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DPChallenge Forums >> Rant >> Iraq hits home - the discussion continues
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04/07/2004 04:28:02 AM · #1
Whilst I can't begin to understand the grief that the families and friends of those killed (of whatever nationality)I send my most heartfelt sympathies to them all.

I've started a new thread out of respect for the original as someone commented it shouldn't be a political thread - so here we go....I'm sure I'm going to make myself very unpopular too.

All troops should be pulling out now and should have pulled out long before now. One death is one too many and if the so called "experts" as someone put it can't see that then there's a problem (by the way - just beacuse someone is elected doesn't really make them an expert, it makes them a great publicity person who happened to win people over on election day). I never agreed with the gung ho attitude to the war in the first place and the blame doesn't just go with America and Bush - Blair is equally to blame for all of this and I just take the cosolation that i never voted for Blair in the last elections (unfortunatley as I am no longer a UK resident I won't be able to help vote him out in the next elections!!!)

I think the following cartoon by Steve Bell at the Guardian nespaper sums up a lot of people's feelings that I know.

//www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1186820,00.html

I await the barrage of comments - but hope that somebody out there agrees with me :)
04/07/2004 04:44:26 AM · #2
Whilst you may be correct about pulling out,I feel it would result in a bloodbath.
My views on the situation there is, how the hell can you bring peace and stability to a country when they allow people to walk around carrying automatic weapons and rocket launchers ?
Disarm them, everyone !! not just some of them, then talk peace.
04/07/2004 04:49:07 AM · #3
Originally posted by shardy:

All troops should be pulling out now and should have pulled out long before now.


how have you come to this conclusion? the media has filled your brain with mush. thanks for the insight Gen. Hardy.

Originally posted by shardy:

One death is one too many


So is one Iraqi death by Saddam's republican guard too many? If so how can that be stopped considering the man in charge certainly isn't willing to stop killing.[/quote]

Originally posted by shardy:

just beacuse someone is elected doesn't really make them an expert, it makes them a great publicity person who happened to win people over on election day). I never agreed with the gung ho attitude to the war in the first place and the blame doesn't just go with America and Bush - Blair is equally to blame...


so in not voting for Blair you take the stand of not standing up to global madmen. good side to be on.

Originally posted by shardy:

I won't be able to help vote him out in the next elections!!!)


it doesn't matter who gets elected in britain

Originally posted by shardy:


//www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1186820,00.html



yep that about sums up your ignorance. what you are basically saying is let people like Osama and Saddam run free...for what reason though. they will never stop killing people because they are so indoctrinated with crap that some Sheik poured down their throats that they know no mercy or peace. get a clue. sometimes war is necessary

04/07/2004 04:54:54 AM · #4
I belive its better to die then kill
04/07/2004 05:03:22 AM · #5
Originally posted by turbo:

I belive its better to die then kill


Well, then you believe in a world of barbarism.

I believe it is better to die in the pursuit of freedom than to let tyrants rule and not be free.
04/07/2004 05:07:21 AM · #6
no i belive in god and jesus
and they say that our kingdom isnt on earth but heaven
and you dont get to heaven if you have killed someone
04/07/2004 05:12:55 AM · #7
I can't understand that belief - find no support for it in my bible - but if that is your feeling, then I'd consider you as a "conscientous objector" and I would certainly not try to sway you from that. In other words there is peace between us.
04/07/2004 05:14:30 AM · #8
Again I'd ask that this kind of thing be moved to the "Rant" section, where it can easily be blocked out.
04/07/2004 05:17:17 AM · #9
The Americans and Britsh have got them self into a great mess there. In general I´m against war and I find it very strange and contoversial to use violence to make peace.
Think maybe that it could be catasrophical to withdraw all troops now since they are there and have made this situation but they surely have to change their tacticks.
04/07/2004 05:42:39 AM · #10
Originally posted by achiral:

Originally posted by shardy:

All troops should be pulling out now and should have pulled out long before now.


how have you come to this conclusion? the media has filled your brain with mush. thanks for the insight Gen. Hardy.

