Terrorism is a tactic, and you can't declare war on a tactic. As you point out, only the dishonest bring up the lie that Saddam was in on 9/11 and had a relationship with Al Qaeda. Funny, all those folks seem to be on your side of the aisle.

It is to your great credit that you are not among them. Kudos to you, for real.

WWW Link

We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaida going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression. We have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaida members, including some who have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq's increased support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with Al Qaida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action."



Our chemical and biological stockpiles have been brought down to a very low number. The only reason we still have some is the environmentalist won’t let us destroy them. Our policy since the 1970’s has been that any attack with the use of any WMD on US soil would be retaliated with nuclear weapons rather than tit for tat. Since then we have been burning our stockpiles.



This is true, what you leave out is that for years the inspectors were in and kicked out several times and the last time were invited back to the country only because we were going to invade. This was hoped to slow down if not stop the invasion. President Bush was not having any more of that so he told them we are going in and get those people out. It was a ploy, Mr. Ritter it was later found out to have received some sort of remuneration from Iraq for objecting to the invasion, since before he was screaming publicly that Iraq had WMD and was hiding it from the inspectors.



The difference is that the house of Saud is not the government of Saudi Arabia. The family rules the country but officially they are different. Iraq’s political leader made the threats meaning he was speaking for his country not himself or his family. Had he parsed his words he would still be alive and a thorn in our sides.



Here we disagree. It was needed and it was done, that can not be changed. Mismanaged, can’t argue with you there. Too many people trying to achieve too many conflicting agenda.

Bin laden, dirt bag that he is or was, is not the problem anymore. He has shot is wad and that is all he had was one large attack that fizzled. As long as he is running for his life he can’t mess with us, and the current world climate will not allow him a safe haven from which to plan and organize another large scale attack.

Diplomatically you are wrong. Every country except one that opposed us going into Iraq has had a change in government leaders and those elected leaders are pro rather than anti American. France has been anti American since the Eisenhower administration and has elected a pro American president. Germany has been leaning away from us for decades now have a pro American chancellor. Russia the last of the axis of idiots has had a change in leadership but is the hand picked puppet of the last leader so there is no change there. It seems that those nations wanted a pro American head of state and got what they wanted.



Please be specific here. The only torture I am aware of is water boarding and that is not all that bad. I went through it many times and it is uncomfortable but does not leave any lasting injury or mental anguish. This has only been used once or twice since the war on terror began and the people it was used on were terrorists of a high order. Every military person who goes through special operations training is subjected to it. If given the choice between what other countries use, (electrodes to the genitals till the pain is so bad you crush your own teeth, just before you snap your own spine from the convulsions) or some one throwing water in my face for 30 seconds. I want the bath!



I don’t doubt it at all, I remember Speaker Pelosi saying that two dollars a gallon was horrible and that now the democrats are in charge that will change. Yup, in less than two years the price is no longer two dollars a gallon, cheers for Speaker Pelosi! Now it is 130 a barrel and four dollars a gallon. Got to love that swift action on her part.

On a serious note I could not find the site that had Saddam saying he would sell or give his WMD to anyone that would use it against Israel or the US. The link I had is not up any more. I will continue to search.

You are correct my friend. I beg to differ with you on one small point. Saddam was involved with AQ for years. No one has suggested that he was in any way involved with 9/11 but he was involved with the first attack on the World Trade Center since the planner of the attack got into the US on a valid Iraqi passport and people involved in the attack that escaped fled to Iraq for protection.

People do make the mistake of equating Saddam and AQ with Saddam, AQ and 9/11. The difference is that we have yet to uncover any proof that he was involved in 9/11 and no one in the administration has ever said there was. MSNBC made that connection and attributed it to the administration but has never produced proof of this and that is what most people point to pro or con the war in Iraq. If there was proof that he was, Iraq would have been first on our hit list. Since no country was proved to be actively involved in the attacks for obvious reasons we had to go after the terrorists themselves, scattered around the world.

All in all I have to say that the president has done a good job. Sure there were missteps and mistakes but people are human. On the whole the current president did very well given the mess he walked into and the two messes that were dumped in his lap the first 9 months of his administration. Why people don’t see that is beyond me.

Humorous in retrospect. Kind of like how Carter trashed Ford for the inflation and jobless rate in 76. And for those of us old enough, we know what happened between 76 and 80! The misery index went from about 11 to over 20!

