Slashdot Mirror
Richard Clarke on Cyberterrorism and Iraq
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Clarke, former counter terrorism advisor to the US National Security Council, has revealed that before invading Iraq, the U.S. government used the Internet to communicate directly with Iraqi soldiers by sending them personalised messages saying, "We're about to invade. We're going to overwhelm you and if you resist us we're going to kill you. But we don't want to do that. So really the best thing for you to do when we invade is to go home." He said the soldiers got the message and most of them went home. Clarke, who many will remember for publicly criticizing the Bush administration, also emphasized the importance of cybersecurity. "Just because it doesn't create a lot of body bags, doesn't mean it's not important. It's vitally important for our economies," Clarke said."
dropping propaganda leaflets from an airplane.
I can't imagine too many of the Iraqi grunts with email or IM. Maybe the upper eschelon officers.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Or would they argue in the Hague that the personalized nature of the death threat made it okay?
How many Iraqi soldiers actually had internet access? Sounds like they really just got in touch with the senior guys.
Well, I believe that in the end those messages did a good thing. Of course, their mechanism was to scare the soldiers and say they would be spared if they just didn't fight. But isn't it a good thing at least those soldiers knew they had another option instead of fighting?
Still, I can't ignore the fact that the message in the end was something like "Surrender yourself to your new overlords". But that doesn't change the fact that people were spared.
" "Richard Clarke, former counter terrorism advisor to the US National Security Council, has revealed that before invading Iraq, the U.S. government used the Internet to communicate directly with Iraqi soldiers by sending them personalised messages saying, "We're about to invade. We're going to overwhelm you and if you resist us we're going to kill you. But we don't want to do that. So really the best thing for you to do when we invade is to go home." He said the soldiers got the message and most of them went home. "
This has been known for quite some time. Majour news didn't mention it, but it has been know for at least a year.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"the U.S. government used the Internet to communicate directly with Iraqi soldiers by sending them personalised messages"
But were they able to get the "Darth Vader Boards The Rebel Cruiser" ringtone to work at the same time? Now THAT would've been cool.
Why does that not seem likely to me? I mean, I was under the impression that most of these guys were lucky to have water or guns that worked.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
teh Bush i5 c0m1ng, 4ll ur b453 r b3l0ng 2 U.S.!!!!!!
before invading Iraq, the U.S. government used the Internet to communicate directly with Iraqi soldiers by sending them personalised messages saying, "We're about to invade. We're going to overwhelm you and if you resist us we're going to kill you...."
Before we invade Iran and Syria, maybe they should send this instead.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
...and a 35% request for penis lengthening rate.
Whats up with the US dropping leaflets, food and etc before we bomb people.
We our really polite at times before killing people.
I wonder why Richard Clarke keeps coming out with these stories, and what he has to gain by them.
Pyschological warfare via the internet has officially begun !
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"Ok, you have us convinced, my pals and I are going home. But on the way, we're going to stop at the local Al-Kmart and do a little shopping, maybe stock up on RPGs and high explosives.
So have fun in Baghdad. Do some sightseeing. Check out Saddams palaces. And watch your backs, because we're going to be bombing and sniping and kidnapping your asses until hell freezes over. Your pal, an Iraqi soldier."
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HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
But the US is known for it's evilness and it's desire to kill as many people as possible. It can't possibly be true that they did anything that probably saved countless lives.</sarcasm>
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
A turned enemy is far more valuable than a dead one.
The war in Iraq will never be won because Bush is focused on kiling the enemy -- and not too worried about killing innocents. Every dead civilian is probably going to create 2-5 enemy insurgents (former friends and family of the dead)... The more people you kill the more enemies you end up with.
Unless he's willing to just Nuke the country then this is is gonna continue ad-infinitum.
The interesting thing is that all of those messages probably gave the baath party the idea of going home (with their weapons) and waiting until the US had moved in -- thus leading, in part, to the current dilemma.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
His book has a bit of puffery, but it was also very insightful.
They e-mailed the iraqi army telling them to give up?
WTF?
That just reminds me so much trash-talking other script kiddies back when I discovered things like winnuke and mailbombing.
HAHA look say I am a stupid bitch NOW or I will *nuke your lame arse! LOL
Err. I never used those things. Just saying...
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Richard Clarke's book is a really good read. Good insight to what has been done right (or at least better) and what is currently going wrong.
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
Since when did Dick Clark stop shooting $100,000 Pyramid and get into politics??? :P
He resigned in Jan 2003, before the invasion took place.
A SM in poly-sci. But still that might make him a slashdot type.
[snip]if you believe how he tells it, he was involved in every national security crisis in the past 30 years and if it wasn't for him, by golly, we'd all be doomed. He almost single-handedly saves the day every time![/snip]
Ok, stop bashing on the guy just because he disagreed with Bush and was asked to leave. I see alot of this, if your not with us, your against us posts about people who disagree with Bush.
This is still America and you can disagree, for now...
But anyways, Richard Clarke has been around for over 30 years fighting terrorism. I'm sure he has seen a little more than the average slashdot poster, his experience shouldn't be disregarded with such disrespect.
Check out Wikipeida on Richard Clarke.
If we could only focus Spammers' efforts towards flooding the "enemy's" mail boxes full of crap, maybe we can bog down their infrastructure bringing their society to a screaming halt!
And it would be cheap to do... we just buy more of those spamming servers from China and... hmmm... WAIT A MINUTE!!!
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
(emphasis mine)
Unfortunately, it's the soldiers who went home who're now shooting at the coalition soldiers.
The vast majority of Iraqis would like us to just leave - even if it means that we don't spend another dime on reconstruction and there is no western investment in the country. Every single poll I've seen has more than 95% of iraqis wanting this.
Why should we be there fighting the desires of the Iraqi people? If our goal was to get rid of Sadam, we've already done that, so why stick around?
Oh, the real reason is so we can steal their oil. And I do mean steal.
Plus, most iraqis I've heard interviewed prefer Sadaam to the US. They say things like "at least Sadaam was an Iraqi."
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
They went home, then they came back when it was easier for them to kill us. If they had just had Saddam to command them, they'd have surrendered en masse again, just like in 1991, and been captured. Instead, we directed them into the ranks of "insurgents". At least half of them showed up again for the free training, guns and uniforms, before regrouping as "insurgents" to bomb us. As usual, we're our own worst enemy.
--
make install -not war
Attention leftist activists and intelligentsia! The solidification of our power is imminent. Although you could stay and fight, it would really be much better if you just left. Please accept these Novia Scotia brochures and a complimentary copy of Hockey for Dummies! Remember, if it's not Right, it's Wrong!
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Now, explain to me again how the US can possibly be "in the right"?
