Cheney got it right in 1994.

In 2003, he was VP. Vice presidents do not set policy. George Bush wanted to get Saddam for personal reasons. Not one of them had to do with 9/11 or WMD. If tackling terrorism was the motive behind the iraq invasion, Bush should have invaded Saudi Arabia, since their connection to 9/11 was far greater than Saddam’s, and the money for the global jihad comes mostly from Saudi Arabia.

So why did he target Saddam? Why not Iran with their bomb program? Why not North Korea? Why not Syria and their terrorists connections? Why not Libya? Why not Pakistan since they are the benefactors of the Taliban? Why not Saudi Arabia, the heart and soul of islam, the center of jihadi finance, and the headquarters for Wabbahism worldwide?

Why not any of these much bigger terrorist fish?

Answer?

It was personal. There was huge animosity between the Saddam clan and the Bush family. Remember the video of Saddam on his balcony victoriously shooting his pistol into the air at the end of the gulf war? He claimed he had won a great victory over Bush even though his armed forces were in tatters. But he survived. And for Saddam, surviving was everything because it meant victory.

Saddam couldn’t believe that he was not out of power at the end of a rope. He couldn’t understand why Bush didn’t go after him. He lost the war but he was left alone to claim victory from his palace. As an arab, as a dictator, that does not compute. In the arab culture, as in the Sicilian culture, when you win, you show no mercy. Showing mercy, means showing weakness. So, in the arab mind, he was the victor. And it was a personal victory over his arch nemesis, George Bush.

At this time, when Bush kicked Saddam out of Kuwait in ‘91, Bush Sr had a 92% support rating. Re-election seemed certain. However, unlike for Saddam, fate was not kind to Bush Sr. A slimey car salesman named Clinton, and a wiseguy billionaire named Perot, and a slowly recovering economy, conspired to throw a monkey wrench into his popularity, and a year and a half later, George Bush Sr. was out on the street, a commoner again, while Saddam was living the good life.

That really stuck in his son’s craw. He is a very proud man. Fiercely proud. Perhaps that was the time at which George decided one day he would be president, on a personal mission to restore his father’s honor. Or maybe it came later.

On April 13, 1993, a group of terrorists sent by Saddam smuggled a car bomb into Kuwait to kill former president George Bush as he was speaking at a university. The plot was foiled. But the salient point was that George Bush was not even president at that time. He was an ordinary citizen. Yet, Saddam wanted him dead simply out of spite.

You can be sure that did not sit well with his son. His father spared Saddam, and Saddam repaid the kindness with an assassination plot. Bush 43 mentioned this in September 2002, just around the time he stopped talking about bin laden as a source of terror, and started to talk about Saddam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCfJBe9nKKQ&mode=related&search=

So, when Bush became president, he was already occupied with Saddam as a personal enemy of his family. He was fully aware of Saddam’s brutality. In addition to his massacre of the Kurds, George knew of the torture chambers, he heard about the rape rooms, he heard about the depraved proclivities of the father and his two sociopathic sons. He heard about the abduction and rape of Iraqi brides and brides-to-be. Indeed, after 9/11, George is on record mentioning the existence of the rape rooms on five separate occasions. It was obviously a personal issue with him. The fact that they were Saddam’s rape rooms was more salt in the wound.

So you can begin to see the confluence of factors at work in George’s mind. Saddam humiliates his father, he persecutes the Kurds, he rapes Iraqi women, tortures his people, and thumbs his nose at the international community. And if that is not enough, then, out of spite, he tries to murder his father.

Saddam was a bad seed and he, and his sons, had to go.

A mere 8 months after being sworn in, 9/11 happens. The first question George asked on that morning was: “Did Saddam have anything to do with this?” There was only one answer that George wanted to hear.

As it turns out, however, it was bin laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that were responsible. But by September 2002, major combat in Afghanistan was winding down, it was not a target-rich environment, and bin laden was no where to be found. And it looked as if he may never be found. This was the point at which George changed targets – from Osama to Saddam.

This change took place not just because Saddam was now a surogate target for the unavailable Osama, but now George had a legitimate reason to go after his family’s old foe. It was the perfect opportunity to settle old scores. In that respect, I don’t blame him. If someone tried to murder my father, and I was president, I suppose I would go after him, too. But you just can’t send in the US army for personal reaons. So, George created a reason to get Saddam. He tied him to 9/11 in some convoluted way and the rest is history.

By 2003, Cheney was no longer free to speak his mind. He was VP and had to support his president on his mission. He understood the sitation in Iraq, but Cheney is a loyal man. George wanted Saddam and that was what George got. Good for him. Saddam deserved a lot worse. But don’t think for one second that it had anything to do with WMD any more than it had to do with oil. Saddam locked horns with Bush and lost. Fighting terrorism, looking for WMD, and spreading democracy, or stealing oil and enriching Haliburton, none of that is true.

It was about a mutual personal vendetta with the Saddam clan. They were obsessed with each other. Saddam went after Bush 41, Bush 43 went after Saddam. It was the Hatfields and the McCoys writ large.

jihadwatcher on August 11, 2007 at 11:23 PM