Bush toppled Saddam for one reason only, as revenge for Saddam planning to assassinate George Sr. The biggest mistake was then disbanding the Iraqi military and police. They could have kept order under new leadership.
Obama has made made even greater blunders, such as supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, not to mention the Libyan disasters.

The attempted assassination of President HW Bush in 1993 did fall under the rubric of US national security and was added to the case against Saddam by President Clinton.

That being said, the best representation of the justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom is the preamble of the 2002 AUMF against Iraq, Public Law 107-243 (link). The 2002 AUMF details a laundry list of reasons that have in common their ties to the UNSCR 660-series resolutions that constituted the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire, ie, the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441). There were a number of reasons for OIF. The general reason in the casus belli was Iraq's noncompliance with the UN mandates, ie, material breach of the ceasefire. Per the 2002 AUMF, Saddam was evidently noncompliant across the board with the UN mandates, including the disarmament mandates of UNSCR 687, at the decision point for OIF.

The deBa'athification was a necessary step for post-Saddam Iraq given the terroristic nature (link) of Saddam's regime. At the same time, the process has been often mischaracterized. For insight on the deBa'athification, read this clarification (link) by senior CPA officials.

Thank you. I've tried to point out numerous times that WMDs were only one claim against Saddam. He had been in violation of the 1991 cease fire from day 1.

No he also did it because he was told that we would have a pipeline of cheap oil if we took over the country. he was lied to, by two of his most significant advisors.

It's not the 1930s. That's not how the petroleum market works.

I know that.

President Bush knew that, too.

I am not as sure of that as you are.

You do know that besides a political career that included exceptional exposure to national and international political economic affairs, Bush is a Yale grad and Harvard Business School grad who started oil businesses and later served as an oil company executive, right? He did this in the modern era, not the turn-of-the-20th-century "There Will Be Blood" oil pioneering era. We can comfortably assume President Bush knew how the petroleum market works, likely better than his "most significant advisors".

Yeah but everything I have read about GW is that he was kind of a dilettante. That he never quite worked as hard as he should have at these jobs. He just kind of showed up and picked up the checks.

Back when Cheney had a brain he said the same thing RAnd is saying today

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

A lot happened with US-Iraqi affairs between the HW Bush administration and the Bush administration.

Note that the HW Bush administration, including then-Secretary of Defense Cheney, did not end the Gulf War as such in 1991.

Instead, through the UN, the Gulf War ceasefire only suspended the war with a spectrum of terms that Saddam's regime was required to fulfill in order to resolve Iraq's intolerable threat and thereby conclude the Gulf War. At the time that HW Bush officials were justifying the decision to stop short of the normal war conclusion of regime change, the expectation was that Saddam would fulfill the terms of the ceasefire within 1-2 years, if not within months, so that the Gulf War could thereby conclude with a resolution of the threat without regime change.

It's true that President HW Bush and SecDef Cheney chose to give Saddam a chance to stay in power despite the Gulf War. Saddam abused that chance. Saddam chose to retain his intolerable threat and breach the terms of the ceasefire, instead. President Clinton gave Saddam more chances to comply and Saddam abused those chances, too. Finally, in October 1998, Iraqi regime change as the official solution for Saddam's material breach was made US law and policy. Then in December 1998, Clinton determined (link), "Iraq has abused its final chance," and cleared the penultimate enforcement step with the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign, which set the stage for the ultimate enforcement step, Saddam's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) under credible threat of regime change.

Vice President Cheney understood the situation with Iraq in 2002-2003 had progressed far from the situation with Iraq faced by Secretary of Defense Cheney in 1990-1991. It seems, however, Rand Paul is even more nostalgic and holds to a view of Saddam from the pre-Gulf War 1980s.

Stop defending the disaster know as Iraq. A blunder of the first magnitude.

The military won the Iraq War, Obama lost it.

Yes publius they did. But we and GW were lured into the conflict by lies. The WMD part was true enough, but the men who did the luring had no understanding of the Middle Eastern mind set. A very significant mistake MANY Americans make is to think that everyone in the world thinks as they do. The Middle East has always been theocratic, ideologically ruled by Imams. The VP and SecDef didn't grasp that truth. All they saw was cheap oil and billions in logistical contracts for their respective companies. That was the lie.

