It amazes me that there are still people who believe this.
And it amazes me that there are people that cannot grasp the simple fact Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, and therefore a legitimate and important target in the war on terrorism.
You keep running around this incredibly simple concept: Saddam Hussein was a terrorist. He sponsored terrorism to achieve his goals, and he provided a save-haven for terrorist groups to operate in his country. This is not new information- Iraq has been on the State Department's lists of state sponsors of terrorism for 25 years. We learned of and foiled numerous Iraqi terrorist plots against us over the past decade, and this was even corroborated all the way up to the invasion last year by Russian intelligence. The War on Terrorism would not be complete if we ignored one of the biggest terrorist threats to our country.
I really don't care if he was working with Al Qaeda or not because we should have gone after Saddam either way. But it really isn't comforting to know that 2 of our biggest and most dangerous enemies were trying to reach out to each other.
If you still think Iraq had WMDs, fine. But you're very alone - not even Bill O'Reilly believes it anymore.
I base my opinion on Iraq's WMDs based on the public reports of what has been found by the only group that is looking for WMD in Iraq. They have not only found a "smoking gun"- they have found dozens of them. What do you base your opinion on?
Well, see, now we are in a semantic debate. They did collaborate- Saddam offered Bin Laden asylum, Bin Laden sent representatives to Baghdad to meet with Saddam, and Iraqi officer was present at the 9/11 planning meeting in Malaysia, etc. Does that mean that Saddam helped with 9/11? Maybe, and maybe not. There is not enough evidence either way.
hell, al qaeda has stronger ties with saudi arabia!
We are talking about state sponsors of terrorism. There is no evidence that the Saudi royal family supports terrorists. On the contrary, they have been extremely helpful in the war on terror.
name a iraqi sponsored terrorist incident.
Ok- the foiled assassination attempt of George Bush Sr, or the foiled attempt to bomb Radio Free Europe in Prague, or the families of Hamas homicide bombers that Saddam paid, or Ramsi Yousef, the Iraqi citizen who mixed the chemicals for the first WTC bombing in 1993 and returned to Iraq afterwards where the Iraqi government protected him, the 2002 attempted assassination of Barham Salih, or the Iraqi-made TNT that was smuggled to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam that was used to kill hundreds of Kurds, etc.
bush failed to draw a connection between iraq and al qaeda.
Not surprising, because he wasn't really trying to. The connection between Iraq and terrorism, on the other hand, is rock solid.
there were no wmds. we're there for no reason.
Uh, yes there were. We have found over 40 material breeches of their disarmament requirements, including chemical and biological weapons, precursor agents and infrastructure to make more, missile programs capable of distances of 1000km and evidence of a deal with North Korea to buy missiles with even longer range, and a "preserved" nuclear weapons program, including enough uranium to make 142 nuclear weapons and centrifuge devices to enrich that uranium. All of this was illegal and justification for military action.
If you had read the 9/11 Commission report, you would know that there were numerous connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They were both driven by their mutual hatred of us and they reached out to each other on different occasions to form a relationship. There is no evidence that they actually collaborated on an attack against the US, but that is irrelevant. We are fighting a war against terrorism, not just a war against Al Qaeda.
According to the USCCR, the error rate of the list was around 14%, so it wasn't "pure" crap. Many counties didn't even use the list at all, but we don't know how many because the Democrat majority in the USCCR didn't bother to find that out before they proclaimed that the felon list was responsible for disenfranchising "countless" innocent people.
The highest estimates are that prior to the election, about 1,100 non-felons were incorrectly removed from voter registration (again, this is from the USCCR). The vast majority of them successfully appealed this and were allowed to vote. In fact, the USCCR did not hear testimony from a SINGLE person that was incorrectly prevented from voting because of the list.
It says that the election supervisor of the county that they live in is to blame, and the 25 counties with the highest error rates were administered by Democrat supervisors. Why do you ask?
And how can you call it one of the most stunningly successful military campaigns ever when it isn't over yet?
Well, to get technical, the military campaign is over now. We are there now as an invited peacekeeping and security force. In a little over a year since the invasion, we have organized a transitional government that has strong international support as well as support from the Iraqi people, and we transferred governing authority to that government. That is a remarkable achievement. And we did this while eliminating one of the biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the world, liberating 25 million people from a brutal dictator, and rebuilding schools, highways, and economic infrastructure all over the country. Where is the failure here?
But why would we invade and conquer the country that attacked us when we can do it on the cheap and install the local warlords (who btw haven't captured or killed Mr. Bin Ladin yet) so we can go and conquer the resource-rich country that didn't kill 3,000 American civilians.
Uh, we did invade Afghanistan, and we did conquer, and Afghanistan is getting ready for their first national election since the fall of the Taliban. Sure we haven't caught Bin Laden yet, but do you seriously think we have given up looking for him? Capturing Bin Laden is little more than a symbolic victory at this point.
Are you operating under the assumption that there can only be one threat to us at any given time? The fact that North Korea does pose a threat to us (which nobody has denied, btw) does not mean that Iraq wasn't a threat.
It is no secret why the DPRK is acting this way- they are seeking international aid. They admit as much. But there is a dialog in place, and we have the support of China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia in this. Progress is being made, with the third round of talks just now finishing up. A 4th round of talks is scheduled for September.
But I will take note of your position, and in case diplomacy does fail in North Korea, I am glad that you will be such a strong supporter of military action against them.
IDid it ever occur to you that North Korea is ten times the threat to the United States that Saddam ever was
There is a HUGE difference between Saddam, who developed WMD in secret and has numerous links to terrorist organizations, and North Korea, who flaunts their nuclear program in a blatant attempt for international recognition and aid.
perhaps if we had sent the 100,000+ troops in Iraq into Afghanistan instead perhaps we would have caught the guy who slaughtered 3,000 American civilians on 9/11?
The war on terrorism is not to get revenge for 9/11. In the 15 staff statement from the 911 commission, they detail the Al Qaeda organization today, and they conclude that it has been "fundamentally changed" in the war on terrorism by killing most of the leaders and eliminating most of their funding. Bin Laden is no longer in control. Sure, it would feel good to capture him, but it would be mostly a symbolic victory that has little impact on the war on terrorism.
