"Saddam's support for terrorist groups would have insured another major attack upon Americans and the soil of the United States."

There was no basis for you to make this statement. Even the Pentagon in it exhaustive but buried final report on the Iraq/al Qaeda connection concluded there were no operation relationships.

Try the 9-11 commission link in that post, Barney. They rather disagree with your assumptione that only Al Qaeda would strike the US and that there would not have been an Iraq-AQ cooperation as time progressed, and THEY reached their conclusion after consulting with terrorism experts.

Then again, ignoring facts and spouting GoreLies is pretty much your whole repertoire, is it not?

Barney - still incompetent.

I felt great apprehension about the second invasion due to the poor coalition we had going in. The real failures and challenges that occurred were when Saddam was allowed to bribe his way into Russia, China, as well as France and other European nations to oppose the invasion. Had the standing President faced this challenge when it occurred (Bubba), the GWOT would have been stronger, we would have had sufficient forces to stifle violence (no SURGE necessary) and secure weapons at the outset. GW may not have recognized the significance of the bribery, but he had little time to counteract what had been in place for eight years.

We were preparing for two to three times the casualties in a few weeks for what we've lost in five years.

This is all made even more interesting when you consider the following:

1) Hussein was connected, in that same report, to several known terrorist groups, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who's one-time leader is OBL's #2 - Ayman al-Zawahiri.

2) France, China, and Russia did not want to help us invade Iraq because they were making millions off of the U.N. Oil for Food program from Saddam. They weren't going to ruin their meal ticket.

DJ, there is and never was any evidence that Saddam supported terrorist attacks on US soil.

"The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq," according to the report. Read excerpts from report (pdf)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/13/alqaeda.saddam/

Barney, you just cannot bring yourself to check out links which might tear your silly talking points apart, can you?

http://www.9-11commission.gov

You have to forgive Barney. He prefers cherry picked, misleading, and misrepresented tidbits, rather than getting the whole story. It's a lot easier to be a usefully idiot that way. Leftists are not "big picture" people for that very reason.

Now why someone would want to be a useful idiot like Barney is a whole different issue...

"In my judgment, Saddam assessed Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida as a threat rather than a potential partner to be exploited to attack the United States. Bin Ladin wanted to attack Iraq after it occupied Kuwait in 1990 rather than have the Saudi government depend on foreign military forces. Several captured al-Qaida operatives have said Usama refused to consider working for or with Saddam, according to press accounts. Saddam would have understood that after Usama had realized his ambition to remove U.S. forces from Arabia and eliminate the Al Sa`ud and other ruling families in the Gulf, that he would have been the next target."
http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing3/witness_yaphe.htm

DJ, where is your proof that Saddam did or was planning to operationally support a terrorist attack on US soil?

I wonder how long the USA can keep borrowing $13 billion per month to run this war in the face of a global financial crisis and a dollar crash.

galoob, you really don't have any clue about the magnitude of the resources of the US, the size of the US federal budget, and what a small fraction of that is being spent on Iraq?

Casualties aside, how much has the war cost in dollars? How many American (or other) lives could have been saved or drastically improved had that money been spent on, I dunno, humanitarian aid or medical research or education?

And how many Iraqis have died, and continue to die, vs. how many Saddam put to death?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm not sure one can give the war a thumbs up or down without giving them some thought.

By the way, where is there any evidence that Iran was going to invade Iraq? I wonder whose side the U.S. would have armed that time around--Saddam's or the Ayatollah's? No way it would've been neither.

SPQR, with a handle like that you should remember that Rome spent itself into the ground.

13 Billion a month is a lot of money. It's like a Boston Big Dig every month and a half. And it took 20 years to spend that Big Dig money. Even inflation adjusted, it's like an Apollo Moon program every two or three months.

A country's currency is a market measure of the economic strength of a country. By that measure, we are tanking. Someday the bill might come due from the Chinese who are buying our T-bills.

Oh well, if it makes you feel good to think that everything's OK, that we are not borrowing ourselves into insolvency, have at it. Reality bites, though.

galoob = chicken little

3,990 US Troops Killed... 29,395 Wounded... 2,100 Have Tried To Commit Suicide... 88% Of Military Officers Say War Has Stretched US Thin... 82,000-89,000 Iraqi Casualties... 4,500,000 Iraqi Refugees... Global Terror Incidents From January 2001: 1,188... Global Terror Incidents From January 2006: 5,188

Republicans are not strong on terror. They are stupid on terror. Making new enemies while isolating your allies ...Not smart.

