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House Narrowly Avoids Having to Debate Impeachment of Cheney
An anonymous reader writes "Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) yesterday successfully moved articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney to the House Judiciary committee. 'Today's resolution from Kucinich (D-Ohio) was essentially the same as the legislation he introduced earlier this year, which included three articles of impeachment against Cheney based largely on allegations that he manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. The last article accuses Cheney of threatening "aggression" against Iran "absent any real threat."'"
At this rate I think Gallup will have a historical first - negative numbers for job approval ratings.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
k. Done. And?
rewriting history since 2109
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm sick of finger pointing. Focus on your agenda and work to get it passed. How many democrat bills have been passed vs. how many resolutions against bush and/or cheney?
If they aren't passing because bush is vetoing, that means they aren't working hard enough to work together.
It was bullshit when the impeached clinton, it's bullshit now.
Gone!
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Iran doesn't have rockets, at least ones that are any kind of threat to the U.S.
"Any crazy person with rockets is a threat to me."
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have lots more missiles at their disposal than Iran's government, so.........
After having watched their performance for the last 7 years, I think their sanity is certainly an open question. George W. was also an alcoholic and drug abuser for most of his adult life which also calls in to question his stability. When you have two people who have done nothing positive for their entire reign, and almost single handedly turned America in to a globally hated and despised country you generally have to wonder....what were they thinking. Just observe the fact the U.S. dollar is plunging relative to most other currencies. Markets are ruthlessly efficient at finding truth and the plunging dollar indicates America has been officially run in to the ground by our fearless leaders.
Kucinich is kind of a space cadet sometimes but he was right on trying to get Cheney impeached first. You have to get him impeached before you can impeach Bush otherwise he would take over and President Cheney would be a nightmare come true.
Unlike, say, North Korea. Who we know has nuclear weapons and rockets capable of reacing the US.
Only if he could have gotten an open house vote on it would it have been a "success", now it will die quietly as have his other attempts to impeach Cheney.
This thing didn't stand a chance in the House either. It was sent to committee to keep it from being debated on the House floor. Most Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the likes of Code Pink, ANSWER, MoveOn.org, Karl Marx and people who see UFO's and try to communicate with trees.
This would not only been counter productive in that regard, but it would have also been seen as a complete waste of time.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Turkey--and you can thank Pelosi for that one.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Let's see....
Is Kucinich running for President? Yes
Is he frontrunner for the Dem's? No
Does he need to improve his profile? Yes
By submitting these articles, is he taking 'initiatives' the public would want taken given the certain ambiguities that remain, with regard to why we are now in this mid-east Debacle (impeaching those who lied to the American People)? Yes
Was there any chance for these articles to come to fruition? NO CHANCE IN HELL!!!
Its political posturing people....
Move along, nothing to see here.
On a sideone, he's at least smart enough to score a trophy wife, right?
Please explain to me exactly *WHY* impeachment is not on the table. There have never been a President and Vice President of the United States *MORE* deserving of impeachment. The Vice President falsified an official intelligence report that was to become the basis of deciding whether or not to send this country to war, for crying out loud. The Vice President outed a CIA operative to settle a political score. The President has institutionalized the breaking of the Fourth Amendment on a massive scale and won't even let Congress, let alone the American people, have all the facts about what he's been doing. *NOT* impeaching them both has got to rank as one of the most gross miscarriages of justice in this nation's history.
Pelosi, Hoyer: GROW A PAIR! Stand up for what's right! Do your job and uphold the Constitution!
-----Chaz
[quote]
Article I: Cheney lied about intelligence regarding banned weapon programs
Whether the result of lies, a lack of willingness to believe contrary viewpoints, or maybe even idiocy (I think he's too smart for that, evil or not), the accusations carry no mention of where he made statements under oath. Statements included are from two press interactions, five interviews, and a speech. While in some cases very public, there are no cases there where he was speaking under oath.
