Petraeus: Troops in Iraq help blunt Iran threat......didn't Iraq under SD have the same effect?

[Postman]

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=179471

I guess you could argue that having US Troops inside Iraq acts as an insurance policy against Iranian influence. But wouldn't it be like arguing that the reason I cut off my leg was because I had a bad case of toenail fungus?

[angstlessk]

1. that is because OUR puppet government in Iraq loves Iran...unlike Sadam Hussein before them!

and no matter what we do it will remain thus!

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Funny, most ME experts believe that our presence in Iraq has increased Iran's influence tenfold.

[Postman]

3. Yeah but you're talking about reality.

This is the land of Bush believe....

[Maine-i-acs]

4. Saddam was doing all that for free ...

Why did we get rid of him again? I can't remember the last reasoning behind that.

Seemzo he was pretty useful ... secular gov't, chearp oil, holding Iran in check, womens' rights, high literacy rate ...

[warren pease]

6. In BushWorld (tm), those aren't accomplishments; they indicate that regime change is needed...

Secular government -- how will the fundie loons get the commandments into the schools and force teachers to bullshit their kids about creationism and some kind of idiocy about divinely directed evolution?

Cheap oil -- lower profits for ExxonMobil and the rest.

Holding Iran in check -- The more religiously insane among the Bushies want Iran unleashed so they can nuke the bastards, start WW III, bring on Armageddon, cause End Times and finally get to experience The Rapture. (No shit)

Womens' rights -- you must be kidding. Womens' rights are not a priority in the "barefoot and pregnant" administration.

High literacy rate -- it's been a key element in the right wing's ongoing efforts to create a nation of apathetic imbeciles too stupid to see what's being done to them by their "leaders." I'd assume a country that promoted literacy rather than discourage it would rate pretty high on the shit list.

Ahhh... But only a cynic could possibly see things that way. Better to believe that Saddam was an evil doer who gassed his own people and had WMDs stashed all over the country -- cleverly disguised as potted plants and motor scooters.


wp

[Hydra]

7. Another cynic here

Saddam Hussein had outlived his usefulness, and we were thinking that we needed a base right in the center of the Mid-East for various reasons.

Nothing Saddam did or didn't do mattered to Bushco- they want what they want, and to hell with anyone in the way.

[warren pease]

5. Yeah, but... but... but...

He gassed his own people and he was a bad man with ties to Osama and he threatened Poppy with assassination and he had WMDs and... Oh gee whiz... so much evil, so little time.

Fortunately, the good guys are now in charge and boy are things improving.

So pay no attention to the approx. 1.3 million civilians we shocked and awed to death, more than half just kids.

Or the bloody civil war we unleashed that absolutely nobody could have predicted -- nobody except the thousands of Middle East policy analysts from the US and from the rest of the world who predicted exactly that.

Or destroying Iraq's total service delivery infrastructure, leaving Iraqis with no reliable sources of electricity, heat, uncontaminated food and drinking water, vital medicines and so forth.

Or the vital facilities -- hospitals, clinics, food producers, sewage treatment plants and hundreds more that modern societies take for granted -- that no longer exist except as bombed out shells or craters.

Or the lunacy of fighting the phony war on terror in the precise manner guaranteed to create the highest possible number of actual terrorists. They've all lost family and friends to the US invasion and occupation. Their rage and sense of futility are growing, even as they're grieving for the dead and dying. Many will decide there's not really much reason to live anymore. And a few of them will eventually strap on that vest of explosives and visit the local mall in suburban areas of the great satan.

Or the harvest of depleted uranium we've left just lying around so that even if the US ever leaves, our lethal presence will continue to be felt for decades, measured in cancer clusters and birth defects.

Achh... I could go on but it's just venting. Nobody who disagrees will read it, and those who agree don't need the education.

So I'll go quietly now. Just don't tase me.


wp

[coalition_unwilling]

9. They were not "just kids" (your words). Don't you know they were

actually terrorists disguised as kids? :sarcasm:

[warren pease]

10. Sorry, my mistake...

It's amazing how much C-4 you can hide in a diaper. We had to kill them over there so we wouldn't have to let them into the doctoral program in Applied Economics at Wharton.

Nothing like an educated Iraqi, trained in the inscrutable ways of unregulated US-style capitalism, advocating predatory free trade and race-to-the-bottom globalization, and set loose to plunder the world. Now that's real terrorism.


wp

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

8. Saddam also had that effect on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other gulf oil states

Even after the first gulf war, Saddam still had enough military left to make the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and other oil producing states in the gulf think twice about flipping off a U.S. President who asks them to increase oil production. The U.S. was the only thing standing between Saddam and another invasion of Kuwait and possible invasion of Saudi Arabia. Once the idiot Chimp got rid of Saddam and his threat (whether perceived or real) the Saudis felt no need to play ball and cooperate with him, no matter how much jawboning he tried.

[spanone]

11. what threat? bullshit.....