G.I.Jim wrote:Voyager wrote:G.I.Jim wrote:What "Threats" would you consider strong enough to deploy our military? I guess Sadam's threats, ignoring UN weapons inspectors for years, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and paying terrorists to destroy us isn't a threat? I guess all of the politicians who voted for the war, voted for revenge against Bush SR also?

There have been similar threats made by other rogue nations. In addition, there are a lot worse human rights violations taking place in countries around the world. Are we going to take all of their dictators out?
Why don't we just take care of ourselves instead of policing the world? Look at China - other countries would never dream of invading or attacking them. That's because they don't fuck with other countries... but if you fuck with them - lookout.
Instead of other nations having this type of healthy fear and respect for America, they mock and ridicule us - all because of George W. Bush.

They "Mock and ridicule" us because they want what we have, and always will. They've been attacking us long before Bush EVER got in office! To say that it's all because of GW, is absolutely retarded!
We are, and always will be the "World Police". We help other nations because we can. Who has China helped, other than Bill Clinton's wallet after giving them our long range ballistic missle technology?
Iraq WAS a serious threat whether you will admit it or not. The world IS a better place since the fall of Sadam. The whole "Leave them alone and they won't mess with us" tactic didn't work for Clinton's dealing with Osama...You can't just stick your head in the sand (or up your ass) and hope the bad guys leave you alone!!!
With all due respect to your service and to you personally Jim- I so don't agree. But BB (Before Bush), we were doing a lot more to help the world and we were seen in a much better light, especially with our own allies. Now, we've dragged other nations into a conflict with Iraq that had nothing to do with us. 911 has NOTHING to do with IRAQ. That's been established a million times over, yet people still drag that out. I don't get that. While Bush has been wacking off in Iraq, we've let Bin Laden go. Hussein was a threat to his own people. He was no threat to us. What Hussein was doing was utterly utterly wrong, but as someone else mentioned, there are others doing just as bad, yet we went to Iraq. Why? Oil.
We brought other nations into this conflict on bogus (or possibly trumped up) 'evidence'. France and Germany were right all along. We shouldn't have launched this on Iraq. Granted, Hussein thumbed his nose at America and stonewalled inspections, etc. But even our own inspectors said there was nothing there. (
http://youtube.com/watch?v=iqoJHOSrjQo .
Somehow we need to get out of there. We need to quit trying to be the world police and we need to take care of our own. Jesus, there's so much important stuff to do HERE. Maybe if we weren't in Iraq, Katrina would've been dealt with better than it was (piss poor!). As for Katrina, I'd encourage you to all watch this
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=EricArceneaux&search_query=katrina&search=Search, but that's another post.
Seriously, America, or rather those running it, are morally screwed up and unfortunately, the world today seems to be driven purely by greed, from the Vatican to the Whitehouse. I think it's completely sad and troubling.
Dude, I'd never have the courage to go to war or even get into the military. I totally respect what you and Deano and others have sacrificed. But we should not be in Iraq.
Respectfully.