I applaud your coherence for once. Nevertheless...
The first is that Saddam had 12 years to comply with the U.N. sancations that were placed upon him after Gulf War I.
The burden of proof here falls on those who say that he failed to comply, and such evidence has never surfaced.
He had jerked inspectors around constantly and would not comply.
The only instance that the pro-war lobby could point to for this idea was in 1998 with Operation Desert Fox. The problem is, the inspectors left Iraq voluntarily and of their own accord. Even if this wasn't the best idea for Iraq's public image, can you really blame the inspectors?
All he would have had to do was produce video tapes, documents, ANYTHING that proves he destroyed his cache of WMDs.
He insisted that he never had them in the first place, and the American people have yet to be presented with credible evidence to the contrary. Saddam did virtually everything the US asked him to do, and the thanks he got was a pointless invasion and two murdered sons.
The WMDs not being there does not mean that he did not have them.
Whacko liberals like I meet here in Europe have a crazy notion that goes something like "innocent until proven guilty." I have an itching that it somehow applies here.
Second, I believe (and evidence shows) that Saddam was a terrorist supporter.
To this end, you can't possibly make any point that couldn't be applied moreso to any other Arab government. And are you really so dense to think that we went to war to help out Israel? Is that what you're trying to imply? With this logic, the most sensible thing for us to have done would be to go apeshit on Saudi Arabia or Yemen or somewhere of that sort.
Why would Al-Queda and Osama give a flying fuck about the U.S. invading Iraq if Osama hated Saddam and the Iraqi people?
Al-Quaeda doesn't hate the Iraqi people, it hates the Iraqi government. Time and time again I have seen it demonstrated that the fundamental flaw with the American mindset is that it is incapable of holding the people of a nation in a different light than its government. Consider the people who supported the war just because our fearless leader told them to. Consider our resentment for the French people for Chirac's anti-war stance, and consider our comradery with Spain for joining the war effort even though the Spanish people were more opposed to the war than those of France or Germany.
Terrorist organizations that would love to see Saddam dead nevertheless perceived the war on Iraq and the 3000 utterly pointless civilian deaths it tolled as an intrusion of Westerners upon their Arab brethren. Simple as that.
Finally, our invasion of Iraq and stiffiling of Saddam's rule has hindered terrorists from recruitment and completion of plans.
Manufactured bullshit. I think last week's attacks showed how stifling it was.
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