:rolleyes:
Do try and keep up. The discussion at hand is if the US troops were to leave and the country erupted into civil war.
Saddam did have WMD’s. He used them! This is not in dispute. The question is when did he stop having them. The intelligence community of many nations and politicians in the US of all stripes all thought he had them. Here in debates on the SDMB people thought he had them. It was a mistake, but it was a reasonable one to make.
This is obviously false. I’d say the women in the rape rooms would disagree with this silly and hyperbolic statement.
Of course. The terrorists were running the country before the invasion! They didn’t need to blow everybody up in frustration and rage. It’s now that they are out of power that they are lashing out with attacks.
Nonsense. There was a third option that you neglect. Keep the UN inspectors in place, continue to enforce the no-fly zone. Saddam was cooperating with the inspectors toward the end, it would have been evident eventually that there were no weapons to be had. His military was in shambles, the US ruled the skies over Iraq. There was no threat from Saddam.
I would hardly call the killing of tens of thousands to be erring on the side of caution.
The invasion was a mistake, yes? If we knew then what we know now, we would not have invaded, yes?
You take my words out of the context of the Duelfer report which my immediately preceding sentence referenced. In any case, those rape rooms are still there, just under new management.
And this vastly higher death rate is preferable, in your view?
Sanctions were not going to be a viable long term option. Prior to the invasion and the whole dust up between Saddam and Bush there were already noises being made to lift the sanctions for humanitarian reasons and that the no-fly zone was illegal and needed to be lifted as well. It was only a matter of time before the grip was loosened on Iraq…probably incrimentally at first but eventually I think you’d see the majority of the sanctions lifted and and no-fly zone disbanded. What happens after that is anyones guess and a debate in itself, but you can’t seriously put forth a C option of simply maintaining the status quo unless you can prove that we WOULD have maintained it for the next 20 or so years (or for how ever long Saddam lived…and assuming we didn’t get one of his son’s as successor which probably would have been worse).
-XT
I don’t understand. Are you saying that an invasion of Iraq when Saddam was gassing Kurds would have saved lives, overall, in a way that an invasion in 2002 would not?
Why do you believe that? Because his military was in worse shape than it was in 2002? Because then he definitely did have WMDs?
Regards,
Shodan
So I guess some media, somewhere, did report some good news or you wouldn’t know about the power plant. And, by the way, does FOX news concentrate on the good news. Is it fair and balanced in that respect. I have a pretty strong stomach but there are some things that are just too much so I don’t watch FOX and I don’t know.
I’ll answer a hypothetical with a hypothetical. I believe that had Saddam gassed Kurds the US or Britain or anyone then could have gone to the UN for a resolution to do something about it and would have got it. The actions in the former Yugoslavia did have UN sanction and so aren’t really relevant to the Iraq invasion which didn’t.
And by the way, Saddam did once gas his own people. That was after the first Gulf War and GW’s father’s administration officials had encouraged a revolt in Iraq. HGW Bush didn’t do a thing about that. Does that mean that GW is a bigger he man than his father?
Oh, and in actual fact Saddam wasn’t gassing Kurds this time so this is all pretty much grist for a movie script and has not bearing on what actually went on. We could spin hypotheticals all day and never get the question of the OP addressed.
I know it’s nitpicky, and certainly not central to the main discussion, but those things were personal accounts by the soldier who wrote the op.ed piece quoted in the web page furt linked to in post #2. To be fair, David M. Lucas’s op.ed piece was published in the Knoxville News (although I presume his anecdoes were otherwise not published by any media) , and he referred to his picture appearing in the News Sentinel’s coverage of a good news rescue (although as an example of “the exception”).
It’s not completely off topic, though, because we can only form our opinions on what we know, and what we know is largely from what the media portrays. How would people’s opinions change on the question of pulling out if, in addition to death tolls, these types of stories were more prominent. Assuming, of course, there are enough of them actually occurring, but how do we know one way or the other?
AFAICT, in your OP, you say that you are discouraged by a negative article that you read, while admitting that it’s only “one data point.”
It was pointed out to you that there are other, positive developments that seem to make the picture more complex.
Now you respond that it’s just the nature of news to focus on the negative (and you’re entirely right). What, then, was the point of the OP? If you know full well that the news media is skewed toward the negative, why are you so alarmed when you read a negative story.
Color me 
They did? I thought the UN sanctioned NATO’s actions after the fact (i.e. after combat operations had already started)…sort of like the UN has sanctioned coalition operations now in Iraq after the fact. Maybe I’m wrong about that…its been a while since I dug into the whole Bosnia thing.
Daddy Bush’s hands were tied. The coalition he had built absolutely refused to allow a direct attack on Iraq with the purpose of unseating Saddam. Thats why the no fly zones were created…to try and protect the Kurds in the north and Shi’ites who were revolting in the south. But at the time any further US involvement against Saddam would have shattered the coalition completely, and thats not something Bush I was willing to do. IIRC of course. 
-XT
Me too. I remembered that there was UN approval but I don’t remember the timing of it. You could be correct. I don’t remember a positive UN approval resolution on Iraq. More of a “we have no military power to stop it” sort of thing.
In which case it would have been prudent to not encourage rebellion.
You spend a lot of time reading into posts things that aren’t there. Like “not giving a damn about how many Iraqis are killed” and “discouraged” above. I don’t see anywhere in the OP that I wrote that I was “discouraged” by anything. And the one data point referred specifically to preemptive shootings by US military of anyone who looked the least bit suspicious while they were driving by a rather high speed.
