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Was Invading Iraq the Right Choice?

Was invading Iraq and going to war in Iraq, was it the right choice?

  • Total voters
    96
How I remember what was going on at the time...

The U.N. was sending in an investigation team. Saddam laid out all of his documentation on the table and said have a look, we're not up to anything. Several locations in Iraq had been searched by the U.N. and turned up nothing. Bush Jr. got his panties in a bunch saying the U.N. wasn't moving fast enough, we know there's WMD, then bombed Baghdad. Of course, he figured we would find the evidence while we were attacking Iraq so he could say, "see, I told you so". Of course, we never found anything.

If we had let the U.N. finish their job with the searches, soldiers like my brother would not have come home with COPD, we'd have a lot more solders still alive. Yeah, Saddam might still be alive, but he was nothing more than a placed puppet. Oh yeah, we put him in power in the first place. Funny how that works. Since he didn't work out, let's try changing the whole government so we can control the oil. That didn't work out too well either.

Saddam was just like our politicians, except we don't kill our politicians when they don't do what we want them to do.
 
Muhammed said:
LOL

I just channel surfed on the TV and realized that MSNBC is giving the GE zombies at DP their marching orders for the day regarding the conflict in Iraq. Half of them are probably just stupid people who don't know how duped they are by the media into thinking that there was no AQ or WMD in Iraq. The other half are simply disgusting evil liars.
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You do know there really weren't any WMD's in Iraq right? After years we never found a single one. Not to mention the CIA and th MI6 had intellegence before hand that Iraq did not have the capabilities to produce one.

If you honestly think Iraq had WMD's I'm afraid you're in the wrong froum

Conspiracy Theories
 
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falcata said:
You do know there really weren't any WMD's in Iraq right? After years we never found a single one. Not to mention the CIA and th MI6 had intellegence before hand that Iraq did not have the capabilities to produce one.

If you honestly think Iraq had WMD's I'm afraid you're in the wrong froum

Conspiracy Theories
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Oh Saddam had WMD's at one time. He used plenty of chemical weapons in his war against Iran. We, (army) found plenty of evidence that he had them with the key word "had". None were found during or after the Iraq war.

http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/81ali.pdf

Here is just one reference, there are a whole bunch more confirming that Iraq did have at one time WMD's and used them. Just google chemical weapons used during the Iraq Iran war.

So the remaining question is what happened to them? Did Saddam use them all up, doubtful. Did he destroy all of them prior to the U.S. invasion, probably. Or he could have hid them in his vast desert. It took us 6 months to uncover 20 MIG Saddam had buried in the desert and that was purely by accident. When you start comparing the size of a 55 gallon drum to a MIG, perhaps you can envision how hard that would be to detect in Iraq's vast desert.

Personally I suspect he destroyed them, that is probably why Saddam was pretty nonchalant about the possibility of an U.S. invasion. But like everyone else, that is just an assumption on my part. If he buried them, we probably won't find them until a little Bedouin boy trips over a lid of one of the drums caused by the shifting sands. That is how we discovered the MIG's, a boy tripping over a tail fin and reporting it.
 
Was invading Iraq and going to war in Iraq, was it the right choice?

Absolutely yes. Was it the "right choice" to lose the ground gained (read lose the peace)?
No Let's hope Iran does not become such a problem that this fact becomes obvious in spades.
 
Generally I take a very liberal view. However, I am sick and ****ing tired of the US government supporting, propping up and condoning tyrants that clearly don't reflect the moral nature of this great nation (and doing so mainly out of fear that free people lead to a more dangerous and unpredictable world). Though I personally feel the actual war with Iraq was bungled from the start (thanks Rumsfeld/Cheney). The overall idea of creating a democracy in the middle east and removing a tyrant with a volunteer army nonetheless. I'm okay with it.

 
Green Balls said:
How I remember what was going on at the time...

The U.N. was sending in an investigation team. Saddam laid out all of his documentation on the table and said have a look, we're not up to anything. Several locations in Iraq had been searched by the U.N. and turned up nothing. Bush Jr. got his panties in a bunch saying the U.N. wasn't moving fast enough, we know there's WMD, then bombed Baghdad. Of course, he figured we would find the evidence while we were attacking Iraq so he could say, "see, I told you so". Of course, we never found anything.

If we had let the U.N. finish their job with the searches, soldiers like my brother would not have come home with COPD, we'd have a lot more solders still alive. Yeah, Saddam might still be alive, but he was nothing more than a placed puppet. Oh yeah, we put him in power in the first place. Funny how that works. Since he didn't work out, let's try changing the whole government so we can control the oil. That didn't work out too well either.

Saddam was just like our politicians, except we don't kill our politicians when they don't do what we want them to do.
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Well said GB!
 
TheDemSocialist said:
So we are nearing the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, and with that happening and looking back 10 years ago i have a quick question for you guys here.
With all that happened, the regime change in Iraq, all the deaths, controversery and what not; Was invading Iraq and going to war in Iraq, was it the right choice?
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No only no, but HELL NO! And this is true even if Iraq eventually becomes heaven on earth. It was costly, both in terms of money and, more importantly, lives. Not to mention our loss of credibility and how much it helped train those who will be killing people for decades to come. It was fool hardy, reckless, and likley caused more harm than good.

