PJ Media

@JC78

You have a a problem with reading comprehension.

I said to quote a lie. Repeating what was said at the time and thought true then is not quoting a lie.

I don’t watch FOX news.

“WMDs.” Thought to be true, so not a lie. Also, several thousand tones of previously unaccounted for WMDs were recovered from Iraq. Organized depots were not found, much smaller ad hoc collections were.

“Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda.” They existed. Sorry, not a lie. Also, Saddam’s support of suicide bombers and harboring terrorists puts him firmly in their camp, so not a lie even in the elliptic sense of exaggerating the truth.

“Liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and create a democratic government.” 100% done, so not a lie.

“His lies” None yet. “and refusal to accept or admit any accountability for the results of his lies have had tremendous cost to Iraq and to the U.S.” How exactly is the responsibility for any of it solely his when it’s Congress’ job to cut the check, to oversee the intelligence services, and they did to their own satisfaction? Also, unlike Obama’s proposed and current expenditure’s the Iraq war is of net benefit to the US, and a really very light cost in terms of what like wars have traditionally cost, especially in terms of what has and will be gained. You need to read more so you develop a better sense of history.

Richard Engel misses the point that the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds he’s carping about are voting–it is all about democracy within the bounds of of popularly accountable, responsive law.

Oh, and 1 million Iraqis are dead? Okay, the utterly discredited Lancet study said it was 600,000; and that was a stupidly high faked number. You just keep on throwing up BS numbers, your crowd will always believe them no matter how large they are.

Oh, and there’s refugees and civilian casualties in a civil conflict, who knew!?

On what cloud do you live where that is a reasonable criteria? By your rules, we lost WWII because therefugees weren’t all settled by 1950–your rules are unintelligent.

If we had simply departed Iraq in 2004, or in any year since, the Turks would have occupied the Kurdish north in large part or comletely, and there would be worse conflict there, the Shiites would have fought the Sunnis into extinction, except where the Saudis shoved enough arms at them to prevent it, and the resulting arms embargo would have the Iraqi Shiites turning to the disliked (by them) Iranians in open alliance.

Not one earthly thing about it would be improved by our absence, including our own goals being met, which they generally are. In your desired course of action, none of our goals are met except the end of Hussein’s government, which was not the sole goal of the war.

“and especially for Iraqis.”

Then they should have managed their own affairs better.

This became our mess to fix when they wouldn’t do it.