Second Battle of Fallujah<\/a>U.S. Marines firing toward Fallujah, Iraq, during the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004.(more)<\/p>\nProponents argue that liberating the people of Iraq from\u00a0Saddam Hussein\u2019s\u00a0human rights abuses, spreading democracy in the region, enforcing UN regulations, finding suspected\u00a0weapons of mass destruction\u00a0(WMDs), and making the US safer from terrorism in a post-9\/11 world, all justified the war.Opponents argue that Iraq had no WMDs or connection to 9\/11, and that the\u00a0Bush administration\u00a0wanted Iraqi oil and any excuse to remove Hussein. They say the attack violated international law, killed countless civilians, wasted billions of dollars, and made the US more vulnerable to terrorism.<\/p>\n
Pro Quotes <\/p>\n
Iyad Allawi, PhD, Interim Prime Minister of Iraq at the time of the quote, was quoted in a Sep. 23, 2004 transcript titled “Allawi Thanks America” on the\u00a0FOX News\u00a0website:<\/p>\n
“We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq\u2019s freedom. I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain… Your decision to go to war in Iraq was not an easy one but it was the right one.”<\/p>\n
George W. Bush, MBA, 43rd\u00a0US President, stated in an Aug. 18, 2003 interview with\u00a0Armed Forces Radio and Television Service:<\/p>\n
“This is a part of the war on terror. And the effect of what we have done in Iraq and what we\u2019re doing in Iraq will be a very positive effect on future generations of Americans, and that\u2019s very important for people to understand.”<\/p>\n
Nouri al-Maliki, MA, State Prime Minister of Iraq, was quoted in a July 26, 2006 US Embassy press release titled “Remarks by President Bush and PM Mailiki at Lunch with Military Personnel and Families”:<\/p>\n
“…We are happy to be partners in this holy task of fighting terrorism and establishing democracy. Iraq, because of what you have offered, because of what your sons have offered, your families have offered, has now moved from dictatorship to democracy; from oppression, torture chambers, chemical weapons, and now into a state of freedom, liberty and partnership…\u00a0And we are confident that we will succeed, because you, and people like you are helping us to confront terrorism — terrorism that is spreading in our land — with foreign support.”<\/p>\n
Con Quotes <\/p>\n
Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq at the time of the quote, stated in a Feb. 26, 2003 interview with Dan Rather on\u00a0CBS News:<\/p>\n
“We hope that the attack will not take place. But we are bracing ourselves to meet such an attack, to face it\u2026Even though, God Almighty invites us\u2026and we hope that — we pray to him that — the Americans will refrain from such an eventuality — to avoid both the Americans — to spare the Americans from committing such a mistake — and also to spare Iraq and the Iraqi people from being involved in such an experience. And those who would like to ride the bandwagon of evil, it\u2019s up to them.”<\/p>\n
Barack Obama, State Senator (D-IL) at the time of the quote, in a July 25, 2004 interview on\u00a0Meet the Press, stated:<\/p>\n
“I would have voted not to authorize the president to go to war given the facts as I saw them at that time.”<\/p>\n
Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, in a Sep. 5, 2002 article titled “The Troubling New Face of America,” in the\u00a0Washington Post, wrote:<\/p>\n
“We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer. There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted inspection in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies.We have thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world, disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords. Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Table of Contents Table of Contents Ask Anything ARCHIVED TOPIC:\u00a0This topic was archived on Dec. 31, 2011 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1162,1199,1198,1197,94,26664],"class_list":{"0":"post-72335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-britannica","10":"tag-encyclopeadia","11":"tag-encyclopedia","12":"tag-iraq","13":"tag-u-s-iraq-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116428980982469194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}