Iraq Soccer team against Bush propaganda.

The central point is that Saddam Hussein's history indicated that he was not someone who ought to be allowed to develop and stockpile WMD. Yes, I know you could say that about a lot of people, or maybe even everyone, but realistically, the world would have been at great risk had someone like Hussein been allowed to amass a more and more deadly stockpile of WMD. It would have been foolhardy in the extreme to allow him to continue developing and stockpiling WMD.

In his memoir, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Bush Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

In a 1996 Frontline Special on The Gulf War General Norman Schwarzkoph spoke these prophetic words.

Gen. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: On the question of going to Baghdad_ if you remember the Vietnam war, we had no international legitimacy for what we did. As a result, we, first of all, lost the battle in world public opinion. Eventually, we lost the battle at home.

In the Gulf war, we had great international legitimacy in the form of eight United Nations resolutions, every one of which said, "Kick Iraq out of Kuwait." Did not say one word about going into Iraq, taking Baghdad, conquering the whole country and- and hanging Saddam Hussein. That's point number one.

Point number two- had we gone on to Baghdad, I don't believe the French would have gone and I'm quite sure that the Arab coalition would not have gone. The coalition would have ruptured and the only people that would have gone would have been the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

And, oh, by the way, I think we'd still be there. We'd be like a dinosaur in a tar pit. We could not have gotten out and we'd still be the occupying power and we'd be paying 100 percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq.

Setting a date and sticking to it is a tremendously bad idea. All that does is let the terrorists and evil-doers know when they can come in and create chaos and take over.

We should merely stay there until we are no longer needed. No longer, no shorter.

A few points... we were not allowing him to continue to develop and stockpile WMD (what a catch all term). He was contained.

Once the permanent government is in place and their army is fully trained and staffed and the police forces have things under control, you will see an American exodus.

mesquite wrote:

A few points... we were not allowing him to continue to develop and stockpile WMD (what a catch all term). He was contained.

How do you contain someone who at any time can smuggle a couple of WMD into your country and use them to kill a mammoth number of people then deny involvement? What would have stopped him from doing this? Do you assert that he couldn't have come up with a sufficiently clever way to get the components through our borders?

No one ever claimed that every iraqi supported being freed, there are still plenty of saddam supporters in iraq who hate that people were liberated from their yoke of terror.

If you thought about it for a moment, who trained these athletes?

Brandon9000 wrote:

mesquite wrote:

A few points... we were not allowing him to continue to develop and stockpile WMD (what a catch all term). He was contained.

How do you contain someone who at any time can smuggle a couple of WMD into your country and use them to kill a mammoth number of people then deny involvement? What would have stopped him from doing this? Do you assert that he couldn't have come up with a sufficiently clever way to get the components through our borders?

Why fixate on Saddam? If you think creating more enemies alleviates the problem, you are mistaken. And by WMD you exact fear is what?

Scenario: Saddam smuggled all his weapons out of Iraq before we got there, including some chemical and biological agents.

Now we don't know WHO has them. And this is a prefferable scenario to KNOWING who has the weapons? How?

Cycloptichorn

p.s. It sounds as if you believe sanctions and blockades can never work again; after all, we can never fully contain a country with 100% accuracy. Do you propose with getting rid of sanctions altogether?