All we have to do is say "bring it on" and let those terrorists try and get through about a half million or so soldiers before we have to worry, just like the President.
Unbelievable. What "intelligent" responses to a question asked and given an honest answer. If someone said these things to my face, it would not be a pleasent situation, I assure you. As it is, I just took a couple of people off ignore and am seriously tempted to put two others on. I'm fundamentally against censorship, so I never liked doing it. This, to me, is more worthy of a response like that then the guys I took off ignore to "celebrate" the fact that we didn't lose the BBS. Let's see. Basso asks a question: is the U.S., and the world, a safer, better place w/out saddam? I reply: Having gone about it the way we did? No. Of course, that is my opinion. rimrocker simply says "no". The same response. For this we get: From basso: seriously??? regardless of whether you think the war was fought for the right reasons, or indeed whether it should have been fought at all, i can't believe you seriously are suggesting that the world was a better place with saddam in charge of iraq. I had no problem with that. None at all. But that was not what has me seriously pis*ed off. Then he adds: basso: major/vegan, i'm stupefied, i would've thought that it was possible to argue that bush was/is a liar, the war was fought on false pretenses, etc., etc., but that noone but the most diehard saddam apologists could actually say that the US/World/Iraq is worse off now than last spring. simply astounding... Ok, I'm not mentioned, but being the second person to say we are worse off, I'm clearly being spoken to. So now I'm a "noone but the most diehard saddam apologists could actually say that the US/World/Iraq is worse off now than last spring." Then, not wanting to be left out... in the finest traditions of Joe McCarthy, we get from bamaslammer: Anyone else who says otherwise is a damned fool who either doesn't care about what happens to this country or is so brain-dead to not care. There are no gray areas to this issue. Either you support us rooting out the scumbags throughout the world or you want us to plead with the UN for a "mother-may-I" for months and months while these subhuman savages plot more attacks against our republic. Either get on board or get the hell out of the way. Not content with that he adds: Tis better to be a patriotic lover of liberty who sees the glass half full than a nattering nabob of negativism who desires in their heart of hearts that America fail and we are humbled before the world, because being a hyperpower just isn't fair, like the Clintons believed. We are winning! We will triumph! To say otherwise is ridiculous and is simply aid and comfort to the enemy. But that's not enough from bamaslammer: If we had the great group of candy ass people like we have that whine and complain here about how the war is being lost and was a great lie and how we are just destroying the world for no great reason, we would've lost that war. Just like that war, we are in a fight for our very survival. To leave Iraq like a bunch of cowards is ridiculous. That's the only solution you whiners have......bring the troops home now. .................. Ridiculous. Illogical. Irrational. Three words that describe the American defeatist Left, who would love to see us slink away like cowards. Would love to see us humbled before the world so we have to beg the UN for help on broken glass. Jeez, people, I thought 9-11 would give you folks a wakeup call, but I guess you are so hard-headed that your warped and twisted ideology of income redistribution, breaking down our nation's sovereignty and borders, moral equivalency, state worship and hedonism still makes sense despite all that our nation has gone through. OK, from another thread I'll repeat why I think it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq at this time... and I've said this several times in different threads in one form or another: Originally posted by treeman ....................... 2) Set the Special Forces loose - and let them do their jobs. Again, we appear to be afraid to do play dirty or offend anyone in this war, and because of this, we have not set our most powerful asset in this war loos on our enemies. Knowing what I know about SF and how they operate, there is no doubt in my mind that if we simply set these guys loose and gave them whatever they asked for, we would have gotten (killed) both Saddam and Osama by now, Al Qaeda would effectively no longer exist as a viable, operationally capable terrorist organization, the opposition in Iraq would be about finished, and Iraq's neighbors would be sh*tting bricks, unable to pass reforms fast enough. I know what those guys are capable of, and they are not being allowed to do their jobs. That is both State's and DoD's fault. Deckard: I can't argue with this. I'm not sure if we would have gotten the two top targets by now... they're damned slippery bast*rds, but we might have gotten lucky. 