Time Will Tell

[timNms]

Invading Iraq and taking out Saddam was inevitable..the onlt problem I have is the timing of the operation. We should have put our resources into capturing Osama first instead of fighting 2 wars at once.

My thoughts exactly. Many assume that I thought Saddam was a nice guy, and that would shouldn't do anything against evil dictators, etc. etc. etc. I disliked, nay, hated Saddam the same as everyone else. I don't think gassing your own people and building 50 gold palaces is a desirable quality in a leader of a major country like Iraq. I think it is very sad and unfortunate that he turned what might have become almost a 1st world country into a repressive hellhole. And I think that at some point we needed to go and clean out Iraq. But I didn't think the time was right. I felt that the issue was forced, and that we were given bad reasons for the war and it was not prosecuted as well as it could have been. This would be Monday morning quarterbacking were it not for the fact that I and others were saying similar things before the war even started. And while I agree that certain European countries not to be named probably had other reasons for not going to war (such as, shall we say, conflicts of interest), I don't think completely dumping the UN and rushing in was the right thing to do. We could have had more support if we had waited and let the inspectors go in. Eventually, Saddam would have resisted, and it would have become clear that he needed to go. Except that way, we would have had much more support and would not have to foot such a large bill. There are, of course, other ways besides this one that we could have dealt with it. As it stands, we rushed in, we pissed off a lot of people (sometimes you have to do the right thing regardless of what others think, but Iraq was not big enough or worth it, IMHO) and now are dealing with unrest. Could we have done it perfectly? Heck no. Even if Bush had waited and gotten world support would all the liberals have shut up? He** no! (I would have, given that I was pretty much on the fence with this one -- unlike many liberals, I only opposed the war on pragmatic/timeline reasons, instead of some fundamental distrust of US actions abroad, or general dislike of war, or concern about a "war for oil", etc.) But could we have done it better and did we know in advance that we could have? I say yes.

End of yet another babbly rant.

Nice rant and I agree to a certain extent. But, wasn't the UN given opportunity time and time again to do something? How many UN resolutions did SH break since the first Gulf War? What about the oil for food program that is under investigation now?
Perhaps it would have been better to wait until the situation in Afgan. was taken care of, but then again, that would have given SH even more time to plot and scheme who knows what.

[WidreMann]

Invading Iraq and taking out Saddam was inevitable..the onlt problem I have is the timing of the operation. We should have put our resources into capturing Osama first instead of fighting 2 wars at once.

My thoughts exactly. Many assume that I thought Saddam was a nice guy, and that would shouldn't do anything against evil dictators, etc. etc. etc. I disliked, nay, hated Saddam the same as everyone else. I don't think gassing your own people and building 50 gold palaces is a desirable quality in a leader of a major country like Iraq. I think it is very sad and unfortunate that he turned what might have become almost a 1st world country into a repressive hellhole. And I think that at some point we needed to go and clean out Iraq. But I didn't think the time was right. I felt that the issue was forced, and that we were given bad reasons for the war and it was not prosecuted as well as it could have been. This would be Monday morning quarterbacking were it not for the fact that I and others were saying similar things before the war even started. And while I agree that certain European countries not to be named probably had other reasons for not going to war (such as, shall we say, conflicts of interest), I don't think completely dumping the UN and rushing in was the right thing to do. We could have had more support if we had waited and let the inspectors go in. Eventually, Saddam would have resisted, and it would have become clear that he needed to go. Except that way, we would have had much more support and would not have to foot such a large bill. There are, of course, other ways besides this one that we could have dealt with it. As it stands, we rushed in, we pissed off a lot of people (sometimes you have to do the right thing regardless of what others think, but Iraq was not big enough or worth it, IMHO) and now are dealing with unrest. Could we have done it perfectly? Heck no. Even if Bush had waited and gotten world support would all the liberals have shut up? He** no! (I would have, given that I was pretty much on the fence with this one -- unlike many liberals, I only opposed the war on pragmatic/timeline reasons, instead of some fundamental distrust of US actions abroad, or general dislike of war, or concern about a "war for oil", etc.) But could we have done it better and did we know in advance that we could have? I say yes.

End of yet another babbly rant.

Nice rant and I agree to a certain extent. But, wasn't the UN given opportunity time and time again to do something? How many UN resolutions did SH break since the first Gulf War? What about the oil for food program that is under investigation now?
Perhaps it would have been better to wait until the situation in Afgan. was taken care of, but then again, that would have given SH even more time to plot and scheme who knows what.

I didn't say the UN alone had to be driving force. And I have no choice but to agree that they dragged their feet (and hey, look what happened in Rwanda -- something the UN was supposed to prevent). So I see nothing wrong with the US being the driving force. However, I disagreed on some of the details -- see my rant above for more info .

[timNms]

What's done is done and can't be changed, whether we like it or not. If we had access to all of the information that the leaders of our country had laid out in front of them at the time the decision was made to attack Iraq, perhaps we'd have done the same thing they did.
I must admit that I was worried about terrorist attacks within Iraq after the US went to war with Iraq. I felt that the terrorist would see that as an opportunity to "do their thing" to prevent democracy there. However, I have confidence that as long as the US and our allies continue to show resolve, the situation will be brought under control and eventually democracy will prevail. It certainly won't happen in the next day or two. I think it'll be a gradual thing that takes more than one or two years to accomplish.