"A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.
Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda’s overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein “only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden.”
The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false information on Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran’s, a 2002 White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be continued."
Woohaa, Bush funding Iran’s intelligence service ! ! !
Hmmmm, how can they spin this and blame the CIA???[/quote]
“Never under estimate the power of stupidity.”
Besides I wouldn’t want to bother you in this, a day of celebration with your bretheren. Have you run out of candy to hand to kids to mark this victorious occasion. Have you yet renewed your vow to kill the infidel yet? I’d say you probably have only about 7 days left to kill at least one American anyway possible. Don’t you have a parade to join in somwhere in Gaza. I wouldn’t think you’d have time to troll today.
Well DUH! All you had to do was listen to Mikey Moore, watch F-9/11! Iraq was a land of milk and honey where the kids flew kites to while away their carefree days and the adults basked in the moderate climes. No one ever got sick and no one ever died.
…early 2001, C.Rice said that Saddam had no WMD’s and no capabilities to produce them. Somehow, over the course of a year, that changed. Ofcourse he didn’t suddenly have the capability to produce WMD’s, but that did not suit Bush…
…i’d like to read any info on this claim. As a secular head of state, Saddam stood to loose alot of power if he allowed fundamentalist muslims in his circle. Saddam and OBL had opposing ideologies. Do the Saudi’s have blood on their hands too? Yet they remain close friends of the Bush family. That’s not right, is it?
…yesss, well, if they lie about that, what else did they lie about? If they have no problems with lying to their allies, why would you and me believe anything else they say? Again, somehow it doesn’t matter how they act, as long as you agree with the end result?
[quote]If we could go back to 9-12-01 knowing what we know now - I am sure we would have done things differently. However - we don’t have that luxury.
If we stop fighting a PC war, and play to win - it would be a much cheaper, and much shorter war.
War implies death and destruction. We are trying to minimize both, and that creates the quagmire you see today. [/quote]
…if that happens the USA proves all those people who objects to the US, right. You have a very narrow view of reality and the world RJ, and you are not beyond reproach. I know it’s useless to let you see a different point of view, but a man who believes he can’t be wrong [you] usually is.
America’s ability to wage war conventionally is being stretched to it’s limits as we speak, would you advocate the use of nukes as a means of warfare?
Well again… Why Iraq??? If the US is so intent on bringing ‘peace’ to oppressed nations… why not Darfur? Why not Djibouti? Why not any other country where humanitarian conditions are disgusting and freedom is nonevident? Yeah cos it seems like a dictator who was AT LEAST doing his best to keep his people safe from starvation was a better option right.
[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
Well again… Why Iraq??? If the US is so intent on bringing ‘peace’ to oppressed nations… why not Darfur? Why not Djibouti? Why not any other country where humanitarian conditions are disgusting and freedom is nonevident? Yeah cos it seems like a dictator who was AT LEAST doing his best to keep his people safe from starvation was a better option right.
[/quote]
Okay, and again I will tell you:
Iraq has the second largest oil fields in the world. This matters because:
It makes a ruthless dictator who has control of them very dangerous, more so than some guy in Africa who has a pocketful of change and a pop-gun in comparison. Wealth = power, and the “measures” that the UN took to make sure he didn’t use the oil money for military build-up didn’t work for even a day. Ever heard of the “Oil for Food” program? Do you know what happened with it?
Like it or not, we have interests in the Middle East because of their natural resources. Now, instead of having just naval and minor air power in the Gulf, we have a significant amount of ground forces and naval/air backup to protect our interests in the region.
Also, Saddam did indeed have WMD’s, because he used them on Iranian troops and the Kurds. It follows from this that knowing Saddam as we do, he is likely to have no scruples over selling such weapons to terrorist interests – if those interests coincide with his own, e.g., setting them off in the USA somewhere.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Shoebolt wrote:
Well again… Why Iraq??? If the US is so intent on bringing ‘peace’ to oppressed nations… why not Darfur? Why not Djibouti? Why not any other country where humanitarian conditions are disgusting and freedom is nonevident? Yeah cos it seems like a dictator who was AT LEAST doing his best to keep his people safe from starvation was a better option right.
