What were the REAL reasons for the Iraq invasion? [Archive]

Skeptic Ginger

17th May 2006, 10:59 PM

Want to know why we invaded Iraq? All you have to do is look at the long track record the US has of invading countries before Iraq. Any country which did not have governments favorable purely to US economic interests has always been fair game. After Vietnam and the resignation of Nixon, there was a ray of hope. But it was quashed by Reagan who had one of the more prolific invasion policies since Monroe.

It's no secret the US has been acting on behalf of corporate interests and not on behalf of saving anyone from communism as was always claimed. I don't know if Bush and his cronies believe they have the Iraqi people's interest at heart, but if they do believe that they are deceiving themselves. It has never been true in the past, why should it be true now?

I felt Clinton was not as inclined as past administrations when it came to assuring the governments of any country which had resources we might be interested in were in our pockets. Perhaps it was only the image I had, but Clinton seemed to pursue policies of trade rather than merely supporting corrupt governments to get the results which benefited US corporate interests. Considering the reaction to the WTO, I can only assume the end result of Clinton's policies was still corporate benefits, rather than benefits for humanity. Still the idea of US military domination as a way of life seemed at least out of the forefront.

Now we are back in the same disgusting place, with sanctions taken against Venezuela the latest action my government has taken against 'my will' anyway. Only this time, populations of many of these countries are actually gaining their own power, and with our total dependence on foreign oil, we may find ourselves no longer so successful in dominating these resources as in the past. The failed coup we tried to encourage in Venezuela is likely a forerunner of things to come.

I had my own personal experience traveling in Central America during Reagan's anti-communist campaign. I do think these guys probably do fool themselves to some extent believing they are doing the right thing. But when you are in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala when the US trained and funded right wing death squads are leaving beheaded bodies in the street every night, it's pretty hard to buy the ruse we are there fighting communism for the sake of the people there. Reagan's supposed Contra "freedom fighters" were nothing but rapists and murderers terrorizing people who dared stand up for their right to benefit from the resources of their own country. Reagan, OTOH, stood behind the corporate interests, as if it were all or none, communism or capitalism. That was simply ridiculous.

Anyone who thinks they know what's going on in Iraq now but doesn't know what this country has done in the last 200 years really needs to read some history. You can argue about the political bias on the following links in how the material is worded but the facts are the facts.

History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America (http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/interventions.html)

Extensive list, though viewed from the left, of US actions in other countries since the founding of our country. (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/usinterventionism.html)

U.S. Intervention in the Middle East (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6308.htm)

For something with more detail and analysis than just a list: Noam Chomsky's account of the US invasion of Panama, its intervention over the previous twenty years and its backing of drug-trafficking dictarator Manuel Noriega (http://www.libcom.org/history/articles/panama-invasion/index.php)

If you think the links I picked out are a bit slanted in presentation, just look at the search list, Google search: History of US intervention (http://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+us+intervention&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&start=0&sa=N), and take your pick from the pages and pages of citations.

shecky

17th May 2006, 11:29 PM

We had to kick somebody's butt after 9/11. May as well make it the bogeyman du jour.

athon

17th May 2006, 11:45 PM

Conspiracy theories abound. I prefer a much simpler explanation.

Individualist cultures look upon collectivist cultures and despair. Democracy is superior, and therefore as the individual has no say life is devalued.

Collectivist cultures look upon individualist cultures and despair. The individual is weak without the community, and without strong cultural values life is devalued.

Individualist cultures want to bring enlightenment to the world.

Collectivist cultures want to bring enlightenment to the world.

Individualist cultures flourish as when the individual becomes economically stable, the community and its support becomes less important. Poor countries are typically collectivist by nature as survival depends on a community effort.

The result; individualist cultures - wealthy and imposing - not only see fit to enlighten the world, but have the means to do so as well. In terms of social struggles, the collectivist will lose. Call it global social evolution; survival of the fittest.

I have oversimplified this to no ends and appreciate how complex it becomes when looked at under a microscope. However, when scraped down to the bone, that's what it's all about.

Athon

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 12:34 AM

We had to kick somebody's butt after 9/11. May as well make it the bogeyman du jour.According to Paul O'Neil, Former Bush aide: US plotted Iraq invasion long before 9/11 (http://www.sundayherald.com/39221). In fact, it was one of the first things they planned after the 2000 election but before Bush was sworn in. Richard Clark and Bob Woodward confirmed the same in their books.

geni

18th May 2006, 12:41 AM

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I'm starting to suspect that the people at the top supported it largely because they thought that someone else at the top had a good reason and they didn't want to be left out.

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 12:44 AM

...
I have oversimplified this to no ends and appreciate how complex it becomes when looked at under a microscope. However, when scraped down to the bone, that's what it's all about.

AthonNot from my viewpoint. You cited the idealistic part but left out the realistic part. People use what you describe to rationalize even to themselves that their motives are philosophical. In reality, power is the key factor. Whether it be the corporation that influences government to protect the corporate interest or the petty dictator who finagles a position of power by providing the avenue for the influenced government to protect the corporate interest, or the powerful dictator who grabs more power and influence by direct invasion, one way or the other, it's personal power, corporate power, administration power, military power, the power of resources, and so on that really underlies military invasions. Animal farm has proven its accuracy time and time again. The individualistic democracy becomes as corrupt as the collective socialist state.

It isn't conspiracy, it's human nature.

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 12:46 AM

a_unique_person

18th May 2006, 01:07 AM

There are always more sheep than shepherds.

With Dubya the biggest sheep of all. After 9/11, he was desperate for something to do that would give the impression he was the president.

Oleron

18th May 2006, 01:49 AM

I would love to know why the US were so keen to invade Iraq but I really don't. All I know is that the reasons given - WMDs and inferred links to AlQaeda - were rubbish. I didn't believe them at the time and I still don't. In fact I don't see how any rational, peaceful individual could believe that story. Which is what worries me...

We are now left with a decision - do we believe that Bush is simply very stupid and aggressive and invaded Iraq because he genuinely thought they were about to unleash WMDs on Israel? Or do we think Bush is smarter than that and was just making up a story that would justify a decision he'd already taken?

I believe the 2nd option - Bush (or influential members of his govt) had already decided they would invade Iraq at some point and they simply waited for the right moment. 9/11 provided that moment. Of course there was the troublesome issue of Afghanistan to deal with first but their real objective was Iraq. So they made a show of invading Afghanistan but quickly moved onto Iraq before the 9/11 fever faded.

The real reason? We could follow the money - the US needs to justify its large armed forces. A cynic might say they need a war once every few years to provide that justification. I really hope I'm completely wrong on that one. The other sources of money in the region are oil and reconstruction contracts. Again, I really hope we don't start wars these days to give our corporate interests a boost.

Am I being too cynical? Or am I getting warm?

3point14

18th May 2006, 02:06 AM

It's no secret the US has been acting on behalf of corporate interests and not on behalf of saving anyone from communism as was always claimed. I don't know if Bush and his cronies believe they have the Iraqi people's interest at heart, but if they do believe that they are deceiving themselves. It has never been true in the past, why should it be true now?

This makes perfect sense to me.

And when coupled with this

The real reason? We could follow the money - the US needs to justify its large armed forces. A cynic might say they need a war once every few years to provide that justification. I really hope I'm completely wrong on that one. The other sources of money in the region are oil and reconstruction contracts. Again, I really hope we don't start wars these days to give our corporate interests a boost.

Seems to cover all the bases.

Maybe I'm cynical and not skeptical, but the longer I live, the less I trust govenments. I don't trust ours (UK) and I'm afraid I dont' trust yours either (US).

joe1347

18th May 2006, 04:05 AM

Possibly I'm thinking in too simplistic terms on this issue. But in between 9/11 and November 2004, what issue likely dominated (or trumped) everything else at the Bush White House. Obviously, getting re-elected (in Nov. 2004). Hence, almost everything done by the Bush Administration after the 2000 election was to insure a victory in 2004. So nothing like a real war - IRAQ - (lots of presidential photo ops) to keep the Republicans looking "manly" as opposed to those sissy/pansy Democrats. The post 9/11 national "mood" seemed to by crying "protect me" - so with the War (in IRAQ) - the Republicans were easily able to tie up the "protect me" voting block in the 2004 election and hence win. With Osama (OBL) still on the loose, another war (Iraq) was especially important to ensure that the public still perceived the Republicans as our protectors. Otherwise, the failure to capture OBL may have dominated the 2004 election and the Democrats may have been able to portray the Bush Admin as being unable to "protect us".

Oil and protecting Israel (remember the second coming) among others all have merit as being the "real" reasons for the war. But I think that we have to remember what matters most to the Bush Admin - not to mention most other Administrations - was getting re-elected.

CaptainManacles

18th May 2006, 04:11 AM

The real reason? We could follow the money - the US needs to justify its large armed forces. A cynic might say they need a war once every few years to provide that justification. I really hope I'm completely wrong on that one. The other sources of money in the region are oil and reconstruction contracts. Again, I really hope we don't start wars these days to give our corporate interests a boost.

I know you're just shooting in the dark, but I really don't think that's very realistic. Even if we were to assume we need a war to justify our armed forced, we had a war. We had an attack on American soil. I don't think they needed the Iraq conflict to get people rah rah more US military power. The whole world was rah rah more US military power. The Iraq conflict did nothing but turn a nearly unanimously pro-military US into a mostly anti-military US, as well as turning the rest of the world against us, and I'm sure it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that was exactly what was going to happen.

To assume they knew that there were no WMD is even sillier. They would seriously have been shooting themselves in the foot with that one.

I would love to know why the US were so keen to invade Iraq but I really don't. All I know is that the reasons given - WMDs and inferred links to AlQaeda - were rubbish. I didn't believe them at the time and I still don't. In fact I don't see how any rational, peaceful individual could believe that story. Which is what worries me...

Well, WMDs and refusal to cooperate with weapons inspectors. And let's not get into the whole genocide thing. I certainly believe that they believed Sadam had WMDs, and it was discovered that all of Sadam's top officials also believed Sadam had WMD, so I don't see how anyone could really fault this administration for jumping to those same conclusions.

Want to know why we invaded Iraq? All you have to do is look at the long track record the US has of invading countries before Iraq. Any country which did not have governments favorable purely to US economic interests has always been fair game. After Vietnam and the resignation of Nixon, there was a ray of hope. But it was quashed by Reagan who had one of the more prolific invasion policies since Monroe.

What does "favorable purely to US economic interests" mean? If you mean what I think you mean, 90% of the world would fit that description. Which would make your point kinda...well, stupid.

It's no secret the US has been acting on behalf of corporate interests and not on behalf of saving anyone from communism as was always claimed. I don't know if Bush and his cronies believe they have the Iraqi people's interest at heart, but if they do believe that they are deceiving themselves. It has never been true in the past, why should it be true now?

No secret? It's a secret to me. Do tell.

Anyone who thinks they know what's going on in Iraq now but doesn't know what this country has done in the last 200 years really needs to read some history. You can argue about the political bias on the following links in how the material is worded but the facts are the facts.

I didn't really see any facts on those sites.

athon

18th May 2006, 04:22 AM

Not from my viewpoint. You cited the idealistic part but left out the realistic part. People use what you describe to rationalize even to themselves that their motives are philosophical. In reality, power is the key factor. Whether it be the corporation that influences government to protect the corporate interest or the petty dictator who finagles a position of power by providing the avenue for the influenced government to protect the corporate interest, or the powerful dictator who grabs more power and influence by direct invasion, one way or the other, it's personal power, corporate power, administration power, military power, the power of resources, and so on that really underlies military invasions. Animal farm has proven its accuracy time and time again. The individualistic democracy becomes as corrupt as the collective socialist state.

It isn't conspiracy, it's human nature.

You know, I really cannot accept that. Nobody gets up in the morning and says 'You know, I really am one evil motherf****er'.

People do seek power, but I can't imagine anybody doing it simply for power's sake. To further an ideal, to control their environment to reflect what they see as 'right', to manage the perceived evils in their life... but not just to be powerful.

It's like people thinking others strive to be rich just to have money. Money is a means to an end, to exchange for a desire or a need. So is power. And that power is used by people to change events around them to suit their own beliefs.

In terms of the powers in the US, that means imposing individualist control onto collectivist cultures with the belief that it automatically creates a better society.

Athon

JohnF_73

18th May 2006, 06:16 AM

I think the reasons were largely economic. Iraq was changing from petro dollars to Euros, which would have been extremely costly. It made fiscal sense to remove Saddam and return to the petro dollar.

Note, I merely think this, given my limited knowledge of the subject. I'm not swearing blind that Bush is hitler or that I am 100% right and anyone who disagrees with me is one of 'them' or brainwashed, okay?

Crossbow

18th May 2006, 06:23 AM

Upchurch

18th May 2006, 06:35 AM

If you look up the PNAC manifesto, the idea that the US was a uniquely powerful and moral force in the world was a very important one to some people.
Like I said yesterday (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=57009), I think the Bush administration has basically been following the PNAC plan and that's why we invaded Iraq. I don't know that I would consider it a conspiracy, being as it is publically available and all, but Rebuilding America's Defences reads like an early draft of what would become the Bush presidency. Given that the people involved with PNAC are now in power, I guess that's hardly surprising.

TonyL

18th May 2006, 07:03 AM

Red Siegfried

18th May 2006, 09:07 AM

What were the REAL reasons for the Iraq invasion?

All of the above.

Differerent people responsible had different reasons, and probably multiple reasons. But having lots of different reasons, some good, some bad, makes it hard to put out one message that people who only spend 5 minutes per day monitoring world events will understand and/or get behind.

Being a backer of the war, my personal opinion on the most important reason was to eliminate Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorist acts against the US.

At any rate, the argument is immaterial since we're there and most of the above "goals" have been met in some form or another. What happens in the future ... I don't know, nor do I care as long as Iraq doesn't threaten the US in any significant way. Were they a threat before? IMO, yes, but not as big a threat a some would have us believe. Was it worth an invasion? Well, since it didn't cost me anything major, yes, it was worth it for me. Your mileage may vary.

Red Siegfried

18th May 2006, 09:08 AM

Ziggurat

18th May 2006, 09:29 AM

According to Paul O'Neil, Former Bush aide: US plotted Iraq invasion long before 9/11 (http://www.sundayherald.com/39221). In fact, it was one of the first things they planned after the 2000 election but before Bush was sworn in. Richard Clark and Bob Woodward confirmed the same in their books.

What, you mean that Bush actually started planning how to accomplish what Congress overwhelmingly said (in 1998) our goal should be? How dare he listen to Congress! I demand an impeachment!

Upchurch

18th May 2006, 09:43 AM

What, you mean that Bush actually started planning how to accomplish what Congress overwhelmingly said (in 1998) our goal should be? How dare he listen to Congress! I demand an impeachment!
No, it just means that the invasion of Iraq had little or nothing to do with 9/11 and the subsequent war on terrorism.

chriswl

18th May 2006, 09:44 AM

To assume they knew that there were no WMD is even sillier. They would seriously have been shooting themselves in the foot with that one.
I'm not sure. The WMD issue was different from all the others in that it was a technical argument designed to get the UN and the "international community" onside. I don't think the US felt remotely threatened by the small quantities of mustard gas or even nerve gas that they thought Saddam might have stashed away somewhere. But because this stuff was classed as WMD's it gave a pretext for an invasion which they wanted to carry out for a whole host of other reasons.

We know in the UK that Blair doctored the evidence to exagerate the case for WMD's and that the raw intelligence he saw was pretty inconclusive. I am sure that Bush and Blair must have had doubts about WMD's (I did just from reading newspaper reports) but they didn't think any of this would matter when they were being cheered through the streets of Baghdad as liberators.

Ziggurat

18th May 2006, 09:47 AM

No, it just means that the invasion of Iraq had little or nothing to do with 9/11 and the subsequent war on terrorism.

Only the disconnect from 9/11 follows, and even that only in a direct sense (ie, changes in our general risk tolerance due to 9/11 can still count). But terrorism, and the necessity to combat terrorists AND their state sponsors, hardly started on 9/11, so I'm afraid that part of the argument simply doesn't follow in any way, shape, or form.

davefoc

18th May 2006, 10:58 AM

I have absolutely no doubt that the white house was engaged in a policy of intentional deception with regard to WMD and Al Qaida tie ins before the Iraq war. The pattern of Bushco lies and misrepresentations with regard to the justifications for the invasion has made it difficult to discern their actual reasons for the invasion reliably.

