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Good article.
My opinion is that the current Iraq War has roots at least as far back as the Carter administration.
The Carter Doctrine of 1980 and the Reagan Corollary of 1981 determined that oil was a strategic resource to the United States, that the Persian Gulf region provided a large portion of the oil consumed in the United States, and therefore the U.S. would be willing confront threats to the Persian Gulf region.
Carter intended this as a warning to the Soviets after their invasion of Afghanistan.
The Reagan Corollary extended this idea to threats from within the Persian Gulf region – He was looking the threat from Khomeini’s Iran.
Up until Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was seen as holding the Iranians at bay, and thus acting in our interests.
We had known since at least 1984 that Iraq possessed a chemical arsenal, and while demarches were issued condemning this, not much else was done – after all, these weapons weren’t a threat to our interests.
However, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait changed the equation completely.
This threatened Saudi Arabia, the single largest exporter of oil destined for the U.S. market.
Iraq was now seen as a threat to stability in the Persian Gulf, which according to the Carter Doctrine was against the national interest of the United States.
Iraq’s arsenal of chemical weapons was now a threat to our interests – thus UN SCR 687, which required the destruction of Iraq’s WMD arsenal and UN verification.
The rest is, as they say history….
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