Invasion of Iraq Invasion of Iraq

The following quote is from Kenneth Pollack, Director of Gulf Affairs for the NSC from 1995-1996 and 1999-2001 (i.e. he worked for Clinton) in his book “The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America� (p. 384-385) on why Iraq under Saddam Hussein would have been significantly more dangerous with nuclear weapons than is Iran today (he also wrote “Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness 1958-1991″ and “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq"):

“What was so disconcerting about Saddam Hussein was that he was a serial agressor who never seemed to learn from his mistakes: his humiliating confrontation with the Shah in 1975 was followed by a confrontation with Syria the next year, which was followed by the invasion of Iran in 1980, then the invasion of Kuwait two years after the end of that war, followed by the decision to fight the United States and thirty other nations for Kuwait in 1991, then the attempt to assassinate former President Bush in 1994, then the renewed threat to Kuwait in 1994, the attack on the Kurdish city of Irbil in 1996, the eviction of U.S. inspectors (provoking the Operation Desert Fox strikes) in 1998, and his effort to move a corps of ground troops to the Golan Heights to start a war with Israel in 2000. This was a stunning record of agressive risk taking behavior unriveled in recent history".