Quote:We most definitely did not hand freedom to Iraq, we handed Iraq to private contracts.

You lost me on that one.  I don't know what you mean. 

We gave them a democratic system and they elected Maliki.... who was about as bad a choice as Bush was for us.

Were we handed freedom when Bush was offered, or when we elected him?  The iraqis voted against their own interests. It happens here as well. Is there some point of the Maliki administration when you feel that Maliki was more powerful than US forces? Where it was him, and not us, calling and enforcing the shots? Where the iraqi peoples interests were better represented, by him..than our own corporate interests were represented, by us?

"Hey look, they voted" was (and remains) a part of the propaganda. OFC it was a bad choice, but had they made a better one I don't know if it would have yielded a substantially better result. We've been fucking with that place pretty hard.

(December 30, 2015 at 6:34 pm)Minimalist Wrote: We gave them a democratic system and they elected Maliki.... who was about as bad a choice as Bush was for us.

Yes, but without doing the homework first. The outside appearance was one of being absolutely clueless about the situation in Iraq. Which, as cannot be stressed enough, is an artificial contruct, drawn up at some colonial office in London, made out of three former Osmanic provinces. Without giving any regard to the people, ethnicities, tribal affiliations and religious denominations and if these people even wanted to live together. Bush calling this a potential beacon of democracy only points to the level of ignorance involved.

Just to be clear, I am agnostic about the merits of invading Iraq.

If Saddam ultimately would have been content to be a horrible dictator who only oppressed his own people, I would say our invasion was 100% a mistake.

However, judging by his past actions it's unlikely he would have remained....unproblematic from 2003 until now.

This is a person who was the first to use chemical weapons in a war since WW1 and killed thousands of Kurds with the same weapons. He invaded and attempted to annex a sovereign country, Kuwait, something even Kim Il Sung and Putin have not done yet (his Crimean adventure not withstanding.)

When his people attempted to overthrow him in 91-92, he responded in a way that made Assad look tame. I believe he killed half a million people and caused up to 4 million Iraqis to flee.


While there was no alliance between Al-Qaeda and Saddam, they both had diplomatic relations with each-other in a sense. Saddam even offered to give Bin Laden a haven in the 90s. Bin Laden rejected it do to Saddam's perceived "apostasy." True there was never any alliance, but there was strong potential for one, given that Saddam and Bin Laden both hated the same enemies: USA, Israel, and the Saudi Royal family.

As I stated earlier Saddam's regime was not nearly as secular as many people make it out to be.

He also hosted Ahmad Yasin (one of the terrorists behind '93 WTC bombing) and Zarqawi somehow mysteriously found his way into Baghdad.

Just to clarify, Im not asking if the Iraq war was justified. Just if the world is better without Saddam, and if in fact he posed a threat to USA of any kind?

That last "if" is a biggie.

(December 30, 2015 at 2:54 pm)abaris Wrote:

(December 30, 2015 at 2:46 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: They tried to invade on the cheap and cost the whole world dearly.

Well, but it didn't come cheap. Not even for Americans. More than 4000 casualties and an estimate of 30.000 wounded, not counting the PTSDs, isn't exactly a bargain. That's the highest loss since Vietnam and the only reason why people didn't take the streets, as they did back then is, that there isn't a draft anymore. And, with most soldiers coming from poor environments, most people don't give a damn outside the support the troops routine.

I remember what my response was to a flag waving chair farting patriot, back in 2003, when he claimed it would be cakewalk. No doubt, it will be easy in, but will it be easy out?

I did say "tried", it was all a massive miscalculation.

(December 30, 2015 at 10:47 pm)TrueChristian Wrote: Just to be clear, I am agnostic about the merits of invading Iraq.

If Saddam ultimately would have been content to be a horrible dictator who only oppressed his own people, I would say our invasion was 100% a mistake.

I don't know how old you are and therefore can't say if you recall the situation in the 90ies and early 2000s. Iraq was virtually under siege, with strict embargos in place that made it even impossible to get certain medications. A situation killing off quite a number of children by proxy, which made headlines around '95. A situation leading Albright to say, she didn't care if they died, as can be seen in the vid, Capn posted.

And, oh yes, bombed on a regular basis by the US and by the UK. On every given pretext and at one time even called the Monica bombings, because Clinton was in a tight spot for a BJ and needed some distraction to present to the public.

Saddam virtually couldn't move. His army was in tatters and he had no airforce. So this argument of Saddam preparing to strike again is nothing short of absurd. Not to speak of the UN commissions constantly being in and out of the country.

(December 31, 2015 at 7:16 am)abaris Wrote: Not to speak of the UN commissions constantly being in and out of the country.

-and constantly being obstructed.  Worth mentioning.  In any case, the notion that Saddam presented a danger to us is, I agree, laughable.  The danger he posed was to his own people, not to us. Hey, I have to ask, with no air force and an army in tatters..how was he supposed to have stopped something like ISIS?

(December 31, 2015 at 7:23 am)Rhythm Wrote:

(December 31, 2015 at 7:16 am)abaris Wrote: Not to speak of the UN commissions constantly being in and out of the country.

-and constantly being obstructed.  Worth mentioning.  In any case, the notion that Saddam presented a danger to us is, I agree, laughable.  The danger he posed was to his own people, not to us.  Hey, I have to ask, with no air force and an army in tatters..how was he supposed to have stopped something like ISIS?

I think the point is that without the instability added by the US toppling of Saddam, there wouldn't have been the right climate for an ISIS.

The instability did not come from toppling Saddam, but from failing to provide the stability which we promised, which we deployed thousands of troops and billions of dollars to secure - which we claimed to be pursuing.  The kind of stability we -are- capable of providing...that we -were- providing in peacekeeping operations elsewhere in the world at the exact same moment.