"George Willer" wrote in message
...
Your opinion is noted, Ed... as ridiculous as it is, it doesn't address
the
topic of this thread, and your comments are complete nonsense.

George, your posts are nothing BUT nonsense. Saying that the two Iraq wars
were "one war" is about as stupid as anything you've said.

What you meant, if you could hold a complete idea together all in one place,
is that, in your opinion, not taking out Saddam the first time is the cause
of the second Iraq war. That's certainly true, in a de facto way, but it was
NOT one war all about the same thing.

The first was about Saddam flexing his muscles to become the dominant power
in the Middle East. In fact, based on what he'd been told by the US
ambassador, he (and others) felt that the US had given him the go-ahead on
Kuwait. Big mistake on both our parts.

The second war supposedly was about the threat of his supplying weapons that
can kill millions of people in the West to terrorists from other Middle East
countries. At least, that's what we, and the rest of the world, were told.

But most of the world knew at the time that doing so was NOT part of
Saddam's plan. His coercion of the West, if he could accomplish it, would
come from controlling almost all of the Middle East's oil. That was his
planned route to Middle East domination and to becoming a major power center
on the world stage.

Colluding with terrorists to attack the US was not only counterproductive to
the strategy that he pursued throughout his career, it would have been a
huge risk with no payoff at all. He didn't have any strategic interest in
attacking the US and he had no reason to expose himself to crushing
retaliation even if he succeeded. Unlike the Islamists, he is not such an
idiot that he would bring on a self-destructive war for the sake of
religion-based, vengeful insanity. His strategic interest was in coercing us
and the rest of the West by controlling the flow of oil.

So the first war was fought because we (and major European countries) didn't
want Saddam to get his hands on all that oil. The second one was fought
because George Bush II was ****ed off.

I realize this is a challenge for you, but, with a little study, you can
figure out why the French, Germans, and others who had an interest in the
first war had no interest in the second. Thus, we had two wars, the second
one fought largely on our own, with no close and powerful allies but the
Brits -- most of whom looked askance at the whole enterprise, anyway.

--
Ed Huntress