Holy crap. I've been trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you are making it difficult. No- the video does not present a rebuttal to that comment. It also doesn't say anything about MoveOn.org comparing Bush with Hitler, or Gephardt saying that Bush is a miserable failure, or Mike Moore saying that the Iraq war was for fictitious reasons, or Dean saying that he wanted his country back, or ANYTHING else in the video. The entire point of the video was to show just how illogical the Democratic party has become because of their hatred of Bush. You don't need to rebut a raving lunatic, after all.
I don't really see the video as mud slinging. It is just showing how ridiculously low some Democrats have stooped in their mud slinging. If that constitutes mud slinging, then so be it.
The worst part is how he justified the war with Iraq by saying God told him to do it.
I feel like a broken record, but he did not say that. The White House has denied that he said it, and the only source of the quote is a translation of the Arabic minutes of a meeting that Abbas attended where Abbas was talking about a meeting he had with President Bush several weeks prior to that. Any conversation that Abbas and Bush did have was through an interpreter, since Abbas does not speak English and Bush does not speak Arabic. The source is so full of holes that nobody in their right mind would rely on it (and this apparently does not include MoveOn.org).
yes it is, it's exactly what it says. Then, you go on and say that it says exactly what I said it says. Are you sure you're not mistaking me for someone else?
Sorry- I was getting hung up in the semantics of the word "plausible". While the 9/11 commission found little evidence that Iraq contributed to the attacks, they do detail many other connections that Al Qaeda had with Iraq. And there are some other "plausible" Iraq connections with 9/11 that the commission did not address, such as the Iraqi agent that was present at the 9/11 planning meeting in Malaysia.
Seems to me that one of those countries is still standing, and the other is rubble. Odd the choices in that respect considering the facts, no?
I do not believe so. We had exhausted all diplomatic solutions with Iraq (including 17 unanimous UN resolutions). There is still more diplomacy that can be tried with Iran.
Except that like I said, they weren't really much of a threat if the capital was conquered in 2 weeks, was it?
9/11 taught us that you don't need a strong, sophisticated military to inflict massive casualties (other countries have known this for a long time). Iraq's threat was not that they had a strong military to rival ours- they clearly did not. The threat was Saddam's combination of terrorist connections, illegal weapons, and willingness to use those weapons.
That said, the record breaking speed at which our troops were able to move through Iraq and seize control was still impressive.
The vague, mostly impotent insinuation that I somehow don't know what's going on in the world.
You claimed that there was no proof to back up the President's claims that Saddam was a threat. We have found proof of just about everything that the President claimed before the war. This proof has been made public in the ISG reports as well as the news wires.
Who pulled it? The Bush campaign? It was never a TV ad, and I just checked, and it is still available for download on their website (at the bottom).
The only insanity here was in the unbridled vitriol of MoveOn.org, Al Gore, Michael Moore, and the like. It was not insane of the Bush campaign to point this out.
Bringing up Germany (i.e. WWII) to try to help justify the war in Iraq... Now that's funny.
That has nothing to do with our justification for the war in Iraq. It was brought up to show that the claim that Iraq has never attacked does not justify us ignoring a major threat to our national security. It does not justify the attack- it only debunks a weak excuse against attacking.
The US had justification for joining in WWII long before they did.
True. And we had justification for confronting Iraq long before we did.
In times of war you are supposed to support your allies, after all.
Thank you! Please voice this opinion to the governments on France, Germany, and Russia.
The reverse is also true. The CIA tried to assasinate Saddam on several occasions.
I really didn't think I would have to bring this up, but the USA = good = trying to save lives, but Saddam = bad = trying to kill innocent people. Your moral equivalency argument is crap.
As for "plotting a direct attack", frankly it's not very credible
Russian intelligence still stands by this claim.
it's much the same as "attempting to acquire uranium"
You can change "attempting" to "succeeded". Or did you forget about the 1.77 tons of undeclared and banned uranium that we have secured in Iraq?
"links to al Quaeda"
Yes- Saddam had links to Al Qaeda. He also had links to many, many other terrorist groups. This is not new information.
Besides which, if I was the leader of a country that had been blockaded and attacked by a foreign power for over a decade I'd be mightily pissed off with them too and wanting to attack them.
So? Should we ignore these attacks then, just because Saddam feels angry? Look- Saddam forfeited his right to take action when he illegally tried to expand his borders and launched an unprovoked missile attack against his neighbors. We kicked his ass, and he agreed to the cease fire. End of story. He could have complied with the UN at any time to lift the sanctions, and if he didn't fire AAA on our patrols, we wouldn't have retaliated.
The US mounts a war to secure the largest oil fields in the Middle East, ensuring they will be priced in dollars...
I think the reception in your tin foil hat is getting a little fuzzy.
The division between rich and poor in the USA is getting bigger every year - it's becoming harder to join the ranks of the rich, and more and more people are living in poverty.
Dude- the standard of living has been increasing across the board here for decades now.
We see headlines of new jobs being created, whereas the rate of job losses gets ignored and unemployment is actually rising.
Dude, what are you talking about? Unemployment has been dropping pretty steadily for the past year, and wages have increased during that same period.
Bringing things slightly back OT we have corrupt senators such as Hatch pushing laws that further persecute the poor.
Just curious, but how do you draw the conclusion that this act would only persecute the poor? Because they wouldn't be able to steal music anymore? If anything, this bill would punish the people that are getting rich off of copyright infringement.
The right and just thing to do would be to reduce the lowest levels of taxation, paying for this with a small increase in the higest levels of taxation.
Ok- how much should the "rich" have to pay in taxes? 50%? 80% (which was the tax rate of the highest tax bracket when Reagan took office, btw)? The rich already shoulder most of the tax burden in this country. How much more should they pay?
As for the victory in Iraq being a resounding success, that may be what CNN tells you,
HA! That is definitely NOT what CNN has been trying to tell me. They (along with most US media sources) have been painting a pretty gloomy picture since before we even invaded!