Originally posted by shardy:

One death is one too many


So is one Iraqi death by Saddam's republican guard too many? If so how can that be stopped considering the man in charge certainly isn't willing to stop killing.


Originally posted by shardy:

just beacuse someone is elected doesn't really make them an expert, it makes them a great publicity person who happened to win people over on election day). I never agreed with the gung ho attitude to the war in the first place and the blame doesn't just go with America and Bush - Blair is equally to blame...


so in not voting for Blair you take the stand of not standing up to global madmen. good side to be on.

Originally posted by shardy:

I won't be able to help vote him out in the next elections!!!)


it doesn't matter who gets elected in britain

Originally posted by shardy:


//www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1186820,00.html



yep that about sums up your ignorance. what you are basically saying is let people like Osama and Saddam run free...for what reason though. they will never stop killing people because they are so indoctrinated with crap that some Sheik poured down their throats that they know no mercy or peace. get a clue. sometimes war is necessary [/quote]

It matters to the Britsh who gets elected in Britain - maybe then they won't get someone who is in Bush's pack pocket as a yes man to help him on his merry way barging his way into other countries affairs. And don't get me wrong, I would never ever ever condone any actions by Saddam Hussain and Bin Laden and any of their henchmen or any other terrorist organistaions - that's not what i go for. But yes I do think Bush and Blair are slightly mad!!!! And for the record, I meant one death on of any nationality is one too many. I just think the whole situation was handled in a gung ho way (which means that countries went ahead without proof of WMD and without the thought of what would happen afterwards.

I figured I would get a lot of backlash from some US members of the site for what I wrote but there you go. I've just been back in the UK for a few days and live here in Italy and the feeling I get from people here and in the UK is that Bush and Blair are equally madmen as Saddam and Bin Laden.

And just for the record - my thoughts are my own - not the media's. The cartoon I happened to see in a UK newspaper before I flew back to Italy and was pointed out to me by someone else.

"sometimes war is necessary" - let's hope you never become President!!!!
04/07/2004 05:44:43 AM · #11
Originally posted by garlic:

The Americans and Britsh have got them self into a great mess there. In general I´m against war and I find it very strange and contoversial to use violence to make peace.
Think maybe that it could be catasrophical to withdraw all troops now since they are there and have made this situation but they surely have to change their tacticks.


To this I agree (and amend my earlier statement) - that we have got ourselves in too deep - but stick to my opnion that what happened was not the way to peace (it hasn't succeeded has it???)
04/07/2004 05:48:00 AM · #12
Our "response" to this atrocity so far includes destroying four houses (est. 28 dead, including women and children) and attacking a mosque.

I guess I find it either depressing or shameful that the best the leaders of the free world can do after some 8000 years of "civilization" amounts to "an eye for an eye" visited ten-fold upon the enemy ...
04/07/2004 05:51:42 AM · #13
Originally posted by GeneralE:

Our "response" to this atrocity so far includes destroying four houses (est. 28 dead, including women and children) and attacking a mosque.

I guess I find it either depressing or shameful that the best the leaders of the free world can do after some 8000 years of "civilization" amounts to "an eye for an eye" visited ten-fold upon the enemy ...


I have to say you've summed up what I really was trying to say - rather more eloquently and with a lot less words. Nicely put.
04/07/2004 06:15:08 AM · #14
i think this sums it up pretty well Ted Kennedy speech

attacking Iraq because of 9/11 would be like attacking Australia after Perl Harbour.
04/07/2004 06:55:33 AM · #15
was Australia supporting Japan during WWII? I don't remember that in my history lessons. Strange
04/07/2004 07:07:11 AM · #16
Originally posted by MadMordegon:

i think this sums it up pretty well Ted Kennedy speech

attacking Iraq because of 9/11 would be like attacking Australia after Perl Harbour.

As stated on their website "The Brookings Institution is an independent, nonpartisan organization devoted to research, analysis, education, and publication focused on public policy issues in the areas of economics, foreign policy, and governance. The goal of Brookings activities is to improve the performance of American institutions and the quality of public policy by using social science to analyze emerging issues and to offer practical approaches to those issues in language aimed at the general public."

