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You seem to have missed 5) Iraq has no WMDs and the invasion of Iraq kills lots of people and makes the use of WMD by a country that also didn't have WMDs more likely.
For obvious reasons it seems a bad plan to miss that possibility.
chez
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I hadnt thought of that part of the equation. Would it not be possible that showing our military dominance would make countries that have or dont have WMDs less likely to attack us? Is this not also a possibility? Maybe dominating the Iraqi military would "knock some since" into other enemies.
Dont get me wrong. Im not saying we should have went to war. Actually I think we shouldnt have gone. I just think the left wing liberal media has blown it way out of proportion. And people with out the ability to think on their own just believe what ever CBS or NBC says. Im trying to come up with a mathematical formula that will show it was a much closer "raise/fold" situation than the media leads us to believe. I guess I could just do what the media does and use my calculation with out asking for the flaws in it but we dont need more statisticians we need more stats. "Stats dont lie statisticians do."
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Logically, in a democracy the military is only the extension of the political will, and hence when the majority desires war and the order is given the military should follow suit. It is complicated abit by international treatises and european legal doctrines that came with the advent of 'modern' country-country politics:
casus belli
And ofcourse the state has to weigh the possibiliy of sanctions, public relations, loss of diplomatic leverage, economical consequences and all these things. But the popular stance that war isn't legitimate, is completely wrong. If war wasn't legitimate then the legitimate people would have a major problem with the illegitimate ones.
Note that this post is not intended as a reflection on the Iraq war specifically, just addressing the issue in general - which is probably healthier because you lose the political dead weight (the Iraq war is a loaded issue and the US is a loaded issue - a 'general' war and an unspecified nation would probably be better to use).