Good old Jimmy Carter! He is the second reason I left the democrat party.

I am starting to see a trend here doc. Governor Carter trashed unemployment and inflation of the republicans and then did it worse when he became president.

Speaker Pelosi trashed the republican congress for high fuel prices and when she took over the prices tripled.

Yes, I finally see how it works. The democrats try to do republicans one better. I just wish they understood that the direction they take us is not the one we need to go in.

Yeah. I can understand that.

Those that don't hate George Bush are usually much quieter than those who do.

Nobody gets insulted or attacked for sticking to the safe party line ("George Bush is like Hitler").

But come election time, the loud-mouthed "peace activists" always get their asses handed to them.

(The British now want Tony Blair back and the Tories are leading in all polls. Labour even lost London!)

Yea but! (Trudy's big but there) - They "feel" your pain AND their intentions were good!

Hi, Paladin77 -

The Army investigation into alleged abuses of prisoners was led by General Antonio Taguba, who at its conclusion stated that the Bush administration "has committed war crimes" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay "when the Commander-in-chief authorized a systmatic regime of torture." This quote is from Taguba's preface to a report written by the group Physicians for Human Rights, which is entitled "Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact." You ought to be able to find it online.

As to the relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda, I'm genuinely confused that you bring this up when the United States Army says no relationship existed. For my reference, if you care to, see http://www.cnn.com/2008/us/03/13/alqaeda.saddam/.

Here is my point - if Saddam had, as you stated, publicly said "I have WMDs and I'll give them to anyone who will use them to attack America", and if he had an operational relationship with Al Qaeda, then I most likely would have supported making war on Iraq myself. However, not only were these things not true, it was pretty much common knowledge that they weren't true by 2005.

I gather you are either active or ex-military, based on your personal experience with waterboarding (SERE?). Sincerely, I thank you for your service. I don't think AWOL Bush and Five-deferment Cheney are fit to lick your boots.

Please tell me - what "mess" did Bush walk into? Could it have been all that money from the budget surplus lying around that he had to clean up and throw away? As to the two messes that were dumped into his lap in the first nine months, I'm assuming that 9/11 was one of them, but what was the other. And if you are willing to use facts to tell me why Bush has done a good job, then I'll use facts, and only facts, to tell you why in my opinion he hasn't. Fair enough?

Is this place a joke? All I see are so many people (grown adults too at that) that haven't gotten out of the "football mindset" of defeating the other side instead of finding the truth about things. And the whole picture? forget about it. I think of myself as conservative but not a neo-conservative which this little nest appears to be comprised of.

Even if Iraq had "relations" with terrorists that doesn't justify our current government to not even declaring war by constitutional standards but make illegal war, the same that rogue countries do.

Using their logic it's okay to kill many hundreds of civilians for a small group of people. It's not like these Iraqi's have familes and ties who could end up hating America and become terrorists themselves..

Also the amount of money this is costing is ennormeous and the simple thing is we will have to pull out eventually because we will be bankrupt in a few years. All the government is doing is ensuring that will happen because things haven't gotten any better over in the years our army has occupied it. If you think 3 groups are going to give up fighting anytime soon, along with the new breed of Terrorists that America has created then you need to wake up. But I correct myself, they aren't terrorists, they are Iraqi people tired of America's occupation. Just imagine if some foreign country invaded us because of some relation we had. This along with fighting in Afghanistan seems like there's something much bigger and it's not in America's interest.

I love it how people complain about socialism, but apparently they don't know what it is. These wars have been infinitely more disaterous than Socialism could ever hope to be. I hate it myself but would prefer it to these illegal wars any day. Instead of spending billions overseas, why not fix some of America's problems? You know like our border for a start.

Thats another thing that gets me steamed - our goverment is supposed to be fighting terrorism overseas spending all of our money and having to borrow and borrow ensuring that foreign privateers buy America. They basically say they're "protecting us". they can also take away all of our rights by making the patriot act, but they cannot... absolutely cannot build better feneces around our border. Nor increase the border patrol. While thousand of illegal immigrants cross it everyday. Something doesn't add up.

 

Hi, Roris1X -

Yours is one of the most sensible posts I've read, and I thank you for it.

