State of Iraq
 

How do you feel about Iraq now? I admit in the beginning I jumped on the bandwagon. The towers had fallen, Saddam had WMD's...let's blow the hell out of them.

Obvious, the propaganda machine of war was long at work in the Bush adm. No WMD's, never any evidence, a big lie. Saddam, well a bad guy, but ran a basic secular culture for the region, he posed no threat to us.

So, here we are still there.

Over 5 million displaced.
Around 150- 300,000 dead civilians estimated killed by US military.
Bout one million overall dead.
700 billion Dollars spent....(there went health care.)
4500 dead US servicemen
35,000 wounded.

Billions in no bid contract to private american companies. Over 50% of the project went 200% above cost, even though many were never completed.

Many think it would be a matter of a year after we left before chaos ensued. Even Obama's so called pull out isn't really a pull out, we'll leave manned military bases, forces, etc..

Most agree insurgents are and stockpiling explosives waiting to reignite the conflict once we leave. If so, do we go back and continue nation building...


Should we continue to stay no matter the cost?

We shouldn't have been there in the first place. So, no, I am not for staying the course in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

I did not had to change my position on Iraq by one inch since 2003, so when I was saying in 2003 and 2004 that it was a big mistake, was caused not by need but by opportunistic desire, that it was about lies and intentional deception of the public, and was both badly prepared and badly carried out, then I still say so today. In fact I feel confirmed in my warnings by everything that has happened since the invasion started.

A very stupid adventure, from A to Z. The blood costs are payed by the Iraqi civilians.

Yep, should have pulled out years ago. Unfortunate we started the ball rolling. We need to clean up the mess. I have a friend who just came back for Iraq. He said it is a mess and will not survive for very long once the US troops are pulled.

Not only that, but it becomes an exercise in futility. Each time we enable one of these nations to democratically liberalize in our western sense, the people of that nation end up voting in the very people we were trying to exclude from power. We're seeing it in motion in Egypt right now. Promoting democracy in the Middle East has really become a lost cause.

Never should've gone there.

Saddam was a bad guy, but he kept things pretty much under control. The war and death of Saddam opened the door for terrorists and chaos. Gonna take a looong time for Iraq to get over this (if it ever will).

All the coilition did was exactly what the Iranians wanted, and probably more than they could have dreamed of.

Back when this all started, I supported it. I was just a year or two out of the military, NBC training was still fresh on my mind, and i almost re enlisted after sept 11. My grandfather begged me not to. Here was a WW 2 veteran who told me, "Don't re up. you've already done your fair share". Considering i was afraid, (because I knew the hardships I would face - again), i took his advice. Besides that, my desire to reenlist was more out of a sense of guilt for not being with my comrades who were still in, as the excrement was hitting the fan. Every bone in my body was ashamed for not being with them, but i knew the odds of re upping, and getting back to the same unit with those people were next to nill.

But there it was, Saddam was supposed to have NBC, and General Powell (the only politician i ever respected in recent time) , gave his anthrax speech to congress. I was sold on it.

When the dust has settled, and all the reasons to go were simply not there, i felt lied to, and betrayed (again). Now its my thought and fear that Iraq coupled with Afganistan, will eventually prove to be the proverbial straw that breaks the camels back. Much as Afganistan overtaxed the soviet union and lead to it's collapse. It won't happen right away, this is a long term reprocussion.

Seems the US can't learn that you can't replace cultures with war. It's impossible to change a mindset that's been around 1000 years with war, it can't be done.

Bush Sr knew better, his son didn't. He lied, he is a criminal and should be charged as one, but we can't do that, somehow it would dishonor the servicemen, so it's just a lie we all live with.

I am glad we went.I think the cause was just even though we did not find WMD's and tired of this crap about Bush lied etc.Believe they followed their intel and used the faulty intel.We do know Sadam had the WMD's at one time, perhaps while we were beating the war drum for months ahead and he had a deadline, he got rid of them or sent them elsewhere, very plausible scenario.

The war was mismanaged, going in fairly light with not enough troops for the shock and awe instead of a full scale war with the numbers they really needed.They tried to do it the easy way going on the assumption once Iraqi Army was gone there would be no real resistance.They failed to plan for an insurgency and it cost many more lives than it should have.

I believe one day Iraq will be the "shining city on the hill" in the middle east.The war was worth it, mismanaged most of the time, absolutely but the surge worked and things are better.Worth it? Absolutely.

:har::har::har::har::har::har::har::har:

Ducimus, that politician you mentioned.
When he was selling that obvious bull that practicly got him laughed out the chamber didn't he describe it as the worst point of his career and the biggest stain on his reputation.
Do you think he would describe it as a "very plausible scenario"?

Worth it? The recently installed government was finally put together after some of the most virulently anti-american terrorists in the region sat down together and agreed which Iranian backed group would take the key positions in government?
Absolutely???????
Worth it? yeah for Iran.

