Hold on there, Brett brotha. What's this silliness about 'you opposed the war, therefore you hail Saddam?' I'll grant that no one is bleeding for Saddam, but the whole deal about Iraqi WMDs being a severe and imminent threat to the US and democracy-embracing freedom-lovers everywhere
was the prime motive behind the war. All the other reasons to do so - he brutalized his own people, etc - were not mentioned by the administration until it became obvious that no weapons would be found. Said 'backup justifications' mostly took place when a certain US president who was in power during most of the 80s (his initials were 'R.R.') called Saddam an ally, armed him, sent envoys and military/ intelligence officials to him, and pretty much called him a friend simply because Saddam called Iran his enemy. The most infamous of Saddam's now-reviled atrocities - the massacre o' Kurds - took place in April 1988, while Herr Reagan was still in power.
Reagan did nothing.
AND HE SHOULD HAVE
Bush the First did do something about him, even though it took the invasion of a small, oil-rich country to get him to do it. I seriously doubt the US would have intervened if this had happened in some 100% impoverished, oil-less shithole like, say, Sudan. Still, Bush the First drove the Iraqi military out of Kuwait quickly and with minimal casualties to US troops and Iraqi civilians. And, as he wrote in his bio in the late 90s, he recongnized that to topple the Hussein regime would have been far too costly and troublesome an effort to undertake. Hence the sanctions and routine inspections.
HE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN HIM THEN TOO
'So,' you say, 'you ackowledge that Saddam was an ass and yet revile Dubya for ousting him?' Not quite. We must first recognize that Reagan's primary reason for ignoring Saddam was the cold war, when those evil socialist-commie forces emmanating from Russia were a much graver danger than any lunatic leader who axxed his own people. In other words, he was too busy paying attention to stupider things.
THE COLD WAR WAS STUPID?
DAMN I THOUGHT THE WALL COMING DOWN WAS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING MOMENTS IN MODERN HISTORY.
While he was cheering for war, Bush himself was paying attention to stupider things, but in this case, Saddam was the culprit. Were this 1988, then I might not have had a problem with it, but these days, the President should have MUCH more important things to worry about than avenging his daddy, which was always what I believed the real reason behind the war. I mean, come on, WMDs? First off, if the Pentagon were actually fully convinced that Saddam DID have them, the administration would not have been so foolish as to say 'okay, Saddam, we're giving you two weeks now. Okay, 13 days... come on, if you don't hand 'em over, we attack you on March 3rd..." because SADDAM WOULD HAVE USED THESE WMDs AGAINST THE US AND ITS ALLIES.
I BELIEVE THE WORLD CONCENSUS WAS THAT HE WAS A GROWING DANGER. THAT HE WAS DECIEVING THE WORLD AND THAT HE WAS IN VIOLATION OF 1441. WHICH WAS UNANIMOUSLY VOTED FOR BY THE UN. SECURITY COUNCIL. HE WAS IN CLEAR VIOLATION. NUFF SAID. AFTER OVER A DECADE IT WAS TIME. Ba Bye, Fuck him..
And think of the ridiculous things the admin. said during the runup to the war. "This here's the flatbed trailer Saddam's goons made warheads in while traversing unpaved desert roads. This abandoned pharmaceudical factory is where they process their plutonium. Saddam was behind 9-11." I mean, get real man.
ALL SADDAM HAD TO DO WAS COME CLEAN. HE BOOTED THE INSPECTORS OUT IN 1996. HE SHOT AT OUR PLANES ON A DAILY BASIS. AND NO ONE SAID HE WAS BEHIND 911.
Then there's the fact that Middle Eastern resentment against the west in general and the US in particular has grown considerably, and that terrorism in Iraq has grotesquely increased, that Iraqi political parties won't even announce who their candidates are for fear of assassinations, and that at least two major cities are too fucked up to be able to partake in the election, and that the US military is still a considerable presence in a country purported to be its own sovereign state again, and a bunch of other shit ad infifuckingnitum.
NO ONE SAID THE WAS TIDLY WINKS
The US has spend untold hundreds of billions of dollars financing the war and the search for weapons, all the while underarming and understaffing the troops who were supposed to have been welcomed as liberators. Well over 1000 US troops have been killed there. Several hundred died searching for weapons I'm convinced the higher-ups knew WERE NOT THERE. It would be one thing if they had died doing something constructive. But they didn't. They died in vain. NOT cool.
BRINGING FREEDOM TO A COUNTRY THAT WAS LIVING IN PURE TYRANNY IS NOT IN VAIN
Meanwhile, the admin is cutting taxes for those who need them least while cutting funding for social programs that benefit people who DO need them,
EVERYONES TAXES WERE CUT. BILLIONS ON THE NEW MEDICARE DRUG PROGRAM.
underfunding the troops while spending shitloads on the war itself... all this INSTEAD OF FIGHTING TERROR.
OUR MILITARY's WAGES HAVE RISEN CONSIDERABLY UNDER BUSH. YOU YOURSELF SAID THAT IRAQ IS WHERE THE TERRORIST ARE
Sense making?
NP: Marillion -
Radiation