It seems to me that LEGO's comments are probably written by some psycho from the american Embassy!

Either that or LEGO is a paid troll who seeks to deflect any serious discussion on OLO about american Imperialism and its takeover of Australia and the world!

LEGO gift-wraps american propaganda so it is easily absorbed by mindless Australians of which there are many.

LEGO, like Abbott, thinks in slogans!

I do know what went on. I am an avid reader of the news and military publications, and I followed the situation in southern Iraq after Gulf war 1. For three years, Saddam Hussein did everything he could to goad the yanks, including shooting SAMS at US reconnaissance aircraft, having his air force violate "no fly zones", and bragging about his WMD program. I myself saw Saddam Hussein on TV holding up a triggering device for a nuclear weapon while his generals sat around a table sniggering. That Saddam had WMD was obvious because he already dropped mustard gas on the Kurds.

When confronted by the US and told to destroy them, he claimed that they no longer existed. He then played shell games with the UN investigators who's task it was to ascertain if Saddam's claim was true. In one incident, Australia's own UN official, Richard Butler, had a gun pointed at his face when he and his team tried to investigate a site believed to have WMD's. If Saddam Hussein had destroyed his WMD's, he did a very good job of pretending otherwise. It was only when the US and it's allies finally lost patience and invasion was imminent, did Saddam come up with his "my dog ate my homework" excuse.

Any person capable of reasoned thought would therefore have blamed Saddam Hussein for the invasion of Iraq. But people like yourself will never lose any opportunity to shift the blame onto America.

Saddam Hussein had started two wars of imperial conquest in which at least a million people had died. I would have thought that pseudo "progressives" like yourself would therefore support the USA in it's efforts to rid the world of a warmonger. One reason why Saddam invaded Kuwait was because unlike yourself, he considered the USA to be too pacifist to do anything about it. He noted how the USA had agonised over the loss of 64,500 soldiers in Vietnam, while Iraq had lost 50,000 soldiers in just one of it's offensives to retake the Fao peninsular, and it did not worry him one bit

LEGO,

".....I myself saw Saddam Hussein on TV holding up a triggering device for a nuclear weapon while his generals sat around a table sniggering. That Saddam had WMD was obvious because he already dropped mustard gas on the Kurds."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/jun/09/the-secret-way-to-war/

"Iraq, the President said, still had the power to prevent war by “declaring and destroying all its weapons of mass destruction”—but if Iraq did not declare and destroy those weapons, the President warned, the United States would “go into battle, as a last resort.”

It is safe to say that, at the time, it surprised almost no one when the Iraqis answered the President’s demand by repeating their claim that in fact there were no weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, the Iraqis had in fact destroyed these weapons, probably years before George W. Bush’s ultimatum: “the Iraqis”—in the words of chief US weapons inspector David Kay—“were telling the truth.”

"Seen from today’s perspective this short paragraph is a strikingly clear template for the future, establishing these points:

By mid-July 2002, eight months before the war began, President Bush had decided to invade and occupy Iraq.

Bush had decided to “justify” the war “by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.”

Already “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Many at the top of the administration did not want to seek approval from the United Nations (going “the UN route”).

Few in Washington seemed much interested in the aftermath of the war.

........

Iraq, at the time of invasion had no WMD's. That was the formal reason for the invasion. The Bush Administration decided to "fix the intelligence and the facts 'around' the invasion policy" - in other words they had already decided to invade and were not interested in the real facts and intelligence - such as what was forthcoming from weapon's inspectors.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/jun/09/the-secret-way-to-war/?page=2

"Thus, the idea of UN inspectors was introduced not as a means to avoid war, as President Bush repeatedly assured Americans, but as a means to make war possible. War had been decided on; the problem under discussion here was how to make, in the prime minister’s words, “the political context …right.” The “political strategy”—at the center of which, as with the Americans, was weapons of mass destruction, for “it was the regime that was producing the WMD”—must be strong enough to give “the military plan the space to work.” Which is to say, once the allies were victorious the war would justify itself. The demand that Iraq accept UN inspectors, especially if refused, could form the political bridge by which the allies could reach their goal: “regime change” through “military action.”

"Cheney, like other administration “hard-liners,” feared “the UN route” not because it might fail but because it might succeed and thereby prevent a war that they were convinced had to be fought."

"....Worse, Saddam frustrated British and American hopes, as articulated by Blair in the July 23 meeting, that he would simply refuse to admit the inspectors and thereby offer the allies an immediate "casus belli". Instead, hundreds of inspectors entered Iraq, began to search, and found…nothing."

"Indeed, the inspectors’ failure to find any evidence of weapons came in the wake of a very large effort launched by the administration to put before the world evidence of Saddam’s arsenal..."

"The inspectors’ failure to find weapons in Iraq was taken to discredit the worth of the inspections, rather than to cast doubt on the administration’s contention that Saddam possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction."

"Oddly enough, Saddam’s only effective strategy to prevent war at this point might have been to reveal and yield up some weapons, thus demonstrating to the world that the inspections were working. As we now know, however, he had no weapons to yield up. As Blix remarks, “It occurred to me [on March 7] that the Iraqis would be in greater difficulty if…there truly were no weapons of which they could ‘yield possession.’” The fact that, in Blix’s words, “the UN and the world had succeeded in disarming Iraq without knowing it”—that the UN process had been successful—meant, in effect, that the inspectors would be discredited and the United States would go to war."

I have cut and pasted because that is the best way to summarise the contents of this article. WMD threat was indeed the Bush Admin's main thrust in formulating an invasion - an invasion which had already been decided upon even as Bush was delivering ultimatums to avert invasion.

"...Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy..."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/jun/09/the-secret-way-to-war/?page=3

Gee Poirot, where did you get that little bit of socialist propaganda, the Green/Left Weekly? I presume that the correspondent was in the white house and privy to all the of President Bush's decisions?

No?

Then it is just an opinion from some hate America drop kick (probably Michael Moore).

So let's see if your scenario makes sense. The USA decided to invade Iraq and steal all of Iraq's oil? And they dreamed up an excuse that Saddam had WMD's to justify it. Their motive was entirely self interest.

What happened. The USA invaded Iraq and deposed a war mongering tytrant who did have WMD's and although he may have destroyed them, he pretended that he did not, until right before the invasion began. The USA did not steal Iraq's oil. They set up a democracy and then left. The war cost them $1 trillion dollars and 3000 men dead so where was the self interest?

The only benefit the US got out of it was that they removed a threat to the world's oil supplies and the only thanks they got for that was endless criticism from specimens like yourself.