This war is SOOO not over oil! I'm sick and tired of hearing other people claim this point. If it really was, there were numerous ways we could have gotten it after the first Gulf War.
1. Taken it by force immediately after.
2. Set up lucrative deals in our favor similar to the French and Russian contracts.
3. Lifted the sanctions and trade embargos.

One of the best reasonings I've heard for this war is plain and simple. Terrorists do not manufacture weapons of mass destruction, states do. Terrorists acquire/buy WMD from Rogue states. Rogue states need to be dealt with accordingly. 12 years of sanctions weren't having any effect. How much longer is the world supposed to wait? Freeing the Iraqi people is just a bonus to solving the Iraqi problem.

People in Europe can't really relate to the problem with terrorism because they are not the main target, the United States is the primary target. It's in our best interest to ensure that WMD do not fall into terrorists hands.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Strike
[B]Listen, all of you who think we should be attacking Iraq!

 

This thread is very interesting. There are about five different conversations being held at once. Not one of us has the full story, and no one will until the dust settles, if even then. The gov. throws so much info(propoganda) out there both true and false no one knows what to beleive. Saddam has chemical weapons, saddam is in bed with Al Queda, saddam kills his own people (how come we haven't ever seen pictures of these evil camps where this happens?). The constant bickering between US, other countries and the UN seems so childish. I mean what serious government wastes legislative time to determine an official name change of fast food side item (freedom fries). Sometimes I am so proud to be in this country, the freedoms we are allowed, anyone can truly become anything they want. Times like this make me feel embarrassed to be an american, I feel sorry for our troops that got dragged back to that area of the world, and I just hope we don't make anymore enemies. I just hope its all over quickly.

 

60 minutes has shown extensive footage of Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons on his own people. Most of the footage is of people who are maimed and disfigured and/or have other health problems. It's difficult to get footage because Iraq is very controlling and only lets the media see what it wants them to see. In any case, 60 minutes has been able to obtain footage over the years and has done several stories about it. It's harder to get footage of dead people after the fact. In any event there has been enough credible testimony in the stories such that, along with the heart wrenching footage of the people that survived the attacks, I believe it to be true.

 

I am from Iraq, left in the early 90's, and am appauled to see the comments that have been conveyed in this thread, I won't further involve myself with most of your slanderous comments. People condoning the war effort sickens me, people in bodybags will be the only outcome, Iraq will not be liberated, not like this... God Bless.

 

This is a great article from the NY Post... http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolu...nists/71309.htm

"THIS present war will not last long, but its effects will echo for decades. And they will be positive effects - for Iraq, for the Middle East, for the world beyond the theater of conflict and for the United States of America.

This war will be smaller in scale and shorter in duration than many of the conflicts in which we have been engaged over the past half century. It is not without grave risks. But its practical benefits and the message it sends make it the most important "hot" war we have waged since World War II.

President Bush is not the most articulate of the world's heads of state. Elitists who speak artfully, while failing to listen honestly, dismiss him. Yet while the intelligentsia clings to the past, our president has the vision to see that the old patterns of diplomacy have failed us, that the world's health is too grave for yesterday's quack medicines.

He will never write a scholarly tome on strategy that will win the applause of academics and diplomats. But our president is rewriting the strategy itself, in a manner so bold and vital that we have not yet begun to grasp its full import.

The new American policy toward which the times have driven us is as radically different as our critics fear. It breaks with a failed and blood-soaked past. We have finally accepted that it is no longer enough to wait for enemies to attack first. We have accepted our unique responsibility to intervene abroad in the cause of global security and human rights.

And we have dispensed with a corrupt sham sustained by our critics: the notion that a dictator, no matter how cruel and illegitimate, is untouchable behind his "sovereign" borders.

It is no accident that the core countries of "Old Europe," France and Germany, oppose us. Between them, they have been responsible for every major European conflict since the Napoleonic era. Those who now accuse us of aggression bear the weight of hundreds of millions of corpses.

President Bush has turned away from the murderous logic of European diplomacy, from mechanisms of statecraft that have led only to unchecked aggression and unchallenged genocide. The essential purpose of European diplomacy has been, and remains, the preservation of the powerful, by the powerful, for the powerful. Wherever in the world we see a dictatorship protected by diplomatic custom and webs of trade, we see an outpost of "Old Europe." Saddam is more European than Tony Blair.

Just as we fought our Civil War to cast off the European legacies of human bondage and political power vested in a landed aristocracy, we are now fighting to cast off an Arab dictator who embodies the European tradition of a tyrant sustained by a bureaucracy of terror. Europeans pioneered the methods. Saddam is merely an imitator.

