There are few countries where people are not oppressed to some degree or other by a maximum leader whose personality cult reigns supreme or by some ideological system. The closest is not 90 miles from Miami. Is it our mission to "liberate" them all?
I've heard the various theories as to why no WMD were found. They don't alter the fact that none were. As I pointed out in my first post, I'm not among those who are accusing the president of having ulterior motives. I think this was simply a bad call.
America needs to recognize the enemy. It is not secular dictators like Hussein. They come and go and the danger vanishes when the man himself perishes. Ideological wars, on the other hand, outlive their current fighters and continue until the philosophy itself is discredited. Our enemy is a violent theology rooted in Islam. Hussein himself was a total non-factor in this battle, in my opinion. Once upon a time he was in fact, our man on the front lines when he waged war against a neighboring Islamic state which had just embraced fundamentalism. Khomeini's Iran was our enemy then too and we stood back and applauded while Saddam gassed and bombed women and children. If he is evil now, he was evil then.
American foreign policy ebbs and flows with the vicissitudes of the moment. It always needs to be measure against the teachings of our faith.
2. I refuse to wait until the other side strikes first, when it comes to nuclear weapons. That was okay in during the Cold War, when mutually assured destruction kept everyone's fingers off the trigger. When dealing with the terrorists, however, we are in a whole new world, because they don't care who or what we hit in retaliation. All they care about is killing lots of us.
3. How is it that you think that Iraq is worse off than before Saddam? The Kurds certainly aren't. Most of the country is far better off. Baghdad is a violent cesspool, but I imagine that will be cleaned up within the year.
4. The misery of the Iraqis wouldn't have ended with Saddam's death. Besides his too evil sons, there were plenty of generals like Chemical ALi who were ready to take over. The misery would have continued.
As far as the misery in the world, no, we don't have the resources to take on all of it. But when the source of misery is also a threat to the safety of a good portion of the world, I don't see what else is to be done.
In an age of radicals trying to get nuclear weapons, I don't think waiting until we are 100% certain is the best policy, especially since the event that might convince us is the detonation of a nuke in a major American city.
Once again: Saddam was NOT secular. He wrote the Koran in his own blood. Does that sound secular to you?
And you think that Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States? You might want to re-think that. You do know that
Clinton and his entire administration thought Iraq was a thread and said so when they signed the Iraqi Liberation Act which called for regime change.
Two of the 1993 WTC bombers were ultimately captured and had Iraqi passports. Another bomber, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was never captured and took refuge in Iraq. You knew that, right?
Laurie Mylroie charges that global "terror networks" such as bin Laden's al Qaeda are nothing more than decoys, "false flag" operations which provide cover for our real enemies.
Mylroie is a leading expert on Iraq. She has taught at Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College, and is currently an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. During the 1992 presidential campaign, she advised Bill Clinton on Iraqi affairs.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey is one of several high-level intelligence officials who have endorsed Mylroie's theory that Iraq masterminded both World Trade Center attacks.
In her book The War Against America, Mylroie notes that James Fox, the FBI official in charge of investigating the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, fingered Iraq as the chief suspect. However, Fox noted that the bombing appeared to be a "false flag" operation -- an attack that is deliberately designed to appear as if someone else did it.
The rank-and-file terrorists involved in the plot were Muslim fanatics from Egypt and Palestine. They were true believers, men who followed orders and asked no questions. In short, they were the perfect patsies.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey agrees that the 1993 World Trade Center attack bore all the earmarks of "a classic false flag operation," in which the mastermind escaped, while leaving "a handful of Muslim extremists behind to be arrested and take the full blame."
Also in keeping with the "classic" false flag pattern, the mastermind of this attack had little in common with the co-conspirators. His name was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and he was no Muslim fanatic. Yousef was a professional intelligence operative, indifferent to religion, a dapper dresser, womanizer and dedicated nightclubber, who often cursed like a longshoreman in fluent English when annoyed.
He was also an Iraqi agent, according to Mylroie.