Here's a blog http://cbftw.blogspot.com/ by a solder serving over there. He talks about what it's like to be there, and what he hears from Iraqis he talks to. The ones he mentions don't seem to be that unhappy with us. It might just be that he's reporting what he sees, not just what fits his preconceptions.
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noun
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
Use of the term 'propaganda' is not necessarily bashing anything. There is actually an entire sub-branch of the military dedicated to propaganda, which the original poster was referring to. They drop leaflets out of airplanes explaining to enemy soldiers that they have no hope of winning, and the best thing to do is surrender, and hey while we're at it, here's the proper way to surrender so you don't get your brains blown out.
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"Clarke, who many will remember for publicly critisizing the Bush administration..."
It truly is memorable that this official publicly criticized the Bush administration. That's scary. A healthy democracy requires broad criticism and debate about those in power.
You know what else was memorable? The administration's ferocious character assasination that began as soon as Clarke spoke out.
Four more years.
Every single poll I've seen has more than 95% of iraqis wanting this.
I'd like to see your source for these polls. This isn't a troll, it's an honest question. You've seen one thing, I've seen something completely different.
Who am I? Why, I'm a Marine who got back from Iraq not long ago. The folks we met were nice and seemed very thankful we were there, the kids especially. The only place we weren't really welcome was in the Sunni Triangle area which is full of old Saddam loyalists who had everything to lose a nothing to gain with Saddam being kicked out.
Why should we be there fighting the desires of the Iraqi people?
Speaking as someone who's been in country and not just reading what CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC is reporting, I find it hard to believe you can ask such a question. The vast majority of the country was tired of being ruled by Saddam and his religious minority. The only way he stayed in power was by intimidation, and the people he intimidated are very happy he's gone. They're doubly happy we're there to prevent his lieutenants from trying to re-establish Ba'athist strongholds and continue his "reign."
If our goal was to get rid of Sadam, we've already done that, so why stick around?
See last two sentences in previous paragraph.
Oh, the real reason is so we can steal their oil. And I do mean steal.
If there's oil theft going on, it's not coming from the Americans. There aren't lines of Texaco supertankers sitting at port just greedily sucking the country dry all so Bush and Halliburton can make a buck. Iraqi oil is being sold to whoever wants it at market prices, the same as in Saudi, the same as in Russia and South America. If we're stealing their oil, precisely why are we paying for it? That kind of goes against the definition of stealing, don't you think?
Plus, most iraqis I've heard interviewed prefer Sadaam to the US. They say things like "at least Sadaam was an Iraqi."
If you did nothing but interview in the Sunni triangle, such reponses would be expected. I'd be shocked if it were otherwise. But outside the Sunni areas it's an entirely different story. You don't hear that story very much because the news organizations are fixated on where the problems are, not where things are going great. Blood and gore sells, but kids going to a newly-opened school don't sell. Roadside bombs boost ratings, but nobody cares whether a water treatment plant or a power plant is back online again. Insurgents shooting RPG's at our Bradley's get lots of airtime, but the kids in the streets giving soldiers and Marines food and water with smiles and thanks gets no screen time at all. You can claim it doesn't happen but I'm willing to bet you haven't been there. I have.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Mod me down as off topic, but I'd like to personally thank the parent poster for his service and his lucid post.
Are you saying we should have allowed Saddam to continue to slaughter Iraqi kurds by the tens or hundreds of thousands? Is it not better to risk killing a few to prevent not only the death but the certain torture of thousands more?
Was not Saddam openly offering $25k to the family of each suicide bomber to blow up Israelis and Americans, in the name of Palestine, anywhere in the world?
Contrary to the image seen on TV, some of the Iraqi units did stand and fight -- talk to anyone in the US units who were at the front line of the attack (of course, many of those are now back in Iraq for their second or third tour, but some are Stateside). The assault wasn't the advertised "cakewalk"; there was real fighting. Of course, those Iraqis who fought, often as not, died as a consequence.
As for most of the remainder -- who didn't want to be there in the first place, and had no love for Saddam and his cronies -- they did what men in any army in history would do in a similar set of circumstances: they deserted as soon as the opportunity arose to do so without risking punishment.
And finally, some percentage -- it is unclear how many -- disappeared, went into hiding for about six months, and then emerged to fight a classical guerrilla war. Which, unfortunately for the stability of the region, they are doing with considerable skill. Some folks that earlier deserted (particularly Sunnis; the Shi'a have decided to wait until they can win the election that the US is generously arranging for them) have joined them, as have an unknown number of outsiders.
This is a nice neat plausible story without the email, which probably had little if any effect. The Iraqi Army (as distinct from Baath apologists and lackies, plus their fearless leader) had no illusions about its chances against the US -- after all, this organization fought two major wars within the memory of its current officer corps. They probably found the emails a bit of comic relief prior to dealing with the inevitable.
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Nor is this constrained to resistance forces. The evacuation at Dunkirk was probably Britain's finest hour in World War II, because the citizens took it on their own to sail in anything that could move on water, through the German bombers and artillery, to rescue escaping allied troops.
However, you'll notice something about both of these examples. No side had an overall advantage. In the case of Russia, the Germans used armor heavily, which is not a good tactic in urban warfare. Their tanks were built for high speeds, which is why they did well in Africa (being defeated largely by superior numbers) but that meant defensive capability and tight cornering were not part of the design.
In the case of Dunkirk, we see a similar situation. The German aircraft were designed to strike fast and run fast. Both the aircraft and artillery were designed to hit big, slow-moving targets. That made them utterly ineffective against something as tiny or as manoeverable as a sailing boat.
The fact, then, that the opponents in both cases were relatively puny was offset by the limitations of the attackers.
At Tora Bora, we got to see both sides. When the Afghan troops were used, the defenders had the advantage, because they had superior terrain. When the US carpet-bombed the entire region, though, relatively little escaped. (Carpet-bombing is frowned upon by the International community, precisely because very little tends to survive. You can't exactly aim to miss the guys who are too wounded to fight, have surrendered, etc. This puts it on the no-no side of the rules of engagement. On the other hand, most nations aren't stupid enough to argue the finer points with a country with 20,000 lb. MOABs.)
In Iraq, we're seeing a similar scenario panning out. Where the US uses Iraqi troops (or their own troops in small numbers), the resistance tends to do quite a bit of damage. However, when the US uses air strikes, missile-armed UAVs, the really heavy tanks (where an RPG just means someone has to go out and re-paint the star on the side) or very large numbers of troops, the US tends to walk right over the opposition.
