[Goodman26]

I agree.

I just don't understand why we are sending any ground troops in. Ground troops aren't going to help find WMD secreted away in some canisters in Saddam's third cousin's secretary's basement. And they are not going to help kill Saddam, who can be more efficiently killed by a massive bombing campaign, which is what we started with, and what will finally get him.

What good is taking over Basra or Baghdad going to do us but expose our troops to danger and cause us to get involved in expensive, ultimately failed efforts at nation-building.

We are after Saddam specifically. Forgetting all the past Bush blunders on Iraq, what do we do now? Bomb the living crap out of all the presidential palaces AND bomb all the mosques, hospitals and apartment complexes, includng the Rashid Hotel, where Saddam and his cronies might be.

It just kills me that we are pussy-footing around, not wanting to hit mosques and the like because of some misguided political sensitivities, while our troops are being exposed to incredible danger (fake surrenders, ambushes and the like.) We should accomplish the mission with the maximum aggression. When we bombed Dresden we just let the bombs fall almost indiscrimately, and we should do the same or more here.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

We are after Saddam specifically.

Not a good strategy to keep such a narrow focus. If you take out Saddam but leave the Baathist power structure intact, you'll have a thousand Saddams waiting in the wings. This is little better than the unfinished job of 1991.

It stinks to have to do this, but we need to stick around long enough to eliminate the Baathists from the political equation permanently.