Okay, and again I will tell you:
Iraq has the second largest oil fields in the world. This matters because:
It makes a ruthless dictator who has control of them very dangerous, more so than some guy in Africa who has a pocketful of change and a pop-gun in comparison. Wealth = power, and the “measures” that the UN took to make sure he didn’t use the oil money for military build-up didn’t work for even a day. Ever heard of the “Oil for Food” program? Do you know what happened with it?
Like it or not, we have interests in the Middle East because of their natural resources. Now, instead of having just naval and minor air power in the Gulf, we have a significant amount of ground forces and naval/air backup to protect our interests in the region.
Also, Saddam did indeed have WMD’s, because he used them on Iranian troops and the Kurds. It follows from this that knowing Saddam as we do, he is likely to have no scruples over selling such weapons to terrorist interests – if those interests coincide with his own, e.g., setting them off in the USA somewhere.
Hope this helps.[/quote]
You are wasting your time. These are people that think we should simply arrest bin Laden and our military should have no role in the war on terror.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
You are wasting your time. These are people that think we should simply arrest bin Laden and our military should have no role in the war on terror.
[/quote]
I know, buddy. We’ve done this a gazillionty times already. I just figured Shoe here is relatively new to the poli forum, so maybe I’d hand out the usual common sense spiel that’s done a GINORMOUGANTUAN AMOUNT OF GOOD in our debates around here over the years.
You know, because it’s the fact that we are genuinely interested in the exchange of ideas and learning, and not just here to spout off a point of view as loudly and as many times as possible.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Okay, and again I will tell you:
Iraq has the second largest oil fields in the world. This matters because:
It makes a ruthless dictator who has control of them very dangerous, more so than some guy in Africa who has a pocketful of change and a pop-gun in comparison. Wealth = power, and the “measures” that the UN took to make sure he didn’t use the oil money for military build-up didn’t work for even a day. Ever heard of the “Oil for Food” program? Do you know what happened with it?
Like it or not, we have interests in the Middle East because of their natural resources. Now, instead of having just naval and minor air power in the Gulf, we have a significant amount of ground forces and naval/air backup to protect our interests in the region.
Also, Saddam did indeed have WMD’s, because he used them on Iranian troops and the Kurds. It follows from this that knowing Saddam as we do, he is likely to have no scruples over selling such weapons to terrorist interests – if those interests coincide with his own, e.g., setting them off in the USA somewhere.
Hope this helps.[/quote]
…it does help to clarify your position, thank you for that. Your attitude should also explain the dislike many have towards the USA, if you didn’t know that by now. The US invaded a sovereign country that was no direct threat to your nation on the premiss that something might happen. The oilfields are a perk, but let’s call it a humanitarian intervention otherwise it may appear too cynical…
…bottomline is, the US bit off more than they can chew. It is far from invincible, and you’ll be paying for the acculumated debt all your life, and for what? Stability in the region? The willingness to adopt democracy by the muslim citizens? The installment of elected governments? To counter the growing fundamentalist islamic movement?
…the answers to those question are the opposite of what Bush said he wanted to achieve. Do you see that? You may have removed a possible threat by dethroning Saddam, but what you got in return is far worse IMO: instead of one dictator to worry about you now have to deal with millions who are just as crazy. Altough the are willing to die, you can’t kill them all…
[quote]ephrem wrote:
Your attitude should also explain the dislike many have towards the USA, if you didn’t know that by now. The US invaded a sovereign country that was no direct threat to your nation on the premiss that something might happen. The oilfields are a perk, but let’s call it a humanitarian intervention otherwise it may appear too cynical…[/quote]
I’m not gonna give up on you or shoe just because we’ve been over this so much in the past few years because you guys are new. So…
My “American” attitude, we invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses:
I’m sorry if I come off as arrogant in this issue concerning our invasion of Iraq. I respect your opinion, and I would like to take this opportunity to remind you of several things that might make digesting our point of view more palatable:
The “first” Gulf War never ended. If you recall, what happened was Saddam withdrew from Kuwait and was allowed to stay in power provided he followed along with certain sanctions designed to prevent him from amassing stockpiles of weapons. These measures were to be monitored by UN weapons inspectors, and the coalition was tasked with maintaining a “No Fly Zone” along the borders of Iraq to further enforce the will of the UN. Think of it as super double secret probation.
