ancient hhistory or not, we should have leveled Baghdad,, and all the adjacent areas, tthen the military installations, all the electric power generating sites.
we could have done it all by air, aircraft or drone, and saved a whole generation of Americans.
that would’ve shown Iran what they may expect.
No. Bad move by idiot Bush Junior.
That it did not turn out as expected or as we wanted at the time does not change the justification. What I see now is a lot of rewriting of history to suit current politics, to turn Iraq into another Vietnam in reference to Ukraine. The "unanswered questions" were asked and answered then. Just like then the answers are ignored. This time the Republican side ignoring the questions and answers, not the Democrats.
Saddam was disguising and hiding his intent to restart his WMD program as soon as he could. Instead of having ready chemical weapons, he stocked up on precursors and kept up low level R&D. Bush made it easy to attack him by refusing to defend any decision he made. Why he refused to defend his decisions when it would have been easy and let the Democrats and the press to walk all over him is beyond me.
The reality is, the US and Iraqi people won. Iraq is its own country, Saddam is dead, the Baathist's are gone, Al Queda and ISIS exist as shadows of what they were, Iran is largely in check. The Middle East is not Europe or Asia. Iraq's cultural heritage goes back 10,000 years and is Islamic, not European and Christian. The outcome was never going to be neat and tidy like we think of WW-II today when Iraq's neighbors are Iran and Syria.
It was right until Obama didn’t have a Status of Forces agreement and gave up the Green Zone. No matter the Weapons of Mass Destruction issue, the Hussein dictatorship needed to end. It’s probably the first time that we ever got a regime change right. It started going wrong when they enshrined Islam in the constitution of Iraq.
Back then I knew that Saddam was not a sponsor of Musalim terrorism. I did go along with Bushy that Saddam had nukes. Now it turns out this was Saddam’s propaganda to keep Iran at bay.
Today I say don’t bother with Muslim nations. Leave them to their own devices with their wacko religion and wacko dictators. Just buy oil and gas from them. This is all they are good for.
Ukraine is a righteous war in Europe. Where most FReepers ancestors are from. But many Freepers don’t want the US to help Ukraine. Due to our two recent wars in Muslim nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Where many Americans died and were maimed. With trillions squandered. So now some FReepers are born again Peaceniks.
Perhaps 20 years ago there was a valid reason. However times have changed. The current mindset is that there is NEVER a reason to invade another country.
No.
No. Wrong then, still wrong today.
Well this is false. Saddam has chemical weapons, even the NYT has an article over soldiers hurt by them when they had to hide that they were finding them.
Secret removal of tons of yellowcake (uranium) to Canada if I remember correctly, was pretty well known.
The problem though wasn’t any WMD, it’s that the Muslim world needs harsh dictators like Saddam to keep them in line. Without him, the gap was quickly filled with even worse people.
The only way to succeed, as someone else mentioned above, was to delete most of the country’s way of life and start back over, like Japan after WWII. But even that would have been iffy unless we did the same thing to all the surrounding countries that are all the same. The entire society is extremely tribal, and the only way to put it together into something actually coherent involves mass re-teaching of the kids and a LOT of time and effort. The Japanese at least started out smart and industrious. That part of the world is neither.
It was an awful decision, IMHO...
The Iraq vs Iran bloody war would have still been going on and the rest of the world would be much safer today...
We had two raghead countries killing each other’s soldiers by the thousands every day for ten years...
It needed another 20 years to permanently clean up that part of the ME...
Clearly it was not.
If Hussain did not have WMD what was used to murder hundreds of northern Iraqi Kurds? I recall it was poison gas. Gas is WMD.
I guess to many the Kurds are subhuman and their murder does not matter.
Not even joking but your mileage may vary.