*Evil*? I'm not a fan of the lies, but taking Saddam out of power and returning the country to the Iraqis can hardly be called *evil*.

if the public werent stupid enough to buy everything they see on tv, they would have come up with some other excuse. like they could maybe someday come up with wmds (iran) or the government may someday commit some mass atrocity (libya) or anything else. iraq isnt the only time they lied. they lie about everything. and they would have went to war with or without the lies. the lies were just an (unsuccessful) attempt to convince other nations to support the invasion.

yes, hello iraqi citizens! i am going to give your country back to you. how, you ask? by bombing everything in sight, killing a couple hundred thousand of you, and putting you under foreign occupation for 8 years. now you are ruled by a puppet regime masquerading as a democracy with terrorists everywhere and anarchy in the streets and are on the brink of civil war. youre welcome.

66,000 civilian deaths. not a couple hundred thousand. That is what wikileaks reported. Get your facts straight.

And I would say "there you go folks. That despot who killed anyone he felt like is dead."

This is where I disagree with you Draug. Not our job to police the world. That's money would could of re-invested in the U.S. or just not gotten into debt with.

@CF - I have said in past threads that I disagree with us being in or even ever going in Iraq. But I also disagree with calling it *evil*. We should never have gone there, but the end result was a despot brought to justice.

it is a couple hundred thousand at least, you get your facts straight and dont just quote that cia operation wikileaks and pretend it is fact. http://costsofwar.org/

here is another link. note that this is university so it is likely understating it for political reasons.
http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/03/warcosts

and that number is only the *direct* deaths.

I have to agree with BF that I don't believe 66k is the number of deaths as it seems very low. However, the confusion a lot of people have between casualties and deaths could have something to do with it. In the end, the cost is not worth it. The Iraqis lost a tremendous amount of lives, have a government that is not stable, and have less security than they did before. Granted Saddam is out of power, but to say that alone makes the Iraqis better off is wrong.

The cost for the US was also high. The casualties of soldiers, the paralyzing debt accumulated, and the loss of will to fight, leading to our exit from a still unstable Afghanistan next year.

1. Saddam Hussien *did* have WMD's at one point -- he used them against the Kurds. Any suggetion that Iraq never possesed WMD's is simply a lie.
2. Saddam was seeking to secure the oil resources of the Middle East - that represented a threat to the global economy (in theory). It could have cost us more in the long run. the "cost of the war" the first time

was minimal - the problem with the First Gulf War is that we never *finished* it, but let Hussein linger on for another 10 years causing problems. Had we finished the war the firt time, this would be a completely different discussion, but we let politicians run the war instead of Generals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack

I hate Wiki links - but it's eashy to find. For those of you that don't know/don't remember history, this is the evidence of Hussein's willingness to use WMD's.

@patizcool. Total death counts vary (but include a lot of soldiers) from 100K to 150K, still not his hundreds of thousands. But I don't count Saddam's military engine as innocent victims. 66K is from Wikileaks (they/Julian Asange are the whistle blowers, remember?) and is direct results of violence. It includes those gravely wounded who died later but does not include deaths caused by terrorists themselves, only by allied Military forces.

"1. Saddam Hussien *did* have WMD's at one point -- he used them against the Kurds."
I wonder where he got them WMDs from, possibly from the same scumbags who financed the proxy war with the Iranians, now let us guess who they were !!

What relevance is it where he got them? That is a different discussion. the *fact* is, he HAD THEM, so all the discussion by liars in the media and government that say the war was based upon false pretenses, that Iraq never had WMD's, is complete bullshit.

I have no problem castigating *any* government that provided poison gas WMD's to Iraq. But..."possibly from the same scumbags..." is you being just another biased fool. You've been confronted with historical evidence that harms your previous erroneous understanding, so now you will try to deflect to a new argument - based upon zero facts - in order to try to continue to throw stones at whatever country you hate.

And what if it was the Russians/Soviet's that provided the WMD's to Iraq? Would you suddenly find love for the US for removing the threat? Or would you then just shift your argument in your obvious hard-on about bashing the US government?

You don't seem to have a fact-based agenda, here...you agenda seems much more emotionally driven. The problem is, your emotions are seemingly based upon your misunderstanding of the facts....leading you down a viscous spiral of anger from which you seemingly can't recover, even as the facts are disclosed to you. It's sad, really...

