Was the Iraq war worth it?

The invasion was a poor decision.

If it takes two generations for Iraq to come around to something good then I am not sure what metric would allow us to take credit for the change.

Meanwhile, just because Iraq may become a freer society doesn't mean that it will stabilize in a way that will benefit us.

As noted above, we can all hope.

I disagree absolutely with the idea that, in the name of 'doing something' in the face of seeming recalcitrance, the appropriate response is to get into bed with known shysters, cherry pick information, invade a sovereign nation, occupy that nation in the most ill-informed manner possible, spend more than a trillion dollars (we are not done pouring money down the hole), etc. We were already doing something -- no fly zones, inspections for MWD that clearly showed no such animal was being found, etc. Iraq was unequivocally contained and Hussein was doing some things that we wanted (keeping Iran at bay).

Further, if you are going to run around brandishing the big stick because it is the only thing you can think to do, best make certain it is a sustainable ploy, a ploy you know how to finish.

Just a poor rationale. It is clear that Hussein was an unsophisticated thinker in re what the US response might be, and it is clear that the Bush Admin was more sophisticated only in the way of selling ******** -- and that game plan was not carried out with any admirable degree of sophistication.

I admit, I have always thought that Hussein was the answer to much of what we wanted in the region, and that imaginative ways of addressing his problematic aspects was better than bull-in-a-china-shop intervention.

It may turn out well. I would say the principle is you don't expend that much blood and purse, not to mention the blood of others, in order to run down ill-defined, poorly understood goals. That is step one of my analysis and has been all along. That principle says you don't invade no matter what the imaginable possibilities might be. You need something stronger.
 
"At some point, you should have sound foriegn policy that doesn't put you in a position to posture or make empty threats."

Mr. Saddam, sir....Um, we really would prefer you didnt invade Kuwait. Can you not do that please? No, seriously, we really really dont like it. You keep this up and we're going to draft a strongly worded memo. We're serious. And no more of that WMD business. Seriously. (Saddam somewhere laughing his *** off).

"Waging war to assuage your insecurity about how the world sees you is insane and likely murder."

Waging war on behalf of weaker countries is not assuaging our insecurity. Requiring that Saddam live up to the terms we set when leaving....is not assuaging our insecurity. Its following through. If you dont back up all of the talk with real consequences then they carry no weight. NK and Iran will see right through that. They dont take spinelessness as anything other than weakness.
 
Well he did kick the UN inspectors out of the country, so he wasn't exactly cooperative with the body that was basically in charge of keeping him alive.
 
mia"Non-compliance with UN sanctions does not grant UN members authority for war. "

From the UN security Council siteThe Link
"Under Chapter VII of the Charter, the Security Council can take enforcement measures to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such measures range from economic and/or other sanctions not involving the use of armed force to international military action.
 
First the people need to know why the government invaded Iraq in the first place. The real reason. Was it for profit, or a military foothold, or revenge, or some other reason? Then it might be possible to put a value on the war. To me, you would have had to be on Mars for seven years to even come up with the title of this thread. One month into the Iraq war was more than enough for me. I wish Saddam was still in power, Saddam's military was still in power, our military had never left our country and the mountain of money had never been borrowed. Iraq was no more a threat to our country then than it is now. The war is just another man made disaster in my eyes.
 
Not worth it. Its hard to imagine a payoff that would justify the Iraq war. Since the reasons for going to war were vague and evolving at the time, it is hard to fully understand what we gained.

If we spared the world some massive WMD display from an aging, nutty dictator, its probably a wash.

Since all that we really accomplished was regime change - the costs seem to completely outweigh the benefit.

Maybe I am missing a benefit here; but let's also be honest that we cannot quantify the costs very well. Let me know the total cost of treating the 80,000 injured troops - we can add those up 50 years down the road while we are basking in a democratic and free Iraq!
 
No (I'm in pretty much full agreement with RomaVicta).

An international war undertaken under false pretenses (i.e. the absolute insistence by GWB's administration that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring WMDs), despite numerous skeptics and mixed intelligence reports. Spending the better part of US $1 trillion to pursue Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's notions of foreign policy. Severely stressed U.S. combat troops (and their families). More al Queda insurgents and recruits practicing and learning terrorism amidst Iraq's anarchy now than ever possible under Saddam's iron fisted rule. The rise of private contractors such as Blackwater/Xe that (very likely) engaged in casual violence with little to no accountability for innocent deaths. A general deterioration and cooling in U.S. foreign relations with many governments (e.g. Turkey) as the U.S. set out, hell bent, to engage in a Middle East war.

The only beneficiaries that I see from the Iraq war are the Iraqi Kurds and the Pentagon's increased capability in developing and refining UAV operational tactics and technologies. And I confess to having enjoyed the fleetng humor provided by Baghdad Bob.
 
Nope.

We knocked off a countervailing threat to Iran, allowed the Iranians into Iraq, and did so at a time when we were already running budget deficits, thus insuring that the cost of actually paying for the war would be borne by future generations.
 
As someone who at the time of invasion was opposed, today I just don't know.

The cons have been mentioned of money and human lives lost (Iraqi and American). Add to that the WMD that were able to be transported to Syria. I don't know any follow up intel on where they are in Syria, but some did get across that border.

The pros are hopes for a stable open Iraq, which is far from a certain thing. And then of course the destruction of the WMD which we did find. Also, the elimination of the threat of WMD getting in hands of those who would use them on American soil.

About WMD. I really don't know why politicians continue to say that they didn't exist. Being near Ft. Hood, and knowing several people up the Col. level. ALL of them say they did exist and many were found. I talked just last night with a friend who has a close family member who is a Col. who said they absolutely existed. I really don't understand the rationale of the government saying they were not there, but I assume they have their reasons.
 
No, and it's not even close.

I'd be all in favor of pulling out of the Middle East entirely and permanently. Just let it burn and become another Africa. That'd be a welcome change for me. We might have to achieve energy independence first, but that would probably cost less than this war did.
 
Theu, the rationale for war was not "Saddam has some WMD" but rather that Saddam was engaging an active WMD production program. We knew that we would find chemical weapons left over from the war with Iran, because weapons inspectors had been finding (and destroying) those caches for years. We did in fact find those caches, but that wasn't what we were looking for. We were looking for evidence of an active WMD program, the main concern was the potential for nuclear enabled weaponry made from yellowcake provided by Niger. When Powell was on the floor of the UN, he was talking about centrifuges, production facilities and transport vehicles... not 20 year old aging depots. We found literally no evidence of an active chemical weapons program and the evidence for Saddam's connection to Niger didn't bear the slightest bit of scrutiny.

As for the Syria connection, there were rumors about that but nothing which was ever confirmed. Even if we presume those rumors were true we are talking about trucks moving existing weapons and NOT entire production facilities. Which is to say, even if Syria had the weapons the evidence of the production facilities would still be in Iraq for us to find... and we didn't find them.

The angle about protecting American soil is a bit of a ruse. Saddam had the chemical weapons in large part to defend against an Iranian invasion so as to protect his own sovereignty... he was not going to use them on the US nor give them to someone else to use on the US. The greatest evidence of this fact is that his country had been getting routinely bombed by the US for 15 years during a time period when Al Qaeda was looking for a home and he (1) didn't support them with weapons or refuge, and (2) didn't use them himself. Neither Saddam nor the existing weapons represented a threat to the US.
 
MIA, Saddam used those chemical weapons on his own people, including the Iranians, whom he attacked first. We, the US, cheered him on the whole time.

We could have done everything we did in this last war in the 90 Gulf War, but instead, we left Saddam in power and then proceeded to sanction hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis to death.
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