1 00:00:00,340 --> 00:00:06,979 Why did the United States go to war against Iraq in 2003? The decision was controversial 2 00:00:06,979 --> 00:00:12,730 at the time and remains so today. But the reason was clear: Saddam Hussein, the brutal 3 00:00:12,730 --> 00:00:19,730 dictator of Iraq for 35 years was the central threat to peace in the Middle East. 4 00:00:19,829 --> 00:00:24,869 With that threat removed, the Bush Administration believed the establishment of a functioning 5 00:00:24,869 --> 00:00:30,929 democracy in Iraq would encourage the growth of democracy elsewhere in the Arab world. 6 00:00:30,929 --> 00:00:34,760 As democracy spread, terrorism would retreat. 7 00:00:34,760 --> 00:00:40,180 But it is on the blood-stained life and career of Saddam Hussein that we need to concentrate 8 00:00:40,190 --> 00:00:46,719 in order better to understand why the United States felt forced to act in 2003. 9 00:00:46,719 --> 00:00:54,879 We begin with the Iran-Iraq War, which Saddam started in 1980 and which lasted until 1988. 10 00:00:54,880 --> 00:01:00,700 One million people died in the course of the decade-long struggle. And during that war, 11 00:01:00,700 --> 00:01:05,480 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) -- especially poison gas -- 12 00:01:05,480 --> 00:01:09,940 were used on a regular basis by both sides. 13 00:01:09,940 --> 00:01:15,860 Once his war with Iran ended, instead of building up his shattered nation, Saddam decided to 14 00:01:15,869 --> 00:01:23,709 embark on another lunatic adventure: In 1990, he tried to grab 19% of the world's oil supply 15 00:01:23,759 --> 00:01:26,299 by invading Kuwait. 16 00:01:26,300 --> 00:01:31,780 His brief annexation of Kuwait proved to be another disaster. The Mother of All Battles, 17 00:01:31,780 --> 00:01:37,610 as Saddam called it, turned out to be a 3-week rout, his Iraqi army utterly defeated by a 18 00:01:37,610 --> 00:01:43,130 US-led coalition. But rather than trying Saddam as a war criminal, 19 00:01:43,130 --> 00:01:46,960 America and the West allowed him to stay in power. 20 00:01:46,969 --> 00:01:53,270 This appeasement eventually led Saddam, once again, to draw entirely the wrong conclusion 21 00:01:53,270 --> 00:02:00,909 and to his making yet another colossal mistake. He arrogantly believed that his Iraqi army 22 00:02:00,909 --> 00:02:04,820 might actually defeat the United States in a second encounter. 23 00:02:04,820 --> 00:02:10,009 His trump card, he believed, or at least attempted to make the world believe, was his possession 24 00:02:10,009 --> 00:02:17,549 of WMD - large quantities of poison gas and, if only in his imagination, a rapidly progressing 25 00:02:17,550 --> 00:02:23,890 nuclear weapons development program. There was no reason to doubt that he had WMD, 26 00:02:23,890 --> 00:02:30,860 as he had used poison gas in his war against Iran. No one -- not the Germans, not the Russians, 27 00:02:30,870 --> 00:02:34,260 not the British -- had any doubts about this. 28 00:02:34,260 --> 00:02:39,610 Looking back, at the twelve years between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, Saddam might 29 00:02:39,610 --> 00:02:45,590 have been able to re-establish international credibility by complying with the 16 reasonable 30 00:02:45,590 --> 00:02:54,150 UN resolutions passed between November 1990 and December 1999. These resolutions simply 31 00:02:54,150 --> 00:02:59,709 required Saddam to, among other things: 'destroy all of his ballistic missiles with a range 32 00:02:59,709 --> 00:03:05,099 greater than 150 kilometers; stop support for terrorism internationally and prevent 33 00:03:05,099 --> 00:03:10,209 terrorist organizations from operating within Iraq; and bear financial liability for damage 34 00:03:10,209 --> 00:03:11,840 from the Gulf War'. 35 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:18,310 But Saddam spent the 1990s defying and mocking America and Britain in every possible way. 36 00:03:18,310 --> 00:03:23,730 He attempted to shoot down Royal Air Force and US Air Force planes over the no-fly zones 37 00:03:23,730 --> 00:03:29,599 created to prevent him from mass-slaughtering his own citizens; he corruptly profited from 38 00:03:29,599 --> 00:03:37,639 the UN oil-for-food scandal while Iraqi children starved to death; he offered $25,000 39 00:03:37,640 --> 00:03:45,300 to the families of every Palestinian suicide-bomber; he harbored many of the world's leading terrorists, 40 00:03:45,300 --> 00:03:49,599 and he expelled UN weapon's inspectors. 41 00:03:49,599 --> 00:03:54,099 By the time of the terrorist attack on the United States of 9/11/ -- something for which 42 00:03:54,099 --> 00:03:59,519 Saddam was not responsible nor ever blamed for -- any War against Terror that did not 43 00:03:59,519 --> 00:04:05,919 involve toppling this brutal dictator, who might supply WMD to terrorists for future attacks, 44 00:04:05,920 --> 00:04:08,180 would have been absurd. 45 00:04:08,180 --> 00:04:14,860 Still, had he backed down and accepted repeated United Nations resolutions - especially those 46 00:04:14,860 --> 00:04:20,480 requiring him to prove he had destroyed his stockpiles of WMD and had no nuclear weapons 47 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:28,120 development program, there would have been no U.S. action. Instead, he only became more bellicose. 48 00:04:28,120 --> 00:04:33,380 That's why some leading Democrats -- such as Senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and 49 00:04:33,380 --> 00:04:39,480 John Kerry -- voted to authorize the second Iraq War. Only later did they recant their 50 00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:43,500 decisions after claiming that they had been lied to by the Administration. But there had 51 00:04:43,500 --> 00:04:49,720 been no need for the Bush Administration to lie. Its assessment of the threat Saddam posed 52 00:04:49,720 --> 00:04:55,220 concurred with that of the Clinton administration, as well as with numerous European intelligence 53 00:04:55,220 --> 00:05:03,380 services. And the road to a democratic Middle East had to begin in Iraq. A vicious, mass-murdering, 54 00:05:03,380 --> 00:05:10,000 despot who had convinced the world that he had WMD and would use them, stood in the way. 55 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:15,780 In the spring of 2003, that was obvious both to Republicans and many Democrats as well 56 00:05:15,780 --> 00:05:21,780 as to the leadership of Britain and dozens of other nations. That's why President Bush 57 00:05:21,780 --> 00:05:25,110 took America to war against Iraq. 58 00:05:25,110 --> 00:05:28,790 I'm Andrew Roberts for Prager University.