Let us review: This is how the Obama Administration is responsible for the threat that is ISIS

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This disaster dates back to 2003, when we invaded Iraq and took out Saddam, who provided a strategic counter-balance to Iran and a firewall against organized terror.

An invasion, as it turns out, that has cost us over a trillion dollars of borrowed money, over 4,000 young American lives, and many more thousands lost American limbs and minds.

So, probably not really a bargain to this point.

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How did Saddam become a counterweight to organized terrorism? He was a terrorist too, by all definitions of the word. He committed systematic genocide of his opposition and of innocent people. He used those chemical weapons we found to intimidate people into submission. The man was a murderer and the Iraqis hailed his demise. I would hardly call that a disaster my friend.

well anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the area would understand Saddam was a stop gap from something like ISIL ever happening, since the European powers constructed the Middle East.
Saddam gassing his own people is not a threat to american safety.

 

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This disaster dates back to 2003, when we invaded Iraq and took out Saddam, who provided a strategic counter-balance to Iran and a firewall against organized terror.

An invasion, as it turns out, that has cost us over a trillion dollars of borrowed money, over 4,000 young American lives, and many more thousands lost American limbs and minds.

So, probably not really a bargain to this point.

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How did Saddam become a counterweight to organized terrorism? He was a terrorist too, by all definitions of the word. He committed systematic genocide of his opposition and of innocent people. Used those chemical weapons we found to intimidate people into submission, The man was a murderer and the Iraqis hailed his demise. I would hardly call that a disaster my friend.

I agree, he was a psychotic monster.

But he had enough control over his "country" that he would have gone after and slaughtered any group like this with no mercy, using his military. That's what despots do, that's how they become and remain despots.

That's the big picture, the one we ignored. We don't like a guy, so we invade a sovereign country and take him out. This is what happens when we think we can decide who the winners and losers are.

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The control he had over his country was stolen. The power he had was of intimidation and of murderous intent. When people plead for our help, do we abandon them? A nation isn't sovereign when a dictator takes away the freedoms of his own people. For a nation to be sovereign the people need to be free as well. Despots prevent national sovereignty by oppressing their people. No freedom, no sovereignty.

It's not a matter of us 'not liking a guy' its a matter of showing the world that we actually support personal liberties and freedom anywhere in the world. What good is it if we don't stand behind our principles?

Torture Chambers
The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins, who wrote the best book on Iraq (“The Forever War”), recently recalled a visit, shortly after the invasion, to one of Saddam’s torture chambers, a place called Al Hakemiya. He met a man there who identified himself as Al-Musawi. The two visited a room where Al-Musawi’s “arms had been nearly torn from their sockets.” He had been hung from the ceiling and electrocuted.

“Today, in 2013 -- a decade later -- it’s not fashionable to suggest that the American invasion of Iraq served any useful purpose,” Filkins continued. “But what are we to make of Iraqis like Al-Musawi? Or of torture chambers like Al Hakemiya? Where do we place them in our memories? And, more important, how should they shape our judgment of the war we waged?”

His suggestion: “Ask the Iraqis -- that is, if anyone, in this moment of American navel-gazing, can be bothered to do so.”

I took Filkins’s charge to heart, and asked another graduate of Saddam’s torture chambers, a man named Barham Salih, what he thought of the invasion, 10 years on.

Today, Salih is the chairman of the board of the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, which provides a liberal education in a place not previously known for such a phenomenon. In recent years, Salih has served as both the deputy prime minister of Iraq and as prime minister of the Kurdish regional government. He was in the camp of people who argued that Saddam’s decision to commit genocide against Iraqi Kurds (sometimes with chemical weapons) in the late 1980s made his removal a moral imperative.

I asked him if he thought the invasion was worth it.

“From the perspective of the Kurdish people -- and I dare say the majority of the Iraqi people -- it was worth it,” he said. “War is never a good option, but given our history and the brutality of Saddam’s regime, it may have been the only other option to end the genocidal campaign waged by Saddam against the Kurds and other communities in Iraq.”

Here is where his answer became a lament. “I must admit, however, that 10 years on, Iraq’s transition is, to say the least, characterized by unrealized expectations, both for Iraqis and for our American liberators. Iraq is not the friendly democracy that the U.S. had hoped for, and it is far from the secure, inclusive democracy that Iraqis deserved and aspired to.”

‘Inherent Danger’
He went on to blame Iraqis, rather than Americans, for the failures of the past decade. “Much can be said about U.S. missteps and miscalculations in this process, but there is no denying that Iraqi political leadership bears prime responsibility for squandering a unique opportunity to deliver to their people. This has been nothing short of a drastic failure of leadership on our part! The Kurdistan region offers hope that all is not lost in Iraq.”

I asked Salih to answer the argument that the Kurds -- who make up almost 20 percent of Iraq’s population -- were, by 2003, mainly living in relative safety in a region protected by an American-enforced no-fly zone. In other words, the invasion wasn’t a humanitarian necessity at that moment.

“All Iraqis lived under a regime that had complete disdain for human life,” he said. “Executions and killings continued at will. Thousands of Iraqis were being sent to the mass graves. The Kurds were never safe as they knew that Saddam could at any time decide to reconquer the no-fly zone.”

He went on, “Saddam was a menace to the Kurds, to the other Iraqi communities, and an inherent danger to the region. He was, from our perspective in this part of the world, a grave and mortal danger that we could never be safe from while he was still around.”

Was the Iraq Invasion Worthwhile Ask an Iraqi - Bloomberg View

we pick and choose who's liberty is more valuable all the time. again Saddam being an evil person is not a legitimate threat to America

 

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anyways the idea that Iraq is Obama's mess is not within context of what actually happened. People can Push other people to try to go along with things, but n the end Iraq is a sovereign nation and thus we must abide by their wishes. The Op is once again just another lazy partisan attempt