What would have happened if Saddam had been left in power..?

..and there had been no invasion? I think he would have been age 70 in April? He was getting up in years. How much longer would he have been able to maintain power? Would his sons have taken over? Would the people or the military have overthrown his sons? Would there have been a similar war as what is happening now if Saddam had died of natural causes? Those are questions we will never know.

really such a bad guy after all" angle.

We would have lifted the sanctions, and started buying oil from him. Well, openly, since he really wasn't suffering from the supposed sanctions. Halliburton, being there already, would have been in on the ground floor of profiting from the whole deal either way.

It sems to me this thing panned out even better for them, since they can take billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for "rebuilding", "security" and laundry services. :eyes:

and we'd still be respected as a country.

But one thing, Iraq would be a much less violent place than it is today.

would still be alive. Oil would be flowing to beat the band since Saddam would have agreed to every condition to lift the sanctions by now. Basically it would like heaven on earth. Instead with Mr Meatball as "commander in chief" we are stuck with an unending shit pot.

If you look at what Ricks has to say in his book Fiasco, "containment" was working extremely well. That's if you believe Saddam was a threat in the first place. I don't happen to be in that camp.

I look forward to what other DU-ers have to say in answer to this question.



Cher

That's if you believe Saddam was a threat in the first place. I don't happen to be in that camp.

Word...

There is NO threat to the world's most advanced civilization except from within.

Less-than-friendly nuclear powers like China and possibly N. Korea. There are always threats in the world. The question is, how does the US respond to them?

Bake

at a 2001 hearing with the UN, containment was working extremely well.

He'd have died within a decade or so, either of natural causes or poisoned by one of his sons. The country would never have accepted either son, so civil war would have ensued.

I've run this guess past quite a few people from the region, and other than speculation that he was too mean to die, they've agreed with me.

Colonial powers drew their borders and those borders had absolutely no respect for the people who lived within them. A struggle was inevitable. Stupid just rushed the schedule and complicated the fight by trying to occupy the country.

Probably so...

Although I'm sure Bumblefuck Bush would've managed to accomplish that somehow, anyway.

I never understood why so many DUers count every US casualty yet ignore the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead.

I agree that Saddam Hussein's death and the end of the regime would trigger some mess.

Just not the mess we have now. But it's definitely hard to say, with the legacy of mass murder that exists in Iraq, whether the numbers would have been drastically different.

I just don't know.

to send Americans to Mars as slave laborers.

Qusay. (He's the one who wasn't a lunatic sadist.)

:nuke: :sarcasm:

or is that just :sarcasm: ??

kindasleezy said. we're not waiting for a mushroom cloud. no I don't believe he would have gotten the bomb, let alone have the capacity to hurl one our way....

Saddam was secular thug, but he was an avowed enemy of the Islamic fundamentalists and Al-Qaeda. He was our guy, handpicked by CIA to route the Reds, and he should have remained our guy. Saddam asked for permission to invade Kuwait, and our ambassador April Glasbie gave him the green light.

By getting rid of Saddam and siding with the Shias, we have fucked ourselves for good!

Sure, Saddam was a monster. But he was OUR monster.


Remember 9/11. Forget Iraq.

or a military assasination....

* just hastened the civil war....

We have no business there, he was no more a threat to the US than many of the other dicators...

We have to deal with Iraq as it is now.

Good for argument's sake if nothing else. Kind of like "what if Hitler has not invaded the USSR?"

Containment was effective, but how many deaths can be attributed to the UN sanctions? Certainly Saddam did not personally suffer. At some point the sanctions would have been lifted.

Certainly there would not be 25k US war casualties, nor the 1/2 trillion in additional debt, and fewer Iraqi dead as well.

Not yet mentioned is the fact Bush would not have been re-elected in 2004. Bin Laden would be captured or dead. Perhaps Kerry, with a true coalition, would have dealt with Iraq in a much more effective and sane manner. Perhaps NK would not have the bomb, and Iran would be dissuaded from pursuing nuclear weapons - if that is what they are doing.

MY GOD! Forgive me for shouting, but how can you even CONTEMPLATE such a horror??????

...O...