I'm not sure that your source on taxes proves your point. The source seems to show that the lower middle class bore the heaviest increase in taxes.
Actually, that is not what it says. It says that if the Bush tax cuts were repealed, the lower middle class would see the heaviest increase in taxes (that is, the Bush tax cuts cut the lower middle class's taxes the most).
very wealthy do not make thier money on income, but on investment.
Maybe so, but they still pay the majority of income taxes that are collected in this country.
I can grant your point on UN resolutions in Iraq, but really, did they have a choice?
Well, as in any cease-fire, the losing side always has the choice to either keep fighting, or comply with the demands of the victor. That is the consequence of getting your ass kicked in a war.
And were 'no fly zones' really needed?
The no fly zones have been credited with saving millions of Iraqi lives and allowing a Kurdish democracy to thrive in the north.
I agree that Saddam is a bad guy, and I'm glad he is in custody, but were we the ones who should have done it?
Well, you might recall that President Bush spent 14 months prior to the invasion gathering support for the war. But Saddam represented a threat that needed to be addressed, whether or not France, Russia, and Germany wanted to help.
huh? President Shrub all but admitted that Iraq did not have WMDs
He has done no such thing.
The US had an isolationist policy and it wasn't until the Lusitania was attacked that we got involved on a military basis.
Um, I think you are confused. The Lusitania was sunk in 1915 at the start of WWI, not WWII. Or am I missing your point?
And isn't N. Korea the 'true enemy'? They admit to, almost brag about, working on WMD, but they don't have oil, and they didn't 'try to kill my dad' so we can go with a diplomatic approach. Just seems inconsistent.
The DPRK is definitely a threat- that is why the President has singled them out along with Iran and Iraq. But, unlike Iraq, they were not in violation of 17 UN resolutions passed under chapter 7 of the charter that spanned 12 years. There is still a lot of diplomacy that is being tried before we reach that point. Oil does play a role here, but probably not the role that you are thinking of- Iraq had some of the richest natural resources that could finance almost any weapons program that Saddam wanted. North Korea is dirt poor, and their desperation is mainly what drives their actions.
So it's between 0.5 and 2 million. That's a gigantic margin of error.
Yeah- it can be rather difficult to count the bodies in a mass grave...
The bad intelligence can be blamed on the President and his staff picking and choosing what they wanted the public to hear wile leaving out much more credible sources saying that the intelligence told to the public was flawed.
What are you talking about? The Bush administration did not make any new claims about Iraq or their WMDs or their terrorist connections, and all of those claims have been verified since the invasion.
Now if you poke around the official Bush website you will find a video. It starts off with Kerry, Moore and others criticizing the president.
Wait, wait wait. If this is the video I am thinking about, it is showing an excerpt from a moveon.org video that attempted to equate Bush with Hitler. The quote that moveon.org found is dubious at best. It is a (*deep breath*)translation of a transcription of Mahmoud Abas talking about what his interpreter had translated to him what Bush had said 2 weeks before (*exhale*). But I guess if you are looking for an excuse to justify your irrational hatred of Bush, this is as good of a reason as any.
I assume you're referring to them firing on our airplanes in the no-fly zone (if not, please correct me, but I'm aware of no other attack by Iraq on us since the end of GWI). Certainly that's true, but I think the point is that he wasn't a threat to U.S. soil, particularly in comparison to the ones who actually did attack us, al Qaeda.
Yes, that is what I was referring to. But don't forget that he also tried to assasinate a former US president, attack the US run Radio Free Europe in Prague, and according to Russia, he was plotting a direct attack on our homeland.
But the biggest threat from Iraq was not a direct attack- it was their known connections to terrorist groups.
The threat from Al Qaeda is also significant- probably moreso than Iraq. Thats why we are fighting them also.
Mmm, well, that's true, but what matters is percentages.
AGI of 1-10,000 18.5% 8.1% AGI of 10,000 to 20,000 16.5% 74.2% AGI of 20,000 to 30,000 13.5% 44.9% AGI of 30,000 to 50,000 18.5% 15.1% AGI of 50,000 to 10,000 22.2% 10.1% AGI of 100,000 to 500,000 9.4% 6.5% AGI of > 500,000 0.5% 4.4%
The group affected the most were people making between $10k and $20k, while people making over $500k saw the smallest decrease. (note- this article is about the tax increase that different groups would see if the Bush tax cuts were repealed. In my mind this should be the same as the amount their taxes were reduced by the tax cut. If you disagree with that logic, let me know).
Are you on drugs, or have you simply been in a news blackout since "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"?
By any measure, the military victory in Iraq was a resounding success. In comparison to other modern wars, it is amazing what we have accomplished in such a short amount of time with so few casualties. It has not been perfect, and we have made some mistakes (like disbanding the Iraqi army), but give credit where credit is due.
As a side note, here is an article by Amir Taheri, who knows a hell of a lot more about what is going on there than you or I do. The article is about 2 months old, but its a pretty even assesment of the situation.
slowing the rush to Bagdad to a multi-week crawl.
I got a kick out of this- multi-week, eh? Have you lost all perspective?
Huh? OK, Germany never attacked the US, but if I recal Junior high history correctly, we did commit to helping protect our allies. More importantly, there was real, proven _evidence_ of what Germany was doing
There is real, proven evidence of what Saddam was doing. And these arguments are eerily similar to the arguments back in 1941, that getting involved with Germany was just going to distract us from the true enemy: Japan.
And how did Iraq attack us between '91 and '02? Sure there were some SAMs fired, but we were sort of, kind of flying over thier airspace uninvited.
As a condition of the cease fire, Iraq agreed to comply with all future UN resolutions. We were enforcing the no-fly-zones that were mandated by UNSEC resolution 688, and we were therefore not there uninvited. Saddam "invited" us by agreeing to the cease-fire.
Um, on a percentage basis, the rich actually did better.
