[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
As you admit, we had achieved a status quo that had held for ten years. Why couldn’t it have lasted for another ten? The Cuban Embargo, the NATO/Warsaw Pact face-off, the Korean DMZ, and the China/Taiwan divide are all potentionally hot situations that still managed to avoid crossing the line into war for decades.
[/QUOTE]
What do any of those nations have that we, or the world, wants? Cigars? Vodka?
[QUOTE=Marley23]
I always get scared when I see this topic debated because, in the space of five years, there are always people who seem to have completely forgotten what the pre-invasion period was like. The push for war was top down and came from the administration. There was comparatively little resistance because the target was Iraq, that much is true. But there was no great shout of “hey, we need to invade somebody else!” that went up from the public. Everybody knew Iraq was bad, sure, but it was mostly forgotten at that point. Why would a Gore administration have created the same push for war the Bush administration did? ManiacMan, are you arguing the DNC would have pressured Gore to do it? Or Gore’s advisers? Why?
[/QUOTE]
Yes I am arguing that point because of the things that I have mentioned previously.
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Saudi Arabia would never have been touched by U.S. despite the fact that most of the hijackers came from there. The other countries as far as I can tell don’t have much at all in terms of resources nor do they have a tyrannical dictator as a leader.
[/QUOTE]
The other Middle Eastern countries? There are countries with both more oil & more tyranny in the Middle East, including our friend Saudi Arabia.
Saddam wasn’t in good with us anymore, but he used to be “our” boy, like Mubarak in Egypt & the Emir of Kuwait. But Iraq wasn’t the largest source of oil or the greatest case of tyranny. Iraq looked easy to knock down & we had people in place, whereas Iran was beyond our capabilities. But that’s a stupid reason to start a war between what are large & diffuse nation-states.
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Yes I am arguing that point because of the things that I have mentioned previously.
[/QUOTE]
All of which have been pretty well refuted.
We are in Iraq because Bush and his buddies were looking for an excuse to go into Iraq even before Bush was elected in 2000 and unless you can find another neo-con presidential candidate, NO other president would have led (lied) us into that mess.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Not a huge priority to anyone but the neocons, who wanted revenge. There are nasty dictators all over the world.
[/quote]
What happens when you leave a nasty dictator do his own devices? You get guys like Kim Jong. Or guys like Saddam. There was enough fear that the very idea that Hitler was developing a nuclear bomb that it caused us to make on first. Iraq was the logical choice to strike since it has oil, it was already hated by Iranians who were probably pissing their pants in anticipation of the attack due to the war between those two countries, therefore they would not interfere for the beginning of the attack but are sure screwing around with us at this point because afterall we sold chemical weapons to our “buddy” Saddam. Who then used them on Iran…I don’t think that the Iranians forgot that.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Which we did by taking resources away from actually fighting AQ in Afghanistan and put them in a place where there was no AQ at the time, Iraq. Have you watched nothing but Faux News for the past 5 years?
[/quote]
No AQ in Iraq prior to all this mess? Pfft…yeah sure… :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Voyager]
which we didn’t need to secure. Oil is fungible. If Saddam sells a lot to anyone, the prices on the global market will go down. Oil production in Iraq after our incompetent fuckup is still down. If you run the numbers, you’ll find that oil could never have paid for the war anyhow - except maybe under Rummy’s assumption of a cheap, short one.
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Its down partly because of sabotage. It’s also not “down” but being used more extensively by countries like China and India. It’s not that oil production is DOWN, but that oil is more scarce because of the increased demand.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
One of the reasons for the 9/11 attack was our base in Saudi Arabia. Plus,. we’d have all the bases we’d want in Afghanistan, where the invasion actually made sense. We’d no doubt be doing better against the Taliban if we weren’t in Iraq.
[/quote]
They can say all day long how they attacked us because we were on Muslim soil…whatever…just another phony reason the attack us.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
The businesses were not exactly Gore supporters, so I doubt he’d do anything for them. But, do you have a cite that business interests had anything to do with the invasion? Haliburton profited from it, but I doubt that Haliburton inspired it. Cheney’s insanity didn’t come from being CEO of Haliburton, but predated it.
[/QUOTE]
No I don’t have a cite but I don’t think any company would advertise how clever they were for getting on board with any administration for money, or perks, or whatever else one could think of getting “value” out of something like this.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
As you admit, we had achieved a status quo that had held for ten years. Why couldn’t it have lasted for another ten? The Cuban Embargo, the NATO/Warsaw Pact face-off, the Korean DMZ, and the China/Taiwan divide are all potentionally hot situations that still managed to avoid crossing the line into war for decades.
