[RACooper]

Let's pick apart this shall we...

Originally Posted by shinerbock

Fiscally imprudent. Since when do democrats care about financial responsibility. Whats more, it is prudent.

I'm sure Rudey would have some fun things to say about the Administrations fiscal policies... all I can say is that traditionally conservatives don't spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave...

It is in the interest of this country to see a stable middle east. Before you spout nonsense about how we've destabilized the middle east, lets pause and consider how stable it was before we went in. Not at all.

Well a stable Middle East is in pretty much every country's interest, not just the US's...

Stable... of course not... but it was compartively much more stable ~ and many people warned that invading Iraq would destablize the region by creating a power vaccuum by removing a secularlist (Saddam), a situation that fundamentalist would be sure to exploit... and lo and behold they did.

Germany was pretty unstable too for a while there.

Ah yes but post conflict in WWII there were masses of troops to completely occupy the territory and to provide peace and security... not so with Iraq. The principle of overwhelming force and manpower was abandoned in favour of just overwhelming force - and overwhelming force doesn't work in the post-combat or reconstruction phase. Anyways it's too bad that Cheney, Wolfie, and Rummie didn't learn from the examples of occupation Germany and Japan - a) you need lots of manpower to secure, rebuild, and re-order; b) it is a long-term proposition 5-15 years...

I think the threat of WMD is a pretty convincing argument. Before you make the banal claim that Iraq had none, lets consider the facts that THEY HAVE used them in the past (against our ally, no less), we HAVE FOUND SOME since the war began, and we HAVE their scientists who have, at numerous points, detailed the creation of weapons under the now deposed dictator.

1> The arguement wasn't all that convincing to everyone, in fact I believe that many nations found the arguement to be rather thin and motivated more by politics than fact.
2> Which Ally would that be?
3> Yes some Iran-Iraq War era munitions have been found, in ammo dump sites and locales marked by the UN after that conflict.
4> All of the debriefed scientists reported that yes they were working on WMD programs, but they also sate emphatical that those programs were stopped and dismantled some 10 years before the invasion of Iraq.

Would they have used the weapons against the U.S., I doubt it. Would they have used them against our interests and allies? Absolutely. Weapons argument aside, the humanitarian issue is also compelling. The massacre of Kurds, the torture and killing of Jews/Christians, and general lack of respect for the sanctity of human life were all prevalent under Saddam.

Your arguement of the torturing of Christians is even more empty that the WMD arguement - Christians were protected under Saddams rule, as long as they didn't challenge his authority... to imply that they were systemically prosecuted (anymore than any other citizen) under Saddam is flat out lying - much like that old propoganda yarn about Iraqi soldiers killing babies in Kuwait.

If you choose to look at Iraq as a failure, I'd suggest putting down todays copy of the NY Times and talking to some soldiers.

Yes... I agree on this one - the troops are doing alot of good... but no troop I've talked to recently will characterize Iraq as a success...

We now have a country, right in the middle of an extremely volatile region, that is struggling to find its way towards democracy. What a valuable tool a free Iraq could be in the future. However, if we turn and abandon them now, as we did following the first war, it will all be for nothing.

Well I gotta say you have a much more rosey picture of the present and future state of Iraq... personally I'll be surprised if there is an Iraq in a decade and not 3 seperate theocratic states.