I, for one, begin with intent. There is no question that, Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals for his aggression.
Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.
Whatever one wants to say about the conduct of the Iraq War, going to war to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 was a necessary act. It should and could have been done earlier, had not the Clinton White House, which understood the need, not wasted the opportunity through timidity and bluster.
We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces.
Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly a brutal dictator who had attacked Iraq's neighbours, repressed and killed many of his own people, and was in violation of obligations imposed by the U.N. Security Council.
The Hussein regime's support for terrorism, within and outside of its borders, its appetite for the world's most dangerous weapons, and its openly declared hostility to the United States were a combination that was a gathering and growing danger to our country.
It's my belief that by demonizing Saddam, by raising the stakes in this war to the point where we're talking about a great moral crusade, that Bush in fact planted the seeds of discontent in the country, because this was fundamentally a limited war with limited objectives and with limited gains.
In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil, basically, and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting.
Further, not only the United States, but the French, British, Germans and the United Nations all thought Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction before the United States intervened.
No opposing quotes found.