U.N.: 979 people died in Iraq in October

He threatened the first year, no wonder the Iraq's had no intention of dealing with him after all his rhetoric against them.

 

Saddam and his government were removed from power, a new government was elected. Success those were the goals you seem to forget.

Who signed the ILA which made the removal of Saddam our official policy?

Along with the overwhelming support of the Congress and the citizens.

Not the current front runner for the Democrat nominee for President. Surely you don't support her do you?

What was the blunder? Saddam was removed and a new government installed. The failure came when Obama came into the picture with his dumb rhetoric and calls for immediate pullout instead of supporting the Iraq government and doing his job in negotiating the second round of the status of forces agreement.

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You leave out the fact that the Democrats in Congress then failed to support the SVM government and it's military.

 

Sorry but that argument was lost in 1998 when it became the official policy of the US to remove him from power and along with the UN resolutions demanding he leave power. Leaving him in power was not an option as Hillary clearly made the case before her vote.

 

The war was a colossal failure.. a ten year failure. Didn't you know before we attacked that it would be? It was about "constructive chaos".. The PNAC and Chalabi told Bush we would be welcomed as liberators.. and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war.

Getting rid of Saddam gave power to Iran.

 

As I already showed Saddam was in fact dealing with them and wanted to further his contacts with them in order to get back at the west and it wasn't just al Qaeda.

 

Is Saddam in power?
Did a new government get elected?

Obama's retreat gave power to Iran.

 

Did you address the rest of my post?

Iraq was crippled by 20 years of sanctions and war.. Neither Iraq nor Saddam was a threat to anyone.

 

Had the will of the people flip-flopped, however, from pro-Iraq invasion to "negatory good buddy!" then the resolution and Hillary's position would have been meaningless. Had those been the nail in Iraq's coffin then G.W. Bush and company would never have bothered bringing the average citizen on board nor have bothered to bribe the entire media industry with embedded reporting slots. Technical legalities are not the same as permission from the people. The people, however (enough of them, that is), gave Bush and company permission to go ahead . . . and the rest is a rather unsavory episode in recent history.

 

Not at all, but they did move their main front to Iraq where they lost BIG TIME in both leadership, forces and treasure. It as a HUGE mistake on their part to fight us where we have the advantage as opposed to keeping their main front in Afghanistan were we didn't. And that is when the US casualties mounting, fighting al Qaeda not Saddam.

Yes, the 2008 was for while we transitioned our forces out with the subsequent SOFA to be negotiated afterwards. That fell to the next President who happened to be Obama who failed.

The original negotiations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.–Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement

The first agreement was to pull out our combat troops and combat presence and then negotiate the residual force that would remain to help with internal security and as a buffer to Iran.

What do you think Obama was negotiating?

 

Well it didn't so you point is moot. From 1998 and into the invasion the people supported Saddam's removal. It was only after the propaganda campaign by the Democrats and the phony "Bush lied" campaigned that they managed to turn the country against the war and gave aid and support to our enemies increasing the casualties we sustained. The unsavory part was the Democrats throwing the troops and our security under the bus for political gain.

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Did you answer my questions?

Another argument lost in 1998 and in 2003. Was Hillary lying when she gave her speech in unequivocal terms stating that Saddam was a very serious threat and could not be allowed to remain in power?

 

Yes.. they were all lying.. They were doing what the neo-cons demanded.

 

You provided nothing but pre-war talking points. I'd like to see real proof. It seems that most of the World knows that al-Qaeda was not active in Iraq during the invasion, and the invasion itself showed no evidence that AQ was active there, and yet you still keep dogmatically believing that AQ was up and running in Iraq.

It seems as if the best proof would be from American forces who were actually in Iraq. What evidence did they find that AQ was active after they took over Baghdad? They found an order for yellow cake, which is almost meaningless (yellow cake has many uses and there is no proof that the shipment arrived), but this had nothing to do with AQ.

The Iraq invasion was an immoral war that took the lives of countless civilians and American soldiers and created massive debt for the USA. Even top generals and Republican politicians are now admitting that it was a mistake. In fact, most Republicans now think tje Iraq War was a mistake. Only the far right is ignoring reality... but that's nothing new. After all, the war went "swimmingly".

Maybe you know something that the rest of us don't. I'm all ears.

 

You are joking aren't you?

 

No. I was reluctantly for the retaliation strike against Afghanistan, but thought that we should have been 'in and out' of that nation in a maximum of two months. I was completely opposed to the War Venture against Iraq, however.

