@Redpillpusher you evidently didn't read what I said in the linked posts I sent you before. I'll copy and paste it for you here:

again, even if he didn't have any WMDs after all (and he did), Saddam kicking out the UN inspectors was an act of war. Nothing else needed.

From a different one I'd linked you to previously:

Where did I ever once say that I don't think too much was spent?

Where did I ever once say "everything went perfect and was all rainbows and unicorn farts and everyone had ice cream and lived happily ever after"?

All I've said all along, was that removing Saddam was the best least bad decision we could have made.

This is the real world, not some abstract math problem where everything is neat and perfect. Sometimes, you are just stuck in a situation where no matter what you do, someone is going to complain about it (the "hurr dee durr amurrca bad" crowd would of course find something to complain about no matter what).

Leaving him in power to run roughshod over the entire Middle East would have been far worse. "How can America just leave their allies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to be conquered by a brutal dictator? Is America going to abandon the UK too next time Germany decides to whip their ass?"

Here's what the situation was, in 2002-2003, with no Captain Hindsight-ing about how much it ended up costing because the people in charge kept moving the goalposts and failed to plan properly:

• Saddam had steamrolled Kuwait in 1991, and had his sights on Saudi Arabia next. These were US allies, and they asked for our help.

• after we purged the Iraqis from Kuwait, part of the terms of surrender that allowed Saddam to remain in power was unfettered access to inspectors to make sure Iraq didn't have WMDs.

• Saddam kicked those inspectors out. this alone was an act of war, and meant that hostilities immediately resumed.

• Saddam had shown willingness to use mustard gas when he did so against Kurdish rebels.

• Saddam attempted to have 2 different US Presidents assassinated.

• Saddam made it clear that he thought of Kuwait as his.

Those are the reasons we initially invaded. Absolutely justified.

Back to your nonsense:

Iraqis weren't suspected of any terrorist attack on US soil.

Never said they were m

So why DF were we invading Iraq and not Saudi Arabia???

Already answered this.

It's a fact that Saudi Arabian men were behind terrorism on US soil

Acting on behalf of Al Qaeda, and not the government of Saudi Arabia.

I dislike Saudi Arabia, but we have no reason to invade them.

as well as they had a legitimate arsenal of WMDs

Yeah, so do a lot of other countries. They're allowed to.

Saddam had to get rid of his and allow unfettered access to inspectors as part of the cease-fire agreement that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

@Whisper whoa, hold on there.

Where did I ever once say that I don't think too much was sIpent?

Where did I ever once say "everything went perfect and was all rainbows and unicorn farts and everyone had ice cream and lived happily ever after"?

All I've said all along, was that removing Saddam was the best least bad decision we could have made.

This is the real world, not some abstract math problem where everything is neat and perfect. Sometimes, you are just stuck in a situation where no matter what you do, someone is going to complain about it (the "hurr dee durr amurrca bad" crowd would of course find something to complain about no matter what).

Leaving him in power to run roughshod over the entire Middle East would have been far worse. "How can America just leave their allies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to be conquered by a brutal dictator? Is America going to abandon the UK too next time Germany decides to whip their ass?"

Here's what the situation was, in 2002-2003, with no Captain Hindsight-ing about how much it ended up costing because the people in charge kept moving the goalposts and failed to plan properly:

• Saddam had steamrolled Kuwait in 1991, and had his sights on Saudi Arabia next. These were US allies, and they asked for our help.

• after we purged the Iraqis from Kuwait, part of the terms of surrender that allowed Saddam to remain in power was unfettered access to inspectors to make sure Iraq didn't have WMDs.

• Saddam kicked those inspectors out. this alone was an act of war, and meant that hostilities immediately resumed.

• Saddam had shown willingness to use mustard gas when he did so against Kurdish rebels.

• Saddam attempted to have 2 different US Presidents assassinated.

• Saddam made it clear that he thought of Kuwait as his.

Given all of this, what would have been your solution?

So far, no one else in this entire conversation has presented an alternative. All anyone so far has been able to say boils down to "that sucked! You shouldn't have done that!" Well, what should we have done instead?

@Whisper

But the mission was liberal hegemony. And, no, that's not just the way the mission was sold. It's the way the mission was carried out.

It was originally sold as "remove Saddam". There was a lot of "and then what?" being asked by almost everyone for the first year plus.

That "install a democracy they don't even want" crap was a pivot.

Persians

Persians are Iranian. Iraqis are Arabs.

Yes, it matters, but not for our discussion. Just a correction.

why [remove Saddam]?

I went over this many times already. See upthread.

setting up an assassination would cost 10 million dollars, maybe 25, tops

Can't. Against the law.

Additionally, one of the grievances against Saddam was his attempts to have two previous US Presidents assassinated (Bush 1 and Clinton). That would have been a pretty bad move to assassinate Saddam right after listing that among the grievances.

