WHY WE INVADED IRAQ

The BushBots often try to pretend we had humanitarian reasons for invading Iraq but the primary justification was WMD:


"We know for a fact there are weapons there." - Ari Fleischer, Jan. 9, 2003

THE PRESIDENT: Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. 3/6/03


"But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about."
-Ari Fleischer Press Briefing 4/10/03

Paul Wolfowitz's interview w/ Vanity Fair


"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason. There have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy."

Feith says Pentagon overdid WMD rationale
By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer
Jul 14, 6:56 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The top policy adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the Bush administration erred by building its public case for war against Saddam Hussein mainly on the claim that he possessed banned weapons.
"I don't think there is any question that we as an administration, instead of giving proper emphasis to all major elements of the rationale for war, overemphasized the WMD aspect," he said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction.