ThePatriot said:
...or do you ignore the issue like we did for TWELVE YEARS and hope that nothing bad happens? Nah, sorry boys, I'll take err on the side of caution any day. Funny part is, if we did ignore Saddam, if we did leave the sanctions go, if we did let him (and Kofi, and Jaques...etc) continue to line their pockets with "oil-for-food" profits, if we let him rebuild his military(as Hitler did under everyones "ignorance"), and God forbid he did launch/sell/fund something bad, you would all be trashing the President for that!
why? saddam was not a threat...
saddam did not attack the united states of america on 9/11...
why would the people of america be upset with bush if he chased and dealt with the people who attacked the country?
The real funny part is how the anti-Bush group is all over the place on this war, yet they claim the President is! First, it was "no blood for oil", then it was "no-WMD's", then it was "no Iraq-Al Quaeda connection", the ever popular "not part of the terror war", "Haliburton waged this war for profit", "oh, and don't forget that classic, "Bush's personal grudge war!".
you are being ignorant if you do not consider the oil situation... the FIRST thing that was done when america went in was not to secure the weapons depots... it was not to secure the facilities were the IAEA kept nuclear materials under lock and key...
no... it was to protect the oil fields first and foremost... keep in mind that while we do not get all of our oil from the middle-east... the largest oilfields in the world and the largest potential supply of oil are in the middle east... heck look @ libya... now that the sanctions have been lifted v.s libya guess who's over there negotiating deals to dig for new fields in libya...
the "no wmd" claim has been made for a while but the thing that has been said from the beginning is that iraq was not a threat and we were already engaged in iraq...
if anything it has been the bush yes-men who have been changing their position from WMD threat, to al-qaeda links to weapons programs, to ability to establish weapons programs...
it is disingineous to assume people are so stupid they would not be able to put 2 and 2 together... but unfortunately people are stupid... 66% of the people of america (lets call them the retarded for the sake of this argument) believe that saddam had direct ties with al-qaeda and was complicit in the attacks on american soil on 9/11...
the war in iraq is not what it was supposed to be... different people oppose it for different reasons... just as bush's reasons for the war keep changing as more evidence comes forth to disprove what he and his administration continually claim...
While the administration, and it's now-nay sayers, had said at the time we dicided to go to war that he was a threat, he is a threat, and he will only become a worse threat because of his past obsession with WMD's and questionable, and STILL UNRESOLVED terrorist involvement.
what was his terrorist involvement?
at the moment the only thing he has been proven to have been involved with was abu nidal and payouts to some palestinian families who had a member that blew him or herself up... and then there is the guy from the achille lauro terrorist activity...
there is no evidence that saddam himself was a sponsor of terrorism...
compare that with the known terrorist activity of nations like syria, libya, yemen, iran and pakistan...
Was all the intel correct? No. Was all the intel incorrect? No. The President made a decision to take out the possibility, rather than wait on a proven dangerous regime to show it's cards and then have to clean up another mess.
you don't get it... I don't think any of the bush yes men get it...
there was NO THREAT... we were attacked by TERRORISTS and a TERRORIST NETWORK... directly sponsored, trained and equpped with help from people in saudi arabia, afghanistan and pakistan...
that should be our number one priority...
unfortuantely our president who promised to bring al-qaeda to justice has not done so, instead we are in a situation where we have more dead/injured after bush's mission accomplished statement... and more dead/injured than that after the handover of sovreignty to the iraqi interim government...
we have now established a precedence whereby any nation can seek and employ pre-emption and we can't do jack about it...
what if india decides to blow up pakistan or vice versa? what if russia decides to blow up sections of chechnya? what if iran and israel attack each other pre-emptively? what possible reason do they have NOT to pre-empt?
how can we tell them "you can't do this" ? many nations have suffered at the hands of terrorism for a lot longer than america has and have lost a lot more people than america has... not one other nation has taken it upon itself to invade another country in the name of national security because of terrorism...
It ain't gonna be easy, but it HAD to be done. We can snivel about it all we want, John Kerry can say he'll pull out the troops, and we can all worry about the draft 'till we get ulcers (yes, my son is 16 and I worry too) but it doesn't change the fact that it was the correct thing to do. Even Duelfer agrees.
thats the thing... it did not have to be done...
no one on this forum or any other forum has yet to explain to me why saddam was so much of a greater threat than all the other despots in the world and why we had to reduce our efforts to bring the perpetrators of the largest single attack on american soil in our history to go after this man...
why did it HAVE to be done? why was saddam a bigger threat than anyone else in the world, even people who did not have 3/4's of their nation inaccesible by aircraft and monitoring equipment everywhere and weapons inspectors on the ground searching the very sites that america and britain and others had suggested they do per their intel (you know, that lovely powerpoint presentation @ the UN)...
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its a cyclic argument... we all have our positions...
however accountability to me is paramount in any situation... there is no accountability in the bush administration whatsoever... his administration spends more time slandering political opponents than doing its job... this is the leadership of the united states of america, at least for 4 more weeks...