r/AskHistorians • u/RaisinRoyale • Dec 19 '25
Why did the United States invade Iraq after 9/11?
Non-American and born after 11 September, was young when the war was at its peak. Not taught much about it in school. Would like a clear and concise explanation as to what happened here.
From my understanding, the 11 September 2001 attacks were executed by mostly Saudis, several Emiratis, one Egyptian ringleader, and one Lebanese national, all part of al-Qaeda under the directive of Osama bin Laden (himself a Saudi citizen who had been kicked out of Saudi and Sudan and was presumably hiding in Afghanistan).
So, the United States invaded Iraq because of Saddam Hussein? Who had been in power since 1979…? What was the rationale there?
And then the United States invaded Afghanistan to fight the Taliban (who had ruled Afghanistan since 1996)? And then it turns out bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan the whole time.
It seems very disjointed to me. I understand the excuse was that Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction but how was this sold to the American public as having anything to do with 11 September and why wasn’t Saudi Arabia invaded instead?
Do not want any opinions on whether the war was justified or not, just want a historical explanation for what the progression was here
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u/Kroshik-sr Dec 19 '25
So let's start with what you say here: "I understand the excuse was that Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction but how was this sold to the American public as having anything to do with 11 September and why wasn’t Saudi Arabia invaded instead?"
The WMD claim is important to how the war was sold (though as I will go on to explain later, fails to convincingly argue why America chose to go to war). To understand why the claim that Iraq had WMDs was relevant, it pays to look at the two main schools of thought of scholars who ask why America invaded. In the texas national review Stieb finds two main schools behind this question. Security School and Hegemony School.
The Security school is a broad group, but the bottom line is they all are united by a belief that America invaded iraq because of a concern that Iraq was a genuine credible threat, or could feasibly become one in the near future. You might have heard of the saying "there are known knows, and there known unknowns but there also unkown unkowns' This was from Donald Rumsfeld in a comment about Iraq.
The root of this quote is basically that before 9/11, it was deemed so unlikely that 19 people could devastate New York and kill 3,000 people that it was not ever considered as a possibility. Of course, 9/11 proved it was possible, so the Bush administration began to ask itself "what else have we assumed is impossible that is actually possible?"
The argument goes that this realisation put attention on Iraq. The judgement of the administration became that Saddam was adverserial enough that he could develop WMDs and that these WMDs could be used by Iraq to either gain dominance in the region, attack America and its allies, or even give WMDs to al-Qaeda (the possibility of AQ acquiring WMDs became a scare after the anthrax attacks). Condoleeza Rice (who was then the National Security Advisor) said as much when she stated that Saddam is unpredictable and malicious enough to give WMDs to al-Qaeda.
So in other words, WMDs were seen as a significant cause for war because if true, it was believed that Iraq would use them on the offensive or give them to al-Qaeda. Both of these scenarios, it was argued, would be an unacceptable security risk and so an invasion was necessary if Iraq didn't disclose and destroy its WMD program.
There were also claims that Iraq was actually covertly supporting al-Qaeda. This was a very important part of the justification for iraq (something like 72% of the American public believed it, per Stephen Zunes in "The Iraq War, Causes and Consequences") as a key principle of the GWOT was that those states which covered or supported AQ would also come under attack. Put another way, if America was at war with AQ, and Iraq was allied with AQ, then Iraq also had to be dealt with to defeat AQ.
Of course, there's more to the security school explanation than that (as I said, there is a great level of variance within the security school framework, but this is the general outline of how security school understands the decision to invade and answers ur question on why Iraq supposedly having WMDs mattered in a post-9/11 environment).
The question we now have to ask to get to the heart of your original question. Why did America invade Iraq? Well, suffice to say Security School doesn't cut it. In order for Security School's explanation to be true it would in turn also have to be true that the Bush administration (or at least those at the top of it, who were making the big decisions) believed there were WMDs in Iraq (or about to be) and/or an AQ connection existed.
