Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
He made this argument pre war. People forget that, pre war, the NYT (and Ty) chided him because he had too many rationales for going to war. That said, WMD was the primary one sold to the country/world.
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True. I misspoke. But he did not get into the humanitarian thing until way late in the game, after the scant WMD evidence did not appear to justify a war.
The bottom line is that Bush supporters should not go into the humaritarian argument because it just smacks of desperation.* It ain't the reason we went over there. We do not engage in actions of that size for humanitarian reasons. Look at what's gone on recently in Sudan. We're tsk tsking it, but we are not starting a military action there.
I cannot laugh enough when I hear Cheney say "Kerry is weak... were he in office, Saddam would still be in power!" Yeh, and that would be a direct threat to us how? Don't tell me because Saddam paid terrorist bounties. He paid them to Palestinian bombers. That's Israel's problem, not ours. And don't tell me because AQ was in Iraq. They weren't.** No secular dictator gets in bed with religiuos nuts who seek governance by mullahs. Saddam marginalized killed the mullahs. I think a great case could be made that it would have been strategically wiser to KEEP Saddam in power to offset the power of the religious loons. We could've brought him back into the fold, but that wouldn't have been too popular with our friends in SA or Kuwait.
* When I make this argument, my GOP friends call me a heartless ogre who'd be complicit in Saddam's crimes against humanity. Notwithstanding the comedic value of hearing such heartless free-marketeers/life-is-tough-deal-with-it types suddenly turn into bleeding heart humanitarians, this argument usually ends when they're reminded who Saddam's largest patron was during the late 70s to mid-to-late 80s.
** Ansar Al Islam operated solely in the area of Northern Iraq controlled by our allies, the Kurds. Now they operate throughout Iraq.
