Think before you answer these questions

I think you know what I mean.

If not, then I'm sorry. You don't know what I meant. But what you think I meant isn't what I actually meant.

That I understood. :wink:

Go back to that Iraqi Weblog I posted: they had a protest march in Baghdad to oppose the terrorists.

Imagine....a people who have been imprisoned in their own country for 30 years, just organized a protest march.

That's the miracle of freedom of speech.

Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue!

Re: Think before you answer these questions


Let me throw my hat in the ring with a (relatively) brief response:

1. Yes. Saddam no longer in power in Iraq is a good thing. He was a terrible person. He killed dissidents. He was a dictator. He invaded a country not too many years ago. I am not wishing his return

2. No. It was not a good thing, what we did. If your going to remove the source of power from a country, you should have a solid backup plan. It is plainly obvious that we would win, and it seems the administration was planning for a victory parade instead of a solid leader to take control once Saddam was gone.

Now, there is a vacuum of power, terrorists are streaming into the country (who would not be there if Saddam was still present...he didn't support Al Quaida, no matter how badly the administration wants to believe it), and the people are getting angry. Sadly, Bush is in panic mode, with elections only a year away, and he wants to find the prettiest way to cut and run. We will leave the Iraqis with no true leader. Someone who we DON'T want in power is going to come in, lead the people and cause problems for us down the line.

3. Onto the last question. There were a few options we could have pursued. Obviously Iraq was not posing a threat to anyone, and the sanctions were crippling his country. Case in point, someone I know just came back from the war and laughed when he spoke of how in one battle, roughly 10 of our tanks completely destroyed over 50 or their's. After the battle, they looked closer and saw why: The Iraqi's tanks were outdated by about 40 years. They didn't stand a chance.

So what could we have done?
We could have kept sanctions, we could have opted to use a "carrot"
approach and offered to lift certain aspects of the sanctions under certain conditions, we could have waited until more proof of his "iminent danger" was established, we could have waited until we had more of the worlds backing before military action was considered and worked with them together on a post war plan, we could have been more generous to projects in Iraq after the war, instead of hoarding it all to ourselves afterward (not we're in trouble). There were plently of things that we could have / should have / didn't do.

heywood, i agree with you wholeheartedly. i would have preferred if it was done smarter, better, more thoughtfully. i would have preferred if we did do it out of geniuinly wanting to help the iraqi people instead fo doing it for oil and telling the world we did because we found evidence of weapons that didn't actually exist. and i would prefer it if we aren't such complete hypocrits as to take out one dictator but not do anything about the rest such as saudi arabia, the numerous south african nations etc because we don't stand to gain much financially from doing so.

but i AM pleased that someone finally got around to doing it instead of sitting on our butts waiting for the right moment for another decade. we should've taken out saddam during the gulf war. we shouldn't have made him an ally and supplied him weapons eventhough we know how cruel a dictator he was in the first place. but bush wasn't around back then. those weren't his mistakes. atleast he did something about it though instead of just waiting around.

As far as I can tell, it merely indicates that whether you think removing Saddam was a good thing is the only issue he's asking you to consider. You and a few others are jumping several steps ahead and accusing him of pigeonholing you based on your answer--which he might intend to do--but your complaints sound as if he has already done it.

The questions seem valid to me. Loaded, sure, but valid. Complaining about the questions just prevents any discussion of anything but complaints about the questions. If that's what y'all want, groovy, but it seems a bit silly to me. Just answer the friggin' questions, then tell him why he CAN'T infer what he wants (what you assume he wants) based on your answer. (Just a suggestion, of course.)