Questions about prewar Iraq intelligence have been raised once again following the publication of a scathing report by a Senate committee last week week that concluded President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials knowingly lied about the threat Iraq post to win support for a military strike against the country.
Regime change in Iraq became a policy issue immediately following 9/11, but there have been allegations made by former White House officials that Iraq was a target of the Bush White House long before 9/11. The White House has vehemently denied suggestions that it was planning military action against Iraq before 9/11.
But in January of 2000, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice wrote an article for Foreign Affairs magazine titled Campaign 2000 -- Promoting the National Interest in which she called for regime change. Many of the policy suggestions in the article were later adopted when the Bush administration took office.
"As history marches toward markets and democracy, some states have been left by the side of the road. Iraq is the prototype. Saddam Hussein's regime is isolated, his conventional military power has been severely weakened, his people live in poverty and terror, and he has no useful place in international politics. He is therefore determined to develop WMD. Nothing will change until Saddam is gone, so the United States must mobilize whatever resources it can, including support from his opposition, to remove him. These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. She echoed that line in August 2000, during an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, where Rice said Iraq posed the gravest threat to the U.S and the world.
"The containment of Iraq should be aimed ultimately at regime change because as long as Saddam is there no one in the region is safe -- most especially his own people," she said during the Aug. 9, 2000 interview. "If Saddam gives you a reason to use force against him, then use decisive force, not just a pinprick."
On July 29, 2001, Rice was interviewed by a CNN reporter. She was asked how the United States would respond to missiles Iraq fired at U.S. war planes patrolling the no-fly zones. She didn't mince words with her answer.
"Well, the president has made very clear that he considers Saddam Hussein to be a threat to his neighbors, a threat to security in the region, in fact a threat to international security more broadly," Rice said. "And he has reserved the right to respond when that threat becomes one that he wishes no longer to tolerate."
"But I can be certain of this, and the world can be certain of this: Saddam Hussein is on the radar screen for the administration. The administration is working hard with a number of our friends and allies to have a policy that is broad; that does look at the sanctions as something that should be restructured so that we have smart sanctions that go after the regime, not after the Iraqi people; that does look at the role of opposition in creating an environment and a regime in Baghdad that the people of Iraq deserve, rather than the one that they have; and one that looks at use of military force in a more resolute manner, and not just a manner of tit-for-tat with him every day."
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