Republicans - Do you believe going into Iraq was still a good idea ?

Question

Considering what we know today, about the yellow cake uranium documents being a fraud that disprove Saddam ever had nukes in his possession and the fact that Iraq never had ties to Al Qaeda.

And the continues death toll of Americans and Iraqi civilians that would never exist had we not invaded that country.

Considering this knowledge do you republicans still support the initial cause of the war even 'tho it was based on fallacious claims?

If you knew this before we started the war would you still support it then ?

Geek- Thanks for answering my question. I doubted many repubs would try to make much of a stand against it. but now time to dissect that post of yours :)

1. Those very reports you claim were originally based on forged documents. furthermore Saddam had no ability to acquire such weapons because the UN had disarmed him completely in the course of 10 years after the first gulf war. This can be found in Scott Ritter's report. ( the man who headed the operation to disarm Iraq)

2. In 1982 when Saddam was the enemy of our enemy, Iran. America had supplied him with hundreds of chemical weapons. moreover we have never invaded a country for having such weapons. if that was our intention for starting a war then we would have invaded dozens of countries across the globe who currently have and were supplied chemical weapons by America.

3. I don't dispute the amount of people who were killed under Saddam's reign. But I also don't dispute the grave effects of the 12 year embargo. It cut off vital supplies and food for the Iraqi population which starved many families to death including 700,000 children of the two and half million that died.

Also our initial strike on Iraq in '91 destroyed many civilian infrastructures as hospitals, watering plants, electric plants. this made many places uninhabitable because of lack of these needed foundations.

Answer 1

Yes. The invasion was the right thing, done for the right reasons.

1. As reported by the BBC, CNN, and the NYTimes, there was certainly 600 metric tons of unenriched uranium, along with 1.5 tons of enriched uranium, in a country that had no nuclear reactors. And, the Brits ruled that the assertion of Saddam still trying to buy uranium after the 1992 cease-fire (around 1999) was indeed accurate. The US Congress had the same findings.

2. Saddam had thrown out the weapons inspectors, and in fact threated to use chemical and nuclear weapons until he was deposed from power. Every intelligence service in the world thought he had at least chemical weapons, and they knew about the uranium. So, the lack of ready-to-use WMDs is an understandable mistake. Bill Clinton argued that there were WMDs when he was President.

3. There was certainly a death toll before the invasion. As you might recall (probably not, but we'll play along), this started when Saddam invaded Iran in the 1980's. To pay for that war, he invaded Kuwait. After he was kicked out of Kuwait, a state of war (a la Korea) still existed in the area, and shooting happened almost every day. Bill Clinton and Bush '41 regularly launched attacks against Iraq.

In retaliation, Saddam killed around 100,000 of his people in order to stay in power, and in an attempt to convince the world that the embargo was starving children.

4. The invasion certainly prevented a situation like Korea, where we've been at war for 50 years, a full army camped on both sides of the DMZ.

HOWEVER...

History will judge Bush harshly for his conduct of the occupation. No one in the Bush administration seemed to understand Iraq, or had any plans for the occupation. Notable among the mistakes:

- not having enough troops in place behind the invasion force to keep the peace

- Disbanding the Iraqi army, then having to start a new Iraqi army from scratch.

- Firing most of the bureaucracy of the government, at a time when most of the government buildings were in ruins, insuring that there would be no government institutions in place to run the country.


Is that honest enough?

Answer 2

i was never for the war...but in the beginning of the war... the majority of the public was for it...
this is not just a Bush 43 problem...its a problem carried over from Bush 41 and many people thought Bush 41 didnt finish the job properly. add to that young bush thought it would be easy and could be funded with oil money.

they seem to be pretty good at shock and awe...they should just cut the country in three
establish no fly zones over the whole country, let the Kurds have the north, as they should (no matter what turkey thinks), let the shiite have the south (and let them colloborate with iran, they are already doing it anyway, big deal), establish borders, police the borders and create DMZ's. and then let the middle duke it out, and fund and train the so-called good guys. or even better, they should do a deal like the india-pakistan problem. people should move. the us should get out of the middle of the country.

and if there is another problem, they should do the shock and awe all over again, they seem to be able to that well enough. they can win wars.
they just cant win the peace.

there is a bigger problem anyway...anywhere that there is a weak muslim state...there appears to be opening for a future al quaeda state such as somalia, or lebanon or the like.
this problem isnt going to go away...its like another cold war with the likely possibility of a world war.

Answer 3

Everyone including the demo's thought there was WMD at the time. Clinton said it over and over and over. No one knew at the time so it wasn't a lie. What you people don't seem to understand we are fighting terrorists. You know, the evil people who say they will fight us on their territory or ours it doesn't matter cause they won't quit until they claim victory. Gee! Yes of course I supported it then and now and there are even some demo's who do!

Answer 4

Seems strange that the Clinton administration and many of the democrats were in favor of it... not just Bush.. In case you have forgotten.. over 90% of congress approved that action specifically and gave Bush the green light to get it done.

Answer 5

I would be surprise if you get any answers from the Republicans, although you may get a couple of answers from the Democrats that believed the lies Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld told them then.

Answer 6

yes-they still supported al-qaeda with money, weapons and a safe place to be. we did a number on al-qaeda-they r weaker now more than ever-bin laden deserves to die, but he is pathetic now-

Answer 7

I never thought it was a good idea, it was a stupid thing to do made up by a stupid guy who cant even say nuclear

Answer 8

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!