[alphamale]

[QUOTE=Jesus Christ]

Originally Posted by alphamale

Yes - it's irrational to oppose a war against people who are the first ones since the soviets with a goal of destroying western civilization. It's hard to sing kumbayah when someone is slitting your throat - it in fact becomes a suicidal hymn.

Prior to our invasion, these people had no power to do these things whatsoever.

Uh, well, no. Before the war in iraq, the IF's on 9/11 racked up the largest death toll by a foreign power on the U.S. homeland since the War of 1812.

Under Saddam Hussein, these people never would have acted in such a manner. We entered Iraq in an overly hasty manner with little planning in regards of what to do after we won because we assumed a priori that the Iraqis would be greeting us with rose petals and open arms, and would love us forever and ever.

I don't know where the "rose petals" myth came from, but if that was the intelligence, then it's just one more in a long string of failures that predated Bush by several administrations. The CIA didn't predict the fall of the soviet union, nor the iranian revolution, nor 9/11, nor did they get the WMD prediction right. I've called for the abolishing of the CIA and replacement of it with a better intelligence organization.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq we had what--three foreign terrorist attacks against US soil/military assets in a decade? Two of which did less damage together than a single domestic terrorist managed?

More americans were killed on 9/11 than Pearl Harbor, and the latter was seen as cause to declare war and put 15 million men under arms.

Then we attacked a target that had no relationship whatsoever to the terrorists of 9/11 on grounds that were quite dubious at best when first introduced, and shown to be quite blatantly fabricated after the fact. Can you understand why the oppossition to the war is legitimate?

Most of the western intelligence agencies, including Britain, France, and Russia, said they had WMDs. Also I've been asking anti-war people to supply proof of the "fabication" for two years - do you want to be the first to supply it? Opposition to any war is legitimate for pacifists.

1. Iraq had no relationship to the espoused enemies of the state
   No - it's now well-known that Iraq had contacts with Al Qaeda.
2. Iraq had no nuclear, biological, or chemical capabilities. This was known by the administrations of both the US and Great Britain at the time, as well as a good portion of the people living there.
   Wrong - and Iraq state secrets were known to average people??
3. The country that was attacked had shown no aggression towards the US or any ally in recent times.
   Wrong - Iraq made the first attack on a country (Israel) with IRBMs since WWII.

There was no causus belli. None

.

See above.

Subsequent to the invasion, the CPA made several grave mistakes almost immediately. Disbanding the Iraqi Army instantly caused large numbers of people to lose their jobs, and in a country that had a decade of economic sanctions imposed against it, there was little opportunity to recover from that.

Congratulations on your 20-20 hindsight. Disbanding an enemy army is always what is done after a war. The U.S. was saddled with handling a decaying infrastructure, and an insurgency, and a post-war situation all at the same time. They didn't do it perfectly - too bad they didn't have you in charge, it would have been perfect.

Ethnic violence sprang up, and today we have Iraqi military and police forces carrying out extrajudicial killings. All this from engaging a country that posed no credible threat to the US or its allies.

Ethnic violence has been there for many hundreds of years. As for the extrajudicial killings, that also occurs in war - e.g. U.S. soldiers did it in WWII. Already asnswered last sentence.

The mere desire for harm to pass upon the US is not a legitimate reason to invade, let alone a reason that cries for urgent invasion. Were that to be the case, we'd most certainly have to invade several other countries right now, such as Iran and North Korea, both of which are in far greater position to attack the US directly or indirectly than Iraq has ever been.

The invasion of those countries are impractical. There's a difference between what regimes ought to be toppled, and those that can be toppled. We got Iraq BEFORE it became like North Korea - a country with nukes and long-range delivery capability.