The whole 'Bush presidency was a catastrophe. Iraq didn’t cause it. Conservatives did. They destroy our freedom, they destroy our economy, they exhaust our army, they attempt to destroy our discourse with “you’re either for us or against us”, and they destroy our standing in the world. They did it under lies of patriotism to serve their own selfish greedy ends.
They’re the worst catastrophe America has ever faced. They’re the rot from within. There is few worse insults then to be called conservative. It’s synonyms with lier, traitor, war criminal, torturer, and scum. They’ll say any lay lie, kill any service man just to get their fool war.
God, I am so tired of hearing the same crap over and over. Iraq attacked Iran with the encouragement, blessing and support of the USA who helped Iraq with those terrible chemical attacks so quit this nonsense. America has attacked many more countries than Saddam ever did and has a long history of overthrowing democracies and installing murderous dictatorships which have been as bad if not worse than Saddam Hussein. So give me a break with this ridiculous righteousness whch believes America has the right to be the world’s judge and policeman. America has a much worse history of aggression than Iraq could ever have, and Iraq is the last bead in that long chain.
Well, we invaded Panama and Grenada, we killed a bunch of Indians (and nuked someone,) and have actually assassinated some leaders (Lumumba,) and tried some more (Castro.) Canada, what are you waiting for.
Kuwait he did invade, and got beat back by a president who knew what the fuck he was doing. As for Iran, remember the pictures of Rummy all kissy-kissy with Saddam. Since when is attacking Islamic extremists against American interests? Yeah, he killed his people, true. Ready to invade Sudan, to just name one of the many candidates on the self-destruct list. The assassination plot is less than proved, by the way.
So, it all boils down to the “Mommy, he looked at me funny” justification.
If only there were some other option other than blundering into wars or waiting helplessly for catastrophes. [I can’t tell if this is a dodge or an attempt at sarcasm.]
Saddam needed to be watched. However, unless your goal was ‘find a reason to invade at any cost,’ there was no reason he had to have anything finished by mid-March 2003. In fact, he was disarming even the little he had right before the invasion, but the war went on ahead anyway. (We can pretend a catastrophe or a deadline was passing, but the reality is they’d decided it would be too hot to fight a war in the summer.) If I said this approach - “he’s giving in to our demands! invade now before he does it again!” - made no sense at all, I’d be being very charitable. It was beyond nonsense.
It didn’t receive that much press at the time, but a few months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq Ariel Sharon fired several high-ranking Mossad officials, including a deputy director and the head of the Iraq desk, for providing a misleading picture - meaning for parroting American claims - regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities. Did anything similar happen in the U.S?
As oppossed to what was advertised? “Hey, these are the guys behind 9/11. Let’s get 'em”?
We’re just lulling you into a false sense of security.
Well, the correct thing to do would have been to look at the actual CIA analysis that was relevant in the last three months of 2002, rather than the more vague errors that had been floated in the preceding years, and note that the people who knew what they were doing had begun to peel away the layers of errors in accumulating the intelligence, discovering that Iraq had no such capability. It would then be correct to permit the UN inspection teams who were physically in the country examining the evidence to report back with what they discovered.
Instead, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz set up a bunch of policy flacks with no experience in gathering or analyzing intelligence to provide a direct pipeline to the White House with slanted information which was then used to suppress any contrary information that the actual intelligence agencies tried to provide. The Office of Special Plans was deliberately set up under Rumsfeld’s control in the Pentagon to prevent actual intelligence agencies from being able to “interfere” with their primary mission of propaganda.
Substituting propaganda for intelligence (and deliberately changing and ignoring the efforts of the actual intelligence agencies) was unethical and counterproductive to the safety of this country.
As to “saving” American lives, the Iraq invasion has probably endangered far more people than it has purportedly saved. Saddam Hussein was a bully who only attacked when he believed he had a sure thing victory. Following his two invasion debacles, he spent ten years avoiding any actual threats to anyone. On the other hand, we have probably recruited many terrorists with our high handed actions–a point that was raised as long ago as 2005 in the U.S. and the U.K., and was confirmed this past summer.
Ah, forgot that little false implication. It is hard to keep track of all the lies, isn’t it?
I’m ready to welcome our new Canadian overlords/ I enjoy hockey, know how to ice skate, and can learn to say “eh” at the end of every sentence.
I agree with most else that has been posted, but wanted to emphasize this statement.
I think we set a mighty poor precedent by so blatantly acting as tho any country has the right to forcefully influence the internal policy of any country that is militarily less powerful.
Reminds me of our foray into Nicaraugua - “Operation Just Cause” (full name - Just 'Cause We Can!) :rolleyes:
Damn - I knew that!
I suspect a brainfart conflating Noreiga/Nic…
What a stupid I am!
But they might, some day. Gotta prevent it. Kill em all now.