Daily Inspiration Quote by Douglas Feith

Feith’s line is doing the quiet work of preemptive moral bookkeeping. By anchoring the claim in the “mid 90s,” he’s not merely reminding listeners that Saddam Hussein was brutal; he’s trying to relocate the origin point of responsibility. If we already “knew,” then later choices - especially the post-9/11 rush toward regime change - can be framed less as a contested policy gamble and more as the overdue execution of an established verdict.

The phrasing is prosecutorial, not analytical. “It was known” is a classic Washington passive that smuggles in consensus without naming who assessed what, on what evidence, and with what dissent. The details he selects are telling: aggression against Iran, invasion of Kuwait. These are real, historically legible crimes, designed to trigger a shared memory of televised tanks and coalition war. Notice what’s absent: the messy 1990s context of containment, sanctions, inspections, and the way U.S. policy toggled between punitive pressure and uneasy stalemate. By skipping that complexity, the statement implies a straight line from Saddam’s prior wars to the necessity of toppling him.

Feith’s intent isn’t to prove the 2003 invasion was justified on its own terms; it’s to make the justification feel redundant. The subtext is: objections were never really about Saddam’s character, only about political will. In that sense, the quote functions as a retroactive alibi - not for what was known, but for what was decided.