Originally posted by: eskimospy
Seriously? Killing 'tons of terrorists' doesn't mean anything. That's the same mentality from the Vietnam War where our generals would report body counts as if they meant something. Nearly all of the 'terrorists' we have killed in Iraq have been homegrown insurgents from there, people we wouldn't have been fighting otherwise. Furthermore, Iraq has served as a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda and according to the most recent CIA estimate I can find AQ is stronger now than it has been at any time since 9/11. So as far as 'killing tons of terrorists' goes, it would appear to me that Iraq has been a failure of epic proportions... assuming that the goal of killing terrorists is to have there be fewer terrorists in the world.
Now for 'establishing a base'. According to the current force agreements in place with Iraq we will not have a significant troop presence there for very much longer, so it's not exactly like we're going to have that much larger a presence in the ME than we already did from support by Turkey, Bahrain, and Israel. What IS quite likely however is that the newly formed government of Iraq will be significantly influenced by Iran, our single largest antagonist in the region. Iran has always been far more dangerous to the US than Iraq, and this war has immeasurably strengthened our key adversary. That's bad.
Oh, and we paid trillions of dollars and thousands of lives for the privilege of strengthening Al-Qaeda and Iran. And it was frivolous because it was designed to stop a problem that didn't exist.
Heck, I'd even go a bit further than that, eskimo.
Ever consider why GBush I didn't go all the way into Iraq during the first Gulf War and depose Saddam? Could it be because he, at least, had the foresight to see what the true end result of doing that would have been, and Bush II missed it.
Granted, Saddam was a tyrant, but he did keep all his factions within his country completely under control....Kurds, Suunis, Shiites, all of them.
And while Saddam gave lip service to Islam, he did not embrace it whatsoever....that was easily seen by his never including any Islamic law into his power structure.
And while true he did rattle his sabre a lot, esp. after the Kuwait invasion, he was, for better or worse, a stabilizing influence in the region, esp. with Iran.
Now, since we've taken him out and when we leave will have a "democratically" elected gov't in Iraq, cannot anyone see what will happen? Instant civil religious war....Suuni vs. Shiite, and completely influenced by Iran.
As soon as the Shiites grind down and out the Suunis, Iraq will become a satellite state of Iran......the Iranian supported insurgency is just the tip of the iceburg, as anyone with eyes can see.
So, you are correct, eskimo, we completely screwed the pooch with the Iraq invasion. But very few will actually admit how badly we have screwed up by looking at the basic foregone conclusions when we finally leave the country. We won't have bases there, we won't have one shred of input, but will instead have, essentially, Iran and Iran South. Just what we needed!
