Iraq

Originally Posted by: magicninjaWhat are these countries we're liberating gonna say? "Alot of Americans died for our freedom?" Where's the honor in that?

Good call ninja! I'd be pissed too (Sheryl Crow jokes aside) if someone had to wipe my ass.

Originally Posted by: RaskolnikovHe can't leak something which is public knowledge. We're talking an issue which was raised publicly in Congress to rebut Democrats who were saying that there were never WMDs in Iraq; it did make it into the news but only for about a day or two.

I think the answer lies in part of the opening chapter to "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg. He was talking about news reporting on the environment of course, but essentially the point he was getting at and fairly solidly proved was that bad news sells better than good news. It gets better ratings.


And truthfully... at this point, who really believes ANYTHING that comes out of Bush's mouth? Most of the world's population wants him to be wrong and will justify that desire any way they can.[/QUOTE]Ok I just don't get that if these chemical shells were the reason we went into Iraq why it wouldn't be a huge story. Apparently the public doesn't feel that those shells were enough to go to war over, I know I don't. I concede that I wouldn't want any weapons of that kind on any side.



[QUOTE=Raskolnikov]
The last time Iraq had a national election, there was like a 70 or 80% turn out of their electorate in spite of Al Queda making credible PROMISES that it was going to attack voters and polling stations... 45% is high for the United States where voting is not only safe, but an easy way to get out of work.

It seems to me that Iraqis value and desire their Democracy FAR more than we do. However, a tiny percentage of the population (generally representing foreign and not Iraqi interests) feels justified in usurping the Democratic process by incredibly violent means.


What kinds of cowards are we if we're to allow a violent minority to decide for a substantial majority which honestly desires a representative government?

We still have no right to go in and force it on them. If they want it so bad let them do it themselves. It's not that Iraq is politically divided but moreso religously divided. Who are we to go tell anyone how to live. Change has to come from within or it's bound to fail. I'm all for UN peacekeepers helping a fledgling government after the fact but to go in and be the cause to me is just not right.

7 pages of post on this topic and not one person points out the obvious here. Look folks, Number one, we were attacked on our own soil. We should have been over there with-in hours and without predjudice or remorse, yet we wait almost 3 yrs. Tell me what other country would wait that long to answer a direct hit on their own soil. That tells you that this war has far deeper reasons that none of us will ever really know. Number two, we have no business fighting someone elses civil wars, (and that's exactly what this is. a civil war that has been going on for 1000s of yrs.) when we have tons of problems in this country that need direct attention, Health care, homeless, unemployment, social security, stock market crash, and the demise of the dollar amount because of some ****head who thinks we should give tax breaks for outsorcing. This president has ruined this country that I love. I'm not saying it's a left or right thing, I'm saying this man and his chosen members.
Dan

"The Bush administration commissioned the Iraq Survey Group to determine whether in fact any WMD existed in Iraq. After a year and half of meticulously combing through the country, here’s what the administration’s own inspectors reported:

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."

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WASHINGTON - In his final word, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion.

“After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall.

“As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.”

Rock on! :cool:

Originally Posted by: Logan8267 pages of post on this topic and not one person points out the obvious here. Look folks, Number one, we were attacked on our own soil. We should have been over there with-in hours and without predjudice or remorse, yet we wait almost 3 yrs. Tell me what other country would wait that long to answer a direct hit on their own soil. That tells you that this war has far deeper reasons that none of us will ever really know. Number two, we have no business fighting someone elses civil wars, (and that's exactly what this is. a civil war that has been going on for 1000s of yrs.) when we have tons of problems in this country that need direct attention, Health care, homeless, unemployment, social security, stock market crash, and the demise of the dollar amount because of some ****head who thinks we should give tax breaks for outsorcing. This president has ruined this country that I love. I'm not saying it's a left or right thing, I'm saying this man and his chosen members.
Dan

But look what was happening to them to make them want to attack us!!

Originally Posted by: DAMAGED ONEBut look what was happening to them to make them want to attack us!!

