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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Another, new reason we shouldn't have invaded Iraq

We're coming up on the 6th anniversary of invading Iraq and fighting and dying there ever since.

And the reasons we shouldn't have invaded have been spelled out before:

--It's against our own national law;

--It's against international law;

--The UN inspectors weren't finding any WMD's;

--Saddam Hussein was cooperating;

--Our invasion of Iraq was totally, completely and utterly unprovoked;

--Our own intelligence agencies--13 of them--advised against the invasion and attack;

--Former President George H. W. Bush himself was against attacking Iraq;

--We had to do it unilaterally and without the world community which made it both costly--in terms of soldiers and materiel--and we didn't have world opinion on our side so it cost us our image, which is not to be dismissed;

--We were all for Saddam Hussein earlier in his career and we traded with him, no problem, while he was gassing his people. We didn't have any problem with it then. It was only later, with George W. Bush and Dick "Lemme at 'em" Cheney that we arbitrarily decided we should attack them without provocation.

And the list goes on.

But here's the real, new beauty today.

Did you hear on NPR this morning that there is a common feeling and thought of Iraqis actually missing Saddam Hussein and the days of his rule in Iraq?

Yeah, and here's why:

--they don't have any jobs

--they can't count on basic services like electricity (ever since we blew them up)

--there's less safety and security

--in Anbar Province, they're disillusioned with "the current Shiite-led government and the local Sunni provincial council"

and more.

Some quotes from Iraqis:

"It is only now that we have discovered how valuable Saddam was to us. People have compared the situation before to the situation now. And then was better."

"Saddam's popularity is back because Saddam gave Iraqis dignity. Now, Iraqis have no dignity whatsoever."

"At the mobile phone shop in Ramadi, owner Abu Mohammed says at least when Saddam was in power, people knew what to expect."

Again, this is another case of the Americans absolutely not being "greeted in the streets with flowers, as liberators", as the Bush Administration promised.

In the meantime, let me mention two statistics, not including what the war is costing us in materiel and dollars:

--The US has suffered 4375 casualties in American Soldiers, men and women and

--We have suffered 31,639 wounded American Soldiers, total, to date

And for what?

So the Iraqis could lament the days they had their own leader, however brutal and barbaric, and we hadn't yet blown them up, put our own soldiers lives at risk and spent trillions of dollars to do all the above.

Do you suppose there are still people out there who think George W. Bush and his administration are going to be thought of in a positive light one day, in retrospect, in the history books?

2 comments:

Radioman KC said...

Sounds to me like evidence for putting the former Pres, his vice president, and the secretary of defense on trial for War Crimes.

That should cut the Republicans down to size, dont ya think. And the Audacity, to play up a "MISS ME YET" sign?

Wonder how many widows and orphans and parents of dead children in Iraq would agree with thse assholes?


OBAMA WON. GET OVER IT!

BTW, goood blog, Rage. You seem to be on Tony's good side. Guess I'm too critical of his anti mayor jones.

Mo Rage said...

hey, thanks, RM.

Tony's not too crazy about me, either. I keep pointing out how stupid, sophomoric, degrading, shallow and sexist it is to put up pix of scantily clad "chicks" and he doesn't appreciate it. So be it.

He appreciates my pix however.