It's like the plot from a bad movie, they didn't win the war, they didn't win the peace and now those chickens have come home to roost. George W Bush led the collition of the willing but I wonder if he would have been so eager if he didn't have the backing of leaders like Blair and Howard who were willing to commit troops to the incursion of Iraq. The approval of the UN was tenuous at best, and history has judged that a valid reason didn't exist because WMD were never found. That they were said to have been buried in Syria is no help at all.

What we have now is a beast like the ancient Hydra, cut off a head and more appear. They cut off the head of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and it reappeared in Iraq, defeated it morphed into Islamic State in Syria, then Iraq followed by Libya and Yemen. The great misjudgement is they didn't understand, despite the lessons of history, what they were dealing with, not just a terrorist organisation but a nation of disaffected, disenfranchised people

WMD were found... and they were proven to have been found, more than one type in fact. The media choose to avoid reporting it because it contradicted their propaganda they had been harping on.

If Saddam had just behaved and kept up his part of the cease fire agreement.. he would still be alive today.

Taking out Qaddafi was just plain stupid, he was behaving and helping us... and Siding with the Terrorist brotherhood in Egypt, against a leader who was both friendly to us and helping us.. was also brutally stupid. Arming ISIS in Syria against a leader who wasn't working against us, was also brutally stupid.

None of them were really great guys...but they were far better than could be expected by taking them out. But then, Someone would have to Attend Columbia and Harvard purely due to affirmative action to be that out of touch with reality.

There weren't that many people here in the USA that thought that was a good idea before he unilaterally decided to do this without consulting anyone smarter than the average 5th grader.
Nobody over there had a clue what freedon is over there...(there is no freedom in any way shape or form under Sharia law), and certainly nobody over there has a clue what Democracy is...

Like expecting someone deaf dumb and blind and completely uneducated to read war and peace. Just isn't going to happen.

Humans have a long history of fighting wars and current ones are no different. Saddam, Khadafy, and Asaad have a long history of brutal dictatorships and killing their own people and its STUPID to see them as anything other than murderers who would continue their killing ways.

It's all good if they aren't shooting at YOU or blowing up YOUR airplanes though, isn't it?

Stupid humans!!

So the point is should they be tried as war criminals or do we wait for dump to show them to be amateurs

yeah let's put them on trial as war criminals . After all ;like Trump said ;Saddam was a great leader ,who's reign of death led to "stability " . Good Grief !

Saddam brutally imposed his will on the people of the Iraq killing 10s of thousands and torturing many more . He gassed the Kurds in Halabja and 40 other villages killing up to 5,000 people and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more. He leveled the town of Dujail in retaliation for one person taking a shot at him . Before he did that he rounded up 140 fighting-age men who were never heard from again.He rounded up 1,500 other townspeople, including children,tortured them before he exiled them into the desert . 182,000 Kurds were killed during his Anfal campaign.

As for stability ,he twice invaded his neighbors ,over a million deaths (mostly during his invasion of Iran) . 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed during his invasion and occupation of Kuwait . Had it not been for our intervention he would've easily over-run Saudi Arabia. The region was far from stable . Iraq under his watch actively supported a number of terrorist organizations and he was a threat to all his neighbors.

He was invaded because despite the multiple sanctions ,and the US ,Brit ,Aussie efforts maintaining UN sanctioned no fly zones to protect the people from his abuses ....and the UN fraud and corruption with the Oil for Food program ....and the multiple warnings that there would be consequences for violating sanctions and not coming clean about his chemical ,biological ,and nuclear programs (yes he still had a nuclear program ...he shipped his nuclear research to Libya )....he still stubbornly refused to comply . His past history proved he could not be trusted to willingly give them up ,or give them up under international pressure .Thousands had died from his Chemical weapons .

The fact that he still had them was not a matter of debate ;it was the consensus assessment of all the intel services in the world ... including his own services and officers .Smoothy is 100% correct . There were plenty of WMD found in Iraq . More were transported out of the country with Russian escorts ;and Saddam had also retained enough material and assets to quickly reconstitute his weapons after the sanction regime collapsed (which again was happening rapidly because countries like Germany and France were anxious to resume business with Saddam). It was also a consensus of the whole American political community that he retained his weapons . This was the bipartisan consensus opinion of everyone ,who had access to the classified intel ...including both Bush and Clinton ,and every Congressional leader in the US ...and any political leader in England and Australia who had access .

The Islamic State is under the leadership of Saddam's former Republican Guard and Baathist supporters . The reason they grew was because we decided to elect a putz who clocked out at the very time real progress was being achieved .

As bad as those dictators could rightfully be argued were... the people under them were still far better off than they are now. The only people there that would argue otherwise are the ones causing all the trouble. Anything Improve in Libya? Nope, far far worse. Anything Improve in Egypt? Nope its far worse... ask all the Coptic Christians there, oh that's right, most of them are dead now. Is Syria better off? I don't think ANYONE will try to argue they are.

The world was a safer place while they were there in charge... particularly that region of the world.

Its just more proof you are sometimes better off with the devil you know, than the devil you don't.

As far as the local populations there? They support Sharia, its the polar opposite of freedom. Democracy? They don't know what it is, and most don't even want it...they Want Islam, they want Sharia, they want to be dictated to how they must wipe their butt and how they must do everything else in their lives.

I will never quietly or peacefully accept, live under or submit to that type of oppression ( and I honestly don't think it will ever come to it during my lifetime but nothing is impossible if you get enough like minded idiots together). What we have to deal with now is more than enough. And like the rest of you...I've seen freedom erode over the last several decades since becoming an adult.

Bully cause problems for you? 30+ years ago..you got a pat on the back for standing up for yourself and kicking their butt, today you have to apologize to the bully and YOU get expelled.

