Yeah, they should go tell the Marsh Arabs what a lovely place Saddam's Iraq was to live in and ask how they're doing now

Also, weren't these more or less the same folks telling us how unliveable Iraq was under the sanctions ?

"There just aren't enough Flikr galleries from those torture sessions, I guess."

And if there had been, they'd be criticized as a CIA plot, and dismissed as forgeries.

The Left will back their ally Saddam. Period.

And none of it makes any difference. Yes, for some people (by no means all) Saddam's Iraq was a bad place to live - but now it's possibly worse, for just about everyone.

However, Saddam's Iraq was a sovereign state, with which the USA had no legitimate quarrel. The internal affairs of another sovereign state are none of the USA's business. Unless said state makes it the USA's business, by attacking or threatening the USA or by supporting or financing such attacks - which Saddam's Iraq didn't do. Far from supporting Al Qaeda, Saddam viciously suppressed it.

Yes, the perpetrators (or the people who sent them - the perps were beyond punishment) of 9/11 had to be punished. So what should have happened? Simple. The bin Laden family, part of the Saudi royal family and therefore part of the enemy (and Wahabists to a man) shouldn't have been sent back on a chartered plane - they should have been arrested. It shouldn't have been Iraq that was invaded - it should have been Saudi. And it shouldn't have been Saddam Hussein that was arrested and ultimately executed - it should have been King Fahd.

Saudi Arabia was, and is, just as vicious a dictatorship as Saddam's Iraq ever was, but that fact is irrelevant.

Why didn't any of this happen? Two reasons. Shrub Jr. wanted to finish the job his daddy had started and should have finished when he could - and invading Saudi couldn't be done because it might have impacted the profits of Shrub, his family and his buddies. So far, America has paid over 4000 lives and 650 billion taxpayers' dollars, with more of both to come, to protect those profits. That's what it's like, living in a plutocracy.

Saddam's Iraqi Republic was a land so fair and bright
Where the handouts grew on bushes,
And you slept out every night.
The boxcars all were empty, and the sun shone every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
On the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In Saddam's Iraqi Republic.

Fletcher: "The internal affairs of another sovereign state are none of the USA's business."

What did you consider the UN resolutions and sanctions, and the no-fly zones, not to mention the inspections?

Fact is, starting with the terms of surrender Saddam agreed to in order to end Desert Storm, which he promptly failed to keep, before OIF, Iraq's internal affairs were already our business for over a decade. With or without 9/11, staying out of Iraq's "internal affairs" was not a choice.

President Clinton, 1998: "The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. Bringing change in Baghdad will take time and effort."

By the time President Bush took office in 2001 and inherited President Clinton's Iraq policy, our choices regarding Iraq were . . .

A. Continue indefinitely and head-lining the corrupted, provocative, harmful and failed sanctions and 'containment' mission.
B. End the mission and release Saddam from constraint, in power and victorious.
C. Give Saddam a final chance to comply, and if he failed again, move ahead with regime change and nation-building.

We chose C. I take it you wanted B, instead?

Yes Iraq was a lovely place. I remember entering the country to see thousands of poor Eygptians fleeing the country being shaken down at the airport by Saddam's henchmen after he dictated that hard currency that could be taken out of the country would be limited to 20 dollars in 1985. So these poor people bought whatever they could to try and get their money out of the country and it was stolen from them. To replace them Saddam suckered Sudanese who were similarly exploited. Happy place only in the minds of people who think gulags are vacation communities.

Iraq was a place where the party members had access to hospitals manned by European doctors and nurses and all others had to deal with counterfeit medicines and untarined staff and non existant medical facilities.

Iraq boasted wonderful stores if you had hard currency all others had to wait in lines for luxury items like rice, chicken, light bulbs and toilet paper. Lines doesn't do the image justice when I saw people crushed to death waiting for cooking oil (one gallon per family). But it was a happy place.

So happy that meat had disappeared; children had never seen a banana or melon. But it was a happy place compared to the evil corrupt places like Jordan or Kuwait which had all these things in abundance but lacked huge military machines and nuclear research facilities and didn't support dozens of terrorist organizations. Yes Iraq was a happy place.

