Iraq War was not so senseless after all

Not to mention the fact that our intel (although wrong) said he had immediate capabilites of WMD's as well as the fact that he prohibited inspections and stated that he did have WMD's. Our President and Congress had no choice but the course of action that they took. However, since then we have made many mistakes that need to be improved upon to include the fact that we are spending our money for their repairs as they are now able to rake in millions from oil. We have liberated and re-built the country and should not be spending our own funds to remain now that Iraq is more than capable of footing the bill.

According to military analyst Thomas Ricks the U.S. war in Iraq may only be half over. Political parties & militias go hand in hand in Iraq. Disputed elections are often a prelude to violence. More elections will be held toward the end of this year that are more consequential than the elections that were just held. These upcoming elections will come at a time when U.S. troops are drawing down in Iraq & scaling up in Afghanistan. It is true as the letter writer notes that Al Qaeda was not a factor in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. Our actions brought them there. During the U.S. surge of troops in Iraq (140,000 U.S. troops still remain in Iraq which is 8,000 more than when it began in Jan 2007) many Al Qaeda fighters who perfected their skills in Iraq (which became under the U.S. occupation a bigger training ground for terrorists than Afghanistan ever was under the Taliban) returned to Afghanistan & Pakistan to escalate the violence there. It is my strong suspicion that as the U.S. surges troops in Afghanistan, some of those fighters will return again to Iraq to take advantage of the decreased levels of U.S. troops there. United States will be playing whack-a-mole for years to come.

To those of you who served in Iraq: Thank you - you did not fight a war to remove THREE bad family members. You did not fight a war that ONE man sent you to. You fought a war that the WORLD sent you to. You fought a war with a country that the WORLD knew possessed weapons of mass dstruction. If the war had ended when we took Baghdad and the insurgency from Iran and other places had not begun, the WORLD would have relished in THEIR victory. But long wars are dropped in the lap of the US. Difficult wars are never something the WORLD fights - only the US. Excepting Vietnam, we finish things. Thank you Operation Iraqi Freedom vets!

I too thank the members of the Armed Forces. Whether you served during peace or war. As:You are wrong on 2 counts. "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday ordered all U.N. inspectors and support staff, humanitarian workers and U.N. observers along the Iraq-Kuwait border to evacuate Iraq after U.S. threats to launch war...But Saddam made a last-minute bid to avert war, admitting that Iraq had once possessed weapons of mass destruction to defend itself from Iran and Israel - but insisting that it no longer has them. ' CBS News. Jesus:You too are wrong."After failing to secure U.N. authorization to use force to disarm Iraq, President Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to step down or face war in a speech Monday night." Sorry for the c&p. Since just about every modern war in the ME, from the founding of Israel, the Mujahideen against the Soviets, Hamas, etc has been fought by insurgency, it was not hard to estimate that it would have happened in Iraq. The most critical error is that Iraq was the main buffer against the growing power of Iran. By toppling Saddam, we have let the Iran genie out of the bottle.

Again Justus proves himself a racist idiot.

I reread justus's post and can't seem to find where he(she) mentioned race. Projection?

War is hell. America should defend itself. Will it during this administration or will another 9-11 be invited?

Our new president is ready to fight his own war. He is chomping at the bits to send our kids off to be murdered in Afghanistan. He wants to double the number of troops on the ground now. This has got to be a great idea. Heck, ask any Russian. I'll bet he will have web cams up 24/7 at Dover for everyone to see our heroes returning home in caskets.

I don't agree with this at all! I think we need to stay in the war! You might disagree and say oh but think of the people in the military would you want them to be sacrificing themselves for us? Don't think I haven't considered this becasue I have. My dad has been to Irag and Afghanistan twice so I've had to worry about him and miss him everday. Believe me I understand the families viewpoint on all of this. The other thing though is almost all of the soldiers I've talked to about this have agreed that we should keep the war. If the people risking their lives think it's a good idea and they're willing to die to do it how is it considered wrong or unjustified or usless? Here's the thing though you can make a better future for your kids by supporting the troops in this war, you can help protect them! Isn't that what all good parents want? I seriously don't see how this war is a bad idea! Besides the financial costs theres not really anything. Would you put a price on building a better tomorrow?

what an idiot to write this.jk as soon as the us pulls out the shia,kurds,and sunnis will have a battle royal for the oil fields.saddam would never let this happen.so in the final analysis,the war was a failure just like the [filtered word] who started it,and left if for someone else to clean up, like all brats do.