 

I reference the federal indictment submitted in a federal court.

They AND OTHER terrorist groups were in and out of Iraq. Saddam was actively supporting terrorist groups and wanting to further his support. What this has to do with the fact that once we did remove Saddam that al Qaeda decided to fight us there and lost big time you have not made clear.

Read more for yourself
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/saddam_and_alqaeda_1.html

Yellow-cake had one use for Saddam, and of course we know he was actively seeking more of it.

It was nothing of the sort, it was the final solution to remove Saddam from power. And act for which there was no other option.

Facts not in evidence. Even top general still maintain that Saddam could not have been left in power as was determined by the Clinton administration, you are aware that that was not originated by the Bush administration. Saddam had the materials, all proscribe, necessary to quickly rearm himself once sanctions were lifted. And of course he was bribing the UN and other countries to get those sanctions lifted. One thing was clear, as long as he was in power he was a threat and more specifically a WMD threat to his own people, the region and the world. The world is calling for the removal of Assad, such was the need to remove Saddam.

As already posted Hillary Clinton made the unequivocal case in 2003 after her husband did so in 1998. What more do you need?

 

OK what was the alternative, why the reluctance? We should have NOT gone after al Qaeda and the Taliban which supported them?

Based on what?

The alternative being what, allowing Saddam to point his middle finger at the UN and the resolutions calling for his compliance and full cooperation with the inspections which he was refusing? Allowing him to bribe the UN and other countries to get out of the sanctions, free to act as he pleased? Free to rebuild his WMD stockpiles and supply such materials to terrorist groups pledged to attack western states?

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ROFL the Clinton administration was lying and doing what conservatives wanted him to do? As was Kerry and Clinton?

 

Iraq? We should not have invaded, and we might even have considered lifting those sanctions . . . just to see what happened, if nothing else. Nobody in Iraq attacked us on 9-11. Also my understanding is that Saddam saw to it that Al Qaeda did not gain a foothold in his nation.

 

Eh? The goal was to find and remove the WMD stockpiles in Iraq. That was the main objective, everything else was secondary.

The...weapons...were...never...found. They were never there. The cost? Hundreds of thousands of military and civilian deaths, trillions of dollars in unpaid costs (with interest!), a destabilized Iraq (hello religious extremists including Al-Qaeda) and an emboldened Iran (lol @ blaming Obama for that).

Bush's quagmire diverted attention from Afghanistan and the hunt for OBL. The man who extinguished 3000 lives on 9/11 wasn't that big a deal, apparently. Thankfully, his successor got the job done.

Republican support for the war in Congress: almost 100%
Democrats: 40%

Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. What absurdity. But if you're going to blame him, might as well blame Bush Sr too. You know he was whispering in his son's ear to invade. Blame him, blame Clinton, blame the American people (someone actually did in this thread!). Blame literally everyone but the man in charge. Ridiculous. This failure of a war was all on Bush's head.

 

Saddam's oil infrastructure was in terrible shape..so bad that some wells would be ruined forever. He wanted Haliburton to come in, make repairs and up grades.. The estimate was 20 billion $$$$..

 

So in all likelihood had the son of G.H Bush made peace overtures instead of war noises he would have compromised and cut deals. I rather thought so at the time.

 

Always check the facts when you source from American Thinker.. They are lousy.

 

Yes.. The reason Haliburton hired Cheney was because of his government contacts.. They wanted sanctions lifted against Iraq, Libya, Iran and the Stans. Cheney failed in his lobbying efforts... That may have been part of his motivation to GET Saddam.

 

That sort of makes sense. I know that what happened behind the scenes was waaaaaay more complex and multi-faceted than what we were told as a people.

 

Dislike of Obama's policies does not automatically indicate love of Bush's policies. Try to think about the issues once.

 

Empowering Saddam and every other two-bit dictator to ignore the UN? We know what would have happened, he would have rearmed and then engaged with terrorist groups to attack western states. He would have restarted his nuclear research and have been well on the way to a bomb by now. We couldn't just wait for that to happen. That was not an option.

Canard, no one claimed anyone did.

But more than willing to engage in mutually beneficial activities including attacks on western states. Why do you think Sadda's secret police were working on rather innocuous looking things such as perfume bottles or aerosol sprayers which could dispense chemical or biological agents? For the battlefield?

Why did he have cache's of highly concentrated organophosphates, the based chemicals for advanced nerve gases although deadly in their right, hidden in underground camouflaged bunkers near new chemical weapons shells all undeclared and hidden from inspectors?