Article II: Cheney lied about connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda
Again, there was no oath taken for the occasions mentioned. Four speeches and five interviews are mentioned, but again, at no time during these was he under oath
[/quote]
It is quite interesting that you are defending his actions based on him "not being under oath".
I don't know about you but I certainly feel that our elected leaders should not be given
impunity to LIE to us whether under oath or not. He is the Vice President of the US for Gods sake.
How can anyone say it is OK for the VP to lie to the American people and simply dismiss it as nothing
for the lack of an oath.
Do we wait until they have nuclear tipped rockets that can reach the US? Do we do nothing until NY glows in the dark?
Maybe wait until there is actual proof these nations wish to launch rockets at the US/NATO.
If you are suggesting that the US strikes before there is an actual threat then what is to stop other countries doing the same?
North Korea will have to launch because the US is a threat, same for everyone else.
There IS an alternative to shoot first & invent evidence later.
I do not think that word means what you think it means. You have to impeach and convict to get kicked out. Clinton was impeached. Unless Bush really screws up, I'm sure it won't happen because there's 1 year left before elections and I don't think they push for it.
It isn't that he's lousy, it is that Bush isn't that smart. Bush isn't the one running the country. That would be Cheney's strong arm of influence over Bush in the information that is threaded to him. Bush, we all know, is not that smart of a cookie. Don't second guess Cheney. He's smart, but he does not have the best interest for the public in his policies.
The deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians and thousands of our own troops maimed and killed is not technically Cheney's fault, in purely legal terms. Nor the fault of the administration who supported and executed the war. I just have one question for these technical excuses for the immoral conduct of our entire government: where exactly does the buck stop? Who has the integrity to accept responsibility for their actions?
They LIED about EVERY threat that Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed, and not only once and in government reports, but MULTIPLE times while addressing the public. The fact that they weren't under oath is actually more evidence that they knew they weren't just being vague or coy, but completely dishonest. Anyone who claims otherwise is as full of shit as they were/are.
do nothing?
well, treating sovereign nations with a bit of respect rather than attempting to play off regional conflicts in order to control their natural resources ( yes, its all about the oil ), is probably as close to 'doing nothing' as you need in order to ward off the spectre of an arms race ( implied just yesterday by hans blix: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/sydney-peace-prize-for-blunt-blix/2007/05/20/1179601243747.html ).
see the problem is, the americans dont want peace, they want peace on their terms, which is to ensure america(ns) are rich and powerful, with scraps thrown out for whoever bends over for them.
its really not that difficult to stop the world going to shit, but how would the rich get richer ( which brings us back OT: please impeach chaney )
Yes, I should have used a noun there and actually said IRAN. However you can't compare the US and Iran because the US is threatening a country which DID DO SOMETHING TO THEM. Just a little history lesson here. The current government of Iran are the ones who took US citizens hostage an refused to let them go. They also threatened an Ally.
"Do we wait until they have nuclear tipped rockets that can reach the US? Do we do nothing until NY glows in the dark?"
Damn, I thought it was sweeps month, and here I am getting reruns:
"Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." - G.W. Bush, 7 Oct 2002
Sorry, but I've been down this road before, and I didn't really buy it the first time. Iran could hypothetically have anti-matter planet busters, but the only way I'll believe it coming from this administration is if they take me personally on a tour of Iran and show them to me. That's the funny thing about credibility. Once it's shot, it's REALLY hard to get it back.
Ironically, I always believed Iran to be a more credible threat to US interests than Iraq anyway. I was never in favor of the Iraq war, but the right argument with solid evidence might have got me behind hitting Iran. But that ship has sailed, and I won't be getting on the next one.
Why on Earth would /. be posting this on the main page? What does this really have to do with Geekdom?
/. that posts such politically charged articles where some technically-themed topic is at hand. For news like this I would rather stick with CNN.com.
I know that Slashdot doesn't have a neutral editorial staff (as evidenced from the various Linux vs. Windows debates that pop up every few hours around here) but, up until now, all political content had some sort of tech issue embedded within. I'm not sure how I'm going to like a
I guess what I'm trying to say is it really cheapens the Slashdot brand in a way that stands a high-risk of alienating the core visitors (the bread and butter).
