ba1025

Saddam and his cronies manically tried to move money out of Iraq after 911 because they believed they would be blamed. he didn't have the WILL to do it. 911 was an oh Shite moment to him too. He frst and foremost wanted to stay in power. No state is going to sponsor that kind of attack on us it would have a return address. Even kim jong wackjob realizes it would be suicide.


once again though we had an identifiable threat and those responsible for 911 in Afghanistan and the Pakistani mountains still.

astralis

ba,

sure, but he dramatically miscalculated what it would take to keep him there. 9-11 was an oh-shite moment for him, but he never believed, deep-down, that the US would want to pluck him out.

instead, he tried to play the nuclear bluff. but instead of deterring the US, it magnified the perceived threat. this was part of the reason why saddam was so dangerous: he had a history of making this type of miscalculation about what he could or could not do. this was apparent from the iran-iraq war, the persian gulf war, and very finally the iraq war.

he would have done far better for himself if he had pulled a libya and abjectly bowed down.

__________________
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Officer of Engineers

Only because he knew we were looking. He tried to assassinate Bush Senior for crying outloud. Anybody stupid enough to try and do that would try anything as soon as he figures out how.

What's more, while his chemical stocks were not large, they were nevertheless significant. Let's not forget that his nuclear program was dormant, not canceled. Those are the signs of a man scheming to get away with as much as he can.

How are you going to prove it? All Saddam would have to do is to sell some fertilizer.

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Chimo

ba1025

We supported him in his war with Iraq even after he used WMD. I don't know what nuclear bluff you refer to. he was claiming to us he had no wmd wasn't he? Wasn't it us who told the Un arms team to leave in 2003? Didn't we tell him to turn over the stockpiles of WMD he didnt have or we would invade?( That line could of been in a Kubrick movie)
His bluster was about maintaining deterrence agaisnt a hostile Iranian state on his borders. One effeect of removing Saddam was removing a state hostile to Iran from it's border

Officer of Engineers

You mean his war against Iran. If you looked at the history, everybody played both sides against each other.

The three Rings of Death and the publicly chemical weapons release order. The AS/modified SA-2 SSM.

gunnut

Dangerous or stupid? He miscalulated and bluffed himself right out of a nice gig. I agree, he could have pulled a Libya and continued to play King Hussein in Iraq. We probably would have left him alone and turned the other way at his oppression of the Shiites, as long as he allowed unfettered access by UN inspectors and the American "diplomats."

Instead, the 3rd time was the charm. He got his ass handed to him.

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

astralis

gunnut,

both- he was dangerous because he was so stupid.

gunnut

OK. I can see that.

ba1025

I still think it has distracted us from what was our primary object the Taliban/ Al Queda in Afghanistan/Pakistan. After 6 years there Karzai is not sounding so committed to destroying the Taliban. IMO there is no political rehabilitation for members of the Taliban that picked up arms in 2002

astralis

ba,

that's true only because the execution of the war has been a complete mess. had the war gone even half as smoothly as the neo-conservatives were betting it would go, the Iraq War would have been hailed as a stroke of strategic genius.

tankie

ba1025, can you fill in your profile ??

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TANKIE , WITHOUT WAX

ba1025

I thought the war did go great. It was a diplomatic failure. I cant pin any of this on the armed forces. They don't win the peace. It wasn't their shortsightedness that couldn't envision two religious factions that had warred for a milenia might mount a sectarian bloodbath. It wasn't the military that didnt recognize that a bunch of returning emigrants from Iran running things might not be in our best interests or that the invasion would be such a boon to Al Queda. I also believe there was no shortage of internal voices pointing out these possibilities but when your decision process puts belief over fact you make bad decisions. I mean really we will be greeted as liberators and they will shower us with flowers and their oil will pay for the whole thing? Yea if there predictions had been half right we would be golden but they were looking with 14 pairs of rose colored glasses on. So, I have NP blaming primarily the Administration and secondly a cowardly congress more concerned with elections 2 months out than their responsibilities to the constitution. " You can go to war if u want" was an abrogation of Constitutional responsibilities. If I seem angry it's because more Americans have now died in Iraq than on 911 and Osam is still free. Alqueda is still functional in eastern Afghanistan/western Pakistan and the Taliban is resurgent. I am really worried we have missed our window in Afghanistan to get it done right because of the Iraq distraction and that at some point when we do leave Iraq the situation may well be more threatening to our geopolitical interests than it was in 2003. If you don't think both are a possibility you aren't capable of disassociating how passionately you feel about our country and just looking at the facts of it imo. Hopefully, we will turn a corner soon but 5 and 6 yrs out Karzai is asking us to stop arresting Taliban who want to come home, he goes somewhere w/o us as security they try to kill him, Afghanistan is the major grower of opium in the world again, the taliban is stronger than a couple years ago, the Iraqis still aren't playing nice with each other. If these people want chaos let um have it.We aren't the world cop. Alqueda attacked us from Afghanistan where the Taliban gave them sanctuary and refused to hand them over. Why couldn't we of just hunted every one of them down and let the rest of the mid est settle their own grudges w/o us in the middle?

Shek

BA,

I'd recommend that you read Fiasco by Tom Ricks. I think you'll change your mind about the extent of culpability within the military.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

tankie

Many thanks ba .

rj1

Can you give us the Cliff Notes version please for those of us that hadn't read it for the military's problems?

I read Assassin's Gate in 2005 not long after it was released. Obviously it's dated a few years. But it places the lack of post-invasion planning solely on the feet of Franks and the State Dept/Defense Dept powerbrokers cause each of them thought the other was doing it. And then when they got to the post-war, everyone realized they were ill-prepared and started blaming everyone else for what was going on.