UK Independent: What we have here is a failure to find justification for w

[sfecap]

Friday, October 8, 2004

What we have here is a failure to find justification for war

By THE INDEPENDENT

Now we finally know what we had long suspected. When U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein had no chemical weapons; he had no biological weapons; he had no nuclear weapons. In fact, he had no banned weapons at all.

That is the considered judgment of the Iraq Survey Group, set up by President Bush to prove his case for removing the Iraqi dictator, and released in Washington this week.

In more than 1,000 pages, the ISG report proves precisely the opposite. The much-maligned international regime of weapons containment had functioned exactly as it was supposed to. After his failed effort to annex Kuwait, Saddam progressively disarmed.

Establishing this truth has required half a dozen top-level inquiries on either side of the Atlantic, spending millions of dollars and pounds, the dispatch of hundreds of United Nations weapons inspectors over the years and -- since Saddam's removal -- the work of 1,200 inspectors who scoured the country under the auspices of the U.S.-directed ISG.

Oh yes, and it took a war, a war in which many thousands of Iraqis, more than 1,000 Americans and more than 100 British and soldiers of other nationalities have died. The injured run into tens of thousands. Iraq is a devastated country that risks sliding into anarchy. And what has it all been for?

(much more...)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/194235_nowmd08.html

[aquart]

1. For George's vanity and Halliburton's profit.

And, pathetically, for oil.