Rove book insists Bush did not invade Iraq for Israel

By ICEJ News

11 Mar 2010

In a new book on his years inside the White House, Karl Rove flatly rejects the notion that US President George W. Bush decided to go to war in Iraq at the behest of Israel. Rove served as a senior adviser in the Bush White House at the time of the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, and his new book to be published next Tuesday debunks several theories which critics have offered on why the president targeted the regime in Baghdad. Among them are: That he was doing the bidding of Israel; he was teaching the Arab world a lesson; or he was finishing what his father started in the first Gulf War. "None of these is true," writes Rove. "The reason we turned our attention to Iraq was much more straightforward: We believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to America's national security." Others have noted that Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister at the time, actually made a special trip to Washington to dissuade the Bush administration from attacking Iraq, arguing that the greater danger in the region was posed instead by the radical clerical regime in Iran.

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