ChrisB803 said:
What you all seem to be proposing is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" philosophy. Had we not invaded Iraq and simply stopped in Afghanistan, it's very likely that Saddam may well have obtained his WMDs, and either sold them to terrorist groups or used them himself. I tend to believe he would have acted more as a supplier for some time, using other groups to do his work. What would you have been saying today had there been another attack on America since 9/11 that was even worse?
You believe that Saddam would do that, because that is what the Bush administration has been saying since it failed to turn up any actual evidence. There is no evidence to support it, it is just a prejudice based on fear - Saddam is bad, terrorists are bad, Saddam has tried to make weapons, so it's clear he will do so, and give them to the terrorists.
It is more likely that Iran or Pakistan, both of which have more advanced weapons programs and no heavy sanctions to bypass, would be a source. Or any of a number of Soviet states that may have former Soviet technology that is badly guarded by underpaid minions. Bush has opposed and underfunded the Nunn-Luger program, a program designed to help secure and deactivate former-soviet nuclear armaments.
I simply believe that we must allow more time for all the facts to come to light, for the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan to try out their new freedoms, and for history to make its own judgements about the rightness of action in Iraq.
The longer we leave it, the less likely that real facts will emerge. With the tacit approval of the nation for the war, the hard questions get brushed aside. History will judge, but I suspect it will be like many other wars, that we won't get a full picture about what was happening until more than 50 years later when stuff starts to become unclassified. We are not going to get the truth out of the most secretive presidential administration in history.
The problem, as I see it, is if we elect Kerry, there is every chance that we will pull out of Iraq too soon, allowing the factions that exist to fall into civil war. The only thing that would make people in the middle east hate us more would be to break our word again and leave these people in the lurch again.
Was the word 'lurch' chosen carefully?
Kerry has made no indication that he will pull out early, simply that he understands it is not a war of attrition that can be won by killing all the enemy. It is a war that needs to be won with international cooperation and restraint. Cooperation means actually inviting the suggestions and input of other nations, not demanding that they defer to your leadership without question (which is the US's current 'with us or against us' approach).