Incorrect. The group that had biggest % decrease in tax liability was people making between $10k and $20k/year (their tax liability was reduced by over 50% by the Bush tax cuts). People making over $500k/year had the smallest % decrease at just over 4% (Source).
How is it successful? Other than that president shrub told you so. Kids still die there every day, and there is no end in sight. If it were the 'most successful' we would not need to be there right now.
??? Look at what we have accomplished! In a little over a year, we eliminated one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism, liberated 25 million people from brutal oppression, transferred governing authority to a new sovereign and democratic government that has great public support, and we did all this with an almost record low amount of casualties (only the first Gulf War had fewer casualties, but it doesn't match the scale of this operation).
Please stop buying in to what the media preaches.
The media has been preaching doom and gloom failure since before the invasion even started!
Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people.
This is one of the most ignorant things I have read in a while. The Bush administration's claims that Saddam supported terrorists was not new or unique- it has been official US foreign policy (as well as the policy of most industrialized nations) for the past 20 years.
Saddam was a unique threat because, unlike all of the other bad dictators out there, he: - was known to have possessed chemical and biological weapons, and he had actually used chemical weapons - had known connections with several terrorist organizations - had recently tried to illegally expand his borders- twice - had launched unprovoked missile attacks against other sovereign neighbors - was under international orders to disarm, with the authorization to use military force to get him to comply, and he had been defying those orders every step of the way - was sitting on some of the riches natural resources in the world that could finance just about any WMD program that he wanted
All of this combines to a very serious terrorist threat. It was a threat that had been growing since 1991. There was even evidence that he was in fact plotting a direct attack on the US in the months before the invasion.
The first Gulf War and following weapons inspections ensured that he couldn't even mount a real attack against a friut stand.
Again, no industrialized nation agrees with this.
He was a dictator. Dictators don't stay in power by sharing their technology and power. If he gave terrorists access to weapons he would no longer be in control of them.
It baffles me how you can make these claims when the overwhelming evidence of his terrorist support is publicly available. Try googling for Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the PKK, the Abu Nidal organization, Hamas, Ansar al Islam, and Palestinian suicide bombers, to name a few.
He can shoot at our patrol planes all he wants because he knew if actually shot one down it'd be his ass.
What? Are you trying to suggest that he was shooting at us but missing on purpose? Why would he do that? To provoke us to bomb him again?
Iran was, and is, more of a terrorists best friend than Iraq ever was.
Yes, Iran supports terrorists. Not more than Iraq did, but they are a problem.
Answer me this one question: Why did we invade Iraq and not Iran given that fact?
Because Iraq posed a greater threat. And its not like we have been ignoring Iran.
I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche. Let's try almost every member of the UN and NATO to start. Haven't they been the brunt of many more (read: in numbers of) attacks than we were? They have been a target longer than the US and are thousands of miles closer to Iraq than we are. If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us? Bravo to the rest of the world for thinking and asking real questions instead of being led around by their fears.
Ok- even France never claimed that Saddam was in compliance with the disarmament. They only differed on how to get Iraq into compliance.
My neighbor who lost both legs in the Arden Forrest (a true partiot) seems to think
No, actually. The Sudan and Afghanistan were all on our own. And the Kosovo action was under NATO, not the UN. In fact, the UN has really only got off of its butt twice: Korea, and Iraq.
The killing and genocide in these countries made Sadam look tame in comparison.
Tell that to the families of the estimated 500,000 to 2 million people he killed. But that is beside the point, anyway. We didn't invade Iraq because Saddam was committing genocide- we invaded to eliminate one of the most serious terrorist threats in the world. Liberating 25 million people was just a nice perk.
(2nd and 3rd world allies don't count)
Why not? Because that doesn't fit with your distorted world view?
So you are comparing the actions of Nazi Germany to Saddam?
Well, I wasn't, but now that you mention it, that isn't a very bad comparison.
I don't recall Saddam taking over the entire Middle East like Hitler took over all of Europe (save England and Spain).
He didn't, but not for a lack of trying. Or are you forgetting his invasion of Iran, Kuwait, and his buildup of troops on the Saudi border before we kicked his ass?
And KNOW you can be ignorant enough to compare the Holocaust to Saddam's purges.
Why? Do you think the brown-skinned people Saddam killed are less important than the Jews?
Also, can you please reference exactly where and when he attacked us almost daily.
He fired on our patrols of the No-Fly-Zone regularly. I'm not going to wipe your butt for you and find a link- try google.
So it's OK for 1% of the population to control over 90% of its wealth?
Sure- why not? Is the old tiresome class warfare argument the best that you got?
Lest wait a few years before we declare unconditional success.
Ok- lets also wait a few years before we declare it a quagmire too, then.
It should be "the alienation of some of our historically strongest and staunchest allies."
If I had to chose between making France happy and preventing terrorists from killing me, guess what I am going to chose?
Even though he was appointed by the Supreme Court
He was "appointed" by the electoral college because he had more electoral votes. Its really not that complicated.
Gore should be blamed for giving up his challenges.
You mean the challenges that would not have changed the outcome?
Yeah because Kerry is going to invade a country that never attacked us
Germany never attacked us- should we have waited to go to war with them? Oh, and Iraq did attack us almost every day between 1991 and 2002.
giving massive tax cuts to the rich.
Everybody that pays taxes got a tax cut. The only reason the rich got a "massive" tax cut is because they pay a massive amount of taxes.
Iraqi quagmire
The liberation of Iraq has been one of the most stunningly successful military compaigns ever. I was going to ask what possible motivations you could have to call it a quagmire, but I think we both know the answer to that...
Slashdot Mirror
How many retractions has FOX run for their reports of WMDs being found in Iraq?
Well, considering we have found plenty of WMD in Iraq, it would be pretty dumb of them to issue a retraction.
It amazes me that there are still people who believe this.
And it amazes me that there are people that cannot grasp the simple fact Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, and therefore a legitimate and important target in the war on terrorism.