At the very first opportunity, Saddam circumvented these measures, sometimes with the collusion of our allies in the UN. The Oil For Food (OFF) program was designed to force Saddam to give up his weapons stockpiles and make sure that all that money he was sitting on was used to improve his nation’s infrastructure and feed his citizens.
But, as the scandal played itself out a while back, it came to light that he used the money to bribe officials, acquire research and materiel for weapons production, and also support terrorism in the form of large payouts for the families of suicide bombers in Palestine… not to mention the large graft he committed as he stole from his nation’s treasury to fill his own personal accounts. We’re talking billions here… like over ten billion dollars.
So now we have a guy who was supposed to be on a short leash just going back to the same old shit he’s been up to since he came to power. All he did after we let him off the hook is pause for a moment before he started stockpiling again. The UN refused to do anything about this, and it can be surmised that the reasons for this might have something to do with OFF graft on their part as well. The head of the UN Kofi Annan’s son Kojo was implicated in taking illegal payments himself.
So now that we’ve dialed back a little bit here, maybe you can appreciate the scenario a little better?
The minute Saddam had violated those UN resolutions, we should have gone in and corrected his ass with a baseball bat, but instead we just sat back and let the UN do their thing because I guess we were too busy about sperm samples and interns at the time to keep our heads on straight.
Please excuse us for that… it’s the first time there’s been open porn discussions on primetime network news channels, and like most other red-blooded Americans, I gotta get a nut when the opportunity presents itself.
[quote]marmaprick wrote:
We should have invaded Saudi Arabia and taken over that country.
The vast majority of the hijackers came from that disfunctional terrorist supporting state.
From there we could have kicked Saddam’s @$$ too.[/quote]
Rubbish marm. Invading a moderate regime without a hint of WMD would have led to MASSIVE and DEADLY Anti-Americanism. Further, they didn’t have any history of invasion of adjacent states. So the Arab nations wouldn’t have been as happy to see the Saudi’s toppled as they were about saddam.
I can hear it now: “America attacked a country just because the terrorists were born there. They can’t help where they were born.”
Unless you can prove that the Saudi government was behind 9/11. In that case, I agree with you 100%.
Further, I could hear your side (lefties) screaming, “Why did we invade Saudi Arabia, when Iraq was obviously the bigger threat.” Or, “Why attack Saudia Arabia, when there are starving people in Darfur.”
You apparently haven’t given this much thought. A to B to C.
The Saudi’s are moderate by your expert definition?
They are friendly to us but they support terrorist groups which is not the definition of moderation.
You are a real genius. Maybe you need to move away from the refineries as the fumes are definitely affecting your brain. At least move for your family’s health…if you can afford to move.
My bad. Good thing that did not happen after going to Iraq…oops.
Don’t pull your foot out of your mouth yet because I have a feeling you are on a roll.
[quote]Further, they didn’t have any history of invasion of adjacent states. So the Arab nations wouldn’t have been as happy to see the Saudi’s toppled as they were about saddam.
I can hear it now: “America attacked a country just because the terrorists were born there. They can’t help where they were born.”
Unless you can prove that the Saudi government was behind 9/11. In that case, I agree with you 100%.[/quote]
According to you we invaded Iraq for?
Saudi Arabia funds terrorist organizations by funneling money to the extremist that run their schools. That is reason enough to invade Saudi Arabia. Our government has asked them to stop. Good luck with that.
F the looney left. I don’t care what they think and I know you don’t.
Are you trying to tell me that our foreign policy should be decided by how the looney left responds.
