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Originally Posted by Rough Rider
politics aside.. and maybe that's impossible.. Just read another local Louisiana native has died in Iraq. I feel so sorry for their families. I admire those who serve in our armed services, as well as those such as firefighters and police who put themselves in harms way to protect us.
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Roughrider,
Politics aside as you say, why are we in Iraq? I do not pretend to hold all the answers to such hard questions, but I do feel that our individual answers depend on our ultimate belief in our government; its intelligence and military agencies, various branches of government, and their motives. You know, those guys we send 35% of our paychecks to!
Perhaps the answer is as simple, if you are a government cynic. When the “no-bid contracts” finally run out, we will pull out because that’s what the war was all about. Or maybe we are there for “big oil” which isn’t paying off, so we should pull out.
For those less jaded by government, maybe the answer is equally simple. Maybe they got it right. Yes you heard me; they received intelligence of a possible threat and acted on it, only the huge delay in action caused Saddam to prepare by moving the threat to a neighboring country such as Syria or else bury it in the sand. This is very possible, even likely given the “countdown” that we gave him. What would you do in his shoes given a stopwatch ticking downward? Is Saddam evil or dysfunctional?
I have no idea which answer is “the truth”, or if there is a third answer to consider. Imagine being president after 911 and having a second attack occured. This hasn’t happened in half a decade. But it could have. Maybe the question is why haven’t we been attacked on homeland soil in the past 5 years? And if we had, would the number of deaths equal 2000 plus? Or exceed it? Who knows?