GERMANY...by the way...that's the answer. Neither the US or the Russians supplied them, but they were acquired from a European country. Thought I'd make it easy for you, since no doubt the thought of you researching the topic you want to blather on about is ludicrous...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war#Chemical_and_biological_exports

Read it and weep .... at least you can, not like the thousands massacred

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

"In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program.[25] Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s.[26][27][28][29][30] As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.[31]"

Oh yes....and then there is the FRENCH involvement, the ITALIANS....the BRITISH....and yes, even the US...

Moron. It's really pathetic that idiots like you love to bury your heads SO DEEP in the sand that you deny reality. I'll openly admit the US has been a bad actor on the global stage at times. Big surprise. We've also done a hell of a lot of good. But it's idiots like you that try to blame the US for all actions bad in the world that I just don't get.

I'm sure it make you feel good about yourself (not sure why...) to bash the US...but it also means you fail to hold the OTHER greedy countries responsible for THEIR bad behavior....thus making you the worst kind of hypocrite, as you enable others to do exactly as you pretend to hate by not holding everyone accountable.

But - back to the start - the real problem is your complete ignorance of history in general, starting with your suddenly learning here, today, for the first time apparently that Iraq did have WMD's Put's you with the 98% of the rest of the morons in the world that conveniently forget history and facts when the media commands you to forget. Bahhhhhhh....good sheeeeople. Bahhhh...

It is disgusting the role the Europeans countries such as England, France & Germany played in this as well. Completely unacceptable, the way we repaid the citizens of Iraq for our behaviour (as if they hadn't suffered enough) was to invade the country again.
The biggest joke is that Tony Blair is now a peace envoy in the Middle East and the whole place has gone up like dried timber. I hope the twat doesn't get paid by results or he'll owe us money.

Hey krellin, do you think Saddam Hussein had WMD at that time?

Yes or no?

Just give the both the Iraq and the Iran chemical weapons and let them wipe each other out. Good ridden to the whole lot of them.

The second Iraq war was a dodgy decision, based on flawed intelligence, badly executed and terribly administered after the event.
The country we should be invading is Iran, which is proven to be developing nuclear weapons, but the problem is so much money & political capital was used up in Iraq that isn't a favoured option.
Afghanistan on the other hand did need to be sorted out.

@Draug
point taken that BF is wrong on hundred's of thousands, but I stand by the fact that 66k seems low. I think it's closer to 100k. Either way, Iraq did not have WMD's at the time of invasion imo, or at the very least, not the capacity to use them.

@KJ

I agree Afghanistan was a war that needed to occur, and I will stand by that forever. Iran, on the other hand, is not needed. Israeli and US spies are killing Iranian physicists and knocking out power to Iranian nuclear facilities daily. Iran will not develop nuclear weapons in the next 10 years, and by then, the Arab Spring will catch up to them, I believe

Your point on the hidden war against Iran is interesting. Let's hope the US/Israeli intelligence is better than it was over Iraq.
There are many forms of war, and as you say maybe a ground war is not needed. But maybe funding & arming insurgents... Helping support an Arab Spring?

To be honest, I am very critical of the US response in Syria. They intervened, with European backing, in Libya and there is now a new government there. A perfect democracy? Of course not- nor in Egypt- but the US did not have a perfect democracy either. We had slaves for nearly 100 years and fought the most bloody war in US history to end that disgrace to freedom.

My point is that the best thing the US can do for the self preservation of Israel and the destruction of the Iranian regime is to back the Syrian rebels. It may be too late, but those educated young masses in Iran are ready to spill into the streets if they know they stand a chance, which the US could give them hope for with a substantial backing of Syrian rebels.

The Presidential election is in June- Ahmadinijad is inelligable for election. Should the results be irregular like last time, in 2009, then I believe that is when the US should throw their muscle behind the people and do their best to help with regime change. The US can no longer be the monster it was during the Cold War and install dictators, but it can certainly use tactical strikes and back room arms deals to get outcomes that favor the US over others

@ Krellin - don't get me started on the French involvement in the Iraq War or more their pre-war technical/military sales & cooperation with Saddams regime