SoloPilot wrote:Sorry Aegis, I don't buy your idea that Iraq wasn't actively supporting the Bad Guys.
But then, I probably have a lot more friends in and from Iraq than most folks do. Many of them fled during the Hussein years.
What makes you think that Syria and the other garden spots aren't also on the To Do list? Iraq was unfinished business from the first Bush, and through the Clintons.
Because of the political fall-out from this war. I find it highly improbable that the majority of the US populace will be willing to support another long-term, overt military action in the near-east any time in the next 5-10 years, absent truly massive provokation (we're talking 9-11 all over again). If they were on a To-Do list, they aren't there now.
And I didn't say that Iraq didn't support the bad guys, just that there are many more countries farther into support of the bad guys than Iraq. Of course the Hussein regime had ties to terrorists. For example, the MKO, which is on the state department's list of terrorist organizations, but which limited its actions to attacking that stalwart ally of ours, Iran.
There was also the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), but it seems their founder (Abu Nidal himself) ran foul of the Husseins and was found dead of four "self-inflicted" gunshot wounds to the head. Go figure.
And then there's Zarqawi, who was actually operating before the war out of an enclave in the Kurdish territories, which lay outside of Saddam's direct control (and within a US and Britain patrolled No-Fly_Zone). Whether there was corroberation between the two or not is still fairly controversial, IIRC.