the reason we went to war in iraq was to remove saddam. last time i checked we had done that or who was that they hung.

The same opinion was commonly held concerning Abe Lincoln during his administration. Not that Bush will end up being revered, but we are still way too close to things to make any real sense of the big picture that history will consider. All depends on what happens over the next decade or so.

No. We went to war to spread freedom under Bush's new doctrine. We went to war to "fight the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here", and we went to war because of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. We went to war to remove a dictator AND instill democracy. To say we went to simply remove SH is an intentional oversimplification. Besides, what was the plan AFTER we removed SH? Ahhh, there's the rub.

I can't speak to the opinions held after Lincoln. Bush is no Abe. The planning and execution of this war is so poor, I'm not sure how you ever can justify it. Lincoln was a uniter, not a divider. And he was working to preserve our union, not nation-build a country divided for milenia. I'm not suggesting we can't work as a nation to spread freedom -- I am suggesting our plan to do so in this case was lacking by any standard.

Lincoln was thought of so badly that the us army and senate(some of the senate) plotted to assassinate him. booth just happened to kill him on the same night.

Then the concentration camps in Europe weren't important because they had nothing to do with our reasoning for entering into WWII.

The mission of Desert Storm changed several times while we were over there. Missions were added and removed as new information was learned.

We didn't deploy to topple the Iraq regime, but in the course of a few months several different orders came down for missions to do just that.

If you are trying to discredit the war in Iraq because our troops aren't fighting the same mission that they originally deployed under, you are ignoring the entire reality of war.

For that matter, if we entered WWII because Japan attacked us, why did we go into Europe at all? (yes the second part was sarcasm) ;~D

Never said Bush was an Abe - but our opinion of Abe is conditioned on the fact that the Union won and on highly filtered & sifted information that sums up his presidency, not to mention that he was assassinated for his trouble. There were many contemporaries on the Union side who thought him a total disaster, that preserving the Union was not worth the ghastly sacrifice of lives and only jumped on the deification bandwagon after his assassination. All the critical stuff has been set aside & nobody talks about it much.

Personally, if the only thing left that we knew about Lincoln was the Gettysburgh Address, he would remain the greatest President since Washington in my mind. That was the most powerful two minutes in political history if you ask me. But that's not really the point.

It's also good to remember that history is always written by the winners.

 

The U.S didn't go to war because Bush said "hey, let's send freedom on the march, baby!" It went to war on the pack of lies that Iraq was building WMD's (a lie) and had connection to terrorists like AQ (also a lie) Tied into the whole thing there was the insinuation that the Iraq war was somehow tied to 9/11, which if that terrible and unforgivable event had never happened they never would have garnered the popular support necessary to go and invade other countries. Interestingly enough, for all the tough talk about the "war on terror" and fighting the terrorists "over there so we don't have to fight them over here" The fact remains that the majority of the hi-jackers on 9/11 were all Saudis, and Saudi Arabia is one country that has done nothing but profit since the U.S went into Iraq. Coincidentally there is much media reporting about Iran providing weapons to Shia militias but very little about weapons being provided to various Sunni groups from Saudi Arabia. Wouldn't want to talk badly about an ally now, would we? Oh yeah, and whatever happened to that Osama guy (also a Saudi national)? Seeing as he was responsible for 9/11, shouldn't the U.S have thrown everything in their disposal at him until they caught him?

Let's examine the logic of this situation.

U.S is attacked on 9/11. It is determined shortly after that the culprit is AQ led by OBL. So, send some bombers and a few thousand troops (and a bunch of pallets of money to pay the northern alliance to fight a great deal of the war) over to Afghanistan, and drop in plenty of those cool scary looking specops guys to go hunt him down. Apparently they got real close, and then he got away. Oh, too bad so sad. We'll keep looking for him though, honest (six years later)

