Attention conspiracy theorists, George Bush haters, and hippies everywhere: The United States invaded Iraq for a good reason.
I’ll pause while you all finish gasping in horror …

Last week, declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein were released to the public through The Freedom of Information Act and revealed information about the intentions of the murderous dictator that has lead to some compelling Monday morning quarterbacking, and here’s some more:
First, a quick history lesson: In the early part of this decade, and the better part of the last, Saddam Hussein went around the Middle East bragging about his stockpile of biological weapons and his emerging nuclear program that he claimed would yield a bomb in the next 10 years.

For those of us living in a civilized society, where women can vote and we don’t beat our soccer teams if they don’t perform, allowing a man who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, invaded our ally Kuwait, unprovoked, and sees war as a means to economic recovery, to have nuclear weapons, or even a nuclear program, was and is unacceptable.

In 2002, the United Nations sent weapons inspectors to Iraq to monitor what Hussein was actually doing and what he was capable of.
In his infinite wisdom, Hussein told them to go home.

About a week later, the UN tried again to gain access to Iraqi weapons facilities and was again told to take a hike. This little game went on for months until the UN finally laid down some consequences for lack of compliance, which included military action.

When Saddam told them to hit the road, for the fifth time, and the UN did absolutely nothing, the international organization left itself more impotent than the guys in Viagra commercials.

After the UN made itself completely and utterly useless, the United States and allies from across the world stepped in and decided to do what the world wanted and the UN failed to do.

Post invasion, it became clear that these weapons did not exist, and the boxes Saddam blatantly moved under the cover of darkness were probably nothing more than empty crates, reminiscent of the wooden replicas of nuclear missiles the Soviet Union paraded through Red Square toward the end of their little hiccup in history.

Now we can examine why Saddam would go to such lengths to make the world believe that Iraq was a nuclear power.

In the documents released last week, Saddam said that he saw Iran as the greatest threat to Iraq and that he didn’t even consider the U.S. an actual threat. This fear led to paranoia and caused Saddam to irrationally mislead the entire world with the goal of appearing as strong as possible to his Iranian neighbor.

In hindsight, today, Iran is a much bigger threat than Iraq ever was, and what happened in Iraq could have been a classic case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Unfortunately, where the Bush administration failed was maintaining the pig-headed attitude of refusing to talk to its enemies. The Bush administration understood the Iranian threat, and if it had the sense to talk with Iraqi officials, on a non-public level, perhaps it could have been made clear that Iraq didn’t have any weapons but rather was terrified of Iran.

I’m not suggesting that George Bush and Hussein should have discussed it over golf but take a look at the lessons of the Cold War.

The Cuban Missile Crisis remained a crisis and not a full-blown nuclear holocaust because in the midst of tension, when U.S. and Soviet leaders couldn’t reach out to each other for political reasons, they created back-channel communications to avoid misunderstandings.

It’s clear now, in hindsight, and after finally knowing Saddam‘s true intentions, seven years too late, that if these back channels were present there may have never been a misunderstanding that has now claimed countless lives and cost trillions of dollars, and Iraq could have potentially been an ally in dealing with the true threat: Iran.

Reach Jim at
jaking5@asu.edu