Osama bin Laden

b95000 wrote: All sorts of alternative energies are being researched by the free nations...I agree, oil will become less and less a factor to the world.. So why then, would the US stupidly fight and lose 1,600 young men and women for a 'few drops of oil? as Dubya says?  No, the reasons and reasoning must be deeper...and they are.  Free Iraqi, Free Afghanis, free Middle Easterners...watchful eyes on the Middle East rogue regimes and terrorist orgs which fomented the greatest mass murder of Americans in American history..

If the Bush regimes motives were to stem the tide of terrorism, why did they invade Iraq? A country with a secular Baathist regime that had no ties to terrorism?

B: Are you serious?  No ties to terrorism?  Haven't you heard of Saddam's support of the Palestinian homicide bombers?  $25,000 to families that would send their kid to kill civilians...does that sound like NO TIES?  What about the high level contacts and privileges given to people like Ramsi Yusef - the first World Trade Center bomber (who murdered 6 people?)  Does that sound like NO TIES?  What about the support and succor given to AQ over 10 to 15 years prior to 9/11, including the meeting with high level AQ by members of Saddam's IIS and his military - does that sound like NO TIES?  What about the fact that prior to the 2002 liberation of Afghanistan, when AQ fled Afghanistan through Iran, they came to rest (to fight another day) in Iraq - does that sound like NO TIES?

In fact, Saddam would never have allowed terrorism to gain a foothold in Iraq as it would have been a danger to his regime.

B: "if it would have been a danger to his regime..."  Saddam had his reasons for tying to Islamic radicals and giving them succor and they had their reasons for cozying up to Saddam and his number two in the world black gold..you as much as admit that through the common sense side of your statement!

Why didn't Bush go after the people that they surmise actually perpetrated the greatest mass murder of Americans in American history, (although this statement is a falsehood as practically the entire Native American population was decimated by European settlers which is truly the greatest mass murder of Americans in history, but we choose to ignore this as we did it), Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Why invade a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11?

B: Again, this has NEVER been proven definitively - but you choose to believe Saddam over all the evidences and all the dozens and dozens of contacts in the prior 10 to 15 years prior to 9-11.  I will side with more skepticism of Saddam's innocence in 9-11.  As to your quick and dirty review of American history - it is clear that there were atrocities on both side of the Indian/Settler wars and that Indians have suffered from great poverty since succumbing to the Anglo-Spanish settlements...but what is to be said of all the African slaves that were taken by Muslim slavers, for instance or the indigenous peoples that Muslims killed to establish themselves in various regions...there are black eyes aplenty to go around and unrighteousness.  And the world is a complex and sad place (at times.)  To call what happened between Indians and settlers murder and not wars is not quite accurate...there were some heinous slaughters on both sides...but I'm not too sure that there were every 3,000 murdered in one hour.

So your efforts to try to 'prove me wrong' in that are to what end?  Let's deal with facts then...I will grant you that there were atrocities there though..

Because Saddam was an unpopular ruler throughout the world, and his army was virtually nonexistent so they couldn't put up much of a fight, and Iraq is sitting atop vast oil reserves, with lots of oil rich neighbors next door...If Bush and his cronies REALLY had moral intentions of spreading freedom and democracy and stopping tyrants, why not send 150,000 troops into Sudan and stop the genocide there?Or into China and stop the genocide of the Tibetan people? Or into numerous other countries where there are brutal regimes repressing freedom and democracy?

B: Were there 16 Section 7 UN SCRs violated by Sudan?  There were for Iraq.  Again, it would be great for you to deal with the facts on these things Mishmash...the US led coalition did have valid reasons for going into Iraq.  Or do you oppose the UN also?

Might I add, that America is not the country of Nazism, we are the country that ultimately STOPED Nazism from spreading into the entire world. 

What you have to credit America with is being the deciding factor in STOPING NAZI GERMANY not helping it spread.