[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Bush’s greatest sin - what really infuriated the left about him - was succeeding in Iraq.
[/quote]
mflmao!!
wtf? What did he succeed in doing exactly?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Bush’s greatest sin - what really infuriated the left about him - was succeeding in Iraq.
mflmao!!
wtf? What did he succeed in doing exactly?[/quote]
He turned a hell-hole lorded over by a fucking butcher into a place where freedom and markets may one day flourish. This is good for the Iraqi people; and very good for the west.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
We didn’t war with Iraq in this century because of WMDs. We did it because of treaty violations and direct and indirect threats from Hussein. WMDs were part of the picture and yes, part of the justification but they were not WHY we invaded Iraq a second time in the same war.
.[/quote]
Did the public initially back the Iraq war because of treaty violations? Or, because we supposedly knew where acual stockpiles could be found?
Bush should’ve said, “Oh snap! Um, no stockpiles. Grab/kill Hussein, his sons, and any left over technical plans, then pull out of there. We’ll turn it over to what’s left of the Baathists/Iraqi army and let them play peace officer. They have the stomach for keeping the peace in Iraq.” After all, Saddam knew how to lead in Iraq. Total and complete fear of what he was willing to unleash.
Instead, we accepted long term responsibility for the nation as we attempted to make it some kind of beacon of liberty and democracy. Where’d that get the Christian minority? Or, the various sects as they cleased each other out of neighborhoods?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
No one can objectively look at Iraq today and scream “FAILURE”. If you do so you are disingenuous at best or a rabid Al Franken caricature at worst.[/quote]
I can’t? You’ve got former mixed neighborhoods emptied of one sect or another, and christians practically butchered at will. I guess it is going to be more peaceful after you’ve cleansed your neighborhood of the undesireables. Let’s pat ole Bush on the back.
And the biggest one of them all…Afghanistan. Anyone remember that war? Well, it’s gone in the crapper while we went and played nation-builder in Iraq.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Bush should’ve said, "Oh snap! Um, no stockpiles. Grab/kill Hussein, his sons, and any left over technical plans, then pull out of there. We’ll turn it over to what’s left of the Baathists/Iraqi army and let them play peace officer.
pushharder wrote:
No one can objectively look at Iraq today and scream “FAILURE”. If you do so you are disingenuous at best or a rabid Al Franken caricature at worst.
I can’t? You’ve got former mixed neighborhoods emptied of one sect or another, and christians practically butchered at will. I guess it is going to be more peaceful after you’ve cleansed your neighborhood of the undesireables. Let’s pat ole Bush on the back.
C’mon. Place the blame on the people committing the atrocities. It is the ultimate in twisted logic to blame Bush for factions that have been killing each other for thousands of years.
[/quote]
The Christians in Iraq have been killing the Muslims for “thousands of years?” I thought they had been living in relative safety under Saddam.
Of course, the Muslims are to blame for this, but so is Bush for turning a blind eye to the clear ethnic cleansing of them.
Bush seemed hell-bent on enabling jihad nearly everywhere he went.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
So you would’ve blasted into Baghdad in 2002, killed Sadam and his boys, hopped a military transport to Kabul and never looked back? Then you would’ve watched from satellite images as Iran settled the situation you left behind? Is that what you, the geopolitical/military genius would’ve done? Huh?[/quote]
I’d leave Iraq’s fate with their military. I could give a rat’s ass in Iran held Iraq. I wasn’t planning on vacationing there. And at least they would be bogged down occupying Iraq. As oppossed to the genius of getting ourselves held up in Iraq while the Taliban makes us look likes a bunch of stooges in Afghanistan.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
So Bush callously, intentionally and maliciously “turned a blind eye”? Bush sent orders to his generals in Iraq to disregard these atrocities? Seriously? I’m not being sarcastic. I wanna know.
