Iraq, and why we are dumb.

Well, here we are again, accept we have Little Bush and Colin Powell instead of Bush Daddy and Colin Powell. The Iraq situation had to be dealt with sooner or later because Bush Sr. and his military administration fucked up the first time. At the end of the Persian Gulf conflict George H. encouraged the people of Iraq to rise up in revolution and topple the oppressive Iraqi government, but he gave no help to the unarmed people. Supposedly this conflict was justified by the government as an application of force to an aggressive nation, so as to prevent further agression, but as soon as the US defeated the Iraqi army, and the flow of oil was no longer threatened, the US and allies withdrew. Why did the US encourage the revolt of the Iraqi people and then give no help to see it through? The US could have had an easy ally in Iraq. The common people were not all that happy with the Hussein regime. Hussein is responsible for the killing of Kurdish peoples, so why not depose him, help another regime get established, and put Hussein on trial for international crimes? I guess we didn't want to use a little extra force or something, in a war that took minimal effort to win. I suppose the fear that more US troops might die from friendly fire, as most who had died in the conflict did die from. But instead we've had decades of sanctions, building hatred towards the US, because the sanctions are affecting the poor more than anyone else in Iraq, an occasional bombing, and worst of all, half-assed weapons inspection; who knows what the Iraqis have in store right now. And now, we have George Dubya to deal with the problem, who at least on the surface appears to be a less experienced version of his father, who sucked anyway. Lets just hope that Powell gets it right the second time.