Correct me if I'm wrong here but I seem to recall you saying that there was evidence such as those camps saying that was proof that Saddam was working with Al Qaeda. So now you're saying that Saddam wasn't but we had to invade incase Saddam got overthrown? So are you now aggreeing with the anti-war side that Saddam and Al Qaeda were never cooperating and as many of those of us on the anti war side have been saying were actually opposed to each other? If this is the case why would we invade Iraq when it would've been far easier to make peace with Saddam and work with him to fight Al Qaeda like we did with Musharraf even though prior to 9/11 he was a pariah in DC? Unresolved issues from the Gulf War 1 seem like a rather weak excuse when we could've made a powerful ally against Islamic terrorism at far less costs in terms of money, lives and diplomatic headaches.
The analogy does work; you have to calculate for a different kind of war. We are certainly now taking AQ on directly-- old-timers, new recruits, whomever. My main point is that there is no point in being obsessed with OBL in the way we were not obsessed with killing Hitler.
1. Terrorists don't want to be terrorists forever-- only as long as necessary to claim their objective. It is a necessary strategy because of where they come from. 2. No Remember there was no significant number of AQs in Iraq, however we have drawn them (and many other forms of extremists) there to the fight. Kill them there or kill them as they try to demonize the US, the UK, Australia et al.
<b>AggieRocket</b>: I don't know about you, but my life is hardly differen post-9/11. While I get your drift, I think you have overstated the accusation of American paranoia. Whether or not those kids' fathers/mothers lives were wasted sacrifices is something only history will judge. I know one thing: you wouldn't say that to their faces... and since you wouldn't (I conjecture) there is something unconvincing in that argument. If it were so patently true, it would not be offensive to them...
I am only trying to fill in some blanks that might explain the war being taken to Iraq. Whether or not AQ was already a strong presence in Iraq is immaterial to me. We had to carry the war somewhere and Iraq was, I guess, the weak sister-- GUILTY AS HELL SINCE THE FIRST GULF WAR and DEFIANT OF UN SANCTIONS IN THE DOZEN YEARS SINCE. I think you are over-simplifying your characterization of the implied cooperation between Saddam and AQ. To me it was always described as a logical end because of shared anti-American sentiments. You are taking the caricature postures and making them mainstream. We were not about to partner up with Saddam-- talk about hypocrisy!
Say what? We "had to" go to war somewhere else? WTF? Guilty of what - being a ruthless dictator? I think there are a lot of those around the world. Why was Iraq special? As for sanctions, there are a lot of coutries "defient" of UN resolutions. Isreal and Pakistan to name two off the top of my head. So the logic is: 1) Saddam doesn't like the US. 2) AQ doesn't like the US. Conclusion: AQ and Saddam are working together. Non Sequitor. Hypocrisy?
Giddy, the AQ scenario is, as you have just said, your own attempt to fill in some blanks. Is filling in blanks a reason to start a war? As far as not partnering up with Saddam, we did that already and when we were doing was during Saddam's most brutal period. The worst things Saddam did were done while we were his ally. We even prevented the UN from passing measures against Saddam at the time. So while I would never advocate partnering up against Saddam, I think it is strange place for many to be calling out hypocisy.
As an individual, I agree with you in that my personal life is hardly different post-9/11. However, the total picture of American life has changed. My life is different maybe 10 days in a year when I am at the airport, when I see a suspicious looking Arab, etc. However, that ~10 days happens for most people and those 10 days aren't uniform. You are also right about history being the judge of whether these lives were wasted and I sincerely hope that history says that I was wrong and that my rant was out of line.
We didn't start the war; we took the fight to a new place. Is GWB just correcting a past mistake made by the US by ousting Saddam? GWB did not have the relationship with Saddam in the past.
<b>rhadamanthus: Say what? We "had to" go to war somewhere else? WTF? Guilty of what - being a ruthless dictator? I think there are a lot of those around the world. Why was Iraq special? As for sanctions, there are a lot of coutries "defient" of UN resolutions. Isreal and Pakistan to name two off the top of my head. So the logic is: 1) Saddam doesn't like the US. 2) AQ doesn't like the US. Conclusion: AQ and Saddam are working together.</b> The fight had begun and it wasn't us who started it. But then it came to our shores in a big way: 9/11. As GWB said, he was tired of swatting at flies, so his administration made a commitment to a war on terrorism to rid the world of that plague. So you gotta go find 'em and kill 'em. Why Iraq? 1. Saddam was a ruthless tyrant, 2. Iraq had been an aggressor nation against Kuwait, and 3. Iraq's ME location. The conclusion was not that they were working together, but they could work together eventually. What would it take? Some Iraqi who was part of Iraq's military police gets a boner for jihad and gets his superior to talk to one of the generals to talk to Saddam about arming him with anthrax and fund him a plane ticket to LA, NY or DC. Four degrees of separation. Couldn't that have been done at anytime in the past? Well, yes it could but it wasn't because it is a risky proposition for Saddam. Why now then? Because post 9/11 would have been a good time to pile on the US. It certainly emboldened our enemies fantasies and it took a show of strength to quiet them down.
