Willravel

My understanding of the situation: In 1978, the People's Democratic Part of Afghanistan took power against a very repressive government. The main goals of the new controling party was land development, trade union rights, better education and social services, and surprisingly equal rights for women and seperation of church and state. The problem was, of course, that these same people wanted to get into bed with the Soviet Union. This did two things: it really, really pissed off the rich landlords (basically warlords), the muslims, and the tribal cheifs, and it really, really pissed of Washington, which was still stuck in McCarthy mode (communism = the boogey man). A resistence was formed in Afghanistan, and the US offered support. This was the birth of the Mujahddin. In '79, Soviet troops poured into Afghanistan to protect the PDPA. This, of course, got the Mujahddin up in arms. The Mujaheddin won. Durring the fight, the US government spent at least $6b (unconfirmed reports say $20b) into arming, training, and funding the Mujahddin factions. One very prominant Mujaheddin fighter and funder was wealthy arab fanatic Osama bin Laden, who provided funds and training and even worked directly with the fighters.

I'm not sure how familair you are with John Cooley who was a very prominant journalist with ABC and an author, but he made it very clear that his sources provided documentation that showed how Mujaheddin fighters were sent to Camp Peary in Virginia (for those who don't know, Camp Peary is a CIA training camp) to be trained in "sabatoge skills". In November of 1998, The Independant reported on how one of the men charged with bombing the US embassy in Kenya (and I believe the embassy in Tanzania), named Ali Mohammed, had trained "bin Laden's operatives" in the late 80s. Ali Mohammed was a greet baret. I think the name of the program to recruit and train the operatives was called something like Operation Cyclone, but don't quote me on that.

Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate used an organization called Maktab al Khidamar in order to distribute money and equiptment to the Mujaheddin. The CIA and Saudis assisted the MAK unofficially, while OBL was one of three people who ran (and eventually took overall control over) the MAK.

The Independant also named Omar Abdel-Rahman (from the first WTC bombing in 1993) as a part of Operation Cyclone. Moving on...

OBL joined the Mujaheddin in 1980. He was in charge of things like recruiting, financing (obviously, the dude was loaded), and training mercinaries. In 1986, OBL was in charge of building and running training camps in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. It is in these camps that the CIA armed and trained OBL and his fellow contra fighters. Fomer British SAS officer Tom Carew, who fought with the Mujaheddin was interviewed by the Observer in 2000, and explained that the Americans trained the Afghans urban terrorism (car bombing, etc.), so that tehy could hit the soviets in cities. The al Qaeda was actually formed to run the camps in 1987.

So when did Bin Laden go from CIA friend and freedom fighter to terrorist? OBL lost it when his family allowed 500,000 US troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia leading into Desert Storm. The problem, and something OBL predicted, is that a great deal of US troops (I don't have a number beyond "many thousands") stayed behind long after the Gulf War. OBL made outrageous claims like the Saudi Government was a puppet government of the US (they really have more of an onofficial partership in reality, though many of their deals are somewhat...questionable), and called for the overthrow of Saudi Arabian and Egyptian governments. In 1994, his assets were finally frozen and he was thrown, kicking and screaming, out of Saudi Arabia.

