Defending the Indefensible War in Iraq

Because the war in Iraq is indefensible from virtually any moral perspective, it is fascinating to see the bizarre fabrications and twisted rationalization of the defenders of one of the most indefensible wars.

Let us review the facts as I see them:

1. Iraq was admitedly a rogue nation (Iran-Iraq war, Kuwait, repressing Shiites, ...) ten years prior to the war.
2. At one point during the Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq started, the US was actually supporting Iraq with satellite imagery and the precursors for chemical weapons!
   
3. Iraq had been beaten badly by those two wars, a de facto Kurdish separation, a Shia revolt, and nearly a decade of sanctions, safe zones, and rigorous inspections.
4. The sanctions on Iraq resulted in a a decline in the social and economic infrastructure or Iraq, resulting in food, water and medicine shortages that killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children according to UNICEF studies.
   
5. Iraq was complying fantastically well with the sanctions, presumably because they wanted the crippling sanctions lifted, but the Baath were legitimately concerned about the US spying on them.
6. Bush was extremely eager to go to war. He paid for false testimony against Saddam, used discredited "facts", invented the threat, and marginalized those in his adminstration who argued against war.
   
7. At the time of the invasion, several independent inspectors had confirmed that Saddam was completely defenseless.
8. George Bush sought even before becoming president to depose Saddam. This was based on three reasons:
   He regretted that his father did not overthrow Saddam and promised himself that if given the opportunity he would not flinch from attacking Saddam.
   He wanted to place a military base in the Middle East to ensure the flow of oil (as if they would not have sold it to us.)
   He wanted to reward his corporate sponsors (Richard Cheney, etc.) with lucrative "reconstruction" contracts
   
9. The United Nations did not wish us to go to war with Iraq.
10. The US bribed many countries to support the war.
    
11. Despite foreign aid bribes, very few countries supported the war, by the end almost all coalition states left.
    
12. The US easily conquered Iraq because Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
13. If Iraq had WMDs, it would have used them when it was attacked.
    
14. The US faced guerrilla warfare from ex-Baathist Sunnis.
15. Bush begrudgingly allowed elections to occur when Shiite leaders started big demonstrations for such elections. (The Shiites knew that they had the most population and would successfully gain power.)
16. Iraqi life became even harder for most Iraqis after the occupation, including shortages of gas, electricity, water, and kerosene.
    
17. Iraqis were in constant fear of being sent of to Abu Gharib or caught in the crossfire between insurgents and US-backed troops.
    
18. The initial euphoria over "liberation" by some Iraqis dissolved into a desire to end the occupation and have a normal government.
19. Vice president Richard Cheney's Halliburton made billions of dollars off of no bid contracts in Iraq. This was a sharp increase over the percentage of contracts in previous wars.
    
20. There never was any connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
21. George Bush's neocons did not even intend to go after Al Qaeda, but wanted to leverage 9/11 to engage in "nation (re)building".
    
22. W attacked Afghanistan with reluctance, knowing that he could then place the attack on Iraq/Iran/Syria/North Korea (and whoever else the administration wanted to eliminate) in the context of an abstract "war on terrorism".
23. The "war on terrorism" degenerated even further into "making the world democratic".
24. Iraq now has considerably less religious freedom (except for Muslims) than it had under Saddam and may well adopt Sharia law.
25. The US has built one of the world's largest permanent military bases in Iraq.
    
26. Saudi Arabia has asked us to remove the military base located there.
    
27. Terrorism has increased dramatically due to the Iraq war.
    
28. The middle east has been greatly destabilized as a result of the war.
    

Given these facts, it was obvious that the war was unjustified. You cannot attack someone for what they did 10 years ago, especially when the country had been severly punished, as was the case with Iraq. Nor did we even purport to do so. We claimed to be attacking them because they were not complying with sanctions; however, this was patently and knowingly false. Fabricating a case against someone is wrong, especially when doing so to wage war. If one can reasonably predict that such a lie will result in the deaths of thousands of innocents, then action is a war crime. This is the same crime for which the Nazis were executed at Nereumberg. George W Bush, Richard Cheney, Condolezza Rich, Ahmed Chalabi, Rumsfeld and others should be tried for war crimes.

Convicting these individuals would make the world a much safer place. In addition, Rumsfeld is guilty of torture and holding prisoners of war illegally, which are both serious war crimes.

Such justice is necessary not only for the survival of our nation, but probably for the survival of humanity. Nuclear war with the Soviet Union/China/Europe is today much more likely due to the United State's heavy-handed imperialism.