The Iraq War was the most evil act in American history.

In the modern era, for a sitting president to attack a sovereign nation that resulted in hundreds and thousands of innocent dead Iraqis, simply because of a belief the president of the nation was a threat based on very weak and manufactured evidence, to me, is unforgivable.

Do I think it was worse than what happened to the Native Americans and blacks ? Yes - because that was an old era filled with ignorance.

I voted for Bush in 2000, but come 2004 I voted for Kerry because I realized we were engaging in an horrific order.

Trump said Bush should be charged with war crimes, and I find it hard to disagree. This isn't about politics, it's about morality and what we stand for as a nation.

Looking back, not a single good thing came from the war in Iraq. We lost any clout because the next time a nation/group attacks us "preemptively" because they perceive us as a threat, on what moral grounds can we fault them ?

Bush and his clan were one of the most ignorant and evil in American history.

 

will you condemn Trump when he starts a war with North Korea, also for political reasons?

 

There are plenty of detestable regimes around the place. The Saudis had far more to do with 9/11 than Iraq ever did. It was, in the majority, about geopolitics.

The same goes for Vietnam, Kennedy and Johnson didn't give a toss about the Vietnamese people, it was all about geopolitics. The same goes for WWII, Roosevelt had been adopting fascist policies for years prior to Pearl Harbour. The same goes for WWI, the alliance system made war preferable for most of the major powers.

The globalism that comes with war crimes prosecutions is a considerably greater threat than Bush was.

 

The first problem with this statement is that we were still technically at war with Iraq and Clinton had been Dropping Bombs on them long before Bush ever took office which was killing innocent civilians, Hell the damn sanctions resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.

 

Negative, because North Korea has nukes, has openly threatened the US and our allies many times, and they're escalating their words and actions. The same cannot be said of Saddam.

 

Nearly everything in your post is either false or deliberately misleading.

Bill Clinton dropped bombs on Iraqi air bases after the violated the no fly zone.

Contrary to your false insinuation, he never contemplated a unilateral military invasion. But this was a popular right wing rationalization, particularly after Bush's war went off the rails (as it did almost from day one).

 

But it was

 

I did not vote for Bush at all.

I was thinking about it, until the smear campaign that Bush and Karl Rove ran in the South Carolina primary.


I felt the way you do about his splendid little war in Iraq from the moment I realized that he was dumb enough to start a war in the Middle East. That was the night of the "axis of evil" speech. Bush's case for war was always a cynical joke. It was an attempt at an oil grab. It's the only explanation that makes the slightest amount of sense.

 

It was by US Administration officials and by the lockstep right wing media, particularly Fox Noise and sites like NewsMax, which actively promoted the war.

Anyone who travelled outside the US, or had access to media from other countries, read and saw a completely different story. Bush administration claims were dismissed and dismembered almost immediately. Colin Powell's sad UN speech didn't last 24 hours before being debunked.

 

The really sad thing was how much the NY Times (via Judith Miller among others) promoted that war as well

 

Please explain to the people of color how the Iraq war is more evil that chattel slavery.
I'll wait.

 

Actually President Clinton did indeed contemplate invading Iraq in the late 1990s. U.S. News & World Report did a major story about the potential invasion including the estimates of it requiring 250,000 troops.

It is quite possible that Clinton would've ordered an invasion had not the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted.

At the time of his death, no single person in the world was responsible for more deaths than Saddam Hussein. I supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I voted for President Bush for reason. And I still believe that.

 

Yes, the Times fell down on the job on that one. The Post was hardly better.

Oddly, on the rare occassion that right wingers list the stories that the Times got wrong, Judith Miller NEVER makes that list.

 

This is simply not true. USNews might have speculated about what would be involved, but that did not mean the Clinton Adminstration was seriously interested in starting a war.

The Iraq Liberation Act was the brain child of Newt Gingrich, and was pushed by a veto proof Republican majority. Interestingly, GOP Congressman sought assurances from the leadership that this act did NOT commit the US to starting a war.

Starting a war in Iraq was Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfled's idea, an idea actively fueled by Iraqi exile and con man, Ahmed Chalabi.

 

You really think that it worthy the life of 5 000 young american men (and women too, but vast majority was men) ? Without considering the one who got mentally or physically destroyed ?

The death of Saddam changed nothing as those kind of population need harsh dictators to not kill each other.

 

I respectfully disagree, even though I opposed the Iraq war. We (the US) have done far more despicable things over the years, and the Trail of Tears leaps to mind as one of the worst. Imprisoning Japanese citizens for the crime of being Japanese also occurs to me as worse than the Iraq war. And then there's slavery. The Patriot Act. Allowing South Vietnam to fall to the Communist North. Oh, we've done a lot of bad things over the years. By the way, if we go after Bush II for Iraq, don't we have to go after Bush I for Panama? We invaded a peaceful country, seized its leader (Noriega), dragged him back to the US, charged him with crimes he obviously could not have committed since he was never a US citizen or on US soil, and imprisoned him from that day till his death in 2017, all under Bush I's watch. Isn't that a war crime? I suggest neither is, for the simple reason that we don't want Democrats and global busybodies charging every Republican who gets elected president with war crimes. And you know they would. There were Democrats pushing the idea of impeaching Trump even before he took office, before he could do anything that could possibly be considered high crimes and misdemeanors. Bush II evil? No. Arrogant, yes, wrong, yes, evil, no. By the way, there's a well-settled legal principle that if you consult a lawyer and he tells you what you want to do is arguably legal, you are not legally responsible for breaking the law, even if it is later decided that the lawyer was wrong. And Bush II had lawyers telling him everything he was doing was legal, even water boarding. So it's hard to charge Bush II with even breaking the law.

 

This thread is a crock. Saddam had WMD and used them on his own people. During the UN investigation, they would show up at a dry-milk processing plant under suspicion, with their "minders", and while waiting to get in the gate they watched trucks quickly drive away from the back of the plant. They didn't catch them but it certainly was suspicious.

Stop believing the crap from the lying liberal media. Hell, even Dan Rather was FIRED in 2004 for making crap up out of thin air about Bush!

Steve

 

Hussein had to go for two reasons:

1) Every intelligence service in the world (American, Russian, Israeli, British, French, German, Chinese, etc.) said he had WMD's.

2) He was a major sponsor of terrorism, allowing al Qaeda to operate in Iraq and funding terrorism against Israel (our ally).

 

1) War is never "worth it" but that doesn't mean it wasn't justified.
2) What "young American men (and women)" killed during the war in Iraq? The average age of Americans killed in Iraq was 30 years old.
3) Every last one of those killed or wounded in Iraq VOLUNTEERED or reenlisted to join the U.S. military long AFTER tensions began rising with Iraq.

 

allowing North Korea to win over the South is not our business.
the trail of tears and everything before the 1950's, I consider, to be pre-modern era and while not forgivable, it was more par for the course

There is nothing in modern history that shows the US invading a sovereign nation that had not shown an ounce of aggression against us or our allies.

 

Please explain to the people of color how the Iraq war is more evil that chattel slavery.
I'll wait.

 

Au contraire, we invaded Grenada, Panama, and Somalia before we invaded Iraq.

 

Iraq repeatedly attempted to lock surface to air radars on American and British planes enforcing the No Fly Zones. This is internationally considered an act of war.

Saddam Hussein was providing support to terrorists who had killed American citizens in Israel which is also an act of war.

 

I mean they weren't 70 YO either. At 30 YO, you sitll have a lot to live, and you rarely have very old children if you have any.
Even if they were volunteer to fight, I don't think it's a good reason to waste their live. Life of american citizen (or of any other country but we're speaking of an american issue) is precious, especially the one of people devoted to their country.

The USA paid a very heavy price in this war, I'm not speaking only of the financial debt.
Much more american people died either in Vietnam (around 60 000) or during 39-45 (200 000), but 5000 are still a lot, especially when considering the results.

 

Nearly everything you said was dead wrong. One Iraqi SAms repeatedly locked up US fighters enforcing the no fly zone over Iraq we always responded by killing them collateral damage resulted in several civilian deaths. And two, whether Clinton planned an invasion or not doesn't by one iota change the fact that a state of war existed between Saddam's government and our own. And had since Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.