Hey, great game.
Let me try,let's see...Pigs might fly if they had wings....Casey might have hit a homer if only it hadn't been a curve...I might be a billionaire if only I bought Google when...
Hell, okay you're better at this game than me.
First of all you need to recognize there was genuine doubt as to whether Saddam had or hadn't any WMD's.
This was confirmed here in a CBS News 60 Minutes broadcast interview with FBI Agent George Piro, Saddam's interrogator in Iraq.
Skip to :30 for the content to start.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDKTqD9_jhM]Interrogator Shares Saddam's Confessions: No WMDS! - YouTube[/ame]
Then, imagine you are the PM of Israel.
Would you do nothing while being led to believe that a mortal enemy (SCUD attacks in Gulf War I and $25,000 payments to Palestinian suicide bomber families) might have WMD's ready to attack your major cities and kill hundreds, thousands or hundreds or thousands of your citizens?
"Never Again."
No, you would not do nothing. You'd do something.
That's been one of Israel's hallmarks. They act against threats and they don't mess around.
Think "Osirak."
Operation Opera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But if Israel had acted in self defense but without provocation against Iraq a powder keg might have gone up in the entire Middle East and possibly led to a regional war which, in addition to the major loss of life could have prompted a multiple Arab nation attack on Israel once again. But THIS time, with more advanced weaponry, Israel might have had to employ her own WMD's to fend off the combined might of all of her hostile neighbors.
There would have also been an unavoidable disruption of oil supplies going to our trading partners, driving up the global price and causing an economic Tsunami.
Here, we'd ONLY have had to worry about the price of gasoline.
Right?
Wrong.
Look up from your computer monitor and survey everything around you.
Everything.
Now tell me what is not made wholly or in part from petroleum? And how did EVERYTHING you see get to the store where you bought it?
And so on.
And though we've never sent troops to fight with or for Israel, the time might have come if our industry and economy and way of life was threatened by attacks on Israel and if general instability in the oil producing Middle Eastern states had occurred.
So how could President GWB keep Israel from setting off what could have been a regional conflagration or worse?
The answer might have been by promising to remove the threat...whether real or only suspected.
And that is what W did.
Now there is little proof this is what happened in reality.
However, it makes sense and it COULD have happened in roughly the way I've outlined it..
So what might we have avoided by invading?
Oil shortage.
WMD attacks on Israel.
Israel (the hated JOOZ!) launching un-provoked, preventive, pre-emptive strikes on Iraq to neutralize unknown WMD's in dozens of places where they MIGHT have been within distance of Israel. This, causing Saddam to appeal to his Islamic "brothers" to come to his aid.
Regional war. Attacks on Israel by multiple Arab nations. If overwhelmed Israel MIGHT have appealed to the US for troop support. Or it might have brought out her own Nukes and/or other WMD's. This would have enraged Muslims around the world and possibly have touched off a global holy war against both the little and the great Satans. (Israel and the USA)
Yes, Saddam was not religious. But he was playing the religious "card" by paying the Palestinian families, by building huge, elaborate religious themed palaces to convince the Imams and the Holy Warriors that he deserved the Koran ordained assistance from his "fellow Muslims."
Economic chaos. Global instability of the stock and bond and options markets.
Shortages of oil in the US. negatively affecting goods and services and workers across the country and of every walk of life.
Otherwise unassuming Muslims in America would have felt a call to defend their brethren and their religion (think of the cartoon riots but with more intensity and more seriousness and in greater numbers) here in America. The result, greater domestic terrorism in the US by American Muslims or residents like the Boston Marathon Bombers.
Oh, there are all kinds of things we were spared because of GWB's decision.
But that's not to say the invasion was all peaches and cream.
It was a war. And that's seldom the best course and should be avoided if possible.
And we made big mistakes after concluding the major conventional ground operations leading to the capture of Baghdad.
But my point is that when you criticize the decision to invade keep in mind there were good reasons for it, too.
And the fact that Saddam was only bluffing was not confirmed until Piro got Saddam to admit as much in his interrogation sessions.
No President (except maybe Obama, whose foreign policy has been to help our foes and take out our allies in the M.E.) would have gambled with Israel's existence at stake.
No Israeli PM would have tolerated a virtual Sword of Damocles hanging over their figurative heads.
