Say What? - The Outrageous Ideas Issue
 The Iraq War Was a Good Idea by Glenn Weiser
Metroland, April 13, 2005

At the risk of never eating lunch in this town again, I’ll play Devil’s advocate and tell you how the Iraq war could be justified.

The United States knew that the U.N. sanctions it had vetoed all attempts to lift were killing sick, elderly and young Iraqis. According to UNICEF estimates, 1.5 million Iraqis died in between 1991 and 1998 as a result of the sanctions, which were part of the policy of containment adopted after the first Gulf war. We were therefore practicing selective genocide, and it had to stop.

That had nothing to do with Bush’s decision to invade, of course—after all, does this man even care about the elderly, sick, and young here at home? The war was instead fought over a three-part lie: Saddam had WMD, he was tight with Osama, and he was going to give him the weapons to use against us unless we kicked butt quick. That was bullshit, of course; controlling Iraqi oil and advancing U.S. global dominance were far more likely reasons. No WMD were found, and former U.N. inspector and Bush administration critic Scott Ritter’s contention that Saddam’s WMD were destroyed following Gulf I was vindicated.

Nonetheless, in 2003 the news media reported that Saddam intended to restart his nuke program when U.N. sanctions were finally lifted. Given that nuclear-armed rogue states are among our gravest threats, and that continuing the U.N. sanctions was de facto genocide, it is quite arguable that removing Saddam was the best option. The war ended the cruelty of the sanctions, albeit at a high price. And in hindsight, we may well find we were better off eliminating a nuclear threat from Saddam sooner rather than later.