You were very logical until you used the term neo-conservative. It is a racial slur used by liberals mostly referring to Jews who left the democrat party. I am a Jew, and I left the democrat party in the 70’s because they stopped being conservative. You did not know this and I am not offended by your use of the term because of your ignorance. I just wanted you to know that it is a highly offensive term, like calling a black person a nigger. It is one of the liberals smug code words that allows the ignorant to not hold them accountable for using such a slur and when they are called on it they claim ignorance and that the person is over sensitive.



Sorry but that lie does not cut it when the facts are brought to light. We attacked Afghanistan because they were protecting Al Qaeda. They refused to turn over AQ we went in and destroyed the government in our search for the bad guys. This was legal and justified.

The legal justification for going into Iraq had noting to do with Saddam’s decades long ties with terrorism, which was just icing on the cake. The reason we went into Iraq, the reason that is on the record is his continued violations of the armistice agreed to and signed by the government of Iraq. The armistice clearly lays out things that Iraq must do to keep the war from resuming. They failed to do this for over a decade. After 9/11 it was decided to resume the war and end it. There was and is no need for a declaration of war because that had been signed and agreed to by our Congress, the UN, and NATO. The Gulf War, just like the Korean War, was not over. The UN started both wars for the United States, now one of the two is over and done with leaving only one war left to finish. Should North Korea openly violate the armistice that war will continue.



Check your history, the same was said with our little stay in Japan, 1946-1975. The same was said with our minor visit to Germany 1946-1993. How about our tiny stay in South Korea 1953- present.

It was also said that converting the government from a socialist fascist state to a democratic state. The argument at the time was that the people would not want to leave the comfort of socialism under the power of a dictator and would fail as soon as we left. This was also said about Italy, Japan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is in our nation’s best interest to make the conversion just as we did in Japan, Germany, and the rest.

The argument of the cost is the same as the one against the Marshal plan and others where we financed the rebuilding of Germany, and the rest of Europe as well as Japan. We spent more on rebuilding those countries than we did in developing the atomic bomb.



This argument was made when we waged the cold war, as well as our space program. Both have helped our nation in many ways you don’t seem to see. The money is there for our border, it is sitting waiting to be spent, but environmentalist have blocked the building of a border fence because it might hurt the migration of some animal or insect. Liberals are fighting protection of our borders because it is racist. It is not the money it is the political will of our nation that stops us almost every time. You are correct it does not add up.

Paladin77

Your stated ratinale for the Iraq War keeps changing, but you've still got a long way to go to catch up with President Bush, who I think stated some 27 different reasons for going into Iraq. First was WMDs, which we now know was false, and which was believed to be false by many of us.

The Downing Street Memo shows clearly that Bush lied us into the Iraq War. And the complete lack of accountability for the billions of dollars sent into Iraq and lost or stolen makes any comparison to the Marshall Plan invalid in my view.

I knew I would get a reply like this if I actually got one. Basically the logic is "it's the liberal's fault" or "here's a history lesson". If the former was truly that way, we wouldn't be at war because the liberals would prevent it. And you basically isolate parts of my whole argurement instead of seeing the connection between the bs of what our adminstration is doing. And sorry for unorganized paraghs, I'm dead tired now.

Also it saddens me when you say "we" the goverment doesn't give a damn about you or me I'm afraid. The only say we have in it is who gets elected and even that's fishy because of media converage on canidates - like making Ron Paul not exist. The majority of this country doesn't agree with the Iraq war and the government, including the democratic congress aren't doing a damn thing about it.

"You were very logical until you used the term neo-conservative."

Then what is this conservative regime that is ruling our country? it certainly isn't this..

Small goverment

No socialism

No nation building

Anti-war

etc

And again liberals are at the fault of everything again? And sorry I've seen the same smugness in this very thread coming from so called "conservatives".

anyone who thinks they can invade a country killing thousands of innocents for a very small amount of people is pretty smug and elite. And another word comes to mind. Basically its hurting the whole for a few which doesn't make sense and so far has lead to only an increasing amount of deaths and people to fight against. I'm not point a finger at you but at the very ones who iniated and are leading it. Which is both democrats and republicans.

I know the conservative admistration is anything but conservative in this age. And neo-consveratives fit them perfectly.

Also here's a video naming out "neo-conservatives" yes they call themselves that and this is coming from a true conservative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4df1soW7Dho

Sorry but that lie does not cut it when the facts are brought to light. We attacked Afghanistan because they were protecting Al Qaeda. They refused to turn over AQ we went in and destroyed the government in our search for the bad guys. This was legal and justified.