It was grossly inappropriate for Ted Kennedy to turn his opportunity to address a non-partisan Institution into a blatantly partisan attack on the Bush administration.

Not to mention that he is doing exactly what he accuses the administration of doing - i.e. "the repeated use of false and misleading arguments to persuade the American people."

Ron
04/07/2004 07:18:44 AM · #17
if anything, going to war with iraq has only given al queda time to regroop and remobilize. there are plenty of tyranical leaders out there who pose a threat to the rest of the world. why the bush administration decided that iraq was a top priority in the middle of an al queda crisis is beyond me, and no one has ever been able to give me an explanation to satisfy my confusion in this matter.

so now we have countless iraqi civillians dead, american soldiers dying every day (STILL), and a country with most if its infrastructure in ruin. so far so good, right?

the point about WMDs is almost totally moot at this stage. we all know there are none, and that it was a false pretense for war, especially when there are other countries practically screaming - YES WE HAVE NUKES AND WE'RE NOT AFRAID TO USE THEM!!!

i still remember the whole leadup to the war where the bush administration was stresssing the point of WMDs, and then on the night the US first attacked bush went on the TV and told the american people that this was a war to liberate the iraqi people from an evil regime. already the story was starting to change. now no one seems to care that there are no WMDs, because people were "liberated". in all their persecution, i doubt that as many people ever died in a single day as they did in a single day of war waged upon them by the US. but hey, they're liberated now, so it must have all been worth it.
04/07/2004 07:29:05 AM · #18
Let's not fool ourselves to think the US and britian are in this out of benevolence. The amount of worldwide atrocities is great. How long did it take before anyone paid attn. to Rwanda, or Uganda or South Africa? Now the US is in a catch 22, they can not win, regardless of what they do now. Yes, Sadam and Usama are awful leaders determined to rule the world (or their corner of it) by any means possible. We all agree this is inappropriate.
But how is the US (britian) any different?? "You will accept or version of 'freedom' or duck, here comes another bomb. Yes you can have freedom, but not of religion if you are a conservative muslim. You can have democracy, if you pick a leader we can be happy with."

Message edited by author 2004-04-07 11:31:03.
04/07/2004 07:44:38 AM · #19
Letâs not forget the other âgoodâ job the US govât did in Afghanistan where numerous war lords now roam, the Taliban and al Qaeda still has some strong holds, the opium trade and opium cultivation has opened up again, womenâs abuses continue and Osama still hides. Hamad Karzai does not have control of this country but the US govt abandoned the real fight on terrorism in Afghanistan for the illusions the Bush administration put before us regarding the immediate threat Hussein posed to the US and the rest of the world.

The US gov't supported the attempted coup in Venezuela two years ago and the ouster of Aristede in Haiti and will continue their Imperialistic ways around the globe.
04/07/2004 07:49:58 AM · #20
Its no secrete that the US government does not like Saddam and wants him out of power.
Back in 1991 there was "Operation Desert Storm" where the US tried to get Saddam out of power, but failed. So this most recent event was used to make another attempt to get Saddam out of control, and it worked.

The US Government (not the office of the presidency) but all those who really make the decisions are sneaky and underhanded and will do ANYTHING to make it look like the US HAS a reason to do something.

In 1989 I was aboard the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) on the decommissioning cruise. We were in Alexandria, Egypt and scheduled to be there for 3 days.

We were pulled out of port early because a Marine Col. had been captured and executed by Libya (im still searching for his name and the exact date, and think it may have actually been Lebanon)

My Ship sailed to the coast of Libya to prepare for an air strike, but the USA has no grounds for such an attack.
So what did our ship do???

500lb practice bombs, which are painted blue, were repainted green with 2 yellow stripes on the front of the bomb to look like a REAL bomb.

These "bombs" were loaded up on the A-6's and F-18's, these aircraft then flew VERY close to if not into the Libyan airspace in order to draw fire so we would have a "reason" to strike back, due to the "dont fire unless fired upon" so called policy the USA has.

