more on Iraq attack

Some excerpts from a Chomsky interview:

It's extremely hard to take Bush and his advisers seriously when
they talk about their reasons for wanting to depose Saddam Hussein. Saddam
Hussein is a monster, there's no doubt about that. Getting rid of him
would be a boon to the people of Iraq and the world. But Bush's advisers
are not opposed to him because of his crimes or because of his efforts to
develop weapons of mass destruction and we all know that.

When he committed his worst crimes, that was with the support of
this President's father. The support continued, Britain as well, well
after the worst crimes were committed. He was a loyal friend and ally.

Furthermore, both Britain and the United States continued to
provide him with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction. He was
much more dangerous then than he is now.

Furthermore, if you're looking at the people the United States is
trying to gather to REPLACE him, ****like the general who can't come to
the meeting because he's under investigation in Denmark for
participation in a massacre*** - does that indicate any effort to bring
some decent outcome for the Iraqi people?

The question of what should be done about Saddam Hussein is a very
serious question, but you cannot take these people seriously. . . . . .
Let's not be innocent, Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the
world. One way or another, the US is going to attempt to regain control
of them and deny them to its adversaries who have an inside track,
primarily France and Russia, and they may think this is a good pretext
for it.

Saddam Hussein remains the same monster he was when the US and
Britain actively and happily supported him right through his worst crimes,
right through the period when he was dangerous and developing weapons of
mass destruction. That remains true. But let's not delude ourselves about
the reasons that might be used as a pretext, the actual reasons for
what will be described under other pretexts.

The goal, as was described pretty accurately - remember that right
after the Gulf War, when the US had total control over the region, there
was an uprising in the south, a Shi'ite uprising, which might very well
have toppled Saddam Hussein except that George Bush effectively
authorised Saddam Hussein to crush it by using military helicopters and
other means. That was explained publicly.

Thomas Friedman, who was then the diplomatic correspondent of the
'New York Times', wrote that this was necessary because as he put it, the
best of all worlds for the United States would be an iron-fisted
military junta which would rule Iraq the same way Saddam Hussein
did, much to the pleasure of US allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia and of
course, though he didn't mention it, the boss in Washington.

That was the attitude then when Bush permitted Saddam Hussein to
crush a Shi'ite rebellion. There's been no change. If the US does do
something to try to regain control of Iraq by force, it has to maintain that
condition.

*****It cannot allow a democratic regime to emerge, even limited
democracy*****, because the majority of the population is Shi'ite and if
there is any democratic participation, chances are quite strong that it
will move towards an alliance with Iran or at least towards connections
with Iran, which the US will certainly block, which is exactly why the
US is now trying to organise Iraqi generals who were involved in some of
the worst atrocities, to be the iron-fisted military junta, which will
be a Sunni military junta, to rule Iraq the way Saddam Hussein did, just
as Thomas Friedman described and indeed advocated.