Reply #48: They didn't want to take out Saddam back then

[Jackpine Radical]

not just because it get us into a mess, but because Saddam was useful as a means of keeping the country from coming unglued into its constitent ethnic groups. Like Tito in Jugoslawia, Saddam kept a multi-ethnic cauldron below the boiling point via brutal means. He was a despot, but a useful one. The game was to keep him in pace and control him like a bishop trapped behind your pawns. That was the formula for the middle-game in the Middle East. The Neocons (read: Cheney) thought it was time to move on to the end game, so they took out Saddam, with predictable (and predicted) results. The current chaos is very much to their liking. We just go on building our giant embassy and seeing to it that Hillary gets elected to oversee the next phase of the game, which will not involve anything remotely resembling an end to the bloodshed.