Decker every single item you listed is wrong. We didn't ravage Iraq, destroy families, cripple people, pocket "loot," etc.
So those 80,000 Iraqis just died falling out of the bathtub? And the children lost their limbs playing stickball, and the oil PSAs just magically appeared giving foreign companies the bulk of the revenue.
But for the US led invasion, those things do not happen in Iraq.
You know it's pretty much impossible to prove a negative. What we did was remove Saddam and his regime. It was actually Saddam who was looting his country's resources.
And we blew up those infrastructural resources and rebuilt them at a nice profit.
I've talked to soldiers who have been in many parts of Iraq, where people live like cavemen. They live that way because Saddam pilfered his country's resources, built numerous palaces, lived like royalty, and handed out peanuts to his people.
7 out of 10 Iraqis still have no access to a steady supply of clean potable water. Iraq was generating 5 megawatts of electricity before the invasion. Now it's generating about 4 megawatts. The Electricity Ministry puts current demand at about 7 megawatts. Major cities used to have 9 hours of electricity per day, today they have about 3.
About 80% of Iraqis still lack decent sanitation. In other words, the Iraqi people had higher living standards living under Hussein than they do under US occupation.
Saddam is the one who built torture chambers for his own people. He is the one who gassed his own people.
Torture...does that ring a bell...Alberto? Yes BB, Hussein was a bad man. How does that give the US the right to do what it did?
The insurgents are the ones blowing up men, women, and children. We don't.
No, our guns shoot magic sedative bullets and our mortars are really puffball sleepy bombs. I think you know better than that.
Our country does not own or control Iraq's oil. I assume that's what you mean by "loot"?
Right. The profit and royalty split between the foreign oil companies and the Iraqi people were entered into willingly and fairly.
We didn't find any WMDs after the fact.
We didn't find any WMDs before the fact either.
Does that mean he didn't have them or wasn't trying to obtain them? No. It's possible he was fooling the entire world into believing that he was in possession of these weapons and/or trying to acquire them, but I think it's more likely he moved them out of the country before we invaded.
It's a good thing we had the worldclass scientist WMD inspectors in Iraq BEFORE the invasion to show that Iraq indeed had no WMDs.
But I do like your conspiracy theories.
I do not believe one item was necessarily reason enough to invade. It's the totality of the circumstances IMO. When you look at his history (all of the items I mentioned and more) and put that together with what the world believed, I think removing him was the right thing to do. He was a unique dictator.
Are beliefs of wrongdoing and, let's face it, the harmless 'threat' posed by the tiny Iraq country, reasons enough to go to war? I look at the pictures of the destruction that, but for the US led invasion, would not have happened and I think, "No."
Some of my military friends disagree with me. We have debated this many times.
You should listen to your friends (like me).
I don't think my views on why they hate us is propaganda at all. I've seen, for example, Iranians teach their children to hate Americans for nearly thirty years. I've seen Middle Eastern children burn American flags for decades. I've seen Middle Eastern children chant "death to America"! I've listened to many in the Middle East call us "the Great Satan" for decades. I've talked to people who have lived in the region and who say they hate our way of life and there is really nothing we can do about it except die.
It is understandable that the Iranians have hated us for over 30 years...it's been 40+ years since the US helped install the murderous Shah of Iran as their leader.
Would you warm up to a country that overthrew your government and installed a murderous dictatorial strongman?
I know I wouldn't.