Some thoughts...

[desertfox04]

The original post was not made to entirely justify the war, it was made so people would shut up about how the Iraqi people are suffering.

Now I will agree, I think our government underestimated the problems that would arise from post war Iraq.

Disbanding the Iraqi army was quite possibly the worst mistake, as we now need to rebuild the Iraqi security force from ground up and we need to do it fast.

 

[Moonbeam]

The only reason we went to war was because Bush wanted to. His reasons had nothing to do with that want. In the process what Bush did is murder a bunch of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians. Bush preempted the UN search for weapons they were suggesting weren't there because, again, he was itching to go to war and his rationalization was being eroded. Bush is a psychologically immature juvenile delinquent with an immature Hollywood cowboy mentality. He is completely unfit to be President of the United States. Only in a nation of similarly immature morons could such an idiot arise and only with the support of his father's judges could he be elected. Bush is the greatest disaster that has ever hit the United States. We have a child for a king.

If you want to remove monsters from power don't send the military into battle. Ask for volunteers to build a special force for that purpose and do it internationally. Nobody should be sent to Iraq under orders. Every America soldier should have a say in whether the war is just or a lie. Nobody should die for a fool who can see he's being used as a tool of a psychotic.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: desertfox04
The point of my post was to debunk the liberals crys of "Think of the Iraqi children that Bush has killed!" and "Iraq was better off with Saddam."

Also, few liberals like to talk about Saddams well documented history of building and USING WMD's.

And for those of you complaining about the slow progress of democracy in Iraq. No one said that building a democracy was easy. Let's look at the history of the U.S. afer the revolutionary war. Inflation was making our currency next to worthless, the states refused to co-operate with each other, Shay's rebellion, and our federal government was impotent.

Creating a democracy is not easily, the United States must get the job done whatever challenges it faces.

That's a strawman argument...and you know it.

No one in this thread has said "Iraq was better off with Saddam" or "Think of the Iraqi children that Bush has killed." People are simply bringing up the question of whether or not the invasion was justified since it appears Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Responding by pointing out that Saddam was a bad guy does not answer that question unless you wish to assert we should invade every country led by a bad guy. I think we'll all agree that Saddam was bad...that's different from saying invasion was a good idea.

 

[umbrella39]

Your post made me smile Thx MB. :thumbsup:

 

[Caminetto]

if i buy a new car and the dealer tells me its a 6 cylinder so i tell my buddies i got a 6 cylinder engine, but when i go to change the oil i find out its only a 4 cylinder, am i a liar?

A better analogy:
If I want to buy a car because I like it?s looks and I think God wants me to look cool, and almost everyone says it may very well be a poor buy, with not enough power to keep the wife and kids safe in freeway driving, and to wait to have it checked out, but hell, the sales guy says it?s a 6 cylinder, and my buds say it?s probably a 6 and that i'll look so cool and my daddy should have had one, so I tell the wife and kids it?s a 6 cause damn I think it's just so cool, am I a liar?

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: desertfox04
Ever wonder what Iraq would be like had we not invaded it? Here are some of my thoughts...

Saddam's political prisons would have never been emptied. There was no excuse for what a few of our soldiers did in Abu Ghraib. But I'd take the naked human pyramid over Sadaam's acid drip room anyday.

Saddam would have continued his policy of giving $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. That's right, all you had to do was strap on some explosives, blow up some women and children at a bus stop and your family would get a check from Sadaam.

Let's not forget the continued use of sanctions as a failed policy of keeping Saddam in line. The U.N. sanctions were believed to have resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children's deaths.

If we were to have ignored Sadaam it is almost certain that he would of put his WMD program back in full swing. There is no questioning Saddams preference in using WMD's in the past. Just about every book on the Persian gulf war, they all contain the pictures of 1988 poison gas attack on the kurds which were believed to have killed a minimum of 50,000 non-combatants. Let's not forget the Iran-Iraq war where Saddam first discovered the effectiveness of poison gas against Iran's human wave attacks. Even the most ardent opponent to the Iraq war must admit that Saddam had a serious history of building and using WMD's.

While Iraq still continues to be a sucky place to live it's alot better off than while under Saddam's rule. I could document Saddam's human rights abuses but I do not have the time nor space to do so. So I will direct you to the following links.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Torture-and-murder-in-Iraq
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engMDE140082001?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIESIRAQ?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIESIRAQ
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraq/

Imagine if Saddam were to have died or been overthrown and the U.S. or some other peace keeping force was not there to stand between the ethnic groups. Best case scenario would be that Uday, a psychopath that was much more cruel than his father, would have taken over and life in Iraq would have gotten only moderatly worse. Although the most likely scenario would be that all the ethnic groups would have jumped at the oppurtunity and would start a civil war that would dwarf the current uprising and result in a death toll that, if the civil war were left unchecked, would most likely climb into the hundred's of thousands.

So in summary, compare the number of accidental civilian deaths to the number of people that would have died under the sanction program, the number of people that would have died due to political persecution and the number that would have died in an Iraqi civil war.

I think you'll find that President Bush's war actually saved quite a few Iraqi lives in the long run.

While what you say is all very commendable, I don't want to send our son's and daughters into harm's way to free the Iraqi's from their persecution. that's basically their problem. To send them over there because they pose a threat to us and our way of life and while they're there to free them from their persecution is a different story. But it turned out to be a big lie, now didn't it.

 

[0marTheZealot]

How about we stop putting these fvcknuts in power in the first place. Stop playing political hot potato with other countries, you'll be surprised how much more people like us when we become evenhanded. Once we stop toppling democracies (see any number of cases in SA/ME) and actually start practicing what we preach, we'll a lot fewer enemies.