Should The US Have Left Sadam Alone?

After the dictators removal Iraq seems to be falling apart.Sect against sect,tribe against tribe,Iranian/syrian involvement.Although i despised him as a leader for his reckless invasion of kuwai and possibly saudi arabia i must ask"Would Iraq itself be better off today"had he not been removed by US forces?Also would the WORLD be better off today?

Saddam was a thug, a tyrant, and generally an all-around miserable excuse for a human being.

Then again, since 2003 it's become apparent he was the only thing holding Iraq together.

So yeah, I'd say time has shown that invading Iraq was a mistake - we'd almost certainly be better off if we had simply continued to contain him, and the Iraqis would have been better off too - certainly many of them would still be alive today who aren't.

As much as it goes against some folks' grain to admit it, sometimes inaction is the wisest course of action.

Deposing an evil dictator sounds like a great idea anyone can get behind - until doing so unleashes a savage terrorist campaign & a brutal sectarian war... oops.

Point taken xmotex.As i said i hated the man and still belive he would have made a run at saudi arabia after raping kuwait had not the world stood up to him.And yet i was one of those few americans who didnt see the point of removing him from power because of the cost in iraqi and american lives.Its actually worse than i feared now and could possibly be a terrorist training school!A serious blunder in all regards.

Well Bush 41 was right, Saddam's expansionist designs had to be thwarted, and that's why (& this might surprise a lot of people here) I agreed the first Gulf War was necessary - although it could have been avoided easily.

But contained in Iraq Saddam was a threat to no-one except his own people, and considering what we've seen since he's been ousted, he was probably less of a threat to them than the sectarian violence his brutal regime suppressed.

Im wondering now if the administration is so embarassed now at how poorly their operation turned out that they dont want to leave.Perhaps they feel pouring enough bs on it in the hope that something good will grow so they can leave on a partial victory at least?

This begs the question?

Was Iraq invaded to get rid of Saddam or for some other reason.

And I can not see anyway Iraq could have been invaded without getting rid of Saddam as one of the objectives of the campaign.

So either way, once the plans to invade were drawn up, Saddam's days were numbered.

What interests me is, what would you or I have done, if we can access to the level of intelligence that Bush had?

And I have to agree with both of you, Saddam was not real threat to the rest of the world. Saddam may have sabre rattled from time to time, but there was enough US fire power in the region for Saddam to realise if he over stepped the mark, he would fire the full force of the US military fire power.

What we should have done if we wanted to topple Saddam from power was invest more time and money in finding an alternative leader and giving them our full support and backup. At some stage, Iraq would have overthrow Saddam.

And just look around the rest of the world for evil and corrupt leaders.

Perhaps washington felt that sadam never would be toppled and was one of reasons for invasion.And i also dont believe that his overthrow/wmds were the governments only motivations,lol.