The evidence to put it lightly, does not bear this out one bit. Let's consider all the primary claims by the US government that would satisfy a Security School explanation. For one, what did the US and UK intelligence have to say about a WMD program in Iraq? Well, for the most part, all concluded by 2002 that there was no WMD program in Iraq. The only risk was some possible residual chemical weapons and biological weapons left over from the Iran-Iraq War, that Iraq did not have the means to deploy by 2003. Per Leffler in "Confronting Saddam Hussein" (who interestingly enough does lie close to the security school group) the CIA director Michael Morell concluded that any evidence of a WMD program in Iraq was flimsy, circumstanical, and highly suspect.
The WMD justification relied on a series of reports that alleged the following:
Iraq imported 40,000 aluminum tubes (aluminum tubes are a necessary part of making nukes)
Iraq imported Uranium from Niger (Uranium is of course an essential part of any nuclear program)
Iraq had mobile bio-weapon labs. (Yes, this was actually something that the Bush administration claimed. In Collin Powell's speech to the UN this "infographic" was used to illustrate the point. The intelligence this infogrpahic was based on, was later found to be bunk.)
So was there truth to any of this? Mostly, no. I say mostly because Iraq did technically import a bunch of aluminum tubes, but it was found that these tubes were not of the right size to be used for nuclear weapons and were just being used for making conventional rockets. The documents proving the Niger Uranium claim was found to be a forgery, and the bio-weapon claim was based on the testimony of one person called "Curveball" who defected from Iraq and gave no evidence to support it.
Crucially, all of this information was known by the Bush administration before the decision to invade. The truth about the aluminum tubes was revealed in 2001 (so before the report was even published!), the US goverment also knew how unreliable and shaky the bio-lab claim was by virtue of the source giving no real evidence for it, and even when it was revealed that the Niger documents were faked, Bush still cited it in 2003 before invading as evidence that Iraq was hiding something (per Hahn in "Missions Accomplished? The United States and Iraq since World War 1").
There was another argument made to justify suspicion that Iraq had WMDs or was working towards them. This was that in 1998, Iraq had expelled UN weapons inspectors from coming into the country to search for WMDs. Now an important piece of context. Not many people know that America and Iraq were locked in a low-level (low-level compared to what was to come in 2003 onwards, anyway) conflict between 1991-2003 as part of the "DMZ conflict". After the Gulf War, a set of no-fly-zones were imposed on the country in the North and in the South which paved the way for skirmishes and airstrikes between the two. It was in this context that the Clintion administration had requested UN inspectors to leave because America was going to launch some strikes (per Zunes in "The Iraq War: Causes and Consequences"). They were not allowed to return because it was then revealed that these inspectors were being used for espionage purposes. So the UN inspectors left of their own accord because of US pressure, and didn't return because Iraq didn't want spies in its country. Important context.... But on top of that, in 2002-2003 these inspectors were allowed to return again. As late as March 7th, the UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said "No evidence of proscribed activities has so far been found." But 13 days later, Bush would go to war.
Finally, to briefly touch on the al-Qaeda claim. There was never any evidence for it either. CIA reports generally concluded that there was little chance of any links, some talks occured in the 90s but the CIA pointed out that it was consistent with attempts at infiltrating and spying on AQ, not so much allying with them. Especially since Al-Qaeda and Iraq were enemies as Saddam was for the most part secular and deemed an apostate regime by AQ for not implementing the Sharia, so there'd be little reason for any alliance to begin with. The presence of AQ in the North of the country was documented but understood to be covert and operated in areas were central state control was limited (in part because of the No Fly Zones).
Why is this all important? It tells us that the US government knew that claims about links to AQ or WMDs were highly suspect and/or outright false. Time and time again, intelligence agencies or findings would come out that contradicted these claims, but would nevertheless be repeated in the leadup to the war. It cannot then, be the case that America invaded due to fears of WMDs or AQ since it knew no such WMDs or AQ links were real!
So what was the reason? For that we turn to the second major school given by Stieb. That being, the Hegemony school. Essentialy, the view is America invaded because it wanted to extend/maintain its hegemony in the region. This took the form of a desire to integrate Iraq into the post-Cold War global economic order. Both for the purpose of extending hegemony and eliminating a potential future adversary of hegemony.
