I never thought taking out Saddam was a good idea.

I opposed the Iraq war tooth & nail.

He was a horrible person, but he kept a brutal peace.

A brutal peace is preferable to anarchy and the rule of religious fanatics.

And the same goes for Assad - a brutal dictator, yes; and yet the only effective impediment ISIS seems to have.

But we've been undermining him because our "buddies" the Saudis don't like him! Dirty Dave (Cameron) has too, and was once caught shipping poison gas to Al Nusra monsters (he claimed he "didn't know that that's what it was&quot .

Bad idea.

could actually safely practice their own religion.

It was totally insane that anyone would every bought the Bush team claim that he was involved with terrorists. Saddam would never ever ever side with any group that could have been a threat to his control.

It was totally insane.

It was like living in a nightmare with no waking.
DU was my place of sanity at the time.
Everywhere else, people had bought the lie that Saddam had attacked us on 9/11.

It was my lesson that the vast majority of people don't read further than the headlines / sound-bites.

If he were still alive, it means we never invaded, and ISIS never existed in the first place

But yes, you are absolutely right. We propped him up for all those years for a reason.

nobody wants to say how the war the US took to Iraq led to the rise of this bunch of barbarians. chances are there was a pallet of american cash they used to grow as well. but the media is the tool of the MIC and the MIC is more invested in maintaining the status quo than peace any day.
i feel bitter these days.

by proxie.

Close to having a nuclear bomb if Saddam was around. A dumb move by W to go after the man his father pushed into power in Iraq. He would have burned out ISIS also.

Thought maybe they could be vulnerable and ended up with a decade long war, massive debt to neighbors, he used poison gas on Iranian cities. Killed well over 100,000 civilians. What do they have to do with nukes?

Weren't we worried about Iraq developing Nukes? Isn't that what the Israeli airstrike was about it? The ones crazy enough to use one already have one & last thing I'm worried about, giving Saddam gas to use against Iranians seems kinda counter-productive in that they're probably more likely to use one after that but it is the hypocrisy of it. US & their allies are more likely to use one then claim the moral high ground after doing so.

The people that have nothing to do with nothing are killed over leaders' squabbles. Their lives shouldn't be so abstract as this.

he fought Iran to a standstill on behalf of the USA. No reason to think he'd have been any less of a valuable asset throughout the region today.
What the hell could Bush (GHWB # 41) have been thinking.

never was.

Unfortunately, the PNAC crew didn't think "those people" would object to colonization by the US.

Most of the Bush Admin was a part of PNAC whose stated goal was to destabilize the Middle East so that the US could build permanent bases in order to project American imperialism in the region.

Sad thing is PNAC is still a powerful force behind the scenes since it's comprised mostly of assholes who control military-industrial interests.

He was a buffer for Iran.

And he ruthlessly suppress radical Islamists.

He was America's kind of dictator.

Bush the elder sold him out to the interests of the Saudi royals and the sheiks of Kuwait.

They and the Neo-Cons want to keep the M.E. destabilized. And ISIS is doing a grand job. This what we get when he don't get out the vote and Republicans win by default - perpetual war.

It's a fact that Saddam Hussein helped further American and other Western goals in the region, look what that ended up getting him in the end. Now the region is full to the brim with warring Islamic factions with no end in sight.

it means little.

what he got himself into by doing the same shit he did under cover of Religious justification .

they are more of a criminal gang .

*Especially* the goddamn Muslim Brotherhood, those fascist bastards.

ISIS is blowback fom the Iraq debacle, just as Bin Laden was blow back form the Afghan war against the Soviets.

Mind you--he was no choirboy, and his sons were absolute monsters.

Hard to know, really, but if he hadn't done that whole "So, I'm gonna invade Kuwait" thing, life might have been different for him. He might have been able to transform his persona.

Still doesn't answer the whole "internal unrest" business as a consequence of religious repression that went largely unreported but that's a conversation for another day.

getting the green light from Bush's Ambassador April Glasbie.

