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Originally Posted by Professor S
So do you or don't you think that the tens of thousands of deaths under Saddam were more acceptable or not? First you say no at the beginning of the post, then you follow it up with this statement? Say what you mean and stop trying to play both sides of the fence. There is no such answer as "No... but yes."
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No. I do not think that tens of thousands of death under Saddam's dictatorship was acceptable.
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Originally Posted by Professor S
Explain the logic of this statement. Honestly, every time someone says something to the effect of "blood for oil" all they do is tell me they refuse to think critically about the war...
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My point is this: There is good evidence that suggests that the motivation to go to war with Iraq was for oil. At the beginning, the Bush campaign downplayed the Iraq war as the United States doing Iraq a wonderful favor by riding it of its horrible dictator. That was a truth stretched in favor of the administration. It wasn't Bush's main motivation for invading Iraq. And, regardless if there is some truth to it, it's still not accurate of why we decided to go to war with Iraq in the first place.
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Originally Posted by Professor S
So if we can't do everything we should do nothing? I've never understood this argument. If we followed the ethic behind it nothing would ever get done in the world in any venue. Don't let the impossible perfect prevent the achievable good.
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This is subjective. Everyone has their own opinion about what we should do. We should do something. For instance, we should have made better plans before the insurgency. Defeating Saddam was no biggie. The guy was in shambles from the Gulf War. This fact is reflected wonderfully...we took Saddam out of power really quickly. That was the easy part, and apparently that was as far ahead as the Bush administration planned. We can't go back in time and change the fact that the United States was unprepared. And, I don't have to complain about this; the history books that will exist 20 years from now will do a good job explaining how we dropped the ball.
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Originally Posted by Professor S
In any case, we are there NOW. This is a real situation with real consequences if we abandon the situation or just let Iran do whatever they like. Do you know how much Hussein feared Iran? He lied about WMD's because he was afraid if Iran knew they had gotten rid of them they would have plowed them under. This is according to Husein's interrogator.
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We are there now. And we can't leave. If we leave now, someone will just rise to the position Sadam had. Until we instill order in Iraq, which may take a long time, we can't leave.
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Originally Posted by Professor S
Hussein feared Iran more than the US. And we shouldn't be concerned over their nuclear program and missile tests?
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While this doesn't directly relate to our discussion of Iraq or the Iraq War...I maintain that we should use diplomacy to try to halt Iran's nuclear program. I don't think we're really in the position to start telling countries if they can or cannot have missiles...Iran has just as much right to defend their border as any other country, regardless of how crazy they are.