BULLSHIT!

You don't get an "I told you so" for self-fulfilling prophesy!

You don't get an "I told you so" for opposition to *invasion*. For opposition to intervention.

What has transpired is not the inevitable outcome of invading Iraq, but the outcome of crippling our war effort, of leftist do-gooderism, of being forced into nation-building *instead of conquest*.

We did not have a choice; this war was forced upon us. We had a choice of either fighting it full-force as we've fought wars in the past, or sitting behind our own shores, convinced in our non-exceptionalism, waiting for the next 9/11... and the next... *as we had done under the Clinton administration*.

Instead, the political class chose the middle course, which is always wrong; to invade, yes, but pretending we're invading WWII Italy and try to win hearts and minds which are unwinnable, rather than breaking asses into submission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3lQSxNd...

So, no, you don't get an "I told you so". You get an olive cluster medal (with dove overlay) for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

I was here when the tanks were waiting to roll. At that point, you could NOT predict this outcome, because at that point we had no idea that once again our military would win the battle (driving to Baghdad in 3 weeks) and our government, under another progressive Republican like Nixon, would give up our victory. *Every* indication was that we were going to war to win, that we were going to put our enemies into a hurt locker, and that the leftists so worried about persecuting Moslems would be quite properly ignored.

You get an "I told you so" the same way racists get an "I told you so" for predicting that the country would become a disaster under a black President. The mess we've made of the war is related to the invasion of Iraq the same way Obama's destruction of the country is related to his skin color; coincidental.

Are you going to scream "I told you so" again, when this exact same thing happens in Afghanistan? In Arizona?

The courts and legislatures will have as much say as did the Senate and Emperor of Rome.

All those people who proudly held up their ink-stained fingers for the cameras, I'm guessing. Including the women.

CHECK

YOUR

PREMISES

"because there is no way to win it."

Grant me complete and unfettered command of our armed forces (including requisitioning and logistics), and I'll win the war in a year.

We promised S Vietnam that if the North broke the treaty and invaded, we'd come back. We didn't do so, just as we won't return to Iraq. We promised we'd fund S. Vietnam so they could hold off the North; we didn't do that, either.

I don't know if Herman Cain would have been any good or not. Alan Keyes would have been, IMO.

As I like to say, it's not the black of his skin, but the red of his ideology that makes Obama a bad man.

Btw, the country is not becoming a disaster under a black President; we have no President.
I just wanted to clarify that in case someone accused me of ever referring to Obama as President. If you re-read my original comment, I attributed that to racists, not myself.

What's this "you" stuff? YOU might not.. *I* do.

Let's apply your logic to WWII... a special ops operation to take out Hitler would have solved everything... only it wouldn't have. It wouldn't have taken out the Party, it wouldn't have taken out the general staff, it wouldn't have taken out Mussolini, and it wouldn't have taken out Tojo.

In point of fact, Germany probably would have given us a much, much tougher fight *had* we taken Hitler out, thus letting the general staff actually fight the war rationally rather than based on Hitler's fantasies.

Where did we find bin Laden? In Pakistan, being succored by our good buddies... and how many tens of thousand of Pakis died as punishment for that? Zero. We are not serious, which is why we are not taken seriously.

This was not about taking out bin Laden as if we were going after Capone (we got Capone, how come the mafia didn't fold up and die? We got bin Laden, how come Al Qaeda didn't fold up and die?)

This war, in spite of Republican and Democrat progressive rhetoric, is a battle with fundamentalist Islam, which is out to establish itself as the dominant political power on the planet. I dunno about you, but I'm opposed to that. Seriously opposed to that. And I don't propose waiting until they're knocking (again!) on our front door before we crush them. *And those who succor them*.

You must have forgotten that 100k of them surrendered to us (so we couldn't kill them... darn it...)

So, based on this, I'm pretty much the only person in the Gulch who makes little enough money to be elected VP or POTUS...

otherwise I'm a corrupt evil capitalist making money.