None the less, I tend to think that the reasons that Bush decided in favor of the war are fairly straightforward and were not self serving or corrupt in the sense that he decided to invade for personal gain or revenge for the attack on his father or anything like that.

I think the basis for Bush's decision to invade were these:

1. Even though he may have realized that much if not all of the evidence that was being put forth for the existence of WMD in Iraq was bogus, I think Bush still believed that there was a good chance that Hussein had WMD and Bush was concerned about the problems that posed for the area and for the US.

2. Hussein had massacred many people that had sided with the coalition in the first gulf war and the US and the UK were enforcing the no-fly zones in an attempt to prevent further massacres. Bush was afraid of the consequences of the capture of a US or UK pilot and he saw the continuation of the US/UK enforcement of the no-fly zones as as effort involving great risk.

3. There was a general consensus that even if Hussein didn't have WMD he would seek to gain them again once the sanctions were lifted.

4. Forcing Hussein to cooperate with the UN inspectors was a costly and difficult process. Essentially, a massive build up of forces was required and then once the force was removed it was very easy for Hussein to go into non-complance mode again. Bush wanted to remove Hussein to prevent this scenario from being played out repeatedly.

5. Bushco, radically underestimated the cost of the war and the difficulty in dealing with a post war Iraq. The problem here, IMHO, had a great deal to do with the Cheney foreign policy group that were largely incompetent amateur bozos that yielded power far beyond the scope of their skill or insight into Iraq.

6. I don't know to what degree Israel played a role in Bush's thinking on the invasion but I think it played some role in the thinking of some of the people who were pushing for a decision to go to war. John Bolton, the man who would become the US UN representative is one of the most outspoken advocates for Israel support that I have seen in the US government. And Israel support seems to be a common theme amongst many of the prowar advocates in the Bush administration. I think doing something that was perceived as being good for Israel was at least seen as an added bonus of the war, even if it wasn't a prime driver.

UndercoverElephant

18th May 2006, 11:06 AM

Six people actually said yes to : "To crush Al Qaeda and/or Taliban forces"

There were none of either in Iraq before the US arrived. I thought pretty much *everyone* was aware of this.

Upchurch

18th May 2006, 11:36 AM

But terrorism, and the necessity to combat terrorists AND their state sponsors, hardly started on 9/11, so I'm afraid that part of the argument simply doesn't follow in any way, shape, or form.
Oh? Do you have anything to support that Saddam Hussain sponsored any terrorists against the US?

Tricky

18th May 2006, 11:55 AM

On Planet X, there are other reasons (explain)

Taking care of unfinished business.

The first war never really ended (I'm not saying Bush I should have taken out Hussein, but once the allied forces decided to leave him in power a realistic peace agreement should have been ironed out. I think history has shown, repeatedly, that "peace agreements" consisting of long term punative measures often delay or prevent a lasting peace.) Anyway, after over ten years there was a low grade air war with no end in sight and there were some people who wanted to end it militarily and others who wanted to end it by just pulling out. Then, some other unfinished business (Al Queda) comes along and bites the US in the behind. This opened the door for the people that had wanted to end the situation in Iraq militarily, and they set out to find a justification for doing so. WMD was the best they could find.

But, that's just my personal opinion.
Actually, I had intended to include something like that on the list, but forgot it. There had been talk that GWHB lost to Clinton because he alianated the right wing by refusing to "finish the job" after Desert Storm. Some suggested that Jr. was going to fix that little oversight.

It's also been suggested that one good reason for the invasion, though not one that has ever been put forth by the government, was that there was some guilt in the US because we made Saddam. We supported him in his war against Iran and we gave him weapons which made him strong enough to become a dictator. We didn't even support a UN resolution condemning his use of WMDs against the Kurds. (As I recall there was a joke circulating at the time that Saddam was like Little Miss Muffet because he had Kurds in his Way. It seemed very funny at the time.)

But of course, that would be admitting we made a mistake, so naturally, no mention was made of this.

Kerberos

18th May 2006, 11:58 AM

Being a backer of the war, my personal opinion on the most important reason was to eliminate Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorist acts against the US.

Could you name some terrorist attacks against the US that Iraq sponsored?

At any rate, the argument is immaterial since we're there and most of the above "goals" have been met in some form or another.
Mostly "another" I'd say.

What happens in the future ... I don't know, nor do I care as long as Iraq doesn't threaten the US in any significant way. Were they a threat before? IMO, yes, but not as big a threat a some would have us believe. Was it worth an invasion? Well, since it didn't cost me anything major, yes, it was worth it for me. Your mileage may vary.
While the Iraq war might be cheap compared to most other wars, I'm not sure 2500 dead soldiers and 250 Billion dollars can be considered a minor cost.

Kerberos

18th May 2006, 12:11 PM

Six people actually said yes to : "To crush Al Qaeda and/or Taliban forces"

There were none of either in Iraq before the US arrived. I thought pretty much *everyone* was aware of this.
That doesn't automatically mean it can't have been part of the reason though (plus I think none is overstating it a bit, there where a few if I remember correctly).

Earthborn

18th May 2006, 12:47 PM

Six people actually said yes to : "To crush Al Qaeda and/or Taliban forces"

There were none of either in Iraq before the US arrived. I thought pretty much *everyone* was aware of this.There also were no WMDs. Doesn't mean it couldn't have been a reason for the Bush administration to throw themselves into this mess.

Red Siegfried

18th May 2006, 02:59 PM

Could you name some terrorist attacks against the US that Iraq sponsored?

Two words: Salman Pak.

It can be arugued that Iraq never actually sponsored a successful terrorist attack against the US. Maybe they did (Oklahoma City?) , maybe they didn't, but there WERE people training to commit terrorist acts in Iraq. Perhaps I should have said "eliminated Iraq as a potential source of terrorist attacks against the US;" it would more accurately reflect what I think because I don't know for sure that they ever pulled one off successfully.

But now someone is going to say Salman Pak is all lies. Hey, whatever, I wasn't a personal witness, nor do I possess the documentation on Salman Pak, so I unfortunately won't be able to meet some people's standards of proof on that. Sorry. I could just as easily say "Proof?" when someone claims that this was a Bush conspiracy to "(insert random Bush conspiracy here)". I just feel a bit safer knowing that there is at least one less training camp for militant Islamofascists in the world.

On your other points I would say "Fair points."

Red Siegfried

18th May 2006, 03:30 PM

There also were no WMDs. Doesn't mean it couldn't have been a reason for the Bush administration to throw themselves into this mess.

As I opined, I think there were lots of reasons, some better than others. People like to have one big reason for a war so they can feel morally certain and can throw themselves completely behind it or against it. War is never that simple and to try to boil it down to one or two reasons is simplistic thinking.

President Bush weighed all these reasons and more and came to the conclusion that we had to act against Iraq. Congress went along with him, for their own reasons. It was not a simple problem, nor was it a simple choice, nor does it have a simple solution. Whether or not the problem was defined correctly, the right choices were made, and the solutions are the correct ones remains to be seen. Time will tell.

davefoc

18th May 2006, 04:17 PM

As I opined, I think there were lots of reasons, some better than others. People like to have one big reason for a war so they can feel morally certain and can throw themselves completely behind it or against it. War is never that simple and to try to boil it down to one or two reasons is simplistic thinking.

President Bush weighed all these reasons and more and came to the conclusion that we had to act against Iraq. Congress went along with him, for their own reasons. It was not a simple problem, nor was it a simple choice, nor does it have a simple solution. Whether or not the problem was defined correctly, the right choices were made, and the solutions are the correct ones remains to be seen. Time will tell.

I think quite a bit of the above is exactly right even if I disagree with your opinion that the war was more likely to have been beneficial than harmful.

I think your "Time will tell" idea is wrong though. Time will not tell. The US was at a fork in the road. The US and the UK and a few of their allies opted to take the path for war. All that we know now is all that we are likely to know in the future about the wisdom of that decision. Time will not tell us what would have happened if the path for war had not been taken.

Maybe Hussein would have been overthrown, maybe Hussein would have moderated the way Qadafi has, maybe the Iranian moderates would have gained power in Iran, maybe without the lesson of preemptive war by the US North Korea would have eliminated its nuclear weapons program, maybe Hussein would have snuck a dirty bomb into the US and caused a terrorist attack that makes 9-11 look tiny, etc. What we are left with is thousands of scenarios that might have happened and some very imperfect information with which to judge their likelyhood. The future is unlikely to supply us with significantly improved information that can be used to judge their likelyhood.

I also disagree somewhat with your statement that congress went along with him for their own reasons. This statement is technically correct but misleading for what it leaves out. Many in congress authorized Bush to go to war as a last resort, assuming that the threat of war was necessary to get Hussein's cooperation but expecting that war would not come until every effort had been made to resolve the situation without war. I think many would have voted against it if they had realized that Bush was determined to go to war regardless of what might have been accomplished diplomatically.

I also think the statement leaves out the full scale effort by the Bush administration to mislead congress about the existence of WMD and the existence of an Al Qaida tie in. Many in congress would not have voted for war if they had realized the degree that Bushco was lying to them.

a_unique_person

18th May 2006, 04:18 PM

gnome

18th May 2006, 04:54 PM

http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/speakers/pics/thomas-h.jpg

Why did we REALLY go to IRAQ?
(cue suspenseful music and parking garage scene)

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 04:56 PM

...

The real reason? We could follow the money - the US needs to justify its large armed forces. A cynic might say they need a war once every few years to provide that justification. I really hope I'm completely wrong on that one. The other sources of money in the region are oil and reconstruction contracts. Again, I really hope we don't start wars these days to give our corporate interests a boost.

Am I being too cynical? Or am I getting warm?Follow the money, yes, but perhaps not as calculated as you put it. One of the scenes in Michael Moore's, "F. 911", movie was of some businessman at a podium drooling aloud at all the money to be made in Iraq if we go in.

One of the big mistakes the Bush admin made was in passing out no-bid contract after contract to everyone but the Iraqis. An interview on Democracy Now with a non-embedded reporter was also revealing. He said that just after the invasion foreigners poured in, not to fight an insurgency, but to find work. Instead, Bush gave all the jobs to cronies. The foreigners left and the Iraqis remained unemployed.

So with that in mind, did these guys sit around and say, "Hey, we need to drum up business for contractor cronies and military industrial complexes we all own stock in"? No, I don't think so. Rather it goes something like this: Those military industrial complexes market themselves to the decision makers. They say things like this or that weapon system will shock and awe the Iraqis and they'll be so impressed we'll just move right in and set up shop. Looks good to the idiots in charge who have no clue what the actual people in the country think. Instead, Bush and company imagine what the Iraqis think based on the scenario they've been sold by the marketers who also don't have a clue what the average Iraqi thinks.

What I don't understand is since the book, "The Ugly American" was written in the 50s, you'd think it'd be a no brainer that taking into account the culture and views of the people in whose country you plan to get involved in is critical. They don't all think like Americans. I know that and it only took a little independent travel right after college to figure it out.

Bush senior didn't know what a bar code reader was in a grocery store. Bush junior seemed to use the term 'crusade' in a speech out of ignorance, not as a purposeful choice. It could be that these rich guys are so insulated from the rest of the world that they truly don't have a clue what most people think and believe in their own country let alone in another culture.

Yes, the military industrial complex drives the machine, but it isn't as calculated as George Orwell describes in, "1984". They know when they are using talking points propaganda. They know a war will make them richer. They know a war gets them re-elected. Somewhere in between fabricating a fake war and fabricating a fake reason to go to war lies the truth. Maybe it's leaning a little toward fake war. Maybe it's leaning a little toward deceiving oneself into thinking everyone wants a country like ours so you fake the reason to go to war.

Either way, it sucks. And unless the public stands up against this kind of government action, it will go on throughout our lifetimes and beyond. We took some significant steps and increased the publics' awareness during and after the Vietnam War. But we seem to be back where we started and the public is as clueless as ever.

Look at the poll results above. How many of you who voted for those idealistic reasons like spreading democracy read any of the history links or history of US interventions from other sources of information? How many of you who think we went into Iraq for idealistic reasons has read the history of or know about from other sources the reasons the US got into the Vietnam War or why we weren't successful there? Except of course if you voted for those idealistic reasons because you think people like Bush believe that is why they invaded. I think the poll should distinguish between we did it because.... or we did it because Bush believes....

People are easily deceived by talking points because they haven't taken the time to educate themselves about how a government like ours in the US actually works. Or, people are suspicious of the government and believe those in power have giant conspiracies going on like the Trilateral Commission Conspiracy. There is no way the government is that idealistic, nor that competent.

The mechanisms that are in play are there in the history record. The government is still repeating the program. Some corruption, some incompetence, a lot of propaganda and marketing, all predictable, all avoidable with an educated and well informed public. But what do we have instead of an educated informed public? Clearly something else. (Individuals excepted, but don't fool yourself into thinking you are the exception if you don't recognize sales and propaganda techniques nor know much about our government's long history of screwing up other countries for the benefit of a few influential citizens/corporations here.)

Polaris

18th May 2006, 05:41 PM

On Planet X, there are other reasons (explain)

According to 'Richard Perle', the person who did the most to rationize and convince Bush to start the war:

The war was about reshaping the Middle East so that this region of the world (and its vast oil reserves on which we are so dependent) would become more democratic and thus more closely allied with the USA.

By the way, a close secondary reason was the desire to finish the job his daddy started.

This doesn't sound altogether unreasonable - or particularly evil and bloodthirsty. One of the major causes of terrorism in the middle east is from repressive dictatorships that channel popular anger into Islamically-based hatred of "the West" and "the Jews" rather than where it truly belongs.

The Marshall Plan wasn't about giving freedom to Europe, it was about containing the Soviet Union. It just had favorable consequences. Likewise I think reshaping the Middle East, in theory at least, toward democracy is commendable. Of course, there's the whole underlying problem that the Middle East is another culture, filled with Semtex and people foaming at the mouth to become suicide bombers.

I think the main problem was with the execution of these lofty goals.

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 05:42 PM

...
To assume they knew that there were no WMD is even sillier. They would seriously have been shooting themselves in the foot with that one.

Well, WMDs and refusal to cooperate with weapons inspectors. And let's not get into the whole genocide thing. I certainly believe that they believed Sadam had WMDs, and it was discovered that all of Sadam's top officials also believed Sadam had WMD, so I don't see how anyone could really fault this administration for jumping to those same conclusions.Right. So the fact the CIA told the admin the attempt to get yellowcake from Niger was bogus; the fact Cheney and/or Rove are close to being indicted for leaking information about Valerie Plame to discredit Joe Wilson, who BTW, did indeed have qualifications to be sent to Niger to investigate the incident as Wilson had many African government connections having been an ambassador in the region for years; the Downing Street memo in which it was discussed that Saddam should be given an ultimatum he would surely refuse then the refusal would be grounds to invade only Saddam did not refuse and Blair and Bush were forced to come up with additional excuses; and, the fact Powell claimed the anodized aluminum tubes could only be used for nuclear weapons production when in reality it is the opposite don't make you suspect these guys were faking reasons to invade? I suppose you think George Tenet's "slam dunk" statement was more than his being eager to please or that Bush and company didn't just share that with Woodward in a bout of wishful thinking?

Where's your evidence these guys believed Saddam was a threat? You just think it must be true? I'd say it's more like they knew it wasn't true and they wanted to go in before it changed. You don't see us invading N Korea now do you?

What does "favorable purely to US economic interests" mean? If you mean what I think you mean, 90% of the world would fit that description. Which would make your point kinda...well, stupid.Right. It was favorable to the world's interest when we assassinated Allende in Chile. And we were promoting democracy when we ousted Mosedeq, who was democratically elected in Iran in the 50s. Of course the Sandanistas in Nicaragua were terrible to rise up against economic oppression of Somoza, one of the worst and cruelist dictators in modern history, so of course Somoza's murderous army were really "freedom fighters". And certainly it was in the world's interest that we backed Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, another incredibly brutal dictator.

After all, there were American companies that stood to lose control of the areas resources in all those countries if a popular uprising resulted in nationalizing any corporate interests. Those corporations invested heavily in factories and what not in order to exploit the natural resources of the regions. Why should they have had to pay anymore than pennies to the stupid peasants who lived there? Why should Shell Oil have to clean up the pollution it caused in Africa? Better to support the corrupt governments there with US government foreign aid.

No secret? It's a secret to me. Do tell....