One could see decreipt buildings on the verge of collapse; dirty and contaminated water and daily power failures while luxury palaces that could feed three thousand people at a time were built. But we all know Iraq was a happy place.

Xerox machines were forbidden as were video tapes. Couldn't risk new ideas that might show people what other people had or how they lived. They might understand why Iraq was such a unique place. So unique no one could leave without Saddam's permission, even people who had been born in the USA but whose parents were Iraqi born, seems like in Saddam's mind this made them Iraqis and the US government did nothing.

But Iraq was a happy place.

ThomasJackson:

And just how happy a place is Iraq now; a substantial part in ruins and you take your life in your hands going shopping, and the power on 4 hours a day, if you're lucky?

Repeat: the internal affairs of Iraq are not the USA's business. Or weren't; you broke it, you own it. And break it you certainly have.

Eric Chen:

Actually, no I wouldn't have preferred B. I would have preferred D. Finish the job the first time. But America couldn't do that, could it, with an election coming up?

Right. Fletcher, because the enemy hasn't been decisively dealt with yet. Your solution is a little baffling for a number of reasons. First invade Saudi Arabia, instead of Afghanistan and Iraq! You think that would have really worked any better. It's true that the Sauds method of confiscating oil wealth and redirecting it toward their
Wahhabist propaganda organs, must be seized and redirected. The problem would be getting there. What would you bomb, in the nation where Islam was born? The Al Haramain Mosque, Mecca & Medina generally. As has been pointed out, the 9/11 cells conducted the bulk of their training in Europe and in the United States; with only some intro work in
Afghanistan; the basic course in jihad. The hawalas,other
charities,foundations operate mostly in other countries.
Interestingly the advisors most aligned with the Saudis (Powell, through his charter membership in the Carlyle Group along with Scowcroft and Baker) Armitage, part
of the Azeri oil lobby; were all opposed to Iraq. Along with most of the time serving former
ambassadors (Fowler, Freeman, Peck
Wilson, Walker) station chiefs (Anderson, Close, Bearden)were on the Saudi payroll were opposed to action in Iraq. Only rare iconoclasts like the late Hume Horan really saw the problem clearly.

Your solution now, seems unclear to say the least. Abandon an outpost right across the way from Saudi Arabia; so we don't have to pay the admittedly high cost now; but a thousandfold a few years from now

What would you bomb, in the nation where Islam was born? The Al Haramain Mosque, Mecca & Medina generally. As has been pointed out, the 9/11 cells conducted the bulk of their training in Europe and in the United States; with only some intro work in
Afghanistan; the basic course in jihad. The hawalas,other
charities,foundations operate mostly in other countries.

I don't think anyone was objecting to our actions in Afghanistan. But after Afghanistan, Saudi was the next logical step.

So, let's pretend that most powerful democrats, republicans, the media and our universities are not owned and/or managed by our Saudi allies. Let's pretend that these centers of American power are more interested in saving American lives than in profiting from Saudi bribes. How would we handle the Saudis?

Well, since they have been our 'friends' for so long, we know a lot about them. We know where their charities and foundations are located worldwide, we know who runs them, we know what they eat for dinner and we know where they live. Most Saudis do no productive work, and they live in a vulnerable environment that can easily be deprived of food, water and security.

The CIA's actions were essential to our victories against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and, until the mess at Tora Bora, those actions were fairly subtle. If influential members of our government decided to protect Americans instead of the Saudis, knowing what we know, it would be easy to quietly remove Saudi leadership in the same way. Since an obvious regime change would probably disrupt the region, we could throw up a few sanctions to weaken the Saudi infrastructure, basically hollowing the economy and vitality of the country out from within while leaving a shell intact, to give the appearance of stability.

The Saudi bankers and politicians who manage the terrorist infrastructure worldwide could also be dealt with by our intelligence agencies, since we've been working with them for so many years. That would be the one advantage of our decades-long friendship with this vile regime.

