Why did the U.S. invade Iraq in the Gulf War (read details)?
We didn’t ‘invade Iraq’ in the Gulf War. We expelled Saddam’s forces from Kuwait, and then kept them on the run until they had all finished surrendering to CNN camera crews. An invasion signifies the capture of territory, and the boundaries of Iraq were not redrawn at the end of the Gulf War (with the exception that it no longer included the sovereign nation of Kuwait). We backed him against Iran because at the time he was the lesser of two evils. It was the same reason we armed Bin Laden so he could fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. At the time, and still today, Iran is a far greater threat to us than Saddam ever was. He served his purpose at the time, but got out of control later on. It seems to me the man had lost his mind. If you didn’t have any weapons, and letting the inspectors back in to verify it would avoid a war that would get you captured, tried, and killed… why wouldn’t you let them back in?
