Point 1: Almost the entire Middle East supports the Palestinian suicide bombers, not just Iraq. Israel is the biggest distablizing problem in the area, not Iraq, Syria, Iran, etc. But that's for another time. Saddam's own personal terror network inside the country had no effect on us. That was only there for one reason, to instill fear into the people of his own country so he could remain in power. They had nothing to do with AQ or 9/11. He was firing on our planes back in '98? I believe. We quickly and decisively dealt with that. Ever since then, sure a radar will pop up ever now and then. But is a new SA-6 that pops up every month in the no-fly and then is summarily dispatched with a HARM any real reason to invade? Saddam has used chemical weapons in the past, we all know that. But did we invade in '89 after he gased the Kurds? Nope. Or how did we feel when he used gas on Iran during the Iran/Iraq War? Especially since those were some of the weapons we gave him.
Let's talk about the weapon's inspection program real quick. We were damn sure Saddam had some chem/bio weapons during Desert Storm. He never used them. And the caches we found, we destroyed. But now lets look at Iraq and the area after the war. Iraq's military is all but destroyed. Their infrastructure is all but destroyed. Saddam has got a problem. Iran still hates Iraq. The weapon's inspectors come and Saddam jerks them around for years and acts like he still has chemical weapons. That was his plan. Now Iran isn't sure whether or not Saddam has got any more chemical weapons. The Kurds to the north aren't gonna try anything cause they don't want to get gased again and like Iran, they don't know. Saddam wanted everyone to think he still had chemical weapons. That still gave him power. Of course he was never gonna admit he had very few left. Even Hans Blix himself said over those 11 years, they had never found any signs of a running WMD program. Saddam was bluffing and everyone fell for it. Reconaissance since '91 has made huge leaps forward. And over all these years, with Keyhole satellites, UAV's, overflights, etc, photographing the entire country over and over and over again, we never found anything.
Point 3: well that still stands. While I agree anyone who supports terrorism should be dealt with harshly, a full scale invasion every time is gonna get costly. And I still want to know who the Iranian "puppet" gov't is puppets to exactly.
Point 4: I wouldn't call Iraq the center of Islamic extremism. I think that award goes to Iran, Saudi, or Syria.
Are you really naive enough to believe that if we set up a democratic gov't in Iraq that the rest of the region will follow? Because, you know, that has worked so well in the other areas we've tried to do that in before. It's simple, the middle east doesn't want a democracy. And they really don't enjoy a dictatorship either. They want to follow their religious leaders. They've been doing it for thousands of years and we surely are not gonna change that in a few years. I agree that with Saddam in power, the chance of stability was in question. But its even more unstable now than it was then. Unfortunately, that's the byproduct of a regime change.
There is no truce on the Korean Peninsula. It was a cease-fire. Yet still, troops on both sides die every week from exchanges. Technically, the Korean War is still on going. And you're right, the loss of life in an invasion would be staggering. Like you, a chem/bio weapon scares me more than a nuke. However, you just can't shrug off their nuke program. The main reason they're using one is, once again, for power. Not only that, but NK is in dire need of some money. So, selling of nuclear material wouldn't be a bad way to get some money. To quote a movie, "I'm not afraid of the man who wants nuclear weapons, I'm terrified of the man who only wants one." One of the selling points in Iraq was that Saddam had chem/bio weapons and was distributing them throughout the terror networks. Don't you think NK is gonna so the same thing once they have 3 or 4 warheads of their own? According to your logic of before, this is more than enough reason to invade. And it would probably be a good idea to perform such an invasion before they fully develop those warheads. But dont' read this the wrong way, in no terms am I advocating invading NK. That just wouldn't be the brightest idea. And don't for one minute believe that Bush is gonna talk NK out of their one and only bargaining chip.
Of course it's not all that simple, but at our level it doesn't need to be any more difficult to understand.
I disagree with this. You're right, it's not that simple. But why shouldn't we understand? Because we might not like the answer? We are all college educated. And we are the operators. For that reason alone I feel we should have a very good understanding of our motives. Let's not forget, our gov't has done some very very very shady things in the past. But I'm not saying I woudn't do my job if I didn't agree with it. You want a target taken out in Iraq, roger that, give me the coordinates and bombs away. But to not understand the reasons for going to war is completely and utterly foolish. Afterall, we are all citizens. We still vote. And what we vote for will have a direct impact on us, cause once again we are the operators of that policy. It would be morally reprehensible for us not to understand those policies. But in the end, we still do our job.
