Yeru
Saddam was a bully, he tried to bully Iran, he bullied Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, and in general said F*CK OFF to the UN...that's been fixed now.
I know that Saddam was a bully to other countries and his own people, but so are lots of other people we didn't invade. China ran over demostrators with tanks in Tianemen square and we didn't invade China. Also, the UN had been getting free access for quite some time to various Iraqi sites before the invasion. One of the reasons they didn't support the invasion was because Saddam Hussein had complied with their requirements. Hans Blix said they were prepared to support a war if there had been any funny business with compliance.
That you don't think Saddam was a threat and I do just shows there are not as many solid answers in this as we'd like.
I don't think Saddam was a threat to us at all. His people had been dying of starvation and lack of medical supplies for years due to our embargoes, and he was having trouble with his own military, who had tried to stage a coup against him already. He was a definite threat to his own people, and possibly to his neighbors. But if we cared so much about nasty dictators who torture their citizens, why did we support the Shah of Iran for years? Just for one example. America has often ignored dictators who torture, kill and disappear their own people.
Saddam funded, aided and abetted terrorists....that's just a fact
I don't know the facts, and possibly you are right. I don't know about this. What terrorists did he fund, aid and abet? Is there any evidence at all that he funded Al-Quaida? If it wasn't Al-Quaida, then how is he different from other governments that fund terrorism? Why didn't we invade one of them? Chechnia, maybe.
Saddam violated the cease fire agreement time and time again...that's also a fact and that fact alone justified the resumption of hostilities...
Wasn't the ceasefire a UN agreement? If the body with whom the agreement was made didn't want to start a war, why did we? Everybody in the UN was keeping an eye an Iraq, inspectors were going in continuously. It's not like they were ignoring the situation. And if that was the only reason necessary, why did Bush and company keeping drumming on other reasons, one simply false and the other rather weak in view of our foreign policy history? An emotional connection was made between 911 and the invasion, though indirectly, and as a result many people still think that we invaded Iraq to get revenge for 911, although no Iraqis were involved and I have not heard anyone say that Iraqi money in any way funded the attack. (If you know of a credible source that actually provides evidence that the Iraqis were in any way involved in 911, please tell me.) The other reason given over and over again was that he was a brutal dictator who needed to be killed and Iraq needed democracy. Undoubtedly true but not that strong a reason when you think of all the non-democratic countries we haven't invaded and set straight. If Bush and his people thought that the violation of the ceasefire was a good enough reason, why didn't they just stick with that?
We'd all have been MUCH better off if Bush 41 would have taken Saddam out the first time around.
You may well be right. I don't understand why we didn't, and also why we didn't support a local military coup when it was brewing.