Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
At the time, Saddam appeared more menacing than Iran. All nations' intel said he had nukes. Hindsight is great now.
Saddam invaded Kuwait showing the world how dangerous he was.
Why did the Bushes have it out for Saddam though? There are things we don't know. He was not the existential threat to us as Kim is now.
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All the posters here are quick to condemn Dubya for invading Iraq, but why does no one fault BarryO for what he did and did not do in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq. Arab spring anyone?
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Are you serious? We know exactly why the Bush's (and Cheney) had it out for him. Iraq was sitting on the largest natural reserves of oil, second only to Saudi Arabia. However, Saudi Arabia was not accessible since they booby trapped all of their oil fields with dirty nukes.
We know that those at the highest level knew that Osama was not in any way associated with Iraq yet Cheney demanded that Iraq be blamed for 911 and be invaded. Invading Iraq put our army in control of the largest oil field available, invading Afghanistan put our military in control of new gas fields discovered in Turkmenistan. The old "leave the gun, take the canoli" attitude of a true killer.
Saddam knew this, that is why he set the oil fields on fire.
No one thought Saddam was any more of a threat than he turned out to be, that is a sitting duck. He thought Bush gave him the green light to invade Kuwait. Once again, a simple deceit giving us a fig leaf to justify our invasion.
As for Obama -- we spent trillions on the Bush wars (according to Trump it is now $4 trillion). Half of our forces are mercenaries. They have turned the US into a paper tiger -- Obama was administering the reality of what we had left. Remember, the first Iraq war was financed largely by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Imagine if we did stretch ourselves out to the max, that would be an invitation to North Korea. Discretion is the better part of valor.