Al-Qaida Leader Captured

[doogie]

Actually, it’s “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

[WhiteCaesar]

Jeff, why don’t you respond to my second post instead of lobbing insults back and forth with 100meters? You and I were having a relatively rational, thoughtful conversation. Don’t you feel like the “Sad State of Affairs” in the Politics forum really just boils down to the tendency of any discussion to degenerate into an exchange of “snaps”?

[JeffR]

[quote]100meters wrote:
JeffR wrote:
lumpy,

I got this from the Department of Defense.

Please look it up.

I have to admit, I feel bad taking advantage of you this way.

However, I’m still your friend.

JeffR
I understand where you got it from.
It doesn’t change the fact that these aren’t the weapons we were looking for does it?
[/quote]

lumpy,

I also understand what you are saying. However, there is a vast difference between the Department of Defenses’ official response and an unnamed source.

Second, W has said that any WMD in the hands of hussein was an unacceptable risk. In fact, I don’t remember him ever stating “Well, we are cool with WMD before 19… AD.”

Again, we did think there was more production than ultimately turned out to be the case.

However, the fact that hussein was hiding these weapons and was on a course to restarting mass production has been proven.

Finally, I understand the dems are desperate for an issue to run on. However, de facto advocating more American casualties from a war with a loaded hussein regime, isn’t the right one.

JeffR

[JeffR]

Hey WC,

I didn’t mean any disrespect to your views by not responding.

However, lumpy and many others have dismissed this find far too quickly.

That took priority.

Jeff, I understand that Saddam was a bad guy and that he may very well have wanted to restart his WMD program. The reason that this is so different than his actually having had the weapons is that we insisted he had them; that is, our governement disdained all doubters and rejected a great deal of contradictory intelligence and hammered home the idea that he had huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was closing in on a nuke.

Would it be fair to say that the most reputable of the world’s intelligence community said exactly that?

Don’t you think it’s fair to say that you go with your best guess with intelligence?

Given hussein’s track record, wasn’t it fair to make exactly the suppositions that we did?

(Zeb, by the way, is right that many of the world’s intelligence agencies were wrong about the state of Iraq’s weapons programs, but he willfully ignores that the Bush Administration willfully ignored anything or anybody that contradicted its views of the situation.)

I disagree with the spirit of the last part. It borders on “Bush manipulated the intelligence.” That has been shown by bipartisan investigation to be a false charge.

He made the best decision given his information.

Now, unless you can give me concrete evidence that Bush “willfully” manipulated the evidence, I’m going to continue to believe he made his call in good faith.

It’s not much of a stretch to say that this contributed to the Iranians’ conclusion that the only way they could avoid invasion would be to develop their own nuclear program.

Interesting. Iraq could also have further swollen the ranks of reform. That is what we hoped and continue to encourage.

For example, Saudi Arabia responded quite differently. They have begun to have elections.

Further, if your logic is true, I have to believe that the Afghanistan invasion was at least as responsible for iran’s reaction as Iraq.

I assume you supported the Afghanistan invasion?

Finally, I guarantee that iran was in the Administration’s crosshairs. They are now sandwiched between Afghanistan and Iraq.

They are going to have to decide whether to continue to be part of the Axis of Evil, or push to reform.

It is also not much of a stretch to say that this situation has hurt our credibility with our ALLIES, who might be less likely to support our next action – say, against Iran, who really does appear to have a serious WMD program.

Ask yourself this question: With few exceptions, do you think the allies who were “offended” by the Iraqi invasion, truly had the stomach to deal with the problem?

Which is the lesser of the two evils? A hostile, al qaeda supporting hussein, loaded with transportable WMD or our luke-warm allies having their sweaty little Anti-Bush marches?

I guess the other thing that so upsets me about this Iraq war is that I was screaming in late 2001 for us to invade Afghanistan with even a fraction of the force we brought to bear in Iraq. (I understand we didn’t have time for such a massive build-up, but we could have scrambled tens of thousands of troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, Germany, South Korea, etc.). I think it’s pretty shameful that we didn’t surround Tora Bora and wrap it up tight enough that nothing could get out alive and that Osama (or his body) wasn’t the one we pulled out of a spider hole.

Both bin laden and hussein needed a killin’.

There are arguments on both side of a massive buildup in Afghanistan.

To play devil’s advocate: I present the example of the soviet’s in Afghanistan. That terrain plays hell with large conventional forces.

I think we played it just about right in Afghanistan.

That isn’t to say that I’m not saddened that bin laden is still running his evil mouth.

I understand that Saddam probably wanted to hurt us (although I do think it’s important that he was far from being able to)

How do you figure that? Did you read the DOD experts saying that any of the WMD transported is toxic?

I believe, if you check the records, that both the clinton and Bush Administrations were and are scared to death about a vial of sarin being released into the atmosphere by a terrorist.

How hard would it be? Remember Tokyo circa 1995?

and that sooner or later we would have had to deal with him; what I don’t understand was why we got so fixated on him before we finished dealing with the guys (Osama and friends) who DID hurt us and are trying to do it again.

WC, are you prepared to go to war with Pakistan? We would have to violate their soverignty to get bin laden?

Once he was in Pakistan, would 12,000,0000,000 troops in Afghanistan made any difference?

Would it have done us any good to stand across the border and hurl insults?

Maybe if the 12,000,000,000 troops had shouted loud enough they could have shook bin laden’s dialysis machine to pieces.

JeffR

[WhiteCaesar]

I never said Bush “manipulated” anything, I said he “ignored” reports that contradicted his view of the matter. This has been pretty well documented also. It has also been well documented that Bush had a hard-on for Saddam and was talking about invading Iraq as early as September 2001, well before Bin-Laden made it to Pakistan – I still don’t understand why we didn’t make sure no one got out of Tora Bora.