I got news for you... there would be no Iraqi oil production if it weren't for private companies. The Bedouins sure didn't have the capability to acquire it. The middle east wouldn't be able to disrupt the world the way it continually does if not for the benevolence of the west in actually paying them for what we in the west developed the means to acquire.

Maybe you didn't live through the 70s when OPEC used oil as a tool of economic warfare, but I did. Any plot to break OPEC is fine with me.

As for WMDs... Hussein USED them on the Kurds. We had survelliance of WMDS and the tools to make them being trucked to Syria. We have soldiers getting sick from exposure to WMD materials.

But, who gives a shit about WMDs? I certainly do not!

At the end of the Gulf War, after Hussein used WMDs on the Kurds, we established a "No-Fly" zone as part of the armistice. He fired on our warplanes flying the no fly zone. This was a violation of the armistice, and an act of war.

Why wasn't THAT reason enough to stomp him into a damp stain? You're seeing now the price of being a paper tiger; Obama's "red line" in Syria has become a joke as terrorists spread their business throughout the middle east... again.

We should have stomped him into a damp stain as an example to the rest of the middle east as to what is gained by tweaking the nose of the U.S. For that reason alone, forget the Al Qaeda training camps, forget the WMDs... forget even the brilliant strategy of taking out Iraq as part of the beginning of the conquest of the entire middle east.

..I.,

There you go.

"America has no compelling interest in what is essentially a recrudescence of sectarian war in the Middle East"

So what? America has other interests in the region, namely, making Al Qaeda and ISIS collectively dead.

It was awful nice of them to stick their heads up so we can now chop them off (figuratively speaking).

What you will end up seeing is Americans being decapitated... in America.


And I don't *have* to resort to calling names or crude gestures... but I figure I might as well, because the terminally obtuse can at least get an idea of my sentiment since they're incapable of rational thought.

In the first place, Hussein wasn't our friend when he was fighting Iran; it was in our interest to keep them beating up ON EACH OTHER, which we did by trying to keep the balance of terror roughly equal.

See, here's the big flaw, caused by you and your ilk, and the rest of the "blame America" crowd...

"Your screed fails to note that our Iraqi "friends" asked us to leave in 2011, after refusing to accept a Status of Forces agreement that would have given our military and intelligence personnel immunity from Iraq's laws and judicial processes. "

And that's because you and your ilk wouldn't let us go in as conquerors; in your defense, I doubt you're among the truly suicidally moronic who liked the idea of us going in as do-gooder nation-builders, but the entire question of "asking us to leave" and of "a Status of Forces agreement"... shouldn't even enter into thought, much less discussion.
"We'll go when we decide to go. We may let you know before we leave.
"Americans are immune to Iraq laws and judicial processes because... America."

But that's harsh and selfish and not at all altruistic, so we can't (politically) do that.

It's the same freaking war we lost in the 70s; no, not Vietnam, which we didn't lose, but the political war here at home, that cost us Vietnam.

I'm not surprised, however. Just because a progressive has a Republican label, like Bush sr and jr, doesn't make him conservative, and it doesn't make him immune to the urge to be magnanimous and benevolent, inappropriately.

No, I'm not glad we took our troops out of Iraq... when we did. If it weren't for you "dickbags" (his word, not mine), we would have taken our troops out of Iraq (and Syria, and Iran, and Afghanistan, and probably Pakistan and/or one or two other protectorates) five or even eight years ago.

But, no, you had to ally yourselves with the anti-Americans, like spoiled children ("But I don't WANT to go into Iraq; no matter how necessary, practical and righteous it is, it doesn't fit my definition of Objectivism, so I don't care what harm I do, I'm going to fight to cripple and put an end to it! waaaaah!")

Again, you can't claim "I told you so" for self-fulfilling prophesy. There was *nothing* wrong with the strategy of invading Iraq. The error came in stopping to nation build instead of conquering the middle east (I imagine you need smelling-salts every time I say that...)

Oh, look everyone! It's another "blame-America-first"!

We didn't attack anyone who didn't do anything to us.

Only a fool worries more about being a "good guy" than about the survival of his nation.