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Why did the United States go to war against Iraq in 2003? The decision was controversial
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at the time and remains so today. But the reason was clear: Saddam Hussein, the brutal
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dictator of Iraq for 35 years was the central threat to peace in the Middle East.
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With that threat removed, the Bush Administration believed the establishment of a functioning
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democracy in Iraq would encourage the growth of democracy elsewhere in the Arab world.
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As democracy spread, terrorism would retreat.
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But it is on the blood-stained life and career of Saddam Hussein that we need to concentrate
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in order better to understand why the United States felt forced to act in 2003.
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We begin with the Iran-Iraq War, which Saddam started in 1980 and which lasted until 1988.
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One million people died in the course of the decade-long struggle. And during that war,
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Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) -- especially poison gas --
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were used on a regular basis by both sides.
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Once his war with Iran ended, instead of building up his shattered nation, Saddam decided to
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embark on another lunatic adventure: In 1990, he tried to grab 19% of the world's oil supply
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by invading Kuwait.
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His brief annexation of Kuwait proved to be another disaster. The Mother of All Battles,
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as Saddam called it, turned out to be a 3-week rout, his Iraqi army utterly defeated by a
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US-led coalition. But rather than trying Saddam as a war criminal,
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America and the West allowed him to stay in power.
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This appeasement eventually led Saddam, once again, to draw entirely the wrong conclusion
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and to his making yet another colossal mistake. He arrogantly believed that his Iraqi army
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might actually defeat the United States in a second encounter.
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His trump card, he believed, or at least attempted to make the world believe, was his possession
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of WMD - large quantities of poison gas and, if only in his imagination, a rapidly progressing
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nuclear weapons development program. There was no reason to doubt that he had WMD,
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as he had used poison gas in his war against Iran. No one -- not the Germans, not the Russians,
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not the British -- had any doubts about this.
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Looking back, at the twelve years between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, Saddam might
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have been able to re-establish international credibility by complying with the 16 reasonable
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UN resolutions passed between November 1990 and December 1999. These resolutions simply
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required Saddam to, among other things: 'destroy all of his ballistic missiles with a range
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greater than 150 kilometers; stop support for terrorism internationally and prevent
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terrorist organizations from operating within Iraq; and bear financial liability for damage
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from the Gulf War'.
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But Saddam spent the 1990s defying and mocking America and Britain in every possible way.
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He attempted to shoot down Royal Air Force and US Air Force planes over the no-fly zones
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created to prevent him from mass-slaughtering his own citizens; he corruptly profited from
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the UN oil-for-food scandal while Iraqi children starved to death; he offered $25,000
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to the families of every Palestinian suicide-bomber; he harbored many of the world's leading terrorists,
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and he expelled UN weapon's inspectors.
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By the time of the terrorist attack on the United States of 9/11/ -- something for which
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Saddam was not responsible nor ever blamed for -- any War against Terror that did not
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involve toppling this brutal dictator, who might supply WMD to terrorists for future attacks,
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would have been absurd.
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Still, had he backed down and accepted repeated United Nations resolutions - especially those
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requiring him to prove he had destroyed his stockpiles of WMD and had no nuclear weapons
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development program, there would have been no U.S. action. Instead, he only became more bellicose.
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That's why some leading Democrats -- such as Senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and
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John Kerry -- voted to authorize the second Iraq War. Only later did they recant their
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decisions after claiming that they had been lied to by the Administration. But there had
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been no need for the Bush Administration to lie. Its assessment of the threat Saddam posed
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concurred with that of the Clinton administration, as well as with numerous European intelligence
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services. And the road to a democratic Middle East had to begin in Iraq. A vicious, mass-murdering,
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despot who had convinced the world that he had WMD and would use them, stood in the way.
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In the spring of 2003, that was obvious both to Republicans and many Democrats as well
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as to the leadership of Britain and dozens of other nations. That's why President Bush
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took America to war against Iraq.
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I'm Andrew Roberts for Prager University.