Posted on 06/17/2014 4:41:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
Yes we have, there are some people you just cannot help, it is counter productive.
If we do not fight them now, we will have to fight them in the future....when they are far stronger.
But, even when we fought them now (Iraq, Afghanistan) we did not fight to win and to destroy the islamists. We tried to play nice.
So, unless this nation’s resolve changes, fighting them now is useless.
If our resolve does not change in the future, we will lose to them and all suffer under the caliphate.
Sorry, Ron, but nobody ever accused Iraq of having nuclear weapons. (The closest was an alleged attempt to purchase "yellow cake" uranium.)
They were thought to have chemical weapons, which the used on both the Kurds and the Iranians, and threatened to turn them over to Al Qaeda for an attack on U.S. soil.
Or so when the justification for the invasion.
War: not necessarily a bad idea at all.
BUTTT........
This ‘touchy-feely’ BS is OUT. Stomp ‘em in a coupla weeks (like we did), then take over and reorganize THEIR army and use it to run the place.
Fer how long? Well, how long ya got?
I'm sick of this old line. People treat our Intelligence community like idiots. Of course there was evidence, we just don't know where it went. The media distorts so much we no longer know what's true or not.
Having said that, do I think we need to die for people who have been at war for eons? NO! Let them fight their own, and if they don't and are taken over by radials, oh well, that's their choice. BUT, I do believe we need to protect those who want no part of this war (those on the fringes).
uh let’s see know yo yo
were you aware or were you not that not only was it “rumored” that Saddam had chemical weapons that he had in fact used chemical weapons on the Kurds?
Are chemical weapons just toys in your mind or are they weapons of mass destruction?
No wonder we haven't had any competent intel for decades, with idiots like this in charge.
I know everyone points to ‘weapons of mass destruction’ for the big justification for invading Iraq....nevermind that they were violating UN Resolutions. Still, the hook that got me from President Bush was that “we need to offer the people of the Middle East an alternative to radicalism (IE-democracy) because without any, radicalism will win out.”
President Bush may have overstated the weapons argument, but it sure looks like in the absence of democracy, radical Islam is the popular choice.
Also, once we went in (regardless of the wisdom of the adventure), it was irresponsible to leave when the fragile Iraq democracy was just getting started. We stayed in Japan for 17 years. We are still in South Korea. We are still in Germany. Why? Because we didn’t want the lives and money to have been used up in vein. Obama is an ass for not finishing the job after such initial effort was made. PERIOD!!! And, he’s reaping the rewards of his sloth right now.
More to the point, they were in material violation of their 1991 cease-fire agreement with us.
I still believe, based on people I have talked to who were in country, that the WMD were there and the “good” stuff was taken to Syria. There were caches found of older chemical weapons, particularly mustard gas, that no one ever talks about.
The biggest mistake in the prosecution of the war was we didn’t commit more troops at the get go and deal immediately with insurgents using looser ROE. We had already been soft shoeing it a while before the surge. Which would never have been required if we had sent a larger force to begin with and prosecuted more forcefully.
The vast majority of Iraqi’s are not adverse to allying with the U.S., had we stayed on they could have become as strong an ally as Japan, Korea, and Germany have been. But the ‘bamster wouldn’t allow that so now we have this mess.
My two cents
And 550 metric tons of yellow cake found was sold to a Canadian company.
You better do a research, because we are still in Japan. Other than that, great reply
Demagogic Putin supporter Ron Paul is playing with words.
WMD,is an acronym meaning weapons of mass destruction it’s a weapons classification which does not just mean nuclear bombs. It also includes poison gas which Saddam Hussain used against the Kurds. And a stockpile of it was found.
While he presents half truths to support his position he fails to mention the real reason we went into Iraq was Saddam’s association with Russia, his invasion of Kuwait, and the resulting threat to Saudi oil.
I have respected Ron Paul off and on over the years for his calling out abuses of our personal deeply valued American freedoms.
But his ignorance of history is astonishing.
Saddam Hussein was a brutal savage vicious dictator who invaded Kuwait for its oil and committed unspeakable crimes to innocent people while there. GWH Bush as leader of the free world had to respond to this barbaric aggression. He did not act unilaterally. He acted by making the case for action and uniting world bodies to that action. He acted as a leader of the free world should act. And this was before the invasion of 2003.
I am no fan of the Bush family because of their failure to police the banking and financial industries of which they are an integral part of. That's another issue altogether.
But in foreign policy, the Bush presidents had it right.
Saddam Hussein was driven back to Iraq and was forced to abide by an agreement with the United Nations.
After 911, Saddam Hussein violated the UN sanctions from the first Gulf War and GW Bush needed to respond, again as leader of the free world. GW Bush took nearly a year to unite the first world in an agreement to take out Hussein. The invasion was not about weapons of mass destruction, it was about responding to a brutal dictator who had violated UN sanctions.
The idea was to rid the world of this mad man and allow Iraqis to elect leaders democratically and it worked. The fact that it is not working now is not the fault of the Bush family or Cheney or any person serving during the presidency of GW Bush. The fact is that this failure in Iraq is all under the presidency of Barack Obama.
Whenever Ron Paul opens his mouth about Iraq all the above history and the many details behind it seem lost on him. He is truly a very strange man and I am glad he was never elected president and I am glad he is out of office.
There sure was evidence, but Saddam kept moving the WMDs around from one hiding place to another, and then just before the war to Syria
His son is cut from the same piece of cloth, but Rand Paul is just a little better at lying about his true beliefs.
Rand Paul would be a foreign policy disaster as a President.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.