Wolfowitz"Iraq War Might Not Have Occurred if US Knew Hussein Had No WMD"

[kpete]

(Kpete: I do not know if this has been posted, but it blew me away!)

Thursday, December 8, 2005

Wolfowitz Says Iraq War Might Not Have Occurred if United States Knew Hussein Had No WMD

Former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said yesterday that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq might not have occurred if the United States had known there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 5).

“I'm not sure based on the evidence we know now that we could have been absolutely convinced that there was no danger, absolutely no danger,” Wolfowitz, a chief promoter of the invasion who is now president of the World Bank, said at the National Press Club. “If somebody could have given you a Lloyd’s of London guarantee that weapons of mass destruction would not possibly be used, one would have contemplated much more support for internal Iraqi opposition and not having the United States take the job on the way we did.”

“It was a sense that the greatest danger in taking this man on would be that he would use them,” said Wolfowitz of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. “If you could have given us a guarantee that they wouldn't have been used, there would have been policy options available probably.”

When asked how he accounted for U.S. intelligence failures before the war, Wolfowitz said, “Well, I don't have to, and it's not just because I don't work for the U.S. government anymore. In my old job, I didn't have to. I was like everyone else outside the intelligence community” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Dec. 7).

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/print.asp?story_id=16F1EA61-1672-4AA2-B62E-95983B0E638F

[SkiGuy]

1. No shit

[grytpype]

2. Well then why didn't Bush let the inspectors finish their work?

Oh, I forgot, Bush made up his mind months earlier that he would invade Iraq.

Because it would be so easy to take over the country and then the whole Middle East would turn into a democracy and there would be peace on Earth.

[RC]

3. Wolfowitz is still reality challenged.

The UN had inspectors on the ground looking for WMD. If they had been allowed to finnish their work the US would have had to find another excuse to invade and occupy Iraq.

[BelgianMadCow]

4. well it looks like a confession but he's trying to hide PNAC

Damage control imho

This from the guy who said in Cigar Aficionado WMD's were the one "administrative" reason picked to go to war on.

Despicable.

[Kagemusha]

5. "If you all could've proved a negative then..."

Yeah. And in the preceding breath he'd said how he's not sure a negative such as that COULD have been proved, to the neocons' satisfaction.

And even if it was possible, they didn't want to be convinced. So there.

[pretzel4gore]

8. what was iraq's military budget?

that's a general idea of a nation's military strength; it's really not a cartoonish world...iraq's military budget was similar to hungary or syria, much smaller then israel or britain....all the 'wmd's' talk is bush crap; to be able to field such weapons requires ability, and ability cost money ...and wolfowitz proves he's a criminal just by this one lying statement...
http://www.borgenproject.org/Defense_Spending.html

[Historic NY]

6. What a POS....

he knew and skewed the intel to put us there.

[bridgit]

7. talk about a death bed conversion...

someone else's death someone else's bed of pain :eyes:

[mmonk]

9. Bull