[PokerMatt]

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Al-Queda existing in Iraq is only one reason to take out SH. There are numerous other reasons which the UK, Spain and other countries don't have. The only fault I give the Bush administration is not having a decent PR program to explain the Iraq liberation. Here are some of the other reasons.

1. Iraq has been a supporter of terrorism longer than I have been alive.
2. Iraq invaded Kuwait and was poised to invade Saudi Arabia.
3. SH regime massacred tens of thousands of his own people, often using WMD to accomplish this.
4. SH balked at over a dozen UN resolutions to let inspectors perform their job.
5. SH did not abide by the cease fire agreement he personally signed in 1993.
6. In the 1980's he started a war with Iran where over 1 million people on both sides were killed.
7. The civilized world would be negligent to allow SH to have control over a significant portion of the world's oil supply.

I am just glad that we have Bush as our president. The Democratic party is falling apart and all they do is bitch about things. They have provided no solutions. It is easy to be the Monday morning quarterback and criticize. It is real leadership to take action and stand your ground. Just look at how recent American history holds Ronald Reagan up as an excellent leader and how we pity the failure of a Jimmy Carter.

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1) You have no evidence to support this. Ayman Zawahiri (Bin-laden's chief ally) tried for 20 years beore 9/11 to overthrow governments and install Islamist regimes in which every attempt failed. Do you really think Hussein would ally himself with that kind of movement when he's more worried about keeping his dictatorship intact? He did support families of suicide bombers but those groups were conerned with a Palestinian state and probably the downfall of Israel, not with converting Iraq to a hardcore Islamist state.

2) In 1991, yes. We had economic interests in Saudi Arabia so of course we're not going to jeopardize them by letting him take over that country.

3) He did massacre thousands of Iraqis. The last I know of him using WMDs was when he used chemical weapons in 1988 against the Kurds. A little research into the particular weapons he had would show that they broke down after a year or two in storage and were unusable.

4) Of course he would balk at the UN inspectors. He couldn't make his weapons anymore like he used to. Despite all of his attempts to stop the inspectors from doing their job, we were still able to aquire enough information to show that he wasn't making any chemical weapons. Since his previous supply was useless you can assume he didn't have any chemical weapons to use in an attack.

6) Started the war with weapons we provided. Oh, and that was over 20 years ago, and the war ended 17 years ago. Isn't it a little late to bring that up now?

7) A good portion of the world's big oil exporters (maybe even a majority) have unstable governments. There's been a lot of talk recently about problems in Saudi Arabia and how that regime may not last more than a few more years. I don't know how true it is, but I've seen it on news websites (like I said, take it for what you will [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]). Do you think we should go invade Saudi Arabia if this is indeed true? They have more oil than anyone, so by that logic the US should make sure that whoever is in power won't screw us over with oil.