At least one thing you lack, Cold Unused Brain:

CONTEXT.

Wow, DJ that\'s quite a refutation. I\'m really impressed. maybe you can come back with \"I know you are but what am I\" next time?

5 times as many terror incidents since the invasion, that there is a successful stragededy.

One I would expect you to endorse though
DJ Dumb Dumb.

"galoob = chicken little"

DJ Drummond = idiot

Cold-Hard-Rock-In-Cranium, you cited no sources, and popped off a collection of data tied to false claims, yet you are surprised I don't stand in awe of your post?

Yeah, right.

When was the last attack on US soil, btw?

How many top AQ leaders are still kicking their heels?

These and all the other cogent questions you ignore, while continuing to play 'It's Bush's fault' for everything you don't understand.

How pathetic. Predictable, but sick.

But really, DJ, you're awfully glib in your all things considered, THE WAR = A-DOUBLE-PLUS "analysis".

You have a tenuous grasp of the concept of causality if you think that the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has somehow prevented people from blowing things up on U.S. soil.

Barney's hilarious.

DJ says: "Saddam's support for terrorist groups would have insured another major attack upon Americans and the soil of the United States."

Barney says there's not proof that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda!

DJ replies: "They [the 9/11 commission] rather disagree with your assumptione that only Al Qaeda would strike the US and that there would not have been an Iraq-AQ cooperation as time progressed, and THEY reached their conclusion after consulting with terrorism experts."

Barney cites another bit of text specifically related to al Qaeda and then comes to the same ridiculous conclusion; Saddam did not support attacks against America.

Barney, Saddam supported and communicated with the Army of Muhammed which is an offshoot of al Qaeda. If you're interested at all and want to know what an ignorant little twerp you are, read Page 35 here and see exactly what the Army of Muhammed's goals were.

It has been five years and regardless of how anyone feels about the current status of things I feel it is important to remember the events that occurred at the beginning of the invasion. I made an eight minute documentary about the looting of the Iraqi National Museum. I had the good fortune of interviewing Dr. Donny George, the former director of the Museum, and learned a great deal about this tragic, historical, and still misunderstood event. Below is a link to the video. I hope it is insightful about one aspect of the this war that is still raging five years later.
-Stuart Draper

http://www.scribemedia.org/2008/02/07/looting-the-iraqi-national-museum/

Oyster, does that then warrant an invasion and occupation of this magnitude and costliness?

If you pee your pants every time some idiot declares his/her intention of "destroying America" or smearing the marmite of Islam across the bagel of Western civilization, then you, personally, are letting them win. A war on terror? How about a war on cancer or poverty instead?

When the chickens come home to roost, Barney is what's left on the ground below.

Jeez, and there's old max again, making assessments without any valid sources.

Isn't galoob a toy company that came up with that cheating device called the 'game genie'?

How about a war on stupidity, matthew? I know just where to start.

In case you haven't been paying attention, this was not what started the war, nor did I imply it was enough to start a war. But you go ahead and toss those red herrings out there all you want. That's the problem with people like you. Your myopic vision only allows you to look at individual circumstances or issues as if they're not interconnected somehow. That or you're hoping you can compartmentalize things in a way that distorts or ignores the full picture. Saddam's support of this particular terror group is only one of many and varied reasons for the war.

Time to go back to your corner.

Had the standing President faced this challenge when it occurred (Bubba), the GWOT would have been stronger, we would have had sufficient forces to stifle violence (no SURGE necessary) and secure weapons at the outset.

Oh, so it wasn't that Bush and Rumsfeld ignored the advice of the generals that we needed more forces, and then fired the ones who disagreed with them. It wasn't Cheney's prediction that the Iraqis would throw us parades. It wasn't the commander-in-chief's fault that securing weapons was not a priority. It wasn't that Bush was later forced to accept reality and backpedal into "the surge".

No, it was none of that. It was Clinton's fault!