Except we didn't commandeer Iraq's oil wells.

I know. I am talking about the "justification" for going in in the first place. Remember what we were told, "It will be a cake walk. The people WANT us to." "18 months" "Easy days". publius go back and look on youtube at some of the things those two gentlemen said in the lead up to the second gulf incursion. They lied. A lot. they started a war for their own purposes, largely economic. And for private companies they were connected to. Take a look at the billions just Halliburton made on the backs of the soldiers. It really is a disgrace.

One more reason for taking out Saddam. When a reporter asked Bush if Saddam's attempt to have Bush I assassinated had anything to do with the invasion Bush answered "What would you do if someone tried to kill your daddy?". Hard to prove, but I strongly believe that from the day Bush first took office he was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq and 9/11 provided that excuse.

Interesting. Disturbing, but interesting.

I initially supported Bush fully in invading Afghanistan but not Iraq. in order to take out bin Laden but he failed to finish the job before moving against Saddam. For political reasons he allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora. He even stated a few years later that he rarely thought about bin Laden and no longer saw him as a priority.

Although Saddam was an evil despot who needed to be taken out of power an prosecuted I do not appreciate direct lies and lies of omission for justification. As far as Afghanistan goes my belief is that we could stay there for a hundred years and as soon as we left they would revert back to the 19th century with the exception is they would then have better weapons to kill each other with.

I also believe that GW Bush is a good person and did what he believed was right, but that he made some colossal blunders during his Presidency. Obama has made quite a few blunders during his time as POTUS, but I also believe he is a good person who is doing what he feels to be the correct way.

The question, "Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq?", is answered here (link). (One-word answer: No.)

Keep in mind that for the war on terror, Saddam's terrorism (link), which included jihadists, including al Qaeda affiliates, was on par, if not more dangerous, than bin Laden's terrorism. More on Saddam's terrorism here (link). Saddam's terrorism in violation of UNSCR 687 was an enforcement trigger for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We didn't invade Afghanistan only to take out bin Laden. We invaded Afghanistan to break apart al Qaeda, which was more than bin Laden, and unseat its host Taliban.

We didn't "allow" bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora. He did that on his own. The Iraq intervention didn't replace the hunt for bin Laden. One, Operation Enduring Freedom continued. Two, the man-hunt for bin Laden was no longer a primarily military mission. At the same time, the hunt for bin Laden and other al Qaeda never let up. See CIA Saved Lives (link).

I suggest you review what Bush actually said and meant: at that point, bin Laden's al Qaeda organization was no longer the strategic threat it had been on 9/11 because we had shattered the group in Afghanistan, taken away its operational base, and AQ's commanders had been captured or chased to ground. Meanwhile, other terrorist entities, including AQ affiliates - granular, flexible, and shifting by nature - had moved ahead of the diminished threat of AQ. Again, while bin Laden had been reduced to a hunted man with his organization taken away, we did not let up until bin Laden was dead.

The Bush administration chose to ignore that there was no evidence to support the claim that Saddam was attempting to buy yellowcake from Nigeria or that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 as Bush claimed. Don't know if Bush himself was involved, but his administration revealed publicly CIA employee Valerie Plame-Wilson as an agent who in the past had performed covert missions and would no longer be able to do so because of this. All of this was because her husband traveled to Nigeria and found there was no evidence of any attempt to buy yellowcake. There was a pattern of the Bush administration ignoring all evidence that his assertions were false and in fact emphasizing what he knew to be untrue as justification to invade Iraq.

The Bush administration lied about Saddam harboring al Qaeda members by providing them the ability to train and recruit more members while knowing full well that Saddam and bin Laden loathed each other Saddam would never have allowed it. His administration also disbanded Task Force 121, which was created to find and take out bin Laden, in 2005.

http://www.washingtonsblog....

http://www.leadingtowar.com...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/...

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pk...

http://foreignpolicy.com/20...

Saddam was an evil despot, who was defying most of the terms of the agreement to end the gulf war, and needed to be taken out and that should have been justification enough to invade. The problem for Bush was that this was not enough to convince other nations, along with congress, to join into a coalition so he manipulated evidence and ignored all evidence contrary to his belief. After the invasion documents found proved that Saddam was indeed harboring and assisting terrorist not affiliated with al Qauda to also justify invasion.

