[GT40FIED]

I gotta say I'm with nonuv on this...for the most part. We should've learned by now that whenever we arm a country, especially in the middle east, they tend to turn on us and then we paint them as the bad guy. We gave money to the Afghanis to get rid of the Soviets, they used the same weapons against us when we went in this time around. We armed Iraq to fight the Iranians and then secretly armed the Iranians to fight the Iraqis...now both countries are "threats" to us according to our leaders. Then there's Israel. We'll help them beat the Palestinians into submission because, let's face it, there's a ton more jewish voters than muslim. No one in that conflict is right...they're both wrong. We just happen to fund one and not the other.

Does it really matter whe he gassed the Kurds? He didn't pose a threat to US with those weapons. It's the job of each individual country to defend themselves. You also have to ask yourself if the Kurds would've risen up if they had thought we'd abruptly pull out like that? Sure, we didn't make any promises but we fell sorely short of our supposed commitment to the cause of the Gulf conflict (sorry...I just can't bring myself to call it a "war").

As for whether or not Iraqis asked for the "freedom" they may get from our being there (which still remains to be seen), it doesn't matter if they did ask or not. If they really wanted freedom it's THEIR job to fight for it, not mine or yours. Hell...in it's infancy America took on the largest empire in the world to gain their freedom. So either we stepped in where we didn't belong or the Iraqis didn't want said freedom as bad as many would have us think. As the saying goes, it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees. I think the issues that people try to make out of this situation are in large part irrelevent. Bottom line is that it's the status quo's responsibility to revolt against a government they feel is corrupt or flat out just not working. That job doesn't fall on a country half way across the world. Unless, of course, said country has a vendetta from a previous altercation which was left unresolved. Then, apparently, it's perfectly fine to "liberate" people who are perfectly capable of liberating themselves. It's a question of legitimacy...are we justified in being there doing their jobs for them. In my mind, the answer is no.