The fight had begun and it wasn't us who started it. But then it came to our shores in a big way: 9/11. As GWB said, he was tired of swatting at flies, so his administration made a commitment to a war on terrorism to rid the world of that plague. So you gotta go find 'em and kill 'em. First of all, the fight against terrorism IS swatting at flies - there's no way around that. Just because he was tired of it doesn't change anything. Second, if you gotta go find 'em and kill 'em, why attack somewhere where there are none of them? The conclusion was not that they were working together, but they could work together eventually. A few posts earlier, you said it was possible that AQ would try to take over Iraq; now you say they might have worked together? These two groups despise each other - Al Queda hated Iraq before they hated the US - the US is only a pawn in the game of getting the Middle East to be "true Islam" in their minds, and that is exactly what a secular Saddam doesn't want. Anything that benefits AQ was a huge negative for Saddam. Couldn't that have been done at anytime in the past? Well, yes it could but it wasn't because it is a risky proposition for Saddam. Why now then? Because post 9/11 would have been a good time to pile on the US. It certainly emboldened our enemies fantasies and it took a show of strength to quiet them down. The show of strength was Afghanistan - that was a true show of strength because it showed that the world was united against terrorism. All the Iraq war showed was that the world was not nearly as united, and that, if anything, would embolden terrorists because fighting terrorism requires global cooperation. Terrorist fears would have been far higher post-Afghanistan than post-Iraq. What Iraq taught terrorists is if they taunt, we'll strike out at whatever is easy, and we're now in the midst of a 3-year distraction from the core of the war on terror. Have we killed a few AQ in Iraq? Absolutely. But if we took all that time, money soldiers and intelligence resources over the last 3 years, we would almost certainly have tracked down far more AQ without Iraq. You can argue that it helped a large group of people (the Iraqis) pretty convincingly. You might be able to argue that it improves our position in the Middle East, but that won't be conclusive for a decade or more. It's almost impossible to argue that this aided in the fight against AQ, though. As for being a good time to pile on the US, that's not at all true from a terrorist perspective. Terrorists rely on being able to do their thing and disappear with minimal retaliation. In post 9/11, any second attack would have resulted in huge consequences (albeit possibly against an unrelated enemy) - so post 9/11, an attack on American soil is the last thing a smart terrorist organization would do. The idea would be to wait several years and then hit again.
<b>major</b>: That the terrorists hated Saddam is exactly why Iraq could have been their target to establish another base of operations. Saddam was considered by them to be an infidel. They would not hesitate to get rid of him. His population was, for generations, downtrodden. AQ could have continued the domination. If you read my "scenario" all it would take is for Saddam to say "yes" to one terrorist and ,bingo, he is working with AQ by definition-- and maybe not even know it! There is tension for Saddam by not wanting to strengthen AQ and wanting to damage the US. If he could accomplish the latter without doing the former he would. This is all just "nightmare-casting" but the point is to provide possibilities where so many of you say there are none. Afghanistan was a show of strength but so was Iraq. It's not a matter of how many appove or disapprove of what you do that measures strength, it is a matter of doing what you set out to do that measures strength. FDR interred the Japanese-Americans during WWII. Is he beloved or reviled? Leaders sometimes have to make tough calls which can mean stepping on some hands along the way.
Truth be told: not all of them are known to be mistakes. Some are setbacks. Some are miscalculations. Some may be mistakes but only time will tell. Look, glynch, this is the polarized nature of politics in America. You deplore practically everything that President Bush does while I defend it. Too bad we can't have a little more even-handed analysis of current events...
That's fine. But Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. No matter how many times the adminstration hinted at it to gather support, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That's not the reasoning given by the administration. It was WMDs being used against the US and the aformentioned hints of a AQ connection to spur patriotic fervor for the war post 9/11. This logic could be applied to almost every country! Based on the news, our "show of strength" has riled them up (insurgency, anti-americanism), and worn us down (army recruiting, civil rights erosion, defecit). Was it worth it for a made up claim of WMDs?
You have over-stated and over-simplified the arguments for going to Iraq. Check out the SOTU2003-- plenty in there about Bad, Bad Saddam and very little about WMD's, although there is a hint at the kind of scenario I've included here. You are only remembering what you want and ignoring what doesn't suit you. Did you see Colin Powell on Jon Stewart last night? How can anyone do much more than "hint" at anything when there is only intelligence to back it up. Did you see the recent news on how we mis-assessed China in a big way?
From the SOTU2003: THEY DID NOT EXIST. Paragraph after paragraph of intelligence (including the famous "nuclear" ability) and yet we gave up on our WMD search. That's not selective - his whole fscking speech regarding Saddam focuses on WMDs and the threat they pose to the US.
Save your breath rhadamanthus. The apologists have told the lie so many times; they believe it's the truth now. Nothing will change their minds.
I'm not caricaterizing anything. These were positions that I seem recall you stating and were positions stated by Rumsfeld and others in the Admin. that the presence of the Ansar Islam camps in Kurdish Areas of Northern Iraq were indications of Saddam's cooperation with Al Qaeda. Yet that's something we've done quite often. We've partnered with Musharraf in Pakistan even though prior to 9/11 he was strongly criticized for taking over in a military coup. The US also had sanctions on Pakistan for their undemocratic policies, nuclear proliferation and support of the Taliban. In fact right after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about invading Pakistan because there was plenty of evidence they were knowingly harboring Al Qaeda. Lets not forget our alliances with Joseph Stalin, Pinochet, Marcos and all sorts of unsavory characters. IMO it strains credibility that we had to take out Saddam before Al Qaeda did. I've yet to hear anyone in the Admin. mention such an idea.
