This message was self-deleted by its author

[Rozlee]

153. Saddam was considered secular by the west

for not imposing Sharia law and promoting modern westernized institutions and lifestyles. Yes, he was religious and promoted Islam, for his own purposes much like our own fundamentalist demogogues, but, he was our fair haired boy until he wasn't. When he gassed the Kurds in Halabja, the U.S. rushed to his defense when the U.N. was voting to press sanctions on him. We insisted that there might have been Iran involvment instead and refused to sanction him. But, in the lead up to the Iraq War, we sure changed our tune. "He gassed his own people!" Bush and his cronies fumed. Well, who gave him the gas and who defended him when he used it?

Several agents in the CIA stepped forward to say that Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, but they were drowned out by the Bush propaganda machine and FOIA now show that Bush officials promoted this lie while they knew it was untrue. And it wasn't hindsight that proved the outcome of the Iraq War. Political analysts told the Bush Administration over and over again that a power vacuum left by the removal of Hussein would allow a fundamentalist regime to take over that would be closely allied with Iran and that would spark a civil war. They refused to listen.

There are and have been far worse dictators than Saddam Hussein that we've allowed to run rampant over the world and people that needed rescuing a great deal more than the Iraqis. We did nothing while almost a million Rwandans were slaughtered. If we really wanted to rid the world of a dictator that made Hussein look like a choir boy, we should have gone after Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, who's been responsible for mind-boggling genocide. But, the truth remains that if we send troops to topple every brutal dictatorship on the planet, we'll run out of resources to care for our own. We've already got a military that is exhausted from multiple tours with 45,000 casualties and who knows how many others suffering from PTSD. The cakewalk wasn't such a cakewalk.