Iraq Today.

And whose idea was it to impose food for oil in the first place, hm? You can't claim victories based on atrocities your side imposed.

Hindsight, 20/20, etc.

Yeah, we should have smoked him in 91'.. But we didn't. We've made our bed and laid in it for some time, time enough to know that now we should wake up, roll out of it without chewing your arm off, and go home.

edited 1st Apr '11 8:33:38 PM by Barkey

So...what happens now that the US is about to leave?

Personally, I see de facto partition. They could try to pull a Lebanon of course, but that should have been done while the CPA was still running things.

EDIT-

Whatever happened to Baghdad Bob? His Wikipedia page hasn't been updated in a while...

edited 1st Apr '11 11:12:16 PM by FFShinra

The greatest indictment of our escapades in Iraq are the basically bloodless waves of peaceful revolution washing away the much vaunted enemies Bush was supposedly fighting. What caused this avalanche? Armed goons and bombs from our generals? Lies and murders from the CIA? No, it was the heroic actions of men like Bradley Manning and Julian Assang, fearless soldiers of freedom and justice, men who knew they would be castigated as criminals and traitors for their selfless deeds, who accomplished what tens of trillions of dollars and millions of deaths never did, all with the simple power of truth.

No violence, no deception, no money stolen from hard working citizens. Imagine if America (or even a minor power, like France or Japan) cut loose all the criminals we're consorting with and declassified every single secret document without exception, distributing the facts of our evil to the oppressed people of the world with the same vigor we perversely pour propagandic lies through entities like Radio Free America. Would more good than harm come? Would any dictatorship on earth survive? Would any harm at all occur?

^^ What we should've done is refrain from assassinating Qasim to install the Baathists in the first place.

edited 3rd Apr '11 2:46:06 AM by EricDVH

He didn't do anything that affected Iraq that much. Most of his information that made waves were the diplomatic cables that usually had zip to do with Iraq.

Dude, that's some seriously obnoxious rhetoric there. Be realistic instead of chucking around words like "evil".

And I don't support the war in Iraq either, by the way. Or Bush.

edited 3rd Apr '11 4:48:02 PM by Barkey

True, but he did touch off a political trend that could solve the big problems in Iraq, not to mention numerous other places around the arab world that Bush was floundering with.

And when I said evil, I wasn't referring to things we'd done that were detailed in the cable leaks (mostly just our unflattering commentary on foreign powers,) I meant things we'd done in the past but are currently classified. Like if the US government 'fessed up to its past crimes and endeavored to make a clean slate of things.

I'm just not terribly receptive to Manning be called a "hero". That's kind of insulting considering what he did. Now given, I wouldn't execute him for it, and I'm sure some people found it helpful, but I wouldn't call him a hero, and I don't think he feels like one in Iso.

Eric, I was with you until you mentioned Manning and Assange. I thought you were going to mention the freedom protesters of Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. Now those guys and what they have accomplished really discredit the confrontational approach of the Bush administration.

edited 4th Apr '11 10:32:24 AM by DeMarquis

Yeeah. Manning and Assange have nothing to do with Tunisia and Egypt. The heroes of those revolutions wasn't any one man, but the collective effort of the people standing up against their respective oppressive regimes.

THAT is the most damning evidence against Iraq. We could have toppled Saddam without a single bomb being dropped. Now you have to live with the fact that 2 million Iraqis were internally displaced, 2 million more forced into refugee status in neighbouring countries (and who knows how many terrorist groups that will spawn), along with now close to 1.5 million to 2 million deaths related to the war (I'm not talking combat deaths, I'm talking disease, starvation, crime and so on relating to the destabilisation of society). Crime is thousands of percent higher than it used to be and the regime you put into place? Democracy? Do democratic leaders gun down protester with live ammunition?

Tunisia blew down the royal family after one man lit himself on fire. Egyptians overthrew Mubarak by banding together in Tahrir Square. All we needed were world leaders that believed in the future, believed in democracy and believed in the people. Instead we got Bush whose war has caused untold suffering and that suffering will continue for decades. All USA got in return were thousands of flag draped coffins.