Do I think the opposition is likely to last? Probably. There are a few too many "unfortunate incidents" which could push the undecided voters - sorry, undecided Arabs into opposing the US presence. There are some serious allegations that such incidents, far from being the product of "a few bad apples" were actually approved policy. If that pans out, I can imagine that we'll start seeing some serious fireworks.
Will the resistance defeat the US? Probably not. At least, not directly. It's currently a war of attrition, and the US can afford the current casualty ratio. Now, if the insurgents were to scatter in the desert and wait it out, then re-invade Iraq once the US left, they'd probably win and the US would be unlikely to go back. (Well, provided the oil stayed flowing.)
The current tactic, though, seems to be geared more to draining the US of the financial resources needed to maintain any presence in the Middle East. That might work. Indirect wars have been fought before. (Napoleon's famous remark of armies marching on their stomach was in reference to the fact that you can destroy an army far more effectively by eliminating the supplies than by direct confrontation.)
Certainly, the US is heavily in debt, inflation is becoming a problem and consumer confidence is very low. However, the war would have to continue at current levels for several more years to destabilize the US economy enough to cause severe problems. The insurgents would also need t
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The coalition, however, has thrown lots of people in jail and tortured some of them, sometimes tortured them to death- which is probably a worse way to go than having your head hacked off, which isn't pretty but at least it's quick. American soldiers have also executed unarmed prisoners.
I'm not saying that the rather amateur torture exploits of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib compare to the professional job done by Hussein, who institutionalized it, or that the occasional summary execution of an insurgent is comparable to Saddam's mass graves. But when we do imprison, torture, and execute people it sort of reduces our moral superiority argument to "Well, you see, but we don't imprison, torture, and execute people nearly as much as Saddam did," which somehow doesn't exactly fill my heart with patriotic pride. If we really want to convince the world that our intentions are decent, and if we really want to convince the world that we're better than the thugs we took out, there should be zero tolerance of this kind of shit- and the accountability should run to the top of the chain of command, where it belongs.
Because, if I were an iraqi involved in the insurgency or was hostile toward a man with tanks, guns and bombs, I'd tell him straight to his face.
Well, you get what you ask for. How about a poll conducted by the CPA itself?
e k/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5217874/site/newswe
If you don't believe that the US has been privatizing (i.e., selling to foreign interests) Iraq's industries, well, you're allowed to deny reality all you want. We've privatized everything from the ports at Umm Qasr to Kimadia (Iraq's pharmaceutical industry which provided the country with cheap drugs). Read Bremer's Order 39, which privatized over 200 state-run companies by selling them off to the highest bidder (most of the bidders being US firms)
The *special* hell.
I'm a Marine who got back from Iraq not long ago. The folks we met were nice and seemed very thankful we were there, the kids especially.
Selection bias. The Iraqis that don't want you or any other foreign military presence in their country will not walk up to you and tell you that. You might shoot them.
I call bullshit. Just because you supposedly went over to Iraq doesn't mean you know shit about what's going on. In a previous post of yours, you dismissed the Abu Gharib atrocities as not really atrocities, saying:
"Wearing panties on your head and being forced to pose nude for photographs is not an attrocity -- except in your morally twisted mind."
Forgetting that there was at least one Iraqi prisoner beaten to death and then posed with, as well as numerous instances of proven sexual abuse and many allegations of rape and torture. You don't think that's an atrocity? I don't think your opinion is very valid.
"The only place we weren't really welcome was in the Sunni Triangle area which is full of old Saddam loyalists who had everything to lose a nothing to gain with Saddam being kicked out."
That's funny. I was pretty sure al-Sistani and al-Sadr, who have nothing to do with the Sunnis or the Sunni triangle area were pretty pissed at the continued American presence. Oh, I'm sure they're just an exception too, right? Or maybe you'll claim they're all foreign al Qaeda fighters, even though most media reports say otherwise.
In past posts, you've also made the claim that the sarin gas that was fired at troops constitutes weapons of mass destruction. You also dismiss the idea of globalization entirely ("This globalization stuff is something non-U.S. nationals have come up with as an excuse to damage the U.S. economically and politically because they can't do so militarily."), and then you go on to tell all those who oppose you "Go burn a flag and worship Stalin or something."
How are you different than every other republican card-carrying asshole, other than the fact that you claim you served in Iraq under the Marines? Even if that were true, that doesn't mean the things you say are right. The testimony of an anti-war military personnel (like the ones in the commercials of operation truth) doesn't necessarily mean his viewpoint is correct.
But you keep trying to feed your viewpoint of the Iraqi population being basically thankful children for American invasion. Forget the fact that over 15,000 civilians have died as a result of the American attacks and no end to such conflict is in sight. Iraqis are happy that Saddam is gone, but they're not happy the United States is there. It's the facts. And no amount of bullshit from you could prove otherwise.
The vast majority of the country was tired of being ruled by Saddam and his religious minority
Do you have evidence of this? Were there independent polls conducted across the country? Or is this just what your CO or President told you? Excuse me for not believing everything the US administration claims.
One could equally claim that over 50 million people in the US alone (not to mention the rest of the world) are tired of the rule of George Bush and his religious minority. Does that justify another nation invading the US? Wouldn't you resist the occupiers as the Iraqi's are doing?
Finally, can you tell me what the 100,000 civillians killed in this war think about the liberation of Iraq? Are they better off now that Sadam is gone?
prisoner-of-enigma, I don't want to denigrate you in any way. You have put more on the line for your country than I think I will ever have the guts to. However I still believe this to be an illegal war and I believe your Government lied to you.
Shitdrummer.
Where in Iraq did you serve? What unit? The "Sunni Triangle" contains about 4 million people. And it excludes the equally-if-not-more dangerous Sadr City, of ~3 million people.
e k/
h tm
.. is back online again
f m? story_id=3352814
What sort of selection bias did you have? I.e., if you served in the Green Zone, you're not exactly going to be encountering those hostile to you very much, just as diplomats in Saigon didn't exactly find most people there to express hatred to their face. In fact, when the US began evacuating from Vietnam, the helicopters were swarmed with US supporters trying to escape the country.
> There aren't lines of Texaco supertankers
> sitting at port
Read Order 36 by Bremer.
> I'd be shocked if it were otherwise
Be shocked.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5217874/site/newswe
> kids going to a newly-opened school
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0628/p01s02-woiq.
Lovely school job there.
> water treatment plant
You mean, like the one that we opened that was immediately hit by a suicide bomber trying to kill the US troops on site?
> power plant
Like how the country's energy is far *lower* than before the war? I can get you graphs if you want. It's especially bad right now.
In short, you need to quit spinning and look at the numbers. Another number you might be interested in: 98,000
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.c
Please discuss the methodology if you wish to complain about it; note that if you find fault in its methodology, you also need to fault pretty much every third world epidemiology study out there.
The *special* hell.
Your post looked interesting until i felt on that :
being ruled by Saddam and his religious minority
Saddam was everything you want but a religious dictator. Actually he was hated by other Arab nations because he wasn't religious. Some of his top trusted lieutenant were christians damn it. Ever heard of Tarek Aziz ? He's christian.
So, I fear you either are making all this "testimony" up or you lack the critical thinking allowing you to understand that only a thin minority of people came to talk to you. And if they came, of course they were friendly, else they wouldn't have come.
Either you're a troll, or you're way over your head by expanding a few anecdotial encounters to a global view of Iraq. If you think that most iraqis have forgotten the fact that US did back up Saddam, you're a dreamer.
i had an argument with someone about that, but both of us agreed this is a UN-enforced debt from the last war, and nothing to really blame the US for: they have somewhat marginal say over it.
our argument was whether john kerry's campaign promise to forgive iraq's debt was hot air or not. kinda moot now.
and I've pointed it out before. Define "terrorism" in this context. How you can hold up Titus' genocide against the Jews -- he ordered the complete destruction of Judea -- as an example of stopping terrorism is beyond me. It was an attempt to steal gold and, of course, put down Jewish resistance to the Roman empire. Perhaps the morons modding this crap up every time you post it would stop to think if they knew you were advocating genocide based on an example of the near extermination of Jews that was actually an influence on Hitler's strategy of annihilation during WWII.
Richard Clarke made repeated attempts at trying to show Condoleeza Rice and Bush that Al-Qaeda was a major threat; the April 2001 date was one of the times where he brought up the topic with the Bush administration, only to be ignored and brushed aside.
m ission/
... We could have caught those guys and then we might have been able to pull that thread and get more of the conspiracy. I'm not saying we could have stopped 9/11, but we could have at least had a chance. "
After the book came out (and I'm not doubting some things were stretched to sell more copies), numerous news agencies asked Condoleeza Rice about whether Richard Clarke had pleaded with the Bush administration; she can't seem to recall any of those NSC meetings - odd considering her position has National Security Adviser to the president.
See CNN here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/24/911.com
Slate has a great op-ed piece too:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097685/
"To an unusual degree, the Bush people can't get their story straight. On the one hand, Condi Rice has said that Bush did almost everything that Clarke recommended he do. On the other hand, Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's show, acted as if Clarke were a lowly, eccentric clerk: "He wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff." This is laughably absurd. Clarke wasn't just in the loop, he was the loop."
Another great tidbit:
"The Principals meeting, which Clarke urgently requested during Bush's first week in office, did not take place until one week before 9/11. In his 60 Minutes interview, Clarke spelled out the significance of this delay. He contrasted July 2001 with December 1999, when the Clinton White House got word of an impending al-Qaida attack on Los Angeles International Airport and Principals meetings were called instantly and repeatedly:
In December '99, every day or every other day, the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the Attorney General had to go to the White House and sit in a meeting and report on all the things that they personally had done to stop the al Qaeda attack, so they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees personally and finding out all the information. If that had happened in July of 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the Attorney General might have found out that there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States. FBI, at lower levels, knew [but] never told me, never told the highest levels in the FBI.
Look, a lot of Americans aren't as pissed b/c we're liberating Iraq - we got rid of a brutal dictator, great, good, that's jolly. We all agree Saddam is bad, no one disagrees. Btw though, if we're just using the oppressiveness of the dictator as a measuring stick on who to invade, why not Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and half of central/northern Africa?
There are two main issues that many Americans and the rest of the world do take with the war though:
#1 - The dishonesty with the rest of the world pre-Invasion.
- We were told WMD's were the main reason - no WMD's have been found in Iraq. The main American Arms inspector confirmed that none are likely to be found. And don't tell me that crap about the rest of the world believing Iraq had WMD's; if you read the reports by the German and othet European intelligence agencies, you'll see that the wording was more on the order of, "Saddam *MIGHT* be trying to make WMD's, but we're not sure." Most importantly, NONE of those reports, the CIA's included, in ANY WAY implied that those WMD's were in ANY position to harm America. So the bottom line is, Saddam might've been trying to make bombs (but we're not sure), but no way in hell can he hurt America with them.
#2 Lack of international consenus before going in/impact on post-war rebuilding.
- The Bush administration made a half-assed attempt to get the world on board by sending Colin Powell to make the case. Know how you can tell it's half-assed? They sent Colin Powell only, who the entire UN knew differed with Rumsfeld/Rice/Bush on his views, and was thus not a credible negotiating agent. Russia and various other countries pleaded for more time for the UN Arms Inspectors - Saddam was ready to allow them access, but these requests fell on deaf ears.
Now, we have no one but the Bush Administration for the shitty post-invasion botchup. It's basically the US going it alone with a bit of help from the UK; had Bush waited and built a real coalition like his dad did, we might have Germany, France, China, and Russia all providing troops, and more importantly LEGITIMACY. This legitimacy might also alleviate some of the anti-Western feelings that the US is doing a great job of stoking right now with heavy-handed tactis and prison scandals. This isn't just about politics, this could've meant significantly lower American casualties.
Just curious, you criticize CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC (and another person threw in the BBC for good measure) for reporting on the Iraq war, but you offer no cites or substantive reasons or backing as to why those media outlets are not reporting the truth.
Additionally, you left out Fox News and MSNBC. Are we to asusme that they are reporting only the "truth" and what is really happening over there, without bias?
Strange too how you leave out Sinclair broadcasting as well. They own many stations in many major markets, yet, they supposedly require or encourage the news reported on their outlets to be slanted in favor of all things Bush. Is this not an example of mis-leading reporting too?
And on another topic, as a Marine, do you think the US Military should be the World's Police force?
You didn't even address his character assassination by the Bushistas after his testimony to the 911 Commission. Your comment that he thought "cyberterrorism" was a bigger threat than bin Laden just shows how uninformed you are. Clarke publicly admitted being partially to blame for 911, but his book makes very clear that if anything, people thought he took the OBL threat too seriously prior to 911. And of course the biggest problem is that the Bush Admin stopped listening to him entirely until 911. "Cyberterrorism" was a subset of his concerns, but for him, al Qaeda was the biggest threat America faced since the Cold War, and he made that eminently clear.
> not long ago.
>
Wow, really? You truly are a polymath then. I've been keeping a private list of interesting things claimed by specific Slashdot posters; "I am a doctor", "I am a rocket scientist" and so forth. When I went to add your ID and username to the list, I found that someone else must have stolen your identity, because I'd already logged someone using your account name and UID as stating "I'm the I.T. Director for a large organization..." (Sorry, I don't track hrefs for each comment, because I didn't think I'd need to refer back to them, but that's a direct quote from a comment.) I guess it'd be in one of these previous comments but I'm on expensive dialup & haven't the time to go trawling for the exact comment.
So, you're the IT Director for the US Marine Corps? Wow, that must be a hell of a job; and you have to see active service as well! Well, good luck avoiding suicide bombers, 'insurgents' and other freedo^h^h^h terrorist types.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Its a no-win situation with people like you.
Well, perhaps if the US Government had listened to people like me in the first place they wouldn't have gotten themselves into this mess.
Perhaps if they had spent more time searching for WMD and listening to what the inspectors had to say ("we need more time") they would have concluded that Sadam was no threat to the US and the invasion wasn't necessary.
Perhaps if the US government didn't lie to the US citizens about Sadam's links to the September 11 attack this war would never have happened.
The US government was warned about what would happen in Iraq after the invasion. They chose to ignore the bad predictions (long drawn out war with many civillian casualities), but whole-heartedly accept the rosy predictions (they will welcome us in the streets with flowers).
And you are right. This is a no-win situation. Any situation that relies on the deaths of other human beings for an outcome is a no-win situation in my book.
Shitdrummer
That poll was taken in mid-June, when things were at their worst: right after Abu-Ghraib, fighting with Sadr, etc. It's gotten a little better since then, and I didn't see anything about "stealing" oil.
Why is privatizing stealing ? So it's not a socialist model, (US's oil companies aren't state run) but Iraq is sitting on a ton of oil and the only ones who got rich from it for the past several decades was Saddam, his henchman, and more recently, possibly some of those involved in the oil for food scandal.
Are you suggesting that these companies are just going to help themselves to the oil and Iraq itself will not see a dime ? That would never work. No doubt it's a killer capitalistic opportunity, but I fail to see where this suggests the Iraq people will not profit as well. Sure, some scumbags will no doubt go over the line, but that doesn't preclude the benefit of the experience these companies could bring.
Since the Iraqi people themselves have never before benefitted from their oil, I think they stand an excellent chance of raising their standard of living, once the insurgency is controlled or stopped. I'm not saying the US is promising a Utopia, but in 5 years I'd bet mod points that Iraq is going to be much better off than before all this began. I'd rather be an optimist than a pessimist.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Let's say a large military power (China?) decided that OUR (U.S.'s) leader was a dangerous crazy with access to WMDs. They invade, depose and occupy for a period of time. Would YOU sit by and wave to the invading troops, bringing them hot Starbuck's and wishing them well, satisfied they were only here for YOUR benefit? I wouldn't. I might even decide to be a giant pain in their ass.
I like my women like I like my coffee. In a burlap bag tied to a donkey.
>Who do you think owns Iraqi oil? Try the government and people of Iraq.
The same way we "own" the airwaves. The elitist policy makers decide who gets what and if you don't understand how there will be selective pro-American contracts then you really have not been paying attention. Hell, the administration even admits it wont give any contracts to most of Europe because they wouldnt send their young men off to die. Luckily, in the US we have Fox News telling us Saddam has nukes with no fact checking and an apathetic populace ready to send off our military into a quagmire.
Idiots, indeed!
> Their uncertainty range is NEAR ZERO
, 69 03,1263830,00.html
...
Apparently you didn't read the article; some key quotes:
1) the study concludes with 90% certainty that more than 40,000 Iraqis have died.
2) the true value is as likely to be larger than 98,000 as it is to be smaller.)
3) (all of the stuff discussing the methodology, and the views of professional statisticians that this method - the same used in epidemiology studies - is correct)
4) the estimate of 98,000 was made without including the Fallujah data.
Address all of these, or accept the results.
> families that Saddam killed, which of course have no survivors
Everyone is related. Be serious here. How many degrees of separation do you think there are between people in, say, Sadr City? Which, BTW, was one of the most oppressed areas under Saddam, and yet is also one of the most fiercely resisting areas in Iraq.
How can we tell how many Saddam killed? Just ignoring your patently silly "kill everyone that ever knew you" notion, you can look at the bodies. Well, how can we find the bodies? In Iraq, overturned soil exposes gypsum, which leaves a distinct spectral line. The US has been systematically analyzing all potential grave sites. The count? Blair used to say 400,000. However, he has since admitted this was untrue:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0
How many were there, then? Thusfar, about 5,000. Of these, most were from the shiite uprising.
Gee, the Iraqi National Congress exaggerating their arses off? Who would ever have guessed that an organization headed by a known felon would make stuff up to get money and power!
Where are the wood chippers for shredding bodies? Where are the vats of acid? Where are all of these horrific things that we were lied to about? All we ran into were a bunch of security offices that were no worse than what you find in every middle eastern nation from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Yemen to Syria to Qatar to Kuwait...
> I would argue that a huge fraction
You'd be wrong. You obviously haven't read much about the study. The vast majority of violent deaths were due to US bombing.
The *special* hell.
So, you're the IT Director for the US Marine Corps?
I'm a reservist who went active and now I'm back. It's that simple. No right-wing conspiracy required. Perhaps if you weren't in such a hurry to sling accusations you'd have thought of it yourself.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
So, you're the IT Director for the US Marine Corps?
You're right, Saddam was about as secular as they come...but many in his government were Sunni's and the vast majority of Iraq is not. Non-Sunni Muslim's were discriminated against to a certain degree, to say nothing of the persecution of Kurdish separatists in the north.
While the religious aspects of it weren't pushed, it is clear the power was concentrated in the hands of a few, and resentment of that bred in non-Sunni's.
So, I fear you either are making all this "testimony" up or you lack the critical thinking allowing you to understand that only a thin minority of people came to talk to you. And if they came, of course they were friendly, else they wouldn't have come.
There's more to "testimony" than just what people walked up and said. I have two eyes and they were open most of the time I was there. Was there unrest? Yes. But was there also hope? Exuberance for a better future? Yes on both counts. I never claimed to say these people represented the entire country, I merely wished to say what I saw. It doesn't get airtime over here, it seems.
If you think that most iraqis have forgotten the fact that US did back up Saddam, you're a dreamer.
I've heard this before, and it's the irrefutable truth. Ever hear the dictum "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? It was coined in WWII and used to justify the Anglo-American alliance with Russia. Stalin was a brutal, murderous thug, but we worked with him to defeat a worse thug, namely Hitler. Should we have ignored Stalin and possibly lost the war because he was a thug? In your view it seems we should have. Fortunately for the world, the allies did not share your view.
