wrote in message
...
On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:19:57 -0800, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

wrote in message
. ..


No argument on Iraq but I blame that on GHWB and Clinton for not
getting the hell out of there when Powell told them to.
Without the aerial occupation of Iraq for 10 years and the
infrastructure we built up around that, the invasion would not be
possible.


?? We needed to contain Saddam, which we were doing. We could have done
that
for another 20 years with very little loss of life.

No we couldn't. Saddam was slipping his "containment" by the time
Clinton left. We had lost most of western Europe as allies in that
fight. The embargo was a joke by then and we were getting a lot of bad
press for killing civilians in our effort to stop Iraqi radar sites
from lighting up our planes. Most of these sites were in residential
areas so we killed civilians almost every time we fired a HARM.
Every sortie over that country was an act of war in itself and there
were dozens every day.
Go look at some of stories coming out of the foreign press in
1999-2000. It was clear the Kurds were not going to rise up and kill
Saddam for us, not that we would be better off with running Iraq. It
was also clear the policy needed to change. That moron Bush jr just
went the wrong way.


There's no strong evidence that he was "slipping his containment." The
no-fly zone was working. The Kurds were pretty much autonomous at that
point. True, they weren't going to overthrow him, but he was powerless
against them having their own territory
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_zone).

There were civilian deaths, but no where near as many as what happened
after
Bush invaded. Not sure what you mean by him going "the wrong way."


The embargo was becoming ineffective since there was so much fraud in
the oil for food program and the number of countries that were simply
ignoring it.
Eventually there was going to be a showdown if we wanted to perpetuate
this sham. It is certainly a fact that most of western Europe were
criticizing the US and UK for their actions and Saddam was actually
gaining support, not losing it. People were questioning our need to
bomb these people virtually every day. We were finding the status quo
hard to justify.
Bush had 2 choices, declare victory or declare war, he went the wrong
way.


He didn't go the wrong way. He lied and went to war when no war was
justified. The embargo was still working, and there was no reason to do more
than what we were doing.


--
Nom=de=Plume