Academic study finds White House used 27 rationales for Iraq war

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May 26, 2004 - In just over a year between September 12, 2001 and October 2002, the Washington hawks used some 27 different arguments for invading Iraq and ousting its then dictator, Saddam Hussein, 24 of them originating at the White House. So writes Devon Largio, an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, who published her honors thesis on the topic of Bush’s rationales for going to war with Iraq. Some of the reasons Largio cited included the evilness of Hussein, the hatred of the US professed by him, and the making of an example out of Iraq to gain favor in the Middle East. Largio also showed that the media drove much of the speculation about Iraqi wrongdoings even ahead of the Bush administration. Largio concluded that nearly every rationale used was questionable.