Who said that "diplomacy stuff" was easy, I wonder?

steel in the elder Bush's spine (after they met in Colorado). Up until that meeting with Thatcher, GHWB had been very mealy-mouthed and wishy-washy. Only after he met with Thatcher, did the BS about a 'line in the sand' and other such nonsense emerge. But that's just my own private suspicion; I've never seen any historian take it up in any meaningful way. Nonetheless, Britain had far older colonial claims in Iraq dating back to Sykes-Picot. And Thatcher would have been just the type to push for punishing her former colonial possession for its presumption. The timing of Bush's sudden onset of spine-liness is, let us merely say, suspicious.

out of context). I've also often wondered if Glaspie gave Hussein the green light without the Brits having first signed on, thus necessitating the massive incoherence of policy in the days and weeks that followed.

Who knows, maybe they were in the tub together....

We know he liked ladies who lived in London (Jennifer Fitzgerald, anyone?) and though she liked tall Americans, her fav was Ronnie...

a lot of memories that had laid dormant for quite some time.

100 years from now when the serious historians get to work (assuming homo sapiens is still around), I wonder whether the British influence on U.S. foreign policy at the time of Operations Desert Shield\Desert Storm will become part of the narrative or whether my private suspicions will remain that, mere whispers in the wind.

read that specific passage, I also know I'm not clever enough by half to have come up with the idea on my own and probably read something along those lines somewhere else. (I have these really vague memories, but can't nail them down which is unlike me.)

I do remember that it seemed to have blown up from nothing into something seemingly overnight. When word of Glaspie's talk with Saddam emerged, I remember feeling absolutely enraged. But it was so long ago now (25-some years) that rage at more current events has supplanted the feelings from that earlier time.

The only real reason he did have a strong dislike for some of the Islamists, is because he saw them as being in the way. But what if, perhaps, Al-Qaeda, or somebody like them, approached Saddam, expressing their mutual dislike of America, and/or Israel? As long as they promised not to backstab him.....I'm convinced that he might just have taken that offer.

calling the secular Hussein apostate and authorizing his execution by any of the faithful. The feeling was mutual and Hussein would have squashed any overture from AQ like a bug.

A couple of thoughts from an "inside" perspective: I spent 2005 OIF3 as a stop-loss cross-level engineer sent into Abu Ghraib with the 306th MP's out of NY. I was against the war before it began, against it while I was there, and against it now. I was a soldier - it's a complicated story, but I signed on the line and I did my time. And don't even thank me for defending your freedom!!! Ever!

First - why in THE hell do we let these guys calls themselves ISIS or ISIL or Fred or Barney? We should own this conversation and call them al qaeda in Iraq. That's who these folks are, al qaeda. Al qaeda did not exist in Iraq until we barged in and broke the place apart. Saddam wouldn't put up with these fanatics for a second. So to all those Generals mewing about progress and a new democracy, and to flat brain Tommy Friedman (I did 2 of your "friedman units" so You can suck on this!), Darth Cheney and his last throes BS, and all the media, and those who just went shopping - all of you can line up and kiss my crusty dusty ass!!!

Second - Why is nobody congratulating me and my friends for creating this Isis, er al qaeda group? We put these folks in Abu Ghraib and then down to Bucca; sort of like a boot camp followed by MOS school. The leaders said they would never have formed this group or the very idea of ISIS had they not been thrown together in US detainee camps where they could polish their plots and designs. So you are all welcome for my efforts. The law of unintended consequences has rarely been writ so large.

Third - Let us never forget the slaughter of the Iraqi people, the destruction of their infrastructure, society, and culture. Iraq had a brewery. That's right folks, they were making and selling beer. The Christians sold liquor in stores, girls wore western clothes at the university, the 60.000+ Jewish citizens lived amicably (one of our interpreters was named David - he had converted from Islam to Judaism with no problem until we arrived), and Sunnis and Shiites intermarried and lived next door to each other. All that has changed. And don't get me wrong, Saddam was a frightfully mean and ruthless bastard, but truly - Iraq was sooo much better before we invaded.

Finally - I thought that Assad in Syria was our friend when we "renditioned" tourists and terrorists to have their balls crushed and their fingernails peeled back? And Libya? And Iran? Egypt? All of these countries were on the Neocon hit list. Somewhere Darth Cheney is smiling as the grand plan continues as planned. Our intervention, invasion, blunder; call it what you want, it has not even unveiled its true trajectory. As Churchill said - this is just the end of the beginning. So stay tuned.

