Why We Deposed Saddam Hussein

Despite all the false excuses given for our invasion of Iraq, the truth is that we deposed Saddam Hussein because he was a strong supporter of the Palestinians. He provided money to those whose homes were bombed or bulldozed by Israel in retaliation after a member of the extended family had become a suicide bomber.

Historically, he had been a ruthless dictator, but he had been our ruthless dictator. We supported him in his invasion of Iran and provided battlefield intelligence, satellite imagery, advisers, etc. A 1994 report by the US Senate Banking Committee showed that the US government approved shipments to Iraq of materials which could be used for biological and chemical WMD. (See Robert Fisk "The Great War For Civilisation" pp. 211-212) Even knowing that he was gassing his enemies, we continued diplomatic ties. (See previous blog entry "Attack Iran? Part 2" 2/8/07)

Before his invasion of Kuwait, our ambassador April Glaspie reportedly told Saddam that this issue was an "Iraqi-Kuwaiti matter." (See Fisk p. 589) In other words, we did not warn him adequately of the dire consequences or explain that this was different from the previous invasion which we backed. Once there, Saddam offered to end his occupation of Kuwait if Israel would end its occupation of Palestine. (See Fisk, p.590) Instead, we massacred his army which was trapped in the desert trying to retreat from Kuwait. Then we encouraged the Iraqi Shiites to revolt, and Saddam's not unexpected retribution resulted in the mass graves we discovered after our invasion.

Although President Bush claims that Saddam tried to kill his father, the evidence for this is not complete. The physical evidence was in question and defendants may have been tortured. Seymour Hersh suggested that "the Kuwaitis might have concocted the plot or at least its connection to the Iraqi government" (See James Bamford "A Pretext for War" p. 259)

In the June 5 debate, Mitt Romney falsely claimed that if Saddam had allowed IAEA weapons inspectors into Iraq and if they had found no WMD, our invasion would have been unnecessary. Of course we all know that Saddam did allow these inspectors in, with free access everywhere. The inspectors found no WMD, but President Bush ordered them to leave since our invasion was predetermined, and WMD were irrelevant.