You should call the WH and tell them about your great idea.
Logic lessons from JeffR are a real hoot!
That is like taking driving lessons from a blind man.
[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
Well again… Why Iraq??? If the US is so intent on bringing ‘peace’ to oppressed nations… why not Darfur? Why not Djibouti? Why not any other country where humanitarian conditions are disgusting and freedom is nonevident? Yeah cos it seems like a dictator who was AT LEAST doing his best to keep his people safe from starvation was a better option right.
[/quote]
why iraq? why not? which choice would have satisified you? my guess is none. ONE of the points of going into iraq was that they sponsor terrorism. they always have.
since 9/11 was a terroist action carried out by arab-muslims and iraq is terrorist sponsoring arab-muslim state, i say ‘why the fuck not!’ can you imagine if bush said, “we just got bombed on 9/11. for this reason, i’m going into darfur!”
my point is that NOTHING short of doing NOTHING will satisfy you people.
[quote]Hack Wilson wrote:
my point is that NOTHING short of doing NOTHING will satisfy you people.
[/quote]
Well, if you’d spend $400 Billion to hunt down Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan instead of accomplishing a complete destablization and rising threat of civil war in Iraq in hopes of stealing their oil and completely privatizing and internationalizing their country’s infrastructure against the will of the Iraqi people, the war might be over right now.
Then the “moral and richeous” United States of America could do something about humanitarian disasters in places like Darfur.
But wait. That wouldn’t allow the Republican Party to slowly solidify power beneath them, nor allow their oil company supporters the rights to drill in Iraq, a nationalistic country that rejects multinationals.
If America:
Leaves all of Iraq’s public institutions in place (instead of attempting to sell them off to foreign investors in complete violation of the Geneva Convention), including its nationalized, 100% publicly owned oil industry.
Allows the new democratic government of Iraq the CHOICE as to whether its people want to open up their borders to international free trade, and whether they want to CHOOSE to privatize their nationalized industries (of course the Iraqi’s are too stupid to make this decision themselves, right? OBVIOUSLY the better choice is neoconservative economics, so you’ll just make that choice FOR them, right? No nation with a strong public works sector, a sector which made them the country with a better standard of living than several European countries, could ever be free and democratic! Never! Even if that were true, the Iraqis must make that choice for themselves. If you want to find out where the money for the insurgency is coming from, look to the common Iraqi businessman. Giving to the insurgency is an investment against foreign economic domination and a life of employment to a foreign master, rather than entepreneurship for one’s self.).
Respects the results of the spontaneous elections for local representatives held by the Iraqi people soon after America’s initial invasion (of which America ignored and appointed “leaders” who were more in line with the Bush agenda. How’s that insurgency going, boys? Way to pour gasoline on the fire. Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to remove the “participatory” from Participatory Democracy) and at least pretends to listen to the advice and opinions of those leaders.
Stop torturing prisoners. Openly apologize to the Iraqi people for the prisoners you did torture. Compensate those prisoners and their families for the shame you have brought to their reputation.
[quote]Hack Wilson wrote:
since 9/11 was a terroist action carried out by arab-muslims and iraq is terrorist sponsoring arab-muslim state, i say ‘why the fuck not!’[/quote]
Iraq under Hussein was a secular state, which is why Islamic terrorist groups hated him. Why he actively tried to capture them.
Of course not. That line of reasoning is ridiculous.
The world supported America when the President said, “We just got bombed on 9/11, for this reason we’re going into Afghanistan to capture Bin Laden and defeat his Taliban allies.”
Canada’s soldiers are still alongside yours on the ground in Afghanistan and I hope they stay until the job is done.
The world turned against America when they violated UN ruling against war in Iraq, a country that had fuck all to do with 9/11 and Islamic terrorism.
Two posts in a row. That’s a lot of stuff. I read some but it sounds pretty fucking crazy, like you smacked your head on a table going down on your boyfriend. I can’t read all that shit. I’d lower my IQ ten points doing something like that. I’ll just assume that you made some good points and say, “Well done!”