Somebody (the Supreme Court) gave the boys (George, and Don, and Dick) the keys to daddy's truck and they filled the bed with a cases of beer, a gallon of whiskey, some flares, and some dynamite for good measure. And they drove the damned thing right into the heart of Baghdad. What could possibly have gone more wrong?

The jail cell I lived in was in a part of the compound designated Life Support Area Shadow. And in addition to being a soldier, an engineer, and permanently tired, I was also the duly appointed mayor! Unfrigginbelievable.

The Shadow Mayor

Teheran (the real crown jewel).

I hope to read more of your work in the near future.

I would certainly recommend it and bookmark it. Your thinking is clear; it is reminiscent of a friend who served with/near you. Thank you.

No thanks.

portion of the world.

Much as England helped out the South during the American Civil War, to keep the USA de-stabilized.

The bigger older more established "Powers that Are" are alwys try to dominate and de-stabilize the smaller third world nations.

Oh and if you follow Naomi Wolf over on FaceBook, she has been posting about the revealations of a captured Pakistani ISIS leader, to the effect that he claims his unit was bought and paid for by the USA.

wanted to help the South, but the British working class (those who worked the textile mills and loaded the ships) knew the score and refused to support the South, even though they took a hit for one year b/c of declining cotton imports from the American South (due to the Union naval blockade).

Lincoln and Seward had to tread delicately and with finesse, so as to keep the Brits (and French) out. But tread delicately they did, including releasing a couple Southern traitors captured on the high seas to continue their futile diplomatic mission to England and France.

. . . together, we humble folk could run this country better than our Ivy League educated idiots.

OKAY - he wasn't perfect. He was an asshole. But he was OUR asshole. And the biggest thing he did, seems to me, was contain Iran.

Iran and Iraq were at war with each other and he was preoccupied with them. And they with him. And while they were so busy being preoccupied with him, they didn't have much time to bother with Israel, or making trouble anywhere else. He was right on their border, and a much more clear-and-present danger and threat to them than anybody else ever was. So he kept them busy, and kept them from stirring things up elsewhere.

And his aim, and equipment, sucked the big one. I remember during Desert Storm how Saddam's scud missiles and the rest of it were thought to be so horrifyingly formidable - at least according to the PR pushed on us all by those wanting war. And his scud missiles never did squat. Never hit whatever target they were aimed toward. Always wound up in some stupid place far afield of where they were aimed. Lot of 'em fell in the desert somewhere and did nothing. His "offensive capabilities" became a joke. And he was "not schooled in the operational art," as Schwarzkopf said. I think a VERY few of them actually landed in Israeli territory. And did very little damage of any significance, as I recall. My memory may be a little faded by now, but I can absolutely remember how I felt as it went on. And those scud missiles got fired, and - blap! A whole lotta nothing. I had to stay home at the AP's L.A. bureau while my radio colleague was sent to Riyadh where the press covering Operations Desert Storm was headquartered. I had to cover part of his beat and part of my own. I remember wondering - what's all the fuss about? What were we huffing and puffing about? Saddam's MUCH-vaunted and MUCH-hyperventilated-about "Revolutionary Guards" were equally Much Ado About Nothing. Those supposedly ruthless and terrifying troops of his folded like so many pieces of paper and dropped their weapons and the loot they stole from Kuwait and ran the other way like stampeding antelope. I kept thinking - "what the hell?"

What an over-sell job. Turned out the ferocious and horribly terrifying reputation of the Saddam forces was, as Mark Twain would say regarding rumors of his own death - "exaggerated."

http://oupacademic.tumblr.com/post/48310773463/misquotation-reports-of-my-death-have-been

(Hey! Look what I just learned! A misquote? I had no idea!)

Saddam went into Kuwait to get his billions from the monarchs whose ass he had covered during the Iran-Iraq war. A costly war during which Kuwait slant drilled into Iraq and made fortunes on the oil market. We gave Saddam the green light (thanks April) and he took the bait. That war was designed to let the poor US army regain its stature. The navy and air force seemed to be more effective and folks were wondering what the hell was the need for a large army? B52's softened up the front lines for weeks before the war began, and the coalition forces (meaning our army and marines) were set. The battles were certainly fierce, but definitely one-sided. Some Generals like McCaffrey didn't get "enough" and annihilated retreating Iraqi forces as their trains rolled homeward. Same thing with the road to Baghdad - a prolonged massacre. Darth Cheney was Sec Def and apparently his blood lust wasn't sated.

