Except when most people shouted "No war ever" then said... "Nevermind."

There really isn't much difference at all between Libya and Iraq outside of direct commiting of invasion forces.  Not even ground forces, since the CIA are "on the ground" as of current... an apparently have been for weeks.

Neither does the "With the UN mandate" hold up, as it's been discovered that Obama signed an order to covertly start supplying the rebels with weapons WEEKS before the UN mandate.

Heck, he did this without even notifying the 8 people in congress he is supposed to notify when he acts covertly.

I guess he wasn't lieing when he said he envied Reagan.

I mean, everything about this war seems... worse.  In every regard then the other two.  If the rebels are to be believed... The army is slipping through the lulls in the airstrikes already.

Seems like the UN is going to be forced to decide to either go farther, or end up with the slaughter happening anyway but us having bombed Libya for a while.

Tell me about it, there are Libyan citizens involved in the revolt as well but a large number of the ones fighting in rebellion are illegal immigrants to Libya.

Not that it makes a difference he's still killing folks over there, but by all rights he can view them as an invading force and those citzens as traitors, the semantics boil down to the same practicality.

The ultimate agenda though is to disolve the mans regime and that is working, I'm moving into absolutely sure that the west chose the wrong enemy to back. It's a semantics game in the end, they want democracy which means they want an Islamic government; how is that democratic and not theocratic? Because thats what they want. Most people stop at representation of the common folk when understanding democracy and do not see that as much as democracy protects the people from government it also when executed properly protects the people from themselves.

The main difference between this and Iraq is that in this case there was a clear and immediate danger of a massacre of the Libyan people. In the Iraq case there was a tyrant who was being no more tyrantish than he had been for the last however many years.

Some interventions are acceptable to me - first Iraq war, Afghanistan, Somalia and now Libya. Others are not because they are essentially baseless - Vietnam, second Iraq war.

I'm curious how you would liken the Iraq war to Vietnam - I mean aside from them being wars maybe you could share a reason or two why the Iraq war was not needed or is unacceptable?

No worse than other countries. I understand the rebellion for civil liberties, and support it, but I think the US should have stayed out. This should be something that their people handle, not outside forces. Remember that the rebel forces took a major city by themselves, then were kicked back out. I'm pretty sure they still have strong enough fighting force to handle themselves. If anything, some guns might help, do not send troops.

And if I remember my history, the Arab monarch that Gaddafi ousted was much worse. Some acts of questionable imprisonment and other acts can be seen in all countries, including the USA, but what Gaddafi is doing is still not something I'm going to say shouldn't be questioned. America just should not be involved past maybe selling some weapons to help get us out of debt.

And why are we in Libya if it isn't for oil? Shouldn't we also be in Yemen and the others if this was to prevent something or "protect Israel"? Really, think about it. We have wasted our money in the middle east so far, so why not take over and change the entire middle east into what the USA envisions?

No other country was on the cusp of genocide. The rebels were and are laughably bad as a fighting force.

@dib8r. I liken Vietnam to Iraq in the fact that both were fought for US interests rather than the interests of the people of the country. In the case of Vietnam it was because of Communism and in Iraq it was so G.W could look like he was doing something in the 'war on terror' as far as I can see.

Hypothetical scenario, what if America did not get involved militarily with the Mesopotamian region? Well first and foremost no American soldiers would have died, the Iraqi Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party would still hold it's iron grip on it's people, Osama Bin Laden would still be manufacturing chemical weapons for use of genocide against the Shia' and the the revolt in Libya would have been stemmed already because Qaddafi would still have WMD's and that's just painting a picture of the short term.

The long term would be that Saddam's rule would of ended leaving his two sons who more than likely would not have shared power or ceded power to the other -- would cause a bloody civil war sending Iraq to a point where some foreign body would have to get involved... logically the most eager nations would be Saudi Arabia with intent to bolster the Sunni ranks and then in response Iran in support of the Shia' ranks, and now keep in mind each of these regimes would want to be recognized as liberators of a sort. The last would be Turkey for the Kurdish representation, and there we have it another Congo right there in the resource capital of the world. Then what would the developed world be saying when these events unfold? How could we let this happen? How much money would have been lost to pay the insanely high oil prices? Three? Five? Seven Trillion dollars? All indications are that it would of been impenetrably higher than the mind could contemplate.

But America did get involved.

After 9/11, all American intelligence told us the one's responsible were in Afghanistan but it would have been irresponsible to push into Afghanistan without securing Iraq, to put it plainly Saddam Hussein had to be dealt with before Osama Bin Laden and a full engagement in Afghanistan would leave room for Saddam who up until the point of his death had refused to allow UN inspectors to search his facilities for WMD's. George Bush had to make a decision on if America should engage in the war of demand or start an unpopular war to secure the the front of another war. I'm not being too kind either when I say that the mans heart was in the right place but he had not the mind to do it efficiently. I must add also that though it took much longer than it should have the war in Iraq came to a successful end for the US.

Well what is success? If I haven't argued this clearly enough in the opening then I'll do it again but from the inverse juxtaposition. By America engaging war on Iraq we have allowed for through the efforts of American and Iraqi soldiers for free elections thus political ideologies, free press, less corrupt economic systems, not even arguably a more humane society and the thanks of many Iraqis some of which built monuments in honor of the soldiers who protect them and us while we sleep. These are the people who want independence but are afraid of what will happen when the last American leaves Iraqi soil.

