Your last sentence makes no sense. Hussein was the root problem to OUR national security? I thought the immediate threat to OUR national security was bin Laden and AQ. Instead of dedicating sufficient resources towards uprooting that problem, we appeased and emboldened international terrorism by bugging out of Saudi Arabia. Subtle shift of focus, well played.
You're cute, in that way sweet, but don't listen to them, way that libertarians are. I mean, it's inconceivable that a group in power might change the rules to enhance its power right?
Matt's turned French. One other thing...I'm assuming the question here isn't, if you could wave a magic wand.... I'm assuming the question is, in the real world, with opportunity costs and al-Zarqawi and Sadr and the Kurdish ambitions to create Kurdistan.... One negative effect of the invasion is that any threats we make toward Iran are empty, empty threats, and everyone knows it. Hell, any threats we make toward Syria are empty threats.
Matt, you've twisted his brain in such a knot... he might become like a Metros fan or something. ... Ope!
The root problem with us being in SA was Saddam Hussein and the enfocement of the no fly zone. And we have dedicated resourced to uprooting Bin Laden and AQ in Afghanistan. We still are dedicating them. Maybe we appeased on this point, but with our latest foriegn policy decisions we certainly have not emboldened AQ. Remember, we have killled or captured a crapload of AQ members.
Depends on how much of the change said country gets to hear about. If a savvy regime were to ensure that their message was to be the only one heard, they could probably effect quite a bit of change with nary a peep from anyone outside of a few rabble-rousers (especially if that regime got to define the term "rabble-rouser").
As long we lose thousands of troops and billions of dollars fighting an unnecessary war not specifically targeted to UBL & AQ, we are not dedicating SUFFICIENT resources towards their eradication. And how could our (at least perceived) appeasement NOT have emboldened wannabee martyrs? For every #2 AQ leader we kill, thousands of others sympathetic to UBL now have conclusive proof his strategy works.
While he didn't go so far as to say that Iraq gets a "clean bill of health" (his term) by April 2002, Scott Ritter was quite firm in noting that, "I've said that no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact." His view re: getting the inspectors back in was on that I was very much for. Also: Knight Ridder basically had it right from the start, and as early as 9/6/02 they wrote: How ironic now, that it was Ritter who was accused by Paula Zahn as having drunk Saddam's Kool Aid.
FWIW, look at just how right Knight Ridder was based on these headlines: The links to all of the stories can be found on this page from Open Source's web site: http://www.radioopensource.org/knight-ridder-on-getting-it-right/
I refuse to believe this... Paula Zahn of the Commie News Network?....the "liberal media"? ..... never!...
One thing that gets really lost in the "did he lie about WMDs" discussion on Iraq is that most people seem to think there was a yes/no choice on the war in Iraq. There were so many other factors related to this war. By example, if I were to concede every discredited fact as having been sincerely believed as true back in early 2002 -- there are WMDs, Hussein deals with terrorists, etc., etc., there still remains important fundamental questions about who we are as a country that are not being addressed. The doctrine of Preemptive War is unlike any other doctrine we've ever had in our existence. The idea of not working with the United Nations towards consensus is something we haven't done since WWII. Was it OK to shift resources from Afghanistan to Iraq? For me anyway, the truth that many of the factual premises were eventually untrue does not change the fact that we made a fundamental change in who we are as a nation that I cannot accept was warranted. Matt, are you saying that because Bush I did not continue on to Baghdad, that by itself is enough reason for the U.S. to announce to the World that is an aggressor nation?
Nope. A policy of containment while working to spark some sort of democratic fire from within might have been an idea. Worked pretty well in eastern europe. As far as your "we owe it to them after 1991" theory, I am not buying it for purely selfish reasons. We have our own threats and our own security at risk. We have to take care of the guy with a gun pointed at our heads first, before we play good samaritan for a group that frankly doesn't like us very much.
Psst. Dammit! [hushed neocon voice] you really should read your morning talking points email before posting. We aren't saying the E-G-Y-P-T word out loud anymore when talking about "freedom is on the march." [hushed neocon voice] Egypt’s presidential elections last September were supposed to be the highlight of the Bush administration’s campaign to promote democracy in the Middle East. Instead, they’ve become an embarrassing acknowledgement of its failure. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10654690/site/newsweek/ It's kind of difficult to hold up a country as an example of the Bush adminisration's success, when its leader has his main opposition dragged to the most public square where his security thugs hold him down with a boot on his neck for an hour before throwing him in jail.
The Iraqi people's throwing off the shackles of oppression by a murderous dictator would've been impossible without our sending in more than 100,000 troops? That'll be news to millions of people across Eastern Europe.
Are you saying that we didn't support Lech Walesa? Are you saying that we didn't build a cold war arsenal to make the USSR compete with us millitarily and thus fall under its own weight? We did none of these things in Iraq, so the situation is completely different We peomised support and delivered bupkis and because of that, thousands are dead and we put orselve in a pickle by requiring heavy forces in places we shouldn't have been. It's not by itself. If Saddam would have gotten his shinola together after 1991 and disclosed that he was not a threat, and not killed thousands of his own people, then he would still be in power today.
Oh he's a fake. That's for sure. Nor was he a man from hope or have his holiday in Cambodia seered into his memory. All politicians are fake.