3) Punish any government that has any links to terrorists. I am not talking about invading; more along the lines of sanctions, blockades, embargoes, and asset freezes. This should include Iran and especially Saudi. Again, both State's and DoD's fault. Deckard: Wasn't this what we were doing, and could have continued at an enhanced level if needed, in Iraq? 4) Get tough with the Pakistanis - tell them that either they clean out the tribal areas, or we will, and if they do not then send in the 101st and wipe the place clean. Afghanistan will not be stabilized until the tribal areas cease to be a haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Again, both DoD and State dropped the ball here (mostly State). Deckard: Think of how much easier it would have been to do this if we were fully engaged in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, and had the forces in the Afghan theatre to do this? And had been using a much larger force inside Afghanistan to crush the remnants of the Taliban and the foreign combatants that plague the country still? And had not had to siphon off intelligence assets to fight the war in Iraq? You talk about fear and threatening countries in the region. I think what we did so easily in Afghanistan, compared to what the Soviets were able to do, did just that. And with those assets we have in Iraq only partly committed in Afghanistan... I think our potential enemies, like the fundamentalists with Iran in their grip, against the wishes of the Iranian majority, and the mad regime in North Korea... would have far more fear of a US attack knowing those forces were on the table and not bogged down where they didn't have to be. And with Pakistan fearful of their eastern borders, how are they credibly going to stop us cleaning up the tribal areas? Not that it would be easy... but worthwhile and something the current Pakistani Government would welcome... protesting in public. Wars have unintended consequences. What you have pointed out as possible actions points out to me ever more strongly the folly of invading Iraq when we could have waited. treeman never responded, by the way. Of course, he very well may be busy. I wouldn't be surprised. He's one of the members of the military that I support. Sorry for the long post, but I'm stuck at home giving out candy to kiddos while my wife takes my daughter around. My son's at a party, the lucky devil.
The 87 Billion Dollar Money Pit.. Its too long to repost, but well worth the time to read.. Link-Newsweek
Tis better to be a patriotic lover of liberty who sees the glass half full than a nattering nabob of negativism who desires in their heart of hearts that America fail and we are humbled before the world, because being a hyperpower just isn't fair, like the Clintons believed. We are winning! We will triumph! To say otherwise is ridiculous and is simply aid and comfort to the enemy. I love these quotes from before the Rumsfeld memo. I wonder if Republicans think Rumsfeld is giving aid and comfort to the enemy by questioning our long-term strategy and its effectiveness. Perhaps we should just pretend everything is going perfect rather than actually look at the whole picture - that way, we're not helping the enemy. I can't argue with this. I'm not sure if we would have gotten the two top targets by now... they're damned slippery bast*rds, but we might have gotten lucky. I'm interested to see if there's ever a critical analysis of the Tora Bora battle. We had OBL surrounded... except that we relied on Afghan troops to hold him on one side. Why did we do this? Because Rumsfeld put a limit on the number of troops that we could use there. From what I understand, the military was pissed; if we had enough of our own forces there, we likely would have had OBL way back during the height of the Afghan campaign. I'm curious to see (1) if that story ever gets attention and (2) if there's ever a public analysis done on that.
It still beats me when peole start to mention IRAQI freedom when it comes to this war. Truly I am not really what to make of most of what is going on but I am afraid about the gross miss information, lies and psychologically warfare going on on both sides. If folks want to talk about USA freeing others from torture why stop in Iraq? Why no go to every corner of the world where these things are goind on. It saddens me a whole lot the amount of ignorance that is overflowing the great and intelligent nation, USA. It is indeed mind boggling to me that don't really understand what is going. Last night (Thursday) on Hannity and Combs, they should Iraqis being tortured in most gruelsome ways. Hannity then asked - "why will anyone question the war after watching these videos". I was stupified by his stupidity and ignorance. Has he heard of Sharia Law? If that is only reason to justify this war then we (USA) have lots of was on our calender. These Sharia goes on in most fundamental muslim states all over the world on a freaking DAILY bases from Saudi Arabia, Parkistan to African countries like Nigeria and Lybia. There is major Humanitarian problem in Cheytchnia (sp) some other Easter Europe countries. Lets park us our troops and go on a worldwide Liberation/Redemption adventure. One thing I know is clear and will be a direct or indirect ramification from this war - A country like Iran can go ahead and attack Israel and justify it with their own half-baked reason(s). I just hope it does not come to that
so you think that people cannot deside for themeself. and why are you so much smarter then they are? why should YOU deside for them how they should life?? you think that is democratic?? i almost understand why people voted for Bush if the iraqi people deside that they want a islamic government and the usa deside that that isn't a acceptable government then the usa is in no way better then a dictator. do you think a christian gevernment is acceptabel?
If they want one, that's their choice. Or do you not understand self determination as part of freedom? Maybe you don't believe in Freedom afterall.
