What? The majority populations of Iran and Iraq are Shia Muslims.

Go back to school, Frank. And take your meds.

Really easy to say that when other people are fighting your battles.

Besides, Liberals(TM) don’t think all war is bad. Just the ones you think are a good idea.

Nice diversion Frank. But I’m talking about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died because you think it’s okay to invade their country for the sole purpose of drawing in terrorists so we can kill them. Because that’s what you said.

Pretty much this. No about of red herring is going to divert attention from the fact that you support Iraqi civilians being used as live bait.

Scratch a liberal and a coward bleeds. I love that line, it is so fitting.

So, if I want to lure a drug dealer into your home with the express purpose of fire bombing it and killing the drug dealer, that would be okay with you, right?

And how many “innocent Iraquis” would have died under the Hussein regime? In a Kurdish revolt? In a war with Iran backed Sunnis? How many “innocent Iraquis” would have watched their daughters raped, and their sons tossed into wood chippers?

How many Kurds would have been poisoned by gas and chemicals? Southern Iraquis flloded out of their ancestral homes?

JS Mill said it best:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Terrorist attacks have been prevented by the three things that right-wingers pooh-poohed in advance of the Iraq invasion: international cooperation, law enforcement and intelligence. Apparently Cheney’s constitution-trampling domestic spying and humanity-trampling torture program contributed little to nothing to the last of these.

that ineffective method had killed of more than 40,000 terrorists.

…and created tens of thousands more.

Assuming that all of those 40,000 were genuine terrorists, how many of them, and how many of the remaining members of al qaeda, etc., were terrorists before 2003?

Maybe “the terrorists” just got lucky on 9/11 and there NEVER WAS any existential threat justifying a WorldwWideWarOnTerror.

Taking out the Taliban government, yeah, but declaring War On A Tactic? Maybe not.

and how many innocent Iraqis, exactly? Jesus, Frank, do you realize how heinous and immoral such a strategy would be, were it put into place?

(not that I think there is any evidence that that is really what happened – it’s just one more in a long list of after-the-fact justifications for the war.)

If you know a better way, you should share it with CENTCOM.

What’s your point? We could’ve killed them in their home countries with far more ease. And that doesn’t explain away those that join AQI in response to the U.S. invasion. If we kill 10 members of AQ, that’s all well and good, until you realize that in doing so, we inadvertently helped them recruit 1000 members.

Really though, your concern about how many members of AQ we’ve killed rather than how much damage we’ve done to the organization as a whole really speaks volumes about your priorities.

Not every crime committed in the US is an act of terrorism.

True, stuff like this can be chalked up to stupidity of people like yourself.

Ever heard of Mohammed al Sadr? Or Vietnam, for that matter?

Iraq was a wasteful, expensive debacle to set back our national security and standing for decades.

First off, do you have any proof it WAS? Secondly, so what if it was? It was still a terrorist attack on American soil.

Funkystein look up “AQI”.

AQI was founded after we invaded (originally known as Group of Monotheism and Jihad in 2003).

Usual, here’s some advice in all seriousness. As much fun as it is to point out the holes in your arguments that you could drive a train through, you should just cut your losses and leave. The only thing more posting is going to accomplish is making the hole you dug yourself in deeper.

3 word review of the last 8 years.

Also check out how many UN agreements Iraq violated, and then get back to me as to whether shooting at allied planes enforcing the Iraqi “no-fly” zone could be considered a “causis belli”

Not reason enough to invade.

What about the anthrax attacks, the perpetrators of which, by the way, were never found.

Too bad they couldn’t prevent 9/11 in the first place, despite a memo entitled “BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN US.”

God I’m so glad your neocons are out of power forever.

Oh that’s right, they never did. It was the good personal friends of the Bush clan, the Saudis. (17 of the 19, at least.)

Especially when THEY DIDN’T ATTACK THE US.

IRAQ DID NOT ATTACK YOU GENIUS.