Why? Because you are enabling them.

Not at all.

You are supporting these missions.

I was a professional Soldier. As long as the missions given to me were legal, I had to complete them.

And this was legal.

Did bad people end up benefiting? You bet. They seem to find a way to do that no matter what, and some profiteers doing what profiteers do wasn't really my problem, and was beyond any power I had, whether as a junior enlisted Soldier or as s junior officer.

Any military member will fulfill the missions given, even by politicians they hate.

Civilian control of our military is one of the foundations of this republic. If the military picked and chose what orders to follow, eventually we'd be a military state.

I'm certain you don't want that.

You are closing your eyes to corruption.

I have done no such thing.

Saddam needed to be removed, based on what we knew at the time.

Bad people benefited from this.

Both of those statements are true.

@MentORPHEUS

And, if he had them before but shipped them to Syria while the Coalition watched, then they KNEW he DIDN'T have them by the time the attack began!

No, we knew several convoys went into Syria.

Were they carrying WMDs? Probably. But we don't know for sure.

And we sure as hell had no way of knowing that it was all of Iraq's WMDs if we didn't even know for sure that it even was WMDs.

Thus, the Casus Belli for the 2nd Gulf War was obsolete before it started.

Not at all.

You continue to ignore the most inconvenient truth:

per the cease-fire agreement that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991:

• Saddam was required to disarm of any WMDs

• the onus was on Saddam to prove that he had

• Saddam kicking out the inspectors was an act of war, whether he even had WMDs or not

The grossly oversimplified "we need to get rid of Saddam because of WMDs" was how it was presented to the public because most people, such as you, fail to understand anything more intricate like what I put in bold above.

This is a terrible Retcon fail on yours and Typo's part.

Not a retcon.

basically replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

Pulling the plug on that debacle was one action of President Biden that I can say was a great accomplishment.

Abandoning everything we did and just letting the Taliban have not only control of Afghanistan but also a shit ton of our weapons, vehicles, and other equipment while abandoning the people who had worked with us to certain torture and death was an accomplishment?!

What the fuck are you smoking?!

Did that dog chew your brain, too?!

@MentORPHEUS

phone driven typo.

I saw the S instead of the A. The L key is too close to the backspace key for my gorilla hands, and I didn't notice that instead of erasing the S and adding the A, I added an L and an A.

So almost anytime you see some erroneous L in my text, that's why.

Anyfuckingway...

[categorical denial that Iraq had any WMDs at all]

Here ya go, from a libtard rag that opposed GWB at every turn, the NY Times:

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

So take your ignorant insistence at spouting the now-normie talking point (and actual lie) that there were no WMDs in Iraq, and shove it up your ass.

[bullshit about American munitions and serial numbers]

I didn't previously dispute your assertion that Saddam got the mustard gas from us, because frankly it wouldn't have surprised me if the USA actually had supplied Iraq during the Iran/Iraq War in the 1980s.

But that bit about serial numbers made me a bit more interested.

From Wikipedia (which normally has a strong leftist bias):

The know-how and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained by Saddam's regime from foreign sources.[47] Most precursors for chemical weapons production came from Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands (4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and West Germany (1,027 tons).

I don't see the USA on that list.

What was your source for that bullshit? Your own wishful thinking?

your silence in ignoring this statement

To me it was a non-starter both then and now, but I'll address it directly at your insistence. This amounts to a negative proof. As such it is inherently un-debateable, as one cannot prove the negative. I saw through this sophistry and manipulation for what it was then, and it has no significance to me now. Its only utility today is as a desperate, "But... But..." argument from those who were all-in supporting the war then and now, if only as a survival and sanity mental tool from getting involved and immersed themselves in the war.

What a crock of shit.

Saying that his kicking out the inspectors was an act of war is not asking anyone to prove a negative.

Anyway, I'm about sick of going around this mountain thousands of times.

Saddam had WMDs, full stop.

Even if he didn't (but he did), his kicking out the inspectors was an act of war, full stop.

Saying "there were no WMDs!" is a lie, full stop.

I consider this matter closed.

@Antelope

under some pretence

There was no pretense.

• Saddam had WMDs, and had used them before.

• Saddam kicked out the inspectors.

See also Ukraine

Irrelevant subject change. This entire discussion was about Iraq.

[muh evil profiteers]

They'll find a way to profiteer from anything. Yes, that's wrong. But that doesn't make the invasion wrong.

And yes, there's a lot we could have done better.

My issue is with retarded dipshits who pussied out of basic training and have spent a lifetime running away from problems accusing me of war crimes.

So saying ‘we’ left infrastructure better in Iraq than ‘we’ found out is an absurd ad hoc justification.

Not at all, as it's not even a justification.