I didn't really see any facts on those sites.Oh pleeease! If you'd bother to read a little history you wouldn't be so poorly informed. Why don't you tell us why we invaded and split the Persian oil resources between the US and Britain in the early 1900s? Tell us why we assassinated Allende in Chile? Tell us why we still run the School of the Americas? Tell my friend why her children visiting relatives in Nicaragua watched a Contra soldier hack off a small child's hand with a machete in Masaya.

Google sources, take your pick:

Mosedeq (http://www.google.com/search?q=mosedeq&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official)

Trujillo (http://www.google.com/search?hs=tSs&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=Trujillo+dominican+republic&btnG=Search)

Somoza (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=somoza&btnG=Search)

Allende (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=Salvador+Allende&btnG=Search)

steven biko africa shell oil (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=steven+biko+africa+shell+oil&spell=1)

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 05:44 PM

What, you mean that Bush actually started planning how to accomplish what Congress overwhelmingly said (in 1998) our goal should be? How dare he listen to Congress! I demand an impeachment!Why don't you read what Paul O'Neil had to say before imagining you know what was planned, by whom and why.

Polaris

18th May 2006, 05:46 PM

Only the disconnect from 9/11 follows, and even that only in a direct sense (ie, changes in our general risk tolerance due to 9/11 can still count). But terrorism, and the necessity to combat terrorists AND their state sponsors, hardly started on 9/11, so I'm afraid that part of the argument simply doesn't follow in any way, shape, or form.

No, but a terrorist attack like THAT hadn't happened before, and the public demand for overwhelming retaliation hadn't been there before either. How many other terrorist attacks in the US destroyed something big enough to be used in a Spiderman movie trailer?

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 05:59 PM

You know, I really cannot accept that. Nobody gets up in the morning and says 'You know, I really am one evil motherf****er'.

People do seek power, but I can't imagine anybody doing it simply for power's sake. To further an ideal, to control their environment to reflect what they see as 'right', to manage the perceived evils in their life... but not just to be powerful.

It's like people thinking others strive to be rich just to have money. Money is a means to an end, to exchange for a desire or a need. So is power. And that power is used by people to change events around them to suit their own beliefs.

In terms of the powers in the US, that means imposing individualist control onto collectivist cultures with the belief that it automatically creates a better society.

Athon
This may just be a difference of perspective. I think people do believe to some extent they have good intentions. I think Reagan did believe he was fighting communism. Bush might believe he is acting as the hand of god. But in reality, men like these took actions that supported their power and wealth, not actions that supported their ideals. That's what I mean by real vs ideal.

You could believe, I suppose that Reagan's support of Somoza was truly because Reagan preferred a brutal dictator to the possibility of a Cuban style communist government. Which would have been worse for the people living there? Somoza or Castro? I can say with confidence anyone would prefer Castro to Somoza, even an American. So if it doesn't matter how badly the people are treated, is it the ideal of fighting communism? No it may be supposedly keeping communism out of one's backyard. But whether that is the motive, or just not wanting to see any company holdings nationalized, the bottom line is Reagan was acting on behalf of US interests, not Nicaraguans' interest. It isn't the idealism of wanting to spread democracy either way. Somoza was certainly not democratically elected nor did he remain in power by the will of the majority. He remained in power solely because we propped him up with military and financial aid.

We trained the contras in the School of the Americas. The same people we trained raped and killed the 4 nuns that made the news. We trained the people who assassinated Father Romero who was trying to help his oppressed parishioners as well.

In this case you don't necessarily have Reagan acting to gain purely personal power. You have a combination of power holding entities, the President and corporations that have influence with the President. These power holders are acting in their own best interests. They aren't necessarily acting like little megalomaniacs. That isn't what I meant at all. But the idea powerful leaders want to make the world a better place isn't reflected by the actual decisions they usually make.

Polaris

18th May 2006, 06:01 PM

It's also been suggested that one good reason for the invasion, though not one that has ever been put forth by the government, was that there was some guilt in the US because we made Saddam. We supported him in his war against Iran and we gave him weapons which made him strong enough to become a dictator.

But of course, that would be admitting we made a mistake, so naturally, no mention was made of this.

This simply isn't true. Satellite photos and other intelligence were given to Saddam by the US government during the Iran-Iraq War - but not weapons. Saddam's military was full of Combloc weapons, up until he was removed from power - Kalashnikov rifles, T-62 and T-72 tanks, MiG fighters, Hind helicopters, Scud missiles, BMP-1 APCs, Katyusha rockets, etc - none of which had "Made in the USA" stamped on them. Chinese weapons also figured prominently in Mesopotamia - such as the Silkworm missile that damaged that mall in Qatar early in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam was heavily courted by the KGB, much more than the CIA. Iraq, in its war agaisnt Iran, was patronized by several countries, of which the US was only one (Iran, btw, wasn't alone in the struggle - it was supported, ironically enough, by Baathist Arab Syria).

Would you not agree that if we put Saddam in power, it would make sense to remove him after he proved to be a murderous despot? Or should the US be forced to never fix its mistakes so anti-Americans around the world never run out of things to hate us for?

Skeptic Ginger

18th May 2006, 06:08 PM

More to follow. I couldn't address all the reactions to my posts yet but plan to try. I don't have an issue if those of you who see my opinions much too left for your taste could present some facts to back your different opinions. But to claim I haven't presented any facts or to just rant that I'm wrong is not very impressive. I'm willing to read your version of history. Link away.

Tricky

18th May 2006, 06:22 PM

This simply isn't true. Satellite photos and other intelligence were given to Saddam by the US government during the Iran-Iraq War - but not weapons. Saddam's military was full of Combloc weapons, up until he was removed from power - Kalashnikov rifles, T-62 and T-72 tanks, MiG fighters, Hind helicopters, Scud missiles, BMP-1 APCs, Katyusha rockets, etc - none of which had "Made in the USA" stamped on them. Chinese weapons also figured prominently in Mesopotamia - such as the Silkworm missile that damaged that mall in Qatar early in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam was heavily courted by the KGB, much more than the CIA. Iraq, in its war agaisnt Iran, was patronized by several countries, of which the US was only one (Iran, btw, wasn't alone in the struggle - it was supported, ironically enough, by Baathist Arab Syria).
You may be correct. I spoke without research. I know many people here in the US supported him at least in spirit because he was attacking Iran, who we hated for having kidnapped our people. I know that the US did not vote to condemn him after he used gas on the Kurds. Maybe we didn't give him weapons. I will withdraw that for now.

Would you not agree that if we put Saddam in power, it would make sense to remove him after he proved to be a murderous despot? Or should the US be forced to never fix its mistakes so anti-Americans around the world never run out of things to hate us for?
I would agree to that, provided it were done with the full admission that we, in a large part, put him in power. If we said "We made this mess, and we have to clean it up," I could have been more understanding of the war, though it would still have been better not to make Frankenstein's monster. But taking the blame for Saddam is something that we have never done and will never do. He was a brutal killer when he was on our side and he was a brutal killer when he was on the other side. We must stop supporting brutal killers just because they are our brutal killers.

Huntster

18th May 2006, 06:39 PM

...One of the big mistakes the Bush admin made was in passing out no-bid contract after contract to everyone but the Iraqis. An interview on Democracy Now with a non-embedded reporter was also revealing. He said that just after the invasion foreigners poured in, not to fight an insurgency, but to find work. Instead, Bush gave all the jobs to cronies. The foreigners left and the Iraqis remained unemployed....

I have nothing but contempt for no-bid contracts, am involved in the system, have a very personal stake in getting the system fixed, and get extremely frustrated with the "Bush Done It" mantra:

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0406/042706k1.htm

http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06399high.pdf

The leftist media loves to rally over the Kellog, Brown, & Root conglomerate because the vice president was a former CEO, but I'm here to tell you that KBR's sweetie deal was well entrenched when I was sweating in the Southeast Asian jungle some 30 years ago. Then we were complaining about Lady Bird Johnson's ties to B&R.

http://indianz.com/News/2006/013478.asp

Anybody ever hear of Pork King Sen. Ted Stevens?

Ever hear of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act?

Ever hear of the federal balance of power, where Congress holds the purse strings?

Following the money usually doesn't start at the White House.............

Polaris

18th May 2006, 06:45 PM

You may be correct. I spoke without research. I know many people here in the US supported him at least in spirit because he was attacking Iran, who we hated for having kidnapped our people. I know that the US did not vote to condemn him after he used gas on the Kurds. Maybe we didn't give him weapons. I will withdraw that for now.

I would agree to that, provided it were done with the full admission that we, in a large part, put him in power. If we said "We made this mess, and we have to clean it up," I could have been more understanding of the war, though it would still have been better not to make Frankenstein's monster. But taking the blame for Saddam is something that we have never done and will never do. He was a brutal killer when he was on our side and he was a brutal killer when he was on the other side. We must stop supporting brutal killers just because they are our brutal killers.

I'm not faulting you for believing that - it's the party line for a large number of anti-Iraq War folks. And the "we installed Saddam" stuff is more or less true - he was a CIA asset in the 50s, when he headed an assassination attempt on the Iraqi president then (Ahmed Karim Qassim if I remember correctly). That attempt was a farce - Saddam lead the gang that couldn't shoot straight. What burns me up is the notion - also accepted as gospel by anti-Bush folks - that Osama bin Laden was a CIA-creation. This one is patently false, and obviously so to anyone who has actually read about the Western contribution to the anti-Soviet Mujahideen.

Personally, I agree with the late, great, Col. David H. Hackworth: no more Made in the USA monsters, because they always come knocking later. My own 2 cents are that I have no problem with the aid to Saddam when he was fighting the Iranians. Their goal was to spread that obscene, disgusting Revolution well beyong their borders and disrupt the eggshell stability of the Middle East at that time, when American power was at its lowest during the second half of the 20th century. Saddam's war bled the manpower of Khomeini, and made his insane quest to become the 12th Imam an impossible dream. If policy is choosing between the lesser of two evils, I think backing Saddam was a good choice. My beef with the situation was that we stopped using our influence after he was no longer useful - the same beef I have with Reagan and Bush I, for ignoring Afghanistan AFTER the Soviets left, and leaving it to turn into the greenhouse for the lowest forms of life in recent human history, who crawled out of madrassas in Pakistan.

Tricky

18th May 2006, 08:26 PM

I'm not faulting you for believing that - it's the party line for a large number of anti-Iraq War folks. And the "we installed Saddam" stuff is more or less true - he was a CIA asset in the 50s, when he headed an assassination attempt on the Iraqi president then (Ahmed Karim Qassim if I remember correctly). That attempt was a farce - Saddam lead the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
You are better read than I on this and you seem to know where of which you speak, so I will defer to your superior knowledge, conditional on further research on my part (which I fully admit I may not do, but if I remain ignorant, I will admit my ignorance.)

What burns me up is the notion - also accepted as gospel by anti-Bush folks - that Osama bin Laden was a CIA-creation. This one is patently false, and obviously so to anyone who has actually read about the Western contribution to the anti-Soviet Mujahideen.
This is conspiracy buff stuff. I don't know many people who have done minimal reading who think OBL is our guy. But I admit that in my ignorance, I cheered to see the Soviets get their butts kicked in the mountains of Afghanistan. Lots of us did. Little did we know...

Personally, I agree with the late, great, Col. David H. Hackworth: no more Made in the USA monsters, because they always come knocking later.
Not familiar with that quote, but I like it.

My own 2 cents are that I have no problem with the aid to Saddam when he was fighting the Iranians. Their goal was to spread that obscene, disgusting Revolution well beyong their borders and disrupt the eggshell stability of the Middle East at that time, when American power was at its lowest during the second half of the 20th century.
Well, I am of mixed feelings here. The truth is that Iraq was, in Saddam's day, more like a western country than most of the nations in the region. It was so open that many strict Islamists thought it was evil. Women walked around in western clothes. Universities taught modern subjects. The down side was that, Saddam murdered his enemies. Now people other than Saddam are murdering their enemies, but Iraq is drifting toward Islamic fundamentalism and the US is the bad guy to most of the world. I can't see this as an improvement.

Saddam's war bled the manpower of Khomeini, and made his insane quest to become the 12th Imam an impossible dream. If policy is choosing between the lesser of two evils, I think backing Saddam was a good choice. My beef with the situation was that we stopped using our influence after he was no longer useful - the same beef I have with Reagan and Bush I, for ignoring Afghanistan AFTER the Soviets left, and leaving it to turn into the greenhouse for the lowest forms of life in recent human history, who crawled out of madrassas in Pakistan.
You make what seem to be good points, though I am not sufficiently well-read to give a truly informed opinion. But what is true is that this is not a good-versus-evil battle. It is a very byzantine series of trails, not a straight path. The pap we were fed to get us into this war was not very intellectually nourishing, but too many of my fellow Americans ate it like candy. It tasted good and it made us feel good. It was empty calories.

Huntster

18th May 2006, 09:22 PM

...Personally, I agree with the late, great, Col. David H. Hackworth: no more Made in the USA monsters, because they always come knocking later....

Amen!

...My own 2 cents are that I have no problem with the aid to Saddam when he was fighting the Iranians. Their goal was to spread that obscene, disgusting Revolution well beyong their borders and disrupt the eggshell stability of the Middle East at that time, when American power was at its lowest during the second half of the 20th century. Saddam's war bled the manpower of Khomeini, and made his insane quest to become the 12th Imam an impossible dream. If policy is choosing between the lesser of two evils, I think backing Saddam was a good choice. My beef with the situation was that we stopped using our influence after he was no longer useful - the same beef I have with Reagan and Bush I, for ignoring Afghanistan AFTER the Soviets left, and leaving it to turn into the greenhouse for the lowest forms of life in recent human history, who crawled out of madrassas in Pakistan.

I've gotta agree, again.

Good points, all.

Kerberos

18th May 2006, 10:57 PM

Two words: Salman Pak.
Five words: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
It can be arugued that Iraq never actually sponsored a successful terrorist attack against the US. Maybe they did (Oklahoma City?) , maybe they didn't, but there WERE people training to commit terrorist acts in Iraq.
Evidence? I looked up Salman Pak on Wikipedia (since I hadn't previously heard of it), and it seemed there was no evidence for the claim.

But now someone is going to say Salman Pak is all lies. Hey, whatever, I wasn't a personal witness, nor do I possess the documentation on Salman Pak, so I unfortunately won't be able to meet some people's standards of proof on that.
Are you able to meat any standards of proof on it?

Sorry. I could just as easily say "Proof?" when someone claims that this was a Bush conspiracy to "(insert random Bush conspiracy here)".
If people are touting baseless conspiracy theories as facts then you should. I don't see how that makes apparently unsubstantiated claims about Salman Pak more credible though.

I just feel a bit safer knowing that there is at least one less training camp for militant Islamofascists in the world.
Leaving aside for a moment whether Salman Pak was a terrorist or an anti-terrorist training camp, when do you think more terrorist were trained in Iraq? Before or after the invasion?

a_unique_person

18th May 2006, 11:16 PM

My own 2 cents are that I have no problem with the aid to Saddam when he was fighting the Iranians. Their goal was to spread that obscene, disgusting Revolution well beyong their borders and disrupt the eggshell stability of the Middle East at that time, when American power was at its lowest during the second half of the 20th century. Saddam's war bled the manpower of Khomeini, and made his insane quest to become the 12th Imam an impossible dream. If policy is choosing between the lesser of two evils, I think backing Saddam was a good choice.

"Bleeding the manpower of Khomeini"? Wasn't that millions dying in a war of defence?

"Disgusting" Revolution. Wasn't that a revolution against a tyrant backed by the US? It was that revolution that gave the Islamists credibility. Then, when it there was a chance to give the moderate Iranians a chance to win over popular support to their side, the US still would not normalise relations, why? Out of spite or internal political grandstanding? Either way, the Iranians had ever right to give the Shah the boot.

CaptainManacles

19th May 2006, 12:52 AM

Right. So the fact the CIA told the admin the attempt to get yellowcake from Niger was bogus; the fact Cheney and/or Rove are close to being indicted for leaking information about Valerie Plame to discredit Joe Wilson, who BTW, did indeed have qualifications to be sent to Niger to investigate the incident as Wilson had many African government connections having been an ambassador in the region for years; the Downing Street memo in which it was discussed that Saddam should be given an ultimatum he would surely refuse then the refusal would be grounds to invade only Saddam did not refuse and Blair and Bush were forced to come up with additional excuses; and, the fact Powell claimed the anodized aluminum tubes could only be used for nuclear weapons production when in reality it is the opposite don't make you suspect these guys were faking reasons to invade?

