When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the war with Iraq was already in progress, because Saddam Hussein was ignoring at least 17 U. N. Resolutions from the 1991 Gulf War; Saddam had agreed to cease production of nuclear and biological weapons, but he would not allow verification that he was doing so. This lack of cooperation meant that the war in which the U.S. and coalition forces had engaged to liberate Kuwait was not concluded.

So, in fact, President Bush did not actually "start" the war; he continued it, and because of the troop surge late in his second term, he virtually ended it. However, with the new president Barack Obama set to withdraw U.S. military from Iraq, there could easily be an escalation in violence, as recent bombings are indicating.

September 11, 2001
After the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, government officials in the Executive and Legislative branches along with the CIA and other intelligence offices were scrambling to find out who the perpetrators were and how they managed to launch such an attack. They realized that they had been blindsided, and they knew they had to do everything in their power to stop any further attacks.

War on Terror Started Under Clinton Administration
Intelligence agents quickly focused on the terror training camps in Afghanistan, because they had known about them since the early Clinton administration. What many Americans even now fail to realize is that the "War on Terror" actually started under the Clinton administration.

Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996, and the Clinton administration tried several times to kill him in Afghanistan, but every time they had a chance to accomplish that act of war, they hesitated and bin Laden escaped. There is usually little difficulty understanding that the bin Laden terror network based in Afghanistan was at war with the U.S., and therefore most Americans had no qualms about the Afghanistan theatre of the war, although techncially the country of Afghanistan did not attack the United States as Iraq did not attack the U.S.

Salman Pak
Because of the relatively recent and actual on-going war with the rogue tyrant Saddam Hussein regime, government authorities realized that even if Saddam Hussein was not directly responsible for 9/11, he had the capability to aid and abet the terrorists who completed the attack. For example, the site at Salman Pak near Baghdad has a fuselage, which could be used for no other purpose than training of the kind that the 9/11 hijacker would have required.

Paying Families of Suicide Bombers
Saddam Hussein awarded Palestinian families $25,000 for each family member who offered their services as suicide bombers. He used biological weapons on his own Kurdish population. His sons raped and tortured their own Iraqi citizens. The Saddam Hussein regime was a constant destabilizing presence in the Middle East. Iraq citizens could not vote for anyone but Saddam Hussein.

The Iraq War Resolution clearly spells out all of the reasons for engaging Saddam Hussein and removing him from power. If the war was, in fact, not necessary, and the U.S. government had accepted that premise in 2003, then today's Iraq citizens would not be in the process of attaining a government in which they can participate while freely choosing their own ways of life. They would still be living under the oppression of a tyrant.

Just as American soldiers fought and died to liberate Europe from the tyranny of Adolf Hitler, they fought and died to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein.