<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="tahoma,verdana,arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>Originally posted by aturner</b>
How many times and ways do I have to ask!? I just want to know if you think the lessons from 1980's Afghanistan can help us decide on the best path for Iraq?
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"Bush took 14 months of pleading with the UN to force Iraq to live up to it's post Gulf War agreement to rid itself of WMD, etc.
Hardly a rush to war and the delay gave Saddam time to hide or remove to other countries the WMDs that we knew he had or was in the process of acquiring". - quoted from an excerpt on this page: <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/12/do1202.xml"> Stop blaming America for terrorism</a>
The United States was trying to keep Western Europe free from Soviet domination. We have idly sat by, these past 20-someodd years, threatening to invade Iraq if they did not comply with the agreement that ended the Gulf War.
The best path for Iraq cannot be decided by a group of people who believe that dying as a martyr will ensure you entry into heaven.
The best path cannot be decided by the United States, who's real goal is not only to keep a nation from "amassing" biological and nuclear weapons, but also to keep communistic governments from controlling the oil fields.
All that we've learned over the past years that you cannot make idle threats. There are way too many people (all over the world) that perceive the U.S. as the big bad wolf. But I see just the opposite. So do we make our house out of straw, or do we make it out of reinforced concrete?
I'm sure we could easily "huff and puff and blow <b>the [intercourse]ing shit out of the entire contry</b>" but then everyone (the rest of the world) would make their house out of reinforced concrete.
We fight with one arm tied behind our back, as the other arm is busy writing pleas to the UN.