WHy should we have expended all of those lives and treasure to get a another Iraqi govt. that hates our guts? An Islamic govt. would not be a democratic one and we are going to have to teach the Iraqi people what true freedom really means. If they want that, they need to be re-educated on what true freedom means. And as for me believing in freedom, I also believe that all of our casulties were not so the Iraqis could put in a ignorant theocracy in charge there.
That's a good a question. Why did we expend those lives and treasure? I do know that if any part of it was for the reason of freeing the Iraqi people, then we should free them, not dictate what their government will be. Well if we want to teach them what freedom really means, I think a wrong way to do that would be denying them the freedom to choose their own rulers, and government. That is the opposite of freedom. Re-educated? Are we talking about Chairman Mao style freedom? Sometimes in the beginning freedom means the freedom to make mistakes. Look at our nations history. There was slavery, descrimination, mass slaughter of Indians etc. It would be better to show them what they can have with true freedom, and reasons why any oppressive style govt. might not be the best for the people, but to force anything on them is not freedom at all. It is a course directly opposed to freedom. I would hope they didn't put a theocracy in either, and I don't think that was an intended purpose of the invasion or the loss of lives either. It's ashame that people who planned this didn't look more in depth at that possibility before they rushed into the war. Forcing a system of government on a people against their will, isn't exactly a good reason for losing those lives either. It also certainly won't make anyone warm up to the benefits of democracy. It's far better to let them taste true freedom, offer them advice and point to examples where things have worked and where other things haven't worked. Listen to their concerns, wants and needs(It is their country afterall.) and try to help them. Democracy is better implemented by good example than by force against the will of a people.
So an Islamic democracy is a priori a bad thing? I can tell you one thing that is for sure. A representative democracy in Iraq will have a majority of Shiites in power. One would expect that the character of this new Iraq democracy will reflect Shiite beliefs and values, good or bad. This is how democracy works. What should have been very obvious to the Bush Admin about a post war Iraq democracy was not? I guess we can chalk this up to Bush getting more bad advice and not being smart enough to know he was being misled.
Why should we have expended all of those lives and treasure to get a another Iraqi govt. that hates our guts? Exactly. Are you starting to get it why 50% of the American people don't support Bush's war.
A. How many times can I state that there was no rush war to war! It took months and months for us to dicker with the UN, build up forces, etc. B. That is the nature of war. You don't know how things will turn out, either during or after the conflict. We had no idea that these whackoes would engage in these terror tactics. C. By re-educating I don't mean by the barrel of a gun, I mean by showing them (winning of hearts and minds) that we are improving their lives day by day and that to hate us is to hate your liberators. D. I don't buy that 50 percent of the U.S. population was against the war. Maybe now, that the media is engaged in their biased, "police blotter" style coverage ala Vietnam in an almost deliberate attempt to turn public opinion, but before the war started? E. It is far better that we deal with these sort of problems than if we listened to you libs and tried to "contain" Saddam and then he used his WMD on us or Israel. Better to get someone BEFORE they have them (or the ability to use them) and we have another NK situation where we have to negotiate with those gargoyles rather than obliterate them from existence with a couple of "Deep Throat" bunker buster bombs.
There are people who mentioned this before the war. The Bush Admin chose to ignore them (or better said chose not discuss this publicly). I also strongly suspect that this scenario was considered during the contingency planning for the war. (If it was not considered, that would be gross negligence on the Pentagon's part and heads should roll.)
I disagree, and posted my reasons why. If the planners didn't know, it's because they didn't listen. There were plenty of people saying this kind of thing is exactly what would happen. Good, I agree. I just think we have different ways of winning their hearts. Well as long as inspectors were there, and those inspections were backed up with threat of force, their wouldn't have been any WMD on the horizon. And our troops would still be alive.
