The Tribune has brought an amazing number of facts together to chronicle the events leading up to the Iraqi war. The problem is these are surface facts. They do not bring in secret intelligence or information from other sources that might have influenced decisions made within the Bush administration that led us to this point. It does bring up the question of how much weight was placed on the public facts versus the private intelligence governments around the world were getting in the progress toward war.
The fact that even after warnings of more sanctions and war the Hussein dictatorship was still acting in a corrupt way is not surprising. Saddam Hussein played the hand dealt him and cheated at every opportunity.
How many chances do you give someone like Hussein before you go in and take him out? The U.S. and Britain, with information the world felt was either inaccurate or false, felt the danger was enough to justify an invasion. The Monday morning quarterback says they were wrong for going in. France and the rest of the world are gleeful that the U.S. fell on its face in the sand. We will have to have a military presence in the Middle East for decades.
