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Originally Posted by Atrocities
I call the patriot act a tool that could be horribly abused if permitted to be mishandled. Thankfully there is no direct evidence that it has been abused domestically and was re-affirmed by a democratic congress after much thoughtful review.
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It is also one of the biggest limitations, if not the biggest that I know of, of those constitutional rights that you seemed to be so aware of. Does it only take some nicely packaged words to sway your principles?
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Originally Posted by Atrocities
The fact was we genuinely believed that Saddam was a threat. From credible news stories from ABC to the History channel the argument against Saddam was believed to be valid. History proved otherwise.
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So you come across as somebody who is totally unprotected against manipulation by the media. Maybe a simplistic black and white view on things, too, but I don't want to exaggerate too much into this.
If you say that Saddam was perceived as a real threat, when what did that threat look like? This is mostly a rhetoric question, but think about it and tell how Saddam could have been a threat to the US. Limited range of missiles is only the beginning - I'm at a loss if I want to imagine how some backwater country is fighting a numerically and technologically vastly superior superpower, especially getting at their grounds and gaining anything from it in the mid to long term. If a cold war Soviet Union failed against the United States, how could the Iraq have succeeded? Unknown super weapons? Secret Moon Bases? I admit, I'm getting polemical.
One thing that I don't want to touch again is that there was absolutely no link at all from 9/11 to Saddam. Was it just that the time was right?
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Originally Posted by Atrocities
Am I sad to see him overthrown and dead, no, the man was a tyrant responsible for more deaths than all of the deaths that followed the US invasion by 10 fold.
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I dislike this altruistic perception of the USA as a worldwide police force. I simply cannot keep up this image in my mind anymore. There are dozens of warlords in Africa that committed and still commit far greater atrocities than Saddam ever did, and they're still alive, they're still doing this. Why doesn't the self-declared peace force get to work there? And as I said earlier, I am quite uncertain if the quality of live in Iraq has really improved and if you can call it "prospering" now. Maybe in the long term. Much later.