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Thadius -> RE: Who's to blame? (6/30/2010 5:42:06 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961
Not to mention the fact that Saddam and the Iraqi government routinely executed Al Qaeda followers caught in Iraq, which came out in a BBC report.
The fact that the WMD's were useless as weapons, doesnt matter evidently. They were as dangerous as a pistol without a firing pin.
Lets not forget that the generals who disagreed with the plan to attack Iraq were fired, after explaining we did not have the manpower to fight two wars. We succeeded in getting ourselves into a situation where we 1) Did not achieve the rebuilding of the country as promised AFTER the invasion, with the exception of a lot of work for Haliburton in the oil fields, the infrastructure is still wrecked, 2) managed to create an Al Qaeda supported insurgent movement, and 3) have managed to get over 105000 Iraqis killed.
The chemicals inside were still viable and toxic, regardless of if the rounds were usable in a weapon. To Ken's point, every major intelligence agency believed that Iraq was still in possession of or attempting to manufacture chemical and bio weapons, mainly because many nations (primarily the US) sold those things and the tech to Iraq during the and prior to the Iran-Iraq war.
Oh and to add a bit of "spin" that all too often gets overlooked around here; Saddam was in violation of the cease-fire agreement he signed and that was ratified in the UN. This is why Clinton was able to continue to bomb and shoot up the country, when he needed a change in the news cycle. Regardless of whether the intelligence about WMDs was accuarate or not, there were plenty of other LEGAL justifications for the overthrow of Hussein for non-compliance.
Now to the snarkier points, it's amazing how the puppet Blix kept filing those reports about unaccounted for WMDs, but the inspectors on the ground apparantly didn't matter... Or the reports that were provided pre-dubbya that provide numbers of unaccounted for (chemical and biological) munitions (filled and unfilled) must obviously have been part of the conspiracy to let Bush the 2nd go play war chief. All of which obviously doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Oil contracts? US companies have received about 10% of the contracts awarded to foreign (other than Iraqi) companies. Huge gains there.
As for rebuilding, we made the same promises to the Iraqi people during Desert Storm, if they would rise up. Just as they started to, we let the politicians pull out all ground support for the civilians, which lead to plenty of fun for Saddam's special police with retribution to those that tried to take back their country based on our word.
If the troops on the ground didn't have their hands tied by some of the crazy ROE, if the generals were allowed to run the war side of these things and were allowed to fight to win, perhaps there would be more progress on the civilian side in both countries. Kind of ironic that you bring up the firing of generals this week, especially in light of the choice the president made for McChrystals replacement.
Like I said in my other post, forget trying to assign blame and let's figure out how to solve the fucking messes that we now find ourselves in.
Shall we now touch on the economic situation and how other countries feel about the Obama proposed continuation of more stimulus spending?
Have a great night, I will try to get back in and respond soon.
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