You lie!!!!!!!

Sometimes you have to look at the big picture. I'm not going on record as being fully in support of the war, but you have to look at the what if as well as the what happened. What if the war had not taken place?

Estimates range as high as 350,000 civilian victims killed (not counting those tortured) by Saddam. If he was still in power al-Qaida would still have a number of training bases there and perhaps we would have had more attacks here (no way of knowing).

and his two crazy sons would soon have been in power, Uday was a sadist in the true sense of the word and it's hard to tell just how badly things could have gotten under his rule. Remember this was a guy who had his own girlfriends tortured as well as athletes who had bad days. And the torture here was not water-boarding, it included mutilation of sexual organs, dumping melted plastic onto people etc

Doesn't matter...we set that regime up in the 80's with our support in their war with Iran...and they never provoked us. The sad thing about all of this is that the war we needed to fight was in Afghanistan, and now the public is so weary of war because of the Iraq fiasco. That's what happens with 8 years of inmates running the asylum and no leadership. The american public look like cowards to foreigners anyways tho because we generally allow our domestic and foreign policy to be set by officials who preyed on the public's "fear" in order to get elected in the first place...kinda sad if you ask me.

Does matter

and that regime has been in power since the 60's

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Originally Posted by Gotch

Does matter

and that regime has been in power since the 60's

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But they were EMPOWERED by US money provided by the US government when Reagan was president...basically in retaliation towards Iran over the hostage crisis that had ended maybe a year earlier. The only reason you say it matters is because it fits your agenda...but it doesn't matter. Right is right and wrong is wrong no matter who performs the action.

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Originally Posted by sup-rbeast

But they were EMPOWERED by US money provided by the US government when Reagan was president...basically in retaliation towards Iran over the hostage crisis that had ended maybe a year earlier. The only reason you say it matters is because it fits your agenda...but it doesn't matter. Right is right and wrong is wrong no matter who performs the action.

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So, it's safe to assume that had you been around at the start of WWII you would have agreed with Charles Lindberg and the America First movement that even after Pearl Harbor we should have restricted our war efforts to fighting only the Japanese, since only they had attacked us?

No, because they were in alliance with Germany and Italy....Iraq wasn't in alliance with Al Queda...which leads me to another point..the US backed Osama Bin Laden during the Afghan war with the USSR during the tenures of Reagan and Bush I. But the difference in my eyes is that Bin Laden orchestrated a terrorist act against the US...there is no evidence Iraq had anything to do with that. So, it was right to go after Al Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan..not Iraq tho. In the panic of the day, you still have to be able to see who's responsible...not close your eyes and lash out at everyone in the general area.

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Originally Posted by sup-rbeast

No, because they were in alliance with Germany and Italy....Iraq wasn't in alliance with Al Queda...which leads me to another point..the US backed Osama Bin Laden during the Afghan war with the USSR during the tenures of Reagan and Bush I. But the difference in my eyes is that Bin Laden orchestrated a terrorist act against the US...there is no evidence Iraq had anything to do with that. So, it was right to go after Al Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan..not Iraq tho. In the panic of the day, you still have to be able to see who's responsible...not close your eyes and lash out at everyone in the general area.

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Uhh, yes they were / are.

Al Qaeda in Iraq: News & Videos about Al Qaeda in Iraq - CNN.com

We allied with the soviet Union during WWII also. Sometimes it is necessary to do distasteful things in order to achieve important goals. You see everything as black and white, right and left, good and evil. When in fact very little in this world is anything but gray areas.

Both the right and the left have their agendas, their dogma, which they hold on to for dear life. This seldom if ever promotes forward motion, but instead results in a stagnated battle of extremes.

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Originally Posted by Gotch

Sometimes you have to look at the big picture. I'm not going on record as being fully in support of the war, but you have to look at the what if as well as the what happened. What if the war had not taken place?

Estimates range as high as 350,000 civilian victims killed (not counting those tortured) by Saddam. If he was still in power al-Qaida would still have a number of training bases there and perhaps we would have had more attacks here (no way of knowing).

and his two crazy sons would soon have been in power, Uday was a sadist in the true sense of the word and it's hard to tell just how badly things could have gotten under his rule. Remember this was a guy who had his own girlfriends tortured as well as athletes who had bad days. And the torture here was not water-boarding, it included mutilation of sexual organs, dumping melted plastic onto people etc

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Iraq is better without Saddam of course, that's a given. But you got to look at why we went over there, the original excuse wasn't to take Saddam down. It was WMD's, then Saddam, then terrorist and rebuilding. It would have been a lot better if Bush had come out and said he wanted to take Saddam out, but he lied or was "misinformed". And as horrible of a person he was, it's bad for the middle east, he was a good "buffer" for the Middle East. And I'm sure you know there are plenty of leaders just as bad and worse than he ever was, but we are a no-show if there isn't anything in it for us. We are a great country, but we're far from the heroes of the world that we pretend to be.

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Originally Posted by Gotch

Uhh, yes they were / are.

Al Qaeda in Iraq: News & Videos about Al Qaeda in Iraq - CNN.com

We allied with the soviet Union during WWII also. Sometimes it is necessary to do distasteful things in order to achieve important goals. You see everything as black and white, right and left, good and evil. When in fact very little in this world is anything but gray areas.

Both the right and the left have their agendas, their dogma, which they hold on to for dear life. This seldom if ever promotes forward motion, but instead results in a stagnated battle of extremes.

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Uhh...Any link between Al Queda and Iraq's government is yet to be proven...just like all those WMD's that we were supposed to find over there...CNN and every other news outlet reported about those too..and they're still looking for 'em. As far as fighting along with the Russians goes, they weren't a rival of ours until AFTER WWII...the Cold War really began in the wake of WWII as well. Just because we were taught to "Hate the Commie" in the 60's, 70's, and 80's doesn't mean it was always so. If you look closer at your link there, you'll notice those stories are about terrorist acts in Iraq perpetrated by Al Queda. So, using that to say Al Queda had ties to Saddam's government is about the same as saying it had ties to the US government because 911 happened..cuz that was an attack on our soil. Al Queda wasn't active in Iraq until we invaded...then they came there to fight.

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And I'm sure you know there are plenty of leaders just as bad and worse than he ever was,

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Like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, that this administration loves.