You keep running around this incredibly simple concept: Saddam Hussein was a terrorist. He sponsored terrorism to achieve his goals, and he provided a save-haven for terrorist groups to operate in his country. This is not new information- Iraq has been on the State Department's lists of state sponsors of terrorism for 25 years. We learned of and foiled numerous Iraqi terrorist plots against us over the past decade, and this was even corroborated all the way up to the invasion last year by Russian intelligence. The War on Terrorism would not be complete if we ignored one of the biggest terrorist threats to our country.
I really don't care if he was working with Al Qaeda or not because we should have gone after Saddam either way. But it really isn't comforting to know that 2 of our biggest and most dangerous enemies were trying to reach out to each other.
If you still think Iraq had WMDs, fine. But you're very alone - not even Bill O'Reilly believes it anymore.
I base my opinion on Iraq's WMDs based on the public reports of what has been found by the only group that is looking for WMD in Iraq. They have not only found a "smoking gun"- they have found dozens of them. What do you base your opinion on?
Well, see, now we are in a semantic debate. They did collaborate- Saddam offered Bin Laden asylum, Bin Laden sent representatives to Baghdad to meet with Saddam, and Iraqi officer was present at the 9/11 planning meeting in Malaysia, etc. Does that mean that Saddam helped with 9/11? Maybe, and maybe not. There is not enough evidence either way.
hell, al qaeda has stronger ties with saudi arabia!
We are talking about state sponsors of terrorism. There is no evidence that the Saudi royal family supports terrorists. On the contrary, they have been extremely helpful in the war on terror.
name a iraqi sponsored terrorist incident.
Ok- the foiled assassination attempt of George Bush Sr, or the foiled attempt to bomb Radio Free Europe in Prague, or the families of Hamas homicide bombers that Saddam paid, or Ramsi Yousef, the Iraqi citizen who mixed the chemicals for the first WTC bombing in 1993 and returned to Iraq afterwards where the Iraqi government protected him, the 2002 attempted assassination of Barham Salih, or the Iraqi-made TNT that was smuggled to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam that was used to kill hundreds of Kurds, etc.
bush failed to draw a connection between iraq and al qaeda.
Not surprising, because he wasn't really trying to. The connection between Iraq and terrorism, on the other hand, is rock solid.
there were no wmds. we're there for no reason.
Uh, yes there were. We have found over 40 material breeches of their disarmament requirements, including chemical and biological weapons, precursor agents and infrastructure to make more, missile programs capable of distances of 1000km and evidence of a deal with North Korea to buy missiles with even longer range, and a "preserved" nuclear weapons program, including enough uranium to make 142 nuclear weapons and centrifuge devices to enrich that uranium. All of this was illegal and justification for military action.
If you had read the 9/11 Commission report, you would know that there were numerous connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They were both driven by their mutual hatred of us and they reached out to each other on different occasions to form a relationship. There is no evidence that they actually collaborated on an attack against the US, but that is irrelevant. We are fighting a war against terrorism, not just a war against Al Qaeda.
but hey, it's all in the name of fighting terrorism, so it's okay, right?
Sounds about right to me.
According to the USCCR, the error rate of the list was around 14%, so it wasn't "pure" crap. Many counties didn't even use the list at all, but we don't know how many because the Democrat majority in the USCCR didn't bother to find that out before they proclaimed that the felon list was responsible for disenfranchising "countless" innocent people.
The highest estimates are that prior to the election, about 1,100 non-felons were incorrectly removed from voter registration (again, this is from the USCCR). The vast majority of them successfully appealed this and were allowed to vote. In fact, the USCCR did not hear testimony from a SINGLE person that was incorrectly prevented from voting because of the list.
It says that the election supervisor of the county that they live in is to blame, and the 25 counties with the highest error rates were administered by Democrat supervisors. Why do you ask?
And how can you call it one of the most stunningly successful military campaigns ever when it isn't over yet?
Well, to get technical, the military campaign is over now. We are there now as an invited peacekeeping and security force. In a little over a year since the invasion, we have organized a transitional government that has strong international support as well as support from the Iraqi people, and we transferred governing authority to that government. That is a remarkable achievement. And we did this while eliminating one of the biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the world, liberating 25 million people from a brutal dictator, and rebuilding schools, highways, and economic infrastructure all over the country. Where is the failure here?
But why would we invade and conquer the country that attacked us when we can do it on the cheap and install the local warlords (who btw haven't captured or killed Mr. Bin Ladin yet) so we can go and conquer the resource-rich country that didn't kill 3,000 American civilians.
Uh, we did invade Afghanistan, and we did conquer, and Afghanistan is getting ready for their first national election since the fall of the Taliban. Sure we haven't caught Bin Laden yet, but do you seriously think we have given up looking for him? Capturing Bin Laden is little more than a symbolic victory at this point.
Gosh Iraq is clearly the threat here.
Are you operating under the assumption that there can only be one threat to us at any given time? The fact that North Korea does pose a threat to us (which nobody has denied, btw) does not mean that Iraq wasn't a threat.
It is no secret why the DPRK is acting this way- they are seeking international aid. They admit as much. But there is a dialog in place, and we have the support of China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia in this. Progress is being made, with the third round of talks just now finishing up. A 4th round of talks is scheduled for September.
But I will take note of your position, and in case diplomacy does fail in North Korea, I am glad that you will be such a strong supporter of military action against them.
IDid it ever occur to you that North Korea is ten times the threat to the United States that Saddam ever was
There is a HUGE difference between Saddam, who developed WMD in secret and has numerous links to terrorist organizations, and North Korea, who flaunts their nuclear program in a blatant attempt for international recognition and aid.
perhaps if we had sent the 100,000+ troops in Iraq into Afghanistan instead perhaps we would have caught the guy who slaughtered 3,000 American civilians on 9/11?
The war on terrorism is not to get revenge for 9/11. In the 15 staff statement from the 911 commission, they detail the Al Qaeda organization today, and they conclude that it has been "fundamentally changed" in the war on terrorism by killing most of the leaders and eliminating most of their funding. Bin Laden is no longer in control. Sure, it would feel good to capture him, but it would be mostly a symbolic victory that has little impact on the war on terrorism.
