The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[kandrathe]

Sometimes, when all your methods don't work, the correct response is to reassess whether every goal you have is really worth pulling out all the stops to achieve.

I guess. If you believe goal in this case was, "stop trying to kill me and my friends" as I tend to think, then the war was a way to bring that about. Most people can't get past the illusion that it was, "hey, give me all your oil." I don't believe it was ever about WMDs and not specifically about Al Queda, although I think Iraq's known involvement in terrorism was a large factor. Mostly, Saddam was one of the biggest pains in the butt the world has seen since Stalin.

There was a story in the news today about a guy who despite the efforts of stopping motorists, stomped, hit and kicked a 1 to 2 yrs old boy to death. Somewhere in this melee the cops shot and killed him. Personally, I could care less if it was during or after at this point. I felt the same way about Saddam, and his sons. Just or unjust, they deserved to die for the things they did to their own people. The unfortunate part of deposing him was the power vacuum left in the wake of de-Bathification, and the lack of a coalition plan to more quickly shore up the civil systems and authority. It is clear that Saddam had a post invasion plan(insurgency), al Quada/Ansar al Islam had a plan for post invasion (insurgency) and Iran had a post invasion plan(insurgency). It's too bad we didn't account for that in our planning.