So the new thing among Republicans is to criticize our involvement in Iraq and our war against Saddam Hussein. Jeb Bush spent the whole week walking back from his support of his brother’s decision on Fox News earlier. Of course, Rand Paul is against anything that makes sense. Lindsey Graham, who voted for the war, still owns his vote. On the other side, of course, is Hillary Clinton who says that she was for the war in Iraq before she was against it. Bernie Sanders has always been against the Iraq War.<\/p>\n
The candidate that gets my vote will not equivocate on the Iraq War. That war should have been fought and there is no way around that. In my opinion, it was fought 12 years late – the politicians and the hand-wringers should have let me go to Baghdad in 1991 when I could see the city from where we ended the Gulf War. But between those years from the premature end of the 1st Gulf War until the march to Baghdad in 2003, Saddam Hussein had paid bounties to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel encouraging terrorists in Israel. <\/p>\n
When the UN put a no-fly zone in place to protect the Kurds and Shi’ites from Hussein, Hussein’s Army took pot shots at US and British aircraft enforcing the mandate. When Hussein wanted to get his political way, he would rattle his saber at Kuwait again, causing Bill Clinton to deploy US troops to the region to line up on the Iraq-Kuwait border with the prepositioned equipment that the US taxpayer was funding.<\/p>\n
The Iraq Intelligence Service had been caught trying to plot the assassination of George HW Bush. It was discovered that Abu Nidal, the founder of Fatah of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, wanted for terrorist attacks in 20 countries, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people, was found hiding out in downtown Baghdad for a decade or so. Despite reports to the contrary, al Qaeda was operating in Iraq before the US invasion. <\/p>\n
Despite other reports, there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that news has been allowed to dribble out in the last few years. But, more importantly, Hussein wasn’t cooperating with UN inspectors who were trying to disarm Hussein in that regard. Sanctions against Iraq, much like the sanctions against Iran these days, were impacting the people, but not the government royalty.<\/p>\n
You can argue all day about how the war in Iraq was fought and I’ll agree with you, mostly. But to say that war wasn’t worth the costs is to forget the lessons of Iraq. In 2006, George W Bush taught us that you don’t stop fighting a war just because people get mad at you. You fight it to a successful conclusion – and then you honor your commitments to security. <\/p>\n
The insurgency in Iraq hoped that the US would leave Iraq due to the political pressure their insurgency put on the politics in the US. The last thing they expected when the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 was that Bush would double down in Iraq with the “Surge” – that’s what broke the back of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Strength is what wins against those people, not ambiguity.<\/p>\n
What caused the rise of ISIS was the fact that the Obama administration sent the message that they weren’t interested in the Middle East. They rushed for the exits from Iraq so they had a campaign slogan for the 2012 elections. They watched North Africa burn without so much as raising a finger. When ISIS took Fallujah, the Obama Administration promised support to the Iraqis that they never delivered until Mosul fell six months later.<\/p>\n
Like I said, you can complain about the way the war was fought, but you can’t dispute the fact the war should have been fought. So, 2016 candidates, please, don’t make me vote for Lindsey Graham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"