The Iraq War Is Over: Who Won?

Removing a dictator and replacing him with a democratically elected representative government is the very definition of liberate.

That's ridiculous. Saddam was a brutal and repressive dictator who slaughtered his own people. As for the quality of life, Iraq has a new infrastructure and the living standards have improved markedly.

Saddam repressed any threat to his regime. And take a lesson from Libya. They were liberated only with outside intervention.

 

Who won? Iran.

 

Meanwhile in the real world:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16297707

 

Sadly all too true.

As terrible a person as Saddam was, I have the strong feeling that he kept the lid on a whole bunch of sectarian violence. I'm not sure if introducing democracy is going to resolve this in the short to medium term. There are too many groups who are vying for power, who are able to use an manipulate people according to which sect of islam they belong.

In short, I do not see Iraqi's and therefore Iraq as coming out of this as winners.

 

I read a great quote a while back, it went something like "you cannot give democracy to a people, for it to work, they must take it for themselves".

I believe there's a lot of truth in this.

 

It was the greatest corporate socialist redistribution of wealth policy of the US in decades. Collect money from US tax payers and instead of using the money to better the USA, recycle it into private businesses, which are linked to the policy makers. Brilliant!

The odd part is the mentality of the people. The US right opposes the redistribution of wealth, yet it supports this policy wholeheartedly.

I just don't get this.

 

Then why you continue to support interventionalism is simply beyond me...

 

Where women could walk the streets, without fear and without Burka's, where women got the vote. Where there was a strong middle class and in general the Iraq's had more rights that most countries in the ME.

Yeah, that was really (*)(*)(*)(*)e. Sure he was a nutter, but if you think they are in a better situation now, you're diluding yourself.

 

Exactly. The reality is that Iraq's infrastructure is in a complete mess. In 2003 the US estimated it would cost 55Bn USD to deal qwith this issue alone, but it was reported in 2006 that this number would "spiral out of control".

I hope the entire bill falls to the US. You break it, you own it!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ocId=CNG.ce5e2e67a61454295cd54a08b0ebf3f2.eb1

 

Read some Iraq history. He had weathered sanctions for years, lost a major war, and put down a huge uprising without losing power. He wasn't anywhere close to being knocked out of power, thats a pipe dream. Saddam killed close to a million of his own people, don't try and whitewash over that for your political agenda.

 

You people are unbelievable. Look at what he did to the Kurds and Shiites. He MURDERED a MILLION of them.

 

Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. The minority Sunni population had life pretty good, but the Kurds, Shiites, and all other ethnic groups were murdered, tortured, and abused beyond belief. I drove through some of the villages Saddam gassed in the 90s...it was awful. I can't believe you can gloss over and ignore the deaths of a million people.

 

halliburton won, 3 billion in profits for defense contracting

oil companies bush family has invested in also won

 

DUDE...the winners of the Iraq war are the Iranians.

BTW...what ever happened to WMD?
Isn't that why you went?

The USA and it's coalition of the eternally stupid, had no business intervening in Iraq just because he killed some people.
Were this the norm...then explain why US troops aren't bombing all those repressive African nations?

You need to get real. The Iraq war had ZERO to do with humanitarian causes.

 

And Reagan vetoed a Senate resolutions condemning Saddam when he was a brutal dictator and was bombing the Kurds. As for your gutless second sentence uttered from the comfort of your home and thousands of miles away from the damage created by conservative cowards, I suggest you try living without out electricity for most of the day after your infrastructure has been destroyed. Ask the 2,000,000 Iraqi refugees and the relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis murdered by Bush and Cheney about their quality of life.

 

We won the war, Obama is going to lose the peace...such is politics

 

Outside of the U.S. supplying him with the chemical weapons he used to do this I don't see how this is the business of the American people. If you feel so dead set on over throwing dictators on the far side of the earth smuggle yourself across their border and join a resistance movement.

 

Don't count on it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45762201/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

What Owebama wants us to believe and the realty seem to be growing more and more apart on a daily basis

 

You can argue all you want what President Bush and Congress thought in their heads when they voted to get involved in Iraq..WMDs w/e. I can look at the reality and see that an absolutely brutal dictator was deposed. A dictator that started one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century and murdered close to a million of his own people. I can also be happy knowing that it served as a "terrorist" magnet and that many thousands and thousands of foriegn fighters were killed. That's good enough for me, and I had a lot more invested in the conflict than you.

Now, if you want to argue about whether it was worth it, I might be on your side.

 

Your numbers are completely wrong. UN/WHO/Red Cross numbers put the total number of civilains killed in Iraq in violence between 100,000 and 200,000. The majority (60%-70%ish) of these have been documented as killed by insurgents. Look up numbers instead of just making them up.

 

so are we here in america free now? have we defeated the iraqi devils?

were free!!!!!!!!!! we won our freedom from iraq

 

I don't, I just won't rewrite history as people here are doing. Claiming that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam is ridiculous. You're to biased to think objectively. I'm not a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, but I'm not going to sit here and ignore one of the major positives of it because of my political agenda.

 

yesssss!!!!

 

What a rather ignorant statement. The count of the dead is only an estimate and 1 million is a high estimate. Should I bring up the death toll from the sanctions and gulf war related deaths into this debate. http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/Ramsey.html Personally i think his estimations are high.
Disgusting that naive and idealistic fighters deaths make you happy. They were manipulated by twisted men using the west's activities as ammo to dispense radical ideas to poor men and women. Not to different from what the west does. Saddam was supported and armed by the west for years and was allowed to murder the Kurds. At best the second intervention was too little too late at worst it was a bull(*)(*)(*)(*) scramble for cash against a failed state with little regard for the outcome.

 

OK let's look at the numbers, the UN first, the only numbers I found from the UN are that 34,452 violent deaths occurred in 2006.

WHO figures say that there were an estimated 151,000 deaths due to violence (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006. That is up to 223,000 till June 2006, it's December 2011 now and another 68 people met their maker just this morning.

As for the Red Cross, I didn't find any figures, I don't think crosses are too popular in Iraq at the moment.