Weapons Inspectors in Iraq

Here's the timeline of weapons inspections in Iraq, with their context and a focus on how various administrations dealt with it.   I'll keep refining it.

1953: in one of its very first operations, the CIA leads a coup to overthrow the popular leader Mohammad Mosaddegh with their puppet, Reza Shah Palavi.  The justification for the US involvement in the coup was that Mosaddegh had been making treaties with its neighbor to the north, USSR.  In fact, the problem was that he had been nationalizing the resources of the Anglo-Persian oil company.  A-P was renamed a few years later to British Petroleum and later BP.
1959: USSR begins helping Iraq build nuclear power system
1968: Saddam Hussein is a leader of the coup that takes power in Iraq.  Initially not its main leader, he gradually assumes control until in 1979 he was "elected" president.
Saddam had supported the development of gas WMD for years.
1979: After 26 years of repression by the puppet regime the US and UK had installed in Iran, religious extremists overthrow the government, capturing the US embassy there.
1980-1988: Iran and Iraq go to war, Iran with weapons supplied during the long US/UK occupation, Iraq with Soviet weapons.  Iraq uses poison gas weapons.  Because of the recent hostility with their longtime ally Iran, the Reagan administration sides with Iraq.  The war ends in stalemate.
1990: Saddam's diplomats ask Bush's diplomats if they have any objections to clarifying certain border questions with Saudi Arabia.  They say no, thinking it was an unpopulated desert area.
Aug 1990: Saddam invades Kuwait, capturing it in a few days.
Jan 1991: Huge coalition recaptures Kuwait and its oilfields, proceeding into southern Iraq, but stops after 100 hours, leaving Saddam in power.  Saddam is forced to accept several concessions, including the permanent installation of UN weapons inspectors, but he hassles them constantly, and he brutally put down rebellions while occupying soldiers were watching, but helpless to do anything because they were not violations of the naive treaty the coalition and Saddam had worked out.  Numerous WMD sites are found and destroyed.

Aug 1998: forces led by Bin Laden truck bombed two embassies in africa, killing over 200, including 12 americans, and injuring over 4000.
A few days later Clinton sends cruise missiles to Al Qaeda facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, supposedly missing Bin Laden himself by less than 5 minutes.
Congressional republicans scream that the response was all about deflecting attention from the Lewinsky affair
Sept 1998: Emboldened by these republicans, Saddam raises increasing barriers and threats to the UN weapons inspectors, who had been there since 1991, eventually forcing them to leave for their own protection.
Dec 1998: Clinton responds by sending cruise missiles to Iraq, destroying several actual WMD sites that had been found.
republicans respond the same way, even more vehemently this time.
Oct 2000: Al Qaeda bombs USS Cole in Yemen.
Clinton sends the FBI but was too intimidated to bomb the obvious culprits again just a few weeks before the election.




Jan 2001: Terrorism adviser Richard Clarke warns about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.  
Apr 2001: CIA director Tenant warns the same thing.  Wolfowitz and Rice poo pooh the warnings and Clarke is demoted
July 2001: Clarke insists there will be a "spectacular attack very soon"
Aug 2001: CIA tells Bush that "Bin Laden determined to strike US"
Bush replies thanks, you've covered your ass.
Sept 11 2001...
CIA and special forces mount a relatively effective campaign in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda flees to Pakistan where US military can't follow.
Nov 2002: a new crop of inspectors are sent to Iraq.
The bulk of the resources in Afghanistan are moved to prepare for attacking Iraq, long before the job was complete there.
Feb 2003: Cheney and Bush pressure Colin Powell to present a fraudulent case before the UN
Mar 2003: Bush orders the inspectors removed from Iraq. When their leader, Hans Blix, complained that their work was not complete, Cheney threatened him. consequently Blix stayed silent until his inspectors were safe, but wrote a book about it.

Blix had believed that there were weapons, but the information the Bush administration gave him was useless and much was obviously fraudulent. the CIA had repeatedly said that this was likely the case and that the information was obtained from untrustworthy sources. Cheney had given this same bogus information to Powell.

The except for the initial coup in 1953, the CIA actually comes out of this whole thing looking pretty good. they're dealing with a lot of information, much of it from dubious sources. Gingrich, Lott, Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Wolfowitz and a few others were the culprits.