Lindsay Graham: Iraq war "still a good idea"

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is one of the smarmiest, ideological members of the U.S. Senate. Just the sight of him makes me angry. His many moronic statements, like his comments above, is the main reason why I despise him.

So, let's get this straight - Graham "absolutely" still believes that invading Iraq was a good idea? Granted, the real questions about Iraq should be "where do we go from here," but how we got where we are will be debated for decades to come, too.

It's pretty clear to most Americans (and polls back this up) that invading Iraq was a monumentally stupid idea for so many reasons, chief among them the cost in blood, our standing in the world and the trillions the invasion and occupation will cost us when it's all said and done (and God only knows when that will be).

Yet, people like Graham constantly go on television, smugly telling America that Obama was wrong about the surge, we are winning/will win in Iraq, and blah blah blah. Most of the time, I simply ignore comments like Graham's, but we cannot afford to ignore these comments, any longer, because this ideology will play a part in giving us more of the same - war, war, war, if John McCain is elected president.

What's more, I don't hear any of the warmongers in Congress spelling out exactly what constitutes "victory" in Iraq. The reason we don't get it is because we will never, ever achieve "victory" in Iraq, at least in a traditional sense. The country will very likely in the foreseeable future to be continually plagued by violence, while sucking hundreds of billions from our treasury, all the while keeping soldiers away from their families (Not to mention casualties). To date, 4,125 Americans have given their lives, and for what? A free Iraq? From what I see and read, Iraqis don't seem to care either way, and the country is much worse off now than before we invaded.

And I'm sick to death of people like Graham saying how "evil" Saddam was. It bears repeating, since many people seem to have forgotten WHY we went to war. The Bush administration kept throwing reasons against the wall until one stuck, which ended up being WMD and his nuclear program. At least that's what we were publicly told were the reasons for the war. In hindsight, we went to war for two reasons: to create a free state in the Middle East, and oil. (Scott McClellan backs up the former in his book, which I'm almost done reading.) Whenever I hear the "Saddam is evil" argument, I always think about Darfur. The leaders there have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and Bush has done nothing about it. I guess the Darfur area of Sudan has no oil.

If Saddam Hussein was so evil, then what does that make the leader of Sudan, Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir? (Who by the way was indicted last week for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.) Just wondering.

It's sad and pathetic that over five years after the war began, people like Graham continue to keep flogging the "We are better off without Saddam" argument. Someone needs to slap morons like Graham in the back of the head, because the record playing in his brain keeps skipping back to the same old, trite arguments about the War in Iraq, and how we'll ultimately "win." (The same goes for McCain.)

Even if we do "win," (whatever that constitutes), I'll never be convinced that the cost in lives, blood, money and our decreased standing around the world will have been worth it.

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Speaking of "winning wars," McSame had this to say last night in front of about 200 GOP backers during a fundraiser in Baltimore: "My friends [I'll never stop hating it when he says that], I know how to win wars."

Again, I ask, exactly how is that? What experience does he have in "winning wars?" As far as I can tell, this is his formula:

1. Volunteer to go to Vietnam (he wasn't drafted, he finished 894th in a class of 899 at the U.S. Naval Academy; I guess he really is like Bush)

2. Bomb innocent people in North Vietnam

3. Get shot down

4. Spend the rest of the war in prison.

And the last time I checked, Senator, we LOST that war.