Right. First of all, I think you don't understand what the word 'fact' means. So the fact that Sadams top officials all thought Sadam had WMD; the fact that every country with intelligence on the matter, even those opposed to our opperations, did not disagree with the assesment that Sadam had WMD, only on how that should be handled; and there was no disagreement that Sadam was not complying with the UN; the fact that Sadam fired on US planes; you find are all irrelevent?

And saying Powell claimed the tubes could be used for nothing else is stretching the truth. Powell wasn't speaking from a possition of scientific authority, actually making claims from his own personal analysis of the facts, he just repeated what was said by people far better educated then him. Granted, in that particular issue every else in the world and the scientific community as a whole dissagreed with the assesment, but the administration admitted as much. But don't let the facts get in the way of the healthy rage you've built.

Right. It was favorable to the world's interest when we assassinated Allende in Chile. And we were promoting democracy when we ousted Mosedeq, who was democratically elected in Iran in the 50s. Of course the Sandanistas in Nicaragua were terrible to rise up against economic oppression of Somoza, one of the worst and cruelist dictators in modern history, so of course Somoza's murderous army were really "freedom fighters". And certainly it was in the world's interest that we backed Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, another incredibly brutal dictator.

That doesn't make any sense as a response to what I said, maybe you should go and re-read things. Let me summarize

You: Every country we attack was not favorable purely to America's economic interests, there must be something to that.
Me: No country ever has been or will be favorable purely to US economic interests, ergo, you are a retard.
You: Oh, so you're saying Somoza's murderous army were really "freedom fighters"?
Me: what the hell is wrong with you?

Oh pleeease! If you'd bother to read a little history you wouldn't be so poorly informed.

Grow up

Why don't you tell us why we invaded and split the Persian oil resources between the US and Britain in the early 1900s?

You have to go back to the early 1900s to prove your point?

Tell us why we assassinated Allende in Chile?

we didn't

Tell us why we still run the School of the Americas?

Well, to be techinical, there hasn't been a school of Americas sense 2001. We still run the WHISC to teach leadership , counter-drug operations, peace support operations, disaster relief and human rights, the rule of law, due process, civilian control of the military, and the role of the military in a democratic society. There were many terrible human rights violations at the school, but it could be argued that was a result of too little US involvement, not too much.

Tell my friend why her children visiting relatives in Nicaragua watched a Contra soldier hack off a small child's hand with a machete in Masaya.

I guess it was because George W Bush hates freedom.

Google sources, take your pick

Did you read any of those sources? Skeptic indeed....

CaptainManacles

19th May 2006, 12:59 AM

Skeptic Ginger

19th May 2006, 01:05 AM

I have nothing but contempt for no-bid contracts, am involved in the system, have a very personal stake in getting the system fixed, and get extremely frustrated with the "Bush Done It" mantra:

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0406/042706k1.htm

http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06399high.pdf

The leftist media loves to rally over the Kellog, Brown, & Root conglomerate because the vice president was a former CEO, but I'm here to tell you that KBR's sweetie deal was well entrenched when I was sweating in the Southeast Asian jungle some 30 years ago. Then we were complaining about Lady Bird Johnson's ties to B&R.

http://indianz.com/News/2006/013478.asp

Anybody ever hear of Pork King Sen. Ted Stevens?

Ever hear of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act?

Ever hear of the federal balance of power, where Congress holds the purse strings?

Following the money usually doesn't start at the White House.............
So your point here is there is more corruption besides Bush? We are talking about a war, not a bridge in Alaska.

As far as the balance of power, are you defending the neocons? Because I condemn the whole lot of them, Delay, Rove, Rummy, Cheney, Frist, Bush, & Abramoff, come to mind at the top of my list but there are more than that.

I'm not defending the pardon of Denise Rich's husband, whatever his name was, nor any of the rest of the corruption in our government, be it Democrat of Republican. But it's hard to say Bush and company haven't taken the corruption to new heights. Clinton had travelgate. Bush has crony Brownie in charge of FEMA when we were hit by Katrina. Care to call those even?

egslim

19th May 2006, 01:32 AM

Ever hear of the federal balance of power, where Congress holds the purse strings?

Following the money usually doesn't start at the White House.............
Very good point. Take for example Lockheed Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin). They are a huge corporation, with locations in 45 states. 95% of their revenue comes from defense contracts, most of them with the US government.
Those defense contracts can actually be considered a form of welfare. Because it really doesn't matter wether the US government needs them, there are members of Congress from 45 states who wouldn't like the loss of jobs if Lockheed Martin lost the contracts.
To make matters worse, the Pentagon often uses a "buy before you fly" approach. Which means they buy an aircraft before its development is completed, and before anyone knows wether it'll do what its supposed to. Which gives a great business opportunity: First sell an overpriced, overbudget and seriously flawed product, second sell the necessary fixes.

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c405.htm
The Osprey [...] began low-rate production in 1997. Operational testing was not completed until last November, nearly four years later.
[..]
The buy before you fly approach allows defense contractors to build a political safety net for their work quickly by spreading jobs and subcontracts to congressional districts throughout the United States. In the case of the Osprey, this has so far meant 15,000 jobs in 43 states, with the potential to go to 23,000 at full-rate production.
[...]
The Osprey test report issued in November revealed a host of problems with the craft. The Marines granted 19 waivers to required tests because known deficiencies could not be corrected in time. The tests also identified two extremely dangerous aerodynamic defects
The tail is wagging the dog.

Skeptic Ginger

19th May 2006, 02:42 AM

Right. First of all, I think you don't understand what the word 'fact' means. So the fact that Sadams top officials all thought Sadam had WMD; the fact that every country with intelligence on the matter, even those opposed to our opperations, did not disagree with the assesment that Sadam had WMD, only on how that should be handled; and there was no disagreement that Sadam was not complying with the UN; the fact that Sadam fired on US planes; you find are all irrelevent?You've obviously sucked up the party line, Captain. But I see no facts presented here.

Try Hans Blix's assessment of the WMD situation and Saddam's cooperation, not lack of cooperation. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june04/blix_3-17.html) Blix was in the best position to know what was going on. Of course the Bush propaganda machine tries to discredit Blix just as they try to discredit anyone who does not tow the party line.HANS BLIX: Well, they certainly advanced weapons of mass destruction as the decisive reason for going to war, and I think the evidence was rather weak at the time.

among the 700 inspections that we performed, none brought us any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. I warned the Security Council about that. Yet, there might have been other evidence and Colin Powell came before the Security Council and he brought some evidence, which we could not check. And I think that by now most of the evidence has fallen apart.

You haven't addressed the Downing St memo. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html) This memo has never been discredited. It was ignored mostly in this country, but never discredited.C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy

And saying Powell claimed the tubes could be used for nothing else is stretching the truth. Powell wasn't speaking from a possition of scientific authority, actually making claims from his own personal analysis of the facts, he just repeated what was said by people far better educated then him. Granted, in that particular issue every else in the world and the scientific community as a whole dissagreed with the assesment, but the administration admitted as much. But don't let the facts get in the way of the healthy rage you've built.I do not see what point you are making here. You are saying Powell was duped. I'm sure he was. How does that let the Bush crowd off the hook for faking the WMD case?

That doesn't make any sense as a response to what I said, maybe you should go and re-read things. Let me summarize

You: Every country we attack was not favorable purely to America's economic interests, there must be something to that.
Me: No country ever has been or will be favorable purely to US economic interests, ergo, you are a retard.
You: Oh, so you're saying Somoza's murderous army were really "freedom fighters"?
Me: what the hell is wrong with you?

Grow upNo facts to argue on here so you resort to calling names? That's convincing. :rolleyes:

You have to go back to the early 1900s to prove your point?So the fact we've been thwarting democracy in the Middle East for a century isn't relevant to the questionable claim we are trying to support democracy now?

we didn't [assassinate allende]
The Case for Full Disclosure of CIA Activities in Chile (http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/comment/00-10-02wp.htm)The CIA made its first public response earlier this month in a report to Congress on "CIA Activities in Chile," conceding that the agency's "ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters...probably appeared to condone" the coup.

The 21-page document, produced by the National Intelligence Council in close concert with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, is a remarkable piece of self-examination, for the way in which it both exonerates the CIA from involvement in the military's excesses and includes a wealth of new information that suggests a far more complex reality.

Take the report's disclosure that the CIA made a one-time cash payment to notorious Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, by far its most sensational revelation.

The CIA's relationship with Contreras from 1974 to 1977 existed for intelligence liaison purposes but was not "cordial and smooth," according to the report, with CIA officials warning him "from the start" that it would not support any activities on his part that "might be construed as 'internal political repression.'"

By December 1974, "the CIA concluded that Contreras was not going to improve his human rights performance." But by May and June 1975, "elements within the CIA recommended establishing a paid relationship with Contreras to obtain intelligence based on his unique position and access to Pinochet."

This recommendation was overruled by headquarters. Yet a one-time cash payment went to Contreras - to end the relationship, senior intelligence officials explained.

It is, from all that, hard to know precisely what to make of the relationship.

CIA Activities in Chile, Official CIA position (http://odci.gov/cia/reports/chile/index.html) "We didn't actually kill him but we did everything to make sure the coup against him succeeded and he killed himself." Not everyone believes this account. Even if the CIA didn't pull the trigger, we still helped overthrow another democratically elected leader and you have not even attempted to address why that was OK.

Well, to be techinical, there hasn't been a school of Americas sense 2001. We still run the WHISC to teach leadership , counter-drug operations, peace support operations, disaster relief and human rights, the rule of law, due process, civilian control of the military, and the role of the military in a democratic society. There were many terrible human rights violations at the school, but it could be argued that was a result of too little US involvement, not too much. If you believe the school's own propaganda site, it's possible things have changed.
U.S. Army's School of the Americas excels in human rights instruction Amelia Simpson - Special Friday, November 17, 2000 (http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usamhi/usarsa/main.htm)As the protest movement to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning prepares its followers for their annual demonstration at the base Saturday, organizers and participants should reflect on the many people in the military who are dedicated human rights advocates.

The terrible slaughter in November 1989 of six Jesuit priests and their servants by members of the armed forces of El Salvador is the touchstone for the protest movement. Yet it was a U.S. Army major, Eric Buckland, who exposed the truth about the massacre, after he learned about it from contacts in the Salvadoran military.

The evidence today is overwhelming that USARSA is not only squeaky clean, and a model of transparency and accountability, but also provides the best human rights instruction for the military in the nation. I attended human rights training at SOA for two years as an observer. The Army school has developed a curriculum that is matched nowhere else in the country.

It is true that USARSA is a hierarchical, undemocratic, male-dominated organization of mostly politically conservative folks. But the school welcomed me, an outspoken feminist, socialist, Latin American activist, because when it comes to human rights, we are on the same side.

The School of the Americas does not teach human rights with a wink and a nod, as was my husband's experience back in 1977 during his basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. There, to his horror, soldiers were marched to and from their sole lecture on the laws of war to a cadence with the enthusiastic refrain, "Because Napalm sticks to kids!"

USARSA's curriculum, in contrast, takes human rights seriously. The training is extensive, reinforced during field exercises, and is mandatory. Guest speakers include helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew member Larry Colburn, who interrupted the 1968 massacre of civilians by U.S. troops at My Lai, during the Vietnam War. Where do you get the idea we weren't involved? There isn't any denial on the schools own web pages. They readily admit the CIA was heavily involved in the terrorism taught to and carried out by the Central American military who went through the training in the School of the Americas.

So the school admits their role in the terrorism practiced by the military dictatorships the US supported in Latin America and you are claiming we trained them in good military conduct and they went off on their own whenever they committed acts of torture and terrorism? You are imagining the world as you want it to be instead of looking at the evidence and seeing what the evidence says.

Of course if one is skeptical of the claim that was then, we are different now one can find many sources which claim the school is still in full operation and continues to teach terrorism tactics to foreign soldiers.

Virtual Truth Commission Telling the Truth for a Better America U. S. Army School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia Summary Page (http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/soa.htm)The SOA is accused of including torture in its curriculum, an accusation its defenders deny, although such a torture manual released to the public in 1991. The "Hall of Fame" at the SOA includes dictators and human rights abusers, and a number of guest instructors were invited to the school's faculty after they had committed atrocities.

As a result, there has been an effort, led by Father Roy Bourgeois since 1986 to close the SOA. Concurrently, military leaders say that the school is vital to U. S. foreign policy, any past abuses have been cured, and the school is now a vital source of education in human rights and democracy as a result of which these values of become more widespread in Latin America.

Seven Reasons to Close the SOA (http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/soaclose.htm) Here's the first reason. Go to the site for the other six.1a. The nature of the atrocities committed by School of the Americas graduates presents a serious and totally unacceptable record.

# H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, which calls for the closure of the School of the Americas, cites "some of the worst human rights abusers in our hemisphere, including: El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Abuisson
# Panamanian dictator and drug dealer Manual Noriega
# Haitian coup leader Raoul Cedras
# 19 Salvadoran soldiers linked to the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter
# Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, Guatemalan officer linked in the death of an American innkeeper
# Hector Gramajo, former Guatemalan defense minister found liabile in United States court for abduction, rape, and torture of Sister Dianna Ortiz, a United States citizen.
# Argentinian dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, leader of the "dirty little war: responsible for the deaths of 30 civilians
# Two of the three killers of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador
# Ten of the twelve officers responsible for the murder of 900 civilians in the El Salvadoran village of El Mozote.
# Three of the five officers involved in the 1980 rape and murder of four United States churchwomen in El Salvador. The above website is full of very specific and verifiable information. Do you have any evidence refuting the claims on the site?

Here are more sites:
Two of the military dictators who orchestrated the coup in Argentina that resulted in 30,000 people being "disappeared" were 2 SOA graduates: Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri. (http://www.soawne.org/)

Backyard terrorism The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it Until January this year, Whisc was called the "School of the Americas", or SOA. Since 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of the continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists. As hundreds of pages of documentation compiled by the pressure group SOA Watch show, Latin America has been ripped apart by its alumni.

In 1993, the United Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero; and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989. In Chile, the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three principal concentration camps. One of them helped to murder Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.

Argentina's dictators Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, Panama's Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado and Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez all benefited from the school's instruction. So did the leader of the Grupo Colina death squad in Fujimori's Peru; four of the five officers who ran the infamous Battalion 3-16 in Honduras (which controlled the death squads there in the 1980s) and the commander responsible for the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico.

All this, the school's defenders insist, is ancient history. But SOA graduates are also involved in the dirty war now being waged, with US support, in Colombia.Have you been to Central America? How do you know the things you believe? I'm willing to read your evidence but so far you've presented none. Why is your opinion to be accepted as correct?

I guess it was because George W Bush hates freedom.More sarcasm for lack of anything substantial to post?

Did you read any of those sources? Skeptic indeed....Yes. I have read extrensively the history of our country. I believe it is critical information if we are to keep this democracy.

Right now we have a mainstream news media that is not doing its job. People like you have bought the propaganda. I was hoping for a more intellectual discussion here with you presenting at least something to support your blind faith in the actions taken by the Bush administration. But instead all you have come up with is childish name calling and insistence that everything is rose colored and the facts as recorded in history document after document haven't occurred.

Where's your evidence, Captain? Where is the source of your information so we can verify it for ourselves?

Tricky

19th May 2006, 05:41 AM

You: Every country we attack was not favorable purely to America's economic interests, there must be something to that.
Me: No country ever has been or will be favorable purely to US economic interests, ergo, you are a retard.
You: Oh, so you're saying Somoza's murderous army were really "freedom fighters"?
Me: what the hell is wrong with you?

Grow up
My but you are a silver-tongued devil. How can anyone resist your logic?:rolleyes:

Red Siegfried

19th May 2006, 09:23 AM

Five words: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Evidence? I looked up Salman Pak on Wikipedia (since I hadn't previously heard of it), and it seemed there was no evidence for the claim.

If you think Wikipedia is the only source of info on Salman Pak, that's not correct. I'm not going to do your research for you. Read up about it and decide for yourself.

Are you able to meat any standards of proof on it?

I think your question should be "Will you meet my standards of proof?" Since you haven't defined them, I'm not going to try. Maybe later.

If people are touting baseless conspiracy theories as facts then you should. I don't see how that makes apparently unsubstantiated claims about Salman Pak more credible though.

Don't call possible terrorist training in Salman Pak an unsubstantiated claim if you haven't read up on it. Read up and decide for yourself whether it's substantiated. I think it is, but I'm keeping an open mind.