Actually it is illegal because our government never legally declared war by constitutional means. *repeated* So it's illegal period. Working with NATO, the U.N doesn't justify ignoring our constitution which is supposed to be our way of law. Also again lets ignore the civilians.

Again I'll use the same logic this adminstration is using they can kill thousands of innocents and face no consequence in order to get a small group running around everyhwere. And again just imagine if another country invaded us on the same proposal - it wouldn't stand. And there are Iraqis fighting against us now because of our occupation. The media likes to call them "terrorists".

"Check your history, the same was said with our little stay in Japan, 1946-1975. The same was said with our minor visit to Germany 1946-1993. How about our tiny stay in South Korea 1953- present."

Those aren't in the same league with two full wars going on along with nation building. America now has so many more military bases around the world. Our goverment has built what looks like an small empire and  much to the natives displeasure - see South Korea. Also we were just in the beginning of the borrowing "bubble". And now it looks like it could pop any day.

It is costing us billions but of course the mainstream meda will never make it in healdline news. Btw there is no "left or right media" if there was really this liberal bias, Bush would not have gotten elected twice nor would we be in this war. If you do some research there are a few individuals who own the media. Off topic I know but just wanted you know because I'm really sick of hearing about horrible liberals when the very peope you support are the ones screwing us over.

To get back to why we will go bankrupt is we've been borrowing heavily from the chinese and other nations. We just can't keep going at it. That's why we've been able to keep this unconstitional empire running. This is called a bubble and it's about to burst. And if it isn't well America has been and is up for sale like I said for Foreign Investors. Not only will they eventually own America but imagine the influence they will or probably already have now.

"This argument was made when we waged the cold war, as well as our space program. Both have helped our nation in many ways you don’t seem to see. The money is there for our border, it is sitting waiting to be spent, but environmentalist have blocked the building of a border fence because it might hurt the migration of some animal or insect. Liberals are fighting protection of our borders because it is racist. It is not the money it is the political will of our nation that stops us almost every time. You are correct it does not add up."

See above for spending.

How has focusing on a space program instead of common sense things like I've stated helped us? The current admin is literally currently focuing more on outer space than down here in America. That would make a great comic.

Your logic makes no sense regarding our borders. I'm sorry, if the current adminstration can get away with two illegal wars, nation biulding, outrageous military spending, etc they can easily fix our borders.. Liberals are also fighting the war and is that stopping it? You must be talking about liberals as in citizens like you and me well like I previous pointed out we so far have no real power. The demcratic congress is nearly identical to the other side with them making plans to spend even more money on Iraq.  This is not the "will of the nation" gimme a break =/. Also you are ignoring the patriot act that can take away all of our rights. They're willing to do something as drastic as that. This again shows the current adminstration doesn't have our interests in mind.

So basically looking at the past in this case doesn't make sense because things have gotten worse - our borrowing and spending bubble, more military bases to make this godforsaken empire, we have no trade surplus now. America doesn't produce anything today besides entertainment. We provide nothing to other countries except nation building which is a huge hole in our pocked to the say the least.

I can already see you're not going to see my way because your so stuck with this party that looks to me is completely self-interest and not for us, the people. Which is a shame because your smarter than I thought you were, you're just not looking at the whole logic and the whole picture. I think your somewhat afraid to go against this outrageous adminstration, along with it's congress thinking it would be unpatriotic. But you would be a true patriot for doing so because they simply don't care about us.

 

 

 

 

 

Some WMDs were found.

You do not "know" that it was "false", you BELIEVE that not enough were found to warrant calling them "WMDs".

That's not the same, really.




Unless it is Saddam in which case the action constitutes no cause for war (I remember the demonstrations against the war to liberate Kuwait), or unless the killing doesn't involve an invasion (Saddam murdering hundreds of thousands of Shiites clearly doesn't constitute grounds for complaints).

But it's even worth than that!

I grew up in territory occupied by the US (West-Berlin) and am a citizen of a country the US invaded (Germany).

Smug and elite indeed, but also necessary and good.

Yes, innocent people died. But I blame the Nazis and Saddam for that. Nobody forced Saddam to attack Iran, gas Kurds, invade Kuwait, attack Israel, support PLO terrorists, and slaughter Shiites.