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Was the Iraq War "Worth it"

Was the Iraq War Worth it?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 6.4%
  • No

    Votes: 65 83.3%
  • Other

    Votes: 8 10.3%

  • Total voters
    78
Yes because the inmportance of the world wars, was that of the IRaq war. :roll: Sorry your comments acting like all three are the same is ridiculous and deserve to be called out as such.

When Japan attacked us a total of 2,335 U.S. servicemen were killed and 1,143 were wounded. Sixty-eight civilians were also killed and 35 were wounded.

Please tell us how many Americans were attacked, injured, and killed with Iraq at the time of the no-fly zones. Again your comaprison is idiotic.
How many Americans were killed by the Germans? Almost none.
Hawaii was not a US state at the time either, so we could have just pulled up stakes and left. Or we could have just fought them only.
 
Hindsight is valuable because it gives us a perspective to learn from our mistakes and, hopefully, not make the same mistakes in the future.

Then again, the human species seems hell-bent on repeating history ad nauseam, so maybe we're screwed anyway. :shrug:

I'm on the record on another forum, in 2003 before we invaded saying this is exactly what would happen in Iraq...and it did and it makes me sick. I take no pleasure in having been right.

That someone with no geopolitical background could KNOW (and I did know...it was clear as a bell) and not one person properly advised the last administration? Or maybe they did but it just didnt fit their agenda.
 
No different then when we went to Europe, twice.

Those were declared wars with a known end game. Quite different from our current form of undeclared imperial interventionism.
 
You don't consider firing, as a government, on US planes that are enforcing a no-fly zone instituted by the UN (to prevent further genocide) to be an attack on the US?

Are you claiming governments can attack our military and we will not consider it an attack on the US?




You've never heard of priorities? Perhaps someone could explain how those work and why. You do realize that the US cannot do everything at the same time, right? And that failing to do everything at the same time is not an indication of hypocrisy, I hope.

Regarding nK, it's not a good idea to invade a regime with nukes. Regarding Cuba, we did invade but JFK chickened out at the air support.



Yeah, sure. The US is an evil monster that never really wants to do anything good. Great Satan.

Let someone else fly planes over that airspace. Pull ours out and let the UN find a different solution before committing thousands and thousands of lives...for nothing.

You gloss over the hypocrisy that we didnt fly any planes over Rwanda at all. Why was Iraq a priority? Rwanda came years earlier. NK....way earlier.

You are just making excuses. No one even knows why we invaded Iraq except the last GWB and Cheney (basically). I have an idea but no proof.
 
Those were declared wars with a known end game. Quite different from our current form of undeclared imperial interventionism.

"known endgame?" Really? We knew the outcome before we entered the wars? Hardly.
 
Ok but Saddam attacked the US, right?

Isn't this rather moot?

The question was whether it was worth the $4 to 6T, the 4,000+ American lives, the 2.5 million American service members whose lives (and the lives of their families) will never be the same because they have been tainted with the smell of death, the 50,000 Iraqi lives lost and the millions displaced all to remove a two bit dictator.

Economic Cost Summary | Costs of War
Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion - The Washington Post
Harvard study: Iraq, Afghan wars will cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion - UPI.com


Was it worth it? Hell no! It was one of the dumbest things America has ever done (we won't even go to out the action fueled hatred of America in the region and probably promoted terrorism)...... Let me also point out that while Saddam was a bad guy; he did hold a country together that wasn't really country but a collection of three peoples that hated each other.......as evident that they go after each other as soon as law and order breaks down (as they did in 2004 and are doing again)


Iraq was as stupid as stupid gets..... and you want to argue over the semantics of whether Iraq attacked the US. What difference does it make? It sounds a little like "little Jimmy hit me so I broke his neck..."
 
Not true
""There were about 700 inspections, and in no case did we find weapons of mass destruction," said Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat called out of retirement to serve as the United Nations' chief weapons inspector from 2000 to 2003; from 1981 to 1997 he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We went to sites [in Iraq] given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find something" - a stash of nuclear documents, some Vulcan boosters, and several empty warheads for chemical weapons. " U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix faults Bush Administration for lack of "critical thinking" in Iraq


"Through the inspections conducted so far, we have obtained a good knowledge of the industrial and scientific landscape of Iraq, as well as of its missile capability but, as before, we do not know every cave and corner. Inspections are effectively helping to bridge the gap in knowledge that arose due to the absence of inspections between December 1998 and November 2002.

More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been collected at different sites. Three-quarters of these have been screened using our own analytical laboratory capabilities at the Baghdad Centre (BOMVIC). The results to date have been consistent with Iraq's declarations." Full text: Hans Blix's briefing to the UN security council | World news | theguardian.com


So what? Many countries do this. Many countries we support do this.