Round 2 was the invasion for WMD's or to "git the guy who tried to kill my daddy" or act 1 of the Neocon plot to take over the world. I honestly wonder if the folks behind this mess played too much Risk in college - a game where you really need to take the middle east to win. It's about as challenging as a long game of tic-tac-toe. All for empire and all for control.

Does anybody remember when Saddam said he would voluntarily leave Iraq if it would avert a war? Does anybody remember Iran offering to put it's whole nuclear program "on the table" if they could help with our war in Iraq? Condi told the Iranians to get stuffed. And why wouldn't she? They were next on the list!

What a colossal mess we have created. Was Saddam a good guy? Hell no - but I notice very little discussion about those wonderful humanitarians running the Saudi empire? I could weep for a week for what has been done in our name, but I'm too tired.

The Shadow Mayor

Thanks for mentioning it.

Glad you're here. If they "trained" for these vaunted positions as foreign policy "experts" by playing "Risk" - then that would explain their utter recklessness in "shepherding" US involvement in world affairs. When you play a game - it's a GAME. There are no consequences when you lose. When you lose at "Monopoly" you don't really lose all your properties and go bankrupt in real life. I don't know if that's what the PNACers did, but they SURE didn't attempt to get any first-hand experience in actual combat situations. Sure didn't line up to sign up - and put their OWN asses in harm's way. They knew nothing, and listening to them gained us nothing. WORSE than nothing. Actively negative real-life consequences. Not just highfalutin "think" tank opining from the elitist chickenhawks of the so-called right. Very few of them ever got their hands dirty. Very few of them ever had skin in the game. They were quite literally arm-chair warriors.

And we who objected were completely shut out, and shut down. There was no face time made generously available to our side. The closest we got, back in the beginning, was michael o'hanlon. He was on camera a lot, representing "the left." michael o'hanlon's appearance on some news or news/talk show arose from his position as an analyst at the Brookings Institution. Back then, at the beginning of bush/cheney, and certainly in the latter days of the Clinton administration, you could name about a half-dozen different institutions, think tanks, foundations, and such on the far right. Heritage Foundation, Eagle Forum, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Hoover Institute, Federalist Society, and our favorites - the good folks at the Project for a New American Century.

When it came to naming institutions, think tanks, foundations, and such on the left - you could come up with the Brookings Institution, and that was pretty much it. Or at least that's all you saw on TV or cable. Ironically enough, michael o'hanlon is a signatory of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) along with donald rumsfeld and jebbie bush, john mccain, paul wolfowitz, scooter libby, elliott abrams, richard perle, john bolton, richard allen, frank gaffney, fred kagan, donald kagan, jeane kirkpatrick, randy scheunemann, john mccain, ed meese, dan quayle (!), charles krauthammer, bill kristol, and richard bruce cheney and just a whole cavalcade of VERMIN who promoted, then and now, a philosophy that called upon America to assert its dominance over the rest of the world. As such, it can be expected that the PNAC policy platform will be part of michael o'hanlon's mind set in one way or other. After all, he did sign off on it. Especially regarding control and dominance of strategic resources. To ensure this would be so, the PNACers advocated an America that was able "to fight and decisively win multiple wars on multiple fronts." All for the sake of our purported way of life and our alleged exceptionalism. Even aggressively imposed imperialism and forced capitalism everywhere. We had to be The Badass of the World, and assert our planetary primacy so that the flow of critical and strategic resources flowed to us without interruption. They wanted and tried to design war in Iraq before bush/cheney was even in the White House. They tried to sell it to Bill Clinton in the last quarter of his service. And they all rode in on their pal cheney's coat-tails.

http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html

THIS >>>>> "What a colossal mess we have created. Was Saddam a good guy? Hell no - but I notice very little discussion about those wonderful humanitarians running the Saudi empire? I could weep for a week for what has been done in our name, but I'm too tired." I know what you mean, shadowmayor.