Our Spanish-American War shattered the inviolable image of European empires. Underestimated in its importance because it was a "small" war, the Spanish-American War was the first time a non-European power reached out to destroy an oppressive European empire. It sparked the century-spanning collapse of European empires that ended with the disintegration of the Soviet incarnation of the empire of the czars, in 1991.

The Europeans will never forgive us for spoiling their party.

Now we have begun a new endeavor. It, too, may last a century. With the old empires gone, we are sending notice to dictators everywhere that the rules formulated by Old Europe no longer apply, that Saddam may be only the first dictator to fall, that the United States will no longer overlook massive violations of human rights, that we shall no longer allow ourselves to be threatened without responding and that we will no longer heed the voices of those foreign capitals that have failed the world with such devastating consequences.

What shall we say to those who accuse us of violating "time-honored" and "proven" rules of international relations?

None of us would want to be operated upon by a surgeon using a medical text from the 19th century. And we cannot address the strategic cancers of the 21st century using antique diplomatic etiquette designed to protect the kings, czars and emperors of bygone Europe.

I do not suggest that our government has a detailed road map to the future. We are learning as we go, improvising and gradually shaping a new strategy to address new challenges. The pace of change is so rapid that we have not even developed the new vocabulary we need.

But Europe is the continent of words; our world is one of action. We are shaping tomorrow, while those who mock us cling to discredited yesterdays. Our instincts are good, our motives are sound and our standards of behavior are the highest in the history of nations. Who shall lead the way, if we do not?

This is an epochal war, one of those rare events that mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. Much attention has been paid to the new technologies we will bring to bear in this conflict. But our new convictions will leave the greater legacy.

As our aircraft pierce the skies over Baghdad and our tanks roll toward the Tigris and Euphrates - along with those of our like-minded British allies - history has returned to the sands that gave rise both to the world's earliest civilizations and some of the world's most brutal tyrants. Our president's command to our forces to enter Iraq marks a break with an ancient and enduring legacy of cruelty, with ideologies of statehood that have killed rather than protected and with the unacceptable tradition that one man, having seized power, has the right to oppress, torment and butcher millions.

I do not underestimate the possible costs of this war. Nor will we know its true results for years, until we survey the altered landscape of the Middle East at least a decade hence. But the cost of continuing to subscribe to the great-power politics and corrupt behaviors that constitute the European tradition of diplomacy is far too high for humanity to pay. In a sense, President Jacques Chirac of France did us a great favor in making the choice between the future and the past so stark and clear.

When Saddam ignored our president's ultimatum, he chose the past. We have chosen the future."

 

You know it came to me, it's very possible that the US once it invades will divide Iraq into two, a north and a south... the U.S. are such hypocrites, if they wanted to help people they'd step into israel (palestine) and stop the zionists... the US gives multibillions a year to israel.... that money goes into killing of palestineans.. Israel broke 65+ UN resolutions would have broken an additional 25 (but the US veto'd it) the US are helping the Israeli's.... and Israel controls a part of the US government..... it's sad...

Invasion of iraq is not because of sadam (because they helped him to power while it was in their interest against iran.. and they helped iran when it was in their interest against the soviets), it's not just about oil (they bombed oil fields, they reported on tv that sadam ordered them burning but it was bombed as reported by iranian news reporters in iraq, they saw planes drop missiles onto oil fields.

It's about regional control and the constant expansion that began 50 years ago... well the history goes way back but the agressive expansion began 50 years ago... That whole religion's people are suffering due to the US... the governments were setup and used by the US, then from time to time destroyed (like afghanistan, iraq, iran were all built up then destroyed and look iraq is being destroyed twice and iran is probably next)

and there are already civilian casualties........... I was watching yesterday and they cut off so much, and the cameras were most of the time turned away so only flashes on buildings were seen
on CNN, They hit the television system, they hit some near residencial areas and CNN just said all the targets were trying to hit where Saddam was.. and they say that he is using the city as a shield because he placed anti-fire in the city, what's he suppose to do just let the US invade the city...
if he left the US would invade if he stayed the US would invade too, plus the US attacked before the deadline! arghhh
, sorry just a rant...

 

I'm supportive of our troops and encouraged by our allies.

 

So Evo8...

Why the hell did you leave Iraq?

 

Well, I am fairly young (I'm 19 now), so my parents moved here in search of better oppurtunities to make a longer story short..