As for the Iraqis:

“You see these people,” he said. “They are here to sell birds to earn some money to help them live. People are not interested in that. They are desperate and want to see real change, so they’ve stopped looking at the news or remembering past events.”

In recent interviews here, most Iraqis, like Mr. Shimari, say they have given little or no thought to the looming anniversary, which falls on Wednesday, though the sight of foreign television news crews conducting stand-ups in the city this week will remind them that the war, for the conquerors anyway, is something to be reflected upon.

“If our situation were better than this, we would surely remember that day when the Americans came to free Iraq and gave us the chance to build a better future,” Mr. Shimari said. “But the Americans didn’t give us that chance. They did all the things possible to ensure that Iraq is going to be ruined.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/w...-to-ignore-10th-anniversary-of-war.html?_r=1&

They are not yet convinced we're heroes who only sought to free them.
 
Catawba said:
Well said GB!
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Thank you. Sometimes I feel like I am the only who remembers the truth without the media and government spin. The invasion of Iraq was just as bad, if not worse than the Vietnam conflict. Of course, we labelled that as a conflict so we didn't have to say we lost the war there either.
 
Tigger said:
There are two types of people in the world.... your Allies and your Enemies. If you aren't one of the first (which I don't believe the US actually has any of), then you ARE one of the second.
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GW Bush is alive and well and posting on DP.
 
Yes, it was the right choice. Better to be proactive and do something versus sitting on our asses like in the 1930's when the war came to us costing trillions and millions of lives.
 
Awesome! said:
Yes, it was the right choice. Better to be proactive and do something versus sitting on our asses like in the 1930's when the war came to us costing trillions and millions of lives.
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With what Navy or Air Force was Iraq going to bring "War" to us. I just don't get that kind of irrational fear in the most powerful country on the planet.
 
I'm a bit torn on this.

On one hand, it was pretty clear that the Bush administration had no real case to invade Iraq.
• Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks
• Iraq posed no imminent threat to the US or its allies
• Inspectors had more work to do
• The administration completely and intentionally screwed up the intelligence
• The administration completely botched the post-invasion management, astoundingly so
• It galvanized Muslims against the US

On the other hand....
• It was entirely reasonable to believe Hussein did have, and was willing to use, at a minimum, chemical weapons
• It's very likely that if embargoes were lifted, Iraq would stockpile chemical weapons again
• Hussein was undoubtedly hostile and aggressive
• He was a nasty piece of work to his own citizens

Ultimately, I think I have to come down on "no," but even knowing how things have turned out, it's not an easy answer.
 
Catawba said:
With what Navy or Air Force was Iraq going to bring "War" to us. I just don't get that kind of irrational fear in the most powerful country on the planet.
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You ever hear of a dirty nuke in the hands of terrorists? We don't have to worry about that anymore After GWB but now with Obama kissing all the Islamic butts in the ME I am not sure...
 
Because Obama pulled out to soon we may have to go back.....that is the sad thing.......
 
Navy Pride said:
You ever hear of a dirty nuke in the hands of terrorists? We don't have to worry about that anymore After GWB but now with Obama kissing all the Islamic butts in the ME I am not sure...
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There are terrorists all over the world, do the fearful expect us to invade and occupy the rest of the world? At the time of our attack, there were few countries that had less military capability than Iraq.
 
Invading Iraq, which was based on deliberate deception, outright lies, and personal animous, was the worst thing my country has done in my lifetime. I will never forgive those who orchestrated or condoned such an evil travesty.
 
Catawba said:
With what Navy or Air Force was Iraq going to bring "War" to us. I just don't get that kind of irrational fear in the most powerful country on the planet.
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Just look at history with regards to your point about irrational fear. WW1 was the war to end all wars right? If you said in the 1930's hundred of millions would die and we would spend trillions defeating Japan and Germany, people would have said the same thing. I concede its all subjective, and a What If game, but it doesn't take much brain power to make assumptions about how Saddam could F UP the middle east leading to an invasion much later costing us even more lives, bloodshed etc he doesn't need a navy or airforce to do that.
 
Awesome! said:
Just look at history with regards to your point about irrational fear. WW1 was the war to end all wars right? If you said in the 1930's hundred of millions would die and we would spend trillions defeating Japan and Germany, people would have said the same thing. I concede its all subjective, and a What If game, but it doesn't take much brain power to make assumptions about how Saddam could F UP the middle east leading to an invasion much later costing us even more lives, bloodshed etc he doesn't need a navy or airforce to do that.
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Did you really not know that we completely destroyed Iraq's capability to invade other countries in the fist Gulf war? I guess that would help explain the fear by people that were not aware of Desert Storm.
 
Catawba said:
Did you really not know that we completely destroyed Iraq's capability to invade other countries in the fist Gulf war? I guess that would help explain the fear by people that were not aware of Desert Storm.
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That didn't prevent him from genociding 50k Marsh Arabs and starving 400k children.
 
ecofarm said:
That didn't prevent him from genociding 50k Marsh Arabs and starving 400k children.
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We were his ally when Saddam was at his most murderous, so that did not represent a threat to us. Hell, Rumsfeld was over there shaking hands with him back then and Reagan had Iraq removed from the terrorist nations listing. Doesn't sound to me like we considered him much of a threat back then.
 
Catawba said:
We were his ally
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Yeah, yeah. I'm tired of explaining how US foreign policy changed from destabilization to nation building. That should be obvious.
 
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