Never ceases to amaze me how people ignore the realities just because its not front page news.

Weapons of mass destruction didn't exist, huh?

Declassified docs as of 2006:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/...classified.pdf

enough Sarin and Mustard gas to kill about 7 Million. In a degraded state, figure about half that. 3.5 Million dead isn't mass destruction? What is then?

Don't like that example? Fair enough - how about the love of the left - wikileaks? Would you rather them tell you? Turns out that one recent dump discussed this very thing....

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010...ising-results/

Not the quantity that was sold to the public by Bush, but thats an intelligence apparatus failure. The reality is they existed.

But wait - there is more... Everyone knows that Saddam wasn't after nukes, right? He had given up on all that, right? Of course, the 550 metric tons of yellow cake uranium he had - that even MSNBC calls " seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment " doesn't mean he actually had a nuclear program, right? I am sure he was just trying to figure out how to power the palace lights with the stuff so he could, uhm - you know - get off the grid.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334...east/n_africa/

Of course - this material was located at the Tuwaitha Special Weapons research / nuclear complex. The name might ring a bell, since it was the location of the Iraqi nuclear research programme when Israel bombed it. The IAEA wanted to inspect the material - but Saddam would not allow them to do so, in violation of treaty. In fact, this refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect the uranium was a major cause of war, since whether or not the uranium was being used to enrich fuel for a weapon or not, it created the APPEARANCE that it was.

Add in the 2004 actions of removing material sufficiently enriched as to be useful in the making of "dirty bombs", as reported by USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...-uranium_x.htm

1.6 tons of enriched uranium, 6.6 lbs of "low enriched" uranium and about 1000 "highly radioactive" items - where "highly radioactive" is defined as suitable for weapon use (but not weapons grade)- aka enriched to 20%.

@ Armistead - Bush lied? About what? Every intelligence report at the time, not only from the US but from multiple allies, indicated that WMD existed on a large scale under Saddam. Is a man a liar if he works from the best information he has?

As far as a criminal, I can only assume you are talking about Bush starting a "war of aggression". To that I can only state that there was nothing illegal about the war. Take WMD's entirely out of the equation - even without them, the war itself was legal due to the violation of the ceasefire by Iraq. Iraq, on multiple occasions, fired upon US and Allied aircraft and violated the ceasefire they agreed to. These acts were not precipitated by them being fired upon, but rather were acts of war by a belligerant in violation of the agreement in place. As such, the moment they fired the first time, any invasion by any signatory of the cease fire became legal.

I don't like Bush much. Its ok for you to not like him too. Did he mismanage the war? You bet he did. However, to call him a liar or a criminal over the war is untrue. WMD's existed that violated the notification and destruction clauses. A clandestine nuclear program MAY have existed (we will likely never know for certain to what extent it may or may not have). Intelligence from almost every source said major programs of NBC warfare existed. The government refused to allow inspections of materials that would support part of those programs - violating treaty. They violated a ceasefire by firing on forces engaged in legitimate, legally defined (and agreed to) patrols without provocation, throwing the cease fire in the trash.

The wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been horribly carried out. No argument here. But that was because we had no idea what to do after the regime's fell.

To be correct, we really should stop calling them wars - for they are not. They are conflict and construction zones. We got into nation building while we get shot at, because the people there don't want to do the heavy lifting.

Liberty and freedom come with a cost, and the biggest error that Bush made was that we cannot free a country. Liberty and freedom are bought with the blood of patriots - not foreigners. Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places in the world will never have true reform until they pay the price for it themselves.

If only every leader of nations understood that.........

You can't use 20% 235U to make a weapon. You can, however, use 20% 235U to fuel a nuclear reactor.

And "highly radioactive items" can't be used to make any sort of fission weapon. The worst you can do is use them for an RDD.

This country has had multi-generational financial harm inflicted upon it because of these idiotic and mad quests for WMD's that didn't exist. Haplo's link says it all: Billions and billions of dollars and thousands of American and Iraqi lives wasted over trivial amounts of chemical weapons. To say that members of the administration were victims of bad intel and not overt liars is wrong and has been proven wrong by revelations from Wikileaks.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are traitors to this nation and should be hung as such.

All evidence pointed to no WMD's, so Bush fabricated fiction. Why did Bush sell out a covert CIA operative putting all her clients lives around the world in peril, because her husband told the truth about no WMD's. All the real players knew WMD's didn't exist, so did Bush. He was given plenty of facts WMD's they didn't exist. Me made up lies.


90% of casualties were civilians in Iraq, we didn't win hearts and minds there, we buried them.

We're now trying to install a puppet government that will be tossed out.

As others stated, it was worth it for Iran.

I'm rather moderate, even voted for Bush once. Now I would vote for a swift trial and swifter execution. He got what he wanted...billions in profits for his friends in the war business selling out over a million dead human beings...."Praise God, I'm a Christian" says Bush.

Worse President in history.