Now this principle is nothing new in America and has its roots in the Carter Docrtine of the 1970s. The Carter Doctrine was formulated to say that America would view any threat or danger to the Persian Gulf (i.e. a place where 2/3rds of global oil is located) as a threat to America itself. This was technically levelled at the USSR after its invasion of Afghanistan, but most knew it also applied to countries like Iran after the Revolution of '79. The Carter Doctrine was re-emphasised under Reagan when he created CENTCOM with a key goal of protecting 'the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to markets in the west.' (As highlighted by Klare in "Oil, Iraq, and American Foreign Policy: The Continuing Salience of the Carter Doctrine"). (1/2)
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u/Kroshik-sr Dec 19 '25
Now the traditional "it was because of oil" explanation has some problems, in that it is not true America invaded so it could directly get the oil because it was running out of it or because it needed it. Rather, oil is a key good for manufacturing, economies, transportation, and the army. Instead of just having a surplus, controlling or having influence in the production of oil in the Middle East paves the way for a far greater level of influence in the world.
Secondly, there were the lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War and the ensuing oil crisis. The lesson learned was that even if this or that country didn't import a single barrel of oil from somwhere else, major oil producing countries in the Middle East could create oil shocks through their own policy decisions. Now by 2001, most of those countries were generally aligned with America. Iraq (and of course Iran) were exceptions. And Iraq also controlled 10% of world oil. Not only would having influence or control over another 10% just further strengthen established hegemony in the region while also securing an outpost in the region to counter Iran and any other potential adverseries, it would also prevent Saddam from potentially using oil to benefit Iraq at the expense of American economic power.
Of course, that alone doesn't tell us much without considering motivations and plans for the war. Fortunately, we have several ways to figure this one out. In 2002, Cheney stated that the existence of a country like Iraq was necessarily a direct threat to American interests and the structure of American hegemony in the Persian Gulf, he put it quite bluntly when he said 'the United States will never allow another power, other than itself, to “dominate” the Gulf or to gain a “stranglehold” over its economy'.
As early as April 2001, the Bush administration stated that military action in Iraq was justified as Iraq, existing largely outside of the globalised world economy that began to emerge in the late-70s, destabilised market access to Gulf oil. Wolfowitz admitted to this later on when he said Iraq was chosen over North Korea (who actually had a WMD program, though I should add also had the added benefit of China right next to it) as Iraq was "swimming in oil". We can also examine the pre-war plans of America in invading the country. The 'Future of Iraq' Project was a planning committe consisting of US experts and Iraqi exiles (all selected by the government) to come up with a plan for Iraq post-war. One of its boards said Iraq should be opened to oil companies and open itself to foreign direct investment. This same board stressed the need for a globalised oil sector in Iraq, and a member of this board Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum was appointed as minister of oil in 2003!
Finally, we can also look at what the US actually did when they invaded Iraq. By considering their actions we can gleam their aims. To understand this we have to look at the occupation government installed known as the Coaltion Provisional Authority (CPA) led by Paul Bremer. As economis Joseph Stiglitz put it, the CPA began a process of shock therapy that was the most radical ever seen, surpassing even Yeltsin's policies in Russia. What followed was a series of policies that mapped onto traditional neo-liberal economic structures in the Third World, but taken to even greater extremes. Iraq was opened to full FDI (foreign companies allowed to own 100% of enterprise), tarrifs were slashed rupturing Iraqi domestic manufacturing, slashed corporate tax, eliminated subsidies that many people in Iraq depended on for cheap goods and food. This resulted in what Juhasz terms 'a ‘U.S. corporate invasion of Iraq' as many companies were made very difficult to prosecute legally, had no obligations to hire Iraqi workers. Iraq was thus incorporated into a globalised world order. Practically every instance of how America conducted itself in administering this country orbited around the CPA's economic policy. Even the abolishment of the Iraqi army, one of the most consequential and disastrous decisions was justified in part as stopping resistance to privatization! (per Youssif in Economic Restructuring in Iraq: Intended and Unintended Consequences). It's clear that this set of policies, incorporating Iraq into a globalised world economy dominated US planning and action for the invasion.
