I kind of wish the United States would openly commit to not get involved in any conflict in the world. When, not if, the world melted down we would get to say "told you so", and this perspective would look silly.
We had a mutual defense pact with Kuwait. We were just keeping our promise... a GOOD THING. That's what allies SHOULD DO. And just a note on the Kurds. I spent a year training the NEW Iraqi Army. The Kurds really loved Americans. More than a few wanted to know how they could join the American Army. Unfortunately, they couldn't.
Since we were talking about Saddam Hussein, I figured it was obvious. Obviously not. SH is short for Saddam Hussein since I didn't want to type Saddam Hussein over and over.
Saddam (or Sadaam) will do fine. I don't think anyone would confuse that with Fred Hussein or Saddam Murphy.
To understand what led up to WW II and everything that followed, you have to study and understand what led up to WW I. If you study how Woodrow Wilson was financed into office, along with the passage of the FedRes Act, Income Tax, and Foundation system - you can then follow the same people and money into ensuring that there would be a war, and that the U.S. would be manipulated into being an active participant. Like most wars from the Crimean War (1853-1856) onward, the International Bankers would more often than not finance both sides. One very notable exception would be America's Civil War. The Rothchilds approached Lincoln with unfavorable terms to finance The Union Army as one of their many attempts to reestablish a Central Bank in the U.S., which had been without a Central Bank after Andrew Jackson successfully scuttled The Second Bank of the United States in 1836. Lincoln told them to pound sand, and issued Greenbacks instead, some of which stayed in circulation until the 1960's. It wasn't until Woodrow Wilson's Presidency that the Rothschilds were finally able to reestablish their bank. The FedRes Act was written by German Banker Paul Warburg, who was a representative of the Rothschilds. J.P. Morgan was a bagman for the Rothschild. Jacob Schiff, Bernard Baruch, Frank Vanderlip, Henry Davidson, et al. Bernard Baruch went on to play a very prominent role in administering The New Deal in the FDR Administration in the 1930's. FDR, like Wilson, was funded by the Wall Street/Banking interests, and dutifully followed orders in implementing the New Deal, which further enriched and empowered the Robber Barons. And, like Wilson, FDR manipulated the U.S. into WW II just as Wilson had done for WW I.
And would have them again, researching better more deadly ones amd methods to use them, and would use them again once the inspections were lifted and sanctions ended. already refuted.
Geez where do you get this stuff? Run by Bin Laden? It was a dual use facility. He was Wotan authority on such matters claiming as such is the straw man. Mainly the tax cuts and he was wrong. And still does not make him an authority on Iraq and remains a disgruntled fire employee. No I could care less. Any comments on what we did find and what the ISG reported?
The region was further destabilized. Iran's and bin Laden's enemy was eliminated. The rise of ISIS was assured. Bush is still searching for the DubyaMDs that Cheney and Rumsfeld lied to him about as the pretext for the disastrous invasion and occupation. CIA’s final report: No WMD found in Iraq
It was a terrible war that should have never had happened and destabilized the entire region. I was for the war then and have absolute regrets today for ever supporting such a ludicrous war. Bush was also the president that started our downward spiral of government escalation of intervention of private citizens privacy with the Patriot act. A horrid piece of legislation that was voted on by both parties!
This thread is a “déjà vu” all over again. The same old argument we have seen back in the days from supporter of this war. Saddam had WMD, we found WMD. Saddam was bad. All the dead Iraqis are terrorist. (you would be terrorist too , if Canada attacked America , dismantled US military and tried to established Canadian style government in US) UN is corrupt. Iraq is better of without Saddam ( really , have you seen what happened to Iraq since the invasion? Before the invasion Iraq was the most powerful military country in Middle East, and an economic powerhouse, today it is a rubble) It feels like time has not changed. these people have exact same argument and belief. But then again conservatives in America live in a different world and different time. For rest of us , this is one of the foreign policy mistakes of 21st century. If we don't want repeat of this mistake, we must go and vote every election so these conservatives can't come to power again. Keep in mind the conservatism is almost dead and their support is shrinking each election. Only way conservatives can come to power in US if you and I sit at home on election day or vote 3rd party as protest.