Normally I would just sit here and stew about it quietly but this disturbs me greatly and, frankly, I have some karma to burn.
Other countries have more reason to launch against us than we do against them. We destroy cultures with our capitalism. We proclaim them religious zealots and kill them. We denounce leaders because of their treatment of their own people, while flushing our own ideals down the toilet. We call POWs enemy combatants so we can torture them.
We're lame. We've been an intruding, imperialist nation in a world for a long time now, and other countries are finally getting sick of it. We need to change our policies, curb our corporate growth, and clean up our act. I hope we don't get nuked by a small country we pissed off, because the rest of the world will just say, "They deserved it."
I'm pro-America. But I feel like we're being led (and have been led for a long time) towards an anti-American goal.
I see. You know, one way to help keep US troops out of reach of Iranian rockets is to pull back US troops so that they're within the US or its territories. That might have the added affect of lessening the amount of anti-American sentiment seen worldover, when perfectly indiginous countries occasionally wonder why there are US military bases on their soil..
Incidentally, the man who's pledged to bring our troops back not only from Iraq but from everywhere is Ron Paul.
Let me make a comparison:
bitorrent client: possession of a bittorrent client is not sufficient grounds to accuse someone of piracy and throw them in jail
nuke: possibility of posession of a nuclear weapon is sufficient grounds to pre-emptively attack them.
Once upon a time, this country tried really hard to avoid war. Not because we're a bunch of sissy pacifists (generally), but because war isn't a hobby one should make, either individually or collectively.
I think it's fair to wait until you've been attacked before you go attacking someone else. History has shown that we typically win defensive wars and there's not much arguing about if we were in the right or not. History has shown that we lose offensive wars and that it deeply divisive towards the soliders, citizens, and rest of the world.
I'm hoping that nobody ever nukes Manhattan. But bombing Iran isn't going to lower the chances of that happening.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I have never heard a clear explanation of exactly why Pelosi and Reid are so against the concept of impeachment. I mean, they actually seem hostile to it. Why is this? The only argument I've seen is that they are somehow "afraid of a backlash" but that seems like a very flimsy reason given the obvious sentiment rising in this country. It seems almost as if the Democrats are somehow actually on Bush's side in some way, and not on the side of "the people" any more. It's almost like the "Opposition party" got taken over by a bunch of Republicans who now take great pains to squelch anything that feels like actual opposition. And they make noises about stopping Bush, but then roll over at every opportunity and give him exactly what he asked for.
I really, really dislike Bush, Cheney & Co. But I am truthfully starting to dislike the Democrats even more, if that's even possible - because it's somehow even worse to be stabbed in the back by a supposed friend than it is to be kicked in the face by your enemy (which you kind of expect). I feel like this country is now being betrayed just as much by the inaction of the Democrats as by the actions of the Republicans.
Worrying about who would replace an impeached Bush is beside the point. The point is that Bush, Cheney, et. al. BROKE THE LAW. Repeatedly. The congress has a responsibility to impeach such behavior because failing to do so condones the illegal behavior. A terrible precedent has been made. A cabal can steal two presidential elections, trash the constitution, and start illegal agressive wars of conquest, and that's a-okay.
-- Democracy in America July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001 R I P
-- QED
Congress was elected with as clear a mandate as I have ever seen in 2006: end the Iraq war. All it would have taken would have been a simple majority against the funding bill in the House, or 40 senators to support a filibuster in the Senate. Instead we get a bunch of hand-wringing and poor excuses (lies) about supporting the troops. "Support the troops; keep them in the middle of a civil war with no chance of victory and don't give them even the basics they need." We need a new government here in the US, one that puts the people of this nation first, second, and third.
The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
Dude, he still killed her. I never understand why people look up to him as this moral authority, when he's -- at the very least -- guilty of manslaughter, and probably negligent homicide. It has totally colored my feelings towards a whole generation of "yeah, but he's a Kennedy" baby boomer libs.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
First all of all Iran hos no rocket that could ever hope to be a threat to you or your family. They simply do not have the military, technology, or capability to be a threat to the USA. To people who say they may have nuke grade uranium in 5-10 years, what about the cold war? Russia had litterally thousands of nukes(on rockerts that could actually make it to us soil unlike iran), and it was possible to get out of that situation without a prempive attack infact a preemptive attack (which chaney is trying to setup on iran) could very well have started a war that destroyed the planet. Iran is NOT a threat to the USA, iran is a threat to oil, and (I admit) a threat to isreal. but thats it. SLet me repeat this IRAN IS NOT A THREAT TO USA, and WILL NOT FOR A LONG TIME. the biggest threat to the USA is is warmongers and profitiers.
Remember when pople used to give their life for our freedom? Why are we now giving our freedom for our life?
No, we send them to secret torture prisons to avoid US laws and throw out habeas corpus and the Geneva Convention on a new made-up class of people, "enemy non-combatants".
The comparison has a sound basis.
This article got tagged as "slashdotliberalwhining"? Are you fucking serious? Conservatives or liberal, you've got to be kidding if you don't think that George Bush and his administration has done more to damage this country than any president in your lifetime. No, seriously: forget about your pet cause, let go of the the party affiliation. Look at where we were five, ten, twenty years ago -- tell me where the improvements have been. By any measure, even conservative social goals, Bush and his administration have accomplished little if any good, and in every other area enormous bad. His approval rating is below what Nixon's was at the point of impeachment. And this article is "slashdotliberalwhining"? Get real.
I'm a moderate. I respect candidates from across the spectrum. George Bush and his administration have been a goddamn nightmare.
I don't care what your religious, political, or social affiliation is. If you don't recognize this administration as crap, you are in deep ignorance or denial.
I love this country. And I could cry over what these people have done to us.
I'm not saying they're correct, I'm just pointing out the inconsistencies in their drive for war with Ira*.
Impeaching Bush without getting rid of Dick Cheney first would lead to President Cheney. Even typing that revolted me.
We are all just people.
It never ceases to amaze me that the USA (speaking as your northern neighbor) could possibly see states like Iran or North Korea or, even more laughable, Iraq, as a possible threat to the USA.
You guys stared down the USSR for the entirety of the cold war, facing an enemy with superior numbers and brutal methods who you were very much aware had nukes, and you got by just fine.
OK, they might get nukes, but so what? Lots of countries have nukes. If you wanna take bets on who's going to be the first country to actually _use_ them, my money's on Israel.
Look, the deal with the non-proliferation treaty goes like this. The countries that don't have nukes agree not to produce them, and those that do agree to gradually phase out their stockpiles.
If the US doesn't feel the need to rid themselves of nukes, why should Iran or anybody else feel the need to obey the Anti-Proliferation Treaty?
The country that has the dubious honor of being the only country to ever use nuclear weapons on humans doesn't get to take the moral high ground and lecture Iran about their nuclear ambitions.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Exactly, our guys say totally different stuff-- and they don't behead, they just pump out thousands of rounds of depleted-uranium or drop bombs from thousands of feet! And they don't like to do their killing on videotape, either. Oh, and they don't do the killing themselves, they order poor kids to do it! Yeah, neocons and radical islamists are totally different kinds of killers. You're right.
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
America is a conservative country with conservative voters following a conservative agenda.
Bush is not a conservative. Conservatism is generally against foreign adventures, against foreign borrowing, against big government, and against government interference in private matters. Bush has engaged in multiple military adventures, has borrowed like no president before him, has increased government spending to unprecedented levels, and has been pushing government interference in religious and private matters.
Bush actually presents himself as a populist nationalist. But like many populist nationalists, he really hides corporatism and borderline corruption under that veneer.
