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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I was asking those question in a general sense, to get a better feel for your views on when you would support forceful action. In either case I would take forceful action.
If you could take (again in general terms) forceful preemptive action to prevent a direct attack on our shores would you?
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I can't deal in absolutes because the situation to which we're referring wasn't absolute. Many, many, many people questioned the horrible pre-war intelligence. Shit, even I did and I don't have access to the intel. Most of Europe and Asia did. French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Russian intel said we were wrong about Saddam. Now we even know most of our own intel said we were wrong.
In a general hypothetical situation where there is a perceived threat, there had better be actual evidence before you even consider taking any action.
Let me make one thing crystal clear: not only did 2003 Saddam not have the capability to carry out an attack on our shore or on our ally's shores, but he wasn't assisting anyone else who was going to attack our shores or our ally's shores. The only people that Saddam was a threat to was his own people and even in that role he had become severely diminished since the early 90s. There was growing resistance in Iraq to the Saddam administration/dictatorship, and Iraq could have been headed for a healthy revolution, free of western occupation. That, in my opinion but also backed by precedence, would have been the best way for Saddam to have been removed from power. Sure, Iraq would have turned into a Syria or Iran, but Syria and Iran are a lot more stable than Iraq has been. Ever.