Today's world is no different. The U.S. government worked with Saddam to keep Iran, a rabidly anti-U.S. country, from becoming too powerful. Did that mean the U.S. was all buddy-buddy with Saddam and therefore endorsing his type? No. But if you believe all choices in life are so clean cut as to always being able to put all the good guys on one side of the room and all the bad guys on the other side, you're being a bit naive. You work with what you have, taking the lesser of evils when you have no other choice.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Selection bias. The Iraqis that don't want you or any other foreign military presence in their country will not walk up to you and tell you that. You might shoot them.
I could claim the same with the news media, and if you were thinking on this objectively you'd have figured that out yourself. As I said, with the news guys, if it bleeds, it leads. Nobody gives a damn what good stuff is going on, they want to show you the bodies, the beheadings, and the smoldering car bombs. No wonder everybody over here thinks the place is a mess, you've been fed nothing but a steady diet of bad news.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Ah, actually, it hasn't gotten better. The destruction of Falluja, with more than 600 civillians dead, 1000 Iraqi insurgents dead, and the photos and videos of the US destroying mosques and shooting the unarmed wounded Iraqi in a mosque, those are bad the fact that Allawi the puppet is talking more ferocious than the Americans is making Iraqis more angry.
The privatizing is bad for a number of reasons, mianly because it's 'Shock-style" privatization (like Poland) and it put a lot of Iraqis out of a job. Also, the prices have gone waay up, so people are angry. The Iraqis wanted liberation from the Ba'ath party, not economic changes for their worse.
If there's oil theft going on, it's not coming from the Americans. There aren't lines of Texaco supertankers sitting at port just greedily sucking the country dry all so Bush and Halliburton can make a buck. Iraqi oil is being sold to whoever wants it at market prices
With the profits going where?
The news reports I've heard say that the profits will go to the US to pay for the cost of occupying the country. Sounds like theft to me!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
My mistake; it was Order 39. Sorry about that - it's been a while since I read over it, and I was typing from memory.
2 0_ CPAORD_39_Foreign_Investment_.pdf
3 1Publ ication\PDFUpload208\8907\Iraq SEP 2003.pdfT L_Guides/g uide-iraq.pdf
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/200312
Here are two analyses of it:
http://www.pillsburywinthrop.com/files/tbl_s
http://www.lexmundi.com/publications/IN
The *special* hell.
First, thanks for putting your life on the line for this country. It's a noble effort, and I admire that.
Thank you. It was no chore for me (and many of my fellow devil dogs). We want to serve. It's as simple as that.
And it's not the 'war on terror,' Rove, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld had plans to invade Iraq well before 9/11, and even before the 2000 election. Google for "New American Century," if they haven't removed the documents already.
If I may be so bold, "regime change" for Saddam has been standard American policy since Bush #1 failed to properly finish what he started. Clinton's team had war plans on hand during his entire tenure. The fact that Bush #2 had such plans is not an indication of some sort of pre-9/11 plot, it's standard U.S. policy. We have plans on hand at all times to invade just about any country we're not on completely friendly terms with. This isn't hyper-aggressiveness, this is called "being ready." Saddam's non-compliance with the 1991 cease fire agreement (not a peace treaty, mind you) gave us ample authority to resume the war with or without U.N. approval. Granted it would've been nicer to do it with the full Security Council, but after fourteen years of making pointless resolutions, I don't think the U.N. was interested in enforcing its own declarations. We were.
However, I do not think you can spread democracy with the barrel of a gun; you can't enforce freedom. And violence certainly isn't the answer for places like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and North Korea. Violence just makes Americans the bad guys, even if it's not warranted.
I agree with you -- partially. Democracy doesn't easily evolve from the barrel of a gun. However, you cannot reasonably expect a multi-decade dictatorship to fall and be replaced with smiling, happy, peaceful, productive citizens overnight. Changes in governments always create at least some chaos. The more drastic the change, the more chaos. Going from a dictatorship to anything else is a drastic change. I think we're all being too quick to judge Iraq here. Look more to what happened with Germany and Japan following WWII. The Marshall plan took more than a decade to evolve, and many of the same problems we're now having in Iraq were present in both postwar Germany and Japan. We're being too impatient here.
Osama bin Laden isn't a political leader; he isn't some James Bond supervillain. He's a petty thug. We don't send Marines to hunt drug lords, we send cops to bring them to justice. We don't give them the chance that their religion is right and they do get those virgins.
Actually, we have sent U.S. armed forces to go after drug lords (or, more correctly, their production areas), but that's beside the point. The problem here is Osama's operation in countries outside the U.S. with the tacit approval of those governments. We faced similar problems in the Korean war, with insurgents dashing back and forth across an imaginary line on the map, knowing we wouldn't pursue. As long as combatants like Osama have a safe haven, we're hamstrung. By showing the U.S. has the will (we already had the firepower) to go after these thugs no matter where they operate, we both disrupt Osama's operations while simultaneously we put pressure on governments not to cooperate him -- or face "serious consequences" like Iraq. The Syrians don't want that. The Iranians don't want that. If they think we're serious (and we are), they're going to stop playing ball with the terrorists. If not, they're not going to be in power for much longer, and believe me, the like being in power.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
We knew who two of the hijackers were terrorists and we detected when they entered the country.
We'd arrested short-bus hijacker Mousaoui.
FBI field agents guessed correctly the friggin plan in writing to their superiors, for Christ's sake.
Here's a good idea, let's vote for the guy that blew it then covered it up then attacked the wrong country.
The scuttle but is that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell were the movers who decided on the response to 9/11. Only one of them wanted to attack Afghanistan before Iraq. Thank goodness he got his way. Can you guess who it was?
I'll give you a hint: he's the only one that Bush has fired.
Play Command HQ online
How many innocent people did you kill while you were over there? People that were no threat to you or your country?
For your information, I didn't kill any innocent civilians, but thanks for asking. And we never fired at anyone who wasn't pointing a weapon at us first. Remember that when you condemn us.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Actually, not true. Most of those now engaging Allied forces are mercenaries and others from other countries, not from Iraq.
I've heard that claim a lot... what proof can you offer?
You can't fight as guerilla fighters without being local or having support of the locals.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Deceptive. Not surprising, coming from USAID. Here's a running graph from the CPA:
r 9. pdf
_ it em&itemid=345
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/ES/consolidated/Ap
It goes up to the last day that they made CPA graphs like this (April 9th).
Furthermore, the "prewar" numbers don't mention that this is discussing "immediately before we invaded". Before we flattened Iraq's power infrastructure in the first gulf war, they produced 9500 MW. On Thursday, Iraq's acting minister of Electricity stated that current electricity production ranges between 3,600 and 4,000 MW:
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show
It's particularly bad right now because several oil installations have been hit, both power and gasoline are in short supply.
The *special* hell.
