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Originally Posted by Army_of_One  So what I extrapolate from all of that is that you think Iraq and the U.S. would be better off if Saddam was still at the helm? |
Long before Saddam invaded Kuwait, the US & the UK should have sent a strong message to him basically saying, "clean up your act or, (to use that quaint American phrase), we're come in and whip your ass!"
Before you rush to say it wouldn't have worked, let me remind you that it did in Libya, a country bombed by Reagan who described Gaddafi as "the mad dog of the Middle East".
Once Libya actually did have WMD, it actively supported the IRA, it was involved in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, it financed the Black September terror movement that perpetrated the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972, it was involved in the 1986 Berlin disco bombing that killed & injured many US service personnel, it financed the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal, etc. In other words it was a truly active terror state, certainly more so than Iraq had ever been!
Today it is friendly with the US, it was the first arab state to come out firmly to denounce 9/11 and pledged its commitment to fighting Al Qaeda. The US have restored full diplomatic relations with Libya and removed it from the list of states that support terrorism.
So the question has to be asked, if the US could have achieved such a result with Libya, why not Iraq? The reason in my view is that Ronald Reagan adopted a policy of quietly building up pressure on Gaddafi until he finally realised he had to change his ways, which he did.
On the other hand Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and gang, decided on a less subtle approach in dealing with Saddam & Iraq, which could best be summed up as kicking the door down, and going in blasting at anything that moved! And we still live with the after effects of that today.