The problem isn't so much the losses of life, as Rumsfeld put it - it's part of the business of war, but the opportunity loss. We invaded a country without WMD and hardly anything to do with terrorism and turned it into a hotbed of terrorism and tied our hands in dealing with actual threats from Afghanistan, Pakistan ( can't seem to finish off the top Al Qaeda going on two years...), and North Korea. To top all of this, we are hamstrung ourselves by trying to help Rummy save face and *not* committing enough ground troops early to enforce security so Rummy could proudly go small and tell the Pentagon "I told you so". Anybody who wants to cooperate with us could be dead within the year based on our ineptness. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...s2nov02,1,3900340.story?coll=la-home-leftrail Assassinations Surge in Iraq Sectarian hatred, revenge and anti-occupation sentiments are forces behind a recent wave of killings that signal a new kind of lawlessness. By Alissa J. Rubin , Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — The streets were almost deserted in the gray light before sunrise as the blind sheik, guided by a young boy, walked slowly home from his small mosque after leading the morning prayer on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan. At the corner, the sheik, Ahmed Khudayer, was hit by a volley of bullets and fell to the ground, slain along with his brother Waleed and the boy, Tayseer. Khudayer was Sunni. The neighborhood is largely Shiite, the majority Muslim sect in Iraq whose members were viciously oppressed under Saddam Hussein. And Khudayer's family believes he was targeted because of his faith. Although terrorist bombings have dominated the headlines, a spiraling number of assassinations across this troubled country is exposing other violent currents at work. These riptides of vigilante justice, sectarian violence and resistance to the U.S.-led occupation are pulling apart Iraq's neighborhoods — and signaling a new kind of lawlessness. "During the former regime, the government ruled with an iron fist, but now since Saddam Hussein is gone, there is a security vacuum," said Tahani Kadhim, 35, the sheik's widow, wearing a black mourning dress. "People such as the ones who killed my husband are encouraged by this — they want to create strife among groups, to trigger a civil war." The recent assassinations in Iraq are hardly the first since the end of major combat was declared in May, but the rapid proliferation of the phenomenon is startling. In just the last three weeks, one of Baghdad's three deputy mayors was killed; the police chief of the southern city of Amara was cut down by an assassin's bullets; a pioneering Iraqi journalist in the northern city of Mosul was shot in the back and killed; at least two Sunni clerics were assassinated; there was an attempt on the life of a moderate Shiite cleric; and at least six former high-ranking officials of the Mukhabarat, Hussein's intelligence agency, were gunned down. A close look suggests that no one group is responsible for the killings of recent weeks. The lack of any single culprit indicates that assassination may have become a terrorizing tool used by all sides. For instance, remnants of Hussein's regime appear to be carrying out selected hits — whether on police chiefs or members of the new U.S.-backed government — as a way to discourage Iraqis from helping to form a new order here. And opponents of the old regime who lost family members to its brutality fear that many of those responsible will never be brought to justice, so they are taking revenge into their own hands. The attacks on Sunni religious leaders appear to be sectarian, instigated by the majority Shiites. At the grass-roots level, the two Muslim branches have gotten along, so some Iraqis conjecture that outside groups seeking to sow suspicion and unrest are behind the killings. As for the attacks on Shiite clerics, local police believe they are the result of rivalries among moderate and more radical Shiite factions. Assassinations are difficult to preempt, especially when used as a tactic by many groups at once, said Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who recently spent several months in Baghdad advising the Interior Ministry. The key is intelligence, he said. But overall, he said, the phenomenon is hardly surprising in a postwar environment. "For the most part, this is no different from the postwar situation we saw in Bosnia and Kosovo," Kerik said, noting that retribution killings were a factor in both places in the Balkans. He said some police were being executed because, unbeknownst to the Americans, they were members of the former regime who had "wormed their way back into positions of power" and their communities angrily dealt with them. However, Kerik said he was hard put to account for the killing of clerics. The solution is more Iraqi police, more Iraqi military, more Iraqi forces, he said. On Saturday, the chief administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, vowed to speed up the training of Iraqi forces in a bid to combat the attacks on civilians. By next September, he said, more than 200,000 Iraqis will be serving as police officers, soldiers and border guards, if Congress completes the appropriation of $20 billion in additional funds. For the victims of these killings and their families, it is already too late. In at least three cases, the victims knew before they died that their days were numbered. With the exception of the Mukhabarat members, many of whom suspect that they are targets but receive no formal warnings, the victims knew they were at risk and decided to continue the work they believed in. On Tuesday, journalist Ahmed Shawkat, an Iraqi Kurd, went to the roof at his newspaper offices in Mosul to use his satellite telephone. A few minutes later, his son Sindbad and his daughter Roaa, both of whom worked with him at the paper, heard two shots. When Sindbad rushed up the stairs, he found his father with a bullet hole in his back and another