they made a decision to voluntarily invade a sovereign country that had done nothing to us. the call wasn't the close at all
For the 30th time - the decision was made before the data was even gathered. It's not hindsight when you know before the decision is made that the data is not in order and the stakes are ludicrously high. This is a preemptive war, not a stock bet - the end-results demand more than "50% of the data agrees and my truthiness will take care of the rest". I'm sorry - but there is no free pass in my book for misleading the nation into war, regardless of any "difficult decision" baloney you paste on top of it. I'm flabbergasted you would think otherwise.
You could do some research by yourself but you have proven to be too lazy to do such. There are literally thousands of pages of print devoted to this issue (starting with the report) which you have apparently not read and do not recall. I haven't read all of it, but I have read a fair amount of it, and recall a lot about stove-piping, the Office of Special Plans, and other items that you haven't bothered to learn about before opining on them. So yes - you deserve to be mocked for coming into this thread and making irrelevant, inaccurate, and contradictory statements about things you don't know much about. Now you will no doubt chalk this up to a bunch of mean old liberals trying to shout you down - but when you proudly tout your ignorance of facts in the formation of your opinion based on such ignorance - I don't know what else you'd expect.
Shouldn't the UN have declared them in violation then? No, the UN inspectors were on the ground inspecting Iraq until Bush had them pulled out before the invasion. Coincidentally, before they had a chance to report the truth: that Iraq had complied with the resolutions and gotten rid of their WMD capabilities.
I have thought about a terse reply but I'm going to be more dignified and just let you off the hook. You deserve yourself. Sorry that my reading list is not as extensive as yours, but I have responsibilities to others besides myself. What facts have I touted ignorance of? You read a bunch of politically-motivated second-guessing and that is supposed to shut everyone else up. Don't think so. See ya!
yes they invaded kuwait, 12 years earlier, as far as ignoring UN, well there are plenty countries we can invade along those lines, including allies
I believe they did but it had no teeth. Didn't Saddam admit to re-inviting the inspectors back in hopes of holding off the US? And didn't Saddam admit to intentionally deceiving and mis-leading the inspectors? I don't see the point in letting the enemy dictate the moves.
1) And who refused to wait for the UN to handle it appropriately? 2) And Isreal's continued defiance of Resolution 237 (since 1967! With five subsequent resolutions!) and 446 betray any moral high-ground here. Once again, it's cherry-picked data. Try again. Nevermind that the UN resolutions were never touted. They were ancillary.
Letting me off the hook? Of what? I read a bunch of first-hand accounts from participants, among other things. You read, well, nothing, I guess. Yeah - you really are arguing from a position of strength here.
Check again. Iraq was complying with the resolutions. Declaring Iraq in violation was not up to the US, it was up to the UN. Even if this is true (I have never seen anything documented that says this), does it really matter? Iraq was complying and the inspectors were finding the truth: that Iraq had no WMD programs. You really ought to stop using assumptions and rumors and instead use facts and available evidence. I have never heard that Saddam admitted anything of the like. I don't see the point of preemptively invading a country based on shoddy, cherry picked "intelligence" when it was not absolutely necessary. There are times to fight and there are times to talk. Iraq was talking, allowing inspectors to do their jobs, but some people in our government were so hot to invade that they thumbed their noses at the international community, at best misled the American public as to the reasons for war, and invaded a country that was not even a slight threat to us. BTW, there is plenty of evidence also that we were duped (by Chalabi, who was in the employ of Iran) into invading by Iranian intelligence. That is the very definition of "letting the enemy dictate the moves," except it was a different enemy that actually HAS designs on nuclear weapons.
I don't prefer to have our country's interests determined by the UN. They were given a decade to put some teeth into Saddam...
So, the UN resolutions were a good enough reason to go to war, but you don't think the UN should have a say into whether those resolutions were violated? That logic is more tortured than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But yet you just used flaunting UN resolutions as rationale for invading. Which is it giddy? Are you now cherry-picking what aspects of the UN we should agree with too?