Did the president of the USA make this call to do this little trick to entice a fight?? NO it was the Military and those government officials who control the military.

So please think again before you blame the president for anything, he is being told what to do.

when the next US president you vote for is in office Im sure we will all pick on him for his so called "mistakes" as well

James

04/07/2004 08:14:45 AM · #21
what jab said.
all this crap usually comes from this "bipartisan" crapola. I wish we could just get rid of the damned parties. No affiliations, and be able to vote in the guy who is most qualified for the job.
bitch about this guy doing this. bitch about the job that that one does. All because they don't pee in the same clubhouse.
still always hear people say that they are not sure about this guy/gal, but I voted for him/her because they are (insert party affiliation here), like me. SHEEP, MERE SHEEP!
04/07/2004 08:31:03 AM · #22
Originally posted by darcy:

so now we have countless iraqi civillians dead, american soldiers dying every day (STILL), and a country with most if its infrastructure in ruin. so far so good, right?


Most of its infrastructure in ruin????? How can you support that statement?

From the Brookings Institute Iraq Index:

Electricity: PreWar: 4,400 megawatts
March: 4,026 megawatts

Potable Water: PreWar: 12.9 million litres
Last Nov: 21.3 million litres

Hospitals: 90% have been restored to pre-war levels

Oil Production: PreWar: 2.8 million barrels a day
March: 2.4 million barrels a day
Oil Export: PreWar: 1.7 million barrels a day
March: 1.5 million barrels a day

Polling of Iraqi citizens conducted in February:
Q. How are things compared to a year ago?
A. 56.5% say better, only 18.6% say worse

Q. What is the greatest threat to Iraq?
A. #1 is Sectarian war, #2 is Bombings of Police Stations,
and International Organizations

Q. How safe would you feel if coalition forces left immediately?
A. Safer=19%, Less safe=65%

Q. How have conditions for peace changed in the last 3 months?
A. Improved=51%, Worsened=25%

Ron
04/07/2004 10:47:36 AM · #23
Unless you live or are serving in Iraq or Afganistan, how can you say what we are doing there is wrong? You listen to news bites that support your opinion and take it as fact. You blow off news bites that do not support your opinion as biased garbage.
Also, a few years ago everyone in the world agreed Iraq had WMD. If they are no longer in Iraq, where did they go? Just as we have not found any yet, we have also not found where they went.
We can either deal with Iraq today when they are slightly dangerous, or we can sit around and wait for them to become strong enough to come after us. For me it's a pretty easy decision.

To everyone serving over there, thank you, good job and good luck.
04/07/2004 11:10:00 AM · #24
I read an article in last Months Texas Monthly magazine, with GW Bush on the cover, written by a journalist who had met with and reported on GOVERNOR GW Bush when he was governor of Texas.

This article was very interesting....

here is the last page of the story.....

"THE LOVE HIM, HATE HIM PRESIDENT" was the headline of Time's December 1 cover story about Bush. "He is the man about whom Americans feel little ambivalence," the story said. "People tend to love him or hate him without any complicating shades of gray." Hmmm. Am I all alone out here in a gray area? I certainly don't hate him. I found him to be a good man with decent instincts. Those who follow the national media don't hear this from journalists, but if you read books journalists have written about himâWoodward's Bush at War, Frank Bruni's Ambling Into Historyâhis character and personality break through. I realize that there are millions of people in America, to say nothing of worldwide, who think that he deliberately lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda, but I can't imagine that the person I knew, who campaigned on restoring honor and dignity to the White House, would deliberately lie to the American people. (I can believe it of Dick Cheney, whom I know only through the media, just as others can believe it of Bush, whom they know only in the same way.)

But I don't love him either. For one thing, I gave up loving politicians long ago. Politics is noble in conception but too often ignoble in practice; it puts expedience on public display. For another, I disagree with him about too many things, including the big one of war and peace. You might reasonably ask: Who am I to disagree with the president of the United States? Well, it's a free country. But more than that, I majored in history, and my favorite professor drummed into us the obligation to be judgmental, about the present as well as the past. "Every man his own historian," he would say.