A good rejoinder, Mary, however, the problem is that most of the problem isn't with the Saud clan;
with the possible exception of Interior Minister Naif, and junior
princes like Ibn AbdulAzziz jr;
"Azouzi". The real problem lies with the Ilkwan clans like the Ghamdi, Uteibi, Quahtani, Mutairi et al who make up the bulks of Gitmo detainees, 9/11 hijacker lists, martyrs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, et al.

narciso:

Iraq is now a mess that it is going to take a decade at least to clean up, and it is going to cost at least a trillion dollars and thousands more lives. Now that the West is in and that the American leadership bungled the first stages of the occupation, the job has to be finished; if only because Iraq is now a training and recruiting ground for terrorists (where it wasn't before).

That wasn't my point. What was my point is that going in, in the first place, was not only a colossal mistake but one based on egotism and narrow factional interests within the USA, and supported by a tissue of lies.

There is a second point here. Assuming that, having gone into Saudi Arabia (which styles itself as the "guardian of the holy places" or some such nonsense) and met no effective opposition, America stayed until it suited America to leave - this would demonstrate that the ideology of the West is superior to theirs; specifically that the demon prince they call G-d was not and is not going to protect them. If necessary, that particular point could have been put more forcefully. A lot more if absolutely necessary - and it still can.

Lastly: when (not if - when) a couple of million Westeners, probably Americans, are vapourised by a weapon supplied by some rogue state (most likely Pakistan), everyone here (including the closet Islamophiles) are going to be howling for blood, and for the mushrooms of agony to rise over Mecca, Medina and Qom at a minimum. When it looks as if that might happen soon, I would prefer the West to get its vapourising in first.

The real problem lies with the Ilkwan clans like the Ghamdi, Uteibi, Quahtani, Mutairi et al who make up the bulks of Gitmo detainees, 9/11 hijacker lists, martyrs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, et al.

You know that, I know that and our intelligence agencies know it. If we were actually fighting a war against terrorism, those clans would be among the first targeted.

But they're not the only problem. The entire Saudi government infrastructure nurtures and exports terrorism and Salafist philosophy. Certain clans may be overrepresented, but we can't pretend that these clans are entirely responsible for the fact that Saudi Arabia is the hub of worldwide terrorism. Terrorism is a billion-dollar industry, managed by non-Saudis in groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

After 9/11, 95% of wealthy Saudis supported bin Laden's goals. Most wealthy and middle class Saudis support violent jihad. Our support of this nation has let the problem get way out of control. The Iraq war has mostly helped the Sauds get stronger.

The only benefit from the war - the Iraqis in the Anbar province taught us how to fight al Qaeda - don't bomb them from far away, don't negotiate with them, don't invite them to your ranch and hold their hands, just find out where they're hiding and kill them when you can. This isn't rocket science.

Hopefully we can return the favor by teaching the Iraqis how to set up some sort of functioning government. Our military is doing their best, despite the worst efforts of our state department and the Saudis..

You're right, Mary, the clans are the foot soldiers, but it takes active collaboration by the leading
financial, political & religious elements of Saudi Arabia to support
them. The Daniel Silva novel "The
Messenger, featuring a fictional analogue to the "Golden Crescent" network, which most represents this pattern. It's not a coincidence that the most guilty of Sauduction were all opposed to an engagement on their doorstep against the heretical Shia. Not for any concern about 'occupation and oppression'; they didn't have any since at least Khaybar & Yathrib, much less Diriyah.

Now Fletcher, you really think invading Arabia Felix would have been a cakewalk; to use an un
felicitous comparison. That would
have been seen as a direct declaration against Islam itself; to cite one example, even Stimson
didn't seek to attack Kyoto ;an in exact parallel to Shintoism.

#13 narciso:

"That would
have been seen as a direct declaration against Islam itself"

Maybe - although if there were any competent propagandists in the US administration (doubtful) I suspect that this could be got around; declare that none except Moslem troops would enter Mecca, for example, or state that Mecca would be left alone - after all, there is nothing important to us (except negatively)there. I don't believe that Mohammed mentioned oil, which is the only export of Saudi - except terrorists, of course.

Of course, each and every vehicle and person entering or leaving Mecca would be searched minutely, to make sure Mecca didn't become a bomb factory. If they don't like that? Tough.

And lastly; Islam declared war on the West somewhat over twelve hundred years ago, and continue to make war. Maybe it's time the West won it? Charles Martel, or Don John of Austria, would have known what to do.

Of course, one problem is that the West has let in a fifth column. Well, they are little use once unmasked.