This isn't magic. It doesn't change the harm done, or justify the cost someone else paid. Many overestimate how much democracy matters to OBL (who wanted Saddam out as much as we did) and his side. And overestimate just how much freedom and improvement the Iraq people are actually seeing.
So, while I wish them well, that will be up to the Iraqis, who have to deal with the pain we brought them and hopefully make something out of all the destruction, eventually.
Just a few "minor" points that you either forgot about or simply want to ignore. Now I could go on but why?
Kay on Today: "It Was Absolutely Prudent to Go to War Against Saddam"
This is David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey group
The Today Show
Kay: "It wasn't only the US who came to that conclusion. The French, Germans, and UN all thought Saddam had WMDs." It was inaccurate in terms of the reality we found on the ground now, but it was accurate in terms of the intelligence at the time.
Saddam was a DESTABILIZING element in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Saddam did have a history of AGGRESSION against his neighbors (who were probably the happiest to see him go and who really in the end cooperated with the coalition).
Saddam did give SANCTUARY TO TERRORISTS...both Abu Abas and Abu Nidal.
Saddam did MUTILATE his people. Cut their ears off and pulled their tongues out.
Saddam did TORTURE his people who opposed the Baath party and his tyranny.
Saddam did MURDER his people as we now know from the mass graves.
Saddam did Gas his own people as is well documented by the horror experienced by the Kurds Saddam did MURDER his people as we now know from the mass graves.
Saddam did OPPRESS those faiths who differed with his Sunni pals. He wasn't the paragon of secular behavior that his appeasers make him out to be.
Saddam represented the worst of ISLAMO/FASCISM and supported terrorists in Palestine
Saddam ATTACKED Israel with scud missiles in the Gulf War just on principle and continued to be a significant obstacle to rational thought among Arabs regarding a rational solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
It is not a coincidence that the recent peace initiative has come on the heels of his removal.
Saddam was a first class fascist just like Hitler and he had to go. The world is better off.
Saddam did provide funding for suicide bomber families
Saddam was indicted by the Clinton Justice Department along with Bin Laden
Saddam was on the terror watch list throughout the 90’s
Saddam Hussein received billions in the oil for food scandal and used it to fund terrorism
Saddam Hussein violated every UN resolution and then failed to abide by 1441
Saddam Hussein helped create the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998
Putin Says Russia Warned U.S. on Saddam, Russia warned the United States on several occasions that Iraq's Saddam Hussein planned "terrorist attacks" on its soil, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.
"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues," he told reporters.
The Kremlin leader, who was speaking in the Kazakh capital, said Russian intelligence services had many times received information that Saddam's special forces were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States "and beyond its borders on American military and civilian targets."
Mohammed Atta trained in Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is in Iraq, Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah, FUNDED From IRAQ, Al Qaeda Terrorist Camp in Iraq, but apparently Saddam was simply a VICTIM Of the West's Imperialism, right and not a terrorist?
By NILES LATHEM
September 8, 2004 --
WASHINGTON — France, Russia and China supplied Saddam Hussein with missiles, arms, defense technology and spare parts before — and after — the start of the Iraq war, an explosive new book claims.
In the book, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz cites a slew of illegal covert arms deals between Saddam and several countries that opposed the U.S. invasion in the months before and after the start of war in March 2003.
The book, "Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies," cites secret Pentagon and CIA reports and interviews with top U.S. defense and intelligence officials.
Gertz claims that many of the weapons sold to Iraq in this critical time frame — and in violation of U.N. embargoes — were used by Ba'athist terrorists against U.S. forces after the fall of Saddam.
