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31 August 2006

FORGIVE ME, forgive me, ignore me if this bugs you, DELETE me even, but I have an honest political question: If the ever-elusive Osama bin Ladin had been caught early on and so the U.S. public had someone to blame and hang for 9/11, would Geo W have been able to invade Iraq?
He would've had a harder time selling the idea to the public, I believe.
posted by jonmc 31 August | 10:35
And Osama would have been a martyr, rallying Muslims across the globe to a holy war...
posted by shane 31 August | 10:38
second jon. I firmly believe he came to the presidency intending to get into Iraq any way he could. But if bin Laden had been captured... yeah. It would have been interesting to see how he would have tried...
posted by gaspode 31 August | 10:41
The "find Osama" angle was one of key the marketing hooks to sell the NEW AND IMPROVED WAR ON TERROR (NOW WITH RETSYN!!!). There's no shortage of bad guys to wrap a reason to invade around, but Osama is box office gold when it comes to rallying the troops.
posted by Slack-a-gogo 31 August | 10:43
I'm not implying anything. Me? No. Never.

But it's not like Dubya is Bill Murray and Osama is the gopher, 'cuz if that were so W would just nuke the whole golf course. If he really wanted the gopher dead.

Then again, there are distinct similarities between Murray's character and Dubya.
posted by shane 31 August | 10:46
I think they (we, I guess) would have been able to, and I think W would have. It would have been more of a "One bad guy down, one more to go!" thing, with the victory in Afghanistan held up as proof that we could democratize the world... which, strangely, is still how it was spun.
posted by occhiblu 31 August | 10:48
Pre-9/11, Iraq was a prize ripe for plucking for any number of countries, but most particularly Turkey, Russia and Iran. The corruption was getting out of even Hussein's control and the whole country was headed for a meltdown with the potential of destabilizing far more than just Iraq's neighbors.

The US invasion, I believe, was to preclude anyone else getting there first with 9/11/WMD/Al Qaeda acting as a smokescreen.
posted by mischief 31 August | 10:51
It's not hard to replace one bag of lies with another. Especially when you have a leader who's considered "folksy" and I have no idea what else.

And you don't bug me, this question doesn't bug me. A certain family with four letters in the name bugs me.
posted by moonshine 31 August | 11:01
I agree with mischief, Iraq was a two-banger. It was not only the one (or close to it) Middle East country we could invade without invoking the wrath of its neighbors (at least directly) but it was The Home Of That Guy Who Wanted To Kill My Dad. We were going to war there, no matter what. Even if we had managed to capture bin Laden and he was testifying up and down Iraq had nothing to with him, we were going. I'm sure they would have just claimed it was a cover up and gone in anyway.

If we were serious about bin Laden, we'd be in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. But we're not.
posted by tommasz 31 August | 11:10
I really don't think it would have made a huge difference, given that Bush invaded Iraq under the premise of what a huge threat Sadam was. I've seen polling data that indicate that large numbers of Americans still believe Sadam was involved in 9/11. I think occhiblu's got it with the idea that OBL's capture would have been spun to bolster the "Freedom is on the March" meme.
posted by pieisexactlythree 31 August | 13:40
It's like we're living in a satire || Earth Shoes n Bell Bottoms

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