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

To: michael97123 who wrote (413008)	9/3/2008 1:16:46 PM
From: Joe NYC	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575908

michael, The fact we defeated al quaeda in iraq does not mean we had to topple saddam and thus create them in the first place. IF we hadnt gone in saddam and his sons queasy and sleazy would still be in place. I love both you and John. Its time for all three of us to be honest. 1. War wasnt necessary to fight al quaeda because there was no al quaeda there. I was against attacking Iraq. But, once the decision was made to go to war, I was all for conducting it to successful (and speedy) outcome. AQ raised the stake by making it THE battlefield to challenge the US. That raised the stake many-folds for the use to achieve a successful outcome. 2. Since we did, todays outcome looks a hell of a lot better than last year and we should do what we can to encourage that good outcome. 3. That includes leaving as the iraqis want us to do in 2011. I have no problem with that. This is not hard. You and I were surprised by the failure of rummy and the strength of the resistance. JF now cant get his arms around republicans taking credit for success in iraq because things are now better. Its a giant clusterfuck in which both the best and worst outcomes seem to be off the table. So we need to accept the best we can get which is both out by 2011 and hopefully a unitary federal state with some trappings of democratic govt. For all of us its like kissing our sister but its better to do that than fight. Where Iraq stands now, as far some resemblence of a democratic government actually exceeds my expectations (as does Afghanistan). My expectations were modest (replace Taliban and Saddam) with regimes that are not enemies of the US. The initial experimentation with democracy is a big bonus, at least for me. We can only hope that Iraq and Afghanistan will not turn into Gaza, where the terrorists won through democratic process... Joe