He wasn't successful at all. Heck, the Republicans were voting in favor of the debate. It is more accurate to say: the articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney have been buried in the House Judiciary committee, and will not be seen again.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Oh so your in favour of pulling out of iraq and leaving millions of innocent people to be murdered and tourtured by insurgents, simply because they might have done business with the americans? because that's exactly will happen if we followed your dumbass cut and run attitude.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No exactly. You go into a bar talking about Iran as if they did all the bad shit and the US was just an inocent player who now has a greivence. Do that with the usual blind adherance to US propaganda and unwillingness to accept that the US might be anything other than squeeky clean, you're likely to shit some people.
Keep up that attitude and people who you annoyed will injure you. Verbally or physically, body or pride doesn't matter.
The world is not jealous of US freedom, the world is pissed off with US self righteousness.
I don't therefore I'm not.
What the Iraqis do to each other is no concern of ours. It wasn't in 2003, and it isn't now. The only valid reason we have to be anywhere else in the world is to deal with threats to our own defense. This entire war has been worse than doing absolutely nothing would have been in that respect. We've lost 3000+ of our own troops in a pointless nation-building exercise, spent billions of dollars, handed off the oilfields to China and Vietnam (instead of using them to pay for the occupation or even returning them to whoever the hell the Iraqis looted them from in the first place), allowed the Iraqis to vote themselves into theocracy, given Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood the apparatus of statehood to carry out their murderous plans (cos hey, it's democracy, right? Democracies *never* do anything bad), allowed Saudi Arabia and Iran to even more brazenly indoctrinate upon the glories of dying for Islam, and forcing me to vote for a Democrat for the first time in my life. To top it all off, we're no safer than we were six years ago, despite onerous violations of privacy and ludicrous security regulations, and we're no more likely to actually deal with these nutjobs who want to kill us until the next national landmark falls down and goes boom. (if even then) Fuck this stay-the-course nonsense. Just think of it as a strategic retreat.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Don't think for one moment that after Bush leaves office, they're going to stop trying to implement their "Project for the New American Century". They've been trying ever since the Nixon administration (where do you think Cheney and Rumsfeld come from?), if they can wait 30 years, they aren't going to just give up just because it's the end of an inning.
This is one of the few worthwhile things happening in the US federal legislature. My friend, please, for God's sake please stop watching American television.
Yes, it can be debated that there's a legal distinction between me as a US citizen sitting at my desk and a farmer in Afghanistan with respect to the provision of rights under US law. What I don't understand is that most people also seem to think that there's a valid moral distinction as well. Frankly, that creeps me out. "They're not people like the rest of us," is a very scary philosophy for people who are debating basic human rights to hold, but it seems to be the prevailing one. Why do I deserve a fair trial when foreigners do not?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I've got no sympathy for Hussein, or any other dictator; the sooner they're given the Mussolini treatment, the better. But it's not our part to sacrifice for the sake of others, giving money and lives for alleviating suffering. Prosperity in this world isn't an automatic; it's the product of a rational mind fully engaged in one's reality to serve one's goals. The prosperity enjoyed by the European states, and later America, is a direct product of the ideals of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the ideals of *objective reality*, of *reason*, in the concrete form of the Industrial Revolution. We can rebuild Iraq, but will it do any good? The ultimate drive behind jihad (and it's counterpart/antagonist, the Arab nationalism that led to Hussein and is still strong in Egypt and Syria (to the extent that the latter isn't an Iranian proxy)) is ultimately that the fundamentalist Muslims want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the prosperity and the cultural dominance we have (Islamic culture peaked around the time of the Abbasids and has been going downhill ever since) while continuing to blank out reality and live according to the whims of their sky-god. They're not alone, either; show me an impoverished country, and I'll show you people who have thrown their reason to the curb and are praying for grain to fall into their hands. To the extent that we provide aid, we help them to continue this evasion (yeah, we do it here too, hopefully *that* reckoning isn't too far off).
