again, you danced over the fact that Democrats were calling for Saddam's ouster all the way back to the 1990's.
And, yeah, I'd call into question the patriotism of anyone who would defend Saddam, a man who was responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of people. Also, their decency and common sense.
But the Democrats were being purely cynical. They voted for the war because of the polls, not the intelligence.
I didn't dance around anything. Anyone with even the most rudimentary spook smarts knows that Saddam was helped into power by the CIA. And after that..had a long and curious relationship with the United States. He thought of himself as the new Saladin and admired Josef Stalin. So he went on hedging his bets between Superpowers and became a proxy and strawman for US politicians. Great to use as a force against states like Iran. And great to shake a fist at when you needed a bad guy.
In any case..I think most people thought Iraq was going to be like Panama. And they weren't:
A. Listening.
B. Recognizing that George W. was no George HW.
Well, a couple things on that.
In this very thread, you said you thought Gulf War I was wrong, too. Since Gulf War I didn't resolve the problem (They didn't occupy Iraq, hoping the Iraqi military would take care of Saddam for them), it would seem doing that again wasn't the answer, was it? Saddam remained a thorne in our side for 12 years.
Personally, I think we need to end all involvement in the ME. Including propping up Israel. If we keep sticking our hands in the hornet's nest, we should expect to get stung, especially by the bigger meaner hornets we were feeding (Saddam and Bin laden).
But please don't make this a partisan issue. Our middle east policy is based on 1) Keeping the place safe for the oil companies and 2) blind, mindless support for Zionism.
And there isn't an inch of daylight between the two parties on that position.