They ought to pull everybody out of the Middle East and let the countries there settle things. We have not done one thing worth an American life there, since Bush sunk us into that quagmire, except killing Bin Laden. Daddy Bush and even Bill Clinton handled Iraq better.
Yes, so long as you are willing to ignore the mass graves that litter Iraq from that era.
I guess the 300k Iraqi slaughtered by the Saddam regime do not count. They can all die, so long as the US does not have to do anything.
Well, it is not like it is 300 thousand from central Florida or Texas. I had no investment of friends or live in Iraq, before people like you bleeding heart, thought we should totally destabilize the Middle East. The A-hole Saddam was keeping Iran at bay, the Russians were not in league with another enemy of democracy to their west, we didn't have troops guarding oil fields for the murderous prince of Saudi Arabia, the lead country that imposed an oil embargo on us and the rest of the world back in the late 70s here at home. I hold grudges against whom I want to. We had a no fly in effect in Iraq. If they flew, we shot them down. If they turned on air defense radar we blew it up and the pilots were home in time for dinner at the O club or officer's mess on ship. We gained nothing from Bush taking over the country. Sure, we captured Saddam and turned him over to the new regime we put in power. They couldn't even hold a decent hanging. We let the CIA make torture part of SOP, though considered a war crime by every civilize country on the planet as well as our own military, and did we find the weapons of mass destruction? NO. Did we find chemical weapons we did not supply to them? NO. Did we end up fighting a war involving civilians often on our side during the day on and with the enemy at night? YES. Sounds like Vietnam with the jungle, doesn't it? Some people never learn, and I think it is us.
So I am a "bleeding heart". Interesting.
Iraq was not "Keeping Iran at Bay", the Ba'athist Party (and Saddam) was trying a war of conquest, against what he thought was somebody that could not fight back and nobody would complain about.
After that, he failed, and decided to try again. The only problem is, he picked another country, that people did have a generally favorable opinion about. Kuwait. You know, the country that had a lot of gas stations all over, called "Q8".
Saddam was not "keeping Iran at bay". In fact, if anything he over time made them more expansionistic and wanting to "eliminate outside threats", more than they ever were before his invasion.
And no, you obviously do not know or understand what "No fly" was. First of all, that was not "Us", that was not the US. It was the UN that did that. And it was not even over all of Iraq. It only covered the areas South of Baghdad that were the approaches used to invade Kuwait, and the very Northern areas, where the Kurds were. In essence, anything North of the 36th parallel, and anything below the 32nd Parallel, then later the 33rd Parallel.
And it did not actually prohibit all flights. Just flights of fighter aircraft. Iraq could still fly anything they wanted North or South, just not combat aircraft.
And we did not just "shoot them down". We would (as with the Soviets) first warn them they were in restricted areas, then only after they refused to listen shoot them down when they moved towards locations where they were known to take offensive actions against those on the ground. That was the entire idea, to protect those on the ground that Iraq was attacking.
I can go on, but I have already made a point, tearing apart your very opening claims.
And "guarding us from Iran (the only country at the time in OPEC that did not join in the 1973 Oil Embargo), and then again in 1979 (where Iran was the only country that set an Embargo against the US), that alone tells me you are making some really silly claims. Oh, and 1973 was a major backfire against OPEC. In fact, several nations left them over that, and all it ultimately did was spur the nations under embargo (US, UK, Japan, Etc) to expand their own petroleum industry again. You know, like those fields in Canada and the North Sea.
And in 1979, that "Oil Crisis" was entirely Iran. The rest of OPEC laughed, and made record profits as they ignored it. That actually was largely about flow, and did not impact anything even close to 1973. OPEC had already learned its lesson, and did not participate.
But yes, I guess I am a "Bleeding Heart", simply because I care about over 300,000 civilians slaughtered and dumped into mass graves. Am I a bleeding heart also because I care about the over 1.3 million killed by Communists in Cambodia> Or the over 7 million killed by the NSDAP?
That is the difference, I see no difference if they are in Texas or Iraq, it is the job of real Warriors to fight to protect civilians, no matter where they are. Of course, that is also why it is that I do what I do.
Oh, and we did indeed find Chemical Weapons in Iraq.
I find it hilarious that people still insist that none were found. Hell, even WIkileaks released classified documents saying what was found, and where.
But
WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.
By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs...
www.wired.com
And to top it all off, you have when in 2009, Iraq finally signed off on the Chemical Weapons Convention. And immediately turned over more than 2 bunkers full of chemicals, weapons, and precursors.
"Iraq submitted its initial declaration on 12 March 2009, and has declared two bunkers with filled and unfilled chemical weapons munitions, some precursors, as well as five former chemical weapons production facilities," Pfirter said last week.
www.nti.org
Holy hell, even Wikileaks and the UN admitted there were such weapons, as has Iraq itself. Have you really been living under a rock for the last 15 years?