That is plainly wrong. Just like the US military was defeated in Vietnam, the military was again defeated in Iraq. The lesson is plain, the US military is incapable of defeating and occupying a nation that does not want to be occupied. The US military has been defeated in every major was going back to Korea.

There were reports that North Vietnam, while we were carpet bombing, volunteered an unconditional surrender to Henry Kissinger in Paris. The North Vietnamese invaded the Saigon after the Democrats in Congress defunded military aid. So once again, democrats lost the war our military won.

We never "lost" the Vietnam war. We never truly prosecuted a war. It was
then what it is today, perpetual war for perpetual peace. And peace
never comes because we do not fight to win, politicians only sustain war
for monetary and political gain. In Vietnam whenever armor or airborne
were deployed in mass the results were extremely positive. Yet they were
used in only limited engagements. The war was never meant to be won,
only fought. Paul is correct, we removed the secular barriers between
radical Islam and the reins of power. Now radical Islam reigns.

And, Barack Obama continued that destabilizing trend!!!

Possibly. They ought to have used the airfields to reduce the Iranian nuclear capability to zero and then got out.

Actually, it was a mistake for Bush's father to not topple Saddam in 1991 when it would have been a lot easier and the population -- including the Ba'athist regime itself -- was ready to accept it.

There are accounts that, after having been defeated, when Saddam and his general staff were told that they would be permitted to retain their dictatorship, they were incredulous.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1st Gulf War, there were several uprisings amongst the population and our vaunted victorious coalition stood idly by as mass-graves were filled with Iraqi men, women and children.

So when US forces came in a 2nd time a dozen years later, the local population was ambivalent about it at best. Also, terrorist groups had time to fester and grow while Saddam brutalized and neglected his own people. Hence, what was possible in victory was significantly diminished in 2003 from what it was in 1991.

When a democracy goes to war against an aggressive regime, you don't leave it in power. In war, there are only three possible outcomes: defeat, victory or a continuation of war. [Compare the result of WW2 with that of Korea; the latter war is still ongoing and the Pyongyang regime has been a threat to world peace ever since.]

In his pursuit of international approval by subordinating American strategic objectives to despotic regimes in the Saudi Peninsula, Bush's father -- whose Presidency was a disaster in many ways -- chose the third option and thus guaranteed that a war left unfinished would have to be picked up later.

And indeed, it still continues there with no end in sight. That is what happens when a war is left half-done. If you're not going to finish a war, don't start it in the first place.

Indeed. Soon after Desert Storm in 1991, the root problems that eventually caused Operation Iraqi Freedom were obvious:
http://bush41library.tamu.e...

Obvious, but ignored. There were reports about atrocities but Bush, then Clinton did nothing.

Bush 41 did something similar with respect to Afghanistan in the late '80s. He sent in help for them to evict the Soviets, declared victory and then didn't want to hear about it anymore.

So he abandoned them there with all of those weapons and in the vacuum, the Mujahideen morphed into the Taliban.

Once again, half-measures. If Bush 41 had followed through and helped the Afghans establish a stable regime legitimized by a popular mandate, 9/11 might never have happened.

There was no morphing. The Northern Alliance factions were Mujaheddin, too. The anti-Soviet Afghan fighters were made up of diverse factions. The conglomerate was collectively called Mujaheddin. We didn't favor the Taliban factions of the Mujaheddin, but other parties did. When we pulled our support after the defeat of the Soviets, those other parties did not pull their support for the Taliban. Thus, in the mujaheddin-v-mujaheddin contest for post-Soviet Afghanistan, the Taliban gained the advantage.

I am aware that Mujahideen is a generic brand name -- just as al Qaeda is. Whatever the origins and nomenclature, the fact remains that Bush 41 abandoned the Iraqis in 1991 by leaving the job unfinished and did the Afghans a similar disservice by not addressing the vacuum left behind.

Bush 41 was a CIA Director and should have known that when there is a vacuum, it will most likely filled by the most ruthless, determined and heavily armed faction. But he was always a multinationalist type and UN fan.

