Trump: Middle East Would Be More Stable With Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi In Power

NBC News ^ | 10/05/2015 | Ali Vitali

[SeekAndFind]

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, when asked if he believes the Middle East would be better today if Moammar Gadhafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq were still in power, responded, "It's not even a contest."

He related the situations in both of those countries with what is currently happening in Syria and seemed to endorse a stronger President Bashar Assad, even while admitting that he is "probably a bad guy."

"You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there — it's a mess — if you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there — it's a mess — it's [Syria] going to be same thing," the real estate mogul said.

This is a sentiment that Trump took with him on Saturday to a rally in Franklin, Tennessee where he recalled our strategy with arming rebels during the days of Qaddafi's reign. Trump told about 1,500 in an event hall: "Then the rebels killed our ambassador in the worst way, what happened to him. And three other people, and many other people by the way. Okay? Remember that."

In regards to Iraq, Trump echoed a familiar line from his campaign: "Don't forget, ISIS came out of Iraq," Trump recalled, calling the terror organization "the leftovers that didn't get taken care of."

He also told the Franklin audience that during the time of Saddam Hussein's "vicious" rule in Iraq "there were no terrorists in Iraq." "You know what he used to do to terrorists?" Trump polled the crowd. "A one day trial and shoot him…and the one day trial usually lasted five minutes, right? There was no terrorism then."

[entropy12]

$2,000,000,000,000 debt on China credit card to attack Iraq? A debt which can never pay off because there are no budget surpluses as far as the eye can see? Do you live your life like this? How many bankruptcies are you going to file?

So show me what we gained from attacking Iraq, except thousands of wounded vets?

I will tell you what we lost. Iran and ISIS now control Iraq and it’s oil. Obama found Saddam as an excuse to remove Qaddafi. Now Libya is gone. Egypt was next on Obama’s agenda to install radical Islam regime. We got lucky due to an anti-radical military coup in Egypt.
Yemen is gone.

A grown man admits his mistakes and moves on. But you are still clinging to justify Iraq invasion? It will go down in history as the biggest blunder of American foreign policy of the 21st century. Almost on par with the 20th century blunder of Vietnam war.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

Thank you kindly.

[The Right wing Infidel]

And you know what, hes right. Muslims need a dictator to keep them in check

if you give muslims democracy or freedom they vote the most insane and most extreme option available, case in point the Muslim brotherhood won fair and square in the Egyptian elections.

Egypt is far better under the military dictatorship lead by sisi then they were under democracy with the Muslim brotherhood

[the_individual2014]

“Biggest lesson: True freedom is unnatural. When freedom is given or bestowed, it just gets corrupted and dies, quite fast. Freedom must be earned, fought for, craved with the entirety of the soul. It is a rare people who win freedom. And it must be won”.

Its the 800 pound gorilla in the room nobody really wants to talk about, some people in that part of the world simply do not have what it takes to have a society like ours and trying to turn Iraq into some pro western state is a fools errand, next time I say just go in, do what we need to do and move on, no rebuilding.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

Yes. Some cultures simply do not think highly of freedom; it is not precious to them. I can’t fathom it, but can accept it. Screw’em. People really do get the governments they deserve.

[agrarianlady]

In 2003, there was HUGE support for Bush and Operation Iraqi Freedom here at FR. In fact, there was HUGE support here at FR for THE SURGE as well. My, how things have changed after a decade...

"Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, 'oh he's using gas!'" Trump said.

I remember when John Kerry was the "traitor" for not supporting the Iraq war in 2004. Imagine if any Freeper had come up with Trump's Code Pink position then - Jim Robinson would probably have banned the user.