It was setting the record straight when a lying, cowardly sack of shit spoke as though we brought nothing but destruction.

The justification was Saddam kicking out the inspectors.

This isn't rocket science.

@Typo-MAGAshiv

www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro

Saddam Hussein made two "huge and significant" strategic "mistakes" to challenge the US dollar-based global oil trading system and American petroleum giants, prompting Washington to invade energy-rich Iraq, according to a new book.

The first mistake Saddam made was when he decided in October 2000 to move away from using US dollars as the currency for oil exports, such as were allowed under the UN 'oil-for-food' program ..

Read more at: economictimes.indiatimes.com/saddam-made-two-strategic-mistakes-to-invite-us-wrath/articleshow/2965361.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Here are some arguments, both for and against the thesis

usiraq.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionid=000911

@Typo-MAGAshiv

1st: no one can say for certain that Saddam didn't have WMDs.

That was a more compelling argument at the time, but now that more than 3 decades have passed without evidence of previously unknown WMDs emerging, anywhere, ever; I think credit goes to the skeptics, not the ones declaring he had them.

mustard gas

The mustard gas shells were known, RIGHT DOWN TO THE SERIAL NUMBERS, because US Weapons Manufacturers made them and the US Government facilitated the transfer because Saddam and Iraq were considered nominal US allies during the long Iran-Iraq war. In manufacturing consent in the US public to go to war, it was the threat of NUKES being the WMDs Saddam "had", and the mustard gas shells were like a side piece. Don't you remember the speech where Americans were told "A mushroom cloud" would be the evidence we'd see if American troops didn't go to war in Iraq?

your silence in ignoring this statement

To me it was a non-starter both then and now, but I'll address it directly at your insistence. This amounts to a negative proof. As such it is inherently un-debateable, as one cannot prove the negative. I saw through this sophistry and manipulation for what it was then, and it has no significance to me now. Its only utility today is as a desperate, "But... But..." argument from those who were all-in supporting the war then and now, if only as a survival and sanity mental tool from getting involved and immersed themselves in the war.

At least O'Reilly was willing to posture to the dude's face;

Yet O'Reilley was ConfidentlyIncorrect in spewing what was at the time a perfectly safe and widely held wrongness in service of The War Machine. IDK if you're aware but within recent weeks the Feds stopped Ritter from boarding a plane for a well publicized trip to Russia and took his passport, then more recently the FBI raided his house, doxxed his home address, and took a bunch of papers including the draft of a book he's writing on a warrant to take electronic devices. So that "posturing" wasn't merely toward an interview between third parties decades in the past.

anything positive about that piece of shit Phil Donslahue

I really only knew Donahue in the twilight of his career when he'd regressed to the mean of Shock/Schlock TV. Thus I never had a stake in "supporting" him. The clip in question though: pure gold and brave (plus very financially and reputationally consequential) of Donahue at a time when most of the Country and virtually all of the GOP stood rabidly pro-war and attacked anyone who went against the party line, including what came to get called "Cancellation."

I spent far too much mental processing time trying to figure out what punny insult that was before reading through to your correction of a mere phone driven typo.

@itsovER

One Man’s Terrorist is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter.

That cliched phrase really only applies to those who actually want freedom, such as the IRA.

The Iraqis didn't want our freedom or democratic-republic style of voting, etc. They pretty much want and need someone like Saddam, which really sucks.

its all about how you look at it.

Yeah, and you Islamists look at it with your heads up your asses, thinking that you can do no wrong and everyone else in the world is evil.

no one forced you to go there

A) No one forced the terrorists to go there either. Again, very few of them were actually from Iraq.

After Saddam's military was squashed, there was a roughly 6-8 month chunk of time during which nothing happened at all, as far as any violence. Terrorists started coming over from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc to fight us there.

B) Saddam forced our hand by kicking out the inspectors.

@MentORPHEUS

@TheRedPike

At the time most of the world agreed with the "righteous moral stature" of it.

Only those who took the Official Party Line at face value, and lacked the will to study the matter even a little bit. That time, the Administration and media mouthpieces were unanimous and insistent on the "fact" that "Saddam has WMDs.

You're conflating the first and second again.

The first was in 1991, and was purely to protect Saudi Arabia and then liberate Kuwait.

In fact, the first Pres Bush faced a lot of criticism from both sides of the aisle for not invading Iraq and taking Saddam out! However, we had no standing at the time to do that, and doing so would likely have turned our coalition against us.

That time, the Administration and media mouthpieces were unanimous and insistent on the "fact" that "Saddam has WMDs.

Sigh, time to go around that mountain again.

He more than likely had them, but those huge truck convoys going into Syria while our government spent months discussing and debating got rid of much of what he had.

Where do you think Al-Assad got the chemical weapons he used on Syrian rebels during the Arab Spring?