We've ousted Saddam, and a fundamentalist slate of pro-Iranian Shiites have replaced his government.
Was any of it -- the billion dollars a week of US tax money, the 2000-plus AMerican military deaths - necessary for the protection of American interests? No. Iraq didn't have WMDs, didn't have anything to do with 9-11, and with a 6th rate military, didn't pose a threat to the US.
What a waste. What a policy blunder. If we'd spent this kind of tax money on a dreamy domestic policy boondoggle, we'd all be calling it typical liberalism. That's what it is, actually, a big-government spending blunder.
What is your prescription now again? Maybe you can do better than Buckley, and lay out what should be done now, and what the end game of that will be.
Who? Not me. Of course, I always figured there could be a civil war. Still could be. In fact, you could call what's been happening since 2003 "civil war". Semantics. It's just that I never saw what that was supposed to have to do with an argument for/against ousting Saddam Hussein. *shrug* Nor did I understand why opponents of the invasion like, apparently, you?, believed that merely warning "there could be a civil war" was a sufficient argument against invading and ousting Saddam Hussein.
Always sounded like one big non sequitur to me and still does. There could be a civil war ignited tomorrow, for all I know. Doesn't have a darn thing to do with whether it was appropriate to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, which it was.
Was any of it -- the billion dollars a week of US tax money, the 2000-plus AMerican military deaths - necessary for the protection of American interests?
That's what our Congress decided in 2003, and I believed they were right. Anyway, it's history. It's a historical event. It happened. Do you get that? Yet you're still arguing about it for some reason. And so am I, which irritates me.
The answer is yes. On 9/11 we lost more people than on December 7, 1941. We were attacked by a global terrorist organization, which had its headquarters in Afghanistan. We invaded Afghanistan, despite the fact that the Taliban was not involved in the 9/11 attack. Why? Because we could no longer tolerate state sponsors of terrorism with a global reach. It was called the Bush Doctrine.
No. Iraq didn't have WMDs, didn't have anything to do with 9-11, and with a 6th rate military, didn't pose a threat to the US.
Iraq did have WMDs. It used them against the Iranians and the Kurds. They failed to account for the destruction of their inventory of WMD, which is why there were UN inspectors in the country for almost a decade. The real question is what did Saddam do with his WMD.
Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism and was listed as such on the State Department's list for over a decade prior to 9/11. Saddam harbored such terrorists as Abu Nidal and one of the culprits responsible for WTC I. Iraq paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Saddam had terrorist training camps. Per the 9/11 Commission report Iraqi intelligence had contacts with AQ, but evidence of an operational relationship could not be found. The jury is still out as more and more information is discovered, e.g., the Saddam tapes. Iraq was behind an assassination plot against Bush 41.
Prior to 9/11, US and British aircraft were enforcing no-fly zones over Iraq. They were being fired upon on almost a daily basis. Our planes were also bombing Iraqi installations. Congress passed a resolution under Clinton that regime change was our objective in Iraq. The truce that followed the end of the Gulf War was not a peaceful one. The question after 9/11 was how could we fight the global war on terror and allow Saddam to remain in power using Iraq as a sanctuary for terrorists. Saddam's track record, i.e., previous use of WMD, invasion of two of his neighbors, terrorist connections, deceptions used against the UN inspectors, etc., ruled against the status quo.
Iraq is part of the WOT in much the same way that Afghanistan was. Iraq was not a military threat against the US, but its use of terrorist surrogates against us was. We are learning more and more about Saddam's ties to AQ. The Oil for Food scandal demonstrated that Saddam had ample funds to bankroll terrorist activities and to purchase WMD from North Korea and people like AQ Khan. We could contain Saddam's 6th rate military, but not the use of terrorist surrogates.
We are fighting AQ today in Iraq. Zarqawi was in Iraq before we invaded. We are at war with AQ and should fight them wherever they are, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Our national interests are at stake.
You nailed it. There were a few that did warn what would happen. But we continued to hear the Iraqis 'wanted' democracy. The US media inundated the public with pictures of purple finger after purple finger in what amounted to nothing much more than a sham of an election. Well that is after the excuse of WMDs fell apart.
What will eventually come from Iraq (if it stays in one piece) is a theocracy that will match some of the more ardent theocracies in the region
And now to top it all off, the esteemed William F Buckley is thrown under the bus because he dares to disagree with new 'conservatism'