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
Since you brought up WWII, how well did we make out? Really? We freed Western Europe from one dictator (who political and philisophical factors across the entire continent had practically forced into the driver's seat) only to lose Eastern Europe to another without so much as a shot being fired. We curbed Japan's empire-building, and drove them out of China, only to see China fall to the Maoists. We fell into the Wilsonian trap of "self-determination of nations", joining a world organization that put jack-booted thugs on an equal footing with the elected leaders of free nations. We became the deal-makers of the world (the American Left, while freely admitting the excesses of the CIA during this time, blanks out the fact that Wilsonian realpolitik is at the heart of their own foreign policy). We fight half-war after half-war, trying to win by not losing. We give land we didn't own to the Jews, then do everything in our power to prevent them from defending it. The moral code we had on Dec 8, 1945 is the only foreign policy we have ever needed: Fuck up our shit, and we will kill you.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
My major problem is the question you didn't answer: What's the appropriate burden of proof for executing an unarmed person in the field or disappearing him to a prison site for the rest of his natural life? I'll accept for the sake of argument that these things are effective ways of dealing with the problem, but I'd like to see some serious rules applied before I give the nod to classifying somebody as a person with no rights, locking him up, and throwing away the key. So far, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that we're doing a good job of figuring out who we should be disappearing, and I've seen enough evidence that we aren't to be hesitant to give the government an "arbitrarily disappear, torture, and execute whoever you want as long as it's not me" card. When you combine death / permanent imprisonment with accusations and evidence that look like a scene out of The Crucible, I get nervous.
Hmmm... I think that we look at the world in a fundamentally different way, then. I tend to think that in all but the most extreme circumstances, it is universally wrong to deprive somebody of life or liberty without a way of meaningfully defending himself. To me, that principle isn't just a convenient legal fiction that happens to work out well for me. It's a fundamental concern about the unfairness of being kidnapped in the middle of the night and shipped off to be held incognito in the middle of nowhere until you die. Add to that the fact that it's bad PR at a time when we're losing a PR war to the types of people who blow up hospitals, and I think that you have the makings for a policy we'll be embarrassed about in the hindsight of history.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Some of the torture prisons are in Turkey, and other nations that permit legal "water-boarding" and other tortures. I suggest you check for the articles in the New York Times: it's an ongoing program to transfer prisoners in Iraq and other places and transfer them to nations where torture is legal. And there's been fascinating testimony, in front of Congress, that the US still engages in "waterboarding" in our own prisons in Iraq. This is a banned torture involving drowing the victim to just shy of death. It does occasionally kill, adn these are prisoners who have never been tried, much less convicted, of anything.
This secret extradition and torture treatment is also in direct violation of the US code of military justice, a set of US laws, which describes court procedures for military procedures and has no magic clause for this newly invented "military non-combatants". I'm afraid you've not glanced at the set of laws being violated: please spend a bit of time checking out the news articles on these tortures and on
We signed the Geneva Convention. We also wrote the US constitution, and numerous court decisions since then provide a minimum of human rights for even enemies in combat, much more for prisoners. The Geneva Convetion is an agreement *by* nation stat4es, and includes their handling of non-signatories. And like parents without children paying taxes for schools, many nations sign it to help prevent trouble worldwide. Better yet, it also includes standards for how nations treat their own citizens, forbidding genocide and yes, torture. So it's not just aimed at protecting one's citizens oversees, it sets a legal minimum standard of behavior worldwide. So let's not pretend that there's only one reason for signing it. That kind of rationalized thinking leads to people only obeying traffic laws when it feels important to them, and it's not safe.
Please examine the history of the US code of military justice, if not of the Geneva Convention, to see how many ways we're violating it. I'm not saying that it justifies beheading of innocent victims, but one does not justify the other: both are illegal and violations of international treaty, and need to stop for either practicioners to be treated as just.
The difference is that a course of action in Iraq can (in my or your opinion) be wiser or "dumber". My unwillingness to join the army has nothing at all to do with what is best for the US or Iraq. People who attack character instead of the issue at hand are usually being deliberately evasive, though I'll allow that they can also just be too stupid to explain why they believe something on its own merits.
