Iraq: My opinion on the real reason we went there.

[The One and Only...]

Our economy is in the shitter. Bush does not want the blame for that.

You see, Bush is trying to do something very sneaky behind our backs: he wants to raise aggregate demand.

Raising aggregate demand means MORE government spending and LESS taxes so as to increase consumption and investment.

Hence why Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill.

Bush is already spending like billionare on crack towards traditionally liberal enactments, and he is losing support from conservatives because of it. However, he wants to maintain support from conservatives while gaining a few votes from some usually Dem-voters. He cannot afford to lose support.

So, he needs to find an outlet to put money in. Where would that be? Iraq appears to be the perfect place.

Iraq is not only an expensive project, but it most likely has (gasp!) WMDs. Whether or not Bush had accurate information, you cannot say that move would appear very risky: after all, Iraq most likely would have WMDs. And, if they didn't, he could always claim they need more time or had faulty intelligence.

Yet that isn't the only angle Bush could play-up: we are liberating the people! Saddam was a horrible dictator who violated human rights and had a bad track record with the UN! Who wouldn't want this man ousted?

Of course, then we come to the UN. Whatever Bush expected initially, I think he had a clear-cut goal: by ousting Saddam, America appears to be the UN's champion. They appear to make the tiger real instead of paper. This means better foreign relations, especially if those WMDs are found.

Of course, it backfired. However, you must ask yourself: how could he have predicted how it would turn out? I don't think I could have.

[GAsux]

Or maybe not.

There has been a movement within the Pentagon for 10 years to rid Iraq of Saddaam. It's not new at all. The war plans were there during Gulf War I when George I decided to stop short of moving into Baghdad.

Then a funny thing happened. Bill Clinton. Saddam didn't go away for 8 years. In fact, if you look at what transpired from 1992-1998ish, the confrontations were pretty heated and involved at least some level of military intervention on a half dozen occasions. The Clinton Administration, by accounts that I've read, did not wish to make Iraq the central theme of it's foreign policy.

The Clinton team felt that if they focused on Iraq, they would not be able to pursue other issues, such as the Middle East peace process, and humanitarian type missions in Africa and Europe. So in an attempt to balance both resources and public opinion, the Clinton administration took a much softer approach to Saddam.

But the men who were involved in Gulf War I did not go away. They did not abandon their plan to use military intervention in Iraq, their ideas were just being shot down. When Dubya got elected, guess who's voices became heard again? Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. All architects and advocates of Saddam's overthrow ten years ago.

Second, add 9/11 into the mix which quite frankly was an embarassment to the administration and the government agencies responsible for this nations protection. For the most part, what was the reaction of most Americans? "How could this happen?" There was a lot of finger pointing and blame. The feeling was that 9/11 should have been prevented and the government failed.

So you put it all together. An administration full of government vets who'd been advocating military force in Iraq for a decade, a catastrophic terrorist act that roused America's sentiment and created a window of viability for action in Iraq, and a president eager to shake off a controversial election by proving that he was not "soft on terrorism" and taking a proactive approach to preventing another 9/11 and viola, there you have Gulf War II.

That's still an oversimplification in my opinion because we're talking about a lot of circumstances involved, but I think that is a significant underlying factor.

Or I'm a jackass. I'm willing to except either explanation.