A new all time low for partisan politics

[bigrun]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

Iraq was not our enemy? If you say so. At least we had something to gain by getting rid of Saddam and getting a regime in there that was friendly to us.

Yeah right, how did that work out

What did we have to gain by helping to oust Mubarrak and Kaddafi, who were our allies? Helping to oust Mubarrak was a disaster. The Muslim Brotherhood took over. We are just lucky that the Egyptian military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood. Libya has turned out to be a complete disaster. How can you criticize Bush over Iraq and not slam Obama over Libya? As I said before, it is bad enough to overthrow an enemy, but why would you want to overthrow an ally?

I might ask you same thing.

United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and direct involvement in warfare against Iran.[3][4]

Support from the U.S. for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open session of the Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nightline that the "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq.

By the way, with regard to Iraq, everyone seems to have a very short memory. We had every right to invade Iraq. If you remember, part of the agreement to the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf war were that Saddam agreed to a number of conditions. We signed a cease-fire and agreed not to invade Bagdhad as long as Saddam honored the conditions of the cease-fire. The conditions were things like open inspections, honoring the no-fly zone, not killing the Kurds, etc. Sadaam violated practically every part of the agreement. The cease-fire becomes null and void at that point and we have the right to invade. Saddam was the one who started the whole thing with his invasion of Kuwait. Just because we had the right to invade, it doesn't mean it was necessarily the right choice. But all this nonsense about Bush/Cheney being a rogue regime is absurd considering that Saddam violated practically every term of the cease-fire.

Really, we had the right to invade? over violation of conditions?...was there any overt military actions against us? I missed that one..I said before Dumya should have read his Dad's book..

President George H.W. Bush wrote a memoir entitled "A World Transformed", published in 1998. (It was written with Brent Scowcroft.) The following is an excerpt on why he did not invade Iraq in 1991:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
A concise argument against the invasion. Didn't Junior bother to read his father's book?


And those incalculable human and political costs..Remember the U.S. led coalition?..95% U.S. and 5% others!

Coalition Military Fatalities By Year

Year US UK Other Total

2001 12 0 0 12
2002 49 3 18 70
2003 48 0 10 58
2004 52 1 7 60
2005 99 1 31 131
2006 98 39 54 191
2007 117 42 73 232
2008 155 51 89 295
2009 317 108 96 521
2010 499 103 109 711
2011 418 46 102 566
2012 310 44 48 402
2013 127 9 25 161
2014 55 6 14 75
2015 0 0 1 1
Total 2356 453 677 3486

http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmcqu...-invaded-iraq/