[Ditto]

...my brain isn't really functioning...

Handicap acknowledged.

at the moment due to extreme fatigue, so if I have a major screwup in this, let me know). So it starts out as a US diplomat in the Iraqi embassy giving our good buddies, the Iraqis (after all, they spend a decade in a war of attrition with the hated Iranians) giving the impression that we wouldn't care if they invade Kuwait since the Kuwaitis were being less than reasonable with the Iraqi war debt

Oh, 'giving them the impression?' When I hear 'giving them the impression' I'm hearing the words of someone with a political axe to grind.

(considering that the Arab World was behind Iraq during the 8 year war since the kingdoms viewed the spread of Islamic fundamentalism ala Iran as a major threat).

One of you actually admits that there was a reason why we backed Saddam way back when: Because there was a worse threat, i.e. the radical Muslim terrorist Ayatollah Kho-maniac. I'm going to remember this, now that you've confirmed you know this. Here this, everyone? THIS IS WHY BE ARMED SADDAM.

So, they invade and the world freaks out. UN is pushed to a unilateral invasion supported by member nations and NATO.

'Unilateral?' I question your use of the word in this context, but it really is open to debate. Of course, your earlier handicap is acknowledged.

Objectives are to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Not "regime change," not "Find the WMDs," not "Occupy Iraq," and not "full invasion of Iraq." It was to push them out of Kuwait and prevent them from retaking it.

Quite so.

What follows is one of the first modern post-Cold War examples of air superiority over waves. Airpower combined with long range cruise missiles and surgical strikes routed the Iraqi military and destroyed much of their armor and air power.

Go us... er, I mean, go U.N.

Iraq faced actions because of it.

Ah, you remember that little part. Yes, as I recall, it was something like "Disarm everything you have, and from now on, give us unfettered leave to check you out anytime it pleases us, and if you don't comply with our wishes in this regard one-hundred percent, if you give us any reason to doubt you, we're going to nail your slimy a** to the wall."

Of course, hearing this from the U.N. is the same as hearing it from Bozo the Clown, and we saw what came of it a few years later when everyone finally stopped laughing and Saddam ordered the inspectors out over some nonsense about them not really being given unfettered access.

Towards the end, we gave the Kurds the idea that we'd help them repel the Baathist rule and support their rebellion. Well, we didn't. They got the wrong end of the Iraqi air force and missile command.

Which was what I was talking about. We didn't need any bloody help. We were all the help they'd have needed. We could have backed them up and damn the U.N. and those scumbag politicans who would have whined. As we all know, things like that blow over in five years anyway.

We should have followed through on that. It would have been in the world's best interests: Ours, the Kurds, the ordinary Iraqi citizens who would be tortured, murdered, and terrified for the next eleven years, our soldiers who lost their lives starting all over on what we could have done back then, and the cause of world security in general. We wouldn't have sat through years of uncertainty and unverifiable, inconclusive data for a decade, leaving us unsure of whether he was a deadly despicable rodent or a contained angel.

If they did define objectives as regime change, do you think we'd have bases in any country in that region? No. If we kept going after the UN said stop, do you think that any other nation in that coalition would have followed us? Hell no. While the Cold War was technically still over, we really didn't know what to make of the former Soviet Union and really had no reason to give ANY country a reason to start a shooting war with us over something that detached and remote. Also consider that we didn't have about a decade of two presidents telling us that Iraq was making WMDs to gas our children when they're sleeping.

If Bush Sr. would have kept going when everyone else would have stopped, his approval would have went from 90% to 30%.

IT DID ANYWAY, YOU FOOL. AND IT WAS FOR THAT REASON. THE MAN WAS TOO AFRAID OF WHAT THE PEOPLE WOULD THINK TO DO ANYTHING THAT WOULD HAVE MADE THEM PROUD. THAT'S WHY WE LOATHED HIM.

Think about it, make those hampster wheels in your head turn...if the American people don't have a reason that effects them directly, they do not give a damn. Why were we in the Cold War? Because the Russians had nukes aimed at us. Everything else was a lower form of that...Korea, Vietnam, Ghosts in Afghanastan (that sounds like a bad movie), Middle Eastern policy, NATO, Warsaw, etc. Anyone that says we shouldn't have stopped in 1991 doesn't know their ass from their elbow and should keep their mouth shut. That's similar to saying that someone should have sent a bullet between Hitler's eyes directly after WWI. Yeah, its a nice theory, but the question on everyone's mind in 1919 was "Who the hell is Adolf Hitler?" Or how about "OMG TEH UNITAD STAETS SUHOLD NEVAR HAEV LEFT VEITNAM!1" No popular support for a war tends to get congress away from it (as you're seeing now). Remember, most of congress voted on the Gulf of Tonkin to go to 'nam, and by the end most of congress was questioning or need to be there. Sure, we have crackpots that say "We should have used tactical nuclear weapons." Yeah, that's a good idea if we wanted an ICBM sandwhich from Russia with Love. There are many complexities about waging war with a democratic system, and people need to realize that some things are just not possible to do.

In other words, most politicians are a bunch of wishy-washy, not-really-concerned-with-anything-but-publicity windbags. We agree. You, however, seem to have this view that the way of the world is to listen to them anyway.

I hate to ask this, but did you lift this straight from an al Qaeda video or something? Think about it man, they say the same thing about us.

Yeah, I really need to learn that there's no difference between us and them, really. It's all just a conflict of values. Nothing's really right or wrong.

That fool Reagan refused to understand that about the Soviet Union.

The major problem lies when we don't distinguish the differance between the evil people and the people we're trying to help.

*BOL* ...And we're through the looking glass.

Get some sleep, Lurch.

[ June 30, 2004, 11:22 AM: Message edited by: Ditto, Sadly, Not a Boss In SSB:M ]