Originally Posted by JAD_333

I wasn't going to reply to the last post you directed at me because I felt a bit like blues--we aren't going to get anywhere with the legalistic approach. But since you say you are trying to understand why we are in Iraq, perhaps the discussion isn't at a dead end afterall.

Your statement, that understanding why we are in Iraq will allow us to form a "more" coherent strategy, is somewhat backwards. Perhaps when you understand the reason we are there, you will see that the strategy is indeed coherent. Well, anyway, whatever is beyond the limits of one's
understanding, is an open question. Wouldn't you agree?



This statement is a little backwards, too, because if we DO know why we are in Iraq, then we'll know when we've won.




Does this suggest, perhaps, that the limit of your understanding is the WMD rationale? As we've all said in very different ways, the essential reason for going into Iraq was much more than WMD and even more than Saddam's villany. In a nutshell, it was to confront a threat to our national security, namely a non-national, political movement that uses terror tactics to advance an agenda which specifically identifies us as its enemy. It's goal is to re-establish a centuries-old, strict Islamic culture throughout the ME and, in due course, to wipe out Israel. This movement knows that the US is a roadblock to its goals. So, it directs its terror attacks at us, at any coalition member, and at any Islamic country that associates with us on a friendly basis.

It might help to understand why we are in Iraq if you ask yourself how this movement could succeed. It'll take a stretch of imagination, but suffice it to say that it could happen and, therefore, it must be regarded as a threat, particularly since it has been growing gradually since well before 9/11. A policymaker simply cannot ignor a growing threat, however small it may yet be. And history has shown us over and over that failure to confront a threat early can be disastrous.

Some people ask, "what threat"? Like you when you asked what can 20,000-30,000 terrorists org. fighters do. You believe our presense in Iraq led to those numbers. That's incorrect. Our presense in Iraq may have drawn them there, but the reason they exist at all is because AQ and other terror orgs converted them to their ideology, and they'll go where we are whether its Iraq or NYC.

So, if you want to understand why we are there, look beyond all the confetti like WMD, Saddam the butcher, claims on Kuwait, who actually triggered the Iraq-Iran war, and especially the logjam of ineffective UN resolutions.