nbarzelay

You are making assumptions again that there weren't any Al-Qaida or other terrorist factions present in Iraq during Saddam's regime. We've discussed this before, and you are once again presenting it as mere fact.
Actually US congress committee which studied this subject considers it to be a fact as well... there were some small al-Quaida affiliated groups present in Kurdistan, which wasn't under Saddam's controll since the first gulf war, but even that was peanuts compared to for example Saudi Arabia.




The terrorist factions seen operating in Iraq today have been present long before the 2003 invasion or Iraq and before the first gulf war. The removal of Saddam simply allowed them free reign of Iraq through the porous borders.
According to the US congress committee Al-Quaida wasn't present in Saddam's Iraq. Also most other islamist (both shiite and sunnite) groups were heavily oppressed by the Baath-regime and didn't stand a chance as long as Saddam remained in power. Of course the US-intervention changed all that and proved to be a God's gift for those islamists, not only in Iraq but all over the Middle East. This is a fact even you can hardly denie, as much as you would want to, it is the ultimate proof of the failure of the neo-con policy.





Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other players has jumped on this situation of anarchy as a chance to increase their influence amongst the Shia majority in Iraq
Iran of course supported their own friends which are now in the Iraqi government, but weirdly enough the US protected the same people, since they couldn't afford to alienate the shiites faced by a huge sunnite ressurrection. It was clear long before the start of this war that Iran and the shiites would benefit from it, and that's what I said on this forum before the start of the war as well, the only real and credible opposition against Saddam were the shiites.(besides the Kurds of course). Syria and Jordan didn't benefit from this war, they now had to take million of Iraqi refugees who fled the violence in Iraq, nearly all Iraqi christians fled to Syria. There is evidence that Saudi Arabia supports extremist sunnite groups in Iraq, as usual mainly trough the islamic medreses they finance all over sunnite parts of Iraq. (which was not allowed during Saddam's rule)








To present this secular infighting as a new phenomenon is just blatantly false.
It's not new of course, but US-invasion led to the current civil war, which wouldn't have erupted without US-invasion. Iraq lived in peace since 1992 (apart from the occasional US-Brittish raid)



Sure, the US could've handled this situation a bit better, but you are proving extremely stubborn and misguided to put the instability seen in Iraq squarely on the coalition forces.
Let me see, in 2003 there was no war in Iraq, since 2004 a civil war erupted in Iraq. The US invaded Iraq in 2003... purely coincidence I assume?????



The simple case of the matter in the US's past support for Saddam was simply in opposition to Iran. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Yes, the US choose to support the bloody invasion of Iran by Saddam's regime because Iran overthrow their own puppet dictator, it also choose to support islamic terrorists against secular communists in Afghanistan, it choose to support bloody tyrants in Latin America against democratically elected governments, it made its priorities sufficiently clear, just like today with this extraordinary alliance with the Saudi islamist medieval tyrants. This may be real-politics, but it also undermines all efforts to present US-policy as being in the interest of freedom, human rights and democracy and other propaganda. Very few people outside the US actually believe that kind of nonsense, even less since Bush assumed power.
But "the ennemy of my ennemy is my friend" is also a principle other countries apply, that's why Chavez visited Iran lately, why Putin arms Iran, Venezuela and Syria, why Iran (a shiite islamist regime) and Syria (a sunnite secular regime) are allies, etc. That's also the reason why the christians and Hezbollah work together in Lebanon to overthrow the mainly sunnite government.