Saddam Hussein. Did we underestimate him?

Most definitely and most grievously.

No, we "misessundermatestamated" him.

I love it!

Iraq was stable under Saddam.

If by stable you mean him gassing and murdering hundreds of thousands of people, then yes it was as stable as any other country in the world.

that's true dan, but the Kurds are notoriously in-fighting. I'm not condoning what he did, but even now as they have carved out Kurdistan in the north, they are getting into squabbles with Turkey. I think they share some of the blame.

they have been persecuted for a long time in both iraq and turkey, trust me when i worked on the iraq-jordanian border in 2005 you wouldn't believe the horror stories from the kurdish refugees

so what's the beef against the Kurds then? Is it religious or something else?

because they wanted to be independent from iraq, iran, and turkey. they are still being persecuted today.

well I feel for them, but what if California said they wanted to be independant from the US. do you think we'd let them or would we mobilize troops?

we're not talking about a unionized country here, we're talking about a country that was drawn hastily at the end of world war 2

that's not how the people who live there see it.

Are you excusing the genocide and crimes against humanity that Saddam and his regime brought down upon these people? What HE chose to do was evil and barbaric, and the blame lies solely in HIS lap. Blaming the victims in any way is unconscionable.

Most likely.

We didn't underestimate Saddam, we murdered him for trying to sell his country's oil in Euros instead of U.S. dollars. All that we knew about him is what our corporate media chose to tell us. Like wmds, this might also be a total fabrication.

Under Saddam's rule, Christians were safe and free to worship as they chose. That will never be the case again.

LOL Plenty of oil is sold in Euros, and Yen, and Rubles. A ridiculous statement. You need to read up more and from different sources. Or, if you know you are spreading misleading statements, then you should stop. He was breaking UN sanctions with the aid of Russia, Germany, and France. They were making millions and he was scoffing at the UN sanctions for all he had done and was supposed to be penalized for. He told the world he had WMDs, had used chemical weapons in the past, and made sure the UN inspectors couldn't prove he didn't because he was trying to keep Iran unsure. Well, he did it a bit too well. The US had to act on what Hussein said his capabilities were and, if you are old enough to remember, the vast majority of the public and politicians in both parties agreed. We lost untold billions, took no oil, and hurt our economy in doing so. The US certainly didn't do it for a profit, but to protect itself and its interests (just as all countries do). It ended up a fiasco and I'm not glad we went in or how the Bush admin botched up the job there, but at least get the facts straight. There are plenty of reasons to dislike it all without silly rhetoric and innuendo.

You need to understand the oil market and American hegemony a little better. When we went off of the gold standard, we went on to the oil standard. Almost all of the world's oil is sold on the London and New York mercantile exchanges in U.S. dollars. We have held the world hostage to the value of our dollar. We routinely run up massive foreign debts and then inflate our way out of them by printing more currency. Recently, "quantitative easing" has reduced our buying power by about a third. China is not going to be happy when we pay them back with Monopoly money !

The only reason that Saddam ever had wmd weapons is because we sold them to him to use against Iran.

The only reason that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were ever a problem is because we financed, armed, and trained them too !

Billions of dollars in American bad decisions are now costing us trillions of dollars to make worse !

Sorry, but I worked for 25 years in the oil market. Its how I made my living. You need to understand it far better than you evidently think you do. And need to stop believing the silly rhetoric. We didn't take oil. We didn't go in to get oil. We went in because the we and the rest of the world needs oil, and we could not allow that region to be overrun with lunatic leaders willing to hold it hostage, not caring what repercussions it had. Hussein brought it all on himself by not cooperating and becoming more of a worry and hindrance to peace than he was a benefit. Hussein was valuable if he contained Iran. He developed his own gas weapons, did not purchase them from us, and was acting as if he had secret nuke designs. He had tried to buy the materials and plans already, and acted like he was working on them. Our mistake was not going in to Iraq. It was bungling the job once there. BIG difference.

I wouldn't say Saddam was underestimated, but it is obvious that there was very little understanding of the realities of Iraq among the decision makers... unless of course they actually wanted an unstable, Shia led Iraq

He probably would still be in power if he hadn't threatened other countries and claimed (foolishly) to have weapons of mass destruction.

well he threatened Kuwait but we left him in power. He told the IAEA he didn't have WMD and they chose not to believe him. they were wrong.

We left him in to hold back Iran. But he was scoffing at the UN sanctions for all he had done and was supposed to be penalized for. He told the world he had WMDs, acted like he did, had used chemical weapons in the past, and made sure the UN inspectors couldn't prove he didn't because he was trying to keep Iran unsure. Even his denials were done so that no one truly believed him. Well, he did it a bit too well. The US had to act on what Hussein said his capabilities were. It was a botched job with no Plan B, but Hussein did bring the actions down on himself. We left him there to control Iran, and ended up having to worry about him, too. At that point, there was no reason to leave in an unbalanced leader who had used WMDs, acted like he had ore, and was threatening the US.

He did have WMDs, but he got rid of them following Desert Storm. As for threatening other countries, he was basically given the green light to invade Kuwait by Baker, HW Bush's Secretary of State. He was set up and fell into the trap like an idiot. His run as dictator of Iraq was doomed by his failure to topple the Islamic regime in Iran

don't agree. He said he destroyed the WMDs and he did.

That is what I said, that following Desert Storm he divested himself of the WMD's

that's not an easy task. The most likely scenario is that he destroyed them when he said he did. We didn't believe him. We never proved he was lying.

I don't understand why you contradict me and then state exactly what I just did. Twice now, sorry but I am confused