How to answer: "Isn't the world better off now that we're rid of Hussein?"

[PurityOfEssence]

It's too early to tell. Maybe not; it was stable and relatively safe.

At the moment, if you're old, sick, very poor, very young or part of the old bureaucracy, your life is much worse now than it was then. It's more dangerous now; there's much more violent crime and theft than under Saddam. It's more unhealthy with the depleted uranium and bad water.

For the 10,000 plus dead, their families and friends and the untold maimed, things are forever changed for the worse.

Who's to know what form of government will hold sway in a few years? Who knows if it will be Theocracy, a Dictatorship that could be worse or something kindler and gentler? It's too early to tell.

Don't compare fact (Hussein's regime) against guesses (the future); it's impossible. If you compare right now against the last few years of his regime, it was better under Hussein.

The precedent of unilateral adventurism is a terrible one. If we get roughed up and can't influence how things go there, it will make the world MUCH MORE WILLING to question our jackbooted authority. This last point is important: underlying many of the pro-war arguments is that we have to "teach them a lesson". Well, we may well show the world that we can't influence post-conquest situations and can't hold on to power. That will cause more questioning of our self-appointed adult superiority. Just what we need.

[tinnypriv]

1. Here is a snappier one

Yeah, and the world would have been better off if he'd have been gone in the 80's. Shame that the current incumbents in Washington were supporting him then, incidentially right through his worst atrocities and beyond.

[hlthe2b]

23. wait a minute: from all indications, WE ARE NOT FREE of SADAAM...

More tapes out now then K-tel can produce oldie classics.... and CIA seems to be saying they are likely him...

[sangha]

2. What I tell them

"Well, there's supposed to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in Iraq, and now they're floating around and no one seems to know where they are. Do you feel safer now?"

[linazelle]

12. I like this one...gonna "borrow" it if you don't mind.

LOL

[SeattleDem]

21. exactly!

if you believe the president, then these weapons may very well have ended up in the hands of terrorists. Still feel safe?? Gee, I thought that was exactly the situation the war was supposed to PREVENT.

[sandnsea]

3. Uhm, he's not gone

We don't know where he is. Maybe it would have been better to keep him where we could see him, put more weapons inspectors in, and put a humanitarian team in Iraq to investigate the abuses and make changes. Has to be a better way to make changes in a country than kill thousands of citizens in the process.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

4. We got rid of Saddam? I must've missed it.

Last thing I heard is him giving a speech to his followers exhorting them to struggle against the invaders. Did they catch him since then or something?

[displacedtexan]

5. my answer...

just because i hate * doesn't mean that i want another country to invade the US and take him out.

[Lefty48197]

6. Maybe Bush liked the Ayatollah so much...

....that he thought there should be two of them?

[arcane1]

7. hmm... if we're "rid of" him...

then why do the nice men on tv keep telling me that Saddam is masterminding the attacks on our troops?


how many men did Saddam tie up and place in bags, for the crime of selling alcohol under his secular govt?



A US soldier flashes the V-sign as he escorts hooded illegal vendors to a police station after being apprehended Thursday July 10, 2003 along the Tigris River in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites). The vendors were allegedly caught selling alcohol, still prohibited to be sold outside in Muslim Iraq. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/030710/168/4n6oe.html&e=2&ncid=1479

[displacedtexan]

8. my answer...

even though i hate the current administration fascists and the horrible mess they've made of my country (job loss, health care scams, polluted water, etc.) doesn't mean that i want another country to invade the US and take them out.

[FloridaPat]

9. Here's my answers.

Bush and Reagan gave him the chemicals he used to "kill his own people". He went to war with Iran with the approval of Bush and Reagan and they helped him fight Iran with intellegience information while they were secretly arming Iran through Iran-Contra. Bush1's ambassador told Sadam it was OK for him to settle the boundry problem with Kuwait, leading to Gulf War 1. Bush1 promised the Kurds he would back them up to overtrow Sadam, but backed out at the last minute, thereby resulting in all those mass graves. 200,000 US troops from GW1 have Gulf War syndrome and are on disabiity (out of 300,000). 50,000 have applied for disability. General concensus is the depleated uranium is the source of the problem. The blockage of Iraq by the US and UK killed 500,000 women and children.
Exactly who is the enemy and who is to blame for all this?