in his right hand — a symbolic attack on his writing, Sindbad believes. Doctors could not save him. Sindbad had urged his father to travel with a bodyguard, or at least a gun, after Shawkat received a written threat signed by someone who said he was "a Muslim speaking for all Muslims," but Shawkat refused. Just days before, his father had told him, "The word 'fear' is not in my dictionary," he said. Shawkat, a soft-spoken middle-aged man who trained as a biologist before becoming a journalist, was filled with plans when Hussein's regime ended. Persecuted by Iraqi security forces for his outspoken critiques of the regime when Hussein was still in power, he had fled to the semi-independent Kurdish areas in the north, but when the dictator was toppled, he returned to Mosul, his native city, and started the independent newspaper Bilattjah, which means No Direction. The weekly's articles criticized all sides but supported the idea of a partnership with the Americans. Roaa also believes that her father was targeted because he had written a book, "Shabbak: The Forgotten Kurds," which argued that Shiite Kurds were the true founders of ethnically and religiously divided Mosul. Some Arab academics maintain that Sunni Muslims founded the city. Her father had a deal with a publisher to print the book, she said, but the man refused to distribute the finished work because he also had received threats. The assassinations range wildly in sophistication. The failed attempt Wednesday on the life of Abdul Mehdi, a spokesman for the moderate Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, was amateurish — a grenade flung by a bicyclist as the cleric and his acolytes left the evening prayer, injuring Mehdi and six others. But the killers who executed one of Baghdad's deputy mayors, Faris Abdul Razzaq Assam, on Sunday appear to have been professionals. Muatasim Abdul Razzaq Assam, 42, who spoke lovingly of his brother wearing "just his slippers and a track suit to a nearby public cafe to sip his tea" before he was killed, said each step of the assassination was choreographed. Two cars pulled up. Two gunmen got out. One, armed with a Kalashnikov, loosed a barrage of bullets over the heads of the teahouse patrons. The other attacker, who was armed with a handgun, shot five bullets into Assam's chest. Then the assassin dashed into one car while his partner continued firing to cover the escape before fleeing in the second car. Muatasim Assam said it was hard to know who was responsible because his brother was widely liked. "It is possible it is remnants of Saddam," he said. "But it's also possible these are people from outside Iraq who want to create as many problems as they can in order to suck America further into the internal affairs of Iraq because they're among those also targeted for change by the Americans." U.S. officials believe that Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, neighboring countries where the United States is urging political change, have allowed foreign fighters to enter Iraq. Assam, like Shawkat and some of the police chiefs who have been killed, had many plans for the new Iraq. He was part of the delegation to the recent Madrid donors conference for Iraq and had just returned the day before he was killed. When he came home and saw his mother, "he was so excited," his brother said. "He said: 'Mother, I just came from abroad and I have gotten you $4 billion for Baghdad. I am going to make Baghdad a paradise for you.' " But he too had received warnings that his days could be numbered — although he did not want to believe it, his 15-year-old son, Yusef, said. He said his father had made him promise not to frighten the family by telling them of the threats. Like many of the victims, Khudayer also had received a warning — a nightmarish one. The blind cleric also made the decision to stand up to the unseen menace. "When he was standing at the entrance to the mosque, he would hear the voices of passersby whispering, 'We are going to kill you sooner or later,' " said his widow, who, after her husband was blinded in the 1980-88 war with Iran, had read aloud to him the Koran and commentaries on it so that he could become a sheik. "Because they knew he could not see them, they would haunt him with whispers." Now the family is planning to move away from the neighborhood — a step Khudayer would have resisted, his widow said, just as he resisted her pleas to stop going to the mosque. "He was a faithful Muslim," she said. "He believed in destiny, and after the warnings, he said to me, 'Whenever destiny comes, I will face martyrdom in the face of God. It is impossible to leave the mosque empty of preachers.' " Salar Jaff of The Times' Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.
B. That is the nature of war. You don't know how things will turn out, either during or after the conflict. We had no idea that these whackoes would engage in these terror tactics. This is ridiculous. Info from the Washington Post in July: June 24, 2003 Wolfowitz Concedes Errors on Iraq "Before the invasion, for example, US Intelligence were persistent in warning the Defense Department that Iraqis would resort to "armed opposition" after the war. The Army's chief of staff warned that a larger stability force would be needed. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team disagreed, confident that Iraqi military and police units would help secure a weakening nation." Or, how about this: "The State Department and other agencies spent many months and millions of dolars drafting strategies on issues ranging from a postwar legal code to oil policy. But after President Bush granted authority over reconstruction to the Pentagon, the Defense Department all but ignored State and its working groups." There's plenty more, but I'm not going to both typing it all out. It's a load of revisionist crap to say that we had no idea what to expect. Plenty of people knew - this administration chose to ignore them, just as they do all information that disagrees with what they want to hear.