Leaving aside for a moment whether Salman Pak was a terrorist or an anti-terrorist training camp, when do you think more terrorist were trained in Iraq? Before or after the invasion?

I think there were more terrorists trained to attack people in foreign countries under Saddam. Now there are more terrorists being trained to disrupt Iraq.

davefoc

19th May 2006, 10:35 AM

Red Siegfried:If you think Wikipedia is the only source of info on Salman Pak, that's not correct. I'm not going to do your research for you. Read up about it and decide for yourself.

I wondered what had happened to this story. I remember when it broke, but then I didn't hear anything about it for years.

A simple man like myself might come to the conclusion that it was because no evidence surfaced to back up the original claim that it was a terrorist training camp.

It appears the simpleton that wrote the Wikipedia article came to the same conclusion:
Consensus View
No evidence has been disclosed about any intelligence finds at the camp after its capture, leading some to doubt that anything was found. According to Douglas MacCollam, a journalist for the Columbia Journalism Review (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Journalism_Review), "the consensus view now is that the camp was what Iraq told UN weapons inspectors it was — a counterterrorism training camp for army commandos."

But Red Siegfried seems to have discovered key evidence or analysis that eluded the simpler minds that have looked at this issue and determined that in fact what appears to be a counter terrorist training camp was a terrorist training camp. Perhaps he could share what that evidence or analysis is with the rest of us?

Red Siegfried

19th May 2006, 12:13 PM

Red Siegfried:

I wondered what had happened to this story. I remember when it broke, but then I didn't hear anything about it for years.

A simple man like myself might come to the conclusion that it was because no evidence surfaced to back up the original claim that it was a terrorist training camp.

It appears the simpleton that wrote the Wikipedia article came to the same conclusion:

But Red Siegfried seems to have discovered key evidence or analysis that eluded the simpler minds that have looked at this issue and determined that in fact what appears to be a counter terrorist training camp was a terrorist training camp. Perhaps he could share what that evidence or analysis is with the rest of us?

The Salman Pak wikipedia article I read said nothing except where it was. I think you were probably reading the one on "Salman Pak Facility" or something.

As I said, wikipedia is not the be all end all of human knowledge. In fact, it could be argued that it is one of the least reliable sources you can go to, though I wouldn't exactly say that. All I'm saying is other sources have different opinions. Do your own research instead of relying on one article that anyone can edit, then decide for yourself. I think the article I read not too long ago was on National Review Online, that was pretty interesting and fairly balanced, if you ask me.

The fact that you need to mischaracterize my position and resort to veiled personal attacks over this topic indicates to me that you feel very threatened that your understanding of the war might, just might, not be 100% accurate. Don't worry, none of us have all the answers, we just know what we've read. That is, unless we were one of the people planning policy on this war. If I'm threatening your worldview, maybe that means that you need to do some more reading on this topic and try to keep a more open mind with regard to all the information out there. Then again, you could be right. Like I said, I'm trying to keep an open mind but as of this point in time I'm leaning toward Salman Pak having been a terrorist training camp, based on all the stuff I've read on it since it made the news.

Anyway, as I said before, stopping Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism was one of many reasons for the war. I feel it was the most important reason. Even if I'm wrong about Iraq sponsoring terrorism that doesn't mean it wasn't a reason. The question was "what are the REAL reasons for the war" and I said all of them were real reasons, with Iraq terrorism being the one that was important to me.

Do you think that by shooting down each of these reasons you are going to somehow declare the war officially unjustified? What is your purpose in contradicting my opinion? What is your purpose in contradicting these reasons for the war? What do you hope to accomplish, and why? This is an honest question, not an attack.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 12:42 PM

...Wasn't that a revolution against a tyrant backed by the US? It was that revolution that gave the Islamists credibility....

You find the Islamists "credible"?

...Then, when it there was a chance to give the moderate Iranians a chance to win over popular support to their side, the US still would not normalise relations, why? Out of spite or internal political grandstanding? Either way, the Iranians had ever right to give the Shah the boot.

Of course they do. They also have every right to replace the Shah with Islamic extremists.

Now it's the right of the West to return and kick ass after Islamic terror, originates in Iran or with the support and blessings of Iran, kills Westerners.

And so the world turns....................

Kerberos

19th May 2006, 12:48 PM

I think your question should be "Will you meet my standards of proof?" Since you haven't defined them, I'm not going to try. Maybe later.
That sounds a lot like a no.

Don't call possible terrorist training in Salman Pak an unsubstantiated claim if you haven't read up on it.
Don't say you know that it was it was a terrorist training camp unless you're willing to substantiuate it. Besides I called it apparently unsubstantiated. Which given that Wikipedia says so, that The Senate Comite says so, and the fact that you're either unwilling or more likely unable to substantiate the claim is a perfectly fair statement.
I think there were more terrorists trained to attack people in foreign countries under Saddam. Now there are more terrorists being trained to disrupt Iraq.'
Everybody is entitle to their own opinion as the expression goes, but not their own facts.
As I said, wikipedia is not the be all end all of human knowledge. In fact, it could be argued that it is one of the least reliable sources you can go to
That could be argued. It would be a fairly impluasible argument though.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
I have nothing but contempt for no-bid contracts, am involved in the system, have a very personal stake in getting the system fixed, and get extremely frustrated with the "Bush Done It" mantra:
As someone who worked in the system for quite some time, what's wrong with no bid contracts?

It gets abused by both sides. The private side charges too much, and the public side uses them more and more because it escapes the insanity of legal challenges to awards, and they are quick and easy to award. The end result is that you usually end up with good quality and you "get what you want", but you also end up broke.

Finally, again, Bush didn't do it. This is the work of Congress, signed into law long before GW ever sat in the Oval Office. Any attempt to blame GW for "evil contractors" illustrates ignorance of the problem.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 01:00 PM

So your point here is there is more corruption besides Bush? We are talking about a war, not a bridge in Alaska....

Thus you reveal more of what you don't know. Do you have any idea how long Stevens has been in the Senate? Do you have any idea how close he came to being Majority Leader? How long he chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee? Defense Appropriations? Do you even know what he looks like?

...As far as the balance of power, are you defending the neocons? Because I condemn the whole lot of them, Delay, Rove, Rummy, Cheney, Frist, Bush, & Abramoff, come to mind at the top of my list but there are more than that....

Gee. Would you be a Democrat?

How would I know that?

Sure. Democrats. That'll fix the problem. They're not corrupt. They're the "Party of the People".

You're right on top of things, aren't you?

...I'm not defending the pardon of Denise Rich's husband, whatever his name was, nor any of the rest of the corruption in our government, be it Democrat of Republican. But it's hard to say Bush and company haven't taken the corruption to new heights....

That was Marc Rich.

Corruption is bad enough. Focusing on what the media wants you to focus on (corruption) to the point of loosing a military campaign (just like we did 30 years ago) is getting old.

...Clinton had travelgate. Bush has crony Brownie in charge of FEMA when we were hit by Katrina. Care to call those even?

Nope. You can call them "even" if you'd like.

I say that the taxpayer and citizen lost both, and as long as partisan politics is the focus, the losing will only intensify.

davefoc

19th May 2006, 01:01 PM

The Salman Pak wikipedia article I read said nothing except where it was. I think you were probably reading the one on "Salman Pak Facility" or something.

As I said, wikipedia is not the be all end all of human knowledge. In fact, it could be argued that it is one of the least reliable sources you can go to, though I wouldn't exactly say that. All I'm saying is other sources have different opinions. Do your own research instead of relying on one article that anyone can edit, then decide for yourself. I think the article I read not too long ago was on National Review Online, that was pretty interesting and fairly balanced, if you ask me.

The fact that you need to mischaracterize my position and resort to veiled personal attacks over this topic indicates to me that you feel very threatened that your understanding of the war might, just might, not be 100% accurate. Don't worry, none of us have all the answers, we just know what we've read. That is, unless we were one of the people planning policy on this war. If I'm threatening your worldview, maybe that means that you need to do some more reading on this topic and try to keep a more open mind with regard to all the information out there. Then again, you could be right. Like I said, I'm trying to keep an open mind but as of this point in time I'm leaning toward Salman Pak having been a terrorist training camp, based on all the stuff I've read on it since it made the news.

Anyway, as I said before, stopping Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism was one of many reasons for the war. I feel it was the most important reason. Even if I'm wrong about Iraq sponsoring terrorism that doesn't mean it wasn't a reason. The question was "what are the REAL reasons for the war" and I said all of them were real reasons, with Iraq terrorism being the one that was important to me.

Do you think that by shooting down each of these reasons you are going to somehow declare the war officially unjustified? What is your purpose in contradicting my opinion? What is your purpose in contradicting these reasons for the war? What do you hope to accomplish, and why? This is an honest question, not an attack.

Lots of issues here and perhaps the sarcastic approach to my previous post led to some misunderstanding. So...

On Salman Pak: the simple explanation is the one that was presented in the Wikipedia article. i.e. it was a counterterrorist training camp. I found some articles dated around 2003 that suggested it might have been a terrorist training camp. Since I didn't see any articles dated much later than that (I didn't look all that hard) it seemed likely that there was no concrete evidence that it was a terrorist training camp. This was consistent with the fact that the Bush administration didn't include it as one of their talking points for the war and it was consistent with the idea that MSM had dropped the story.

I did notice some RushLimbaugh links, but to say the least he is both not a pimary source and he is unrelentingly partisan to the point that I think he has no credibility as any kind of a source.

It was my hope that my sarcastic approach might goad you in to posting some evidence for your view. It was my intention to look at this evidence with an open mind. My sarcastic approach seems to have failed perhaps my more reasoned approach will work.

As to my declaring the war officially unjustified: I do think the war was more harmful than beneficial, but I don't think that is provable and in the end the judgment has to be made based on an imprecise balance between the arguments for and against the war. If you had read an earlier post of mine where I listed what I thought were the main drivers behind Bush's decision for war you might have noticed that the list included most of the legitimate arguments for the war and none of the what I call "Bush is evil" arguments. You might see that as evidence of a somewhat balanced view of the situation and a willingness to be open to facts which might change my views of the war. Or you might not.

Red Siegfried

19th May 2006, 01:11 PM

The badgering is really starting to annoy me.

I guess I'm not allowed to state what I think on this topic unless I've proved it to your satisfaction. The point is, you've already made up your mind so trying to prove anything to you would be a waste of my time and I'm not going there. Why should you take the word of some guy on an Internet message board? No matter what sources I cite, you're just going to site other sources that contradict it, which is fine, but doesn't get us anywhere. Apparently the point of this debate is not to establish the truth (debates rarely do that) but to badger anyone who disagrees with you until you can claim you've "won."

Well, if it makes you feel better, I declare you victor because I don't feel inclined to try to change your mind on something that you've already made up your mind on, nor do I feel inclined to being interrogated on my opinions and thoughts. I can question my own beliefs and the sources of my knowledge well enough, thank you, and I'll make up my own mind.

Kerberos

19th May 2006, 01:18 PM

Skeptic Ginger

19th May 2006, 02:03 PM

Thus you reveal more of what you don't know. Do you have any idea how long Stevens has been in the Senate? Do you have any idea how close he came to being Majority Leader? How long he chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee? Defense Appropriations? Do you even know what he looks like?

Gee. Would you be a Democrat?

Sure. Democrats. That'll fix the problem. They're not corrupt. They're the "Party of the People".

You're right on top of things, aren't you?

Corruption is bad enough. Focusing on what the media wants you to focus on (corruption) to the point of loosing a military campaign (just like we did 30 years ago) is getting old.

I say that the taxpayer and citizen lost both, and as long as partisan politics is the focus, the losing will only intensify.I'm not quite sure of your position here. Are you saying things are no worse now in terms of corruption and cronyism than under Clinton? Or do you think I just give Democrats a pass and think they are unique?

I have a strong anti-corporation belief. I fully support capitalism but there needs to be regulation and oversight. Corporations are good except a couple of problems, their role is to seek the best for the company, not the best for the general population. And, the costs of goods and services has not included cleanup and disposal of those products and their byproducts. That has led to a fault in the capitalism market forces.

The second issue is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of too few. The corporate control of media in this country and the concentration of wealth is again a serious threat to democracy and society.

While none of this is new, it is reaching new heights. Bush and his cronies are out of control and corruption is the worst I've seen in my lifetime. It needs to change. Right now, the only way to do that is to elect Democrats this November.

Ideally, there would be another option. Nadar tried it but got nowhere. Unless you have a better option?

Are the Democrats as tied to the corporate power structure as the Republicans. Certainly they are to a great extent. But the base, me and my politically active friends and neighbors, are trying to push the party in a more "Progressive" direction. Howard Dean is a progressive as well.

If we had another valid option we would be exercising it. Do I think once in power people fall prey to the system and become as corrupt as they can get away with. Yes, I do indeed believe that. Dave Reichert, Republican Congressman from my own district is a perfect example. One term in office and he's already in the thick of it.

The only solution I see is a well informed public, a news media that actually investigates the corruption, and constant vigil. You think I am soaking up mainstream media trash? Where on Earth do you get that assessment from? Certainly not my posts if you read them. I think you are assigning all sorts of beliefs about me and my politics from your stereotype of a Democrat.

The Republicans have put out a talking points memo that said, repeat repeat repeat, "the Democrats are just as bad" whenever any one points out the indictments, pending indictments, cronyism, and lately, in response to spying on Americans without warrants.

Well I'm sorry, but currently, the Democrats are nowhere near as bad, and the spying example being touted occurred with warrants.

See next post for the support of the war issues.

CaptainManacles

19th May 2006, 02:13 PM

Try Hans Blix's assessment of the WMD situation and Saddam's cooperation, not lack of cooperation. Blix was in the best position to know what was going on. Of course the Bush propaganda machine tries to discredit Blix just as they try to discredit anyone who does not tow the party line.

Show me a mass of public statements like that from before the war and I'll eat my hat. Otherwise, Blix has a political agenda just like everyone else, the fact that you automatically assume he is telling the truth and the bush admin is lying just speaks to your bias. It's easy to look back and say, "well, I KNEW he didn't have WMD and Bush was full of it, I told the bush admin as much. But I didn't tell anyone else....because....uh.....hmmmm"

[QUTOE]You haven't addressed the Downing St memo. This memo has never been discredited. It was ignored mostly in this country, but never discredited.[/QUOTE]

Don't really care.

I do not see what point you are making here. You are saying Powell was duped. I'm sure he was. How does that let the Bush crowd off the hook for faking the WMD case?

They didn't. They presented the opinions of various scientists, including those who disagreed with them, and presented their own conclusions.

No facts to argue on here so you resort to calling names? That's convincing.

Your previous response made no sense, so I resorted to pointing that out. Are you really that disconnected from reality?

So the fact we've been thwarting democracy in the Middle East for a century isn't relevant to the questionable claim we are trying to support democracy now?

No, but weather or not we thwarded democracy in one case 100 years ago is hardly relevent.

"We didn't actually kill him but we did everything to make sure the coup against him succeeded and he killed himself." Not everyone believes this account. Even if the CIA didn't pull the trigger, we still helped overthrow another democratically elected leader and you have not even attempted to address why that was OK.

Freedom is more important than democracy. The biggest mistake we made in Iraq was establishing democracy and allowing them to write their own constitution. We needed to establish individual liberty and basic human rights. You are not allowed to oppress women just because you voted on it.

Where do you get the idea we weren't involved? There isn't any denial on the schools own web pages. They readily admit the CIA was heavily involved in the terrorism taught to and carried out by the Central American military who went through the training in the School of the Americas.

I never said that.

So the school admits their role in the terrorism practiced by the military dictatorships the US supported in Latin America and you are claiming we trained them in good military conduct and they went off on their own whenever they committed acts of torture and terrorism? You are imagining the world as you want it to be instead of looking at the evidence and seeing what the evidence says.

I claimed that it could be argued the lack of US oversite seemed to coorelate fairly well with the amount of human rights violations.

"Because Napalm sticks to kids!"

Oh Snap!

Of course if one is skeptical of the claim that was then, we are different now one can find many sources which claim the school is still in full operation and continues to teach terrorism tactics to foreign soldiers.

And you can find many sources which claim that is crap.

The above website is full of very specific and verifiable information. Do you have any evidence refuting the claims on the site?

Well, again the school of americas was shut down. Also, no, I do not dispute the facts, but I do dispute the conclusions. Nothing on that website has any reasoning that we haven't been over.