Calimary - that was right-said-Fred! Believe it or not, there were some (certainly a minority) of us in the military who thought the whole the whole Iraq story was crap from the get-go. I spoke out loudly and often and many in my unit thought I was some kind of commie-kissin', Hillary-huggin', hippy dipstick who didn't belong in this man's army. After several weeks in Abu Ghraib I started getting visits late at night from my fellow soldiers who usually said something like: "You weren't joking about this stuff, were you?" or "man I thought you were nuts and an asshole, and I'm sorry". And so the conversations would begin.

The PNAC list is a real who's who of heartless human excrement. And it is truly perpetual war for perpetual empire. Smedley Butler was right, war is a racket. Pax Americana is Pox Americana. To see Cheney or Rumsfeld or Condi on TV makes my blood boil and I question the sanity of a population that doesn't demand their swift "rendition" to the Hague. I know a lot of the beltway echo chorus comes from the think tanks you mentioned - propaganda centers that really gathered steam after Goldwater got crushed by LBJ. And let's not forget how many of the PNAC shit-stains got their start under Dick Nixon's tutelage and guidance.

I don't often post, but sometimes it just seems like the right thing to do? I appreciate your reply and at the end of the day, a slice of key lime pie and a good book will remind me that maybe there is hope for the simians after all?

The Shadow Mayor

And many of us ALSO will NOT forget that the list of PNAC signatories is chock-full of panty-waists and pansy-asses who NEVER served.

NEVER served.

NEVER saw combat.

NEVER put themselves in harm's way.

NEVER experienced first-hand what REAL war is.

NEVER put their own asses on the line.

NEVER got their hands dirty.

Starting with richard bruce cheney and his five deferments. Because he always had "other priorities."

The only one on the PNAC signatory list who did, to my limited knowledge - was general barry mccaffrey. I should also, for accuracy's sake, point out that rumsfeld, ironically, actually did wear his country's uniform. But he never got it dirty. He lucked out. Served between wars - I believe it was between Korea and Vietnam. So he never saw combat either. He just got lucky - served his time during peacetime and got his points and earned an honorable discharge - without EVER tasting the bitter taste of real war, and real blood, and real loss, and real carnage, and real genuine honest-to-God threats to your life that could come from anywhere - the top of a nearby building or even hidden under the ground that your humvee was about to drive across. Or if it isn't you facing that direct and constant threat, it's your buddy - who you may have just personally witnessed getting suddenly blown to Mars.

I was once begged, by a woman I knew who was gung-ho for the Iraq War because everyone she knew was a Pox Noise afficionado, to PLEEEEEZE hang out my American flag by my front door "to support our trooooooooooooops" on the day the war started. I told her the only way to "support our troops," FOR REAL, is NOT to feed them into some stupid useless wasteful Middle East meat-grinder for the sake of lies and fraud ill-gotten gains for our war machine and all its greedy corporate suppliers - a war that should NEVER have been undertaken in the first place.

It was just awful during that time. Seemed like everybody around me was so pro-bush/cheney, so gung-ho for war ("okay, if it's so damn fabulous, why don't YOU go suit up and go over there and get some!&quot and a precious few spoke up. There were a few individuals who agreed with me but only when they knew we were alone going for coffee or there was nobody else around to hear what we were grumbling about. It was really awful. Seemed like so many around me were buying and swallowing, whole, what the media was force-feeding us while banging the drum so loudly for war. It was awful. Everybody believed contradicta and wolfie and dickie and rummy and all the rest of those lying, scheming BEASTS. You could NOT talk sense into them. You could NOT open their eyes. And if you tried, it was YOU who became the enemy, the sniveling "libtard" or "Saddam-lover" or "al Qaeda sympathizer" or "anti-American" or you were just stupid and naive with your dreaded liberal kumbaya ideas and it was YOU who didn't understand. And YOU who were the traitor and disloyal and on the side of the enemy. That whole "you're either with us or agin' us" thing applied directly to YOU for "NOT supporting our troooooooooooooops."