Success is when Qaddafi decides that holding on to WMD's isn't worth it and surrenders his weapons which America had long suspected him of having to not the UN or NATO or any European Nation but to the UK and the US; those weapons after analysis back tracked to Pakistan and North Korea.

Success is ending the Mesopotamian powers of Al Qaeda which had seen it's end to it's major chemical based functions purportedly by the actions of President Clinton's bombings on suspected factories in Sudan. It's odd how people can even suggest that Al Qaeda doesn't exist or that the Iraq war is a farce and all these event's were set in motion by the US or Zionists. The truth is always found in the inconvenient because mistakes are always indifferent, the US and UK went into Iraq under the idea that Saddam had WMD's but it just so happens that Clinton had bombed the correct factories so the ones he had were completely degraded. It's not a question of if he ever had them because he did, he used them on American troops in Kuwait and on his own people. The truth is that we thought he still had more but he didn't and that's a good thing, it also shows that there was never a conspiracy of any sort due to the lack of convenience. One thing is for certain if the US did not engage Iraq Saddam would have had a fresh supply of WMD's from the Mesopotamian Al Qaeda front and if America had left Iraq any sooner than the Iraqi's needed that various factions of radicalism would have been even more so present and forceful there.

The most successful part of the Iraq war was that it battle hardened to American troops, they have seen combat and can make brilliant field decisions while in that area of the world. The experience that they took from Iraq carried over to Afghanistan and soon will be needed in Pakistan and eventually maybe Lebanon.

The idea that America is a paper tiger went out the window once America set out troops on the middle east, but the paper tiger was shot with a flaming arrow on it's way out when America also launched an attack in Afghanistan. I'm talking about cases like Syria who immediately began talks of recognizing Lebanon's sovereignty to where now Hezbollah receives larger funding from Iran than they do from Damascus.

The fact is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would prove only insanity by invading the gulf or Pakistan or claiming a Nuclear power or other WMD while American troops rest on two of his borders.

There are four reasons that a countries sovereignty may be revoked before the Geneva convention.
1. Genocide
2. The Illegal Annexing of another sovereign nation
3. Usage of unsanctioned WMD's
4. The violation of human rights

On all four accounts Saddam was long overdue to be removed from power by any UN member and the UK and US by far had every legal authority to invade him... or was the convention for nothing? Let's not forget the $10,000 Saddam would offer to anyone willing to commit an act of terror against the US or UK in one case even leading to the attempted poisoning of Britans water supply with rice.

I agree that in the end Iraq is going to end up a better place than it was before the war, there is no denying that Saddam was a tyrant who had comitted terrible crimes against humanity. However if war can be waged purely to remove a tyrant, I don't think Saddam would be top of the list and they should have said that was their intention before they did it.

The evidence of any WMD program was slim to none at the time of the war and none surfaced during the war, the intelligence saying there was was either a pretense for war or a complete and utter cock up - I'm not sure which. However the intelligence community undeniably should have known that the program had ended. There is no denying that Saddam once had WMDs and a WMD program, however this seems to have ended long before the war began.

There is no evidence that Al-Qaeda was established in Iraq before the war, Saddam's Baath party was strictly secular and he would have seen Al-Qaeda as an affront to his power.

Also can you link me to the part of the Geneva convention that gives the right to revoke the sovereignity of a nation?

Was their going to be a massacre of the Libyian people?  Me I always took the massacre we were preventing as the massacre of the rebels. 

Which is exactly what any ruler would do at the time.  It's also exactly what would of happenened in vietnam.  One party countries aren't too tolerant of others.

There was really no difference in what Gahadaffi iss doing and what the vietnese were doing.

In reverse:

Do your own research? I could point at a few good sources but I wouldn't be sure if you could find them quite as plainly as I've laid them out. Those are the four reasons though, note that only genocide on it's own gives the authority for invasion the others require diplomacy first, which is why I keep saying the Libya-America conflict is either illegal or has innocently skipped a step. I would think you could just Google Geneva convention or international law in regards to invasion, I’ve never taken the time to use the web to search for something I already knew.

The Ba'th party was secular, but their weapons suppliers were based in Sudan and are known as a section or were (we eliminated them) known as the Mesopotamian Al Qaeda branch. If you've read through Bin Laden's grievances you'd see secular Saddam or not he just wanted to west to die which is what Saddam wanted as well.

Either way it is well reported that Iraq got it's chemical weapons from Sudanese production facilities since 1998 or at least had proof of it since then after various chemicals were found in soil samples covertly collected.

I'll make it clearer then: If Bush had sent US soldiers into Afghanistan without attacking Saddam first he risked Saddam using a chemical weapon on US soldiers  while on a campaign to kill his WMD supplier.

Now this is just how it is, take it or leave it. This is the reason for saying that WMD's were there it was always an unspoken truth that if he had WMD's he would not waste time to use them on US soldiers again.

I rather enjoy a better safe than sorry approach.

I've already listed 3 ways that have nothing to do with saving baby seals for reasons to invade Iraq.

As for Korea what happened there can never be compared to any other War the US was in and I would agree with you if you said the administration then needs to be hung for their crimes.