Firstly I believe we have to look at the politics of the Middle East and the recent history of the region. You have the ultra-conservative Wahhabi’s and other gulf Arabs, the Ba’athists or Arab Socialists and then more recently the Shi’ite regime in Iran. None of these ideologies really see eye to eye with one another and have fought on several occasions. The most recent Arab conflict was the first gulf war, when NATO and her allies liberated Kuwait. The Saudi’s didn’t like the look of Saddam and were more than happy to have US forces stationed in the desert. The Clinton years saw a regime of UN inspections and sanctions on Iraq that hurt the Iraqi people at the same time as they weakened Saddam. When Saddam assused the US of espionage and kicked out the UN inspectors Clinton launched a bombing campaign that attracted little Western attention. When Bush came to power there were only ever three options on the table as far as Iraq was concerned. Firstly to keep the sanctions in place and Iraq weak. Secondly to lift the sanctions. Thirdly regime change and a new Iraq.

Russia was now gaining in strength and sealing a major arms deal with Iran in definance of the USA, in retaliation for the proposed ‘Son of Star Wars’ missile defence shield, which was to be sited in Europe against Russian wishes and without the opportunity for Russian cooperation. Leaving Iraq in a weakened state next door to a newly resurgent Iran, now on a program of uranium enrichment and civil nuclear power that the West believed may hide a WMD program, probably did not look good, in that Iran may be able to have caused civil unrest and possibly Shi’ite revolution. Lifting the sanctions, and thus allowing Saddam to re-arm (bearing in mind even if NATO didn’t arm Saddam it was likely the Russians would have) would not have been popular with the Arabs in the gulf states, not to mention the Israelis, both of whom have good diplomatic relations with the USA. It was likely from the start that the Neo-conservatives in the USA would have preferred the third option of regime change. US public opinion could never have been persuaded to just do this, the infamous ‘baby incubator’ lie was rolled out in order to persuade them to partake in the liberation of Kuwait. Not to mention that ‘regime change’ has no legal basis in international law.

Now let’s consider US politics in relation to defence spending and foreign policy post Cold War. The collapse of the USSR left a power vacuum in the world, the USA was now the only superpower. The Clinton administration cut defence budgets and lessened Cold War orders for defence technologies such as the F/A-22 Raptor. The Neoconservatives, once called the crazies by many serious political commentators, were gathering momentum. They claimed that traditional conservative foreign policy of propping up dictatorships that were friendly to US interests was immoral and stood against long term US interests of peace and security in the world. The Neoconservative think-tank, Project for a New American Century argued that the USA had a window of opportunity to make the world a safer, more stable and better place. They criticised defence spending cuts, suggested that the US government meet Cold War commitments regarding the purchase of F/A-22 Raptors and that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a project the UK had sunk