| Kratos0518 said: I havn't read all the posts, but I think a majority of posts are just trying to rewrite history after the fact. I remember right after 9/11 something like close to 90% of the country were screaming for somebody's head to pay for the tragedy. Now lets imagine you were the president of the most powerful nation on earth, tasked with the responsibility of keeping Americans safe at all costs. A MAJORITY of your intelligence agencies and european allies present slam dunk evidence and you didn't act on it, and Saddam was still in power today and some other tragedy happend it will be all you revisionists screaming for Bushes head. I don't have any love for some of his decisions, but he did what he felt was right. So Saddam is still in power because we havn't invaded we still believe he has WMDs, the Iranians are very threatened they are further along with their own weapons program than now, the Isrealis are also very uncomfortable and threatened, that could be an alternate reality. So Bush is damned cos he acted and he is damned he he didn't act, he's in no win win situation. |
I disagree with this statement. While there was (ultimately questionable) evidence that WMDs were possibly being created in Iraq, there was little evidence of terrorist links, which really cuts the 9/11 connection out - the rage for that allowed us to invade Afghanistan, which was a questionable move, because most of what was done there was quickly undone, and we left an already crumbling country in an even greater state of decay (I wasn't one of the ones screaming for blood). Furthermore, there are many other nations (see: North Korea) more hostile to the US without terrorist links and with a much clearer indication of nuclear capabilities, so the justification for invasion of Iraq seems flimsy at best. I also question that a "majority" of the intelligence agencies and european allies were presenting "slam dunk evidence" - that sounds pretty revisionist to me as well. As far as I could tell, no new indications of WMDs had emerged for, well, a long time, and there was no more indication that Iraq was a threat than 5 years previously. What there wasn't five years previously was a psychological hook in the American people needed to send them to war, which emerged with the 9/11 attacks. Finally having something to replace the Soviets as an evasive international threat that justified almost any action, the US went straight back to its interventionist foreign policy that it had practiced for the majroity of the 20th century.
Fortunately for us and unfortunately for the Bush administration, it was so sloppily done this time that even Americans didn't entirely buy into their bullshit.
