At this point, let's tally up what we don't know, but with regard to this invasion have always WANTED to know. Who knows? Maybe the info is out there, and someone else can link us to it. I've wanted to know: what's life like for those Iraqis in towns opposite in size and significance (to the US) from Baghdad. I mean, what's going on in those small towns along the road from, for example, Al Fullujaa to Ar Rutbah? We never get their story. Or maybe we do, and I've just missed it, in which case, enlighten me.
My question is why were/are people so utterly outraged when we dismantled a brutal regime. Disagreement is one thing, but overpowering rage is completely another. If you want to debate the merits of this fine, but what have seen over the last year is surreal to say the least.
Re: Re: Iraq Invasion: what questions have you had that have never been answered/explored? When you go out of the way to kick your mom in the mouth on the way to killing a heinous convicted murderer who has terminal cancer, your family might want to question the way you go about your business. And when you respond to your family's concerns by saying "Hey; I just killed a murderer," they might submit that they agree the murderer was bad, but that their concern is what kind of man YOU were becoming; for your family, its not about this person or that person; its about who YOU are...
I have Iraqi friends who have gone back and visited and the general consensus was that Baghdad is in ruins but the rest of the country is improving fast. The BBC just ran an article about how much of Iraq is on the upswing and Bill Archer posted an article from the Sun in the Uk stating the same.
I've got a question: How come we didn't make an effort to secure those sites where Iraq had nuclear materials? Who benefits from that oversight? 'Cause it sure ain't me, wondering where the nuclear material has gone off to and who's doing what with it now.
Re: Re: Re: Iraq Invasion: what questions have you had that have never been answered/explored? Mel, that is a very good analogy. Pretty much sums up the situation.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq Invasion: what questions have you had that have never been answered/explored? Except that this heinous murderer did not have terminal cancer and both he and his heirs continued torturing and murdering people, and were unlikely to go away or stop their heinous acts in the foreseable future unless we intervened. A better analogy is that of a neighborhood thug or gang leader whose organization is killing and raping innocent people in the neighborhood. We go to the police but they are corrupt and fail to act, because some have interest in not seeing the thug go away. So finally, convinced that the cops will do nothing, we get a few of our neighbors together and go kill the thug. (Or, to be more precise, we capture him). Then we are the ones accused of lawlessness by the very same people who stood by and let him commit all the henous crimes.
Re: Re: Re: Iraq Invasion: what questions have you had that have never been answered/ I'm puzzled...are you saying the UN is the United States' mom? Because from my vantage point they look more like the impotent deranged uncle people don't like to talk about. And, Iraq had terminal cancer? Are you implying that there was an END in sight to Saddam's cancerous reign? Because he had like 2 other sons and grandsons who were destined to rule with an iron fist for many decades. Your analogy...in a word...sucks. Not to mention that it's stupid.
Wow, I'm agreeing with Mel. I expect the antichrist anyday now. Hussein was not a threat anymore. We invaded a country where we're not really wanted, where we're spending billions, and where we're expending resources needed to fight terrorism. We've opened up Iraq to terror, and meanwhile the regime that contributed 15 hijackers for the 9/11 attacks is airing commercials touting their great friendship with the US. Mel's analogy isn't entirely accurate. What we actually did is set fire to a neighborhood because we wanted to get rid of a crackhouse that didn't really have any drugs. Sure, we're rebuilding the crackhouse, and we know it won't have drugs for a while, but everyone else is pissed at us, because their houses are all fucked up.
Would you tell that to all those who were being killed, raped and tortured, including members of the wrong ethnic groups, athletes who were representing their country, and women whose only crime was to catch the eye of one of Saddam's sons?
Sure, just as soon as you tell the people being killed and raped and tortured, including members of the wrong ethnic groups, in the Congo why we arn't lifting a finger. Or in Liberia. Or in Sudan. Or in plenty of other places. Hey, you can even explain to the people in Iraq why it is that you voted for a guy that explicitly said he would not get involved in foriegn nations.
Except that he did most of those things while our leaders' response was this... --------------- My question is: Where was right wing outrage over Saddam before 1991 when he was gassing his own people (with WMDs our leaders provided him) and committing most of his other evil actions? Where were the cries for the poor Iraqi people while Saddam was the U.S.'s fair haired boy? My other question is: Why are the right wingers who were so outraged about Clinton lying about something so utterly frivolous as a blow job bending over backwards to find excuses for a president who lied to start a pointless war instead of fighting terrorism? A third question, if I may: Why are the rightwingers not screaming for Bush to release the full 9/11 report? Why does the Right hate America enough to favor terrorist-funding Saudis over Americans?
I would like the full story about the WMDs before the election, even if our intelligence sources must be compromised.
Presumably the same things that the current administration would tell to residents of Uzbekistan. The guy shaking Rumsfeld's hand is Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan and a post 9/11 ally of the US. Karimov shares with the current administration a concern about Islamic fundamentalists and a distaste for restraint in dealing with them. Since Karimov doesn't have a Guantanamo-like place to stash them, he prefers torture and murder. According to the Guardian, the US has given half a billion dollars in aid to a guy who apparently had a couple of prisoners boiled to death in 2002.http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,963497,00.html The office of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) has compiled a searchable database of 237 innacurate, misleading or outright false statements made by Bush and the gang. http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/ So, we know that the WMD stuff was a sales pitch and nothing more; ditto the links to AQ and other terrorist groups. The status of Karimov tells us that human rights wasn't really the issue either. My question is still: what were the real reasons for the invasion and why didn't they tell us?