...Actually. I believe they attacked us because Islam has waged war on the infidels. The infidels being us.

Originally Posted by: grizzlymint...Actually. I believe they attacked us because Islam has waged war on the infidels. The infidels being us.

So we did nothing to provoke them? like make threats, Sanctions, control more oil..

Originally Posted by: magicninjaOk I just don't get that if these chemical shells were the reason we went into Iraq why it wouldn't be a huge story. Apparently the public doesn't feel that those shells were enough to go to war over, I know I don't. I concede that I wouldn't want any weapons of that kind on any side.[/quote]
1). By and large, the public doesn't know about those munitions at all.

2). The truth about the WMD issue is that it isn't what either side wants it to be. There were no stockpiles that you could wage a chemical or biological offensive with nor indications that Iraq was actively manufacturing any WMDs, but there's too much evidence indicating that Saddam planned to reconstitute his WMD programs after the end of UN sanctions to ignore the long-term threat to regional security he presented.

As with anything, the truth is far more complicated than anybody would care to suggest and most people only hear what they want to believe. Anti-war and Anti-Bush people are never going to see a viable reason to go war with Iraq, end of story.

Originally Posted by: magicninjaWe still have no right to go in and force it on them. If they want it so bad let them do it themselves. It's not that Iraq is politically divided but moreso religously divided. Who are we to go tell anyone how to live. Change has to come from within or it's bound to fail.[/quote]
"Democracy" is not enough of a reason, I will readily concede that.

However, "Democracy" is not the only reason and never was. There was a huge laundry list of reasons to invade Iraq and most of them we had every reason to believe to be true.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a long term strategic threat to the region that was only getting worse and worse as years passed – either by his regime's eventual collapse or by its survival and eventual rearmament. Due to the number of allies we have in the surrounding area, a threat like that can't be ignored. Not if you intend to live up to the treaties you sign and not if you intend to be a responsible global citizen.

Originally Posted by: magicninjaI'm all for UN peacekeepers helping a fledgling government after the fact but to go in and be the cause to me is just not right.[/QUOTE]
I don't know about you, but personally I'm not for another "Food for Sex" scandal.

Originally Posted by: Logan8267 pages of post on this topic and not one person points out the obvious here. Look folks, Number one, we were attacked on our own soil. We should have been over there with-in hours and without predjudice or remorse...[/quote]
Nor planning, I suppose??

Sir, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the people of this country with my life if need be, but I personally happen to value my life a little more than that.


[QUOTE=Logan826]yet we wait almost 3 yrs.

We were in Afghanistan (al Queda's former base of operations) within weeks... I really don't know what you're trying to say.



[QUOTE=Logan826]Number two, we have no business fighting someone elses civil wars, (and that's exactly what this is. a civil war that has been going on for 1000s of yrs.)

Elements of the sectarian violence we're seeing today have been at play for hundreds of years, but the biggest divisions were incited by Saddam Hussein only decades ago and the people we see acting them out are a substantial (if very brutal) minority. The majority of Sunnis and Shiahs only want to raise their families in peace and there's a substantial amount of intermarriage between Sunni and Shiah families.



[QUOTE=Logan826]stock market crash,

Have you looked at the stock market lately? Here's a hint: It's setting records and they're not lows.



[QUOTE=z0s0_jp]"The Bush administration commissioned the Iraq Survey Group to determine whether in fact any WMD existed in Iraq. After a year and half of meticulously combing through the country, here’s what the administration’s own inspectors reported:

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."

----------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON - In his final word, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion.

“After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall.

“As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.”

I've read substantial portions of the Kay and Duelfer reports for myself and [in summation] they don't say what these excerpts say.

Moreover, finds have been made since they were written indicating (as Mr. Kay said in an interview with NPR) that the amount of chemical weapons we've found indicated that Iraq produced FAR more chemical munitions than anybody had previously estimated.