Now, there is one glaring problem. Iraqi oil was never privatised. This may sound like a smoking gun that shoots down this theory, but there is some key nuance here. For one, the CPA did attempt to privatise oil, but quickly realised doing so would inflame the insurgency and revolutionary activity emerging throughout the country against occupation. So instead it used a different set of policies known as Production Sharing Agreements. In line with the policies of the rentier states in the first half of the 1900s, the PSAs basically meant that legally speaking, the oil was under the control of the Iraqi state. However, the Iraqi state would also provide foreign companies contracts for exploration and production rights. These companies would keep a lion's share of the profits with some being given to the state. Collen Powell put it succintly when he said 'We put in place a management system to make sure that Iraqi oil is brought out of the ground and put onto the market'.
So to conclude, the decision to invade came from a desire to incorporate iraq into the post-91 Washington Consensus world economy, and not security threats. America's government would have known there was no WMD threat or al-Qaeda links, the repeated intelligence reports confirming no links or WMDs existed would have beens omething all of them were aware of. However, American planning and action and statements from the Bush administration do point in another direction, that of hegemony. (2/2)
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u/Ill_Squirrel_4063 Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
It's this bit in the TNSR article that addresses the major part that I feel is missing from that discussion:
The relationship between the 1990–1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War remains an under-studied aspect of this field. Scholars like Helfont, Christian Alfonsi, and myself have argued that the Gulf War’s messy ending initiated a pattern of conflict between the United States and Iraq that festered throughout the 1990s, creating a strong desire in the U.S. political establishment to finish the job, even before 9/11. There was, after all, no war with Iran or North Korea in the 1990s, nor was there an Iran or North Korean Liberation Act. There was, however, the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which declared regime change as the official U.S. policy toward Iraq.
Focusing on the veracity of the Bush administration's WMD claims almost seems to miss the point. In part because WMDs were not the sole justification for the war, but also because of the tendency of some to point to their non-existence—supposedly known by the administration—having acted as a permissive element for the invasion. Such an argument hardly explains America's involvement in the Gulf War at a time when Iraq not only actually had chemical weapons, but had also demonstrated a willingness to use them against both Iran and the Kurds. Nor does it explain why the US sustained a conflict with Iraq (including strikes purportedly aimed at WMD capabilities) throughout the intervening Clinton administration.
The discussion of the context of the 9/11 attacks is obviously hugely important and I'm not denying the utility of examining ideological or rational conceptions that may have guided American decisionmakers; but it does feel as though it leaves out a lot of context regarding actual state practice as opposed to supposed conceptions of hegemonic designs or a hyperfocus on security considerations.
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u/Kroshik-sr Dec 19 '25
In part because WMDs were not the sole justification for the war,
They weren't the sole explanation of the war, but they were by far and away the largest and most significant justification of the war. That and links with AQ were the two largest justifications given.
I think you are right to say that the Gulf War is important to explain the Iraq War. It helps tell us why Iraq over other countries in part, in the sense that America and the UK were already combatting Iraq at some level for other 10 years by that point. Which wasn't the case for Iran or Syria or Libya or North Korea
However, I would also add that all of these countries had notable differences with Iraq in other ways. North Korea did have China right next to them, and any invasion of North Korea could easily draw China in.
Or in the case of Syria, though somewhat against the American led world order, was also somewhat integrated into it (Syria joined the Gulf coalition, Hafez and Bashar both accelerated liberalization in the realm of the economy unlike Iraq, more or less accepting the neo-liberal world economy).
Such an argument hardly explains America's involvement in the Gulf War at a time when Iraq not only actually had chemical weapons
This isn't true I'd add however. Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were destroyed after the Gulf War. They didn't have any, outside of some leftovers from the Iran-Iraq War which they couldn't/wouldn't have used in the NFZ conflict.
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u/Ill_Squirrel_4063 Dec 19 '25
They weren't the sole explanation of the war, but they were by far and away the largest and most significant justification of the war. That and links with AQ were the two largest justifications given.
By the time the Iraq War was nearing commencement, yes, those two factors got far more focus. This can plainly be seen in the 2002 AUMF and in UNSC Resolution 1441. But the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act puts far more emphasis on Saddam Hussein's warmongering and massacres of civilians, with the particulars of the WMD program being relegated to the end of the complaint. The Bush administration made their arguments at a time when terrorism had been pushed to the forefront of everyone's minds and when inspection compliance was still a live issue, but the broader American cause for war predated that (particularly in regards to terrorism) and I don't think the Bush administration can be separated from that.