I call bullshit. Just because you supposedly went over to Iraq doesn't mean you know shit about what's going on. In a previous post of yours, you dismissed the Abu Gharib atrocities as not really atrocities, saying:
"Wearing panties on your head and being forced to pose nude for photographs is not an attrocity -- except in your morally twisted mind."
Forgetting that there was at least one Iraqi prisoner beaten to death and then posed with, as well as numerous instances of proven sexual abuse and many allegations of rape and torture. You don't think that's an atrocity? I don't think your opinion is very valid.
You're taking the opportunity to quote me out of context, so I'll take the time to correct you where you're wrong. The fact that you actually quoted one thing but then said I said something else ought to have been evidence enough of the innaccuracy of your post. I stated exactly as you quoted: wearing panties on your head and being forced to pose nude is not an attrocity, and I still stand by that. Being beaten to death is an attrocity and should be punished as such. I never once said or indicated anything otherwise, and I am angered that you would portray my feelings otherwise.
That's funny. I was pretty sure al-Sistani and al-Sadr, who have nothing to do with the Sunnis or the Sunni triangle area were pretty pissed at the continued American presence. Oh, I'm sure they're just an exception too, right? Or maybe you'll claim they're all foreign al Qaeda fighters, even though most media reports say otherwise.
Al-Qaeda is taking advantage of the unrest in an attempt to push its agenda, much like you're taking advantage of misquoting me to serve yours.
In past posts, you've also made the claim that the sarin gas that was fired at troops constitutes weapons of mass destruction.
Sarin gas is a WMD, and you don't need a supertanker full of it for it to be a threat. A single vial the size of your index finger of this stuff can kill hundreds of people. Is that not enough to qualify it as a WMD? If not, what's the lowest limit of deaths you'd accept for a WMD? A thousand? Ten thousand? A million? How many people have to be dead before you'd consider it to actually be a threat? What if it was just one person, but that person was you? As you lay there dying, I'm sure you'd think it was a WMD.
Oh, by the way, USA Today has an article up right now showing actual photographs of a cache of sarin. Forty vials of the stuff, enough to kill several thousand people if properly dispersed. Doesn't that qualify as a WMD? If not, what does? Or are you arbitrarily setting the bar just a little bit above whatever it is we're finding in Iraq so as to discredit what's going on?
I'm just glad they found the stuff (a) before it could be used on any Marines and (b) after I left.
You also dismiss the idea of globalization entirely
I'm not a fan of this "global test" stuff, if that's what you mean, and I'm unapologetic about it. The United States is a sovereign nation. We have no obligation to get anyone's permission to do anything. If we can get others on board for things like Iraq, great. If we can't, we're going to do what we think is right regardless. Too many other countries have agendas that are in conflict with ours for me to feel comfortable submitting our policy to their approval mechanisms.
and then you go on to tell all those who oppose you "Go burn a flag and worship Stalin or something."
All true. Were you expecting me to be sorry? Oh, but you forgot to post the other side of that conversation where the guy was being a complete jerk. Perhaps you were that jerk, and you're just trying to get back at me now. Since you posted AC, we'll never know. Me? I don't hide behind AC. You should try it sometime.
How are you dif
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It's when you fail to welcome your New Overlords that you might be considered a terrorist
I never claimed the American news media was capable of accurately accessing the situation. My point was not "It's all gone to hell, I saw it on Fox News and you can't tell me otherwise." My point was you can't tell me one way or another because a person in your position will never know. The same is true of the journalists stationed there.
> How about the one that contained Uday Hussein's
> infamous plastics shredder? Want a street address?
> Can't help you.
EXACTLY! That's because it NEVER EXISTED. We've been occupying this country for ample time to find these mythical horror devices - where are they? They'd have been dragged out and paraded on national news for weeks. THEY DON'T EXIST.
And once again, this shouldn't be a shock. These stories largely came from INC defectors. You know Chalabi, right? Embezzled from Jordan's national bank in the largest banking scandal in the country's history, then fled in the trunk of a car and used the money to start the INC, whose entire goal was to get us to go to war with Iraq?
> You need to keep up with the reports. The number has now topped 300,000.
LOL! Read the article. Blair retracted his oversized number. Are you trying to say that they went 300k->5k->300k? Better get a cite!
> But setting that aside, I want to know what kind of
> fucked-up, crazy world you live in where you can say
> "5,000 bodies" and "only" in the same sentence.
Over a decade. In comparison to >90% probability of 40k war deaths in little over a year, expected number of 98k war deaths thusfar, and this is only *when you exclude Fallujah*, I think it most definitely involves the world "only".
> The realistic number has, as I said, topped 300,000.
Blair retracted. I provided a cite. Try again!
Seing as the only two women bloggers from Iraq that I am aware of that are out there (Faiza Jarrar and Riverbend) both intensely disagree with you, who should I believe here?
> I'll assume you're making a little joke.
No, I'm not. I can reference women who have lived in Iraq under Saddam and under the US. Both are insistant that the situation for women is far worse (and are scared to death of Sharia being instituted). How many Iraqi women can you reference?
> The magic word here is "estimated."
Estimated using the same data that's been used to feed them for the past decade. Also: 42% registered women. Women outnumber men in Afghanistan (I forget the exact number, so lets say 60-40). 9.8 to 10.35. That's 1.5 times too many men, *Assuming That Every Last Person In Every Remote Village Who Was Elligable Registered*. Can you honestly believe that?
> every international body has certified this election,
> including your precious UN. Mmm-kay.
The UN has nothing to do with certifying the election. The UN appointed a fraud investigation panel which concluded that the voter fraud that occurred was not relevant in determining the winner; Afghanistan certified its election results after that. However, that doesn't address the fact that, as referenced in my second link on the subject, warlords essentially told their people who to vote for, and 1.5 times as many men as were even elligable voted.
>> The prohibition is also in the Charter of the United
>> Nations, which is ratified by the US.
>>
>> Which is not anything even remotely approaching a law.
hahahaaa!!!
Article IV of the US Constitution:
"... This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;"
> The UN Secretary General is scrambling desperately to
> keep from being indicted now that his involvement in
> oil-for-food has become public.
Once again, you're making things up. Kofi Annan is not being investigated. Some right wing groups have been baselessly accusing his son simply because his son worked for Cotecna (despite the fact that Kojo's work was in Africa, and Cotecna was the only bidder for inspections when the previous company pulled out).
> Russia and France were in on the scam as well as was Germany.
Once again, basel
The *special* hell.
