Christ, the Lefties are hanging strawmen like f*cking decorations around here. Now let one of the "barbarian hawks" weigh in, drench the Left's Iraq strawman in lighter fluid, and torch it.
Iraq's Baathist government likely had nothing to do with 9/11. I've never thought otherwise. Did they have some low-level AQ contacts? Probably. Did they even know something might be up? Maybe. But were they directly part of it? I highly doubt it.
That said...Iraq is still one of the central reasons 9/11 happened. What was the primary reason bin Laden launch the attacks? Because of the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. Why were those forces there? To enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. The decade-plus of sanctions on Iraq had produced a useless stalemate that morphed into 9/11. Our presence there is directly linked to 9/11. The Ba'athists themselves had nothing to do with it.
So, what to do? More of the same stalemate? That's not very proactive.
Retreat and abandon the region? Not very smart.
How about "remake the region" for $1,000, Alex....?
Bingo.
Starting with Iraq, which was the pragmatic military choice and the root of a lot of other problems. Since this is such an unconventional war, the operation over there was partly designed to draw these bastards out into the open...on their own soil. Iraq is a better location to be duking it out with these a-holes than, say, Cleveland. Fix Iraq, get a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian problem, and you've gone a long way toward pulling the Persian carpet out from underneath boobs like AQ.
But to say Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 reveals a lack of understanding of the bigger picture and the root-cause of the attacks. Saying we deserved 9/11 because of our action, or that Britain did Wednesday because of being our ally, is akin to blaming the rape victim (you know, like George Galloway had the sack to do today).
