Don't you just love these liberals who have declared themselves smarter than the CIA, other world intelligence agencies, the FBI and the US Military on matters of Iraq? Nevermind the fact that they have never once set foot in Iraq. Nevermind the fact that they have never once conducted research on the topic that wasn't from media publications or secondhand sources. Nevermind the fact that they wouldn't even recognize a chemical weapon if it was directly in front of their face. No sir! None of that matters! All that matters to the liberals is playing the game of I told you so. Nanny nanny boo boo, we were right! We told you Iraq wasn't a direct threat! We told you there were no WMD! We told you Saddam was trustworthy! What an utter joke. Monday morning quarterbacking at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. Hindsight is after all 20/20. The situation has yet to run its course. The initial transition period will always be difficult, as we have seen. Why are the liberals so quick to denounce our military's efforts as a failure? Why are they so eager to assign blame to our military and its leaders? Maybe because this is their desired outcome? Maybe because it will help them get elected? The liberals whine and moan about every single policy decision. This we can agree on. For them to sit here and say they were right is pure lunacy. It's ridiculous. Really, it is. Liberals like Batman probably sit at home and watch poker on ESPN and declare the players stupid for not knowing what the other guys cards are. Heck, they can see it on the screen! Why can't the others players figure it out! This is hindsight, my friends. Leadership is about making decisions using the best information available *at the time*. You have to make educated guesses. You have to try to read between the lines. You will face uncertainty, and you have to navigate through it, with sound judgment. Saddam had a history of lying. Saddam had a history of using WMD. Saddam refused to comply with the UN. Saddam could not account for his previously acknowledged WMD. Should we have just accepted him at his word?!? Should we have continued to make US foreign policy seem empty and actionless? Should we have allowed the rape rooms and torture chambers to continue to operate? Should we have allowed a brutal dictator to cause instability in the region and fund terror in Israel and beyond? *That* my friends is crazy.
Please show me where any liberal (or conservative for that matter) that said any of this? You can't because you are a liar. You use sensationalist language to stir emotions. Nevermind that what you claim is clearly false. Your objective is to divert attention from facts and onto emtionaly-charged flag waving bull****. Flag waving is good for morale, but is useless when evaulating the job skills of a US President during war time.
You're such a joke, Jorge. Since you love to point out others' grammar and spelling errors, I feel compelled to tell you "nevermind" is not a word. It's the name of a Nirvana record. I don't think I know more than our intelligence agencies. That's Bush and Cheney you're thinking of. They're the ones that took the intel they wanted and sent back the rest. And lied about it. No wonder you're doing it too. None of us ever said we believed Saddam and I certainly never said there weren't WMD's. I also never said Iraq definitely wasn't an immediate threat. I said that as soon as the White House could provide ANY compelling evidence of an immediate threat OR a connection to 9/11 I would change my position on the war and support it. I said they hadn't, you said they had. I was right, you were wrong. And you're not man enough to admit it. You're a liar and a joke. And it's a waste of time arguing with you. There are intelligent posters here who have supported the war (Jorge obviously excluded). If they would just say, "Okay, I was wrong on this point. We were wrong on this point. But what about this?" then I would listen and we could continue the conversation. But they don't do that. They pretend their core arguments from before the war don't count. They pretend they didn't happen. And I stop listening. With regard to Jorge, I stopped listening a long time ago. He hasn't made a good (or, really, I believe, even a sincere) point on this board in over a year.
Batman, insults aside, please answer these questions so that I can try to understand your position. I am making a good faith effort here to understand your stance: 1) Do you not think it is a threat to our national security to not enforce UN treaties regarding WMD? 2) Do you agree that Saddam did not comply with the UN inspectors? 3) Do you agree that Saddam did not account for previously-accounted for WMD? 4) What in your mind constitutes an "actionable threat" or an "immediate danger" to US security? 5) Do you believe 9-11 changed the way we evaluate the danger mentioned in question #4? 6) Do you disagree that Saddam funded terror in Israel? Do you not think that this logically translates to funding terror against US interests? Thanks in advance.