[/QUOTE]
Was it a status quo? Sure didn’t look like one to me at the time. The situation was constantly changing, with tensions mounting periodically over the admission or expulsion of inspectors, firing on American and British warplanes and units, and a constant effort by the Iraqis to undermine sanctions.
I will remind you, too, that this flared up into air and cruise missile strikes in late 1998, concurrent with legislation signed by President Clinton making regime change in Iraq explicit U.S. policy. And I will note that all of this took place before Bush took office.
It wasn’t a status quo at all, clearly. And while I’m sure you’ve convinced yourself that it could have been maintained forever, I’m less convinced that that is true because of what we were dealing with at the time.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
All of which have been pretty well refuted.
We are in Iraq because Bush and his buddies were looking for an excuse to go into Iraq even before Bush was elected in 2000 and unless you can find another neo-con presidential candidate, NO other president would have led (lied) us into that mess.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah that’s your opinion, that’s cool. You don’t seem to see the larger picture of what I have said…the broader theme that I am trying to get across. There was going to be a point in the near future that something was going to have to be done about Saddam, his refusal to obey UN sanctions, the securing of the oil there for emerging economies, the fact that it as the most “logical” target in terms of location, other ME countries lack of doing anything about it except playing lip service by saying “oh don’t do that you bad US, you!”. Just because the oil isn’t being pumped gang buster style currently does not mean it won’t be in the next 10 years. Think about it…
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Yeah that’s your opinion, that’s cool. You don’t seem to see the larger picture of what I have said…the broader theme that I am trying to get across. There was going to be a point in the near future that something was going to have to be done about Saddam, his refusal to obey UN sanctions, the securing of the oil there for emerging economies, the fact that it as the most “logical” target in terms of location, other ME countries lack of doing anything about it except playing lip service by saying “oh don’t do that you bad US, you!”. Just because the oil isn’t being pumped gang buster style currently does not mean it won’t be in the next 10 years. Think about it…
[/QUOTE]
Nothing “had” to be done.
Under the threats of the fall of 2002, Hussein was complying with the UN orders (and we discovered he had already destroyed his WMD stocks–they are not in Syria).
“Most logical”? Only if you have some sort of weird idea that we HAVE to have a war going somewhere–a situation that Afghanistan filled admirably.
Your big picture is all smoke and mirrors. Leaving Hussein to stew in his own juices while we attempted to do something useful in Afghanistan would have achived every goal you claim we wanted by invading Iraq, without breeding a whole new generation of terrorists, turning Iraq into a massive war zone, tripling or quadrupling our debt, exhausting our military (in case a ral need for them arose), alienating our friends, creating the impression throughout the world that we despised civilization and democracy and promoted torture and conquest.
Need Iraq’s oil? Simply ease off on the sanctions, clean up the “Oil for Food” program, and let him sell it on the open market. No war necessary.
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Yes I am arguing that point because of the things that I have mentioned previously.
[/QUOTE]
Ok. Just because some people went along with an action does not mean they would have initiated it on their own. I don’t see any evidence that anyone else, other than a President Cheney, would have invaded Iraq four years ago. I don’t know what would have made the DNC (which has no power over the President anyway), or others, so suddenly eager for war. If you think history is all about vague forces and the actions of individuals don’t make much difference, that’s your view. I think Congress didn’t make much noise against the invasion because of the reasons you give, more or less. But they didn’t come up with the idea.
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
No AQ in Iraq prior to all this mess? Pfft…yeah sure… :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
Oh, there was an Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion, but only in Iraqi Kurdistan – the part of Iraq Hussein, thanks to the U.S., did not control.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
But, do you have a cite that business interests had anything to do with the invasion?
[/QUOTE]
Oil companies, at any rate, were involved in crafting the State Department’s “Plan A” for invasion (later disregarded in favor of the Pentagon neocons’ “Plan B”).
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Was it a status quo? Sure didn’t look like one to me at the time. The situation was constantly changing, with tensions mounting periodically over the admission or expulsion of inspectors, firing on American and British warplanes and units, and a constant effort by the Iraqis to undermine sanctions.
I will remind you, too, that this flared up into air and cruise missile strikes in late 1998, concurrent with legislation signed by President Clinton making regime change in Iraq explicit U.S. policy. And I will note that all of this took place before Bush took office.
It wasn’t a status quo at all, clearly. And while I’m sure you’ve convinced yourself that it could have been maintained forever, I’m less convinced that that is true because of what we were dealing with at the time.
