Quote:I think...the issue is not really so clear-cut. It's debatable whether the Bush administration really believed Saddam was a threat. Let's say they did, though. And let's go a bit further and assume they genuinely believed he had to be taken down before he did something terribly nasty to the US.
Saddam did not pose a threat to the US. Saddam was not affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Virtually everybody who knew a damn thing about the matter knew that. That's why 90% of the world said so when Bush started going on about it. Bush said they were wrong.
Now, in hindsight, we know that reasoning was wrong. And even if it was right, well, they still ran their whole public relations campaign in a despicable manner. But the basic impulse for going to war, even the decision, that's understandable.
Wrong, but understandable.
Also consider...many other countries opposed the US. But WHY did they do so? Because they really believed that Saddam didn't have WMDs? Dunno. I'm sure a lot of nations did believe there were WMDs, but still opposed the invasion for various political reasons. Most Middle Eastern nations kicked up a fuss - the US was proposing an invasion of another Muslim nation, Afghanistan was bad enough. Heck, the first Iraq war drew fire from the Middle East as well... most Arabs thought Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was a terrible thing, but they still opposed US intervention on principle. Then there's France. French leaders have been talking about balancing the US in world politics since the end of WWII. Chirac's stance wasn't anything new.
And then, of course, there's all those countries which did support the US invasion of Iraq, the Coalition forces. Sure, it was mostly US and British troops, but a lot of countries sent detachments, however small, to Iraq, and didn't condemn the war. Australia, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Denmark, a whole raft of Eastern European nations...a lot of those nations probably didn't believe the whole WMD thing, but they probably went along with the war for...yeah, political reasons. Currying favour with the US, if you wanna be crude about it.
-- Acyl