Quote:I think the 9/11 reference and Saddam Hussein have been muddied by those opposed to the war from the get go.  We were fighting a war in the region in response to 9/11, but on a completely different front.  The entire situation in Iraq blew up as a result of his refusal to allow UN inspectors into the country to investigate suspected sites for WMD production/storage.  Iraq was in violation of the UN resolution that had been in place since the first Gulf War by refusing to allow inspectors into the country.  The recourse for doing so was military intervention. 

 

Other motivations that are spun via conspiracy theories are fun to toss back and forth between those opposed to the war, but at the end of the day Iraq was in violation of UN resolutions 687 and 1441. 

 

What's funny is that those opposed to the war have repeatedly leaned on the fact that supposedly no WMDs were found.  When that was debunked and it was reported years later that there were indeed several sites that were secured where weapons caches were found including Mustard Gas and other WMDs, it was barely reported on by the MSM.  One of the facilities that was still under guard contained tons of degraded but still dangerous material was overrun and under the control of ISIS following the withdrawal of the US, and the subsequent expansion of the terror organizations geographical domain in their quest for a caliphate. Iraqi security had assumed the responsibility of protecting these weapons.

 

I posted the NY Times article where they documented the WMD found since the end of the war, and the lengths that Iraq went to to hide them.  It then did what you'd expect the NY Times to do, dismissing the revelation that tons of material was found because they didn't want to admit there was the potential that the Bush administration was right, and that rather than announce these discoveries, they were more intent to secure the weapons and assure that they were destroyed, or at the very least secured. 

 

Iraq was stable when the troops were withdrawn.  The current administration took great pride in the fact that they ended the war despite the fact that the draw down was planned well before they were elected.  Of course, they denied they were responsible for the draw down and end of the war when they had to send troops back in last year.  There's a great video of the president campaigning in 2008 and taking full credit for ending the war in Iraq, then denying it was his decision in 2014. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_nxouSJq9c

 

There were certainly mistakes made by the Bush administration in the execution of the war, but when he made the decision to do the surge that ultimately ended the conflict, part of the plan was to create a withdrawal plan that would draw down the troops but leave behind a small number of troops to assure stability in the country.  When Obama took office, he abandoned that in order to appease the Iraqi government. Initially, they were going to go along with the plan crafted by the Bush administration to leave a residual force in country to help keep the peace, but that this position became a political liability both in Iraq as well as here in the US, so he caved and agreed to withdraw completely.  We did so leaving behind equipment, weapons, and nobody to guard those stockpiles other than Iraqi security forces which proved to be inept, especially when faced with the prospect of having to fight fellow Arabs. 

 

 

 

His sons were worse than he was in that regard.  The rape rooms. The torture.  All of the atrocities that took place AFTER the first Gulf War.  Truly horrific.

 

The shame of this was that we did ally ourselves with him up to 1991, and turned a blind eye to the horrors that took place under his regime.  We saw them as allies against the Soviet backed Iran prior to that point,  The Cold War was still in full throat, and the US was willing to partner with anyone who opposed anything pro USSR.  Once the first Gulf War concluded, that was a very different story.  The Cold War was over.  We didn't need to rely on them any longer.  Hussein saw both the Kurds and the Shiites as direct threats to an Arab Iraq, and he never stopped looking for ways to diminish their numbers. 

 

Back to the original point of this topic (sort of), the next person who sits in the Oval Office is going to inherit a dysfunctional US National Security / Foreign Policy situation that is going to require actual leadership to fix.  That doesn't mean we need a hawk in the White House who is going to unleash the military on the world, but the US can't create a vacuum of leadership on a global scale by completely withdrawing.  We're seeing firsthand what happens when we do exactly that right now.  Russia and China are filling that void, and they're definitely not looking out for the best interests of the US.  The next president is going to have to reset that situation quickly and with great resolve.  I don't know which candidate best fits that role, but I do know that those who have announced on the democrat side sure as heck aren't equipped.  Hillary is completely compromised by her own corruption, Sanders is a loon, and O'Malley is a light weight who doesn't have a clue. If one of these (or Warren) get elected, this country is pretty much toast.  I'm not sure it's any better looking at those running on the other side.