Originally Posted by pocketkangaroo

I wouldn't exactly classify Saddam as our "best friend". We hated the Iranians more than we hated Iraq at the time, so we gave him all the weapons we could muster. We knew he was gassing his own people, but we didn't care. As long as he kept fighting Iran and selling us oil, he could slaughter as many of his own people as he could (with our weapons).

And Saddam was a fucking lunatic. No one denies that. But there are hundreds of lunatics running countries and parts of countries throughout the world. There have been genocides taking place in parts of Africa and Eastern Europe up to today. There are countries like Pakistan and North Korea that actually have nuclear weapons available. So out of all these major threats and atrocities taking place, why pick such a small blip on the radar such as Iraq? It's like having 5 guys coming at you with machine guns and you choose to take out the guy carrying only a knife. If you're going to argue that this was about a "threat to our security", then why not take out the countries that are actually a threat to our country? If you're going to play the "atrocities" card, why not take out the countries that are committing much worse atrocities than Saddam ever did?

But the most amusing aspect of the whole Middle East debacle is the demonization of Saddam as if he was any different than the other leaders in the Middle East. Do you know there is a country that has a leader that financially supports terrorist organizations (heck they hold fundraisers for them!)? A country that the overwhelming majority of 9/11 hijackers came from? A country that runs on Sharia law and opresses their people much more than Saddam was when we went to war? But guess what? He gets to hold hands with our President.