It must be nice to have a little bugaboo you can blame everything bad on so you can keep your head in the sand.

The plethora of reasons, Oyster, still don't convince most people in your country, let alone the rest of the world, that the war was worth prosecuting. Are you simply smarter than them? Is everybody else stupid, or ignorant?

Put the majority of people in your country, and the vast majority of the rest of the world, in the corner with me.

I stand by my assertion that people who are afraid of terrorists are letting terrorists win. They don't warrant the attention you insist on giving to them, let alone tectonic geopolitical reorganization at an obscene cost of human life and treasure.

DJ, you list facts like the Iraq war is just a continuation of the Kuwait invasion, you list facts that we have not been attacked since 9/11, yet the liberal lefty dufus' continue to propagate the lie.

The the left, before Iraq the terrorists really, really hates us and wanted us dead, now that we are in Iraq, they really, really, really hate us and want us dead. How stupid can the left be? Nevermind. ww

Not too long ago the majority of the people in the world thought the world was flat and that the sun revolved around it.

Being in the majority has nothing to do with being right.

Being thoughtful, having an open mind, seeking out and learning all the facts instead of a few cherry picked ones, and looking at the big picture will get you a lot closer to the truth.

I wish our friends on the left, who would prefer to see the US be defeated and tuck tail and run from Iraq, would be a little more liberal in their thinking.

dufus' is possessive, and spelled wrong. Doofuses is plural, and spelled right.

People can be wild and coherent at the same time, Willie.

Who has not been attacked? Americans? I thought the jerks with AK-47s in Iraq were terrorists, and that they'd killed about 4,000 Americans.

Why are you such a pansy? If some asshole ten thousand miles away from you wants you dead, do you:

A) pimp for, and attempt to justify after the fact, an expensive and bloody war; or

B) ignore them and get on with life

?

When I hear the jingoistic "tough on terror", it makes me laugh, because it really means "totally afraid of idiots really far away from me".

We've been listening to the same arguments for five years, P. Bunyan. Just because they've failed to convince us (and a majority of everyone else), doesn't mean we just don't get it. It could very well be that the arguments being made are shitty at worst; and at best insufficient justification for an invasion and occupation.

There are 50,000 Iraqi prostitutes in Syria that weren't there before the war. Something else to factor into your crass cost/benefit analyses.

...though you are right: consensus does not determine facts, and truth is independent of opinion.

There are differences, though, that make your flat Earth analogy tenuous: compared to Columbus' Europe, our civilization today is 1) literate; 2) informed; and 3) governed at least in part by empirical science rather than theological B.S.

"The plethora of reasons, Oyster, still don't convince most people in your country,..."

It convinced Congress and the majority of America before and for a good while after. It was only until there was evidence of mismanagement that some of that majority began to change their minds. While there are many of us still that believe going to war and deposing Saddam was the right thing to do, we can still hold reservations about how it was conducted. That the situation was able to be turned around has been encouraging.

If you were against the war from the beginning, no matter how it was conducted, then fine. You're entitled to your opinion, but don't try to twist it into a "I was right all along" scenario or try to feed me that line that "more people agree with you so that makes you right" bullshit.

The media has played an enormous role in shaping public opinion with massive negativity over the last few years and even still after the situation improved they were grasping at straws to maintain a negative output in their reporting. Now they've just stopped reporting at all. Unless, of course, something bad happens.

And finally, matthew, I am not "afraid of terrorists" in the same way that a child is afraid of the boogeyman. If I were confronted with a terrorist, you're damn right I'd be afraid. And so would you. But that's as far as it goes. Ask the people of the Middle East if they're afraid of terrorists though. They wouldn't take your little sentiment so lightly.

How are the victims of the terrorists supposed to get on with their lives when they're dead?

Also when one political movement has control of almost all of the media as well the educational system, as is the case today your #2 point is invalid and #3 is debatable. I'll grant you #3, but there is still a lot more religion than science behind government decisions. (And a lot of religion disguised as science -- anthropogenic global warming & atheistic Darwinian evlution for examples-- which is the most dangerous.)

Typo- I meant to type "and #1 is debatable"

Yes. It totally sucks when terrorists kill people. It sucked when Saddam Hussein killed people. But there are lots of things that pose a far greater threat to your security than assholes with g