As to your contention that Arabs (Shia and Sunni) cannot be civilized, I will point to Europe as a counter-example. Europe was in more or less continuous warfare for thousands of years. When they weren't fighting in Europe, they were fighting through proxies. Western Europe has not had a significant conflict since World War II. Certainly the Middle East can get 50 years of peace, no?
I would also contend that giving up after a few years would be short-sighted, though I agree that the administration severely underestimated the consequences of getting involved (or at least did so publicly).
I certainly agree that we wouldn't even be over there if it weren't for oil, and we can debate the merits of that if you like. But that, too, has little to do with what the best course of action is right now. I am arguing that to leave the country in the midst of a civil war of our creation is irresponsible, and the end results are probably not in the best interest of the US or the bulk of the Iraqi people.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Right, because ignoring "other people's problems" worked so well for us in World War 2.
We didn't enter WWII for humanitarian reasons. We entered the war because Japan drew us in with a massive attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Up until that day in December 1941, there was a strong sense that the US should stay out of the war, because we remembered what happened in WWI. We were sending supplies to Britain, and providing other resources to our allies, but there was no support for declaring war on anyone.
When Japan made it clear that they intended to work with the other Axis powers to rule all of the world, there was no question that we needed to fight back, and so we did. The difference between WWII and all other conflicts since is huge. The Axis powers were clearly an existential threat to the continental US (Hawaii first, lower 48 next); unlike the theoretical threats embodied in "domino theory" and "global war on terror".
Sure, Al Qaeda did attack us, and we attacked back -- in Afghanistan. We were making some good progress there, too... Until the majority of our resources and attention were refocused on the Iraq boondoggle. Now look what's happening in Afghanistan: the Taliban is coming back, poppy/cannabis harvests are booming, and Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan is having major problems due in no small part to the increasing influence of radical islamists who operate from the safety of the afghanistan/pakistan border.
The only entities that are benefitting from this Iraq shitstorm are Al Qaeda (it's a fucking recruiting wet dream) and the guys like Halliburton, Blackwater, and all the other Military-Industrial Complex hangers-on.
Feh.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Not very likely for a number of reasons. The least of which is the American public was completely opposed to the idea of getting involved and if FDR had tried he probably would have been impeached.
Beyond that, with the exception of the Navy, our armed forces in the 30s were a joke. They only started to expand them in 1941, several months before Pearl Harbor. Why do you think it took until 1944 before the Allies were ready for the cross-channel invasion of Europe? There is little to nothing that the United States could do early in the war that would have changed anything.
FDR did the best he could with the resources and public opinion that he had to contend with. He started to quietly build up our forces, work on public opinion and do everything in his power (lend-lease) to keep the UK and Russia in the war. I don't see what he could have done differently.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I also think that the Democrats have not done a job at all in showing that their were wrong doings from this government. If you ask me they could have spread a lot more information around to people to get them to realize how wrong this war and policies are. We on slashdot are fortunate we read news keep up to date in breaches of privacy and such, but the majority of people globally don't seem to care. They are too busy with other things, and it's not being pumped out into the mainstream media half as much as it should. The media is to blame, the American people are to blame and the government is to blame. In the end you bring it on yourself when you don't get involved. If your not involved you let these travesties go unchecked. Some of the major ones like treatment of prisoners are dealt with quickly because of pressure from media outlets and people. These are two large things, if they put pressure on the government they have no choice but to act, but that kind of pressure has not been put on anyone.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe more Americans do seem to care than I think, but I think they are more concerned on what is going to happen on American idol than the Nation. People just don't care, and I don't think the Democrats are going to push something so controversial if it's not publicly charged.
That's a sad thing because in the end if the Democrats pushed for it, it would become publicly charged. So I don't think it will happen. The people won't act before the Democrats and the Democrats won't act before they know it is a safe topic. It's a bloody Mexican standoff.
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I know my grammer are bad.
Clinton lied to cover up the fact that he got a hummer from an intern. Bush/Cheney lied to start an unprovoked war of convenience.