So here's what this individual historian believes. First, when dealing with the rest of the world, America must abide by its basic principles, which, as Lincoln said just before the outbreak of civil war, in 1861, offer "hope to the world for all future time." He added, "If [the country] can't be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful." Second, the most effective foreign policy for a great power is the one laid down almost one hundred years ago by Theodore Roosevelt: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

On my personal scorecard, Bush is zero for two. What is especially sad about this is that he had the country overwhelmingly behind him after 9/11. The moment that everything changed came in the 2002 State of the Union address, when Bush identified an "axis of evil": Iraq, Iran, North Korea. So much for speaking softly. He could have said the same thing in many different ways; the way that he choseâboldness, always boldnessâcommitted us to act, for a president does not employ words like "evil" casually. To use that label is to raise the stakes, because how can good (that's us) tolerate evil?

Let me be very clear about this: It's not the label itself I object to; these were all bad regimes. It's the use of it. It raises the basic question of whether America should be the world's moral policeman, ridding the globe of bad guys who pose no imminent threat to us except in what they might do at some future time. In other words, preemptive war; as Shakespeare's Brutus said, in determining to join the assassination plot against a too-ambitious Julius Caesar, "Then, lest he may, prevent." But does brandishing your intentions in public create a safer worldâor a more dangerous one? In the case of North Korea, it is likely that the "axis of evil" speech created exactly what we feared, spurring that country to resume its nuclear weapons program. The speech and the policy it produced reopened the political divisions of the 2000 election by forcing each of us to decide what kind of values we expect our country to uphold. I am 100 percent in favor of hunting down terrorists to the ends of the earth and bringing them to justice. But it's not justice if the government can hold suspects indefinitely without charging them. I know the counterargument, that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But requiring the government to have some evidence against suspects to produce in court is not tantamount to suicide. And it doesn't necessarily advance the war on terrorism to wage war on spec against states; indeed, it may cause us to shift our focus from the greater danger to a lesser one.

These are truly momentous issues. The president did not seek them out; they were forced upon him by 9/11. It's hard to blame him for going to the utmost lengths to protect the nation; that's his sworn duty. What concerns me is whether we can trust the decision-making apparatus around him. In the governor's office, Bush had advisers and top aides who were totally loyal to him. In the White House, he has advisers and top aides who have a long history of intellectual and ideological loyalty to specific policy positions. This is not to say that they are disloyal, just that they think the way ideologues always thinkâthat their interests and the nation's interests (and the president's) are one and the same. One day after 9/11, the National Security Council met to plan the response. According to Bush at War(which is based on interviews with the principles), one of the first comments was by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asking why we shouldn't go after Iraq, as his chief deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, famously supported. Colin Powell warned that neither the coalition America was seeking nor the American people wanted a war against Iraq. At first, Woodward writes, Bush worried about diluting the mission against Al Qaeda, but the proponents were relentlessâin particular, Cheney, who repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda, two assertions that remain unprovedâand they must have known that the boss's proclivity for boldness would work in their favor. Once Bush decides to take a bite of the apple, it's going to be the biggest chunk he can sink his teeth into. The argument that the status quo in the Islamic world would not change unless America did something to change it would have appealed to him. Of all the reasons to oust Saddam, the boldest was to change the paradigm. I admire the play, and I hope it works, even as I doubt its likelihood of success and fear that it targeted a less dangerous enemy than Al Qaeda. Few things in international affairs are more risky than to view the world as you wish it to be, rather than as it is.

