With 20-20 hindsight, it is abundantly clear, it has completely destabilized the middle-east. ISIS would be impossible under Saddam regime. Saddam was quickly and brutally killing the Jihadists. He was able to keep Iraq's 3 factions under control.
Most important, none of the 911 terrorists were Iraqi. The chemical weapons WMD was a ruse Saddam was effectively using to keep a more powerful enemy, Iran, at bay, and guessing.
I’m not the type of person who will say “I told you so!” ... but I never supported the invasion of Iraq at all. I also considered it a major betrayal of the conservative movement by the Bush administration, too. That was the moment the whole bunch of them was exposed as nothing more than a bunch of big-government globalists.
Code Pink praises Donald Trump after debate
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/269472-code-pink-praises-donald-trump
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is being praised by Code Pink, a group that has protested the Iraq War.
Trump garnered support from Code Pink dduring the GOP debate Saturday night when he called the Iraq War a mistake and accused the George W. Bush administration of lying before the invasion.
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Code Pink also wants Israel wiped out.
Code played a part in setting up the Obama/muslim brotherhood attempt to take over Egypt.
Code Pink is a big HAMAS supporter and was part of the ‘flotilla” that tried to undermine Israel.
My thought precisely.
The other part that GWB has to answer for:
Putting the war on the national credit card.
No matter HOW badly it had to be fought (or not) the administration should have been upfront about the costs.
Iraq had no intention and no ability to attack America. And Iraq also had ZERO to do with 9/11. So, why did we attack?
Yes I stupidly supported the Iraq invasion by GWB too...Most of us here did. It probably could have been a success if Bush didn’t tie the military hands behind their back and announce Islam as a religion of peace......that should have been red flags but we were all wrapped up in the marketing. Oh well can’t turn back time, but for goodness sake we can at least not vote for Jeb.
Trump 2016.
Effective and brilliant perhaps, but disingenuous, cynical and exploitive.
Here is Trump in a saner moment making the case Rubio mentioned in the debate.
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Trump on if he were told by intelligence agencies of Saddam WMDs
I would have been a lot more certain that he had those weapons of mass destruction. He [Saddam] obviously overplayed his hand. All he had to do was say was, “Come in and take a look,” and he would still be running that country.
http://humanevents.com/2011/03/14/trump-unplugged/
I wonder if Trump will go after Hillary’s vote for approval of the Iraq invasion? Or Kerry’s, or any of the other Democrats who overwhelmingly approved? Or will he go after Bill Clinton’s lack of action to get OBL while he was Commander In Chief. I know trump thinks everything in the Federal government is the Conservatives’ fault. So that’s why I ask.
Trump’s tactics may be everything good these folks think it was but it cost him my vote and was so far away from acting Presidential as to be more akin to a kindergarten student than a mature man running for high office. I will vote for Cruz.
The Iraq invasion was the right thing to do. They should never have mad the WMDs the reason. They did not need to. ut intel at the time said that there was a nuclear program.
We know that there were actually WMDs. GAs, nerve agents, bio agents. Saddam had used them before. It is not accurate to say that there were none. But they never found the nuclear program they expected.
Just the same. Bush defeated Saddam. He then had to retool to defeat the insurgency...and that was hard and expensive. But he and Petraus did that too. By 2007 the insurgency was defeated, Iraq had held elections and adopted a constitution and was on its way to becoming a secular republic. which is what we wanted.
And, it allowed the US to be perched right next door to Iran with a sizable contingency force to allow Iraq to continue to develop.
As I say...that all worked and was a success.
It was Obama pulling out and dismantling that precipitously and releasing many insurgents from the US held jails that led to ISIS and the failures we now see.
THAT WS NOT NUSH’s fault. Trump is using those words and the false narrative established by Obama and the MSM to try and score points against his GOP opponents. it is all pure politics.
Now, I support Cruz in the campaign. I believe that, despite these politics, that Trump would be FAR netter for the nation than Sanders or Hillary and that he will actually do what he has promised.
But lets make no mistake. What Trump is doing is pure hard hitting, under the table politics. Iraq was not a mistake.
Agree completely.
It was SO effective, as was screaming about loving Planned Parenthood, that it got him plenty of uncomfortable blowback.
And, of course, in Trump sore loser style, he’s whining about running to a third party again.
Second, while it is true Trump attacks the foolishness in DC, that is a code term for elites, because they don't have "commonsense" not to, for example, "take the oil." "Taking the oil" isn't a policy presecription: its a corporate manual that says, "If you're going to do something expensive and deadly, you better have a positive payoff at the end." Trump's whole campaign is anti-elite---against the party, against the media, against the "established" way of doing things.
I opposed the Bush1 war in Iraq, and the Bush2 war.
Neither one of them had anything to do with American interests, but were what the neo-cons wanted.
I also supported taking out Saddam. In hindsight, it was a mistake for the reasons you cited.
“Islam is a religion of peace”
That’s what Bush really lied about.
It goes in the face of ALL historical evidence, not to mention their own book.
What about Gulf War 1? Didn’t that begin all this nonsense? The UN was in the middle of monitoring following the war and there were no fly zones. Our politicos agreed there were WMDs in those years (ie..Clinton). GWB wanted the UN resolutions to mean something and hold Saddam to account. My bottom line question would be, what would have happened with total annihilation in GW 1? Secondly, what would be the case today if we had maintained a strong presence in Iraq the past 8 years?
You are 100% correct.
I did supported the war but I’m pissed off at the way George didn’t say crap about Obama when he started to draw troops out of Iraq.
I’m ticked off at how quiet he was when the country needed him to stand up against the commie/muzz humping bastard who sits in the white hut.
One of the reasons why I like Trump. What ever he says, he stands by it right or wrong and will defend himself.
invading iraq didn’t destabilize the middle east. abandoning iraq destabilized the middle east.
The invasion was not a mistake. The "nation building" was the mistake. Iraq would have been fine had we toppled Saddam and then left well enough alone. We didn't. We had to attempt to impose Christian ideas (such as equality) onto a Muslim Culture.
Paul Bremmer is the man responsible for screwing up Iraq. His decision to disband the Iraqi army was one of the biggest pieces of idiocy of which I have ever heard. It was only exceeded in stupidity by his decision to ban all Bathe party members from government employ.
But what really screwed up the middle east is electing an unqualified simple minded petulant fool, just because the the thought of having a "black" president gave Liberal Media Democrats Orgasms.
That was the real disaster for the middle east, and indeed for the larger world beyond it.
Please don't repeat this Democrat talking point on this forum. The destabilization happened after a certain affirmative action President vowed to withdraw all troops during a very sensitive and a previously estimated generation of US support for the duly elected democratic regime .
And let us get rid of another talking point, the presence of WMD. Even the NY Times admitted their presence there by reaffirming the intelligence reports given to Bush Sr, Clinton and Bush Jr.AND embraced by almost every coalition partner and their own intelligence services