As you may have noticed, when we rebooted Mixed Media, much of our old content was lost. Whenever relevant, we will repost some of that material here for your perusal. This post is originally from Feb. 20 of this year, when Sen. Jeff Sessions spoke to the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Tuesday morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions spoke to Birmingham business leaders about everything in general and nothing in particular. Before the breakfast speech, though, Sessions answered questions from reporters about the Iraq war. Birmingham Weekly took this opportunity to ask the senator our “Four Questions on Iraq”, which we hope to make a regular feature here.
BW: What constitutes winning the Iraq War or what objectives do we have to achieve before we can pack it up and come home?
JS: I think we want a stable, peaceful Iraq, that has some sort of representative government that is legitimate and decent. And that the Iraqi people have a chance to allow their industriousness to succeed instead of being caught up in violence. We do not want it to be a haven for terrorists. We do not want it to be a threat to the region. But frankly the goals that we set for a high standard of democracy are difficult to reach because the sectarian divisions in the country are substantial, because of the oppression that they suffered for so long, and a lack of any history of an organized democratic government makes this a difficult list.
Do you think this objective is achievable?
I do. General [David] Petaeus testified. He has been over there two years, twice already. He will be commanding this surge. He said he wouldn’t go there if he didn’t think it was possible. He believes that it can be done, but he does not in anyway sugarcoat. The challenges that we are going to face. […] We voted the money to support the surge. We voted to confirm the commander who will lead it, and I don’t see the need for a resolution that says we oppose it at the same time. To me that is duplicitous and I don’t think it was healthy for the Republic. It didn’t show real maturity in our Congress and it was not necessary. I don’t know how big of a deal it will be. It has no teeth to it. It did not pass, ultimately.
When this goes down in the history books, what will be the reason we went to war in Iraq?
For me it wasn’t any doubt for why we went to war. Because Saddam Hussein still claimed he had won the first Gulf War. He had committed, when he sued for peace to stop the invasion of Baghdad, he committed to a number of things, which is complete inspections by the U.N. He was in violation of 17 U.N. resolutions. We were flying — and I don’t know if you remember — but we were flying protection for the Kurds and others, enforcing a no-fly zone. On a weekly basis, we dropped bombs on them and they shot missiles at us — on virtually a daily basis. The embargo was crumbling. The people that was suffering most from the embargo on Iraq was the children and families of Iraq, not Saddam Hussein. He was funding his military. He was funding his own mansions. So it got down to a point that basically the U.N. — basically, they wouldn’t give a firm approval of this war, but they pressured him also. He didn’t respond. And we gave him multiple last chances. We also thought he had weapons of mass destruction.
Since the invasion, do you think the condition of Iraq has improved or deteriorated?
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