THEN, it's time for the real show. OBL and his group AQ may have killed thousands of American citizens but now Iraq is the real threat! They have WMD's and even have mobile chemical weapons labs. We can't let our smoking gun come in the form of the mushroom cloud. Rumour even had it, that Iraq had obtained yellowcake uranium from Nigeria (didn't you hear?!?) And we could say with confidence that Saddam was plotting to strike within America. So, gather up hundreds of thousands of troops, six (was it six?) aircraft carrier groups not too mention a whole wack of other ships and sit them on the border and off the coasts. Of course they're not their to invade Iraq! We just spent billions to send them over there to intimidate Saddam into complying with UN weapons inspectors (although those very same inspectors said time and again they were confident Iraq had no WMD's which proved to be true)

Iraq was never a threat to the U.S, and massive amounts of manpower and materiel were expended going after it while the real perpetrators were largely left alone. AQ wasn't in Iraq until after the U.S invaded, because they WANT to be there. The U.S invasion of Iraq is precisely what Osama Bin Laden wanted, and even stated that it was his goal several years earlier to provoke the U.S into invading an arab country. The subsequent past 4 and a half years have provided AQ with previously unimagined recruiting opportunities, both in Iraq and around the world. In invading Iraq, the U.S has actually succeeded in making various terrorist groups stronger and more defined than they ever thought they could be. Now, the average joes in Iraq have had enough of AQ's terror and are starting to wipe out the slimy SOB's, and good on'em for it! The point is the entire thing was needless, and never had to happen. The Iraq war is a war of choice, it is illegal and has tarnished the reputation of the good American people around the world.

Actually, Arty, there were 4 reasons given my Prs. Bush to go to war. WMD, Enforce the Ceasefire of 91, Hussein's Support for anti western terrorism and And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)... in other words, you're wrong. From the beginning, part of the mission was to liberate the Iraqi people.

Saddam was paying 25,000 to the families of suicide bombers did two forget that little bit.


Saddam had the only mock up of a jetliner to train terrorists to hijack one. i know you two forgot that too.


it is estimated that Saddam was starving up to 150,000 people a year so he could furnish is what was it 25 mansions.


and what about those mobile labs that weren't mobile labs. did we find these trucks that weren't mobile labs. and what/can a mobile lab do. that is right they can move. like to Syria or Iran or where ever else. if the local police can identify your car without tags. don't you think that the military can do the samething. oh thats right you people think the military is stupid.


Ben laden or what ever was a man with out a country. he got kicked out of Saudi Arabia like 10 years before.


and they did find yellow cake. yes i know gene keeps telling me it was for something else. but if he had yellow cake and we thought he was buying yellow cake. gee i guess we were right on that one.

The reasons we went to war are important, I agree. Intelligence failure prior to the war was a complete and egregious cock-up. Despite this we continue to buy into HUMINT reports with the same level of breathless credulity possesed by a 12 year old girl forwarding her first AOL chain e-mail. 

That said, just because something didn't turn out to have the same basis fro action as you initially thought doesn't give a person or nation a reason or excuse to just say "Fuck it." and leave.

I think that's a fair argument. But it is precisely Bush's lack of being able to assess change on the ground that lead to "Mission Accomplished". I would argue not only did the Bush administration screw up the reasons for entering the war, it also screwed up our administration of the war. We ended up supporting people with no internal support. By all accounts, except perhaps Snowflake man, the mistakes made within the first years of Iraq lead to the problems that (perhaps) may be getting better today.

I don't think there's and excuse for those problems. Not that our mission can't change -- of course it can. This President, however, changed the mission slowly and reacted to new information sluggishly.

Do you really think he has acted as a great leader? If so, take a workshop.

I blame the press. ;~D

I don't have time this morning to get into everything you write, please read "State of Denial".

I don't think the military is stupid, if you are referring to me. My partner is a vet and I've covered much war. Please see my other posts. I'm offended.

This is also an argument unique to this Administration in scope: if you are against us,you are against our troops and unamerican. That reasoning is perhaps the single biggest example of how this President thinks outside the lines of the Constitution and is perhaps the worst in history.

Oh come now... That is certainly not unique to this administraion. Just a tiny bit of research will show that.


FDR interned innocents based on racial profiling, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus in order to throw dissenting reporters into prison, and Truman presided over both the McCarthy era hearings and the wholesale intentional bombing of civilian targets.

Truly you damage your credibility when you engage in this sort of rank hyperbole. You have a talent for writing, don't sully it with poorly thought out rhetoric.