Back to the reports, what they effectively say is "we don't know." We know that Chemical, Nuclear and Biological weapon manufacturing and R&D capabilities were being preserved as much as possible and we know that Saddam went to great effort right before the invasion to obscure as much of the truth as possible.

Beyond that, nobody can really say anything for certain.


I urge you to do a quick google search for the Kay and Duelfer reports; they're very easy to find and you owe it to yourself to see what they actually have to say.

Let us not forget that the US gave him chemical and biological weapons technology during the Iran v. Iraq war. :rolleyes:


The USA's big media institutions did little to illuminate how Washington and business interests combined to strengthen and arm Saddam Hussein during many of his worst crimes. "In the 1980s and afterward, the United States underwrote 24 American corporations so they could sell to Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction, which he used against Iran, at that time the prime Middle Eastern enemy of the United States," writes Ben Bagdikian, a former assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, in his book The New Media Monopoly. "Hussein used U.S.-supplied poison gas" against Iranians and Kurds "while the United States looked the other way."

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--Congressional investigations after the Gulf War revealed that the Commerce Department had licensed sales of biological agents, including anthrax, and insecticides, which could be used in chemical weapons, to Iraq.

When Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1987, there was anger in Congress and the White House. But a memo in 1988 from Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy stated that "The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is … important to our long-term political and economic objectives."

Originally Posted by: DAMAGED ONEBut look what was happening to them to make them want to attack us!!

Jihad was first declared against the United States between World Wars I and II by Amin El Husseini (the ideological grandfather of Arab Nationalists like Saddam Hussein and Jihadists like bin Laden) back when there was no Israel, oil still came from Texas and the United States had virtually no foreign policy whatsoever.

Fanatics will always justify their hatred and fanaticism no matter what the truth may be.

The question becomes, "do you defend yourself or do you accept somebody else's rules for your continued existence?"

Sir, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the people of this country with my life if need be, but I personally happen to value my life a little more than that.

Rask,
I fully support our troops. My son is a Marine. I don't not support the fact of taking care of other countries civil wars, when again, we have problems in our own back yard and our own soil to defend. I'm sick and tired of our country taking care of everyone elses' problems. We can't even take care of our own school systems yet we can spend billions on a war for what......???. And I fully disagree with your statement about our economy. We are in an all time low. Unemployment, poverty, the american dollar is with **** right now. Take a look a little deeper then what the republicans want you to see. We are hurting in a bad way my friend, and sad to say it's just gone really down hill in the last 6yrs. This is the point I'm trying to make. I could really care less if we were in Afganistan in a few weeks, we didn't wage war for almost 3 yrs. As for training, if our military wasn't spread so thin because of...again, taking care of others problems, we would have had trained troops and supplies to eliminate this problem quickly. We have 1/4 of the troops in iraq now then we did in Vietnam. Hell, we can't even supply our troops with the supplies they need to do the job now, yet we spend billions on this war. Something is dead wrong with this whole picture.
Dan

and the people we see acting them out are a substantial (if very brutal) minority

If this is such a small minority, then why have we been fighting this war for 3 yrs ?
Dan

Originally Posted by: DAMAGED ONESo we did nothing to provoke them? like make threats, Sanctions, control more oil..

The fact that their religion (through the Koran) wages war on us, it wouldn't seem so.

Originally Posted by: grizzlymintThe fact that their religion (through the Koran) wages war on us, it wouldn't seem so.

so you have read the Quran?? I did not know you read Arabic...

Originally Posted by: Raskolnikov1). By and large, the public doesn't know about those munitions at all.

2). The truth about the WMD issue is that it isn't what either side wants it to be. There were no stockpiles that you could wage a chemical or biological offensive with nor indications that Iraq was actively manufacturing any WMDs, but there's too much evidence indicating that Saddam planned to reconstitute his WMD programs after the end of UN sanctions to ignore the long-term threat to regional security he presented.

As with anything, the truth is far more complicated than anybody would care to suggest and most people only hear what they want to believe. Anti-war and Anti-Bush people are never going to see a viable reason to go war with Iraq, end of story.