Long list of other things you used to have the right to do...and don't any more.

They were all in charge when the planes crashed into the twin towers .Guess it depends on your definition of safe and better off. Were the Kurds and Shia better off with Saddam's reign of terror ? Were the Israelis safer with Saddam paying the families of suicide bombers ? 1 million people died when Saddam attacked Iran. Thousands more died when he invaded Kuwait . Without intervention he would've seized Saudi oil fields and would've had a strangle hold on most of the known oil reserves at the time.

That being said ,we did not attack Iraq under some phony R2P justification like we did in Libya . The reason we invaded Iraq and went for regime change was because of Saddam's decade + defiance of requirements to come clean about his WMD program. And the reason that was important was because he had demonstrated that he was not a source of stability ;but was instead an aggressor who had no qualms about using his wmd on his own people ,and his neighbors.

Well, 9/11 might never have happened if Bill Clinton had not prevented the Left hand from Talking to the right hand... The information was there... they all had part of the puzzle ( NSA, FBI and CIA and its already been proven by the 9/11 commission)... if they had not been prevented from talking to each other and sharing it... there is a very good possibility it might have been prevented.

I won't argue any of them were great guys, because they weren't... Just look what's happened in the years since they were forcibly removed.

What they DID manage to do fairly effectively... was keep their unruly elements somewhat under control. Lesser of two evils. Not a Good vs Bad situation.

unruly is in the eye of the beholder . In Iraq the unruly were the Kurds ,they dared to want a degree of self rule . The Shia were also the unruly . They were the ones Saddam ,a Sunni ruled with an iron fist and a jackboot. Today it is the Sunni faction that leads the Islamic State . The unruly in Iran are the liberty loving people of the Green Revolution. The Iranian regime is also stable because they gunned down their opposition . It is not my intention to defend the emperor and Evita's very destabilizing measures of promoting the Arab Spring against our Arab allies in Egypt ,or their ousting Q Daffy at the behest of the European Union. But this op was about some clown commission with 20 20 Hindsight rewriting the history of our intervention in Iraq. Those morons are like Trump and the emperor ;stating with certainty a verdict on decisions made when they were in no position at the time to make the call and put their career and legacy on the line. If I was Tony Blair I would give 'Sir' John Chilcot ,a career diplomat and civil service occupant ,a big middle finger salute . The report was predetermined before the commission was formed . Chilcot had also been instrumental in the flawed Butler report.

I would like to apologize Sir John . His report did not accuse Tony Blair or Bush of either lying about WMD or manipulating intelligence . He called the intelligence flawed ;but Bush and Blair and Howard were acting on the best intelligence available . This confirms what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence twice made clear....that the U.S. intelligence community agreed that Saddam Hussein was hiding chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons programs.
Chilcot's report concludes that The ingrained belief that Saddam Hussein’s regime retained chemical and biological warfare capabilities, was determined to preserve and if possible enhance its capabilities, including at some point in the future a nuclear capability, and was pursuing an active policy of deception and concealment, had underpinned UK policy towards Iraq since the Gulf Conflict ended in 1991.

Chilcot does take Blair to task for the war preparations ,especially in the days immediately after the invasion. But it does not lend any validity to the Bush /Blair lied crowd . Saddam Hussein was already in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions pertaining to wmd by the time of the invasion. He kicked inspectors out of the country on multiple occasions. He never allowed the U.N. access to his scientists demanded by the Security Council's final resolution. He acted as if he had something to hide. Bush /Blair /Howard believed he did ,as did most of the world.

Without intervention he would've seized Saudi oil fields and would've had a strangle hold on most of the known oil reserves at the time.

.
I know we have argued all this before but what you said there is the nub of the matter and the degree of Saudi intervention has been hidden
. GWB was protecting his Saudi friends and business partners. Maybe what you said was true of Gulf 1 but not Gulf 2, Saddam was by then a spent force and what happen after the Invasion proved that, the Iraqi no longer had the heart or a fight. That any of us should be embroiled in Iraq today is regretable, Iraq has powerful neighbours willing to deal with these issues


. Those morons are like Trump and the emperor .

Now I thought you are infavour of a Dump takeover, maybe you are changing your tune

I know we have argued all this before but what you said there is the nub of the matter and the degree of Saudi intervention has been hidden
. GWB was protecting his Saudi friends and business partners. Maybe what you said was true of Gulf 1 but not Gulf 2, Saddam was by then a spent force and what happen after the Invasion proved that, the Iraqi no longer had the heart or a fight. That any of us should be embroiled in Iraq today is regretable, Iraq has powerful neighbours willing to deal with these issues



Now I thought you are infavour of a Dump takeover, maybe you are changing your tune

Huh ? No where here or at the other site have I been anything but extremely critical of the Trump candidacy . He is an arschlochs.

Huh ? No where here or at the other site have I been anything but extremely critical of the Trump candidacy . He is an arschlochs.

Sorry Tom I must have read you wrong, not sure of the meaning of the definition you used, however I agree your nation would not be well served should he succeed. Speaking of succeeding it looks like Turncoat has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat here, another victory for luke warm conservatism

Sorry Tom I must have read you wrong, not sure of the meaning of the definition you used, however I agree your nation would not be well served should he succeed. Speaking of succeeding it looks like Turncoat has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat here, another victory for luke warm conservatism

It is a word that would be censored if I used the English translation.

It is a word that would be censored if I used the English translation.

It's okay tom I'll use the aussie translation

Presumptive GOP nominee on chemical weapons attacks: "Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, 'oh he's using gas!'"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-favorite-dictators-in-reviled-tyrants-gop-nominee-finds-traits-to-praise/2016/07/06/8debf792-4385-11e6-bc99-7d269f8719b1_story.html

Who knew Dump is a dill, he admires strong men and has a bromance with Putin