Holy crap. I've been trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you are making it difficult. No- the video does not present a rebuttal to that comment. It also doesn't say anything about MoveOn.org comparing Bush with Hitler, or Gephardt saying that Bush is a miserable failure, or Mike Moore saying that the Iraq war was for fictitious reasons, or Dean saying that he wanted his country back, or ANYTHING else in the video. The entire point of the video was to show just how illogical the Democratic party has become because of their hatred of Bush. You don't need to rebut a raving lunatic, after all.
I don't really see the video as mud slinging. It is just showing how ridiculously low some Democrats have stooped in their mud slinging. If that constitutes mud slinging, then so be it.
The worst part is how he justified the war with Iraq by saying God told him to do it.
I feel like a broken record, but he did not say that. The White House has denied that he said it, and the only source of the quote is a translation of the Arabic minutes of a meeting that Abbas attended where Abbas was talking about a meeting he had with President Bush several weeks prior to that. Any conversation that Abbas and Bush did have was through an interpreter, since Abbas does not speak English and Bush does not speak Arabic. The source is so full of holes that nobody in their right mind would rely on it (and this apparently does not include MoveOn.org).
yes it is, it's exactly what it says. Then, you go on and say that it says exactly what I said it says. Are you sure you're not mistaking me for someone else?
Sorry- I was getting hung up in the semantics of the word "plausible". While the 9/11 commission found little evidence that Iraq contributed to the attacks, they do detail many other connections that Al Qaeda had with Iraq. And there are some other "plausible" Iraq connections with 9/11 that the commission did not address, such as the Iraqi agent that was present at the 9/11 planning meeting in Malaysia.
Seems to me that one of those countries is still standing, and the other is rubble. Odd the choices in that respect considering the facts, no?
I do not believe so. We had exhausted all diplomatic solutions with Iraq (including 17 unanimous UN resolutions). There is still more diplomacy that can be tried with Iran.
Except that like I said, they weren't really much of a threat if the capital was conquered in 2 weeks, was it?
9/11 taught us that you don't need a strong, sophisticated military to inflict massive casualties (other countries have known this for a long time). Iraq's threat was not that they had a strong military to rival ours- they clearly did not. The threat was Saddam's combination of terrorist connections, illegal weapons, and willingness to use those weapons.
That said, the record breaking speed at which our troops were able to move through Iraq and seize control was still impressive.
The vague, mostly impotent insinuation that I somehow don't know what's going on in the world.
You claimed that there was no proof to back up the President's claims that Saddam was a threat. We have found proof of just about everything that the President claimed before the war. This proof has been made public in the ISG reports as well as the news wires.
Who pulled it? The Bush campaign? It was never a TV ad, and I just checked, and it is still available for download on their website (at the bottom).
The only insanity here was in the unbridled vitriol of MoveOn.org, Al Gore, Michael Moore, and the like. It was not insane of the Bush campaign to point this out.
Bringing up Germany (i.e. WWII) to try to help justify the war in Iraq... Now that's funny.
That has nothing to do with our justification for the war in Iraq. It was brought up to show that the claim that Iraq has never attacked does not justify us ignoring a major threat to our national security. It does not justify the attack- it only debunks a weak excuse against attacking.
The US had justification for joining in WWII long before they did.
True. And we had justification for confronting Iraq long before we did.
In times of war you are supposed to support your allies, after all.
Thank you! Please voice this opinion to the governments on France, Germany, and Russia.
The reverse is also true. The CIA tried to assasinate Saddam on several occasions.
I really didn't think I would have to bring this up, but the USA = good = trying to save lives, but Saddam = bad = trying to kill innocent people. Your moral equivalency argument is crap.
As for "plotting a direct attack", frankly it's not very credible
Russian intelligence still stands by this claim.
it's much the same as "attempting to acquire uranium"
You can change "attempting" to "succeeded". Or did you forget about the 1.77 tons of undeclared and banned uranium that we have secured in Iraq?
"links to al Quaeda"
Yes- Saddam had links to Al Qaeda. He also had links to many, many other terrorist groups. This is not new information.
Besides which, if I was the leader of a country that had been blockaded and attacked by a foreign power for over a decade I'd be mightily pissed off with them too and wanting to attack them.
So? Should we ignore these attacks then, just because Saddam feels angry? Look- Saddam forfeited his right to take action when he illegally tried to expand his borders and launched an unprovoked missile attack against his neighbors. We kicked his ass, and he agreed to the cease fire. End of story. He could have complied with the UN at any time to lift the sanctions, and if he didn't fire AAA on our patrols, we wouldn't have retaliated.
The US mounts a war to secure the largest oil fields in the Middle East, ensuring they will be priced in dollars...
I think the reception in your tin foil hat is getting a little fuzzy.
The division between rich and poor in the USA is getting bigger every year - it's becoming harder to join the ranks of the rich, and more and more people are living in poverty.
Dude- the standard of living has been increasing across the board here for decades now.
We see headlines of new jobs being created, whereas the rate of job losses gets ignored and unemployment is actually rising.
Dude, what are you talking about? Unemployment has been dropping pretty steadily for the past year, and wages have increased during that same period.
Bringing things slightly back OT we have corrupt senators such as Hatch pushing laws that further persecute the poor.
Just curious, but how do you draw the conclusion that this act would only persecute the poor? Because they wouldn't be able to steal music anymore? If anything, this bill would punish the people that are getting rich off of copyright infringement.
The right and just thing to do would be to reduce the lowest levels of taxation, paying for this with a small increase in the higest levels of taxation.
Ok- how much should the "rich" have to pay in taxes? 50%? 80% (which was the tax rate of the highest tax bracket when Reagan took office, btw)? The rich already shoulder most of the tax burden in this country. How much more should they pay?
As for the victory in Iraq being a resounding success, that may be what CNN tells you,
HA! That is definitely NOT what CNN has been trying to tell me. They (along with most US media sources) have been painting a pretty gloomy picture since before we even invaded!
I'm not sure that your source on taxes proves your point. The source seems to show that the lower middle class bore the heaviest increase in taxes.
