The US Did Not Invade Iraq, Post 9-11

Probably something similar to what happened in Libya earlier this year would have happened in Iraq. A weakened Hussein regime would have had to deal with Western funded Shi'a rebels in the South, and the Kurds in the North. After a period of civil strife, the rebels enter into Baghdad and establish a provisional council to govern the country, but warfare continues in many of the Sunni areas. It would be a mess, either way you slice it.

On the negative side: Saddam would still be ruling with an iron fist. On the positive:Thousands of our precious Men and Women in the Military would still be alive,and thousands more would still have their eyes,arms,legs and sanity.Untold thousands of Iraqui Civillians (many of them children) would still be alive.We would be TRILLIONS of dollars less in debt,and not staring down the black maw of an economic meltdown.

I guess that means they would have invaded it Pre 9-11.

Contrary to what many auto-Bush-haters would have us believe, this is a what-if with two sides. It is true that the US lost some political chips with this action. It is true that Saddam was not directly involved in 9/11.However, it is also true that many of the world's terrorists were sucked into this funnel and killed by US and coalition troops. Further, one must ask: if Saddam were still alive and still in power, what would he be doing. Obvious answer: everything he could to undermine the USA and the war on terror.

we would get our billions of dollars back that Bush spent having his heart set on having his war. we would not have our troops in a country we were not supposed to be in.

Wrong country to invade of course. Bush probably heard that that country had a magical tree that spouted Ring Dings or something. I'm surprised that he didn't say something like if America loses this war, we'll have to put a Q at the end of America, becoming Americaq.

What if?  The Iraqi people would still be under the control of a popgun tyrant, but at least there would be social order and around-the-clock electricity in that country.  Hundreds of thousands of innocent, defenseless Iraqi citizens would still be living, and the infrastructure would still be intact.  The streets wouldn't be teaming with ethnic militia, Sunni insurgents, Iran-backed entities and criminal gangs.  There would still be something called The Western Alliance and the U.S. wouldn't have such a crappy reputation in the eyes of the world.  4,000 American families wouldn't have had their sons and daughters come home in a body bag, having died in vain in an unnecessary and inglorious war.  The U.S. debt would be a half trillion dollars smaller, but the income statements over the past five years for Halliburton and other no-bid government contractors near and dear to the Chimp Boy Administration wouldn't have been so robust.  This fiasco in Iraq has proven to be about the worst f... Read more

We would probably be speaking Arabic in our own concentration camps. That is, the survivors of the massive attacks.

If only that were the case then again things would be a lot different and more favorable in my opinion

Whether you believe this was the wrong war badly executed, or the right war badly executed, it's hard to argue that the US wouldn't be in better shape had we stayed out of this hell hole.  And, as Numbah points out, we would have had a better chance at stabilizing Afghanistan - which now seems to be slipping into chaos again.

Then we could have focused on real terrorists instead of dubya's phantoms, not created a generation of Iraqis who will have a permanent hard-on for us, and we might not have fostered a foreign policy that has inspired ridicule and resentment that hasn't been matched in recent memory.

We would have been able to focus better on Afghanistan and less people would be pissed at us.

I'm all for supporting the U.S. in any way, but if we were going to go to war with any country, it should have been with the right one. It's just the way that I feel.