You have to ask yourself if those "real goals" are for our benefit. In my opinion they are not. They are so the top 5 or 10% can maintain dominion and control over the rest of us unwashed masses. They are so companies like British-Petroleom, Dutch-Shell and other US friendly companies can have no-bid contracts to siphon off billions of dollars of another country's resources. Like they did in southeast Asia, and Central and South America. So that companies like KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater, and Bechtel, to name a few, can have cost-plus contracts to fleece the American people out of billions of dollars. Money better spent perhaps on say the abysmal education system in this country. For example, they rent out 5-star hotel compounds in Kuwait or elsewhere and lease, LEASE mind you, fully loaded S.U.V.'s for each and every employee over there at $7,500/month to sit in said compound parking lot because most of those employees do not have to leave the grounds to do their jobs. This so that the companies can charge the US taxpayer more money and make more profits. They have little or no oversight by any governmental body. Apparently, a few million dollars a year for the CEO's were not enough to fill the umpteen swimming pools at there umpteen multi-million dollar mansions across the globe.
I am truly grateful for the service that the men and women of the armed services do, but I, for one minute do not believe they are fighting for my freedom, my safety, or their country. Before anyone blows up at this and gives me the usual diatribe about protecting us from some unknown\known threat let me explain. I am just as likely to get shot by some random criminal as I am to die in a "terrorist" attack. If the so-called leaders of this country were truly worried about Nuclear attack or WMD we would be more concerned with N. Korea, Pakistan, India, or any other country that posses such weapons, not Iraq. Iraq was the straw man, the paper tiger, easily pushed aside with little actual danger to anyone other than the men and women they sent over there to be targets. I do not doubt for a minute that most over there and around this country believe they are fighting for Mom, baseball, and apple pie, but the truth is that they have been lied too, just like everyone else. The main goal for policy-makers, both liberal and conservative, is to maintain control over the worlds most valuable finite resource, Oil. They made this clear when they first called the Iraq Invasion, Operation Iraqi Liberation, O.I.L. Talk about the Freudian slip of the century.
Suddam was an evil SOB, yes, and he was our evil SOB for nearly two decades. The gassing of the Kurds in the 80's Bush and the like were so quick to point to as evidence for invasion, had made in the USA on the canisters. (Not literally). When the UN and international community wanted to condemn Suddam for his actions, the US, along with Israel, ran blocker in the Security Counsel to prevent that from happening.
As for the whole atrocities being just military versus military, what about places like Nicaragua, where many of the same people in charge now directed forces to attack "soft targets" like food collectives and health clinics. Those were definitely not military targets. This is after a UN Security Counsel resolution was vetoed by the US which would have called attention to the atrocities going on at the behest of US handlers.
I guess the long and short of it is just this. I am so sick and tired of most American's thinking this country can do no wrong. That it is only torture if it is done by someone we don't like. It is only aggression when it is done without our approval. It is amazing the amount of things the government does in our name and for our protection.
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American
president would have to be hanged."
- Noam Chomsky