"Democracy" is not enough of a reason, I will readily concede that.

However, "Democracy" is not the only reason and never was. There was a huge laundry list of reasons to invade Iraq and most of them we had every reason to believe to be true.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a long term strategic threat to the region that was only getting worse and worse as years passed – either by his regime's eventual collapse or by its survival and eventual rearmament. Due to the number of allies we have in the surrounding area, a threat like that can't be ignored. Not if you intend to live up to the treaties you sign and not if you intend to be a responsible global citizen.




I don't know about you, but personally I'm not for another "Food for Sex" scandal.

Well the WMD situation is what it is. I feel lied to. I don't like war, who does? I would however be all for a necessary war with truthful reasons. I would even be all for it if the president came came on TV and said "Hey we're out of oil and have no choice but to go take a few countries over." That wouldn't bother me. I'd feel bad that it had to end that way but hey, self preservation right?


As for strapping up a gun and strutting around someone else's country to solve someone else's problems? Nah, I can't stand behind that. I don't care who hates who over there. Let them settle it themselves. They've been going at it for thousands of years over there. I don't really expect that anything we do is gonna ever change that. I'd much rather we sat at a table and helped them work it out rather than using our manpower to decide who wins. At least that way we wouldn't have made so many enemies ourselves.

Originally Posted by: grizzlymintThe fact that their religion (through the Koran) wages war on us, it wouldn't seem so.

Die you Infidels! LMAO!

I think the fact, now, remains: How do we prevent a civil war in someone else's country.

Lee, that's not the question we should be asking. The correct question is "How do we prevent a civil war in our country" I'm not saying that would happen, very well could, but doubtfull. Why should we prevent this in other countries ? Why don't we take care of our own country first ? We have starving families and kids right here in our own backyards, why do we keep sending billions of dollars and tons of food over seas to other countries for food and clothing when we can't even provide that here. Why do we rebuild towns, cities, schools in other countries when we can't even provide a solid education right here. Look what happened when Katrina hit, we couldn't even take care of our own then. Why do we have 15yr old kids robbing and killing in this country. I'll tell you why, because there is no more disipline allowed. That's another topic that we can discuss in another thread. ;) This list just goes on. Hey, I'm all for helping out our neighbors, but let's feed and put roofs over own starving and homeless first. This is like you giving the next door neighbor a peice of steak for his kids, when yours' are bare naked and starving. The current party in power has lied to us so much about our economy being strong and the work force is strong. Take a drive to your nearest big city and drive off the beaten path, read between the lines in the newpaper, your eyes will be opened my brother. I see these streets, kids, families, home forclosers, jobless every single day. I my friend speak the truth. I cry and pray everyday for these people, and I pound my fist in utter discust when I hear our president talk of how well our economy is doing, when he too is blind and doesn't care because he has all the money he will ever need. I would bet a years wages that our president couldn't tell you the price of a loaf of bread. This has been proven already. Anyone who agrees with this is blinded by lies and doesn't open his/her eyes to how bad things really are right here in our own country.
Dan

Originally Posted by: Logan826Lee, that's not the question we should be asking. The correct question is "How do we prevent a civil war in our country" I'm not saying that would happen, very well could, but doubtfull. Why should we prevent this in other countries ? Why don't we take care of our own country first ? We have starving families and kids right here in our own backyards, why do we keep sending billions of dollars and tons of food over seas to other countries for food and clothing when we can't even provide that here. Why do we rebuild towns, cities, schools in other countries when we can't even provide a solid education right here. Look what happened when Katrina hit, we couldn't even take care of our own then. Why do we have 15yr old kids robbing and killing in this country. I'll tell you why, because there is no more disipline allowed. That's another topic that we can discuss in another thread. ;) This list just goes on. Hey, I'm all for helping out our neighbors, but let's feed and put roofs over own starving and homeless first.

OIL,Oil,Oil,Oil,Oil,Oil,Oil,Oil,its all about the oil.