Iraq had lost all its weapons. And i quote the great Condy and Powell in 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUNsv66m8Rw


"Hostility"? Really?


:lamo Also not true.
Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda not linked, Pentagon says - CNN.com
Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed (washingtonpost.com)


The PLF? Or giving money to suicide bomber families?



Also, simply not true
http://www.debatepolitics.com/gener...-all-proved-righty-iraq-2.html#post1063420347

It was passed with a bipartisan vote.
 
Isn't this rather moot?

The question was whether it was worth the $4 to 6T, the 4,000+ American lives, the 2.5 million American service members whose lives (and the lives of their families) will never be the same because they have been tainted with the smell of death, the 50,000 Iraqi lives lost and the millions displaced all to remove a two bit dictator.

Economic Cost Summary | Costs of War
Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion - The Washington Post
Harvard study: Iraq, Afghan wars will cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion - UPI.com


Was it worth it? Hell no! It was one of the dumbest things America has ever done (we won't even go to out the action fueled hatred of America in the region and probably promoted terrorism)...... Let me also point out that while Saddam was a bad guy; he did hold a country together that wasn't really country but a collection of three peoples that hated each other.......as evident that they go after each other as soon as law and order breaks down (as they did in 2004 and are doing again)


Iraq was as stupid as stupid gets..... and you want to argue over the semantics of whether Iraq attacked the US. What difference does it make? It sounds a little like "little Jimmy hit me so I broke his neck..."

Well put.
 
How many Americans were killed by the Germans? Almost none.
Hawaii was not a US state at the time either, so we could have just pulled up stakes and left. Or we could have just fought them only.

Again, the Iraq War PALES in compraison to the importance of the two World Wars. No comparison.
 
Again, the Iraq War PALES in compraison to the importance of the two World Wars. No comparison.
Find me quotes from Hitler and or Mussolini about destroying the US and the west on almost daily basis. How many times did they burn American flags?
How many hits inside our borders did they get killing thousands?
 
Well one argument about Iraq was the one that has happened. It was the one I thought would happen. According to the news, the religious side in power can't treat the side that is not in power fairly (as I expected). The religious side not in power resents not being treated fairly (as I expected). The religious side not in power agitates until enough steam has built up to actually attack militarily (as I thought would likely happen). In no way did I think theses things were merely plausible. Some of them I thought to be near 100% likely. Others I thought to be more likely than not, say 75% likely.

This whole thing has played out exactly as I thought it would from start to finish, (start of hostilities under Bush, until our departure) except for one thing: I didn't think we would get them to actually stop fighting, and would have to leave while there was a small amount of fighting still occurring. But even when we did, I knew it was quite likely that fighting would start again. You will have to excuse me if I trust my judgement at this point more than yours.

If you didn't, it wouldn't be your judgement, it would be your guess.

However, the sectarian divide in Iraqi culture is overplayed as a naturally occurring issue. It is easy to grasp and an easy model to fit lots of things into, but does not match many of the conditions on the ground. Lots of Iraqi families have Shia and Sunni branches, the sects mixed peacefully in the big cities, the Shia fought honorably and bravely (and were proud of having done so) for Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war. Sectarian conflict, to an extensive degree, had to be fomented in Iraq by AMZ and his doppelganger, MAS. Sunni opposition was originally tribal, not religious in nature; the 1920 Brigade and like elements were nationalistic former regime elements and affiliates, not Wahhabi (and probably still are not: ISIL might be just a particularly useful human shield for the Anbar Tribes to establish de facto independence). Even today actors like Sistani (who is big) are appealing to nationalism rather than straight sectarianism. The main players who push and have pushed sectarian divides are the AQ elements and the Iranian elements - it was not as organic as the simple narrative requires.

So you may keep your judgement (it is yours), but I think you are still exaggerating its importance as it currently sits. But we are traveling in your direction, to be sure.
 
That doesnt mean that the "facts" presented were infact just a bunch of BS.

No. The facts presented were what we knew at the time. Some of which (for example, the usage of mobile production platforms) turned out to be incorrect. Some of that was the result of tainted reporting, and some of it was the result of a successful MILDEC campaign by Saddam to convince the world (well, the Iranians) that he still had a production and storage capacity. The assessments given were problematic because they were built in part off of tainted reporting streams (such as described), and were over zealous in their levels of confidence. Even today it is not possible to utilize just the data that was available in the winter of 2002 and come to the conclusion that Saddam had given up and destroyed his WMD program - all you can justify is reducing the confidence levels.
 
Interesting - the sheer number of people who said "no" to the poll indicates that it must include quite a few of the conservatives on this forum...yet so many of them are outraged that Obama isn't more eager to put more boots on the ground elsewhere.

That's an interesting assessment. Can you cite this rage?
 
