Security will decide election, candidates sayFollow

Well, you never put the /sarcasm tags in your little joke, so don't blame us when you get flamed for it. :)

Yep, let them generals fight on! Keep throwing more bodies at em, we'll win this war on sheer number of men (dead or alive) alone!

I needed more D-day mentality to make my day go by. Thanks.

Haha! I feel all dirty but I agree with Totem! Except for the Saddam thing, since we haven't found anything to prove our invasion was justified.

But as sketchy as our intel was and has proven to be, how would we have gone about determining whether terrorists were being harbored in Iraq (something that did happen, just not to the extent that we were lead to believe)? On the surface, I agree with you, Taeldar. Opening essentially a two-front war divides the effort in half. Yet based on what we are seeing, I am not certain that events played out as they had, that even with more planning and men things would have turned out differently. There remains a contingent of people in Iraq who oppose us being there regardless of our intentions and what we have done to improve their lot in life. Perhaps there is something of the accepting nature of a willingly battered wife in the national character of Iraqis at play here-- I don't know. But as we have seen, there are people who prefer Saddam's tyranies over anything the Coalition has to offer. Is that everyone in Iraq? No, but we must recognise that a significant percentage of folks would apparently go back to what they had, for good or for evil.

Yet in the end, we would have gone in and done it anyways. Because like putting off any unpleasant task, procrastinating doesn't make it go away.

Totem

Perhaps, perhaps not. His motivations could very well have been to avenge the attempt on his father's life, to make a legacy for himself by supposedly finishing what Bush Sr. started, but either way, the intel that his decision was predicated on was very faulty, bordering on intentionally wrong.

Totem

They have found *zero* evidence that the Bush administration somehow padded the intel, or manipulated it in any way.


Not going to get into a discussion here, but I just wanted to point out that if you had actually

READ THE FUC[B][/B]KING REPORT


You'd realize that your statement is completely false.

Since you asked so nicely. No. We didn't attack so we'd be complying with the UN. Quite the opposite. The UN was moving towards removing sanctions and normalizing relations with Iraq. The US disagreed with that move. We felt that Iraq had never complied with the terms of the cease-fire and had planned all along to just drag things out until the UN got tired and gave up (which is exactly what it seemed like the UN was doing).

So we spent about 6 months trying to convince the UN to take action in Iraq instead. And they refused. So we took the opportunity to take action ourselves.


The timing has to do with "legal" wars and "illegal" wars. Legally, the first gulf war never ended. We were under a state of cease fire with Iraq. Thus, we could, at our own discretion chose to resume hostilities if we chose. Now, there were terms to that cease fire agreemen. In addition to a number of other things, they included turning over materials and research related to their WMD programs. Since they did not comply with those requirements, two things resulted:

1. We did not know for sure how many weapons they ever built, or what ability they had or would have to build more, or where they built them, or who designed them. We had no "intel" about their WMD, because they never complied with the terms of the cease fire which required them to disclose the information. And it's not like they let us wander around looking either.

2. We also has a "legal" cause to resume hostilities. Failing to meet the terms of a cease fire is all the justification anyone needs to resume a fight. That's why they call it a "cease fire" instead of a peace agreement. All the stuff we did with congress approving it was just getting domestic approval for the effort. Internationally, we had every right to do so from day one. We didn't have to ask the UN. We did anyway out of a courtesy.


However, if we waited until the UN settled the cease fire, we would not be able to legally attack Iraq. That's the difference. That's why the UN's timetable on this issue pushed ours. We were put in a "use it or lose it" situation. We had a legal right to attack Iraq, but only while a state of war already existed. Once that was resolved, we could still attack, but we'd have *really* been pissing off the rest of the world. Our invasion of Iraq was "legal" in every sense in terms of international law. If we'd waited 1 year (I'm guessing how long, but that's probably close), then we could only make an illegal attack, and that would carry some pretty grave problems (like UN sanction against us).


So yeah. We didn't really get to chose the timing. Iraq wasn't just something our administration came up with out of a hat. It was a legitimate issue that had to be resolved at the time it was resolved. And personally, given the alternatives, I think the administration made the right choice. Certainly it was "right" to go into Iraq. It would have been nice if they'd been a bit more straight about all the reasons for war, but given how difficult it is to explain the reasons to people on this forum (who presumably are at least somewhat above average intelligence and somewhat better informed them the "average" person), I can't blame them for trying to simplify the issue and just focus on the subject of WMD. At the time, that seemed a pretty safe bet. Everyone assumed they had them. Um... But their active presense was not the whole of our reasons to go into Iraq. It's just a simplified version for public consumption.

You're pretty convincing,


Only if you're pretty naive :)