George W. Bush was right to remove Saddam. He was a threat and an enemy. But the pity is that he didn't have to be our enemy. Bush Sr. should not have opposed Saddam's invasion of Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia) in 1991. Indeed, the U.S. had seemed to give him tacit support (the April Glasbie episode). Saddam could have been our cat's paw/bullwark against Islamic fundamentalism, Wahabeeism, Iran/Shiite crazies, Bin Laden and the like. Now we read that our leaders are surprised by the strength of the anti-U.S, anti-western, pro-Iranian Shiite movement in Iraq. How could they be surprised? What is up with these morons? We are paying for Bush Sr.'s misguided opposition to Saddam (to benefit his Kuwaiti/Saudi friends?) Saddam was a tyrant who used torture? Sure, but he was using it against Shiites who are not friends of the U.S., just as Musharraf is using it in Pakistan against Al Qaeda types. Saddam could have been our new Shah of Iran. Well, the genie is out of the bottle now. Fasten your seatbelts...............
That's an interesting take on it. By the way how did the Shah work out for us in Iran? Yeah, that's what I thought.
If we had a Nixon or Reagan as president instead of gutless Jimmy Carter, we would have intervened militarily to keep the Shah in power.
Well, they did complete and thorough analysis of the situation in Iraq, mostly by interviewing about a half dozen Iraqi exiles who hated Saddam Hussain and came to the USA many years ago. And they were heartened by the fact there was a huge american flag sewing company in Basra. (Unfortunately, they did not realize all those flags were being created for middle-eastern protestors to burn.)
What, the guy that started OPEC and created the oil crisis that created a depression and led to us losing Vietnam? They would have been in line to stab him.
Once again, the US must sacrifice its men (and now women) to rid the world of another Bush Crime Family crony.
I disagree, especially if Nixon and Kissinger were running the show--- they would have put aside vengeance and practiced realpolitik.
I'm pretty sure this was the idea from the beginning. Hence, we gave Saddam his "weapons of mass destruction" in order to prevent the spilling over of the Iranian Islamic revolution into Iraq. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a bit unruly, so we had to pull the plug. The problem now is that the Shiites know they can't trust us farther than they can throw one of our tanks. They know that we helped Saddam repress them, and only turned on Saddam when he invaded our Kuwaiti oil shiek friends. They want us out, but we are already in too deep, and unfortunately, if we let them gather into anything remotely resembling self-rule, they will automatically reject the subjugation that is inherent with Western capitalist involvement in their economy.