Where Was the Danger?

Пенко Гаджев
в-к The Occurence, САЩ

We are now more than three weeks into the war with Iraq but we have yet to see the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" allegedly owned by Saddam Hussein. These weapons were the main point of President Bush in his miserably failed attempt to convince the world that the war was needed.
Saddam Hussein has proven that he either does not have those weapons, or he would not use them even as a last resort. This fact undermines another point of Mr. Bush: that Iraq is a grave danger to the United States. If the Iraqi president would not use chemical or biological weapons on American troops inside Baghdad, how likely was he to use them on U.S. soil or against American interests in the Middle East?
None of the alleged reasons for the invasion of Iraq have been proven. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld never showed us his "bulletproof evidence" that Iraq was behind the terrorist acts on September 11.
President Bush repeatedly described how Saddam "gassed his own people", but neglected to mention the $1.2 billion in financial aid his father gave the Iraqi government just months after that attack 15 years ago, and the continuous financial and political support the United States was giving Iraq right up to the Gulf war.
Bush also lied to the world by saying repeatedly that Iraq posed an imminent threat. The U.N. inspectors working in Iraq specifically pointed out that they have found no evidence of a nuclear program and that many of the documents used by the U.S intelligence were fake.
On February 5, addresing the U.N. Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that "in the history of chemical warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein's Iraq", conveniently forgetting the 72 million litters of chemicals, 66% of which Agent Orange, dumped on Vietnam during the Vietnam War, exposing millions of Vietnamese and as many as 4.2 million American soldiers to the super strain of toxic TCCD.
There were many things Saddam could have done over the last few weeks to stop or slow down the American advance into Iraq. He could have set hundreds of oil fields on fire, creating an environmental disaster and making the mission of U.S. pilots much harder.
He did not do it.
He could have blown the dams on major waterways, flooding the delta between the Tigris and Euphrates, sending millions of refugees in the way of the troops and slowing them for weeks, if not months.
He did not do it.
Or, President Bush's favorite hypothetical - unleashing chemical weapons on the advancing troops, killing thousands.
He did not do that, either.
Saddam may be a monster, but he is not stupid. He is fully aware that by using any kind of unconventional weapons, all international support for his regime would have been lost.
Judging by everything we know about him, the Iraqi dictator needed to go. The big question, however, remains: Why right now?
America has been in a recession for the last three years and the outlook is not very good for the remaining year until the next elections. Most states are in the red, the Federal Government too. The unemployment rate is at an even 6%. Money is being cut from education, health, and most other sectors. Sooner or later, the average American will figure out that the government is not doing a great job.
The war on terrorism is in a dead end, with Bin Laden still alive and well and Afghanistan still ravaged by warlords, despite American military presence.
So, what better way to jump-start the failing economy than by invading the country with the second largest oil reserve in the world? Why not spend $75 billion tax dollars for a month of destruction and later award the contracts for reconstruction to the idling multinational corporations, paid with the proceedings of the Iraqi oil?