Nobody likes Saddam, but it would be better if Bin Laden were dead, having been concentrated on single-mindedly, since you can't get past the fact the Bin Laden, and not Saddam, committed the 9/11 atrocities.
I completely agree.
There are plenty of terrible tyrants in the world we could have taken out, but it was idiotic to concentrate on someone who didn't commit the crime you were purportedly addressing. In this case, even Obama has his head on straight: It's Pakistan, not Iraq. I am not going to give credit for taking out Saddam, because it would be better for him to still be in power and Bin Laden and Al Qaeda taken care of, than simply taking out a 'monstrous tyrant' because he might have had something, and might do something. We KNEW Bin Laden had done something, and we also pretended we were going to Iraq for this purpose. There's the idiocy.
well, frankly it would be better if we had got Bin Laden, and then when that was all done taken care of IRaq.
I think Qua's point is good, too but regardless of intelligence failures, these failures did NOT point to involvemend by Hussein in the 9/11 attacks.
agreed. But he still was a monster who was an extremely destabilizing force to all nations around him, not just to our foreign policy. For as much confusion and chaos in Iraq now, for 5 years, has anyone been worried about some psycho in Iraq launching missiles at them?
Using that as a pretense to attack another 'bad nation' is a Minor League, B-list sort of sensibility.
true, but all nations throughout history have used some sort of hyper-pretext to start wars, many of whom collude with others to do so....even if it is over the smallest thing....because the overwhelming interest makes it necessary to find a pretext.
Anyone that wants to get a criminal goes first after THAT criminal, not another one that might think it was hunky-dory that some other terrorist he didn't care for shot up the WTC. Al Qaeda certainly didn't play for shitty little stakes like that, they went all the way to the top. And we didn't.