Debate With Hitch
This is an imaginary debate between myself and the late Christopher Hitchens:
Chris: Invading Iraq was the best idea George W. Bush ever had.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Roedy: That may well be true since Bush did not have any good ideas. However, invading Iraq was an illegal, idiotic idea.
Chris: So you want just let the Muslim horde take over? You can’t let dusty international law interfere with survival.
Roedy: If that was your intent, Iraq was a strange place to start, the most secular country in the middle east.
Chris: But Saddam was an odious monster. Did you want to just let him get away with it?
Roedy: Yes, he was a monster, but he was America’s monster. The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) helped him into power. George Herbert Walker Bush sold Saddam the poison gas on credit that he used to gas the Kurds. George H.W. Bush’s friends in the cabinet owned the company that manufactured it. Getting rid of one man does not require invading an entire country.
Chris: But he had doubles. There was no way to pick just him off with a few bombs.
Roedy: You forget that Saddam offered to surrender on the eve of the invasion. If the goal were simply to get rid of him, would that not have been preferable to destroying the entire country?
Chris: You just made that up. He would never have surrendered. The war was about freedom for the Iraqis and about his nukes.
Roedy: Bush claimed Saddam had the ambiguous term WMDs (Weapon of Mass Destructions) which could have been just a canister of chlorine. Bush used the poetic term mushroom cloud which indicated he meant nukes. His only evidence was a from an anonymous alcoholic, code named Curveball, paid $40,000 a month to make up lurid tales that were never verified. Ambassador Joe Wilson (a Republican) and the Italians and French warned Bush that the documents supposedly proving Saddam was buying yellowcake from Niger were obvious fakes. France had bought up the entire production for years to come. Rumsfeld lied that he knew the exact location of Saddam’s nukes. Bush would not touch North Korea with a ten foot pole because they actually had nukes. The US army marched boldly into Iraq without any precautions. They clearly were not expecting any nukes.
Chris: Everybody knows there were tons of WMDs even if no one could find them. Saddam was smart. He just hid them. They were just for deterrence. He never dreamed of using them. The war was really about getting rid of Saddam and inaugurating an age of democratic freedom.
Roedy: If the war were truly about deposing Saddam, why did it not end when he was captured or hanged? There was not even a hiccup. It did not wind down until the day Obama announced the giant auction of all of Iraq’s oil reserves mainly to European oil companies. Ask anyone in the middle east. They will tell you that the war was about getting control of Iraq’s oil.