IRAQ WAR GOOD OR BAD?
...perations have disrupted al Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi's poison scheme in France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia. Before the war, Facilities in Northern Iraq, set up by Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam were an al Qaida's poisons/toxins laboratory, (Ten Ways Liberation). Saddam’s Iraq gave help and funding to other terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad. This included paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, according to Palestinians and the evidence of cancelled checks. Also, according to State Department reports, terrorist groups like the Iranian Mujahedin-e-Khalq and the Abu Nidal organization were protected by the Iraqi regime. (Ten Ways Liberation) The Duelfer report clearly points out what Saddam’s Oil for Food program was really about. Saddam sold over 187 million barrels of unaccounted oil in vouchers to countries like Russia and France who have veto power in the U.N. Security council to make sure that if the United States would try to get the U.N. involved, there would be no coalition which would stop the U.S. from invading. The plan was that after the current U.N. sanctions would crumble, Saddam would have gone forward with production of WMD’s; this breaches U.N. resolution 1441. However Saddam could not conceive that the U.S. would go to war without the United Nations, (The Real News). After the invasion, newly formed Iraqi intelligence organizations found undeclared laboratories that could have researched and tested biological weapons. Within six months Saddam could have produced sulfur agents, and mustard gas, and within two years he could have had nerve agents. Saddam was laundering money for years for personal profit through this program, and now even certain leaders in the United Nations have also been caught and are being prosecuted for the same offense of money laundering. (Gertz, 1) Recently there has been a suspicion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that Russia had used their special forces (“Spetnaz”) to move the weapons to other neighboring countries like Syria and Lebanon. Using the information from the Duelfer Report, Americans will likely realize that it would be in Russia’s best interest to keep the weapons for being discarded. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) had satellite images of long convoys of trucks with Russian security going from Baghdad to the Syrian borders. Other U.S. officials claimed that in the past two years Saddam had used trucks and aircrafts to take weapons out of Iraq before March, 2003. Then John A. Shaw, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that our intelligence showed that Russian Special Forces were involved in a dispersal operation of weapons from January, 2003 to March, 2003 (Gertz, 1). The convoys were believed to be shipping equipment that could potentially form plastic explosives and nuclear weapons. There was also reason to believe that there were missile parts, chemicals for poison gas weapons, tanks and aircrafts parts. This scenario could actually occur; American forces found that the Al- Quqaa weapons facility in Iraq missing connection seems obvious. Pentagon and NBC correspondents said the facility had been emptied before U.S. had gotten there. It is believed that Russian forces were housed at a computer center near the Russian embassy on the outskirts of Baghdad. They had vacated shortly before the U.S. invasion. Harold Hough, a photographic specialist, indicated that commercial satellite images showed Russian transport aircrafts at Baghdad International Airport near a warehouse in a hurry to leave. When the Bush administration received Shaw’s report, it reacted very cautiously, and White house spokesman Scott McCellan refused to comment on this information, (Gertz, 2). The war on terror did not end in Afghanistan; it is a worldwide fight, and Iraq is part of it. It is clear that at this point this war is taking its toll on the U.S., with the casualty count at well over 1000 troops. Does the U.S. fight abroad, or will more blood be spilled on American soil? September 11 has shown us, frighteningly, what terrorism does when fought on the home front. Moreover, a war on terror is just that: a fight against terrorists. It is not conventional warfare, and sooner or later the U. S. military needs to learn unconventional methods of warfare. Since previous wars were not terrorist battlegrounds, military adaptation is crucial. Not knowing how to fight a war of insurgencies, America fought sloppily and in a disorganized manner. One example of America being unprepared was the first attack on Fallujah, an apparent loss for the coalition, with too many casualties. The next battle cut down the casualties, took less time to fight, and as a result made the coalition victorious. The American military is evolving every day, quicker than the enemy, and this training should result in victory. (Taheri, 29) A successful election recently too...