Certainly the picture is complex but not to you I guess. Your view seems to be that democracy in Iraq is worth the cost to the US but we should wait 20 or 30 years to see it that works out.
I fail to see how any amount of positive news now will offset the anger resulting from the shootings described in the cite of the OP.
At last. Something we can agree on.
I’ll try and answer this so you’ll understand. Invading Iraq was the right decision to make, given the facts at hand at the time. Yes, it was a mistake now looking back with 20/20 hindsight, but no going into Iraq then was not a mistake.
It’s like a police officer who is arresting a man known to be armed and dangerous. The man doesn’t obey commands to stop and raises a gun at the officer. The officer shoots him dead.
Later, it turns out that the gun he was pointing wasn’t loaded. So, technically the officer in question “made a mistake”. If he knew then what we know now he would not have shot him. However that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t do the same thing all over again next time he has a gun pointed at him.
Iraq was a mistake because the WMD’s that everyone thought existed were not there. But, that doesn’t mean we did anything wrong.
Your words were idiotic and clearly false in any context.
You are seriously comparing unsubstantiated allegations of US troops abusing women from a single individual to the widescale and methodical raping and murdering that took place under Saddam? Surely, you want to re-think this.
Cite for “vastly higher death rate”.
That’s what I meant. Wasn’t that the Kurds?
I doubt that the coalition which decided to leave Saddam in power after the first Gulf War would have sanctioned an invasion later.
If by “bigger” you mean 'more decisive", then yes. But as I said above, it would have been better if Bush Sr. could have overthrown Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War. Twelve fewer years of Saddam would tend to involve a lower death toll overall, if from the sanctions alone.
I thought at the time that the Arab nations more or less vetoed the idea of toppling Saddam. Set a bad precedent for many of them, no doubt.
But I wonder how the rest of the world would have reacted if Bush Sr. had simply told the rest of the coalition to pound sand, and he and the UK continued the drive to Baghdad, hung Saddam and a few generals, and presented the world with a fait accompli.
20/20 hindsight, of course.
Regards,
Shodan
I think the Saudi’s told Bush that they wouldn’t allow us to stage an invasion out of their country (thats were we stockpiled supplies and ran logistics from for the first GW…well, the second too I suppose), so I’m not sure how we would have done and invasion unless we told the Saudi’s that we were there and not leaving. At any rate the arabs would have gone completely nuts (many countries like Syria, Jordan, Egypt told us point blank they would not support any further combat against Saddam than to expell him from Kuait, and several hinted IIRC they would work against us if we tried), and I doubt the Europeans would have been too keen either.
Still, its a compelling scenario and I’ve often thought how much easier things would have been (let alone cheaper and with a lot less cost in blood) if we had simply continued on towards Baghdad and deposed Saddam right then. I doubt we would have had the same problem with insurgents we are having today for instance. Oh well…as you said, hindsight.
-XT
I am not convinced that the status quo could not have been maintained. Had the sanctions been lifted and credible evidence arose that he was indeed amassing WMDs or if he had started to commit genocide, the US could have petitioned the UN to reimpose them. Certainly there were avenues to exhaust before invading. But Bush was determined even before assuming office (or, I wager, before even deciding to run) that he was going to topple Saddam. A wise leader chooses war only as a last result after all other options are played out. This war was a first resort, and we all know it.
We’d have today’s situation, just a decade earlier. Which, if you’ll recall, is why Bush Sr. decided NOT to do that.
I doubt we’d have todays situation (though I conceed we could have myriad OTHER problems), mostly because based on the fact that large segments of the population DID end up revolting we’d have had a much easier time (as well as the fact that right then the Ba’athists were in complete disarray and were probably ripe to completely fracture…unlike when we actually invaded. Also Saddam built his Fedayeen irregulars AFTER the first gulf war, and they are most likely one of the core groups now fighting us), but thats not why Bush Sr. decided not to invade.
In the end Bush Sr. felt that keeping the coalition together was important and that it was a step towards better relations in the ME for the US. In hindsight it didn’t work out that well because I think the US is oriented more towards the GOVERNMENTS in the region and less towards the politics and the various factions political and religious there, but thats another thread. But its simply wrong to say Bush Sr. didn’t invade because he know we’d get a situation like we have today in Iraq, at least from my own reading of the situation at the time. If you have some evidence that Bush’s primary concern with invasion was not the fracturing of the coalition but a concern that we’d be in an incessant insurgency in Iraq than bring it out and I’ll see if it modifies my position on this.
-XT
Bush Sr. and Scowcroft explained it already:
That good enough for ya?
Well, you realize that the first part (well, almost to the last 2 sentences) is exactly what I was saying…right? As to the last part, perhaps you do have a point. I didn’t realize that Bush I and company had considered the occupation to be so formitable or that it was even part of their decision process as far as invade/not invade went. I’ll have to think about that. One question that springs to mind is that if this were the case why GW thought the situation would have radically altered by the time the actual invasion of Iraq went through. After all, the time to strike was when Saddams army was totally shattered, his party was in disarray and there was active revolt in both the northern and southern parts of Iraq.
-XT
You missed it, XT. He could spell “quagmire”. The problem wasn’t getting rid of Saddam, the problem was filling the void. A chastened despot was in America’s best interest, by his lights. From an entirely realpolitick point of view, he was spot on.