I never trusted him when he coined the term "Voodoo Economics" when he ran against Ronald Reagan for the GOP nomination in 1980. He was what they used to call a Gypsy Moth Republican.

The murdered, raped, and displaced Christians and Yazidis of northern Iraq tend to agree with Mr. Rand Paul. These minorities were 99% better off before 2003 than after it, when the invasion of Iraq happened. Israel and its powerful ally the U.S. wanted Sadam out at whatever cost and they got him out. The lives of Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities are worthless to the Neocons. Only the well being of the Kurds matters, that is until they too fall out of favor. Today, some people even believe ISIS is a creation of those very same powers to counter, disrupt, and balance the ascendency of Iran and its Shi'ite allies. Sure fits with what has been done to Iraq so far. As long as Israel and U.S. have a say in the Middle East, the Sunnis and the Shi'ites will continue to slaughter each other, and everyone else in Iraq.

I wouldn't go so far to say that the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam Hussein. He was gassing men, women and children by the hundreds of thousands. Mass-graves were found everywhere. He had a special prison just for children.

He had thugs go into houses, take infants from their mothers and throw them against the wall. Then they would rape the mothers and daughters in front of the husband. Then they would get really nasty. People were being fed feet first into plastic shredders so they would die more slowly. The lucky ones only had limbs amputated.

Saddam was a monster and had to go. As I had noted earlier, Bush 41 should have take care of that in 1991.

It was inevitable,
Saddam was previously a pentagon dog of war, but he didn't conceal his dislike of the zionists.
With Washington being a zionist dog of war, this meant that saddam couldn't stay - regardless of the amount he - as a usual ally of washington normally does - churned out in terms of weapons sales forthe M.I.C
and tyranny.

Throw in all of that with the bush family, the neocons, florida, the weathy and usurious Zionist stranglehold - and oil, the outcome becomes obvious.

Gaddafi too, again, didn't suck zionist c--k,
And neither did assad (golan was a sore point).
True, all of them were secular (infidel) inclined,
true, none of them had many problems with washington (gaddafi even reconciled with blair during the iraq robbery despite what happened to Hanna).
And true, they all despised the slimy zionist crooks
And true, they were all attacked.
Whats more amazing is how washington seems to be able to get them and the Muslim revolutionaries at each other's throats just before something goes down.
They're usually paranoid of and suppressing mujahideen by the time they're ripe enough for washington to pluck, and it's no secret that the cia mossad are well versed (though often clumsy) in the art of false-flagging and running mujahideen outfits without knowledge of the fighters.
Afghanistan during brzezinski and the cold war is a clear demonstration.

ACHTUNG DAS JUDEN!

ya think?

When Bush left office, Iraq was stabilized and progressing well following the Counterinsurgency "Surge" and Anbar Awakening. The Arab Spring hadn't happened yet. The proximate causes of the subsequent crisis in Iraq are, one, the construction of ISIS in Syria in the degeneration of the Arab Spring that combined with, two, the US-abandoned vulnerability of Iraq. Both conditions arose from post-Bush events that are related to fundamental errors made by President Obama, such as the 'lead from behind' approach to the Arab Spring and disengagement from Iraq, that sharply deviated from President Bush's course.

See:

In Foreign Policy magazine, Ali Khedery, perhaps the longest serving US official from Operation Iraqi Freedom, attributes (link) the regression of Iraq since Bush left office to decisions by Obama from the outset in 2009, including the pull-out in 2011.

In Foreign Affairs magazine, Rick Brennan, a senior advisor in Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2006 to 2011, describes (link) "the bungling of the Iraq exit" by Obama.

In Politico, Emma Sky, an official and senior advisor in Operation Iraqi Freedom, laments (link) the progress and opportunities lost in Iraq due to Obama's sharp deviation from Bush with an approach that favored Iran's encroachment in Iraq. In Slate, more (link) from Emma Sky.

That is utter nonsense. Iraq was NEVER stable. Try to tell the kids who died over there in green zones how stable it was in Iraq.

Nation Building seldom works with the USA itself a rare exception. But, Americans shouldn't lose sight of the fact that America was ATTACKED on 9/11/2001 which made the resulting War one of defense NOT like one of the Democrat Wars of choice as in the Vietnam War & WW I.

