Martin,

Did America send enough ground troops yes or no?

Did they get the pre planning correct yes or no?

WMD (I don't need you to tell me they did not find any) What are your thoughts on why they did not find any and do you think that is acceptable considering what Iraq went through.

Dick Cheney...What are your thoughts on Cheney who was against invading Iraq in 1994 and then 2003 supports the idea.

 

Enough troops to overthrow Saddam; yes, enough to secure the country clearly not

The Americans (and us) got post war planning catastrophically wrong. There was a State Dept plan for post war Iraq which was basically torn up by Rumsfeld

WMD well it depends on who you believe, but lets use a bit of logic and try and return our minds back to late 2002 / early 2003...


On balance my view is that the government believed that Iraq had WMD, I think there was some exaggeration given for sure, but they genuinely believed they would find lots of active WMD and WMD programmes
There was no serious debate going on at the time about whether Iraq possessed WMD, the debate was about the how much longer should the UN inspectors be given.

France, Russia and Germany who were opposing us in the UN were not saying Iraq didn't have WMD, so pressumably their intellegence services were under the same delusion as ours and the Americans.

Ultimately they got it wrong, I don't believe that lies were told I think that's just an easy insult to throw around. Surely it's not complete fantasy to believe that they just got it wrong is it?

Overall Iraq was a big call, but that's why we have governments and Prime Ministers... to make the big calls, then if they get them wrong we can throw them out of office (which we didn't do in 2005)

The last I'd say on this is that there would be consequences of us not removing Saddam so opposing this war is/was not the zero sum game it sometimes get portrayed as.


As for Dick Cheney, I abhor him, his politics and everything his politics stands for... need I say more? Pressumably he was refering to the first Gulf War and the UN mandate for war, the yanks could not of held together the massive coalllition (including many Arab and Muslim countries) if they had pushed on into Iraq. As you may recall Saddam spent most of that war trying to split the coallition by attempting to get Israel into the fight by firing missles at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. So different times different imperatives I guess

 

My final conclusion.

People write Saddam was a bad man and did horrible things to the people of Iraq that's why we needed to get him out. I totally agree Saddam was bad and did some terrible things and I was no way supporter of the guy.

Going back to 2003, America and Britain got it so badly wrong and that`s what upsets me, I can understand peoples support in getting rid of Saddam but I don`t understand how anybody can support the way America and Britain went about getting rid of him.

Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and Cheney should be held accountable for what happened in Iraq, 4,500 Americans died 32,000 seriously injured 105,000 Iraq civilians died (Maybe more) The country has no stable government, possibly ending up in a civil war and yet people support it and say it was worth it.

America raped Iraq and I am sure their are hidden truths behind the lies and the smoke screens are governments put up. Why not go sort out Zimbabwe or Somalia is it because those country's have no natural assets we want.

 

There is no doubt that the whole Iraq issue is fertile territory for the fan of conspircay theories, that said I'm far more a believer in ****-up than conspiracy.

As for Zimbabwe YES, Rwanda YES, Somalia yes we should of intervened, as we did in Iraq, Afganistan, Bosnia, Kosova and Seirra Leone

The Iraq issue was slightly more difficult because in theory there were post 9-11 national security issues as well

I read lots about oil being the reason we went to war, if this is the case why am i paying £1.20 a litre for fuel, surely we should be getting it much cheaper, why are we drilling deep in the Gulf of Mexico, why is Alaska suddenly on the big oil companies radars? It's such an easy throw away line about the war being about oil, but there is no evidence to back this assertion up, and certainly no benefit that I can point to.

 

Clearly your an intelligent guy (Martin). Who knows what the truth is, you have your views I have mine.

 

You seem to be easily taken in by the aura of authority Martin!

Les