OK, Tak, I can understand your point. So I'm going to take the thought a step further: What constitutes a "fabricated basis?"

By the way, I do agree with you in re: the world not being a safer place, but I contend that it wasn't a safe place long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or even the 11 Sep attacks, either. Our European members who were around in the latter half of the 20th Century could attest to the safe world of the IRA and the various Red Army factions blowing up discos in the FRG.

Last thought for now: If we Americans, with the responsibility of being one of the more powerful nations on Earth, are not to be tasked with being the world's police, then who is? Furthermore, without anyone taking responsibility for it, what's left?

Now, if we are acting as the world's police, that's one thing. Clearly, the US hasn't stopped at just that, and has projected its forms of government with its policing. I'm speaking solely of policing, not imperialism.

Yeah, 'fabrication' was probably poor word selection on my part. What I really mean is more along the lines of 'inaccurate'. These facilities, mobile chemistry labs and whatnot never appeared, and probably never existed. However, I'm not a person who believes that this discrepancy between pre-war intelligence and post-war reality was intentional.

Technically, the UN is the world's police force, but I think we can all agree on just how effective they actually are. That being said, I don't think that the world really needs a policing nation. We more or less act in this capacity, but our actions do not accomplish the goal of any policing action; that being stability. Look at the ongoing Somali civil war. We tried in that case, and all we had to show for our actions was a fat lip and an emboldened local militia. I think that example has been more typical than not of our intervention across the globe.

I agree that we aren't talking about imperialism here. Iraq is not, and will never be a colony of the United States. We're talking about policing action with the goal of stabilizing nations and regions, and I think that we are failing in that pursuit.

There's a vast difference than fabricated and inaccurate that is apparently lost on some folks. In fact if anyone was fabricating things then it was Saddam himself trying to look more powerful than he really was.

Note to future despots: You don't point toy guns at cops and you don't threaten hostile superpowers with fake WMD.

I think the key point in this argument thus far is what constitutes enough probable cause to warrant invasion and regime.

Listed reasons are, WMD's, Hostility towards neighbors, oppressive regime, Hostile to US.

Now I can name allot of country's that fit that bill that we haven't invaded, lets use North Korea as an example. They meet and in fact exceed most criteria that validates invasion using Iraq's justification for War.

Discuss

This oversimplifies the things that have to considered in such a decision. Probable cause does not say anything about opportunity or ramifications. These aspects need to be factored in.

Main differences that I see:

1. North Korea is within Red China's sphere of influence and would likely defend the NK's if they're invaded. They have already done it once and would likely do so again.

2. South Korea and Japan would have to be willing to host invasion forces in spite of knowing that they, especially SK, would get severely messed up in the crossfire, if not nuked for their troubles. They might do it if they felt theatened enough like at least some of Iraqs neighbors seemed to be.

3. North Korea would have had to repeatedly violate the ceasefire agreement since it was signed.

4. North Korea would have to pretend to violate even more serious aspects of the ceasefire agreement such as claim to be ready to use WMD capabilities they actually didn't have. Like pointing a toy gun at a cop, Dumb.

5. There would need to be large ethnic groups of North Koreans that could be counted on to, not only be in favor of removing Kim and his government from power, but willing to actively assist us in doing it.

6. These large ethnic groups would also have vocal expatriate populations who make sure that each one of Kims atrocities are made known to the American people.

7. There has to be a fairly strong domestic feeling from bottom to top that we had left the job unfinished the last time we were there.

Actually its not that complicated.
If a crazy dictator is gassing people and needs to be removed for doing that nasty stuff then he is a crazy dictator that needs to be removed from doing that nasty stuff, however if you support him while he is doing all the nasty stuff then using the excuse years later when he isn't gassing people then your excuse is pure bull.
Plus of course if you support crazy dictators who do really nasty stuff and try and justify the really nasty stuff it does suggest that your regime is very crazy too and needs a regime change itself rather rapidly.

All of the evidence against Saddam was trumped up. Those "mobile WMD labs"? Artist conceptual drawings, not actual intelligence. And again...why haven't we found anything to date? Theres a reason why the UN didn't find anything, and on that subject there's a definite reason why the administration tried everything they could to paint the UN in a bad light whenever they told us not to go into Iraq. They were a fly in the ointment, someone who wasn't beating the war drums...and they had to be discredited in the eyes of the American people.

Secondly,We went through 3 different reasons during that war, First...saddam was a threat with WMD's, but then we found none so it was "ohh he was a tyrant and were making a better life for them". People get mad in Iraq because we actually made everything worse and start shooting at us and it's "insurgents and terrorists that we have to defeat to protect america" Even though there really hasn't been solid evidence that terrorists were there before we showed up.

I have a hard time finding a war legitimate if you keep changing the reason were there. They should have said it from the begining: "we don't like Saddam, want some oil if we can get it...and while were at it lets throw some money to haliburton and other defense contractors."

Here is my take.

Saddam has not fired a shot outside of his border's since Gulf war One.

Terrorists fly planes into the WTC and that wakes a sleeping giant.

We then start agitating for war with Iraq and here is my problem with it all

Iraq somehow starts getting thrown in with the attack in the media and soon it almost becomes as If Saddam himself ordered the attack. The media really starts pushing the links to AL Q.

Thats when I had to call BS. The way it was being sold you could smell the pure speculation and fabrication of it all. We knew that almost all of the terrorists were almost exclusively Saudi. But did we hold Saudi Arabia responsible? At this point you could say no but why should we, This was an attack by individual extremists and that makes it hard to make a nation accountable, Yet at the same time thats exactly what we did in Iraq!

We used one thing (WTC) to justify a complete other (IRAQ Invasion)

So far we have destabilized a region, created a power Vacuum that Iran is more than happy to fill, Cost countless lives both ours and theirs, ran up a dept that will be hard to recover from and made the USA look like fools and tyrants to the rest of the world including most of our allies.

Nope it wasn't worth it, IRAQ would have been better off with Saddam.

Easy to say when it's not your family being subjected to chemical weapons attacks or being tortured because you lost a soccer game.

and how many are dead there now or displaced? I can't say we really helped either.

What chemical weapons attacks?
The ones many years before when he was our friend.:yep:

Though to further illustrate the level of bull and sheer hypocricy some still spout in support of the lies lets take a few of their usual lines and apply them to Iraq....
Saddam killed some civilians, these civilians were supporting Iranian backed terrorists and the terrorists were hiding amongst the civilians.
That makes it the terrorists fault and the civilians fault and the Iranians fault, they are the ones who were wrong not Saddam.
While using chemical weapons in civilian areas isn't very nice it is one of the lesser evils we must support to counter the greater evil and if those civilians didn't wan't to be gassed they should have moved somewhere else or made the terrorists move.

We had to destroy the village in order to save it, I believe was a rational during Viet Nam. :doh:

It'll take 50 years to know for sure either way.

We don't see the innocents as human, they're numbers. Hard to grasp the US military killed close to 300,000 civilians. Imagine you as a parent having your home blown up and all you can find of your kids is body parts. We are supposed to protect civilians, when we level towns because of a few gunman then blame them for all the civilian deaths....that's just murder.

Care to cite where you got that statistic?