Do democratic leaders gun down protester with live ammunition?

Historically that happens from time to time. Every democracy is guilty of it through accident, mistaken intent, panic or what have you.

Can you just say it is wrong? It's okay to say that you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

Revoking the sanctions during Clinton's two terms might've helped. How else are they supposed to help topple Saddam from within? Madeline Albright, who in retrospect was like a Beta Hillary, was open in her lack of regard for the Iraqi people.

Since the Gulf War was plainly not waged with the intent of extracting Saddam, and the Iraq War was similarly suspect, it's pretty clear that the U.S. has no problems with dictators, only ones who don't follow orders.

I can only imagine all of the sanctions would've been lifted if Saddam were toppled, but of course Clinton could've done things better with Iraq, as Obama could today with Cuba.

That the Arab protesters themselves are amazing, especially facing the literal risk of violent death, goes without saying. My point was that (while they obviously couldn't have imagined it would lead to anything remotely this big, I certainly didn't) the leaks didn't just fail to cause something bad to happen, they caused something GOOD to happen, so this is exactly the sort of thing that would be a more effective policy weapon against tyranny than war.

Why are the US attacking Iraq anyway? I mean, from an economic perspective, its stupid. The costs of military operations in Iraq outweigh the cost of the oil extracted from Iraq. So it can't be because of the oil, but if it isn't , than why in the world is the US attacking Iraq?

Because you do things better the 2nd time.*

^^ Because we tortured this guy so he'd tell us what he knew, and then he told us things he didn't actually know.

edited 12th Sep '11 2:42:16 PM by feotakahari

There's also this, though I suppose I've probably posted a link on this thread already 'cause it has "Iraq" on the title.

As for it turning into the mess it was (and to a degree still is) after the invasion, that was sheer lack of preparation. Bush wanted a war and not enough preparation was done for what would happen after the high intensity phase.

Bush got his war.

The practical and logical side of me says because Saddam was so shady about letting people inspect his country for WMD's that it was obvious he had them, only.. He didn't.(I think he didn't want the truth getting out because that was posturing to keep Iraq from looking vulnerable to Iran)

The conspiratorial gut instinct feeling I get that I don't like to acknowledge? That it was all one big effort to launch an operation that would achieve a combination of things, such as locking in a new key ally in the Middle East to ween us off of our support of Israel(as they are our only major middle eastern ally that would cooperate with a military initiative) and securing epic profits for corporations such as Halliburton and KBR(Cheney was the VP of Halliburton, after all) and driving the prices of oil up globally due to "tension" in the middle east(something the Bush clan would gain from)

I don't know enough to say about ulterior motives... Cheney certainly seemed to do suspiciously well out of it all.

I was originally a staunch war supporter when we went in; even argued about it vociferously with my classmates who were almost down to a man completely against the Iraq invasion. But to me it was always about taking down a tyrant; I was still young, and my Wide-Eyed Idealist tendencies weren't tempered by such petty considerations as "will this actually lead to less bodybags" and other small matters. Being a gullible teenager, I made the stupid mistake of assuming they would actually think the operation through carefully.

...since then, I've gone the other way; governments need to be watched carefully and judged, because they're probably doing something incompetent. This goes double for military operations. I'm a big subscriber of Hanlon's Razor when it comes to the war; nothing that was done this badly can have been the original plan.

Thread Hop.

It's a Crapsaccharine World instead of a Crapsack World, and under the surface it's coming apart at the edges as the last semblance of order leaves with its enforcers—the US Military.

Are they better off? Slightly. Will it turn it better later on? I couldn't say. Was it worth it? No.

edited 12th Sep '11 3:38:15 PM by USAF713

Iraq is a tinderbox thanks to the artificial nature of the state (not the US's fault, modern Iraq has always been artificial) and the Arab Spring. It, alongside Bahrain, will become the chess pieces of the Middle Eastern Cold War going on...