[Sacajaweau]

I've always said that the underlying reason we went into Iraq was to prevent the Taliban and/or alqueda from setting up shop in that country.

Of course it was thinking outside the box because folks said Saddam and Osama would never deal.

The chem specialist and the delivery specialist would love to deal if they could destroy the USA. And they were down to not just killing...but to create a USA economic disaster.

Osama and Saddam are gone. The new generation of terrorists are here to stay.

And the 5 in Qatar are smiling and dealing.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

I've always said that the underlying reason we went into Iraq was to prevent the Taliban and/or alqueda from setting up shop in that country.

Saddam effectively kept Al-Qaeda out. The Taliban were an Afghanistan problem.

The Bush administration went into Iraq because it was politically convenient (nobody liked Saddam) and it cleaved in half the Islamic strip (that runs from north Africa to Indonesia). It provided a staging area in the midst of terror sponsoring states. It allowed the US to set up and to go after Syria and Iran (never realized).