[/quote]
He wouldn’t have to turn a blind eye for it to happen. The problem was us trying to play great builder of democracy in a culture of death and oppression.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
pushharder wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Bush should’ve said, "Oh snap! Um, no stockpiles. Grab/kill Hussein, his sons, and any left over technical plans, then pull out of there. We’ll turn it over to what’s left of the Baathists/Iraqi army and let them play peace officer.
pushharder wrote:
No one can objectively look at Iraq today and scream “FAILURE”. If you do so you are disingenuous at best or a rabid Al Franken caricature at worst.
I can’t? You’ve got former mixed neighborhoods emptied of one sect or another, and christians practically butchered at will. I guess it is going to be more peaceful after you’ve cleansed your neighborhood of the undesireables. Let’s pat ole Bush on the back.
C’mon. Place the blame on the people committing the atrocities. It is the ultimate in twisted logic to blame Bush for factions that have been killing each other for thousands of years.
The Christians in Iraq have been killing the Muslims for “thousands of years?” I thought they had been living in relative safety under Saddam.
Of course, the Muslims are to blame for this, but so is Bush for turning a blind eye to the clear ethnic cleansing of them.
Bush seemed hell-bent on enabling jihad nearly everywhere he went.
So Bush callously, intentionally and maliciously “turned a blind eye”? Bush sent orders to his generals in Iraq to disregard these atrocities? Seriously? I’m not being sarcastic. I wanna know.
[/quote]
I think he’s been willfully ignorant, which betrays a moral callousness that deserves all of the stripes he’s gotten in the media (“beatings are for the backs of fools”). I’m sorry, when Muslims are waging jihad against infidels everywhere and flying planes into our buildings and he’s getting up there talking about the Religion of Peace, I’ve got huge problem giving him the benefit of the doubt. As someone once said, “A fool’s talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them,” conversely, “A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions.”
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Vegita wrote:
pushharder wrote:
PB-Crawl wrote:
…the kind of opportunity bush had post 9-11, in the national and international level. all we can do hope he doesn’t drop the ball like it was last time.
Yeah, that stinkin Bush pisses me off too. Since you mentioned 9-11, look at all the people who’ve died at the hands of terrorists on American soil since then. Absolutely disgusting. It’s a good thing he’s gone. I sure hope BO can stop the bloodshed.
Pushy, preventing deaths of americans on american soil is not the ONLY job of the POTUS. Also we have no idea if more than a handful of attacks were even attempted. AND to further that, even a democratic president would have beefed up CIA and FBI which is what stopped the few other plots. So if we give him credit for doing ONE thing right, we certainly are well within our rights to give him full credit for fucking up 20 things. (approxamately)
Basically, my view of bush is that he was so one tract minded, that people still died on american soil, just instead of it being from a terrorist attack, it was from a hurricane. AND thousands died over seas fighting a country over invisible WMD’s.
V
My problem with Bush is he wasn’t conservative enough.
I don’t conjecture that he killed people with a hurricane or sacrificed lives over invisible WMDs. I’m smart enough to know that hurricanes can kill people with or without a president’s permission and I’ve seen enough gassed Kurds to know WMDs aren’t invisible.
I responded to the terrorist attack deal precisely because PB brought it up. He directly referenced 9-11 and in the same sentence said Bush “dropped the ball”. If he meant something different he should have structured his statement in a more coherent fashion.
Without trying to dredge up the whole Iraq war legitimacy issue, let me remind you that the Iraq War started in 1990. G.W. Bush didn’t start the war. He finished it. What we saw from '02 to the present is a continuation of that war not an initialization.
We didn’t war with Iraq in this century because of WMDs. We did it because of treaty violations and direct and indirect threats from Hussein. WMDs were part of the picture and yes, part of the justification but they were not WHY we invaded Iraq a second time in the same war.