Actually, that is not what it says. It says that if the Bush tax cuts were repealed, the lower middle class would see the heaviest increase in taxes (that is, the Bush tax cuts cut the lower middle class's taxes the most).
very wealthy do not make thier money on income, but on investment.
Maybe so, but they still pay the majority of income taxes that are collected in this country.
I can grant your point on UN resolutions in Iraq, but really, did they have a choice?
Well, as in any cease-fire, the losing side always has the choice to either keep fighting, or comply with the demands of the victor. That is the consequence of getting your ass kicked in a war.
And were 'no fly zones' really needed?
The no fly zones have been credited with saving millions of Iraqi lives and allowing a Kurdish democracy to thrive in the north.
I agree that Saddam is a bad guy, and I'm glad he is in custody, but were we the ones who should have done it?
Well, you might recall that President Bush spent 14 months prior to the invasion gathering support for the war. But Saddam represented a threat that needed to be addressed, whether or not France, Russia, and Germany wanted to help.
huh? President Shrub all but admitted that Iraq did not have WMDs
He has done no such thing.
The US had an isolationist policy and it wasn't until the Lusitania was attacked that we got involved on a military basis.
Um, I think you are confused. The Lusitania was sunk in 1915 at the start of WWI, not WWII. Or am I missing your point?
And isn't N. Korea the 'true enemy'? They admit to, almost brag about, working on WMD, but they don't have oil, and they didn't 'try to kill my dad' so we can go with a diplomatic approach. Just seems inconsistent.
The DPRK is definitely a threat- that is why the President has singled them out along with Iran and Iraq. But, unlike Iraq, they were not in violation of 17 UN resolutions passed under chapter 7 of the charter that spanned 12 years. There is still a lot of diplomacy that is being tried before we reach that point. Oil does play a role here, but probably not the role that you are thinking of- Iraq had some of the richest natural resources that could finance almost any weapons program that Saddam wanted. North Korea is dirt poor, and their desperation is mainly what drives their actions.
So it's between 0.5 and 2 million. That's a gigantic margin of error.
Yeah- it can be rather difficult to count the bodies in a mass grave...
The bad intelligence can be blamed on the President and his staff picking and choosing what they wanted the public to hear wile leaving out much more credible sources saying that the intelligence told to the public was flawed.
What are you talking about? The Bush administration did not make any new claims about Iraq or their WMDs or their terrorist connections, and all of those claims have been verified since the invasion.
Now if you poke around the official Bush website you will find a video. It starts off with Kerry, Moore and others criticizing the president.
Wait, wait wait. If this is the video I am thinking about, it is showing an excerpt from a moveon.org video that attempted to equate Bush with Hitler. The quote that moveon.org found is dubious at best. It is a (*deep breath*)translation of a transcription of Mahmoud Abas talking about what his interpreter had translated to him what Bush had said 2 weeks before (*exhale*). But I guess if you are looking for an excuse to justify your irrational hatred of Bush, this is as good of a reason as any.
I assume you're referring to them firing on our airplanes in the no-fly zone (if not, please correct me, but I'm aware of no other attack by Iraq on us since the end of GWI). Certainly that's true, but I think the point is that he wasn't a threat to U.S. soil, particularly in comparison to the ones who actually did attack us, al Qaeda.
Yes, that is what I was referring to. But don't forget that he also tried to assasinate a former US president, attack the US run Radio Free Europe in Prague, and according to Russia, he was plotting a direct attack on our homeland.
But the biggest threat from Iraq was not a direct attack- it was their known connections to terrorist groups.
The threat from Al Qaeda is also significant- probably moreso than Iraq. Thats why we are fighting them also.
Mmm, well, that's true, but what matters is percentages.
And the percentages are:
AGI of 1-10,000 18.5% 8.1%
AGI of 10,000 to 20,000 16.5% 74.2%
AGI of 20,000 to 30,000 13.5% 44.9%
AGI of 30,000 to 50,000 18.5% 15.1%
AGI of 50,000 to 10,000 22.2% 10.1%
AGI of 100,000 to 500,000 9.4% 6.5%
AGI of > 500,000 0.5% 4.4%
The group affected the most were people making between $10k and $20k, while people making over $500k saw the smallest decrease. (note- this article is about the tax increase that different groups would see if the Bush tax cuts were repealed. In my mind this should be the same as the amount their taxes were reduced by the tax cut. If you disagree with that logic, let me know).
Are you on drugs, or have you simply been in a news blackout since "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"?
By any measure, the military victory in Iraq was a resounding success. In comparison to other modern wars, it is amazing what we have accomplished in such a short amount of time with so few casualties. It has not been perfect, and we have made some mistakes (like disbanding the Iraqi army), but give credit where credit is due.
As a side note, here is an article by Amir Taheri, who knows a hell of a lot more about what is going on there than you or I do. The article is about 2 months old, but its a pretty even assesment of the situation.
slowing the rush to Bagdad to a multi-week crawl.
I got a kick out of this- multi-week, eh? Have you lost all perspective?
Don't be a jackass.
Huh? OK, Germany never attacked the US, but if I recal Junior high history correctly, we did commit to helping protect our allies. More importantly, there was real, proven _evidence_ of what Germany was doing
There is real, proven evidence of what Saddam was doing. And these arguments are eerily similar to the arguments back in 1941, that getting involved with Germany was just going to distract us from the true enemy: Japan.
And how did Iraq attack us between '91 and '02? Sure there were some SAMs fired, but we were sort of, kind of flying over thier airspace uninvited.
As a condition of the cease fire, Iraq agreed to comply with all future UN resolutions. We were enforcing the no-fly-zones that were mandated by UNSEC resolution 688, and we were therefore not there uninvited. Saddam "invited" us by agreeing to the cease-fire.
Um, on a percentage basis, the rich actually did better.
Incorrect. The group that had biggest % decrease in tax liability was people making between $10k and $20k/year (their tax liability was reduced by over 50% by the Bush tax cuts). People making over $500k/year had the smallest % decrease at just over 4% (Source).
