[theknife]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Sez who?

I think the argument could be made that a majority of Americans supported an invasion before Powell asked the UN for its blessing, though I admit I have no evidence to support this claim. It should have been enough for Powell to tell the UN, "Look at all of your sanctions that Iraq is violating, that's why you should support us." It wasn't until after the UN decided they didn't want us enforcing their sanctions and inspections that WMD's became an issue as a last ditch attempt to build a consensus. But here's the thing: the UN had decided long before that they wouldn't support a war, and the US had decided long before that it would pursue a war.

The WMD argument wasn't a justification for our war, it was an attempt to build consesus for a war we were going to start anyway. If the administration lied to the UN, so what?

But if you're so hung up on this issue I want to remind you of three truths:

• We knew Saddam wanted WMD's
• We knew he was capable of aquiring them because he had done so before
• We knew he was capable of using them because he had done so before, against Iraqis!

I don't know about you, but I feel like the world is a safer place now that he's behind bars, and you can bet that about 20,000,000 Iraqis breathed a huge sigh of relief when he was arrested.

Those reasons, combined with his past actions of firing missiles at our planes, violating the no fly zones, bribing UN officials, and generally abusing his power to rape his own nation of its wealth and culture more than justified his ouster.

forcible regime change is flatly illegal under international law because it deprives a people of thier right to self-determination. and while i am not up on the specifics under US law and War Powers Act, i do know that if you have to defraud the Congress and the US people with false documentation to make a case for it, then that is illegal here as well.

and while your world may feel like a safer place, the rest of the world is not: number of terror incidents tripled last year from 2003, making 2004 the most active year for terror attack since 1985. and if you think these numbers are some kind of anomaly, bear in mind that the CIA has identified Iraq as having replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists. so rather than diminishing terror, we created a post-graduate course in terror with our occupation of Iraq that has spread to places like Egypt, London, Madrid, Iistanbul and others.

so here we are three years later and we are indeed left with three truths:
the war in Iraq was not necessary, it was not worth the cost because the world is not a safer place, and it is not winnable. so no matter how good of an idea you think iraq invading may be, it is a failure by any military or political yardstick you'd care to use.

at this point, my question to any Iraq war supporter would be twofold:
1) exactly how many american lives is war in iraq worth? 5000? 10000?
5000? unlimited casualties? put a number on it
2) exactly how is victory defined? reduction of car bombs to x per day? 50% of the population employed? reduction of insurgent attacks to x per day? electricity in bagdhad to 15 houors per day? specifically, what does victory in iraq mean?

your leaders cannot define the cost because they are locked into the consequences of thier decisions and they can't define victory because they don't know what it looks like. that's why they can only speak in bumperstickers.

i'll finish this rant with the words of CIA terrorism expert Michael Scheuer, on Hardball today:

O‘DONNELL: And, finally, the president has made the case that winning the war in Iraq is central to winning the war on terror and making sure that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda cannot take—harm the United States. Is that true, if we win there, will that help?

SCHEUER: No, ma‘am. The war in Iraq has broken the back of our counterterrorism effort. I‘m not an expert on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but the invasion of Iraq has made sure this war will last decades ahead and it has transferred bin Laden and al Qaeda from being man and an organization into being a philosophy and a movement. We‘ve really made sure that the war against us is going to be a long and very bloody one. Iraq was an absolutely disastrous decision.

so there's the bottom line: whatever you thought of Saddam, the consequences and cost of invading Iraq far outweigh whatever the percieved benefits were supposed to be.