Gopher Cheese

Here's a copy of an e-mail I recently sent to a friend of mine. I thought some of you more politically minded Bloggers might enjoy reading it and then arguing with/making fun of me over it. Either way, here it is:

Why are we in Iraq? You've touched on a controversial issue there. I don't claim to be an expert in these things, so this will just be my opinion.
I believe we are in Iraq because President Bush thinks it was the right thing to do. The intelligence he received at the time seemed to indicate that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The fact that he was refusing to allow UN weapons inspectors into certain areas only served to reinforce that claim. So here's the situation as Bush sees it: You have a sadistic dictator with the means of killing millions of innocent people. What decent person wouldn't want to do something about that? It's like having a convicted murderer running around and someone hands him a gun. Wouldn't you want the police to take him down before he got a chance to use that gun?
Ok, so we went to war. We took Saddam down. Yes, soldiers died, but that's war. Don't get me wrong, I admire our fighting men and what they do greatly, but if you are a soldier, death is an occupational hazard. But where are the WMDs? Maybe the intelligence was faulty, and they were never there in the first place. Maybe they were smuggled across the border into Syria. Who knows? Either way, Iraq and the world is better off without someone like Saddam Hussein in power.
"But it doesn't seem like the people want us there, and aren't there still tons of bombings and stuff? Aren't people still dying?" you might ask. Those are good questions, but let me address something right off. If you haven't noticed by now, the media is incredibly biased. Anything that they think they can twist into making the right-wing in general, and Bush in particular, look bad, you can bet it will make front page, prime time news. The media only reports the bad things that happen in Iraq. They only cover the malcontents. What you don't hear, is that those people are in the minority, and the vast number of Iraqis are greatful for what we did, and happy for the newfound freedom that they have. Where do I get that information? Sources that aren't mainstream, like World Magazine and such. They're biased as well (to the right) but at least they admit it.
What about all of the bombings and general instability? I admit that the "exit strategy", and plan for Iraq's new government could have been better thought out, but you have to consider this: No one has ever done this before. No one, to my knowledge, has ever come into a country, liberated it, and then set up a democratic government for that country. So cut us some slack,eh? We're learning as we go.
All of this is probably a little more than you were expecting,but remember it's all just my take on things. Maybe we really did go for the oil. Maybe it's all part of some conspiracy to take over the world. I don't know for sure, but what I've said above seems to make the most sense to me. What can I say? I'm an optimist.