How is it successful? Other than that president shrub told you so. Kids still die there every day, and there is no end in sight. If it were the 'most successful' we would not need to be there right now.
??? Look at what we have accomplished! In a little over a year, we eliminated one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism, liberated 25 million people from brutal oppression, transferred governing authority to a new sovereign and democratic government that has great public support, and we did all this with an almost record low amount of casualties (only the first Gulf War had fewer casualties, but it doesn't match the scale of this operation).
Please stop buying in to what the media preaches.
The media has been preaching doom and gloom failure since before the invasion even started!
Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people.
This is one of the most ignorant things I have read in a while. The Bush administration's claims that Saddam supported terrorists was not new or unique- it has been official US foreign policy (as well as the policy of most industrialized nations) for the past 20 years.
Saddam was a unique threat because, unlike all of the other bad dictators out there, he:
- was known to have possessed chemical and biological weapons, and he had actually used chemical weapons
- had known connections with several terrorist organizations
- had recently tried to illegally expand his borders- twice
- had launched unprovoked missile attacks against other sovereign neighbors
- was under international orders to disarm, with the authorization to use military force to get him to comply, and he had been defying those orders every step of the way
- was sitting on some of the riches natural resources in the world that could finance just about any WMD program that he wanted
All of this combines to a very serious terrorist threat. It was a threat that had been growing since 1991. There was even evidence that he was in fact plotting a direct attack on the US in the months before the invasion.
The first Gulf War and following weapons inspections ensured that he couldn't even mount a real attack against a friut stand.
Again, no industrialized nation agrees with this.
He was a dictator. Dictators don't stay in power by sharing their technology and power. If he gave terrorists access to weapons he would no longer be in control of them.
It baffles me how you can make these claims when the overwhelming evidence of his terrorist support is publicly available. Try googling for Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the PKK, the Abu Nidal organization, Hamas, Ansar al Islam, and Palestinian suicide bombers, to name a few.
He can shoot at our patrol planes all he wants because he knew if actually shot one down it'd be his ass.
What? Are you trying to suggest that he was shooting at us but missing on purpose? Why would he do that? To provoke us to bomb him again?
Iran was, and is, more of a terrorists best friend than Iraq ever was.
Yes, Iran supports terrorists. Not more than Iraq did, but they are a problem.
Answer me this one question: Why did we invade Iraq and not Iran given that fact?
Because Iraq posed a greater threat. And its not like we have been ignoring Iran.
I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche. Let's try almost every member of the UN and NATO to start. Haven't they been the brunt of many more (read: in numbers of) attacks than we were? They have been a target longer than the US and are thousands of miles closer to Iraq than we are. If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us? Bravo to the rest of the world for thinking and asking real questions instead of being led around by their fears.
Ok- even France never claimed that Saddam was in compliance with the disarmament. They only differed on how to get Iraq into compliance.
My neighbor who lost both legs in the Arden Forrest (a true partiot) seems to think
What, exactly, does that prove?
I think most of those were U.N. interventions.
No, actually. The Sudan and Afghanistan were all on our own. And the Kosovo action was under NATO, not the UN. In fact, the UN has really only got off of its butt twice: Korea, and Iraq.
The killing and genocide in these countries made Sadam look tame in comparison.
Tell that to the families of the estimated 500,000 to 2 million people he killed. But that is beside the point, anyway. We didn't invade Iraq because Saddam was committing genocide- we invaded to eliminate one of the most serious terrorist threats in the world. Liberating 25 million people was just a nice perk.
(2nd and 3rd world allies don't count)
Why not? Because that doesn't fit with your distorted world view?
So you are comparing the actions of Nazi Germany to Saddam?
Well, I wasn't, but now that you mention it, that isn't a very bad comparison.
I don't recall Saddam taking over the entire Middle East like Hitler took over all of Europe (save England and Spain).
He didn't, but not for a lack of trying. Or are you forgetting his invasion of Iran, Kuwait, and his buildup of troops on the Saudi border before we kicked his ass?
And KNOW you can be ignorant enough to compare the Holocaust to Saddam's purges.
Why? Do you think the brown-skinned people Saddam killed are less important than the Jews?
Also, can you please reference exactly where and when he attacked us almost daily.
He fired on our patrols of the No-Fly-Zone regularly. I'm not going to wipe your butt for you and find a link- try google.
So it's OK for 1% of the population to control over 90% of its wealth?
Sure- why not? Is the old tiresome class warfare argument the best that you got?
Lest wait a few years before we declare unconditional success.
Ok- lets also wait a few years before we declare it a quagmire too, then.
It should be "the alienation of some of our historically strongest and staunchest allies."
If I had to chose between making France happy and preventing terrorists from killing me, guess what I am going to chose?
Even though he was appointed by the Supreme Court
He was "appointed" by the electoral college because he had more electoral votes. Its really not that complicated.
Gore should be blamed for giving up his challenges.
You mean the challenges that would not have changed the outcome?
And a lot of these people should not be making so much money.
Just curious- who decides how much money is too much? If its not the employer/board of directors, then who makes that call?
Any dumbass can make a fund grow in up times
Ha ha ha ha!
Taxing money over large quantities is a way to encourage people to look after their employees (and is not done enough)
What?
It's a lot harder to fuck your employees out of 1,000,000 dollars of bennifits for 300,000 dollars then it is for 600,000 dollars.
Seriously, what?
Yeah because Kerry is going to invade a country that never attacked us
Germany never attacked us- should we have waited to go to war with them? Oh, and Iraq did attack us almost every day between 1991 and 2002.
giving massive tax cuts to the rich.
Everybody that pays taxes got a tax cut. The only reason the rich got a "massive" tax cut is because they pay a massive amount of taxes.
Iraqi quagmire
The liberation of Iraq has been one of the most stunningly successful military compaigns ever. I was going to ask what possible motivations you could have to call it a quagmire, but I think we both know the answer to that...
with the entire free World hating our guts
So, you like to exaggerate, eh?
or should I say if Bush hadn't gotten appointed
No, you shouldn't say that.