Salyavin, My reply is in blue letters.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Obama is in a tough situation. But the die has been cast. The US cannot get involved in an Islamic civil war. Why can't they? If they hadn't opened the door for sectarian violence and al-Queda in 2003 this wouldn't be happening. It isn't like they weren't warned... The US administration has learned that Bush made a mistake in attacking Iraq in the first place. Bush was acting like a gunslinger from Texas without thinking about the situation before and after making the attack against Saddam. The Iraqis had their chance to forge a nation for their own benefit, but apparently cannot do so. This is the reason the US didn't invade Iraq after the first Gulf war, the best analysis showed that a Shia/Sunni rift was all but inevitable and without a long term stabilising force they'd be better off leaving Saddam in charge. Which didn't stop the US & UK encouraging the southern marsh Arabs to rise up against Saddam, promising them any help in a revolution before pulling out and leaving them high and dry and facing severe reprisals from Saddam, which they got and the attrocities formed part of the dossier presented to British MP's about how we need to get rid of Saddam! This is the reason why I believe Bush 1 was a better decision maker than George W. Bush 1 knew what his mission was and did not bother going after Saddam, knowing the complications that would result. But George W was poorly advised by his cabinet staff that Saddam had WMD. I believe the National Security Agency and Condaleeza Rice are to blame for providing the erroneous information. The CIA chief, at the time, disagreed with the idea that Saddam had WMD. For this position, George W later awarded the chief a Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the invasion. When I saw this on TV, I thought I was seeing a movie parody of of the government's absurdity. It's very clear now that George W's "pre-emptive war" doctrine was a fiasco. If the country had to be divided due to religious reasons, let it be so. This may be the best answer, rather than having constant bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. It's inevitable, the region was split along Shia/Sunni lines for centuries before the French and British carved it up to benefit their own imperial ends, trouble is everyone is so fired up with jihad that any Islamic state will inevitably start planning more 9/11 type attacks. And we have big plans for Iraqi oil, which is supposed to be taking over when the Saudi wells start to run dry. All a bit of a pickle really.... The Iraq War scenario is like a very complicated chess game. The Americans and European allies were looking at their interest, primarily the stabilization of the Middle East and the acquisition of oil, as the main goals. But Bush gravely miscalculated the pawns, or the people of Iraq, which had allegiances based on sectarian lines and not by geographical boundaries. IMO, Obama knows the sectarian issue that's plaguing the Iraqi government. That's why he stated he will not send American troops back in there. The question now is: can he make the right decision given the factors that he's dealt with?
