Can someone explain why it was a good idea to overthrow Saddam and let ISIS take over?

It was obvious wrote:

Kafir wrote:

The consensus was Iraq had WMD's. Oddly enough it's the same three letter departments that says there is a consensus Russia hacked the election.

Senator Bob Graham of Florida was on the Senate Intelligence committee and privy to all the reports - the initial reports, based on actual findings, not the reports "massaged" to fit Haliburton's, err, the White House's narrative. He said there was no evidence that Saddam had WMDs.

Then it's rather unfortunate that WMDS have been found in Iraq. Guess the narrative was correct.

Because the cia and intel community wanted to, that's why.

RBoston wrote:

It was obvious wrote:

Senator Bob Graham of Florida was on the Senate Intelligence committee and privy to all the reports - the initial reports, based on actual findings, not the reports "massaged" to fit Haliburton's, err, the White House's narrative. He said there was no evidence that Saddam had WMDs.

Then it's rather unfortunate that WMDS have been found in Iraq. Guess the narrative was correct.

And what exactly were those WMDs? Leftover gas? Or actual functioning weapons?

Mostly right answer. Cheney's war.

At the time of the invasion, everyone new that the WMD justification was just a pretext. Iraq was complying within a very invasive inspection regime that was an unprecedented foreign intrusion on a sovereign nation. The intelligence reports about mobile biological weapons labs was such an obvious fabrication that it was shocking that our intelligence community wasn't resigning en masse in protest.

The real reason for the invasion of Iraq was to tip the balance of power among Sunni's to Saudi Arabia. Saddam's Baathist movement was actually very progressive compared to the Saudi's Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam. Women in Iraq could hold jobs alongside men and could participate in government. The fear was that Saddam would be successful in reforming Iraq by complying with UN weapons inspections and would become an alternative to the Saudi center of power in the Middle East. Saddam was not a US client, but Iraq was starting to improve relations with France before the second gulf war.

The idea of regime change was attractive considering the recent history of US intervention. Grenada, Panama and Serbia/Kosovo were all cases where the US exercised military power with minimal casualties and gained a stable alternative client state with little post-conflict effort. The Bush administration believed that the group of ex-pat Iraqi clowns lead by Ahmed Chalabi would be welcomed by the Iraqis as liberators.

In order to lay the ground work for that transition, L. Paul Bremer order the dissolution of the Baath party and the Iraqi army so the US could install a client government lead by Chalabi and his cronies. The response by the Iraqi people was immediate and catastrophic. Iraqi Army weapons depots were raided. Baath party and Iraqi army leaders went underground to plot their return to power. The Shia majority began its revenge campaign against the Sunni minority that ruled it with an iron fist under Saddam. The US installed government was corrupt from the start and never had the trust of the Iraqi people.

ISIS was the vision of Wahhabi Muslims who wanted to form a very extreme Islamic caliphate that was completely free of any relationship with the West. It is thought to have been historically tied to the Muslim Brotherhood as an extreme Islamic conservative opposition movement to governments in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which were clients of the US. ISIS rose to power by drawing upon the talents of former Baathist and Iraqi Army generals. Unlike Bin Laden's followers, who were mostly the product of Madrasas with limited battlefield experience as guerrilla fighters in the Afghan/Soviet war, ISIS had very sophisticated military leaders and former government officials who were able to out fox the feeble Iraqi defense forces and easily take over Sunni territory that was resentful of the Shia dominated Iraqi government.

In all fairness, no one expected the former Baathists to align themselves with followers of a very extreme Wahhabi sect. But it was very much foreseeable that the former Baathist would go underground and form a counterinsurgency. many called for a truth and reconciliation process to keep the existing Iraqi army and government in place while transitioning to a new democracy. That would have enable the Iraqis to secure all their weapons and keep an insurgency from forming.

No not overthrow a sovereign government, just spreading democracy.

We're the good guys remember that.

NW traveler wrote:

looking to learn wrote:

The logic to overthrowing Saddam and letting ISIS take his place must be over my head, because I can't seem to make sense of it. Can someone explain?

You won't find a defense from me. Perhaps rojo on letsrun, but he's the equivalent of Sean Hannity on foxnews... dumb as a post. Obviously overthrowing saddam backfired. It made the United State a target for for the 1% of Muslim who are crazy as sh*t. So unnecessary. Now we have a president intent on screwing us over in the middle east even more. Idiot.

So before the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US was NOT the target for Islamic extremists?

Overrun with extremists? Aren't they pretty isolated in a small area now?

horseshoes wrote:

That is incorrect. He used chemical weapons but he did not use WMDs on the Kurds.

The reason for the war was WMDs and they did not find them because it was all a LIE.

That

Crime and punishment wrote:

But Saddam did have WMD. He used them against the Kurds.

There seems to be a difference of opinion on what constitutes a WMD.

Let's break down "lie". A lie is something you say that you know not to be true. For instance, if I ask you right now where your wife is and you say "at work", but I call her work and she is at lunch. Did you lie?

The intelligence communities from several countries thought Iraq had weapons that violated the UN sanctions that came into play after Iraq had invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. Yes, that proved to be false. Hussein violated UN sanction after UN sanction not to mention terrorizing his own people. Iraq was paying off the families of Palestinian terrorists as well in their attacks on Israel.

It was a horrible situation. And yes to some extent our (Western countries in general) arrogance that we could impose some form of democracy similar to ours played a role.

There were also tons of errors made. The purge of the Baathists left government without anyone who knew how to do anything. I am thinking most of those Baathists cared little about the party but joined because you had to if you were going to get any sort of meaningful job.

Plus, it is EASY to Monday morning QB about what should or should not have been done. But I also think it is naive to think everything would be just fine if Saddam were still in power.

I hear we invade every country who is a threat to our DOLLAR.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Hard to predict the future. There was no ISIS in 2003. ISIS is a product of the War in Iraq and the general Sunni Awakening.

Alan

Hard to predict?? You're better than that. It was actually an easy outcome to predict.

Started the crack trade in the US, too. Real patriots AND capitalist.

Kafir wrote:

The consensus was Iraq had WMD's. Oddly enough it's the same three letter departments that says there is a consensus Russia hacked the election.

The US has never had very good foreign policy, at least since 1900.

Lots of us knew how Iraq would turn out, but it was a pretty popular war at the beginning, if you recall. Granted, that support was built on a pretext of lies given to us by the Bush administration. It is really insidious how Cheney and company preyed on American's emotions post 9/11 to achieve a long term policy goal. The climate in the country at that time was truly peculiar. Cheney was a good politician and a horrible person.

There is a special place in Hell reserved for W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bremer.

No one can understand the logic behind anything Obummer did!!!! 8 years wasted on the worst President in US history!!!

Precious Roy wrote:...The real reason for the invasion of Iraq was to tip the balance of power among Sunni's to Saudi Arabia....

I think you are giving the actual US decision-makers too much credit for having coherent foreign-policy reasons for the Iraq War. That may have been the rationale for some people in the State Department or Defense Department, but the actual decision makers were much more motivated by domestic political considerations.

After 9/11, people in the administration were looking around for someone to punch in the nose and came up with the "Axis of Evil." But Iran and North Korea couldn't be attacked easily or without an unacceptable downside, so they settled on attacking Iraq and "finishing" the Gulf War. But without seriously thinking about the ultimate strategic objective of the war or having a realistic post-war plan. WMDs were always just a make-weight argument for a war undertaken to satisfy domestic political interests in showing that that the US was sufficiently "tough" in response to 9/11.

BINGO!