Biggles-
I won't quote your post due to it's length; I will try to address it as well as I can.
It seems the concensus alights rather heavily on oil as our clumsily and ineffectually cloaked raison d'etre in the mid-east.
For the sake of a paragraph or so worth of blather, let's say you are right.
If we wanted/needed the oil that badly, why wouldn't we just barge in and take it, reputation and diplomacy be damned?
We could hardly do worse than we are in the court of world opinion. Why would we have expended such effort or wasted such time in the U.N.?
Really, now-we don't have to care, so why do we waste time, money, alliances and lives in the effort?
If we went about our "appropriations" baldly and without any pretense whatsoever, could we have possibly damaged our international reputation any further?
I will grant that Saudi Arabia makes, at best, an extremely unctuous (I almost balked at using that word, but, hey, it was next in the rotation ) ally in the mid-east, and I am glad to see us stepping in any other direction, but, while it lasted, it offered stability in an otherwise unstable region, and yes, it's true, the U.S. can't function without oil. We're top dog, and we like it that way; we feel our presence in the region lends stability overall, and also allows us to be supportive of Israel. We know the rest of the Arab world would prefer we leave the area (and Israel) so they can get on with fulfilling their religious mandate of wiping out the Jews, but.....oh, nevermind-we're only there for the oil, and Israel is only an excuse for us to stay.
As for WMD, a quick google will reveal that, as I've said, everybody in the whole, wide world believed Saddam had a really nice selection of such toys.
The U.N. Security Council sure believed it, and that includes Schroeder, Chirac, Putin, and a few others.
Although this fact is undeniably true, and reinforced by endless anecdotal evidence provided by Iraqi refugees and international intelligence organizations, it is denounced on it's face by the same entities who passed 17 U.N. resolutions and sent (or tried to send) untold numbers of inspectors, at tremendous cost, to Iraq to enforce these resolutions they now disavow a need for?
So-the U.S. gets tired of the U.N. twiddling their thumbs, and also of France, which, by virtue of it's veto power attempts to force the U.S. to twiddle it's thumbs, too-and acts!
We deduced Saddam would eventually cause trouble for us, our allies, or even our enemies.
Yes, he is getting on in years-so? Had we not ousted him, does anyone doubt Uday and Qusay, together or separately, had a wide enough sadistic streak to carry on in dear old Dad's name?
Apparently, it was too much of a judgement call for others to make, especially since nobody else had the wherewithal to act in any capacity other than to stand idly by or continue to try to ignore or appease Saddam.
And, now that the deed is done, who's to say what will happen next in the area?
History would seem to dictate a bad end.
Should we have left the Iraqis to their fate? The rest of you seem to think so.
I don't.
Sorry-
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