Iraq War Remembered

It's the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War and every blog and its dog will be putting there opinion forward today. Most, i suspect, will be explaining why it was wrong but some will come down on the idea that the ends justified the means and the removal of Saddam was worth it.
I'm not so brave about willing other peoples children to die in a futile war but what cannot be denied is that we were lied to from the word go, the Bush administration were looking tom go after Saddam no matter what and Blair, for some unfathomable reason, was happy to go along with it and it ended up costing him his job and his reputation, the Bush's poodle taunt will haunt him to his grave.
What the last ten years has revealed are numerous reports and investigations and books that lay out the path from 9/11 to the outbreak of Operation Iraqi Freedom began that proves the WMD justification was a fig leaf.
Let's begin on the day of 9/11, as the towers were still crumbling:   

11/09/2001: Best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit S.H. at same time. Not only UBL? Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not - Donald Rumsfeld

12/09/2001: See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way. See if Saddam was involved. Just look - GWB

20/09/2001: I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq - GWB to Tony Blair.  

08/02/2002: Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training - GWB

14/03/2002: Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions: How to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified. - Foreign Policy Advisor David Manning memo to TB

15/03/2002: There is no intelligence on any biological warfare agent production facilities. - British intelligence report

22/03/2002: US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing. To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations, we have to be convincing that:  the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability.But we are still left with a problem of bringing public opinion to accept the imminence of a threat from Iraq. This is something the Prime Minister and President need to have a frank discussion about. Regime change does not stack up. - Political director Peter Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw

24/03/2002: Saddam is a man of great evil, as the president said. And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time. - Dick Cheney

25/03/2002: At present no majority inside the Labor Party for any military action against Iraq. Colleagues know that Saddam and the Iraqi regime are bad. Making that case is easy. But we have a long way to go to convince them as to the scale of the threat from Iraq and why this has got worse recently: what distinguishes the Iraqi threat from that of e.g. Iran and North Korea so as to justify military action; the justification for any military action in terms of international law. A lot of work will now be needed to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea. - Jack Straw memo to Tony Blair

25/07/2002: C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. 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. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force. - Downing Street cabinet memo

26/08/2002: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. - Dick Cheney

07/09/2002: An IAEA report says Iraq is six months from developing a nuclear weapon - GWB

08/09/2002: We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs to build a nuclear weapon. - Dick Cheney

16/09/2002: The President hasn't made a decision with respect to Iraq. - Donald Rumsfeld

19/09/2002: Saddam has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins, and possibly Smallpox. He's amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas. His regime has an active program to acquire nuclear weapons. - Donald Rumsfeld

20/09/2002: We now have irrefutable evidence that Saddam has once again set up and reconstituted his program to take uranium, to enrich it to sufficiently high grade, so that it will function as the base material as a nuclear weapon. And there's no doubt about the fact that the level of effort has escalated in recent months. - Dick Cheney

24/09/2002: Iraq can launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes. Saddam has sought to acquire significant quantities of uranium from Africa. - Tony Blair

28/09/2002: The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding the facilities to make more. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year. - GWB

01/10/2002: Of course, I haven't made up my mind we're going to war with Iraq. - GWB

08/10/2002: A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in Bush's own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war. The intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary. - Warren P. Strobel

16/10/2002: I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary. - GWB

21/12/2002: Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public  This is the best we've got? - GWB to CIA

09/01/2003: Inspectors have found no smoking guns in Iraq after two months' work. - Hans Blix

27/01/2003: Inspections have turned up no evidence of nuclear weapons programs in Iraq. It appears that the aluminum tubes would be consistent with the purpose stated by Iraq and, unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges. - Mohamed ElBaradei

27/01/2003: It would appear that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on substance in order to complete the disarmament task through inspection. - UN

27/01/2003: No evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons programme. - UN report

28/01/2002: Saddam has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Iraq has mobile biological weapons labs designed to produce germ warfare agents. - GWB

29/01/2002: Saddam's regime has the design for a nuclear weapon; it was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The regime plays host to terrorists, including al Qaeda. - Donald Rumsfeld

31/01/2002: Bush and Blair were aware that no WMDs had been found and that it was possible that they never would be, but Bush, determined to invade, spent the meeting discussing ways in which the two could justify the invasion. - memo of Blair & Bush meeting in Oval Office

05/02/2002:  Iraq's mobile labs can brew enough weapons-grade microbes in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. - Colin Powell to UN

06/02/2002: Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, possesses at least seven mobile factories for germ warfare, and harbors terrorist networks. Iraq has developed spray devices for chemical and biological weapons that could be attached to unmanned aerial vehicles. A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland. - GWB

14/02/2003: Inspectors have enjoyed uninhibited access to 300 sites over a period of 11 weeks. Everything is in accordance with the Iraqi weapons declaration, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found. - Hans Blix

07/03/2003: Searches have found no evidence of mobile biological production facilities in Iraq. - Hans Blix

07/03/2003: After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq. The Niger uranium documents are not authentic. - Mohamed ElBaradei

08/09/2002: We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. - GWB

16/03/2003: Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. - Dick Cheney

17/03/2003: The American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war.- GWB

19/03/2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom begins.

10/04/2003: Saddam gave us no choice but to act. - Tony Blair

06/05/2003: I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein because he had a weapons program. - GWB

06/10/2006: The group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced and stockpiled any weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when UN sanctions were imposed. - Iraq Survey Group