Clinton was subjected to a political show trial that was (to borrow a phrase) full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Bush/Cheney continue to operate as if the laws of the land do not apply to them.
The human cost of Clinton's lies are utterly insignificant. The same cannot cannot be said to be even remotely true for Bush/Cheney.
Yet Clinton was the president who was impeached...
Honestly - what's wrong with you people?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
What the Iraqis do to each other is no concern of ours. It wasn't in 2003, and it isn't now.
It's OUR mess. We made it our mess when we invaded. While Saddam was no paragon of moral superiority, the number of innocents who died under his charge were less than under ours. It's like Valdiz incident. While it would have surely been profitable for Exxon to retreat and say "Not our problem", you cause a mess, you clean it. There wasn't Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, or any other suicide bombing group in Iraq before the invasion.
I'm all in favor of a pull-out, but for God's sake, we've got a moral responsibility to clean up our own mess before we do as best we can.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
All wars are fueled by governments trying to make land grabs. If the two governments happen to have different religions, then that will be used as a convenient propaganda device to build support for the war. If a formerly allied region falls under the control of a competing religious faction, then it's all about liberating the noble people of Fooland from the infidel. But really it's about getting Fooland. This was true in the Muslim conquests of the 8th and 9th Centuries, the Crusades of the 11th-14th Centuries, the Reconquista of Spain, the Thirty Years War, the wars against the Ottomans from the 15th through 20th Centuries, the Arab-Israeli Wars, and the Gulf Wars. All of which could be (and were) spun to be about religion. You can bet the people financing those wars knew better, though.
I hope your post is sarcastic, but I don't see a tag. I can only assume your rebuttal is genuine.
we would not have invaded
The intelligence was fabricated. Google "Hans Blix" for more info about Saddam's weapons program and degree of compliance with UN inspectors.
He was given ample opportunity to prove to us he didn't have them
You can't prove a negative.
Who do you think is causing all this shit in Iraq?
Put the shoe on the other foot. If a foreign army was rolling up and down your block in their urban assault vehicles, going door to door shaking down you and your neighbors, what would you do? Sit there and take it? I'd cause as much trouble for that occupying force as humanly posible. So would you. So would any of us. We are creating "nutjobs" with our presence, not "dealing" with them.
it was an exercise in pre-emptive defense to invade Iraq
No, it wasn't. It was the greatest robbery in history. Stealing public money and giving it to well-connected corporate insiders. It was securing cheap oil to be sold to the American public at premium prices.
its to the benefit and safety of the people of the US to remain there
I'll say it again. We are creating "nutjobs" with our presence in Iraq. How can you not understand this? We won't stay there forever (I hope). And when we leave, there WILL be a revolt, or a civil war to tear down the puppet government we've tried to establish.
In my opinion, the only way to "win" in Iraq is to be overthrown by insurgent "nutjobs". Only then will they have the national pride to install a govenment of their own making. In other words, we are going to lose. We just need to decide how many lives will be lost before it's over.
Idiot!
The US did not "stay out of the war".
We fired the first "shot" at Japan, when we took sides, and embargoed their oil supply.
They were busy building an empire, and having no domestic oil supply of their own, got kind of pissed when we cut them off. Do you blame them for attacking us?
If Saudi Arabia said to us tomorrow; "Hey, America, we don't like what you're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we're cutting you off until you get out - " how long do you think it would take for the order to go from the White House to a Submarine in the Persian Gulf to fire a barrage of SLCM's at Ryadh? All of 5 minutes?
Yes.
WW II was also, about oil.
Growing, industrial superpowers, Japan and Germany, as soon as they ran out of domestic energy supplies, and as soon as they got sick of being extorted by their neighbors for energy, they took matters into their own hands. And when their neighbors got nervous, and cut them off, Japan and Germany went ballistic. Literally.
Does any of this sound familliar?
Maybe history does not repeat itself.
But as Mark Twain said; "it does rhyme."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.