Tophat665

You know, I was going to point out the irony of $eretogis ( kisses dahlink) diverting attention from roachboy's post about the diversionary tactics of the administration, but that would be bushleague.

Lots of sarcasm and kneejerk reactions here. Let's see If we can cut through the crap a minute:
1) There were UN resolutions and sanctions against Iraq.
2) There were inspectors on the ground who apparently seem to have been doing their jobs.
3) While I admit we had allies in going into Iraq, it seems to me that the only body that has any jurisdiction over enforcing UN resolutions is the UN itself.
4) By taking it upon ourselves (or, rather, by Bush taking it upon ourselves) to use force to implement UN resolutions in defiance of the UN, we crossed the into vigilanteism.
5) The absence of any WMDs in a year and a half of looking pretty clearly illustrates to me that we also fell into the trap of vigilanteism - punishing the wrong people.

Now one could say that we didn't actually go in after WMDs. One who did that and called Kerry a flip flopper would have no credibilty. One could also pick nits and use exotic definitions of common words to cast doubt on what I have just said. That might work for people without much critical thought capability, but I was under the impression that we were better than that here.

One could also, without becoming hypocritical, go on to other reasons why it was a good thing that we removed Saddam Hussein from power. One might even be correct in that assessment, but without a plan to win the peace, it is increasingly apparent that the likely alternatives to the Baath party are as bad or worse. In the case that someone held forth that we were in the right to go to war to remove Hussein for any number of humanitarian reasons, I might even be forced to agree with them, but the way we went about it has made a dogs dinner of the effort, and it still does not obviate the fact that we did it in contravention of international law, such as it is. (Were the chances of a happy outcome not receding daily, that might not be such a big deal, but, as it is....)

Last thing, both sides, could we please raise the debate just a hair. We all know we are unlikely to convince our opposite numbers, and we are all familiar with the talking points. This is a good place full of smart people; could we at least try to be original?

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