As a liberal, let me say...Follow

What tarv & Redphoenixxxx said, with a proviso.

There were legitimate reasons to remove Saddam.

There were 2 used by Bush & Bliar to invade Iraq: Al-Qaeda & WMD.

There were no Al-Qaeda links (Senate acknowledges there were none, several years after the rest of the world screamed the fact)

There were no WMD (Senate acknowledges there were none, several years after the rest of the world screamed the fact)

Note the intention was not (according to the whitehouse & No 10) "regime change" (remember that?), but to remove the WMD & kill the Al-Qaeda links.

IF a case had been argued to remove Saddam because of his brutal actions against Arabs (his massacres of Iranians & the Marsh Arabs south of Basra being the most obvious), we would almost certainly have gained the support of the Arab world (They all hated saddam - even Qaddafi!).

But we didn't. we went after wmd, AQ and stirred up the biggest hornet's nest.

And gbaji - don't feel the need to quote your 'Janet & John's Book of Middle East History' - just try not to go over the lines when you coloUr it in

Really? You have a magical time machine that allows you to go back in time, change an event (invasion of Iraq) and see what the violence level would have been if we hadn't invaded?

And that's ignoring the obvious strawman in your response. I didn't say we made "the world" safer. I said we made "us" (as in the USA) safer. Even more to the point, "the world" is likely safer, but Iraq is not. We've done exactly what we set out to do; created a single small area where the bulk of the Islamic fundamentalists can go kill themselves fighting for a cause (that's Iraq in case you're wondering).

If you have to fight a war, it's always better to fight in someone else's country rather then your own. This was the strength of the Terrorists prior to 9/11. They got to pick the time and place. With Iraq being such an obvious draw for their recruits, they're forced to expend most of their efforts fighting in a country that they inherently have no real reason to fight in/against, and gain nothing by doing so. Which is the whole point.




I thought we were talking about how safe the US was, or even "the world". Now you're focusing on one country? Of course Iraq is less stable then it was before. That doesn't violate the criteria of "making the US safer" though, does it?



Um... Grossly underestimating the before, and grossly over estimating the after. More like 400+ attacks globally in 1999-2001 time frame. Dropped significantly for the three years after that, and has only risen above those levels recently because those tracking the attacks count *all* bombings and attacks in Iraq as "terrorist attacks". While some undoubtably are, many (as most Liberals will argue) are regular insurgents fighting within their own country (or even a semi-civil war action).



You're also making a grave error. You're comparing the "safety level" of the world prior to 9/11 and after invading Iraq. This makes the assumption that global terrorism would not have risen after 9/11 if we hadn't invaded Iraq. The reality is that you have no freaking clue how many terrorism attacks would have occured if we'd followed a different path. However, I think that on 9/12/2001 most experts were expecting a sharp rise in terrorist attacks globally as a result. 9/11 was seen as a "dam burst" event, and it would encourage tons of repreat attacks by every terrorist group in the world wanting to make a name for itself.

But that hasn't happened. Major terrorist attacks *outside* the Middle East itself has not significantly risen since 9/11. They've recieved more airplay, and they've arguably been more dramatic in scope, but we're looking at what? 4 or 5 major attacks (including 9/11 itself) over the last 5 years?

You can't say how many attacks would have occured if we'd not invaded Iraq. Maybe Iraq did reduce the number of attacks. Maybe it had no effect at all. Maybe it increased it. But if it did, then we're still looking today at fewer major attacks then most people *thought* were going to happen after 9/11. So maybe we overestimated the terrorists. Or maybe, just maybe, Iraq had a much larger effect on reducing the rate of major terrorist attacks against the west then you want to admit.

Irony.