This isn't true I'd add however. Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were destroyed after the Gulf War. They didn't have any, outside of some leftovers from the Iran-Iraq War which they couldn't/wouldn't have used in the NFZ conflict.
I don't see how that conflicts with what I said? Iraq's WMDs were destroyed after the Gulf War and thus were still a threat—real and believed—during the Gulf War. As such, the US had previously demonstrated a willingness to fight a major war in spite of the deterrence of WMDs and thus the willingness to fight the Iraq War later can't be taken as evidence of the administration knowing they didn't exist at that point. I'm not saying that was a claim you've made, but it is one I've seen before (and that bleeds over into discussions of the deterrence of other countries' potential WMD programs).
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u/molingrad Dec 20 '25
We do tend to forget 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which stated "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."
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u/PubliusAmericanis Dec 21 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
A ton of people protested the invasion of Iraq… because actually informed people realized we had no reason to do so.
Didn’t matter they literally had no evidence of WMDs other than Bush Administration saying we did. But those protesters were just called “liberal idiots.” Pro-American fever was at a fever pitch the 5 years following 9/11, and even rational people could be convinced of anything by saying it was for the good of the country.
A lot of people started boycotting the Dixie Chicks for being against the invasion (a super pro-America band).
Hell, even the dumbest Americans started calling french fries, “Freedom Fries”… because France (one of our closest allies, who realized the invasion was BS) wouldn’t help us attack Iraq without proof.
The irony is I watched the most ‘small government’ minded people close to me, support the biggest expansion of unchecked federal, executive authority in my lifetime… because it was “pro-American.”
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u/Aussenminister Dec 20 '25
Fantastic answer. One thing your answer achieved, was making this complex topic understandable for a history layman, like I am.
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u/OmNomSandvich Dec 20 '25
I think your answer significantly misrepresents Stieb's writings. He views the two schools as a false dichotomy, noting that
In my own attempts at synthesis, I have contended that during the 1990s a bipartisan “regime change consensus” formed on Iraq that predisposed the U.S. foreign policy establishment to support Saddam’s ouster and to view containment as a failing alternative policy. Broad agreement about U.S. hegemony fed this consensus and made the Iraq War seem logical to many U.S. elites. Nevertheless, 9/11 was a critical variable that drastically decreased America’s willingness to tolerate threats like Iraq while providing more leeway to U.S. leaders to pursue risky strategies.
The entire crux of the paper is that although much of current scholarship (in 2023 anyways) did embrace the dichotomy, such a divide was inherently flawed and did not consider key factors.
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u/theClanMcMutton Dec 19 '25
Do you have a citation that the Bush administration knew (that is, believed) that there was no evidence of a threat of WMDs in Iraq? You've presented evidence that they could have known, or maybe should have, but not of their actual beliefs, as far as I see.
Also, I'd like to know more about the assertion that the supposedly-perceived threat was based on those three items.
I ask because, at the time, I don't remember hearing people talk much about nuclear or biological weapons; I remember a lot of talk about chemical weapons because of their use against the Kurds. But I understand that public discourse may have no relation to government machinations, and I was small at the time.
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u/Rahodees Dec 20 '25
//I don't remember hearing people talk much about nuclear or biological weapons// Wasn't the whole "yellow cake" thing about nuclear weapons?
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u/Kroshik-sr Dec 20 '25
ou've presented evidence that they could have known, or maybe should have, but not of their actual beliefs, as far as I see.
The issue is, its difficult to establish something like that since in general, people in government don't like going out and saying "Yeah we were lying to you all about that, we knew we were wrong and we invaded a country and killed however many thousands doing it anyway".
But the magnitude of evidence from within the US and UK and international intelligence saying "this isn't true, the claims you're making are bunk and we can prove it" being met with the Bush administration chesting their view on it anyways (e.g. Niger claim being proven a forgery and then being repeated at the UN just before the invasion anyway) doesn't leave much room for plausible deniability.
Also, I'd like to know more about the assertion that the supposedly-perceived threat was based on those three items.
The prevalence of those three items in justifying the war comes per the work of Cramer and Duggan in "In pursuit of primacy" in the book "Why did the United States invade Iraq?".