Please, Veg, don’t you or any other reasonable person distill the Iraq War down to the simplistic view that WMDs were what it is all about. To do so relegates you to receiving a legitimate criticism of having a “one track mind” which you just happen to incidentally loathe in your now ex-president.[/quote]
Legally the war was “continued” for violations of UN Resolutions. BUT the UN didn’t order us to go into Iraq, we wnt in Unilaterally, or at the very least with a small coalition. Using semantics to say the war was not over is a little underhanded, there hadn’t been fighting, and there was effectively a ceasfire, we moved our troops out of the Iraq country, for all intents and purposes the old war was over. The reasons we were told that we needed to go into iraq and make war with that country, was that they had weapons of mass destruction, and that they were an imminent threat to our security because of thier ties to Al-Qaida. During those times, I strongly supported those decision, s oI can’t say I was always against it, However, after the information has come out about our country selling up the facts to gain support to go in there, I see a very unjust thing. There were no ties to Al-Qaida, they hated eachother, and we have never found any WMD besides a few very old and clearly not in use sarin and mustard containers. They probably didn’t even realize they still had them.
So I agree, we can’t distill the Iraq war down to just WMD’s obviously our Gov’t either knew or was unsure that Iraq did’nt have WMD, so the real reason we invaded Iraq? Well I guess thats the question. Bush had a hardon for saddam? We wanted to gain a resource in the form of Iraq oil fields that we could tap into as we built them up as an ally? I’m sure there were many reasons, enforcing a UN resolution, on it’s principle was definately NOT why we went in there, it is only the legal mechanism we used. And that my friend is pure bullshit.
Thats the equivalent of a cop busting down your door because he “heard a scream” when there wasn’t one and then just happens to bust you for a bag of weed and a bong on your living room table. He knows it’s bullshit, you know it’s bullshit, the judge will know it’s bullshit, but you get fucked over anyways.
V
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Bush’s greatest sin - what really infuriated the left about him - was succeeding in Iraq.
mflmao!!
wtf? What did he succeed in doing exactly?
He turned a hell-hole lorded over by a fucking butcher into a place where freedom and markets may one day flourish. This is good for the Iraqi people; and very good for the west.
[/quote]
actually, no he didn’t.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Sloth wrote:
pushharder wrote:
So you would’ve blasted into Baghdad in 2002, killed Sadam and his boys, hopped a military transport to Kabul and never looked back? Then you would’ve watched from satellite images as Iran settled the situation you left behind? Is that what you, the geopolitical/military genius would’ve done? Huh?
I’d leave Iraq’s fate with their military. I could give a rat’s ass in Iran held Iraq.
Is it even remotely possible that someone out there smarter than you might think that an Iran-controlled Iraq might not be a good idea? Or do you gaze at your B.A. in Political Science degree hanging on the wall and say, “Nope, dem stupid asses should’ve listened to me?”
I wasn’t planning on vacationing there. And at least they would be bogged down occupying Iraq. As oppossed to the genius of getting ourselves held up in Iraq while the Taliban makes us look likes a bunch of stooges in Afghanistan.
Speaking of diplomas, post a pic of the one you earned at war college; the one that gives you the credentials to make such an astute observation.
I know some guys in Af that would fuck you up pretty good if you said they looked like “stooges” to their faces. You’d be well advised to hang around the relative safety of your keyboard when it comes to dispensing your…intelligencia.[/quote]
Um, I didn’t think the backwards slide in Afghanistan was even debateable. And I could give a rats ass what your thug AF guys thought about my statement. And yes, thugs, if you’re portrayal of their temperament is accurate. Besides that, stooges was reserved for the decision makers.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Um, I didn’t think the backwards slide in Afghanistan was even debateable. [/quote]
You’re talking to a guy who loves Ann Coulter. You need to either walk him through it step by step, or not even bother.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Um, I didn’t think the backwards slide in Afghanistan was even debateable.
You’re talking to a guy who loves Ann Coulter. You need to either walk him through it step by step, or not even bother.[/quote]
Heh, nah. While I guess this got a little heated, if my memory isn’t failing me, we end up on the same side on a number of other issues. And, I’m sure we will again. Meh, the AF thing got under my skin. Not really a big deal in the end.
Side note: Since you mention her, I don’t think I’ve ever weighed in on Ann Coulter. On an instinctual level I tend to avoid her. Just her demeanor, I suppose. I know she’s supposedly sharp tounged, but because of the before-mentioned avoidance, I honestly couldn’t tell you much about what she’s said, done, or believes.