[acerbic]

10. The short, simple answer: it's not about Saddam, it's about the LYING

The little longer one: if the people of USA decide to act as world police and remove dictators like Saddam, then they decide so, but they should decide based on facts, not lies.

[DieboldMustDie]

11. What makes you think we're rid of Saddam Hussein?

So he's not currently in charge in Iraq -- though, come to think of it, neither is anyone else really -- but he could be even more dangerous as a free-agent terrorist than as a head of state. After all, what does he have to lose?

[DEMActivist]

13. Answer: HOW is the world better off? n/t

[damnraddem]

14. A few other points:

1. Hussein is apparently still around, so we are not without him.
2. Many Iraqis are much worse off, even many who welcomed the U.S. toppling of his regime.
3. Hussein was a minor problem, while Dubya and his gang pose a major threat to the world; and the toppling of Hussein intensifies the threat so posed.

[Walt Starr]

15. Nope, now there's even more of a chance of fundamentalist Islamists

taking control of Iraq and using it as a base for terrorism against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil than before 9/11.

[PurityOfEssence]

16. You guys make me very happy.

Good responses, all.

Yep, the "if someone invaded my country" line of reasoning is one of the reasons Iraqi military dead should be included with all of the other victims of this adventurism. Somehow, it's okay to dismiss them because they were in league with this fiend, yet if the enemy was coming up the 101 and some local guardsman put a rifle in my hand, I'd probably use it and be a "Bush lover".

It's sickening how all the leftist (hahaha) pundits repeatedly use the rejoinder that Bush is responsible for the deaths of 200 Americans. The big issue is the 10,000 humans who are no more and their crying shattered families who are bereft and often destitute. Aaaah, buncha wogs, who cares?

We've really become dreadfully mean as a country since the beginning of the Reagan years.

[dsc]

17. The simple answer is

that they are asking the wrong question. Unless the questioner is enuciating a doctrine that the US should invade countries whenever the "world would be better off" if the leaders of said countries are gone than that isn't good enough.

Even if Iraq becomes the second coming of the Garden of Eden we had no business invading it without there being a reasonable certainty that Iraq both could and were attempting to harm us. We are continually trying to answer the wrong question to our detriment.

[Snow]

18. One more modest attempt.....

It's about means and ends. Saddam is evil enough that we can use whatever means necessary to kill/remove him is really what's behind the "isn't the world better.." statement. There's an unstated "..in spite of..." in the statement. In my opinion, no, that end certainly did not justify the horrible means used to achieve it. My religious tradition, Quakers, emphasizes the way you accomplish something as much as what you accomplish - in fact, likes to make the point that the way you go about doing something shapes what you do (duh!) - so the disastrous results of our actions are no surprise.

[alfredo]

19. We are not

rid of Hussein, he is still active and unlike before the invasion, he is having Americans killed.

[MrBenchley]

20. Hey, we knew where he was before...

Now he's on the loose...and since the unelected drunk can't find him or those weapons of mass destruction the GOP swore up and down that he had, how do we know Saddam and his anthrax aren't in a rental truck right down the road from us?

[LiberalLibra]

22. How about something like......

.....

Saddam was contained after the Gulf War I, but the real question is how do we contain Dictator Bush now????
or
Maybe, if Saddam had really had WMD but of course the US has more WMD than half the world put together. So who is going to disarm us????
or
The US either sold or gave Iraq all their WMD back in the 80's. How was it that Saddam became a bad guy in the years between Reagan and Bush Sr.??? Oh yes, Saddam missed that shot at daddy didn't he??