I spent 28 years a Foreign Service Officer, including five years in Saudi Arabia during the entire Gulf War and two years in Iran during the fall of the Shah and the entrance of Khomeini. I understand what is going on in the region from personal experience and knowledge.
Iraq is more corrupt and unstable than it ever has been. Car bombs go off daily and sectarian violence is tearing the country apart. I’ve seen news reports where the people in Baghdad yearn for the days of Saddam Hussein. He was a secular leader and yes a terrible dictator but he kept a lid on the sectarian violence.
When a dictator or tyrant is in power, there is less public violence. You are living in a prison. The real violence takes place quietly and in the middle of the night. People disappear. Yes, Iran is a mess internally, but that doesn't mean that US interests have been damaged with the removal of Saddam. It is a good thing that he is gone along with his two sons.
As for Iran they now basically run Iraq and have huge influence.
They have influence, but they don't run the country. Iranians are not Arabs. There is still a huge impact from the Iran-Iraq war where over a million lost their lives.
So this war against Iraq - which never attacked the US and was never a threat - has replaced one corrupt leaders with another set of corrupt leaders and strengthened the hand of Iran.
Never a threat? This is simply not so. Iraq was on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism for over a decade. Iraq attacked US interests whether it was in Israel, Turkey, or elsewhere in the region. Iraq invaded Kuwait. They provided a safe haven for terrorists including AQ and Abu Nidal. The Israelis took out the Osirak nuclear plant in 1981. Saddam used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds. After 9/11 how could we isolate or contain Saddam from using non-state actors like AQ as surrogates against us? He was circumventing the Gulf War accords. We were maintaining Northern and Southern no-fly zones so he didn't kill his own people. It was costing us $8 billion a year to maintain them. We would still be enforcing them today if we had not removed him.
And we’ve not even addressed the fact that the debacle in Iraq cost the GOP massively in 06 and 08 elections when we lost the House and Senate and in 2009 there was a cabal of Blue Dog democrats still hanging around who rammed through Obamacare.
That is not why we lost Congress in 2006. Bush had lost the confidence of conservatives due to his wild spending, doubling the education budget, supporting amnesty, and expanding Medicare with the prescription drug program. How do you explain what happened in 2010?
Now they want to do the same thing in Syria... Removing a non-sectarian leader and replace it with a bunch of radical islamics.
Blaming this on conservatives? Who was responsible for removing non-sectarian leaders from Libya and Egypt and replacing them with "radical Islamics." You had better be careful and be more "pro-Islamic," a term I have asked you repeatedly to define without success. It appears Obama has not lost the votes of Muslims by supporting what has gone on in Egypt and Libya. Why not Syria?
Please stop listening to the McCain and Graham’s of the GOP.
LOL. You mean the guys who are part of the Gang of 8 who want to implement an amnesty that will destroy this country with the stroke a pen. They are the last people I would listen to on anything.
The State Dept are a joke and them putting a country on a list for political reasons has no bearing on anything.
They were not a threat and the Iraq war was sold to the public with lies about WMDs.
As for his actual stocks of chemical weapons who did he get them off ?
Saddam was a CIA asset from the 60’s until 1991. Rumsfeld is right there on tape shaking his hand and selling those chemical weapons in the 80’s.
Iraq is just another example of a schizophrenic foreign policy. One minute they’re our friend next minute we want them removed.
As for spending and losing Congres... well Iraq debacle had a lot do with that. The iraqi’s formed a resistance and didn’t like having their country invaded (which is a completely natural reaction) so fought back.
Do you think the iraq war was cheap? It cost 1 trillion!+ and was a significant factor in losing the House.
The costs of war are bourne by the veterans of course. Many lost lives and limbs and bills will be with us for a long time .
Totally careless and not worth it.
One day you’ll agree with me I hope.