The 2000 Presidential and VP Debate Contains Clues to the Why We’re in Iraq Now

George Bush:
The coalition against Saddam has fallen apart or it’s unraveling, let’s put it that way. The sanctions are being violated. We don’t know whether he’s developing weapons of mass destruction. He better not be or there’s going to be a consequence should I be the president. But it’s important to have credibility and credibility is formed by being strong with your friends and resoluting your determination. One of the reasons why I think it’s important for this nation to develop an anti-ballistic missile system that we can share with our allies in the Middle East if need be to keep the peace is to be able to say to the Saddam Husseins of the world or the Iranians, don’t dare threaten our friends.

MODERATOR: Saddam Hussein, you mean, get him out of there?
BUSH: I would like to, of course, and I presume this administration would as well. We don’t know – there are no inspectors now in Iraq, the coalition that was in place isn’t as strong as it used to be. He is a danger. We don’t want him fishing in troubled waters in the Middle East. And it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him.

Dick Cheney:
I also think it’s unfortunate we find ourselves in a position where we don’t know for sure what might be transpiring inside Iraq. I certainly hope he’s not regenerating that kind of capability, but if he were, if in fact Saddam Hussein were taking steps to try to rebuild nuclear capability or weapons of mass destruction, you would have to give very serious consideration to military action to – to stop that activity. I don’t think you can afford to have a man like Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons in the Middle East. (By the way, we apparently did know what was going on in Iraq since the inspectors who were actually there kept telling the President that Saddam had no WMDs. Since we now know for sure that Cheney was wrong and the inspectors were right about those WMDs, it’s safe to assume that most of the other information the inspectors were giving were also right. Cheney basically was lying to the American people about our ignorance of what was transpiring in Iraq because he was laying the groundwork for a war in the unlikely event he and Bush got elected.)

I think these words are pretty decent evidence for the case that the invasion of Iraq had been planned at least since the 2000 campaign. Oddly, you would think that a war that had been planned for so long would come off better, but that presupposes that the people doing the planning know what they’re doing. It’s increasingly evident that Donald Rumsfailed is the single worst military strategist the US has ever had. He is thoroughly incapable of making a good decision.

What these words also indicate is Bush and Cheney believed Saddam a threat to the world long before those planes hit the WTC and Pentagon. Here was this guy who was threatening to blow us off the planet, at least according to their words, and for nine months they sat firmly on their fat Republican asses and did nothing. But suddenly, when they were able to easily tie Saddam to 9/11 despite all evidence to the contrary they could finally put their plan in motion. Hmmmm.

But I saved the best for last. Ever notice how Bush never actually said Saddam was responsible for 9/11, and how he never actually says that Saddam wasn’t responsible for 9/11, but instead always manages in both cases to put the words Saddam and 9/11 within a few words together so it facilitates a psychological connection in the minds of the audience? Well, consider that trend as you read this and it appears he just couldn’t stop himself from admitting why he wanted so bad to get rid of Saddam:

From the 2000 Presidential debate:

George Bush:
You bet I want to open up a small part of Alaska. When that field is online it will produce one million barrels a day. Today we import one million barrels from Saddam Hussein. I would rather that a million come from our own hemisphere, have it come from our own country as opposed to Saddam Hussein. I want to develop the coal resources in America. Have clean coal technologies. We better start exploring it or otherwise we’ll be in deep trouble in the future because of our dependency upon foreign sources of crude.

You would think that with America occupying Iraq and being in charge of the oil that we would be importing far more oil from Iraq now than we were when Saddam was in power. And yet that is not the case. Oil imports are down, oil prices are up and what’s a country with rising gas prices and good jobs being outsourced to do?

Hey, I’ve got an idea! If we open up the Alaska wildlife refuge to start drilling, we’ll create thousands of good paying jobs and start importing more than enough oil to keep gas prices under $4.00.