Did Bush manipulate Iraq data?

[Moldran]

We waged war against the dictatorial regime of Iraq BECAUSE of Saddam Hussien, BECAUSE of the iraqi people, and BECAUSE the Bush Administration said so. To say what you just posted completely bastardizes the whole cause of LIBERATION, you know, that thing where we get rid of governments who test biological agents on their civillians, drag people into the street and cut their tounges out for speaking against the government... I could go on, but why?

The thing is that the Bush administration did not name liberation as the main reason for the war. They built up their argumentation on the claim that Iraq had WMDs that were a threat to the USA, not that the regime was committing atrocities in its own country.
The reason for this is quite simple: International law and the principles of the UN. According to international law, there are exactly two reasons that justify a military attack on another country:
1) The UN security council authorises such an attack.
2) The attacker acts in direct self-defense.

Fullfilling 1) was not achieved, so if the US wanted to somehow keep up the impression that they were acting in compliance with international law, they had to come up with something that would mean a direct threat to them. That is why they used the WMD argument.

Iraq very likely did have WMDs, and Saddam publicly admitted that he does cooperate with terrorists... but both happened in a way that was not really a direct threat to the US, of course

Maybe it would have been more clever to say "If international law protects Saddam´s regime, to hell with it. The suffering of the Iraqis is so great that we must do something". That basically is the argumentation the EU used in the case of Yugoslavia. Of course, that, too, would have been quite problematic, considering that the US has no problems to cooperate with brutal dictatorships when it fits their interests...

Moldran