Rice Says Iraq War Still Worth It

(CBS/AP)  Five years after 9/11 the United States is still embroiled in costly and violent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — the latter of which many people are questioning on the grounds that the Bush administration may have led the United States to war under false pretenses.

On CBS News' Face the Nation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the war in Iraq is still a crucial part in the larger struggle against Islamic terrorism.

"Well, first of all, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is very important and better for the world," she told Bob Schieffer. "One cannot imagine a Middle East that would be different and would not be a place in which extremism thrives without Saddam Hussein's removal and the chance for a different kind of Iraq."

After 9/11, the Bush administration justified invading Iraq because it said longtime dictator Saddam Hussein harbored terrorists and held weapons of mass destruction.

A Senate report released Friday disclosed for the first time that a CIA assessment in October 2005 said Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates."

Rice said Sunday she does not remember seeing that particular report.

Republican John Lehman, a former member of the Sept. 11 commission, said the U.S. has taken important steps to stem terrorism by capturing many of those responsible for planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We have gotten rid of most if not all theater commanders of al Qaeda, but we have not addressed as a nation the root cause... this jihadist ideology that is being preached around the world, basically funded with Persian Gulf money."

Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste, also a commission member, said the war in Iraq "has been a recruiting poster for jihadists throughout the Muslim world, and there are far more terrorists now than there were on 9/11. The Iraq invasion and occupation had nothing to do with terrorism. It had nothing to do with 9/11."

Rice said Hussein wanted to destabilize the region and had been shooting at American planes since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

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[bonnie442]

Is the war in Iraq worth it? You be the judge:
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

[sharncedar]

I'm going to be a real throwback to civilization (remember that?) and say that determining when someone is deserving of capital punishment is a serious thing in which you want to have a consistent and fair process in which as a minimum the person can answer their accusers and have access to the same evidence. Remember those ideals? Yeah, people fought for some 500 years to establish those priciples against stupid kings and so forth.

So condemning Saddam whoever to death (recall the first act of the current Iraq bombing spree, I won't dignify it as a war, was an attempt to kill Saddam hussein in cold blood with bunker bombs) should have followed some more fair process. I don't think that some people with bombs deciding in a group of three or four with only one dissenting voice that someone is "evil" is a good precedent for applying death to folks. Suppose we get a super-liberal president like Hugo Chavez in there. Who might he condemn to death as "evil"? Perhaps the whole Fortune 500 CEO list, who knows. Or maybe you, what's to stop him, he is just "destroying evil" like Bush/Cheny/Rumsfeld. Whatever a president does becomes precedent for the next one, the way Clinton's snub of congress in Yugoslavia led to Bush's free hand in Iraq which leads to what next, God help us.

[fedora1958]

When logic is tortured this much, it reaches the point of organ failure.

Although the reasons given for the war were not true, the war itself was correct. No one lied, and yet, no one made a mistake, either. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Two plus two equals five.

The War in Iraq may have indeed been a noble cause, or at least there may one hidden somewhere among the corporate giveaways. Going against brutal dictators is not a bad thing per se.

But they misrepresented the reasons for war. At the very least, that's bad leadership. If it's worth doing, it was worth the truth. In their arrogance, they assusmed that it wouldn't matter, because it was all going to be over in time to kick off the 2004 campaign with a nice photo op on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

But it didn't work out that way, and now the American People are balking, and that's one reason why the mission in Iraq is probably going to fail. Bush is telling the truth about this much; if we fail in Iraq, it will empower the terrorists. Likewise if we continue to occupy Iraq. We are in a hell of a mess, thank you very much.

[ronniehm]

I guess I would go along with the "Saddam is evil" excuse. After we kicked him out of Kuwait, he signed an agreement that stopped us from taking him down. He violated the agreement. The end.

If Bush had just said that, I think most people would view the invasion of Iraq as a continuation of the war that started when Saddam invaded Kuwait. I don't think it was necessary to sell this as a new war or to call it part of the war on terror.

[imjustsaying]

In 2002 and 2003, this administration made explicit claims that Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda, and hence to 9-11. But now they're back to the Saddam was evil excuse -- we've seen it all before Ms. Rice. You know perfectly well, that most Americans would probably have never gone along with your "Saddam is evil" excuse for invading Iraq.

The American people are tired of these continued misrepresentations of your pre-war position. I hope they will let you know just how tired in November.