I would have liked to seen us finish the job in Afghanistan instead of diverting our attention to Iraq. I have yet to see one credible piece of intelligence that Saddam possessed WMD's or the ability to use them; or that there were active terrorist cells and training camps akin to those in other Middle Eastern nations. There are plenty of nations with oppressive governments that do deplorable things to its citizens. Maybe we should start using military force to overthrow all of those governments as well. You know ... continue to stretch our military resources thin and spend taxpayer dollars to spread democracy.
You raise two points. Did Saddam have WMDs? For this reason (below), he had to be disarmed. Disarmed meaning never able to rearm or whatever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
The
Halabja poison gas attack (
Kurdish:
Kîmyabarana Helebce) occurred in the period 16–17 March 1988, during the
Iran-Iraq War.
Chemical weapons (CW) were used by the
Iraqi government forces in the Iraqi
Kurdish town of
Halabja, killing thousands of people, most of them
civilians (3,200-5,000 dead on the spot and 7,000-10,000 injured
[1]). Thousands more died of horrific
complications,
diseases, and
birth defects in the years after the attack
[2].
The incident, which
Human Rights Watch (HRW) defined as an act of
genocide, was as of 2009 the largest-scale chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history
If you're looking for people who saw the intel and voted for the war, there are a stream of Democrats including both Clintons, John Kerry, and many others who were briefed and have connections with foreign powers and oversight responsibility. As we know, Pelosi and several other Democrats were briefed all along about the gory details of what we were doing and only came out against those things when it was politically beneficial.
Second issue you raise is whether we should overthrow other dictators. Saddam was an evil of our own making. If you're familiar with Iran-Contra, you know we were playing both sides against the other in the Iran-Iraq war, even selling arms to Iran. The thing is, Iraq won the war after we shared satellite intel with Saddam's armed forces so they knew all the positions of Iran's planes, tanks, jeeps, control centers, and forces. When it was all said and done, Saddam was in power with one of the strongest militaries in the world, and he used that might to repress the people there. Blood was on our hands.
Not so of other places.
However, we can see what happens when we use force in a place like Kosovo and we can see what happens when we don't in a place like Rwanda. Iraq is a lot closer to the situation in Kosovo than Rwanda.
Lincoln had to replace his top generals several times during the Civil War until he found the right one who had the winning strategy. It's not a whole lot different than what happened with Iraq. We had the right guy to accomplish the mission of ending Saddam's government and disbursing his military, but we didn't have the right one to win the hearts and minds of the people and to rebuild the place in shorter order. Though shorter order may not have been possible under any circumstances.
Meanwhile, the situation in Afghanistan has gotten drastically worse, with the Taliban once again taking root and opium farms providing up to 80% of the funding for extreme terrorist cells in the Afghani-Pakistani mountains.
-Pop
Has it gotten worse since Obama escalated the troop levels there? Maxiep is spot on that Afghanistan is a country in the stone age with virtually no history, one major highway in the whole country, one major city, and the bulk of their population living in tents or mud huts scattered across the landscape. Compare to Iraq which is the oldest civilization on the face of the earth, with modern cities, hospitals, universities, grade schools, and an actual source of revenue that isn't illegal like poppies.
I haven't heard one word about any offensive ordered or supported by Obama to go after the poppy fields, have you? If you're so worried about that money funding terrorist activities and organizations, maybe you should speak up for doing that kind of thing. Realize it will really impoverish that nation, since they have nothing else to bring money in and potentially improve their standard of living.
Afghanistan is Obama's war now, and he's chosen to send more troops there. While I don't support that kind of effort, I'm not going to pound away at him for doing so because I saw what the left did to the effort in Iraq. An outright disgrace.
I hope we win there and win soon. Whatever win means.
