WI: 9/11 One Year Early?

Bush did not invade Iraq for oil. He invaded Iraq because of the possibility that Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction. Let's just imagine, for a second, what would occur if Saddam Hussein's Iraq got WMDs.

Hussein is an imperialist; his attempt to invade Kuwait proved that. He would try to spread his reign outside of his country's borders. The death toll would be far, far higher than the OTL Iraq War and that was something Bush did not want to risk.

The Iraq War was caused by paranoia, but it was justified paranoia.
 
Dr. Luny, you sure picked an accurate name. You are a lunatic who drank the "I hate Bush" Kool-Aid.

Welcome to my ignore list.
 
Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction. He killed almost 40,000 Iranians and Kurds with gas during the Iran-Iraq War, half of them Iranian soldiers. He did not use them against Kuwait and seems to have had largely dismantled his WMD programs to comply with UN sanctions before we invaded.

He also was not a suicidal maniac who wanted the US to whipe him off the map. We were effectively deterring his use of weapons of mass destruction and even conventional military power. We were flying fighter aircraft over his country enforcing no-fly zones for years before the war. He knew full well that if he tried anything we would do what we did: come into his country, destroy his government, and hunt him and his cronies down and kill them.

If we can go to war over paranoia then we are out of control.
 
Two problems with your theory, Kenny:

1) Oil is fungible. If Iraq sells only to Europe and China, then Europe and China don't buy as much oil from other countries, and the U.S. buys that oil.

2) If the U.S. were going to invade a country just to get oil, Saudi Arabia would have been the target. They have more oil and less military.
 

Caspian

Banned
Two problems with your theory, Kenny:

1) Oil is fungible. If Iraq sells only to Europe and China, then Europe and China don't buy as much oil from other countries, and the U.S. buys that oil.

2) If the U.S. were going to invade a country just to get oil, Saudi Arabia would have been the target. They have more oil and less military.

Also, Iraq doesn't seem to be producing massive amounts of oil at the moment (I could be wrong - latest data I was able to quickly find was 2006, where Iraq ranked 14th in the world). I suppose you could just call that incompetent management, but it doesn't strike me as exactly helping that theory.
 
One thing: 9/11/00 is after the primaries.

I missed that. In that case the GOP would have a hard time winning that election with GWB as their candidate - even if a foreign policy heavyweight were to be selected as the running mate.

An earlier 9/11/01 also has consequences in Afghanistan itself : Ahmad Shah Massoud might well still be alive (OTL assassinated on 9/9/01) ...

Massoud was assassinated as part of the 911 plot. If OBL moved his attack on America ahead a year, he would certainly move up the attack on Massoud accordingly. Of course they might fail, but then they could fail in America as well.
 
Two problems with your theory, Kenny:

1) Oil is fungible. If Iraq sells only to Europe and China, then Europe and China don't buy as much oil from other countries, and the U.S. buys that oil.

2) If the U.S. were going to invade a country just to get oil, Saudi Arabia would have been the target. They have more oil and less military.

Actually major powers don't pay market prices for all the oil they import. Contracts are made to buy X amount of oil over time at a certain fixed price, in return for investments, arms sales, security guarantee, diplomatic support, etc. Saudi Arabia is already beholding to the US, this is one reason OBL has a beef against America.

Bush did not invade Iraq for oil. He invaded Iraq because of the possibility that Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Oil was part of the calculation certainly, just not the primarily one. WMDs was not it either. Saddam was military impotent. He had no conventional force of consequence and if he had chemical weapons he would be contained by the threat of retaliation had he tried to use it. The only value of chemical weapons was its deterrent and bargaining value. Iraq faced threat of invasion and the then on-going embargo which Saddam could neutralize with chemical weapons. It seemed logical therefore that he should have them, but it turned out he did not.

The real reason for invading Iraq is due to the Neo-Conservative ideology of using military power to spread democracy in the Middle East to further American national security. It was assumed that a democratic Iraq would expand across the region and lead to better relations between Arabs and the US and Israel.

I had been following the Neo-Conservative movement throughout the 1990s and had expected an invasion of Iraq to be likely the moment George W. Bush was elected. The only question is whether the public would support the project. After 9-11 of course the public was. But even so it had to be sold as a hunt for WMDs. This process is well documented.

Personally I never thought the Neo-Con project was wrong, just unrealistic. I was also amazed they weren't up front with their motives to the public. IMO it was possible to convince the public given the sentiment of the time. They used the WMD issue because it was convenient. They were sure they would find it. And because they were just too lazy to explain themselves truthfully.
 
Bush would have lost. Clinton would be a popular wartime President; this would have helped Gore and Bush would have found it very difficult to go after him on national security issues.
 
One PoD that most have ignored. I'm not sure when this happened, but in a debate in 2000, George W. Bush, in response to Gore's attacks on racial profiling, stated that he opposed it as well, using as an example the racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims. In addition, Bush reached out to Muslim voters in several states, notably Florida. (Ironically, as a result, Grover Norquist of the American Conservative Union, stated that Bush won Florida because of the Muslim vote...)
If Bush didn't make said statements, the Muslim voters would likely go to Nader. (Who is of Mideastern descent, BTW.)
Don't expect the country to rally around Clinton. Look what everyone did when he attacked Iraq in 1998. (Though, alas, nobody brought up Hussein Kamil's remarks from a few years prior, otherwise Gore would likely have been president in 2000. (Unless the neo-Conservatives and Iraq foes among the Republicans argued that Iraq was a threat despite having no WMD...)) There would definitely be hearings about US air defenses and anti-terror measures- after all the Republicans held Congress.
 
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