Originally Posted by: PonyOneplus, with all the defense contractors, and most famously, Halliburton's involvement in the war effort, yes, some pockets are getting lined.[/quote]
Ever talk to a rough neck about that one?

Halliburton is the only US based company (possibly the only one in the world, but I kinda doubt that) which is equipped to handle all of the oil related problems and work that was needed to be done in Iraq. So, while it certainly looks shady, it did make a lot of sense to contract them at the beginning stages of the invaision from a command and control perspective -- it's better to have one company to deal with than to find yourself in a "cat herding" situation in the midst of a war zone.

And, considering that once bidding was opened up to all US companies, we probably didn't have to pay that much extra for their services.


[QUOTE=PonyOne]and why bother raping Saudi Arabia??? They're already in bed with us.

And yet, they do next to nothing of what we ask of them and we do next to nothing of what they ask of us, 'cause when you get right down to it, the Saudi Royal Family isn't doing that much to crack down on militant Islam within Saudi Arabia and we invaded Iraq and Afganistan against their wishes.




As to the war and the justifications for it, the bottom line is that Saddam never once abandoned his WMD programs (he only put them on hold so he could wiggle out from under UN sanctions) and even if he never intended to use them on the US (which isn't a "maybe" I'm comfortable with), he most certainly did have a number of our allies in his crosshairs and we would be at war again with Iraq sometime in the next 15 to 20 years.

So, like it or not, here's the pickle the US was in before the invaision:

We have a rouge nation with an active WMD program who's dictator sees himself as the reincarnation of Saladin with ambitions to conquer a number of nations we've made promises to protect. On top of this, said dictator may or may not be willing to hand over one, some or possibly a large supply of WMDs to certain terrorist types (whom he's more than happy to play nice with when it suits him) once his weapons program is to that point.

This means that we can:

1. Choose to be isolationists, abandon our allies, ignore the entire situation and hope we don't get bit in the ass in spite of us "minding our own business."

2. Put off the problem until Iraqi tanks start rolling over international borders again backed by WMD or Iraqi made WMD are used against us in terrorist style attacks (or both) and suddenly find ourselves confronting a much stronger enemy than the ones we face today.

or...

3. Do something now when Saddam's regime is weak and without the means of attacking us directly because it's far less costly in terms of lives and money for everybody concerned than letting either of the above scenarios play out.



I don't think any of those options are especially appealing, but having followed this as long as I have, I came to realize a long time ago that something needed to be done. I just wish Clinton had had the balls/political will/whatever to do it back in 1998.