Have you been to Central America? How do you know the things you believe? I'm willing to read your evidence but so far you've presented none. Why is your opinion to be accepted as correct?

I didn't make a claim about SOA, you did. You have to bring the bacon, miss.

More sarcasm for lack of anything substantial to post?

More sarcasm for lack of anything substantial to respond to.

Yes. I have read extrensively the history of our country. I believe it is critical information if we are to keep this democracy.

I questioned weather you read those sources because quickly scanning through them I didn't see anything that supported your point.

Right now we have a mainstream news media that is not doing its job. People like you have bought the propaganda. I was hoping for a more intellectual discussion here with you presenting at least something to support your blind faith in the actions taken by the Bush administration. But instead all you have come up with is childish name calling and insistence that everything is rose colored and the facts as recorded in history document after document haven't occurred.

Well, I guess you see what you want to see. I think I've made some reasonable arguments, and quite a few of your responses didn't make any sense at all. You seem to be seeing the same thing coming from me, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Where's your evidence, Captain? Where is the source of your information so we can verify it for ourselves?

For what? We've both made a few claims, some based on reasoning, some are just matters of public record, you either have to dispute my reasoning or dispute a particular fact I used in my reasoning. If you had something particular in mind I could look around for some internet sources. Keep in mind, I'm not claiming Bush is a saint or that America has never done wrong. For most of these discussions I'm not the one making claims, so you have to provide sources. And after running through around 8 of the links you've posted so far and finding almost none of them had any evidence for what you were saying, I'm pretty much done reading anything you have to say. To repeat your own words back to you, I was hoping for more of an intellectual discussion here. You don't even seem to understand how an arguement is formed.

CaptainManacles

19th May 2006, 02:38 PM

It gets abused by both sides. The private side charges too much, and the public side uses them more and more because it escapes the insanity of legal challenges to awards, and they are quick and easy to award. The end result is that you usually end up with good quality and you "get what you want", but you also end up broke.

Okay, yeah, that's true. Though I would think good quality would be what we were looking for in Iraq. Cost is always really important, but you really don't want to halfass a job like this either.

Skeptic Ginger

19th May 2006, 02:46 PM

The failures in Iraq are not due to public complaints about Bush and Republicans. That's the same ploy used by the administration during the Vietnam War to keep themselves in power. It is people who believe that which are being fooled, not those who are speaking out against the mistakes and direction we are taking.

So lets break it down. Suppose the public was gung ho behind the President and the Iraq War. (Same thing applied in Vietnam.) How is that going to correct the mistakes already made? How is that going to make Iraqis who already feel otherwise rather hopeless stop fighting the insurgency? How is that going to get the three major factions to settle their differences and not break down into a civil war?

What mistakes were made. The biggest and most critical mistake that was made was raising Iraqi expectations before the invasion, then not meeting any, let alone all of those expectations. And for stupid reasons as well.

We refuse to acknowledge Iraqi life lost. If you were an Iraqi, the message is clear, the US could care less about you, your children, and your country.

After the invasion, we guarded oil production facilities and very little else. The message is obvious to the people in Iraq why we are really there, and it ain't to spread democracy.

We are building permanent military bases there. The message is we are occupying the country. Our actions speak way louder than our words.

We gave all the rebuilding jobs to foreign contractors tied to the Bush administration. Unemployed skilled Iraqis sit idly by watching inefficient unsuccessful rebuilding of infrastructure. There are still limited water, sewer and electrical utilities in the very large city of Baghdad 3+ years after we invaded.

These mistakes and others like them are what are losing the war, not whether or not I voice my discontent against Bush. In fact, getting rid of Bush can go a long way to changing the direction of the Iraq War if handled properly.

We need to publicly change these policies even if it means admitting mistakes. To worry that will make us look weak to terrorists is absolutely absurd. You don't win Cubas and Vietnams and Iraqs without the support of the people. That lesson has been learned over and over again. Suppressing the population with force, including our own terrorism, has never brought peace. It has only bought time in countries where the populations were uneducated and unarmed. The Iraqis are neither.

You start hiring Iraqis to rebuild the infrastructure. You put controls in place to stop corruption among Iraqis. Right now we are fostering a system of corruption. We reward it. It's no wonder there are daily kidnappings for ransom.

You make it very clear we will not occupy the military bases we are building. You can hold on to them but at the cost of many lives. I say give them up. I'd rather drive a 40MPH electric car than give my child's life for Mideast oil. Wouldn't you?

You start counting the Iraqi dead. You acknowledge that you care about collateral damage. You do a lot more to prevent it. You don't torture anymore political prisoners. You set up a lot more hospitals for Iraqis who are injured. You attend funerals if asked.

These are just a few directions we could be going in instead of the direction we are going in. Get rid of Bush and make an attempt to work for the Iraqis whose country we have devastated, not for the oil resources that we really went there for.

Some of this may sound idealistic. It isn't. We've already made such a mess it will be thousands of times harder than had we done it right (or not done it) in the first place. Security and infrastructure are the biggest problems and solutions will require a lot of thought. But the alternative is the wishful thinking things are going to turn around, just around the corner, no wait, just around that corner, um the corner over there.....The evidence is that such a change is not just around any corner, civil war is what's around the next corner.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 02:53 PM

I'm not quite sure of your position here. Are you saying things are no worse now in terms of corruption and cronyism than under Clinton? Or do you think I just give Democrats a pass and think they are unique?...

Close. I believe things aren't much worse now in terms of corruption and cronyism than under Clinton (if at all), and I think you appear to be quite willing to give the Democratic party a pass.

...I have a strong anti-corporation belief. I fully support capitalism but there needs to be regulation and oversight....

I agree fully.

...Corporations are good except a couple of problems, their role is to seek the best for the company, not the best for the general population. And, the costs of goods and services has not included cleanup and disposal of those products and their byproducts. That has led to a fault in the capitalism market forces....

Those are faults inherent in capitalism. Thankfully, the Soviets provided us with a perfect example of why throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and adopting a radical new ideology is extremely dangerous, and will likely lead to disaster.

Therefore, reason should lead us toward the responsible government regulation and oversight that we both agree needs to occur.

...The second issue is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of too few. The corporate control of media in this country and the concentration of wealth is again a serious threat to democracy and society....

I agree with that in a huge way. Again, responsible government regulation and oversight is necessary.

That written, I think the economy is regulated and controlled a whole hellava lot more and better than the media has been. You and I are changing that right here and now. Dan Rather is long gone, even before he "retired". I don't even listen to those propagandists anymore. Do you?

...While none of this is new, it is reaching new heights. Bush and his cronies are out of control and corruption is the worst I've seen in my lifetime....

You must be very young....

...It needs to change. Right now, the only way to do that is to elect Democrats this November....

I think a whole new approach would be good for all; you, me, the Republicans, and the Democrats.

But it ain't gonna happen, as long as people continue to be politically "religious".

...Ideally, there would be another option. Nadar tried it but got nowhere. Unless you have a better option?...

A new party is precisely what we need. It's going to happen eventually, too. Unfortunately, things are going to have to get much worse before that happens (ala the birth of the Republican party with Abraham Lincoln). I never thought I'd live to see it. I might have been wrong. It certainly appears that my children might have to endure the hard times to come.

...Are the Democrats as tied to the corporate power structure as the Republicans. Certainly they are to a great extent. But the base, me and my politically active friends and neighbors, are trying to push the party in a more "Progressive" direction....

My main problem with the Democratic Party is their willingness to "jump into bed" with literally any extreme agenda that pops up, and their political exploitation of the disadvantaged (while simultaneously claiming to be their salvation).

...Howard Dean is a progressive as well....

You call it progressive. I call it ideological zeal.

...If we had another valid option we would be exercising it. Do I think once in power people fall prey to the system and become as corrupt as they can get away with. Yes, I do indeed believe that. Dave Reichert, Republican Congressman from my own district is a perfect example. One term in office and he's already in the thick of it....

Oh, BTW, I guess I'd better mention it: Ted Stevens is a Republican. I've met him, and spoken to him several times. I know his son. (Alaska is a very, very small state in terms of population; a state over twice the size of Texas, we have a population less than that of the city of Long Beach, CA; it's like a small town; everybody knows each other). I oppose him, mainly because of what you just wrote. He is too tuned in to money to suit me. Besides, he's been in Washington so long (approaching 40 years) that he just needs to retire now.

...The only solution I see is a well informed public, a news media that actually investigates the corruption, and constant vigil....

I think you can safely forget that. The media is a tool of propaganda. It has always been so, and it always will be so.

This is somewhat different. It's individual. You and me. Like it should be.

...You think I am soaking up mainstream media trash?...

Yup.

Where on Earth do you get that assessment from?...[/QUOTE]

From your partisanship.

...Certainly not my posts if you read them. I think you are assigning all sorts of beliefs about me and my politics from your stereotype of a Democrat...

No way. I feel the same way about Limbaugh "dittoheads".

...The Republicans have put out a talking points memo that said, repeat repeat repeat, "the Democrats are just as bad" whenever any one points out the indictments, pending indictments, cronyism, and lately, in response to spying on Americans without warrants.

Well I'm sorry, but currently, the Democrats are nowhere near as bad, and the spying example being touted occurred with warrants...

Partisan politics works both ways, and in either direction, it's foolish.

Skeptic Ginger

19th May 2006, 02:56 PM

...

Freedom is more important than democracy. The biggest mistake we made in Iraq was establishing democracy and allowing them to write their own constitution. We needed to establish individual liberty and basic human rights. You are not allowed to oppress women just because you voted on it. ...
.
The one thing of substance in all your posts.

I totally agree here. One of the mistakes the Neocons made and continue to make is defining democracy as majority vote. In reality, a true democracy also protects individual rights against the majority vote. If that concept was verbalized and addressed in this fake push for democracy, we'd look a lot less hypocritical when we don't like the outcome of the majority vote.

Skeptic Ginger

19th May 2006, 03:14 PM

Close. I believe things aren't much worse now in terms of corruption and cronyism than under Clinton (if at all), and I think you appear to be quite willing to give the Democratic party a pass.You're wrong here on both counts.

Therefore, reason should lead us toward the responsible government regulation and oversight that we both agree needs to occur.

Again, responsible government regulation and oversight is necessary.I said I fully support capitalism and the regulations are needed. The only difference we are having here is you believe the regulations are working or are excessinve. I think we need to do more. Too much money is being concentrated in too few hands as a result.

Dan Rather is long gone, even before he "retired". I don't even listen to those propagandists anymore. Do you?You might do well to read Mary Mapes book. The Rather memo was valid. The claim the type face was modern was the lie. Additional unrelated documents are published in her book from the same era with the same typeface. And the Bush/Rove propaganda machine dodged another bullet. The public is stupid.

I think a whole new approach would be good for all; you, me, the Republicans, and the Democrats.

But it ain't gonna happen, as long as people continue to be politically "religious".

A new party is precisely what we need. It's going to happen eventually, too. Unfortunately, things are going to have to get much worse before that happens (ala the birth of the Republican party with Abraham Lincoln). I never thought I'd live to see it. I might have been wrong. It certainly appears that my children might have to endure the hard times to come.Dream on. We have to live in the real world. What's your plan to convince everyone of this idea?

I think you can safely forget that. The media is a tool of propaganda. It has always been so, and it always will be so.I get my news from many many sources. Mass media is not one of them. (Except maybe the traffic and weather report.)

BTW, Stevens is senile. His little pouty episode when he didn't get his bridge was quite revealing.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 04:01 PM

The failures in Iraq are not due to public complaints about Bush and Republicans. That's the same ploy used by the administration during the Vietnam War to keep themselves in power. It is people who believe that which are being fooled, not those who are speaking out against the mistakes and direction we are taking........

I'm getting less and less tolerant of the "Vietnam" analogy with regard to this current war. I did duty in Southeast Asia before the fall of Saigon, and that was after growing up watching supposedly smart university students act up during the 1960's.

The similarity between Vietnam and Iraq is how the mass media and leftists are behaving, and that's just about it.

...So lets break it down. Suppose the public was gung ho behind the President and the Iraq War. (Same thing applied in Vietnam.)...

Did it? American insertion into Vietnam was an anti-communist "mini-war", begun during the (Democratic) Kennedy administration. It blew out of proportion as a result of the Gulf of Tonkin event, which occurred after Kennedy's assasination (but again during a Democratic Administration). The assasination had the nation tearing itself apart from the inside at the time.

This Iraqi war is the second war waged with this nation, interrupted by 12 years of containment, aerial blockade, arms inspections, negotiations, and international games.

...We refuse to acknowledge Iraqi life lost. If you were an Iraqi, the message is clear, the US could care less about you, your children, and your country.

After the invasion, we guarded oil production facilities and very little else. The message is obvious to the people in Iraq why we are really there, and it ain't to spread democracy....

And you deny being a patsy for the media?

...We are building permanent military bases there. The message is we are occupying the country. Our actions speak way louder than our words....

Where have you been? We're still in Korea. We're still in Germany and Japan. We're still in Kosovo (you know, that "one year adventure"?). Hell, after over 100 years, we're still even in Cuba (you know; that "Gitmo" place?)

...We gave all the rebuilding jobs to foreign contractors tied to the Bush administration. Unemployed skilled Iraqis sit idly by watching inefficient unsuccessful rebuilding of infrastructure. There are still limited water, sewer and electrical utilities in the very large city of Baghdad 3+ years after we invaded....

Okay. I've had about enough.

Please provide evidence of those claims.

...These mistakes and others like them are what are losing the war, not whether or not I voice my discontent against Bush....

We're not "losing the war". The United States military invaded, overthrew, and occupied Iraq, across the globe, in several mere weeks, with incredibly low casulties.

We're "losing the peace", and that's because it's not ours to lose. It's up to them.

...In fact, getting rid of Bush can go a long way to changing the direction of the Iraq War if handled properly....

Interesting. Do you have some war fighting qualifications that you haven't outlined for us?

...You start hiring Iraqis to rebuild the infrastructure...

What do you do when you need, say, electricians, and there are no Iraqi electricians around? Or the ones that are around don't show up for work? Or the electricians are Sunni, and the carpenters are Shiite?

...You put controls in place to stop corruption among Iraqis. Right now we are fostering a system of corruption. We reward it. It's no wonder there are daily kidnappings for ransom...

You can't even stop the corruption in your own nation, a thriving democracy over 200 years of age. What are you doing about the incredible corruption in Mexico, that is causing a wave of economic refugees to invade the United States?

Yet, you can stop corruption in Iraq?

How?

...You make it very clear we will not occupy the military bases we are building....

Why build military bases if you're not going to occupy them?

...I'd rather drive a 40MPH electric car than give my child's life for Mideast oil. Wouldn't you?...

I want neither.

...You start counting the Iraqi dead. You acknowledge that you care about collateral damage. You do a lot more to prevent it....

Compared to wars of the past, as well as the warmaking capabilities of other nations today, there has been no collateral damage.

...You don't torture anymore political prisoners....

There's that torture word again. I see it a lot on this forum, usually when one refers to the religious concept of Hell.

I think the word is misused.

...These are just a few directions we could be going in instead of the direction we are going in. Get rid of Bush and make an attempt to work for the Iraqis whose country we have devastated, not for the oil resources that we really went there for....

Do you have any evidence at all that Iraqi crude oil is being imported into the United States?

...Some of this may sound idealistic. It isn't....

I agree. It's pure fantasy.

Polaris

19th May 2006, 05:43 PM

Amen!

I've gotta agree, again.

Good points, all.

I don't always talk out of my culo.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 05:50 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Therefore, reason should lead us toward the responsible government regulation and oversight that we both agree needs to occur.

Again, responsible government regulation and oversight is necessary.

I said I fully support capitalism and the regulations are needed. The only difference we are having here is you believe the regulations are working or are excessinve. I think we need to do more. Too much money is being concentrated in too few hands as a result....

I believe the distribution of both wealth and income in this country is more level than at any other time in American history.

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Dan Rather is long gone, even before he "retired". I don't even listen to those propagandists anymore. Do you?

You might do well to read Mary Mapes book. The Rather memo was valid. The claim the type face was modern was the lie. Additional unrelated documents are published in her book from the same era with the same typeface. And the Bush/Rove propaganda machine dodged another bullet. The public is stupid.

Wow! It's hard to debate someone who refuses to accept what everybody else knows is true.

Originally Posted by Huntster :
I think a whole new approach would be good for all; you, me, the Republicans, and the Democrats.

But it ain't gonna happen, as long as people continue to be politically "religious".

