HMM! Perhaps some of you folks have forgotten several FACTS!
#1: Saddam Hussein DID, in fact, have WMD's and an on-going research program for nuclear weapons!
No, he did not. There was no evidence. That's why the US government was cooking intelligence, with phony documents about Nigerian uranium and the like.
It is possible or even PROBABLE that, when Saddam was delaying the IAEA inspectors, the massive amounts of WMD materials were being re-located in another country!
There is no evidence for this, either. And even if he had had those weapons, he would have used them to defend against the invasion rather than hide them and wait to be "dethroned."
The US government never attacks countries that it
knows have WMDs (like North Korea). The fact that we attacked Iraq shows that the government knew that Saddam had no nukes.
#2: Saddam Hussein DID, in fact, violate UN sanctions a total of 17 times!
Did you know that nations like Israel and Morocco are in violation of more UN resolutions than Iraq was? Why doesn't the US have a problem with that?
When the Bush administration uncovered the "food for oil" scam, with many of the UN "elitists" involved, it became obvious that the UN (and the IAEA) might have been totally compromised, from pure GREED!
The US government uses the UN to gain legitimacy for its foreign policy when the UN agrees with US policy; otherwise, the US ignores the UN.
#3: It was "common knowledge" that Saddam Hussein was "payrolling" the Hezbollah and Hamas, and paying "tribute money" to the families of suicide bombers... that just might be classified as "terrorists"?
Hezbollah and Hamas are Israel's problem, not America's. Israel has killed more noncombatants than either of those groups while pursuing its ethnocentric, expansionist aims.
#4: Within the politicos in the USA, Bill Clinton (when he was still President), Al Gore (still in office as VP), Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry, and MANY others gave speeches that openly declared that Saddam Hussein had WMD's! As an aside, you have to wonder if we would have invaded Iraq ANYWAY, if Al Gore had won in 2000, or if John Kerry had won in 2004!
The Democrats are no better than the Republicans.
#5: Just prior to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush had an EXTREMELY high rating in all of the polls! For that matter, the majority of the American people kept on wondering WHEN we would attack, not WHY!
That's because most Americans are extremely gullible and actually believe what "their" government tells them. I doubt many Americans have heard of Operation Northwoods, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
The US government lies all the time as a first resort. If anyone from the White House or the Pentagon tells you the world is round, it's best to start thinking that it may be flat after all.
#6: The "fatalistic" aspect within the USA was falsely based on what became "vogue" to say....that the USA had attacked "unilaterally"! It was NOT "unilateral", for there was a total of 32 countries that supplied troops, logistics or intelligence! We were NOT alone, yet the news media kept on hyping the word "unilateral"!
It wasn't really unilateral, but a solid majority of troops sent into Iraq were American, with Britain sending some as well. The other nations were very minor players. The UN did not support the invasion because the evidence for the threat posed by Saddam was weak at best.
#7: The leftist anti-war organizations "warned" that "hundreds of thousands" of body bags would be filled with American troops! It sounded like even those organizations BELIEVED that Saddam had WMD's, and would use them!
Leftists can be just as gullible as right-wingers.
#8: If the invasion of Iraq was all about the oil, then WHY are we seeing such high gasoline prices right now? I'm not sure of what the price of gas is in Iraq at the moment, but it was a whopping 12-cents per gallon not too long ago.....because THEY are using THEIR oil!
The Iraq invasion was not about oil. It was the beginning of a plan to redraw the Middle East in a manner favorable to Israel at US expense. Do some online searching on the PNAC, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and neocons such as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith.
#9: We've "lost" the war, or it's "un-winnable"? Well, if the FACTS are correct, 16 of the 17 Iraqi provinces are relatively peaceful right now! The "insurgency" seems to be centralized, mostly within Baghdad! Maybe the news media folks, who RARELY venture out of the "green zone", aren't exactly reporting the TRUE story?
Whether the US eventually wins this clusterf__k or not, it sure wasn't worth the loss of lives, limbs, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and the moral standing of the US in the eyes of the world. Remember, the point of this war was never really to disarm Saddam of WMDs or, even better, bring freedom to the Iraqis. If the US government cared about freedom, we would not be trading with communist China.
#10: ....And, I just GOTTA use this one, since it has become so popular with the lefties: The invasion of Iraq was....."For the children"! Perhaps if/when Iraq is able to stand on its own feet and become "democratic", they won't feed the children into the "suicide bomber" factories that the fanatic "Mullahs" have made! Maybe the Iraqi kids of today won't become "Martyr's" later on!
Iraqi children were never bombing anyone. A lot of children did die, however, during the initial bombing of Iraq. Countless others lost limbs, hearing, or sight. Either the families of those children are now very grateful to us, or they're determined to get revenge. Maybe some of them are sneaking across the wide-open US border right now to get a little payback. That's how these wars make us "safe."