Although Saddam has not yet been caught, and in fact looks like turning into another ghost-like figure ala bin Laden, with the occasional recording inciting followers to new acts of violence against America etc, it is an obvious fact that Saddam has been removed from power in Iraq. Thus this goal has clearly been achieved. However, the goal only has any merit if he is replaced with something better, which given the current situation in Iraq is far from clear.

With the war on Iraq impending, I wrote up a small argument against a war. Of course, the war is now been and gone, however I think it still important to consider, if only because Iraq doesn't appear to be the last on the US's list of countries in need of 'liberation'. Note that this write-up makes claims which the reader may not initially agree with, but all of which are backed up within this site.

A few important reasons why I don't support a non-UN-backed war on Iraq:

Anyone doubting this need only consider Iraq's history. The CIA played a hand in overthrowing the government in Iraq in 1963 which brought Saddam to power. The reason was that the government had moved to nationalise oil (exactly the same thing also happened in Iran). Going back further also gives a long history of the colonial power Britain treating Iraq atrociously in order to control their oil.

Consider further the Bush Administration's deep ties with the oil industry, read about the English and US oil companies already lobbying over who gets to drill the Iraqi oil (Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world), read the report submitted to Dick Cheney suggesting the use of military force in Iraq because the US needs the oil, or consider that a result of the war in Afghanistan was the US finally getting to build a pipeline through the country, or that high oil prices are currently threatening the US economy and could be reliably kept significantly lower if the US were to control Iraq's oil.

At least for his own people he had thus done a better job than most other Middle Eastern leaders, and now we're supposed to be saving his people from him? I'm not saying Saddam is all good, far from it, but can anyone honestly claim that we are acting in the interests of the Iraqi people here?

Consider this - over the past 12 years under the UN sanctions, an estimated 5000-6000 children in Iraq have died due to starvation and lack of water and medication in Iraq every week. The blame for this lies not with Saddam or even the UN, rather the fact that the US and UK have always fought against any relaxation of the sanctions, including blocking the efforts of the oil-for-food program. The two successive UN leaders of the oil-for-food program resigned due to this, saying that Saddam had done his best to provide his people with food, however calling the US and UK actions 'genocide'. If the US and UK have pursued a genocidal policy at the cost of 1.5 million Iraqi lives over the past 10 years, can we believe their claim to now be taking war to the people of Iraq for their own good?

Iraq probably still has some 'weapons of mass destruction' of course, but an insignificant amount which pales in comparison to that of many other countries (including of course the US and Britain, but also less stable places such as Syria and the nuclear states of North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel).

Saddam has never been a threat to or threatened the US. This brings into question not only the motives for the war but also whether there is any right by international law or even under Bush's pre-emptive doctrine to initiate one. Saddam's army was pathetic in the Gulf War and is much weaker now. Even CIA Director George Tenet believes that the probability of Saddam Hussein initiating an attack on the United States is low, however 'should Saddam Hussein conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions'.

Saddam gives no evidence to being the irrational madman that Bush paints him to be (except perhaps when pushed into a corner as mentioned above and as evidenced by him firing missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War). His war on Iran was backed by the US, as was initially his invasion of Kuwait. If we are truly concerned about chemical and biological weapons, we might ask why the US has recently undermined the Chemical Weapons Convention by restricting inspections in the US, killed the Biological Weapons Convention and refused to sign an International Treaty banning germ warfare. We might also ask why the US had to edit Iraq's weapons declaration before releasing it to the public, removing 150 American, British and other foreign companies from it who illegally supplied Iraq's WMD in the first place.

It is this same doctrine which started World War I, and we can only hope that neither the US nor any other countries continue with this doctrine - the most worrying aspect about this war in Iraq is that it appears to be just the beginning, with Iran and Syria looking likely contenders for being the next 'threats' to the US in need of liberation.

Not only does this war set a dangerous precent, and in the words of Abe Lincoln 'allow (the US) to make war at pleasure', but it may also encourage other countries to seek WMD to combat the US threat - the threat of US force/co-ercion is in fact one of the main reasons countries seek to obtain WMD.