Ah, here's the rub. Usually, this is the response I get to my views on Iraq. My other points go unanswered, and the response is effectively "he was a bad man". Part of the answer is, of course, what so many have given above - we liked him when he committed the worst of his atrocities, and supported him. However, that's a bit of a half-answer; if you get somehing wrong the first time, shouldn't you correct it the second time? I'm not fully comfortable with "he was our ally before", so here's a fuller explanation. As of the second Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was not an international threat. This we know for certain, and Ritter had said there were no WMD in Iraq a year before the war. This was widely known. His army was in disarray. He was not a supporter of terrorism aside from the money he gave to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, which while abhorrent, would rank him around 7th place for worst terrorism state offender in the region, let alone the world. In short, on a macro level, he was not a threat. Now, on an internal macro level, was he a threat? The answer here is more complicated, but ultimately has to be no. The Kurds, thanks to the first Gulf War and the strictly enforced no fly zone had been autonomous for about 9 years. There had been no large depredations against them recently. Similarly, the South of Iraq was also under a no fly zone, and Hussein's activity there was severely curtailed. All the mass graves we are discovering now are very old. At least 10 years - when we were still allied with him. On an internal macro level, Saddam was not a threat. Now, to the specific cases you mention - killings, rapes and tortures of women Saddam's sons liked and of athletes. This is a very bad thing. As for ethnic violence - there's no proof of large scale violence against ethnic groups in the last 5 years. So what we're left with is really the charge that his sons were monsters and that members of his political elite were likely to suffer accidents - like accidentally being shot 8 times after having your testicles electricuted. This, again, is a bad thing. But think to yourself. Does this justify a war? I mean, really - two monstrous children of a toothless regime justifies the spending of billions of dollars, the shift of funds, soldiers and resources away from Afghanistan and the real war on terror. The destabilization of potentially the whole region for a country that has never experienced democracy (our other "democratic successes" did), and the ludicrously high cost of rebuilding a country we destroyed because Saddam and his sons were bad people. This on top of our alienation of most of the world (if not their governments too - see Spain) and a growing dissatisfaction with our foreign policy. Was this decision worth it? In the end, its all about a cost-benefit analysis. Sure, this sounds inhuman and harsh, but its ultimately true. We, as a country, have the ability to remedy the suffering of almost any human being on this planet. The Tibetans, for instance - if we fought a war with China to free Tibet, we would likely win. But we won't. Why? Because Chinese actions in Tibet aren't bad? Of course they are. Its because the war will be far more costly and dangerous in our eyes than freeing the people of Tibet from oppression. Neither China nor Saddam were Hitler (and even if Saddam was, I've shown above he was contained). In the face of predictable brutal dictatorial behavior, this cost benefit analysis must be created. And the Bush administration simply failed on that level. The advantages of eliminating Saddam and his sons is simply not worth the commitment we put in. There are people struggling far worse - hell, pick two African countries at random and one of them is likely worse off than Iraq. Or how about Turkmenistan and Belarus? Justifying the war on the calculus of "Saddam was a bad man" leaves you open to the question of "how low does the benefit have to be for us to help people?" I'm sure that the Shah's family is much poorer now - should we invade Iran and prop his son on the throne because the Persians did nasty things to his family? No, of course not. Why? Cost benefit analysis. I also won't go into the shameful selling of this war, which suggested from the very beginning that an ulterior motive was behind it. As Perle has practically admitted, WMDs were picked because everyone happened to agree with them - the facts were tailored to the dogma. The "intelligence gaffe" which was almost certainly massaged, the Niger Uranium claim which had been debunked in the New York Times before Bush even mentioned it, the linking of Iraq to terror (patently untrue) all suggested that the rationale you have was not really considered by Bush. Which is a shame, because the people of Iraq deserve freedom. At the end of the day, however, we are not the people who should have given it to them at this time. It sounds bad to say it, and I don't really like to think that way...........but its true.
Apparently a 1 February first draft of the speech Colin Powell was supposed to make was prepared for him by Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in late January. According to US News and World Report, the draft contained such questionable material that Powell lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit." As we now know that Powell went ot the UN with clear bullshit, albeit a flavour of his own liking, I'd like to know exactly what that first draft said.
Not to defend anyone, but that Saddam/Rummy pic is so over the top. You know the divorce rate in the US is about 50%? Why couldn't the US have seen later that Saddam was a backstabbing bastard and cut ties with him? Oh, yea, in the divorce, Saddam got to keep all the goods he received during the marriage. Is there any other context to that picture that I don't know? Explore/answer at will.
It all really seems self explanatory to me. Bushies in their mind truly believe that the war against Iraq (at the time) would help the war on terror. I completely and totally disagreed with their assessment then and I disagree with it now. I really don't have any questions about anything really. All that is left is the popular election to get rid of Bush. Problem is I am choosing between a President who led our country into a war that was a misuse of valuable resources, and a Senator who voted in favor of the same war. If I had any question it would be for Kerry: Based on your experiences during the Vietnam War, how on god's green earth could you vote for 1) a resolution that mirrored the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and 2) that same resolution without yet knowing how the UN would act with regards to the Iraq issue if you so strongly believe in multilateralism, the role of the UN, etc.