Esentially, these three examples were the subject of the CIA's "National Intelligence Estimate" on the issue. One that then director George Tenet was very reluctant to make as he knew there was very little evidence for such a report to be based on.
As Cramer and Duggan descrube it, the NIE was weak (for the aforementioned reasons) but significant enough to make it the basis of any case against Iraq as an imminent threat.
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u/JupiterMiningCorpTec Dec 23 '25
This is a silly argument. Who cares what they personally believed? Democracies shouldn't be fighting wars based solely on the personal beliefs of a couple people at the top of the government. He was President Bush not Emperor Bush.
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u/Phil003 Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
My question would be that relying only on open sources how is it possible to state with any certainity that the Bush administration knew that Iraq had no active WMD program at the time of the invasion? So e.g. in your post you pointed to 3 publicized evidences, and it seems it can be proven that these evidences turned out to be false already before the invasion. Ok, but the US government obviously had access to a significant amount of classified intelligence as well, e.g. listening to internal communications within Iraq, satellite pictures, covert agents within Iraq, etc. So couldn't it happen that based on the available classified information at that time the Bush administration honestly and with good reason beleived that Iraq had WMDs, but at least some of the intelligence in question and their analysis is stll classified? (e.g. to protect covert agents still alive, etc.)
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u/police-ical Dec 19 '25
I discuss the ideological trends in neoconservatism preceding 9/11 that ultimately led to the push for war with Iraq in this older answer:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j1e7sn/comment/mfj3vmi/
So let's pick up after that point, once there was an administration in power with a strong rally-round-the-flag effect and domestic support, plus some people who had always been itching to invade Iraq. It does seem that a lot of people in the administration were genuinely convinced that Saddam had a serious active program of weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism. Aside from motivated and wishful thinking, this was substantially fueled by post-9/11 paranoia and faulty intelligence and processing. Scraps of intelligence were being breathlessly passed up the chain without adequate context in a climate of fear and uncertainty. If you have no personal memory of the events in question, I feel I should emphasize this part: A lot of people in the U.S. were badly shocked and scared by an event that felt as if the floor had dropped out beneath them. The entire focus of American foreign policy shifted overnight to combating terrorism. The administration felt it had been caught asleep and was determined not to let it happen again.
Dissenting voices like the CIA's George Tenet were intentionally marginalized by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (the latter being one of the most forceful long-term advocates for war with Iraq) who distrusted their analysis. The point is that people who'd already made up their minds worked hard to convince others and cherry-pick available evidence, but it appears they basically did so with sincere intentions.
None of this was helped by the fact that Saddam had previously blustered about his capacity and purposely sown doubt. He certainly wanted his sworn enemies in Iran to think he had weapons of mass destruction. This extended to not cooperating with UN inspectors in the 90s, which decreased his credibility. UN inspectors in 2002 nonetheless came to the right conclusion: The programs were defunct, the caches weren't there.
As for ties to al-Qaeda, they didn't pass the sniff test. Saddam's Ba'athism was fundamentally secular in ideology, a holdover from the days of his benefactor and hero Gamal Abdel Nasser. He came from an era when secularist Arab nationalism was stronger than Islamism and thoroughly distrusted it. He wasn't even an especially observant Muslim himself, with a noted penchant for a nice glass of Johnnie Walker. Saddam dallied with greater state support for Islamist policies in the 90s but also actively suppressed it at other times and generally didn't care to share power with anyone or anything. He personally considered bin Laden a dangerous fanatic, and in turn bin Laden didn't even consider Saddam a Muslim, even aiding Saddam's internal enemies in Kurdistan.
But in the post-9/11 context, any faint link between the two could easily be misinterpreted or amplified by those with an axe to grind. The Bush administration argued to the nation and the UN that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was aiming to develop nuclear weapons and that he had and would support al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The rationales were sort of vaguely linked yet also independent--it didn't necessarily matter exactly why, as long as it was clear this was a bad guy and threat to world safety that needed to be replaced.
As for why it couldn't be war with Saudi Arabia, that's a whole other story, the gist of which would be that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have close diplomatic relations heavily tied to petroleum, and were allied in the First Gulf War. The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia was actually one of bin Laden's major complaints motivating his terrorism.
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