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Originally Posted by Tchocky
I'm not sure on this one.
What we've found out about the coercive intelligence regime in Washington leading up to the war leads me to believe that it was going to happen one way or the other.
Also, the amount of people in the run-up to the war saying there ain't any weapons, tells me that the whole idea of WMD was a pretext, an excuse. You can't go to war without public support, so you run around keeping the same couple of phrases really close together, "saddam....9/11.....al-qaeda". Overt stating isn't required.
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That is however my point. Regardless of what spin was or was not happening inside Washington, had Saddam or his UN ambassador publicly announced (and followed through on) an open-door policy for the inpections, public support for the invasion would have been lower than whale poop. The best defence against darkness is light, after all. Even the hottest hawks could not have surmounted that one, I suspect.
mrbeast has a good point. Saddam, not for the first time, but just about for the last time, misjudged the consequences of his actions. Of course, any tyranny has to keep an iron grip on its own people or risk a coup or revolution; the open-door policy might have been seen as a sign of weakness.
Bottom line - good riddance to him.