The Chavez-Obama pictures will join a postmodern photo array that includes Donald Rumsfeld gifting Saddam Hussein with spurs from President Reagan.
The first Iraq War was one of necessity because vital U.S. interests were at stake, and we reached the point where no other national-security instruments were likely to achieve the necessary goal, which was the reversal of Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
The fact is, our men and women in uniform, the bravest in the world, did everything they could to protect this country from a terror threat and to protect others from the terror threat that was Saddam Hussein. And nobody can deny that we are in a better place because Saddam Hussein is dead.
The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.
As soon as, say, Saddam Hussein started bombing Israel with Scuds, everyone was like, ‘Poor Israel.’ But when Israel retaliates – and most of the time they then win – people turn against them.
Democrats were quick to point out that President Bush’s budget creates a 1 trillion dollar deficit. The White House quickly responded with ‘Hey, look over there, it’s Saddam Hussein.’
Whatever one wants to say about the conduct of the Iraq War, going to war to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 was a necessary act. It should and could have been done earlier, had not the Clinton White House, which understood the need, not wasted the opportunity through timidity and bluster.
There are many countries who have traditionally sponsored terrorism. Iraq is one, though it appears the majority of the terrorism committed by Saddam Hussein is on his own citizens. Iran in this regard. Syria, with their close support of Hezbollah, is noteworthy in this respect.
For all who love freedom and peace, the world without Saddam Hussein’s regime is a better and safer place.
Saddam Hussein wrote the book on human rights violations.
The legacies of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, of Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein, stand as an inspiration for all who work for peace.
That was not part of the U.N. resolution; it was not part of the mandate to go on to Baghdad and, frankly, if we had gone into Baghdad and pushed Saddam Hussein off, we would have inherited an even bigger mess than the mess we inherited with the refugee problem.
Throughout our courtship, Kenny told me that he had proof that Saddam Hussein was a threat because he possessed weapons of mass destruction. I told him, ‘You had me at weapons.’
Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein was a nightmare for the Iraqi people, and his execution marks the end of an era when violence against innocent men, women and children was a means to wealth and power.
Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.
The M-1 is the best tank in the world, if you can get it to the war in time, if you have a Saddam Hussein who’ll give you seven months to move your forces in.
Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize Bush to take the nation to war. Most of them did so in the belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace.
Howard Dean is not the first politician to distort facts in his own interests. But many activists in the party he now leads are puzzled over what he thinks he is accomplishing politically. Is it good politics to contend that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein than even a flawed Islamic republic?
That was one of the great successes of removing Saddam Hussein, as we took Iraq out of the picture of having a sovereign nation from which the terrorists could operate. But this war has not gone perfectly.
But I want to just caution, it is not incumbent on the United States to prove that Saddam Hussein is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He’s already demonstrated that he’s trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Any time you have a situation in which you are calling for more time rather than calling for Iraq to immediately comply, it plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.
The reality is, it will be a significant conflict going for many, many months, if not longer. Saddam Hussein is not a fool. He hasn’t been sitting there waiting to get shot for 13 years.
It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted.
In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap.
All around the world one heard or read that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
I don’t think there was enough skepticism because I think most of us kind of believed that Saddam Hussein was building biological, chemical, and perhaps even, nuclear weapons.
Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security.
I, for one, begin with intent. There is no question that, Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America.
The president welcomes peaceful protests – it is a time-honored tradition. The president agrees violence is not the answer in Iraq, and that’s why he hopes Saddam Hussein will disarm.
In general, Barack Hussein Obama brings us face to face with the discomfort our society feels with this idea of difference.
Iraqi national identity under Saddam Hussein never truly incorporated Shiites or Kurds. Sunnis, who identified most closely with the Iraqi nation, remain in some ways disenfranchised relative to the other groups, or at least they perceive themselves that way.
It was an attempt to stick the Congress’s finger in King Hussein’s eye.
New rumors that Saddam Hussein is planning to flee to a castle in Libya with 10 billion dollars. Now President Bush doesn’t know whether to nuke him or give him a tax cut.
Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.
I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time.
Reparations – not just aid – should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and – together with other criminal states – for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.
Had the decision belonged to Senator Kerry, Saddam hussein would still be in power today in Iraq. In fact, Saddam Hussein would almost certainly still be in control of Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. I am glad he is now on trial for crimes against humanity. But, opposition to a dictator is not the measure I use when deciding whether to send our men and women in uniform off to war and possible death.
But figuring out Saddam Hussein was one our greatest mysteries. He marched to his own drummer and frequently as this unfolded he made decisions which were sometimes inexplicable to us and sometimes didn’t look very smart.
Colin Powell has said over the years that Saddam Hussein is like a toothache. It recurs from time to time, and you just have to live with it. At other times, he’s compared Saddam Hussein to a kidney stone that will eventually pass. But he has never said, ‘You have to operate and take out the kidney stone.’
Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.
In the post-9/11 world you cannot give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result of our going into Iraq, not only is Saddam Hussein gone, but Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction and tremendous progress is being made in Iraq.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had and used significant weapons of mass destruction on his own people, both the Kurds and the Iranians.
What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head.
The illegal 2003 invasion had little to do with liberating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Instead, the real freedoms and benefits were destined to go to corporations like Halliburton and others that stood to gain from the privatisation of the formerly state-owned Iraqi economy.
Last night the United States dropped four 2,000 pound bombs on Saddam Hussein. I don’t know anything about explosives, but, my God, do those things even need to explode?
It is now conventional wisdom that Americans do not care why we went to war in Iraq, that it is enough that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