TJ at the time of the upcoming invasion many of us were arguing against it. We used what we believed were the most sound reasonable information we had at the time. Don't you love that history has shown us to be correct, and even more than that, it's gone beyond what we thought. We believed there probably was WMD's, and even that turns out to be wrong.
Ask much as rag on old Jorge here these are very important questions and mainly because I haven't got a respectable answer to them is why I continue to support our efforts.
1. The UN resolutions should be enforced. However, I believe if the only type of enforcement people can imagine is invasion and occupation of a non threatening nation, then it show's the limitation of their mind. Considering we had the option to send in thousands of intel agents to Iraq as well as have democratic elections there we were far from the last resort. War should always be the last resort. 2. At which point? There were obviously a number of missles which extended the range allowed. Prior to the invasion Saddam was in the process of destroying those rockets. 3. Saddam did in fact send a huge stack of information stating that he did not have WMD. History has shown him to be correct. 4. Actionable threat to our security would be someone having the means, willingness, and intent of attacking our country. We would need to know that no other means of dealing with the threat were available other than war, before actually going to war. These conditions were not met. 5. 9-11 Should change where our priorities lay. They should lay with the terrorists that were a threat to our nation, not to a govt. that had no connection to 9/11 6. I believe there is some intel stating that Saddam shipped weapons to the PLA. That of course should be further investigated and flushed out. That also does not constitute a threat to the U.S.
No. Complete and utter bull****. You are not making a "good faith" effort at anything. You have never made a good faith effort to "understand" my stance. In fact, you have taken every opportunity to misrepresent my stance in the most ridiculous light, with all the 'why do you trust Saddam' and 'why do you hate the troops' stuff. You've been doing it for over a year, regardless of everything I've posted to the contrary. You're lucky I even reply to you considering what an incredible ******* you've been in these ways. Virtually everything you've said about "my stance" on these issues would be considered libelous if BBS's mattered at all. But here we go again. 1. They were being enforced through containment. The only time I would consider UN resolution violations to constitute a serious threat to our national security is when the violator possessed the means and intent to threaten our national security. Saddam arguably demonstrated intent. I don't actually think he did. I think he demonstrated a wish to inflict harm, but not intent, but I won't argue against the intent question because it's irrelevant without the means. He in no way demonstrated the means though, even if you believed every bit of the since refuted WMD claims. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. 4. See number one. 5. Yes. And if there had ever been any evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 or ever demonstrated means and intent to commit a similar terrorist attack in the future, I would have supported the war. 6. No, I do not disagree. And yes, compensation to suicide bombers in an allied country does, in my opinion, constitutes funding terror against an American ally if that's what you meant to say. I'm not sure American interests is the right way to put it. He didn't compensate people who blew up American people or property. If you equate our allies with our interests, yes, I'll grant you this one. It is, however, a far, far cry from a mushroom cloud at an American baseball game and it is also a far cry from a mushroom cloud in Israel. We aren't even engaged in a war against those suicide bombers or the organizations that order those bombings themselves, let alone people who sent their families money. We are not bombing Hamas. We are not sending American kids to die to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. And we never have. That dispute has never risen to a level that was considered worthy of spilling American blood. And, in fact, if you want to get so religious about UN resolutions, Israel has been in plain violation of theirs for years. And if you want to send Americans to die in order to remove anyone who's given money to the families of suicide bombers then we are sure as hell going to have a draft, because there are a lot of other countries we need to be attacking. Try as you might to define the war issue as people who hate Saddam versus people who love him, people who support American troops versus people who oppose them and people who cared about those who died in 9/11 versus people who didn't, those are all lies. And virtually everyone here sees through this simplistic hoohah. If they didn't before, if they made the mistake of being suckered by these patently bogus divisions, they don't anymore. Either that or half the country are lunatic left wing radical fringe Saddam lovers who hate America and the American troops. Said it before, I'll say it again. You're a joke and a liar.