The rest, as they say, is history, but the bottom line is that OBL was directly involved with and trained by, the CIA. Our dirty anti-Soviet deals, which were swept under the perverbial carpet, came back to haunt us when OBL revamped his private army and joined with the Taliban and started bombing and attacking people and places.
The thing is, Iran and Israel - I'd say those would be Iraq's main enemies - are technologically advanced, maybe not as much so as the US (no one is), but I'm sure they are enough so to deal quickly and easily with a standing army with outdated weaponry.
My horrible sense of humor. The point I was trying to make is that the world is not black and white, and when you make an argument where the only two options are absolutes, you're probably exaggerating to try and make a point.
I'm not sure how far we can go back into the history of TFP, but I remember discissions back in 2003 about how Iraq probably didn't ahve weapons of mass destruction or links to al Qaeda. It didn't make sense. Yes, the inspectors were kicked out a few times (Saddam was often his own worst enemy), but leading up to the war it was the opinion of those at the UN who were responsible for monitoring Saddam that he did not have the ability to make war with any kind of weapon of chemical, nuclear, or other powerful nature. We constantly had spy planes and such monitoring the deserts of Iraq for places where he might be illegally manufacturing these weapons, and they never whitnessed anything damning. It was also clear that Bush had alrterrior motives, as not just anti-war or anti-Bush Americans were aginst the war, but most the the rest of the world was against it. Even the UN strongly suggested we don't invade.
The UN can be effective against smaller, less powerful countries, but when it comes to the US, we have no one to answer to. If the UN wanted to do anything to us, it would put them in a pickle, as we are massively powerful and also influential in the UN itself. If the UN had the power to do so, it's possible they may have taken action to either deter or stop us from invading.
Laws are imperfect, but so is intel. The problem was that this was an agressive violent move, so I had to have an aggressive, violent move in my analogy (so the asthma thing may not be apt). Saddam was a horrible man, and it was illegal for us to stop him. We also had more pressing matters to attend to. It's clear now that we lowered the priority of finding OBL when we turned out attentions on Iraq. The man who is generally accepted as being responsible for most of the terrorist attacks over the past 10 years, everything from 9/11 to Madrid to London. It's clear that the terrorist networks of the world are a much, much bigger threat than Iraq, and deserve more of our attention. How many troops are in Iraq right now? I think it's something like 90,000 active troops and 60,000 reserve. Can you imagine them in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the areas where we know there to be terrorist activity? Is it possible that, if the U had not invaded Iraq in 2003, we might have prevented the Madrid and London bombings? I can't answer that, but I can say that they would be less likely.
The UN is not wholely inneffective either. They are working vigilantly to meeet the 'millennium goals' (end extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; gender equality; reduce child mortality; inprove maternal health; fight hiv/aids; environmental sustainability; and developing a global partership for development). At the end of 2006, they reported a great deal of progress on each front listed. You can find more information on them on their website, www.un.org, and there are plenty of articles about them from news sources.
The Shia or Kurds should have asked for our help. The thing is, I don't think they wanted our help...but we went in anyway.
Yes, the idea is laughable. That is, however, exactly what the administration was expecting. Do you remember when Cheney said the Iraqi's would "welcome us with open arms as liberators"? They were expecting everything to go perfectly, and it's lunacy.
Buhs isn't what you call a thinking man. He would have flunked out of graduate school, and he couldn't run because of his family's reputation. The air national guard was a perfect option for him.
Are you 100% sure it's only the CIA that waterboards POWs? I'm pretty sure the Army has their hand in that.
You think Saddam killed 60,000-200,000 people in 4 years?! Don't you think we'd know about that? Where are you getting your information?

I count any death as a tragety, but that's just me. I'm what you might call anti-war.
You have the tenacity of a recruiter. It was just a guess.
K, I'm going to try and make it clear: yes! Saddam did want to take over the Middle East. Yes, he wanted to take out Israel and even attack the US. The problem was, all he had was an outdated military with no real weapons, and paintings of missles that really couldn't do any harm. I have ambitions to have my daughter take over the world, but we lack the means so I don't think that any government will consider us a threat. Do you see? Had Iraq utilized it's only strength, a large number of soldiers, they would have been descimated from the air by missles and bombs. The Soviets are arming China now and have their own oil, so they don't care about Iraq enough to sell them weapons. The US isn't going to sell Iraq weapons. France wouldn't dare because if they were caught, they'd be in a shitload of trouble with it's friends the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

So in review: Saddam never changed his outlook. He still wanted to kill everyone and dominate everything. He lacked the means. He was not innocent, he was not dangerous. There is a difference.

Iraq lacked the means to endanger the US, therefore attacking them was not an act of protection. Protection is the only legal excuse for invading and ovethroing a government. Saddam's intent won't change that fact. Saddam was not a threat to the US. Saddam was only a minor threat to his neighbors. Saddam was a threat to the Iraqis.