Originally posted by GePap
Actually we contained Iraq for a decade with just a few lead elemenst and the troops we had based in Kuwait and SA.
Actually we contained Iraq for a decade with just a few lead elemenst and the troops we had based in Kuwait and SA.
Somebody finally brought up this point, so allow me to blow away this reason for continued containment: The troops based in Saudi Arabia to contain the Iraqi threat to the region were a major cause behind 9/11. The Saudi Arabian government has been effectively able to cast themselves as an "ally of the West" while at the same time oppressing their people and underhandedly funding terrorist organizations. The presence of US troops in the "holy land' has been one of Osama bin Laden's most oft-cited grievances and a source of recruitment propoganda. The USA has been able to take no effective action against the Saudis because of the continuing containment policies -- or does anyone believe for a second that the Saudis, other Arab regimes, and the UN wouldn't have *****ed and moaned if the USA pulled out of the country and/or begun to exert diplomatic/economic pressure on the Saudis? Hence the need to end the containment policies, but Saddam's continuing noncomplaince with UN resolutions made that impossible. Since the UN offered no peaceful means for the USA to extricate itself from the situation -- I didn't see France, Germany, Russia, or China offering to take over the USA's presence in Saudi Arabia, for example -- removing Saddam's regime became the only viable solution.
So to put your pro-war/anti-war question into another light, GePap: would you continue to keep American troops in Saudi Arabia to contain Iraq, knowing that further terrorist attacks against the USA because of those troops, was not only possible, but likely? That's the "imminent threat", the threat that steps can now be taken toward removing with an Iraq that no longer needs to be contained.
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