A new party is precisely what we need. It's going to happen eventually, too. Unfortunately, things are going to have to get much worse before that happens (ala the birth of the Republican party with Abraham Lincoln). I never thought I'd live to see it. I might have been wrong. It certainly appears that my children might have to endure the hard times to come.

Dream on. We have to live in the real world. What's your plan to convince everyone of this idea?

You don't seem to understand. Neither the Democratic or the Republican parties were around during the beginning years of the American Republic, and neither will last forever. A tramatic event will spawn dramatic change. I hate to see it happen that way, but that is simply a fact of evolution (yes, politics evolve, just like "monkeys").

Unfortunately, it's partisans like yourself that cause this to be the case.

...BTW, Stevens is senile. His little pouty episode when he didn't get his bridge was quite revealing..

It wasn't "revealing" to me. Like I wrote, I know the man. It was more revolting and frustrating to me.

Regardless, and back to my point about the man, the fact of the matter is that "pouty" Ted Stevens is a very, very powerful man, and his efforts were were precisely what created the "8b" minority classification for Alaska Native Corporations. What's more, it was Ted Stevens who was instrumental in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA), which created the unique corporate structure for Alaska Natives (as opposed to "tribal" status, like all other Indian peoples). And, btw, guess who his major campaign contributors are? And despite the fact that the Alaska Native community are oerwhelmingly Democrats (like most other American Indian peoples), Stevens is Republican.

And you didn't know any of that.

Polaris

19th May 2006, 05:51 PM

"Bleeding the manpower of Khomeini"? Wasn't that millions dying in a war of defence?

"Disgusting" Revolution. Wasn't that a revolution against a tyrant backed by the US? It was that revolution that gave the Islamists credibility. Then, when it there was a chance to give the moderate Iranians a chance to win over popular support to their side, the US still would not normalise relations, why? Out of spite or internal political grandstanding? Either way, the Iranians had ever right to give the Shah the boot.

A revolution that "gave the Islamists credibility" is not disgusting, why?

Recall that the Revolution was in reaction to the Shah, and a popular one. But the Islamic fundamentalist (aided practically by the bazaari class) brutally consolidated power afterwards, with scores of executions (including ones where women were raped before being shot so they would also go to Hell as fornicators). Why would the US not give moderate Iranians a chance to win over support? Could it be the Embassy staff that was held hostage for 444 days? Could it be the millions of people in the street shouting "Death to America"? By the time those hostages were released, any "moderates" had already been ground into the dirt by Khomeini and his basijin.

I agree the Shah was a scumbag - and he deserved worse than he got. But he was replaced by a gang of millenarian fundie thugs who exported terrorism around the Middle East, and eventually the world, and who have subjugated the Revolutionary generations' children with coerced religious fundamentalism that stifles their hopes and dreams. Boy, they really taught US a lesson.

Eos of the Eons

19th May 2006, 06:19 PM

Just from reading a bit here, I see the war was started a long time ago.

I'm trying to see reasons for and against it. I keep thinking "what if US did not oust Saddam?".

I wonder what Afghanistan would be like without US intervention?

I wonder why nobody cares about the dictatorships in Africa?

Everybody at work thinks the war is just over oil. I think that is over simplifying it. Am I wrong.

I'm still confused over all this. If anyone can answer my questions, then please help.

westphalia

19th May 2006, 06:38 PM

And here I've been visiting the forum for a break from politics. Ah, well.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 07:42 PM

...I wonder why nobody cares about the dictatorships in Africa?...

I think Ziggurat made some excellent points regarding the problems in Africa with this post (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=1638035&postcount=65).

...Everybody at work thinks the war is just over oil. I think that is over simplifying it. Am I wrong.

I think you're right. There are a number of reasons why Iraq ended up invaded and occupied, but ultimately, it was because Saddam wouldn't comply with U.N. resolutions.

Eos of the Eons

19th May 2006, 07:52 PM

I think Ziggurat made some excellent points regarding the problems in Africa with this post (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=1638035&postcount=65).

I think you're right. There are a number of reasons why Iraq ended up invaded and occupied, but ultimately, it was because Saddam wouldn't comply with U.N. resolutions.

I get laughed at for bringing up UN resolutions.

I also get told that dictators in Africa are allowed to not comply with UN resolutions because they have no oil. This seems silly to me. What African countries have UN compliancy issues, and which have UN rules/guidelines to restrict themselves to? I'm told they don't get watch-dogged because they don't have oil. They can be more corrupt, have more illegal weapons, and be more murderous than Saddam ever was because they don't have oil, the US simply isn't concerned about them since there is nothing to gain from getting them if they break the rules.

Huntster

19th May 2006, 08:49 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
I think Ziggurat made some excellent points regarding the problems in Africa with this post.

I think you're right. There are a number of reasons why Iraq ended up invaded and occupied, but ultimately, it was because Saddam wouldn't comply with U.N. resolutions.

I get laughed at for bringing up UN resolutions....

That's too bad, because this is exactly why the U.N. was formed. It's track record is poor.

I had plenty of problems with the GHW Bush presidency, but I think he had one of the best foreign affairs abilities and cabinet in my lifetime. After they got the U.N. to issue withdrawal resolutions to Iraq after the Kuwaite invasion, and Iraq ignored them, the "wimpy" president, his cabinet, and his military took Kuwaite back in a rout. Then they got more resolutions for Iraq to disarm.

Should all such U.N. resolutions be ignored, or "laughed at"?

...I also get told that dictators in Africa are allowed to not comply with UN resolutions because they have no oil. This seems silly to me. What African countries have UN compliancy issues, and which have UN rules/guidelines to restrict themselves to? I'm told they don't get watch-dogged because they don't have oil. They can be more corrupt, have more illegal weapons, and be more murderous than Saddam ever was because they don't have oil, the US simply isn't concerned about them since there is nothing to gain from getting them if they break the rules.

Close, but no cigar.

It's true; African situations usually bring different U.S. or U.N. intervention. Oil is a part of it. But, of course, there's more.

Ultimately, you see how much domestic opposition there is to this war/occupation? It's a guarantee. No matter where it happens, war and occupation is a no win situation. That's why you don't see many individual countries do it. Review SunTzu.

If a situation endangers your morals alone, you might be slow to respond (especially when your resources are already concentrating elsewhere, and you can't move all of them........).

If a situation endangers your morals as well as your economy, you might pay a bit more attention to it.

If a situation endangers your morals, your security, as well as your economy, you might really get serious.

Kerberos

20th May 2006, 01:43 AM

I think you're right. There are a number of reasons why Iraq ended up invaded and occupied, but ultimately, it was because Saddam wouldn't comply with U.N. resolutions.
Do you mean to tell me that you honestly believe that Bush choose to invade Iraq sacrfificing billions of dollars and thausends of Americans lives because of his huge respect for international law? Come on!

Tricky

20th May 2006, 09:40 AM

Do you mean to tell me that you honestly believe that Bush choose to invade Iraq sacrfificing billions of dollars and thausends of Americans lives because of his huge respect for international law? Come on!I too am always curious as to why war supporter would use the "because they were violating UN resolutions" argument. It makes it sound like the US was only invading because the UN wanted them to. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. They were strongly opposed to the invasion and the removal of the inspection team. And of course, the US and Israel are also guilty of ignoring numerous UN resolutions. So to claim some sort of UN authority for the invasion is truly an act of desperation.

Ziggurat

20th May 2006, 10:28 AM

I also get told that dictators in Africa are allowed to not comply with UN resolutions because they have no oil. This seems silly to me. What African countries have UN compliancy issues, and which have UN rules/guidelines to restrict themselves to?

Let's put things in a little perspective. First off, for the most part, the UN doesn't pass resolutions regarding internal affairs of countries (the exceptions come when a group of countries want to gang up on an unpopular country, but that mostly just happens with Israel). The UN is not in the business of promoting human rights, it is not in the business of promoting justice, it is not in the business of righting wrongs. It is, first and foremost, interested in protecting the executive power of member states, since that's who makes up the organization. Most UN resolutions which impose demands on member states arise not from a member state doing something wrong, per se, but from conflicts between member states where a violation of one member state's sovereignty occurs. That's what got Iraq in hot water: not the WMD's, not the genocidal campaign against the Kurds, but the fact that they invaded another member state.

So, what's going on in Africa? Lots and lots of violence and turmoil, but plenty of it is internal, and even a lot of the cross-border violence is not officially state actors, and so the UN stays out of it. But there ARE, in fact, a number of state-to-state conflicts which the UN has stepped into in Africa, such as the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia, where one or more party flouts UN resolutions.

I'm told they don't get watch-dogged because they don't have oil. They can be more corrupt, have more illegal weapons, and be more murderous than Saddam ever was because they don't have oil, the US simply isn't concerned about them since there is nothing to gain from getting them if they break the rules.

Why does Eritrea and Ethiopia's border dispute get less attention than Iraq's invasion of Kuwait? Yes, it is partly about oil, but that phrase usually obscures the truth, rather than illuminates the situation. We don't care about Ethiopia and Eritrea because their conflict has no apparent ramifications beyond their borders - the world does not feel any consequences from the conflict and so has little stake in the outcome. But with Iraq invading Kuwait, the repercussions were obvious and huge, not just for us but for the global economy. Damned straight we sat up and took notice. And Iraq's own oil also played a role in the 2003 invasion. That's usually used to mean that we invaded Iraq in order to secure its oil, but that's not really the reason (among other things, we're not controlling or profiting from that oil right now). The real connection to oil is that, unlike a lot of African dictators, that oil gave Saddam a large and steady supply of cash, and cash makes dictators more dangerous. So it's not that we had more to gain by invading Iraq because it had oil, but the flip-side of that coin: because Iraq had oil, it could do far more harm when it broke the rules than a poor country without oil can.

Eos of the Eons

20th May 2006, 11:18 AM

Okay, let's test what I'm ingesting.

UN is there to protect countries from unwarranted attacks by others. Saddam attacked Kuwait. So, Iraq gets watch dogged for that. But, the US at one time helped Iraq, helped Saddam gain his power. Saddam uses the resources in his country to award families of suicide bombers ($10,000 to each family), and...(what else did he do to undermine peace in Israel and elsewhere?).

Saddam is being a menace and misusing money, and killing people in the religion he doesn't belong to. Genocides happen.

Then there's Africa and its genocides and they fight amongst themselves and don't pay people to attack others in countries they don't belong to. The UN thus has no "jurisdiction" over these countries. The UN does step in when it does pertain to what they do though. The US doesn't feel threatened by this, so stays out of it.

So, the US is getting nervous because Saddam has piles of money, calling for genocides, is causing trouble in other countries, and seems to be thumbing his nose at the UN. Is that all of it, or is there more? US wants troops in the Middle East for various other reasons as well. So they want Saddam out, but none of these seem to be good enough reasons to go to war.

So, I'm left looking at the US as looking for an excuse to oust Saddam. Any excuse, since all that Saddam is really doing isn't enough?? So lie to people about WMDs? Wasn't there a better and more real reason to oust Saddam?

Just for fun, if there were no WMDs, then how did Iraq endanger US security? Why not let Saddam try to stomp all over the middle east? THEN if he pointed a warhead at a US city, they could react in self defense.
How much would that affect US economy?

I'm trying to understand the big picture. Do I have it yet?

I'm left thinking that MAYBE Saddam was a threat, but the US should have waited. If not, why not?

Thank to everyone who has answered my questions so far. I do feel I'm getting closer to understanding the situation...unless this post says otherwise!

Ziggurat

20th May 2006, 11:59 AM

Okay, let's test what I'm ingesting.

UN is there to protect countries from unwarranted attacks by others.

The concept of "warranted" is not relevant here. The UN protects sovereignty, INCLUDING the ability of dictators to commit genocide within their borders. "Warranted" or "unwarranted" is beside the point for the UN.

Saddam attacked Kuwait. So, Iraq gets watch dogged for that. But, the US at one time helped Iraq, helped Saddam gain his power. Saddam uses the resources in his country to award families of suicide bombers ($10,000 to each family), and...(what else did he do to undermine peace in Israel and elsewhere?).

He supported PKK terrorists in Turkey for quite some time as well, and may have helped out terrorist groups in Southeast Asia for quite some time too. Also gave shelter to terrorists fleeing capture.

So, the US is getting nervous because Saddam has piles of money, calling for genocides, is causing trouble in other countries, and seems to be thumbing his nose at the UN. Is that all of it, or is there more?

Well, we were also faced with the problem that Saddam had become a direct enemy of ours whom we had already come to blows with. And it's always dangerous to strike at an enemy but leave them standing and still angry, as we did after the first gulf war.

So, I'm left looking at the US as looking for an excuse to oust Saddam. Any excuse, since all that Saddam is really doing isn't enough?? So lie to people about WMDs? Wasn't there a better and more real reason to oust Saddam?

First off, why the assumption that it was a lie and not a mistake? Secondly, the administration always talked about other reasons as well - if don't believe me, just look at all the stuff in the congressional authorization for war, or actually go through Bush's entire speech to Congress asking for that authorization. Some of those reasons were not relevant to our efforts to get UN support, for example, and so got less attention because of that. There's no chance in hell you can go to the UN and ask for permission to violate a member's sovereignty for the sake of promoting democracy, no matter how despicable that member, because you'll just get laughed out of the room by all the tyrants and despots who will always block any such move. And because some of those non-WMD reasons (like democracy promotion) were based on principles and not disputable facts, it was easy for press coverage to just sort of ignore those aspects of the debate, and instead cover the "juicy" questions, like who said what about which weapons.

Just for fun, if there were no WMDs, then how did Iraq endanger US security?

Just for fun, with no WMD's, no military to speak of, and no massive oil revenues, how did the Taliban and Al Qaeda endanger US security? A determined enemy is a dangerous enemy, period.

Why not let Saddam try to stomp all over the middle east?

Because the world depends on middle east oil for stability, and the pathologies of the region don't stay confined to the region but leak out all over the place. In the long run there's a price to be paid for that, and it accrues interest in the form of blood.

THEN if he pointed a warhead at a US city, they could react in self defense.
How much would that affect US economy?

9/11 did a half a trillion dollars in economic damage. And we could not react in self defense against it, but only in vengeance after it was done (and I say vengeance no revenge: revenge is the answer to an injury, but vengeance is the answer to a crime).

I'm left thinking that MAYBE Saddam was a threat, but the US should have waited. If not, why not?

We indeed could have waited. But it was getting harder, not easier, to muster the necessary political willpower and support to solve the problem. And even though Saddam's weapons programs might have been at a standstill, his political infiltration and corruption of both the UN and a number of "allies" was getting worse. Time was not on our side.

Thank to everyone who has answered my questions so far. I do feel I'm getting closer to understanding the situation...unless this post says otherwise!

I can make no promises about that, but I think you are starting to understand the pro-war position better. If you're up for it, I can advise a bit of reading on the logic behind the pro-war position, written back before the war started, about what we stand to gain by invading Iraq. These posts played a role in solidifying my own thinking on the topic:
"Who is our enemy?"
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Whoisourenemy.shtml
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Arabtraditionalism.shtml

Eos of the Eons

20th May 2006, 12:05 PM

Thank you Ziggura. More than ever, I feel that saying "it's just about oil" is a gross oversimplification.

I'll go read the links.

In protecting sovereignty, Saddam was a threat to other sovereignties, not just Kuwait's?

I don't think I understand the entire threat "terrorism" poses to the US, and others, other than one attack with airplanes. I feel hugely ignorant there. Can anyone review the bigger threat?

People at work really think the Brits were stupidly mislead by "Bush's lies". And yes, I am to ignore the "few terror attacks" that did happen. Oh, and I'm to watch the Moore film. Ugh. I really don't want to.

I'm feeling people have their heads in the sand over what is happening as far as "villifying the West".

Ziggurat

20th May 2006, 12:10 PM

In protecting sovereignty, Saddam was a threat to other sovereignties, not just Kuwait's?

Primarily Kuwait's, though he made plenty of threatening noises in regards to Saudi Arabia (where an invasion or even an attack would really have thrown a wrench in the global economy). That's why we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia for so long, which created problems of its own (we've withdrawn those troops since the invasion).

Eos of the Eons

20th May 2006, 12:20 PM

Thank you again. I feel I will still have a really hard time refuting "it's all about oil" though.

Has the US taken oil from these countries? How do we and the US get our oil from them, I'm assuming it is bought.

Who gets the money, and what is the money used for?

One of my arguments about this being a money grab, is that US now has a huge debt.

