Rhrosty I thought exactly the same thing, when they did not go straight through Baghdad. Thinking about it later, I came to the conclusion that Bush senior probably didn't have much choice in it. I believe his Arab allies, or their population, were almost as scared of Bush/USA as they were of Saddam Hussein, & threatened to stop cooperation if he kept going.

I agree completely, we are too damn gentle in our conquests. It is only the Genghis Khan's of this world that bring lasting peace to their newly conquered dominions. Only by ruthlessly suppressing all opposition will peace reign. It appears ISIS is well aware of this, & will thrash us while we try to be the good guys.

We have only 2 choices, get ruthless or be subjected. I think our bleeding hearts will do for us, in the not too far distant future. There would never have been a Rule Britannia, if our forbears had been less tough with opposition.

Good post, Rhosty.

To Haldual.

I presume that I am the "neo-Nazi" that you are referring too?

The example of Hitler, and how WW2 would probably have been avoided had the Allies invaded Germany when it was very weak, instead of waiting until it rearmed, just happens to be an instructive lesson on the use of force to prevent a much more serious and destructive war. I know that it causes people like you to cringe for two very good reasons. You understand the role of the "peace at any price" Appeasers in encouraging Hitler's ambitions, and you can understand that had the Allies missed a golden opportunity to prevent WW2 because they were too pacifist to do what was necessary.

My take on Ukraine, is that the Crimea is a part of Russia and I can understand why the Russians want it back. Russia took the Crimea from the Muslims in 1767, who had previously took it from the Byzantines. Anyone who helps to shrink the Muslim caliphate is alright by me. The Crimea was ceded to Ukraine by Khruschev for administrative efficiency only, as the USSR at that time believed that Ukraine would always be a part of the USSR. The smartest thing that the Ukraine could do is to cede the Crimea back to Russia and give them a land corridor.

I am more likely to blame the idiot who directed flight MH 17 over a war zone, where SAM's were flying about shooting down military aircraft, than the Russians who were helping the pro Russian insurgents. Abbot should "shirt front" the air traffic controller instead of Putin.

Hasbeen,
Churchill and Truman if they were alive today would have already carpet bombed Mosul and Raqqua and they'd be starving the survivors to death like they did in Berlin in 45-46.
That's how they "de Nazified" Germany, starved, beat and raped the people into submission and locked up anyone who still followed the ideology or who had been involved in the NS bureaucracy.

The United States Has Killed At Least 8 Million People
In The Last 50 Years For The Greedy Capitalistic
Corporate Profits Controlled By The 1% Oligarchy

In the last 50 years, the United States has promoted, financed and participated in over 200 incursions and 20 separate wars, killing over 8,000,000 people.

1952 - 79, 70,000 Iranians killed. ( Ayatollah Khomeini, US public enemy for the 1980s, was on the CIA payroll while in exile in Paris in 1970s, as were Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden at different times and in different places. )

1954 - 120,000 Guatemalans killed

1954 - 1975, 4,000,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians killed.

1965 - 3,000 Dominican Republicans killed

1965 - 800,000 Indonesians killed

1973 - 30,000 Chileans killed

1975 - 250,000 East Timorese killed

1970s - 1,000,000 Angolans killed

1984 - 30,000 Nicaraguans killed

1980s - 80,000 El Salvadoreans killed

1989 - 8,000 Panamanians killed in an attempt to capture George H. Bush's CIA partner now turned enemy, Manuel Noriega,

1980s - over 700,000 Libyans, Grenadians, Somalians, Haitians, Afghanistanis, Sudanese, Brazilians, Argentineans and Yugoslavians killed,

1991 - over 1,000,000 Iraqis killed, including over 500,000 children -- about which Madeline Albright ( then, Secretary of State ) said "their deaths are worth the cost". While George W. Bush owns over 80% of the oil wells in Kuwait, trouble will continue there.

( Source: Philip Bradbury, Insight Magazine, November 2001 )

View the 200+ Incursions by the United States since WWII
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/index.html#post

P.S. So who are the real terrorists?

David,
Don't leave out the so called "Good War", that's vital for context, add a conservative estimate of about five million Germans,Volksdeutsche and their Eastern European allies along with a million Japanese killed in the post 1945 period.