[/QUOTE]
None of that amounts to a “case for war,” let alone one “growing stronger all the time.”
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
. . . the securing of the oil there for emerging economies . . .
[/QUOTE]
The biggest demand there is from China and India. I can’t see any U.S. administration invading Iraq to secure oil for them.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
None of that amounts to a “case for war,” let alone one “growing stronger all the time.”
[/QUOTE]
Dunno. Economic sanctions aren’t exactly a peaceful act, are they? Nor are air and cruise missile strikes or legislation aimed to take a country’s leader out.
There was an ongoing conflict in Iraq that had left unresolved issues that could easily have sparked broader and deeper conflict - and by 2001, these issues were getting a lot worse.
A case for war existed at any time that Hussein failed to live up to the terms of the cease-fire, which he did repeatedly.
Again, Operation Desert Fox wasn’t exactly peaceful, was it? And yet by the early 2000s these issues were at the forefront again - violations of sanctions, no-fly zones, inspections, and the like. Why should we be surprised that an administration of whatever stripe struck Iraq militarily at this time - or that a decision was made to make this time the last one, given the problems going back to 1990?
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
Iraq was the logical choice to strike since it has oil, it was already hated by Iranians…
[/QUOTE]
You think we invaded Iraq to help Iran?
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Again, Operation Desert Fox wasn’t exactly peaceful, was it? And yet by the early 2000s these issues were at the forefront again - violations of sanctions, no-fly zones, inspections, and the like.
[/quote]
Had there been any attempt to get the inspectors back into Iraq between 1998 and 2002? I’m not aware of one.
The previous bombings, to the extent they had any point at all, were done to encourage Iraq to get in line with the sanctions. To go from “there are no inspections, but we don’t care much about that” to “we need inspections prove Iraq isn’t developing nuclear and biological weapons” to “the inspectors are in, but Iraq isn’t complying fast enough, we can’t wait for them to finish their job and need to invade NOW!” in the space of six months doesn’t make any sense.
The U.S. policy on Iraq didn’t make sense in a lot of ways and perhaps it was not sustainable indefinitely. That’s true of many policies and doesn’t justify the invasion.
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Dunno. Economic sanctions aren’t exactly a peaceful act, are they? Nor are air and cruise missile strikes or legislation aimed to take a country’s leader out.
[/quote]
You might characterize those as acts of war – entirely unilateral on the part of the U.S. – but such neither constitute nor support a case for war.
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
There was an ongoing conflict in Iraq that had left unresolved issues that could easily have sparked broader and deeper conflict - and by 2001, these issues were getting a lot worse.
[/quote]
Eh? The only “ongoing conflict in Iraq” was the status of Kurdistan, and that had long since been put on a low simmer.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
The biggest demand there is from China and India. I can’t see any U.S. administration invading Iraq to secure oil for them.
[/QUOTE]
Hmmm…yet almost everything these days is made in China? Not sure about India…
[QUOTE=Robot Arm]
You think we invaded Iraq to help Iran?
[/QUOTE]
No I did not say that. I said that Iran wouldn’t do jack squat about us invading Iran until afterwards. The Iranians I am sure HATE the Iraqi leadership for the things that Iraqi leadership did to Iran and it’s people during their war. Some of which we can be a part of since we sold wmd to Iraq.
[QUOTE=ManiacMan]
What happens when you leave a nasty dictator do his own devices? You get guys like Kim Jong. Or guys like Saddam. There was enough fear that the very idea that Hitler was developing a nuclear bomb that it caused us to make on first. Iraq was the logical choice to strike since it has oil, it was already hated by Iranians who were probably pissing their pants in anticipation of the attack due to the war between those two countries, therefore they would not interfere for the beginning of the attack but are sure screwing around with us at this point because afterall we sold chemical weapons to our “buddy” Saddam. Who then used them on Iran…I don’t think that the Iranians forgot that.
[/quote]
Yes, he had WMDs before GW I, but not after. Do you think we invaded at the request of the Iranians? Probably more plausible than what you’re saying, since the Iranians have profited greatly from Bush’s screwup, and Chalabi, who provided much of the so-called intelligence about WMDs, seems to be in bed with them.
.
Got a cite? Thought not. There was a terrorist training camp - in the North, where Saddam didn’t have control. Why do you think a dictator would let an independent group run around?
That’s right, because we can’t provide security for long pipelines. And I’m talking about production in Iraq only, not in the entire world.
No disaffected executives? We have plenty of inside info on how the Bushies screwed up Iraq - you’d think we’d get something about companies.