War in Iraq: There Was Another Option Essay -- Politics Political

War in Iraq: There Was Another Option 1. As our brave men and women in uniform find themselves embroiled again in a conflict in the Middle East, debate surrounding the timeliness and necessity of this second Gulf conflict has ceased in most professional circles. However, before the current conflict began, controversy raged over when and how to best prosecute this situation. Many argued that the United States should have worked through the United Nations to pursue a resolution that had the consensus of the world behind it. That endeavor, however, was doomed to failure from the start. The United States sought to solve this dilemma using military force. France and Germany desired to diffuse it using anything but force. In order to properly evaluate all options in this case, one must ask themselves how immediate a threat did Saddam Hussein pose to the United States and what is the best way to counter that threat? In my estimation, Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat to the United States. Thus, the US government had the time to cultivate a plan to remove him from power that was agreeable to all involved. 2. One must examine the fine points of each argument that the administration had proposed for the immediacy of war in order to best refute them. The first and often most repeated argument that Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to the United States is that he possessed weapons of mass destruction. I am willing to concede that the Iraqi military possessed both chemical and biological agents. Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of them that were never accounted for after the first Gulf War. He has even used them on several occasions on Kurdish minorities in Northern Iraq. However, no proof was ever offered that he possessed nu... ...o.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ ap/20030411/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_us_military_623> McDowell, Patrick. Crowd Kills 2 Clerics at Shiite Shrine . Middle East AP. April 11 th 2003. < http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ ap/20030411/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_clerics_killed&cid=540&ncid=716> Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. An Unnecessary War . Foreign Policy. January/February 2003. 45-48 Pollack, Kenneth M. The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq . Random House Publishing. First Edition 2002. 64, 144 Rai, Milan. No Justification For War . Znet. March 6 2002. Community for Social Change. April 13 2003. Rice, Condoleezza. Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest . Foreign Affairs. January/February 2000. 86 Tenet, George. Letter to Congress . October 2002