Clarke was one of the major figures interviewed in PBS Fronline documentary about cyber security. You can watch the full, streamed broadcast at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cybe rwar/view/
I've read Order 39, have you? It makes no mention of allowing theft of Iraqi oil or other natural resources. You can try and read it as such, but that's not what it says. I understand it's a hot topic on democraticunderground.com, though. It's supposed to be some sort of talisman to use against anyone claiming we're not there to rape and pillage the country. Sorry, but your interpretation is wrong.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hi, I'm not the AC you were having conversation with, but I'd like to know what makes you think that USA is right?
Let me put your question another way: what makes you think you're right? Everyone has their own ideas of how a "perfect" world would work. Just about everyond has fantasized about how "things would be different if I were running the show," whether it be running countries or running a business.
It's not so much that I think the U.S. is right, it's that the U.S. and I are in agreement about where we'd like the world to be. Not an American dictatorship, but a place where freedom and prosperity are available to all who wish to strive for it.
Note the qualifiers "available to all" and "strive." I don't believe prosperity can be "given" to anyone. Those who don't work for their rewards generally are unable to value them properly. That's why I'm in general disagreement with many socialist or communist ideologies, many of which are championed by left-leaning EU members and the UN.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
That's what they said shortly after the invasion. We're still waiting.
And how long did it take for us to fully restore Germany, Italy, and Japan to their pre-war electrification and production levels? I'll give you a hint: it was a lot longer than two years. You're being too impatient, not understanding the size and scope of what's required to change a country that's been mired in dictatorship and sanctions for decades.
This isn't some quick in-and-out intervention here, Iraq is a long-term project. It's not going to be a nice and tidy, wrapped up in between commercial breaks. The President never said it would be and neither did the generals or the Pentagon. In fact, both parties said the exact opposite. You should give people time to do their jobs before condemning their efforts as failures.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Is that so?
"You're taking the opportunity to quote me out of context, so I'll take the time to correct you where you're wrong. The fact that you actually quoted one thing but then said I said something else ought to have been evidence enough of the innaccuracy of your post. I stated exactly as you quoted: wearing panties on your head and being forced to pose nude is not an attrocity, and I still stand by that. Being beaten to death is an attrocity and should be punished as such. I never once said or indicated anything otherwise, and I am angered that you would portray my feelings otherwise."
That's funny. Even if I take a look at your whole comment, you not only say Abu Gharib wasn't an atrocity, but go on to say that just because the soldiers posed with a badly beaten body, doesn't mean it's bad, because perhaps they didn't do it (forget the fact that it's now been largely accepted that they did beat that man to death). It's not out of context. It's right in context and consistent with your views.
"Al-Qaeda is taking advantage of the unrest in an attempt to push its agenda, much like you're taking advantage of misquoting me to serve yours."
Here's a great manuveour. I mention al-Sistani and al-Sadr, neither of them al Qaeda, neither Sunni, though you just claimed that only those from the Sunni triangle give American soldiers trouble, so rather than account for that inconsistency in your claim, you just give me some line about al Qaeda that could have been taken straight from George W's campaign website. You don't bother to address what I actually said.
"Sarin gas is a WMD, and you don't need a supertanker full of it for it to be a threat."
Great, except we didn't invade because of sarin gas. If you remember what the President, Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and all the others were saying it was primarily that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program already in the works and also that we'd find "tons" of WMD. All of a sudden, you found what you claim to be 40 vials of sarin, and that's enough? Even though I'd claim it's not, let's go ahead and investigate your claims. NPR was one of the news sources that broke the 40 vials of sarin being found in Fallujah. If you follow your own link, the caption under the photo says "40 vials of suuspected sarin". Why is this important?
I'll tell you why. Because, it turns out, they weren't vials of sarin at all. Oh, that must burn a little. Go to that link, upper left hand corner. Yep, click right up there where it says "Troops' Discovery Found Not to be Sarin Gas". What that is, my friend, is vials of a chemical used to test for sarin gas. Not exactly the stuff that a single vial of "can kill hundreds of people". But don't let that get in the way of your dleusions. I'm glad that they found that stuff after you left though!
So, with your WMD argument thoroughly thrown aside, what else do you have to offer?
"I'm not a fan of this "global test" stuff, if that's what you mean, and I'm unapologetic about it."
No, I was using the word you used: "globalization". Globalization has nothing to do with the "global test stuff" made so popular by John Kerry. If you have no idea what glboalization means, which it's clear you don't, maybe you shouldn't dismiss it so quickly like you have.
"All true. Were you expecting me to be sorry? Oh, but you forgot to post the other side of that conversation where the guy was being a complete jerk."
Ah, the "he did it first" argument. I didn't know they allow four year olds to enlist in the Marines.
"No doubt you're basing your numbers on the Lancet report, which has been widely discredited."
Finally, no I'm not. What I'm sure happened here is that you read another user's comment that said the Lancet document was discredited and thought he was responding to me. Not so. The Lancet document, which I doubt you
The public is fed bad news, as 90% of all the news coming from Iraq is bad. Unless tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of INNOCENT people dying is cool, somehow?
When it's done to a PoW, it's a war crime. So you approve of US troops committing war crimes, but not when Iraqis do it to you? Double standards ahoy!
The 15,000 dead is the conservative estimate. The Lancet report was 100,000-200,000+. He wasn't sloppy with his sources, but was doing you a favour. Maybe you should do some research yourself.
You say it's only the Sunnis who are pissed off at the Americans, when in fact the Shia are pissed off too. After the first gulf war, Bush Sr. told them to rise up against Saddam, and that the US would help them. Well, they did rise up, and the US was nowhere to be seen. Over 30,000 people died when Saddam quelled the rebellion using helicopters sanctioned by the US. But I suppose they should forget that, right?
Just because Saddam was a dick doesn't make the US any better. The old argument "but Saddam killed X iraqis" is getting more and more tenuous as each Iraqi death is recorded (obviously not by US forces, as you "don't do body counts", to quote Tommy Franks on the subject).
As for that sarin, even the caption said it was suspected sarin, nothing definite. Even if it was sarin, it's only dangerous if it has a method of delivery. As you can see, 40 vials of this "sarin" isn't dangerous. It has to be weaponised first, which turns the raw material into a weapon. What about those 300+ tons of explosives that went missing? I suppose that wasn't the US's fault...
I can see you're not debating this through logic, but by some sort of staunch ideology you have.
peace.
I am just pointing out that there's a difference between the two.
Yes, but not in the way you think. You can't simply divide all insurgent actions into either "terrorism" or "resistance". Depending on the situation, terrorism may be a valid form of resistance, or it can be for other purposes. ("valid" doesn't mean "good")
Terrorists target civilians whereas resistance fighters target the soldiers who occupy their land.
No. Even the USA government disagrees with you, as they classify many attacks directed solely at combat soliders as "terrorism".