re: #567 EmmaAnne

I was one of the people who supported going into Iraq to overthrow Saddam because of his own genocidal actions against the Marsh Arabs and Kurds (and democide generally against anyone opposed to his regime, which was the reason the no-fly zones were established after the first Gulf War).

Removing him and hoping that the successor government would hold together was in hindsight wishful thinking though the failure of the military to hold together after we withdrew our forces because no SOFA was concluded surprises a whole lot of people. There was no reason to think it couldn’t be a coherent force, but the Maliki government frittered away the tools at his disposal and lost support of a whole lot of Iraqis in part because of his actions. That gave ISIS the opportunity they needed to make inroads and exploit the divisions in the Iraqi government/military.