Also, I’m not sure why you think getting Osama even after he made it out of Afghaniastan would involve going to war with Pakistan. If we were spending the time and resources and international clout that we’ve devoted into Iraq instead pressuring Pakistan to help us go get Osama and Zawahiri just like they helped us get Khalid Sheik Muhammad and a number of other baddies that we’d never have been able to get without their help, do you honestly believe we wouldn’t have been able to get him by now? I realize Pakistan has a lot of people in it who don’t like us, but it’s ruled by a pragmatist who has the near-total support of the army. When we took aim at Afghanistan, he dropped the Taliban like a hot potato even though that was not a popular move with many of his countrymen. Do you really think he’d go to war with us to keep us out of his lawless border region?

In addition to all of that, I still don’t see anything in your posts that explains why Iraq was more dangerous than Iran, which has lots of WMDs supports many terrorist oragnizations, including Hizb’allah which has attacked and killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans.

[JeffR]

[quote]WhiteCaesar wrote:
I never said Bush “manipulated” anything, I said he “ignored” reports that contradicted his view of the matter. This has been pretty well documented also. It has also been well documented that Bush had a hard-on for Saddam and was talking about invading Iraq as early as September 2001, well before Bin-Laden made it to Pakistan – I still don’t understand why we didn’t make sure no one got out of Tora Bora.[/quote]

They tried. Again, the rub between large conventional forces versus fewer casualties.

Everyone had a hard on to remove saddam. Remember regime change was a clinton directive.

Also, I’m not sure why you think getting Osama even after he made it out of Afghaniastan would involve going to war with Pakistan. If we were spending the time and resources and international clout that we’ve devoted into Iraq instead pressuring Pakistan to help us go get Osama and Zawahiri just like they helped us get Khalid Sheik Muhammad and a number of other baddies that we’d never have been able to get without their help, do you honestly believe we wouldn’t have been able to get him by now? I realize Pakistan has a lot of people in it who don’t like us, but it’s ruled by a pragmatist who has the near-total support of the army. When we took aim at Afghanistan, he dropped the Taliban like a hot potato even though that was not a popular move with many of his countrymen. Do you really think he’d go to war with us to keep us out of his lawless border region?

Musharaf would be dead if he gives up bin laden.

I would like you to read a little more about him.

His control of the country is tenuous at best.

For example, he was forced to relinquish his control of the military in 2004 due to the hard line islamic element in his government.

Further, he’s escaped some large assassination attempts. There were two within two months if memory serves.

I think if we invaded pakistan, he would either oppose us or he would be killed.

Giving up bin laden is one hell of a lot different to the fundamentalists than his lieutenants.

In addition to all of that, I still don’t see anything in your posts that explains why Iraq was more dangerous than Iran, which has lots of WMDs supports many terrorist oragnizations, including Hizb’allah which has attacked and killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans.

You do realize that saddam was harboring and supporting al qaeda. He even did P.R. work for bin laden himself.

Proof: Please read the saddam tapes.

JeffR

[Tokoya]

[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
doogie wrote:

These dipshits hated us and hated Israel long before we went into Iraq.

Agreed, and how many recruits went unfazed by the invasion into Afghanistan but decided to join up after the invasion of Iraq?

I seriously doubt any Muslims sitting on the terrorist fence shrugged his shoulders because of Afghanistan but was outraged by Iraq enough to strap a bomb-vest on.

And your evidence? Israel was hated yes for their anti-humanitarian actions against Palestinians. The US was hated at that point for supporting them. Since it was only muslim countries that were complaining about this, most muslims saw the US actions as a war on Islam.

So why would they not be angry when the US struck Afghanistan and Iraq? I’m not saying the muslims are completley free of fault. But it seems to me that you guys all like to see one side of the story, instead of both, as if you prefer to leave your views on that one side and not prefer to even approach the other arguments.

As for coming up with left-wing theories. Where are the proofs for right wing theories. Why are so many people here just speculating on both sides. All I can see are a few users ranting about conspiracy theories, while they get their information from videos hashed together using pizza money, and then we have people who think muslims are the most evil people alive, without even studying the religion.

Its good they got that terrorist leader. But its too late for it to allow the war to get better. Both sides have already gotten themselves into a spiral that they can’t get out of. Unless both choose to stop fighting, embrace peace, and at least talk about how they can reach a mutual agreement. Which as we know, will never happen.[/quote]

It’s all about Iraq, isn’t it?

Yep, it’s all about Iraq and…

India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Israel and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Germany and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and East Timor and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and Chad and Canada and China and…

…and pretty much wherever Muslims believe their religion tells them to:

“Fight and slay the Unbelievers wherever ye find them. Seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war.”
Qur’an, Sura 9:5

[lothario1132]

I love my liberal brothers here at T-Nation, but I’m sorry if I can’t join with you this once in the “Bush sucks” bandwagon when it comes to Iraq.

Bush just might be an evil, self-serving jerk… I don’t know. But going into Iraq was a good fucking idea for many reasons, and we’ve gone on about it many times here already.

Are we really going to do this again?

[Marmadogg]

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
I love my liberal brothers here at T-Nation, but I’m sorry if I can’t join with you this once in the “Bush sucks” bandwagon when it comes to Iraq.

Bush just might be an evil, self-serving jerk… I don’t know. But going into Iraq was a good fucking idea for many reasons, and we’ve gone on about it many times here already.

Are we really going to do this again?[/quote]

Too bad he F’ed that up.