I saw no link in your responses.  I'm sorry if I missed it.  Can you point me to a link where the UN "un-mandated" the mandates I linked you to?

I already addressed this, repeatedly.  I see NO equivalence between a multinational force intervening in Yugoslavia to end the ethnic cleansing of Slobodan's serb butchers and Russian's unjustifiable invasion.  Just like I don't believe there is equivalent moral justification between the multinational force and clear world mandate of the first Gulf War and the unjustified invasion by US and UK forces in the second Gulf War.

The first Gulf War was in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and, I repeat, I supported it.  Again, I'm against naked unprovoked aggression.  The second Gulf War had no legitimate grounds whatsoever and was NOT mandated or sanctioned by the UN.  Saddam was defanged, declawed, and impotent after the first Gulf War.  His claims to the contrary were just bravado intended to keep Iran from seeing just how weak he'd become. 

Bush Jr. went back in to Iraq to take back the oil rights that the French and the Russians were negotiating under the table.  In the second Guld War, it was the US committing an act of naked, unprovoked aggression.

I provided ALL of the relevant link in my first, and still definitive, post to you. 

The rest of your posts have just been insults intended to bait me into lowering myself to your level.  Not...gonna...happen. 

Cheers!  We tried in 2004 to get rid of Bush Jr. and failed.  It's taken us a huge amount of pain to finally shed these Vietnam/Cold War Era relics from our White House once and for all.

Yes, the Canadians and Aussies have been good in supporting the US/UK...even when we were flat out WRONG, like in Iraq now.

Wow, for all the big replying you do here, this is all you could come up with? Well you know what they say about people who assume.

Your trivial non-answer deserved only an equally trivial dismissal. 

Now, would you like to actually join the discussion? 

What does the Gulf War have to do with the Cold War?  

I still don't see how you really can make a distinction between Kosovo and Iraq.  It seems like splitting hairs to try to argue there's a difference. 

If Obama decides to send troops into the Sudan will that be a good war or a bad war?

You read much more in to the vote #'s, from people ive talked to His policies and capabilities were not even contributing factors to why they voted.. Also being popular don't make you correct.

It will stand to reason unless Obama can actually live up to the Huge promises he made, his #'s of supporters will drop rather rapidly.

This just rings with respect for those who served and still do, in our armed forces.

Wow, that would take way too much time to explain.  A short summary would be that America has been paying the price for Vietnam (clearly a Cold War conflict) for the past 40 years.  And now that Kerry, McCain, etc. have passed into history as candidates, the painful echoes of Vietnam are unlikely to ever appear again on the Presidential stage.

Even in this thread we've seen phrases like Hippy, war-monger, and comments about McCain's POW status and how our veterans have been shunted aside in a truly shameful way just because they fought in an unpopular and needless war.  Those wounds are still healing for the 55+ generation.

Vietnam, and the scars of the civil rights movement, are just some of the underlying reasons why the older generations voted more for McCain than Obama.  Similarly, younger generations, born after integration and with no contemporaneous memory of Vietnam, voted overwhelmingly for Obama over McCain.

I actually think this is a VERY good thing as those were painful, divisive times...America's "teen years", so to speak.  And it's the natural order of things that those painful memories eventually fade away. 

But that's just me waxing philosophic. 

If really you want to see the connections between the Cold War and the Gulf War, you need only read the historical resumes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and most importantly, the three Bushes in American history - Prescott, GHW Bush, and GW Bush.

Though this is a MASSIVE hypothetical, if the US went in as part of a UN peacekeeping mission to stabilize the country and end the genocide, then I would probably support it. 

And yet, like the first and second Gulf Wars, I see them as night and day. 

A poor but simpler analogy would be to use a single policeman.  Most of the time they act within the weight of law and under the true auspices of justice when they have to shoot someone - in self defense, to protect the lives of others, etc.  And sometimes they are just on an egocentric power trip or have been corrupted/bribed/etc.   The stage is still the same...an officer, a fired gun, and one dead person.   Yet one is a legal act and one is criminal.  And the difference between these two scenarios is the measure of the officer and his motive.

