AHC: Make the Iraq War popular

As it says right up there in the title, your goal today is to make the Iraq War much much more popular than it was in real life. Not much to elaborate on here. Bonus points if you can get a majority of Americans favoring the war after the matter. Double bonus points if you can make politicians openly stating their support for the war as a way to win voters, and H.W. Bonus Points if you can make it as popular as the Gulf War. Annnnnd, go!
 
Rumsfeld must go. The US needs an occupation plan, and so long as that imbecile is in charge that's not happening.
 
I think it's best to have the "Iraq War" be another Gulf War style affair only with the US-led coalition taking over Baghdad in the process; problem is that Ba'athist Iraq is shattered from the previous war, what with the embargoes and no-fly zones. So how would Iraq go on a rampage across the Arab middle east? I have no idea; perhaps invading Syria for the sake of it I guess, but that would make things more complicated.
 
1.) Have Sadaam Hussein actually have nukes
2.) A wider international coalition. This can be brought about by having different leadership in France/Germany or having Iraq support terrorists that attacked those countries.
3.) Successful occupation. This will require:
a.) ~400,000 troops
b.) greater focus on containing looting, maintaining law and order
c.)Reduced jihadi presence before the war. This makes the war of ideals easier.
4.) Make the war be a war of defense rather than an American war of agression. Easiest way to make this happen is to have Iraq launch an all out attack to conquer and exterminate the Kurds.
5.)Above all else: Avoid an insurgency. This is what turned Americans against the war. If the US rolls into Iraq, freedomizes the locals and procedes to consolidate its position quickly then this will be remebered as a "good war" like the GUlf.
 
Make the stuff George W. said actually true. Saddam subtly restarts his chemical weapons programs small-scale in the late 1990s and produces just enough Sarin and VX for the U.S. to discover and claim truthfully we were right.
 
1. Saddam Hussein really has WMD's.
2. Not necessary but it would make thing even mor justified if Saddam Hussein would be activating genocide and invasion would be humanitarian intervention.
3. Better occupation plan. Not dissolution of Iraqi army nor firing of Baathist officials. So there is lesser bitter high ranked people.
4. No Abu Ghraibi nor other notable atrocities. And punish these soldiers who violate international laws.
5. Occupiers should leave totally when to the country has got stable government.
 
Remove Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bremmer. That alone may go a long way to making the cluster somewhat more manageable.
 
Saddam had some Chemical Weapons they just never went public when they found evidence. Those weapons might have been in the process of being stored or deactivated because as far as anyone knows they never used chemical weapons against U.S troops. Perhpas have Saddam use those chemical weapons, or U.S troops get lucky and find an old storage area that still contains chemical weapons, even if they are old and not planned on being used.
 

Towelie

Banned
Only way I see this happening is if Iraq actually has WMDs.
Didn't they find some chemical weapons or something? I know it wasn't nukes, but I thought that some surplus chem weapons were found. Not a full blown program mind you, but certainly some weapons that Saddam insisted he did not have and clearly was full of shit about.

Not that it really mattered anyways. The war turned unpopular because the transition of power was marred by a civil war that got really nasty. Photo ops of statues of Saddam falling and cheering Kurdish crowds greeting US troops made the lack of WMDs not really matter, but issues like a Sunni-Shiite civil war in the Baghdad suburbs made the effort unpopular even if they had paraded the chem weapons on camera or found some enriched uranium or something.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
UN backs the intervention, the chemical weapons stuff KS mentioned isn't suppressed, and there is a post-invasion plan in place that isn't demonstrably awful.
 
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