Sorry for all of the naysayers, but my Uncle was a civilian constractor for Blackwater and now works for the NSA and just shakes his head at all the people that thinks we have been a failure in Iraq. He tells me all the time how things are so much better over there than anyone in the media portrays it, (Fox Included.) He told me that those people over there love us and are so thankful that we got rid of Saddam. Unfortunately, he says, the media shows the 3 America-haters and suddenly we are evil murderers.

This letter is mostly wishful thinking, and no matter how much we all want to believe that Iraq has a future which is brighter that it was under Sadam, the truth is somewhat less rosy. Before the Iraqi state was destroyed by our invasion and 13 years of economic sanctions, Iraq was one of the most highly developed Arab countries in the Middle East, but it was practicing terror against its own population. Even if democracy could be installed, it would not end terrorist violence. Historically, this has always been the result when western style democracy has been attempted in non-western countries. Iraq is evloving into into a Shia-dominated theocracy like the one we see in Iran. It may be better that what has been replaced, but the US will have to accept that, in place of pure democracy, if the forces of terrorism are to be weakened. The idea that these countries will ever accept the US as a model of government is fantasy. Iraq has a future of either secular tyranny (like under Sadam) or Islamist rule (theocracy). The American-backed government is a battle ground of sectarian forces. A failed state dependent on the Shia militias.

Patriciathomas, perhaps you could enlighten me on how the Iraq War had anything to do with American or global security. The Bush administration represented the attack on Iraq as a response to the threat of WMD development. But that could have been dealt with by rigorous inspection procedures and other methods. Even had Sadam had WMD's, an analysis by the CIA concluded that he was likely to use them only in the context of American invasion. The real reason was to lessen our dependance on the Saudis for oil, because the administration considered them to be involved in terrorism and we needed a more secure source of oil in the Gulf. During the first Gulf War, nobody pretended it had anything to do with democracy or controling terrorism. And Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 911. 911 and WMD's were pretexts for war, not objectives.

Furthermore, patriciathomas, if you are all set to blame Obama completely for the next (God forbid) 911, shouldn't you be fair and say that Bush was at least partly responsible for the first 911? Recall that he was playing golf and clearing brush that summer while ignoring all the warnings from his intelligence community. It's a pleasant fantasy to believe that we should defend ourselves by nuking that part of Pakistan that is harboring and creating the terrorists, like the ones that attacked Mumbai last November. But how to you propose we should go about that? Invoking pre-emptive war again? You know, the famous doctrine that the Wordsmith from Wasilla was clueless about. I am curious to hear your views on this and hope you will respond. I need simplistic explainations and miss the coherence of Republican virtue under Bush.

jedex6 writes TRUTH! We hear crickets from patriciathomas and other national security hawks including Mike Ryan and The Augusta Chronicle editorial staff (ACES).

Saddam is gone but that could have been accomplished without a war costing 4200 lives and upwards of 4 trillion in expansion of the debt ceiling which has been a major component of the recent economic downturn. As I pointed out in a letter to this paper on 10-2-2002, we could have paid his own people 50 million to place a NATO round squarely between his eyes and ended up with less of a mess than we now have in that country. Are we ever going to learn to use focused approaches to these types of problems?

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

jedex6, you write like a horribly uninformed (though good Dem) person with a short memory. (good Dem) Clinton didn't give a turn over until moments before leaving the white house and many of the files containing important intelligence were damaged by his staff. His cohorts had also erected barriers between various investigative and law enforcement agencies to prevent them from sharing information. "All of the signs" that you refer to were obvious on 9-11. Not before, unless you're referring to your amazing powers of hindsight. What a good Dem you are. Way to rewrite history, or re-remember it, or re-interpret it. You're such a good Dem. I bet all of your really good information can be found on CNN or PBS.

PT, NOW I hear the crickets!