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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (376213)	4/4/2008 2:12:35 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575622

Bingo...strategic = OIL Tell tench to stop talking iraq in humanitarian terms. I've never understood this argument. From the outset, the Left has tried to make it all about oil -- which, taken alone, is a legitimate reason for what we did -- after all, anything involving supplies of petroleum represents a serious national security issue for us. However, as I pointed out years ago, there are numerous reasons for having done what we did in Iraq -- - Humanitarian - People were dying under Saddam's regime and would have continued to do so; - Military - we were locked into a situation where we had to maintain no-fly zones, which meant bases in the region, that eventually, we could get away from if we get Iraq straightened out. - WMD - without regard to the WMD not being found, we know that Saddam had used them in the past and would have reaquired WMD capabilities at the earliest possible time; - Terrorism - we are engaged in a war on terror, and Saddam was sponsoring terrorism (actually making payments to the families of suicide bombers) and there were active Al Qaeda training camps in Iraq; - Brinksmanship - Saddam had, since the Gulf War, brought us to the brink of war numerous times during the Clinton administration (and in fact, a competent president would have restarted the Gulf War where we left off when he did so). For the US to have allowed this to happen weakened us in the eyes of Islamic Terrorists, and was a mistake. Had Bush not removed Saddam, we would still be playing that game today, with each successive incident making us look more foolish -- and as we all know, a country in our position cannot afford to be made to look foolish. - Democracy - Most importantly, installing some form of democratic government in Iraq will provide incentive for other countries, like Iran, to move toward real democracy. Which is the reason Iran is so fiercely fighting it. There are numerous other reasons why this needed to be done. You seem to always want to point to Africa and say, "Why aren't we helping them?" We can't solve all the world's problems, but we can try to help where possible, while at the same time further our own interests. That's what it comes down to -- you think we shouldn't be in Iraq if we are furthering our own interests. But as long as those interests don't conflict with doing the right thing, generally, your case simply doesn't hold water.