Essay About Bush Administration And Saddam Hussein

Resolved: That the Us Should Go to War with Iraq
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Copyright 2004 Devon M. Largio. All rights reserved.
Introduction
In the weeks and months that followed the events of September 11, 2001, the nation
watched, listened, and read as the Bush administration declared a war on terror and the media
began frenzied coverage of the military efforts in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden
and al Qaeda. But in the midst of all of the chaos, speculation about the suspects at the heart of
the attacks started to shift, though ever so slightly, into the direction of a familiar foe to the
United States, and particularly to the Bush family: Saddam Hussein. Although he was
mentioned by members of the media and the Bush administration as a possible conspirator in the
terrorist acts on New York City and Washington, D.C. and any actual connection has yet to be
established, the name Saddam Hussein was in the news and on the lips of government officials
and President Bush himself only a couple of weeks after the dust had settled at Ground Zero.
Now, more than two years after the horror of 9-11, a war with Iraq has been fought and,
supposedly, won. Saddams regime has been ousted and a new-found freedom awaits the Iraqi
people. But how did we get here, to the point of final confrontation with an enemy once
challenged and long despised? When did the road to war with Saddam begin? When did the
nation start to focus on the threat of terrorism in Iraq as opposed to threats from other nations and
networks?
Much discussion has occurred in political circles, in the news media, in classrooms, and
in social settings about the reasons for the recent war with Iraq. The focus of the Iraq war
rationales has been on the war on terrorism, a war that began as a result of September 11, 2001,
and launched its first attack on Afghanistan and al Qaeda approximately one month later. Yet, as
preliminary research for this project showed, many other states were harboring al Qaeda
networks and the link between al Qaeda and Iraq has yet to be solidly proven by the Bush
administration or others. Iraq may or may not actually have been supporting terrorism against
the United States. What was clear to the Bush administration, however, was Saddam Husseins
outright refusal to allow United Nations inspectors in his country any longer. It seems, then,
that another rationale behind the war emerges: the potential for nuclear, biological, or chemical
weapons