I would argue that the US acted as a legally authorized "policeman" with the full weight of the world's consent in Kosovo, putting our own people at risk for what was seen as an unselfish cause -- to save innocent lives.  And to this date, the only people who generally object to what was done in Kosovo are Serbian fascists and their sympathizers/allies.

Whereas, the US acted as a bully and a butcher when it came to the second Gulf War.   Corrupt from its very conception, it's already cost the lives of 4,000+ brave American soldiers and hundreds of thousand of Iraqi civilians and helped bankrupt our nation...just for selfish graft for Bush's family friends of Big Oil and Cheney's own company, Halliburton.  And it's already clear that the opinion of the entire world remains against the US/UK on this, as it was when we rammed it past everyone's objections.

So, while I am making the point in extremis, I hardly think the two things are a hair's breath apart.  But that's just my opinion. 

Again, hearsay is not a supportable position.  Earlier in this thread I posted the top ten issues on voter's minds, regarding why they voted for Obama over McCain, etc.  That would represent real EVIDENCE to counter your hearsay.

The ideologies are the relics.

I have made it clear over and over again how much I support our veterans.  I don't hold them responsible for executing a failed policy built on false promises and lies.  Anymore than I hold our current troops accountable for what is ultimately Bush and Cheney's neocon graft.

But see what I mean?  The scars still echo.

I promised myself I'd stay out of this , but all this talk about Afghanistan and Iraq begs for me to comment

I find it ironic that the two men running the garbage in Iraq are 5 time Deferral Dick Cheney and GW 'Did he actually show up for the national guard' Bush. It's funny when it was their turn to go help out in Vietnam they were chickens , and now 30 years later , they're hawks with other people's kids.

Can't wait to see their warmonging chickenhawk asses out of there

I personally will stick to what ive been told by actual voters I know over Published hearsay. Unless you have actually talked to the people who were polled to besure the given results were fully truthful, it is still just heresay.

3rd party polling is so easily swayed I hold them less credible than the people I actually talk to.

I hardly think the 'entire world remains against the US/UK on this'....again, what about the Aussies?

Christ...stop dismissing us.  Ask the UK special forces in Afghanistan who protected their extraction when it all got too hot for them?  Who guided the airstrikes?  Who was on the ground months before the public was even aware of a drama in Afghanistan?  There are approx 400 SAS in Australia.... or rather ...the majority of the 400 currently aren't.

Anyway....the only beef the outside world has with the handling of the Iraqi war is it would have been much easier/successful as a 'surgical strike'....on Saddam and the rest of the hit-list/and family....and then concentrate on doing the same with Bin Laden.  HE was past his use-by date around about 9/12.

The real issue is with 'pre-emptive strike'.  Remember....there are people who claim that every male is a potential rapist....so....perhaps every male should be castrated pre-emptively as well.

Hitler simply got 'concerned' about Poland...so 'pre-emptively struck'...and gosh, other countries like France, etc might go all hissy-fit about that....and want to argue...so he pre-emptively struck yet again.....and that, boys and girls is how WW2 started....

Regardless of ideology, self-reinforcement of dogma does not provide an honest, critical examination of any issue.  It's just an ideological mutual masturbation society.

No one is "dismissing the Aussies".  Normally I'd use the word "coalition" but since there were only 6 countries involved, I didn't want to try and support Bush's rationale.  They claimed for months that it was a "multinational force"...ahem.

Either way, I agree with you 100%.  I have argued publicly and privately that if Saddam actually WAS a threat anymore, a few million in cruise missiles was a MUCH better price/performance ratio than spending a trillion dollars and killing all those people.

I'd still argue that he remained just a nuisance, as Kaddafi was, and like him, eventually the tide turned.

And yes, we absolutely should have been putting our energies into Osama...all the time, until he was brought to justice.  That was a righteous and just cause and no one in the world begrudged us that measure.  No one.

Instead, we've wasted all this time, money, and lives, while the REAL criminals of 9-11 still eat dates in between dialysis treatments.