The Bush administration did not claim Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. Rather, the 9/11 attacks raised the threat consideration of Saddam's terrorism (link) in breach of UNSCR 687 in combination with the threat of Saddam's continuing breach of the disarmament mandates of UNSCR 687. Contrary to a popular misconception, Saddam was not against jihadist terrorism. In fact, Saddam's terrorism included jihadist terrorists, including al Qaeda affiliates.

The casus belli was rooted in an enforcement basis with Iraq's noncompliance with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire. The defense aspect of OIF was included in the enforcement aspect because Saddam's material breach constituted "the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441). Among Iraq's violation of ceasefire terms, the main trigger for OIF was Saddam's failure to comply with the UNSCR 1441 inspections as evident with the UNMOVIC Cluster Document finding (link) of "about 100 unresolved disarmament issues" in breach of UNSCR 687.

The only way that the Bush Administration should have taken the action in Iraq was if enough anti Saddam elements in Iraq had the strength of the Northern Alliance that was America's Ally in Afghanistan. Then, the Liberation could've been seen as "local." But in both places, the commie UN should've been kept out in order to allow locals to form their own governments without UN interference. The Northern Alliance should've been allowed to organize a government with US support in Afghanistan. Iraq should've been allowed to break into the pieces that existed before the WW I settlement that was forced by the Brits for their benefit. The Bush Admin should've stayed with defensive War tactics & ZERO nation building.

By US law and policy, it was impossible to keep the UN out of the Iraq intervention. The structure of the US mission from day one (August 2, 1990, fyi) was enforcement of the UNSCR 660-series resolutions. The US law and policy regarding Iraq was based on enforcing Iraq's compliance with UN mandates. The 1991 AUMF and 2002 AUMF were explicitly Congressional authorities for the President to enforce the UN mandates for Iraq.

President Bush only came on for the coda with Saddam. The operative enforcement procedure, including for regime change, was mature by the time that President Clinton handed over the Iraq enforcement to President Bush in 2001.
Of course, the US had a significant hand in writing the UNSCR 660-series resolutions, but nonetheless, the UNSCRs set guidelines enforced by the US president under US law.

I guess you won't like it, but if you read the UNSCR 660-series resolutions, including the 2003-forward UNSC resolutions of the occupation, you'll see that Bush's decisions tracked the UNSCRs.

Like I said, Bush should never have taken the actions with UN involvement. Democrat President for Life FDR's commie protege Alger Hiss was the anti American architect of the UN.

The hypothetical analogy is if Eisenhower had prematurely withdrawn the US peace operations from Europe and/or Asia in the early 1950s at the 8/9-year mark like Obama prematurely withdrew the US peace operations from Iraq in 2011 at the 8/9-year mark, and then consequentially, our progressing but still fragile European and Asian wards had collapsed with a resulting sweep by the Communists or another competitive political movement, there were factions (such as the isolationist America First Committee) that would have blamed Roosevelt and Truman for entangling America in WW2 in the first place rather than blame Eisenhower for prematurely pulling out the rug (the foundation) from underneath the American-bulwarked international order.

Fortunately, Eisenhower stayed the competitive course of American leadership of the free world. Unfortunately, Obama did not with disastrous consequence.

Worst analogy ever. So many holes in it, it looks like a strainer. The Iraq war wasn't prosecuted worth a damn. That was the issue. The chicken hawk neo-cons who never served, would not listen to the military, and set a political agenda instead of a military campaign. This failed war in Iraq sits squarely on Cheney's shoulders, and Bush's for letting Cheney run the war.

Hear, Hear!

Read the book titled SADDAM'S BOMBMAKER to learn that an MIT PhD Iraqi defected to warn the CIA Saddam was making nuclear weapons on his palace grounds risking his family left in Iraq. You'll learn Saddam's monstrous nature. Then read the book titled SADDAM'S SECRETS by one of Saddam's Generals who casually mentions IF Saddam did not like his General's performance he would invite them to dinner that have them killed, some with a long nail driven from above one ear to out the other. SADDAM A MONSTER THAT HAD TO BE TAKEN CARE OF. Mr. Paul better get his facts in order and know his stuff.

Yesah those deadly nuclear weapons were just all over the place right? Do you believe in the Easter bunny also?