Nobody should have been surprised by this!!

Submitted by Dr RJP (United States), Feb 28, 2006 at 15:48

Why do you think that Bush Sr. left Saddam in power? Because had he taken him out (which he should have), a power vaccum would have been created, and the country would have immediately fallen into a civil war with Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds all looking for a piece of the pie.

Well, maybe not.

We had a golden opportunity to bring Iraqi Shii'tes on board with us had we either toppled Saddam in 1991 ourselves, or helped support the Shi'ite revolt against him. Instead, we chickened out and the revolt failed, leading to the wholesale murder of Shiites in reprisal.

Unfortunately, we cannot change history, but at least we should be able to learn from it. We should have known immediately after Saddam fell this time around that unless both Sunnis and Shiites have an equal say in their government, that there would be civil war. Yet, for Bush to think that Iraqis would not want control to be divided up according to population size or political influence may be his vision of democracy, but it is not theirs.

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