If Canada invaded US today, I would encourage every 12 years old American boy to take up RPG and point it to Canadian army. There was no terrorist in Iraq. Saddam was bad and brutal, but so are every single leader in Arab nation. All Iraqis who didn’t want Americans in Iraq became “ terrorist” because we gave them that name. it was their country, and we had no business in there.
If the US has learned ANYTHING from the removing Saddam is that there is no such thing as Democratic nation building in the Middle East and that dictators like Saddam are truly needed in that region to ensure radicals are unable to breed. What Reagan did with Gaddafi was the best way to get the message across to remain in line. Gaddafi became less of a threat after that action and Libya was a stable nation... until the US intervened again in 2011 and absolutely destabilized the region once again! Again, we did not learn any lessons!
According to Biden’s own statements in 1998, he believed that Hussein could never be trusted to eliminate his program, no matter how many inspectors were admitted. Summer 2002 hearings, Biden claimed that “one thing is clear, these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” In October 2004, by which time it had become clear there were no WMDs, Biden told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations, “I never believed they had weapons of mass destruction.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infinite_Reach The basis for the attack Suspecting that Al-Shifa was linked to, and producing chemical weapons for, bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, the U.S. destroyed the facility with cruise missiles The concluding facts: U.S. officials later acknowledged that the evidence cited by the U.S. in its rationale for the Al-Shifa strike was weaker than initially believed: The facility had not been involved in chemical weapons production, and was not connected to bin Laden.
Not only was the military disbanded leaving 300K people without a job the civil service was also disbanded by Paul Bremmer. So for people left without a livelihood Bremmer was a terrorist.
The US did not unprovoked simply invade Iraq. That is wholly a fabricated summation of the situation that ignores a whole host of factors and considerations. People that commit genocide using chemical weapons qualifies as a terrorist in my book. I guess this is somewhat subjective. In any case, our initial defense of Kuwait, and the sanctions put on Iraq, as well as the followup offensive to remove him from power for violating those sanctions were not justified by his killing of the kurds in the 10's of thousands. "We had no business there" is wholly your opinion. I disagree. And the iraqis that didn't want us there were fine... the ones who took arms against us then became the enemy. This idea that there were widespread opposition to the US's removal of Saddam simply wasn't the case. It's funny to me today, Iraq especially in Bagdad represents a cultural advancement, freedom, liberty, democratic government, and generally peace with the occasional small uprising of fundamentalists who desire power and control. They act is if this was all resultant from something OTHER THAN the US's removal of Saddam and continued embattlement of fringe islamic fundamentalists fighting for control and power. Do they think this current culture and progress is inspite of the removal of Saddam? It seems completely devoid of reality.
We should not have invaded Iraq. My son fought in that war, and that's a story unto itself. I am acutely aware of the sacrifices our young people in uniform made fighting that war, and it makes me sympathetic to the sufferings the Iraqi people have gone through since then. That said, the one silver lining is that after all of the convulsions Iraq has gone through in the past 20 years, its democratic form of government survives. Hopefully, it survives into the future. At least that's something.
134,000 casualties due mostly to re-emergence of Sunni vs Shia conflict... NOT US military action... for the most part
Whatever let you sleep at night. It doesn’t matter Sunni and Shia killed each other, running water shortage killed people or not. This is direct result of US invasion which destabilized the country. There was a reason Saddam was brutal dictator. For 1500 years Shia and Sunni fought each other, but GWB thought he can re-write history. Saddam was bad but Iraq was a stable country in Middle East. Iraq was not financing any terrorist group like Iran did. We went to Iraq, destabilized the country and then “ They killed each other , we didn’t do anything”. Yea, every single person who supported that war has blood on their hand.
One of the disappointing aspects of the Obama admin, he didn't end the Patriot Act like he said he would.
Sunni and Shia have been slaughtering each other for over a thousand years... nothing to do with any US action. You should look up Abu Abbas and where we found him in Baghdad before you say Sadaam wasn't supporting terrorism. I spent two years in Iraq. I met lots of Iraqi's... Sunni, Shia, Kurds even a Yaziti that was terrorized by other Iraqi's. You really have no idea.