A COUPLE OF DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I went to Washington for an interview at the White House with a senior administration official, who imposed the condition of anonymity. My editor and I had talked by phone earlier in the day, and he had told me to stick to the big stuff. "If you bring up arsenic in drinking water, they'll laugh you out of the office," he said. The SAO and I exchanged pleasantries, and I mentioned that I had written only a couple of stories about Bush since he became president. "I know," the SAO said, tapping a red file folder resting on the table. It contained copies of what I had written: one pre-9/11 article expressing puzzlement over Bush's policies and another, from last fall, about Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen and her nomination to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. "You got it completely wrong," the SAO said. "But you didn't come here to talk about that." "That's okay," I said. "Let's talk about it." And the first thing the SAO brought up was . . . arsenic in drinking water: how they had no choice but to reexamine the scientific evidence or else the rule left for them by the Clinton administration would have been subject to a court challenge.

That's pretty much how the interview went. The SAO had plenty to say, but the old atmosphere, so impressive in my Texas interviews, of open and big-picture discussions was nowhere in evidence. This was all about staying on messageâand the message was that the national media have consistently failed to report Bush's policies accurately. Earlier in the day, I had had lunch with Paul Begala, the Democratic consultant and co-host of CNN's Crossfire. He had told me that the Democrats felt lied to about Bush's education bill, which Bush did not fully fund, falling $15 billion short. The SAO's response to my mention of this widely reported issue was that the White House had increased education funding by 60 percent since 2000, the largest increase in history. I turned to Iraq: What about the slow pace of rebuilding? No such thing, was the answerâno food crisis, no breakdown in health care, electricity back to pre-war levels, no refugees.

I confess that this aggressive defense took me by surprise. Perhaps it shouldn't have. This White House is famous for its antipathy to the national media, and the president himself makes no secret that he neither reads nor watches the news. This goes back to the campaign; I remember one Bush aide telling me in 1999, as the media clamored to know Bush's stance on issues, that "we intend to run this campaign on our timetable, not the media's." Still, I was from Texas. They knew me. Didn't that make a difference? Well, those days are gone. When I got home that night, I told my wife about the interview and said, "I felt just like a member of the national media." She gave me her best you-idiot look and said, "You are a member of the national media."

The thing I most wanted to ask about was Bush's desire to change the culture of Washington and what had become of it. The SAO told me that the president never criticizes Democrats directly; he always says something like "some in Congress." The Democratic leadership, on the other hand, wants total war. The SAO told a story about a trade bill, giving more authority to the president, that a number of House Democrats had supported during the Clinton years but opposed when Bush wanted it. Bush met with the D's, but all but a handful rejected his overtures. One of the Democrats, the SAO said, complained that a Republican chairman had been mean to them, shutting them out of conference committees and heaping other indignities on them. The SAO presented this as a silly reason to be against a public policy issue, as if, What is the president supposed to doâcall up the chairman and say, "Be nice to the Democrats?" In fact, if Bush is serious about changing the culture of Washington, I think that is exactly what he should do. "Look," he could say, "I'm trying to get reelected, trying to help us keep our majorities in Congress, trying to pass important legislation, trying to unite the country in the war on terrorism, and I don't need you guys screwing things up." But I don't think he's serious about itânot serious enough to do the hard stuff, like take on the petty princes in his own party.

I STARTED THIS ARTICLE BY SAYING that I never expected to know a president of the United States. The truth is, I don't know President Bush. The person I knew was Governor Bush. I really liked him. I still do. But I'm ambivalent about his alter ego. On the one hand, the issue that matters most to me is the safety of my family and my country, and I cannot imagine that anyone, Republican or Democrat, would be more resolute and vigilant than Bush; on the other, I disagree with so many things that he has done.

If I end up voting for himâand I probably willâit will really be Governor Bush who gets my vote. Why? Because hope springs eternal: my hope that in a second term, free from worries about reelection and with an undisputed electoral victory, he will reappear after a four-year sabbatical. I'm betting he's still around; we just haven't seen him for a while. He's a uniter, not a divider. He doesn't kowtow to the extremists in his party. He's serious about wanting to change the political climate. He's vigilant about not letting his team mislead him or taint his administration. He makes appointments based on ability, not litmus tests. You see, I knew that guy.

04/07/2004 11:15:54 AM · #25
Originally posted by jab119:

I read ...

Wow, you're pushing the post boundary there James! When the DPC database craps out I'm holding you personally responsible. ;-)
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