No...it could have been had we left a military presence there to handle the subsequent problems with al Qaeda which we knew was not only possible but probable.

Afghanistan you ask? Same scenario in the making. If you're gonna do it...you might want to do it right.
 
With the situation in Iraq unfolding do you believe that the Iraq War was worth it?

21 mostly Saudis blew up a few buildings and killed a few thousand Americans on our soil. We went after Saddam in Iraq to get Bin Laden, who we believed was probably in Pakistan or possibly Afghanistan, claiming that we were really looking for WMD's, which had been destroyed or moved, or never existed. We decided that we would establish a democratic all inclusive government in an area where the people had been fighting for hundreds of years, and accomplish it in a couple of years.

What could possibly go wrong with that?
 
Find me quotes from Hitler and or Mussolini about destroying the US and the west on almost daily basis. How many times did they burn American flags?
How many hits inside our borders did they get killing thousands?

Using your logic, you're saying we should invade North Korea and Iran too, they do the same thing. Boy, you sure do like wars.
 
No. The facts presented were what we knew at the time. Some of which (for example, the usage of mobile production platforms) turned out to be incorrect. Some of that was the result of tainted reporting, and some of it was the result of a successful MILDEC campaign by Saddam to convince the world (well, the Iranians) that he still had a production and storage capacity. The assessments given were problematic because they were built in part off of tainted reporting streams (such as described), and were over zealous in their levels of confidence. Even today it is not possible to utilize just the data that was available in the winter of 2002 and come to the conclusion that Saddam had given up and destroyed his WMD program - all you can justify is reducing the confidence levels.

At that dandy. "They were facts at the time" but now they are just a bunch of BS. In fact much of the reporting done at the time especially by Hans Blix was reported before the war...
 
I think this FOX News reporter about said it all.

"MEGYN KELLY to DICK CHENEY: In your op-ed, you write as follows: 'Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.' But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well, sir. You said there were no doubts that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the Iraq insurgency was in its last throes back in 2005. And you said after our intervention, extremists would have to "rethink their strategy of jihad." Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many? "


Megyn Kelly to Dick Cheney: "Time and Time Again, History Has Proven You Got It Wrong" on Iraq | Video | RealClearPolitics
 
That doesnt mean that the "facts" presented were infact just a bunch of BS.

Those were the goals agreed to and achieved for the most part. A bipartisan success. What more do you want? You seem to be trying to redefining success out of existence.

Was Saddam removed? Yes he was. That was a goal agreed to across the aisle.

Was all threat of WMD removed? Yes, it was. Another goal agreed to across the aisle.

Was Iraqi support for international terrorism stopped? Yes, it was.

And so on and so forth.
 
Those were the goals agreed to and achieved for the most part. A bipartisan success. What more do you want? You seem to be trying to redefining success out of existence.
No they were reasons given to invade and occupy Iraq.


Was Saddam removed? Yes he was. That was a goal agreed to across the aisle.
Ok..

Was all threat of WMD removed? Yes, it was. Another goal agreed to across the aisle.
Missing something. There was no thread of WMD's because they didnt exist!

Was Iraqi support for international terrorism stopped? Yes, it was.
The "support of terrorism" at the time was giving money to families whose son/daughter/mother/ or father was a suicide bomber.
 
At that dandy. "They were facts at the time" but now they are just a bunch of BS. In fact much of the reporting done at the time especially by Hans Blix was reported before the war...

I'm not sure that last sentence says what you intended it to say.

And yes, they were the facts that we had at the time. Would you prefer that your policy makers make decisions off of things other than the facts available to them? What would you replace it with? FDR used to set the price of gold around what numbers were traditionally lucky, so I suppose the "I feel lucky" option has a precedent.
 
I think this FOX News reporter about said it all.

"MEGYN KELLY to DICK CHENEY: In your op-ed, you write as follows: 'Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.' But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well, sir. You said there were no doubts that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the Iraq insurgency was in its last throes back in 2005. And you said after our intervention, extremists would have to "rethink their strategy of jihad." Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many? "


Megyn Kelly to Dick Cheney: "Time and Time Again, History Has Proven You Got It Wrong" on Iraq | Video | RealClearPolitics

Cheney's response was pretty good. Maybe you should read it.
 
I'm not sure that last sentence says what you intended it to say.

And yes, they were the facts that we had at the time. Would you prefer that your policy makers make decisions off of things other than the facts available to them? What would you replace it with? FDR used to set the price of gold around what numbers were traditionally lucky, so I suppose the "I feel lucky" option has a precedent.

You keep saying those were the facts we had? I think you need to learn what the meaning of a fact is.

Definition- fact

: something that truly exists or happens : something that has actual existence

: a true piece of information


All we had was misinformation that was at best, guess work.
 
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