It was awful. I don't see many of those folks anymore. Our kids all grew up and went off to college and otherwise scattered to the four winds. We weren't close anyway, so there wouldn't be much reason or opportunity to hang out together. My husband and I don't do the country club thing. But sometimes I think back on that whole bunch and wonder what they think now, and wonder - if they ever saw me and it ever came up in conversation - that they'd ever admit they were wrong. And that they'd been royally HAD by the very "heroes" they worshipped and put their faith in and stood by, so firmly, in the bush/cheney cabal. HAD - at the end of a fork. I wonder if they still think they were "right." Sadly enough, there are still too many of our fellow Americans across the country who do.

But rest assured, shadowmayor, there are many of us who don't. Many of us who weren't fooled from the very beginning. And many more of us who may have gone along at first but then started realizing they'd been lied to and that the whole sordid mess was a FRAUD. There are many of us who won't be cowed or snowed and won't shut up, either. We're here to remind everyone and anyone of what happened, so that no amount of republi-CON or CONservative attempts to rewrite history after the fact will stick.

Calimary - I don't know you from Alice, but I "know" ya if you know what I mean? I have made it my mission to be very detailed, graphic, explicit, and honest in my replies to the question "what was it really like over there". The looks of revulsion and the shame on the faces I respond to tell me enough.

A strange observation. All my liberal friends and family have all said the same thing to me - Oh my god - I'm so sorry our country sent you and everybody else into that bloody mess. My conservative friends and family all thank me for serving our country.

Thanks for coming to "work" here on DU.

The Shadow Mayor

Gaddafi was fighting the Black Flag Rebels in Libya.
Fundamentalists have taken Libya now and imposed Sharia Law.

Things would have been different than they are now, I'm sure of that.

This is serious nonsense . .

"Iran would never have gotten
Close to having a nuclear bomb if Saddam was around."

Please cite your sources that Iran is, or was, "close"
There aren't any.

into Iraq. 'We are going to turn the ME into a glass parking lot' - Michael Ledeen, fan of Machiavelli, a believer in the 'State Lying to the People' because of 'fatherly' superiority. The Noble Lie, I believe Rove called it.

And they are at it again. Not happy with all the wars we are engaged in, they still want the big prize, IRAN, and Russia. Watch the propaganda, it is almost identical to the Iraq War lies.

He'd be able to communicate with them at their level.

It has been supported by both parties, but embraced more by republicans and conservatives.

Actually, I don't think you do but it frames that way in context of the conversation at hand.

I'd argue that the regime we installed was no better and a hell of a lot weaker and more ineffective all around though.

Of course, he terrorized and executed plenty of people himself through his secret police and security services. And he embodied Sunni rule of a majority Shiite country so ISIS would have been quite happy with him in that sense.

Liberals can oppose invasions to depose dictators without endorsing a policy of supporting dictators in the "lesser of two evils" guise of controlling terrorists, communists, etc.

answer in this segment of "keeping it 100".

This is a tribal society based on tribal loyalty. Seeing how Takrik, Saddam and his tribe's hometown, is firmly ISIS territory they probably would have been in together. ISIS would not exist under Saddam, true. But that is not because Saddam was secular. He was the leader of his tribes. Other tribes, Kurds, Shia tribes were against.

We in the West fall for the idea that ISIS is religious based. Outwardly they are and this is used as a recruiting tactic, especially with Western Sunni disaffected youth. (And Chechans, but they just love to fight.)

...until he threatened the corporatist establishment's friends in Saudi Arabia (who were all on board with his willingness to oppose and attack Iran) by driving his army to Kuwait in an attempt to better advantage his oil exports by seizing their port city and reducing the Saudi monopoly on oil.

maybe one day ISIS will be our ally against someone.

Assad is not much different from Saddam yet he has proven incapable of dealing with ISIS nor is there any need for us to count him as an ally.

If Al-Maliki, quite simply, allowed participation for elected Sunni officials. Plus, he allowed Shia militias to do what they went & have grown.

Al-Maliki, was a political leader in Iraq under Saddam, fled to Iran and CIA put him in charge as Prime Minister.

I just have no interest in allying in favor of oppressive dictators over people, it is true ISIS would be very oppressive in charge but the political reality of the situation still exists. They took advantage of the political opportunity, war, & swept in.

The thing that wasn't favorable for ISIS is Saddam treated the Sunnis better. Same shit, he violently oppressed Shia & Kurdish revolts but he was secular. Not a Wahabbi which the he had something to do with 9/11 made no sense.

if Saddam was in power.