War in Iraq.

It's true I don't agree with Mccain on much. Indeed precisely speaking I don't agree with him on Iraq (I agree that a war should take place there but not in the manner he describes.) My support for Mccain is strictly a matter of all the other candidates being even worse. but that of course is not the debate. "The people who have made predictions before we entered Iraq such as "we're going to find WMD's, the Iraqi citizens will welcome us there, etc..." were dead wrong, and now they're the ones saying "if we leave, they're going to follow us home"" These predictions I do not share and did not when they were made, and I was 13 at the time :D. I don't take my advice on the matter from the neocons. Indeed I don't have a problem with leaving at this point, I simply favor the initial act of war. "We found no WMD's and the Iraqi citizens prefer Saddam Hussein than us. " We did indeed find no WMD's, but although the Iraqi citizens' preferences are not my prime motive, there are no indications that the citizens on the whole find him preferable. It was Iraqi citizens, not US troops, who tore down his statues, after all. The Sunnis certainly favored him, but the Sunnis were the minority party and he was a sunni. The Shiites and Kurds did not favor him. Indeed he had an odd habit of sending them to gas chambers. "With Saddam you just said "sir, yes sir" and you stay alive. Poor and starving. But alive. With America you can get a bullet through you just crossing the street. " "Staying alive" means nothing when you are a slave. Although the gas chambers seem to indicate even the staying alive part was difficult at times. Yes, a bit of a security risk does come with the present situation. But, people there have a better shot at freedom. And keep in mind most of them are shooting each other, Americans don't shoot one "just crossing the street." "Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens have died, you can't possibly believe those were all evil guilty Islamic extremists that we killed with good reason." Many of them were that or complicit in Saddam's crimes (Saddam and his party were not Islamist extremists but socialist ones). The innocents among them, i.e. those who were not participating in some manner in the oppression of someone, obviously realize the value of freedom (anyone who didn't would pick an oppressing side and start on it already.) One cannot realize the value of freedom without being willing to risk one's life for it. "Iraq never attacked us" Technically true. they have others to attack. "Iran never attacked us" False, Iran funds those who attack us. Unlike Iraq they have direct ties to Al Qaeda. They also employ two terror groups, hamas and hezbollah, almost fully on their paycheck, to attack Israel (which admittedly has many of its own crimes, but the attacks from Iran predate the crimes). Plus, they give arms to Sunni insurgents. And they held plenty of Americans prisoner back in the day of course. So why Iraq in all this? Because Iran, and Saudi Arabia (technically our "ally" according to the administration, but an even bigger state sponsor of anti-american terrorist groups than Iran), both border Iraq. Iraq has a number of chaotic forces (see what's going on now) that Saddam kept under control. Now that Saddam and his Arab Socialist Ba'ath party are out of power, the minute we leave Iraq those forces will be even more out of control. They will spill over into Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of which will then have to dedicate resources to stopping it (resources that can no longer be used against America.) Either they fail and they're stuck, or they succeed- and end up right next to each other in the middle of Iraq. Both are our enemies (even though the idiot administration thinks the Saudis are allies), but Saudi Arabia is essentially Sunni, and Iran is Shia. We've seen what happens when those two mix- hell. When the enemies of America are stuck using resources against each other in hell, america wins. I won't pretend that either the current administration or Mccain has this plan in mind. But the polls clearly show that whoever is the next president, if they want another term, needs to get out of Iraq. They will not follow us home (even if they wanted to, Iraqi power projection capabilities are essentially nil at the moment). They will be busy. That is the proper goal of the Iraq war. Not the Iraq occupation, which I don't support, it's altruistic nonsense. The war qua war.