What does "winning" in Iraq mean?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=Marley23]
One goal was to get rid of Iraq’s WMDs and prevent it from threatening the USA. Since it had no WMD or terrorist ties to begin with, I think we can safely say that mission has been accomplished. :rolleyes:

Bush often expressed the hope that a free and democratic Iraq would be a beacon to the Arab world, and a catalyst for regional change. Since Iraq looks more like Somalia than anything else, I’d say that isn’t going so well. In fact, it’s going so badly that I think in the end, “winning” will be any outcome that allows the American government to get out and claim to the public that this wasn’t an embarrassing defeat, and that the fault was with the Iraqi people, not us.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe we can get the Ethiopians to clean up that place.

22

Winning will be having a strongly defended puppet government which will allow us to use Iraq to stage troops to invade Iran.

Jiiiiiiii Haaaaad! (You have to say this with a texas accent, to get the full effect.)

We are the bad guys. Pray for defeat. It is the only way out.

Tris

23

[QUOTE=glee]
I think the objective was twofold:

  • convince the US electorate that this was an attack on the 9/11 bombers
  • remove Saddam’s military capability so the US bases in Saudi Arabia could be removed, without risk of Iraq invading Saudi
    [/QUOTE]

I’m genuinely interested, why do you think the US wanted to close its bases in Saudi ?

That is a new one to me.

24

I’m as big a critic of Bush and the Iraq War as anyone, but most of the posts in this thread are complete bullshit.

There has never been any ambiguity about what “Victory in Iraq” means; it means a state where Iraq is peaceful and friendly to the United States and its business interests and all the opponents of U.S. policy in Iraq are either pacified or dead. Bush and his minions have been quite clear on this point. It’s been said over and over and over. It’s the only thing Bush has been clear and honest about.

What makes this a monumental fuckup is not that the conditions of victory were unclear, it’s that the possibility of achieving the conditions of victory was extremely unlikely in 2003 - and due to the incompetence and stupidity of the Bush administration, has since been reduced to being completely impossible.

25

[QUOTE=FRDE]
I’m genuinely interested, why do you think the US wanted to close its bases in Saudi ?

That is a new one to me.
[/QUOTE]

Having infidel troops on the holy soil of SA – homeland of the Prophet – just inflames Muslims everywhere and was one of bin Laden’s stated grievances prior to 9/11. That’s why the U.S. bases there were closed – after, of course, we had taken Iraq, giving us somewhere less holy to put the troops without pulling them out of the MENA.