But, I'm told that Bush is gleefully planning on all the money he gets from taking all this oil.

The troops left Saudi Arabia because there is no longer a threat to Saudi Arabia now that Saddam is gone? I think I will get laughed at for suggesting this...any more links?

And to get to the "meat of the matter"... Even in grade 6 I felt that the Middle East would be the cause of World War 3. Why? Because they seem to figure that they will own the world, and won't stop trying until they do. If they have the resources to do so, and they do as long as someone is needing buying their oil, then they can point out the bad guys as picking on the weaker if we don't buy it from them, and instead invade and take it over.

So, there is this dance. They need our money to buy resouces to continue to try to advance on the world when they build up technology and arms to do so. We fear they are doing this, so try to buy their oil, but suppress them with agreements to not harm us now or in the future.

They then view this suppression as further proof that the West is evil and pushing their ways on others, so it goads them into planning on putting the West in its place. Heck, they teach their children this in textbooks. The West is evil, and will be the World's moral and complete downfall.

So, we try to get what we need without being the bad guy, but they still see us as the bad guy anyways. We can't let them cut us off oil, and they need our money from the sale of oil.

So, if we no longer needed oil, then they could be left alone? See them sink or swim on their own?

Yeesh, this should be incentive enought to pour all this war money into energy alternatives!

Ziggurat

20th May 2006, 12:40 PM

I don't think I understand the entire threat "terrorism" poses to the US, and others, other than one attack with airplanes. I feel hugely ignorant there. Can anyone review the bigger threat?

There have actually been too many attacks to neatly summarize, though most of them have been small scale (with airliner bombings the largest, and individual kidnappings/murder being more common), and most have happened in the middle east itself. Here's a timeline of evens tied to Al Qaeda specifically, though:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/3618762.stm
Singificant attacks include the 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center (a sort of prelude to 9/11 which might have killed tens of thousands had it worked), two simultaneous embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

A few other notable terrorist events (not a comprehensive list):
1979-1981: Islamic radicals hold US embassy personell hostage for 444 days
1981: Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, is assassinated for making peace with Israel
1983: a suicide truck bomber kills 241 US Marines in Beirut
1988: Pan Am flight blows up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people (189 of them Americans)

The peculiar threat from Islamic terrorism, as opposed to more traditional state-vs-state aggression, comes largely from the combination of two factors:
First, the threat of retaliation historically does little to dissuade those who use it.,
Second, those who engage in it are often limited ONLY by their capability to inflict harm, and not by any decision to limit the destructiveness of their actions. If they ever find themselves capable of carrying out an attack more destructive than 9/11, they will not hesitate to do so.

Eos of the Eons

20th May 2006, 12:55 PM

those who engage in it are often limited ONLY by their capability to inflict harm, and not by any decision to limit the destructiveness of their actions. If they ever find themselves capable of carrying out an attack more destructive than 9/11, they will not hesitate to do so.

I completely agree.

Where is the tangible proof that Saddam posed this kind of threat... There were no WMDs, but there were other things. Can we list his resources, friends, etc. You already alluded to his UN connections. Can I get a list? This would include the rewards to the suicide bomber families. Hi influences were many.

Now that he is gone, what have the improvements been?

I'm told the terror alerts are simply a way to convince americans to keep agreeing to this war. I can't refute that, since with Saddam gone, shouldn't there be less of a risk of terror now?

Ugh, to them, this is a holy war. The irony is that if they win, the whole world will suck, but if they don't win we'll be viewed as all condemned to hell. They've put themselves in a no-win situation and want to fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Yeesh. We want to have religious tolerance in this world, but they want their own religion only. Yet we are the bad guys if we win, but trying not to be is costing us.

I have to say I hate Bush, but at least he has bitten the bullet. I just wish US had a leader that was less a religious nut so that this doesn't seem so much a holy war. How does one try to say that this isn't Catholics fighting non-catholics when Bush is so darn prone to saying he talks to god. Maybe if US had a leader more open to science, then we would be on the road to energy alternatives?We're facing a 14th century culture engaged in a 14th century war against us. The problem is that they are armed with 20th century weapons, which may eventually include nuclear weapons. And they embrace a culture which honors dying in a good cause, which means that deterrence can't be relied on if they get nuclear weapons.
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/09/Whoisourenemy.shtml

So we are afraid of them, for good reason. So their cries of suppression are true, but to protect ourselves.

There is just no diplomatic solution here. There just isn't.

Ziggurat

20th May 2006, 01:05 PM

Thank you again. I feel I will still have a really hard time refuting "it's all about oil" though.

Has the US taken oil from these countries? How do we and the US get our oil from them, I'm assuming it is bought.

No, we don't "take" oil from countries. We either buy it from them or our oil companies (as the oil companies of many countries do) sign contracts with them for drilling rights to specific areas. With that kind of setup, the host country gets a very large cut of the sale of any oil from those drilling rights. Some countries will also pay for specific services of foreign oil companies (ie, drill this particular well, build us this pipeline, etc) even if the oil itself remains completely under their control, and providing those services can be quite profitable to the companies involved. But American companies still have to compete with other foreign oil companies for all this still.

Who gets the money, and what is the money used for?

The money we pay them goes to their government. Any other money involved goes to the oil companies involved. None of it ever goes to the US government.

One of my arguments about this being a money grab, is that US now has a huge debt.

Unfortunately that's not a good counterargument, since the accusation is that Bush is enriching his cronies in private companies at the expense of the taxpayer. The real counterargument comes from the fact that Iraq controls their own oil revenues, not any US companies, and Haliburton has made very meager profits in Iraq (they're a public company, and so that kind of information is open and gets discussed by analysts all the time).

The troops left Saudi Arabia because there is no longer a threat to Saudi Arabia now that Saddam is gone? I think I will get laughed at for suggesting this...any more links?

Here's a story about the withdrawl:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2984547.stm
Most of the discussion pertains to the maintenance of the no-fly zone, as opposed to protecting Saudi Arabia (though they accomplished that role too). But that was very much on our minds when we first deployed our troops there in 1991, and the no-fly zone wasn't established until later, in 1992.

So, if we no longer needed oil, then they could be left alone? See them sink or swim on their own?

More or less (but it would have to be the world not needing their oil, not just us).

Yeesh, this should be incentive enought to pour all this war money into energy alternatives!

Unfortunately there are no possible alternatives that can remove the need for oil within the next few decades under even the most optimistic projections. So while alternative energy is important and useful to pursue, we have to deal with the problem now under the assumption that we're going to be needing oil for a long time to come.

Eos of the Eons

20th May 2006, 01:13 PM

Thank you! I'm in your debt Ziggurat.

Ziggurat

20th May 2006, 01:37 PM

You already alluded to his UN connections. Can I get a list?

Couple of different sources for this. The best source for skeptics is the Volcker report, which you can find here:
http://www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm which was a UN-appointed independent investigation into corruption in the oil-for-food scandal. The most significant person directly implicated in the scandal is Benon Sevan, who was in charge of running the oil-for-food program, though he's not alone, and more indirect links even higher up the chain may have existed (Kofi Annan's son Kojo, for example, has also been implicated). The Duelfer report (a US government report about Iraq written after the invasion) also covers some of the same ground. An Iraq newspaper also published a list of people and organizations which Saddam bribed, based on a list that they say came from the oil ministry. You can find out some info about this list (including stuff about how the scheme reportedly worked), the list itself, and even a number of reactions by people and groups named on the list, here:
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA16404#_edn1

Now that he is gone, what have the improvements been?

The easiest way to look for improvements is actually in macroscopic indicators. Tow in particular stand out: refugee flows and currency stability. When things go bad in Iraq, people flee and the value of currency falls. There has been a net return of refugees to Iraq since the start of the invasion, not just since the end of it (in other words, it's a net return even if you count the small numbers who fled due to the invasion itself), and the currency has been quite stable for the first time in decades. Here's a nice column on that topic from Amir Taheri, an expat Iranian now living in France who visited Iraq recently.
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/19499

I'm told the terror alerts are simply a way to convince americans to keep agreeing to this war. I can't refute that, since with Saddam gone, shouldn't there be less of a risk of terror now?

I can only speak for myself, but I can't remember the last time I even heard anything about terror alert levels - I think it must have been at least a year ago, maybe longer. Not to mention people won't respond to them uniformly anyways - a higher alert level may make some people think our actions in Iraq are more necessary than ever, but it may make others think we're only making things worse. So I don't see why it would be an effective tool, and apparently the evil genius Rove must agree with me because he isn't bothering to use it.

How does one try to say that this isn't Catholics fighting non-catholics when Bush is so darn prone to saying he talks to god.

Well, I think Bush is a Methodist, so that might help ;)

Kerberos

20th May 2006, 01:46 PM

Unfortunately that's not a good counterargument, since the accusation is that Bush is enriching his cronies in private companies at the expense of the taxpayer. The real counterargument comes from the fact that Iraq controls their own oil revenues, not any US companies, and Haliburton has made very meager profits in Iraq (they're a public company, and so that kind of information is open and gets discussed by analysts all the time).
Not that I really believe that Bush started the IRaq qar as a roundeabout way of supsidising Haliburton, but those arguments aren't exactly bulletproof either. While Iraq might be fully sovereign on paper, you have to be naive not to recognize that the US troops in Iraq gives you a lot of pull.

As for their profits of Haliburton, it's not really very difficult to move a surplus by from one part of a company to another. You just let Haliburton Iraq buy products from Haliburton US at inflated rates. Mulitnational companies use this technique for tax evasion, but it could also be used to cenceal the AWFUL TRUTH (cue: Spooky music) about the obscene profits Haliburton makes in Iraq,

Huntster

20th May 2006, 03:36 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
I think you're right. There are a number of reasons why Iraq ended up invaded and occupied, but ultimately, it was because Saddam wouldn't comply with U.N. resolutions.
Do you mean to tell me that you honestly believe that Bush choose to invade Iraq sacrfificing billions of dollars and thausends of Americans lives because of his huge respect for international law? Come on!

Nope.

The Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq for a myriad of reasons.

The failure of Iraq to adhere to the U.N. resolutions legitimized it legally(whether you or anyone else likes it or not).

Huntster

20th May 2006, 03:39 PM

...And of course, the US and Israel are also guilty of ignoring numerous UN resolutions....

Such as?

Huntster

20th May 2006, 03:56 PM

...The UN is not in the business of promoting human rights, it is not in the business of promoting justice, it is not in the business of righting wrongs....

Yet it sure loves to pose as if human rights, justice, and righting wrongs is it's mandate.

...It is, first and foremost, interested in protecting the executive power of member states, since that's who makes up the organization. Most UN resolutions which impose demands on member states arise not from a member state doing something wrong, per se, but from conflicts between member states where a violation of one member state's sovereignty occurs....

Ultimately, it is supposed to serve as a gathering point for diplomats to negotiate together, in order to avoid what happened between 1914-1918, and 1939-1945.

...That's what got Iraq in hot water: not the WMD's, not the genocidal campaign against the Kurds, but the fact that they invaded another member state....

Initially. Iraq's failure to comply with post Desert Storm resolutions is what led to today's invasion and occupation.

...Why does Eritrea and Ethiopia's border dispute get less attention than Iraq's invasion of Kuwait? Yes, it is partly about oil, but that phrase usually obscures the truth, rather than illuminates the situation. We don't care about Ethiopia and Eritrea because their conflict has no apparent ramifications beyond their borders - the world does not feel any consequences from the conflict and so has little stake in the outcome....

Bravo!

Those who are complaining otherwise are either ignorant, partisan, or ideologically influenced.

...But with Iraq invading Kuwait, the repercussions were obvious and huge, not just for us but for the global economy. Damned straight we sat up and took notice. And Iraq's own oil also played a role in the 2003 invasion. That's usually used to mean that we invaded Iraq in order to secure its oil, but that's not really the reason (among other things, we're not controlling or profiting from that oil right now)....

Again, BRAVO!

Those who are complaining otherwise are either ignorant, partisan, or ideologically influenced.

Soapy Sam

20th May 2006, 04:00 PM

ljazeera's take on the issue-
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/36EBB766-7662-47C6-9F74-5E66768741EB.htm

Huntster

20th May 2006, 04:22 PM

...UN is there to protect countries from unwarranted attacks by others. Saddam attacked Kuwait. So, Iraq gets watch dogged for that....

No, they got ejected. Then they got watch dogged.

They could have been invaded and occupied then. GHW Bush was roundly condemned by many for not marching into Baghdad then and collecting him up. He didn't. That wasn't authorized by the resolution.

...But, the US at one time helped Iraq, helped Saddam gain his power....

Provided assistance during the Iran-Iraq War, yes. Helped Saddam gain power, no.

...Saddam uses the resources in his country to award families of suicide bombers ($10,000 to each family), and...(what else did he do to undermine peace in Israel and elsewhere?)...

You and I don't know. That's still classified information.

...Genocides happen....

It can happen quickly, too; in as little as 100 days (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1288230.stm).

...Then there's Africa and its genocides and they fight amongst themselves and don't pay people to attack others in countries they don't belong to. The UN thus has no "jurisdiction" over these countries. The UN does step in when it does pertain to what they do though. The US doesn't feel threatened by this, so stays out of it...

Nope.

Internal struggles are left alone until overriding circumstances force either the U.N. or individual nations to intervene. That force can consist of moral concerns within that particular nation, or within the U.N.

Politics are slow. It's understandably slower than 100 days for a nation to decide to intervene, stage militarily to do so (especially when their military resources are staged elsewhere, and you're reluctant to move them, because you don't trust the adversary where you're staged), then act effectively.

...So, the US is getting nervous because Saddam has piles of money, calling for genocides, is causing trouble in other countries, and seems to be thumbing his nose at the UN. Is that all of it, or is there more?...

Saddam has had half a lifetime history of brutality, destruction, obfuscation, and terror behind him. He's no different than Adolph (unless he's worse).

So when do you act?

...US wants troops in the Middle East for various other reasons as well....

The U.S. has had military resources in the Middle East.

...So they want Saddam out, but none of these seem to be good enough reasons to go to war....

No, going to war must be legitimized and legal for a society like the United States, which is tied to the international community.

...So, I'm left looking at the US as looking for an excuse to oust Saddam. Any excuse, since all that Saddam is really doing isn't enough?? So lie to people about WMDs? Wasn't there a better and more real reason to oust Saddam?...

Unfortunately, that is your view. It isn't complete.

...Just for fun, if there were no WMDs, then how did Iraq endanger US security?...

This ain't "fun".

...Why not let Saddam try to stomp all over the middle east? THEN if he pointed a warhead at a US city, they could react in self defense....

Please review world history, from 1900 to 1945.

...I'm trying to understand the big picture. Do I have it yet?...

No, you don't.

...I'm left thinking that MAYBE Saddam was a threat, but the US should have waited. If not, why not?...

For the same reason you don't wait a year to sweep the kitchen floor.

joe1347

20th May 2006, 04:51 PM

Since Huntster is implying that the invasion of Iraq was primarily to eliminate a regional threat - which could then turn into a global threat. Then I guess we can all assume that the Bush Administrations policy was a complete success? Since it appears that Iraq is now a failed (destroyed) state and unlikely to threaten anyone outside it's (whatever they end up) own borders. I'm not trying to be cute in my phrasing. Perhaps, the almost destruction of Iraq was THE reason for the invasion and since we're being pragmatic. Why should we (America) care about the suffering of the Iraqi people. We (Americans) elected our leaders to protect us (Americans) - not to make nice with the rest of the world for fear of hurting their feelings.

Of course, I may be forgetting one minor detail. You remember - Terrorism. Doesn't it look like the destruction of Iraq will make the world less safe with regards to Terrorism - for lots of obvious reasons.

a_unique_person

20th May 2006, 05:55 PM

The peculiar threat from Islamic terrorism, as opposed to more traditional state-vs-state aggression, comes largely from the combination of two factors:
First, the threat of retaliation historically does little to dissuade those who use it.,
Second, those who engage in it are often limited ONLY by their capability to inflict harm, and not by any decision to limit the destructiveness of their actions. If they ever find themselves capable of carrying out an attack more destructive than 9/11, they will not hesitate to do so.

You left out the bit about why Islamic terrorism came to be a big factor.

Eos of the Eons

20th May 2006, 08:42 PM

Saddam was destroyed, not Iraq. Iraq is rebuilding: http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/19499

For this reason, and the fact that terrorists and families of suicide bombers no longer receive money from Saddam, the world is more safe in regards to terrorism.

You left out the bit about why Islamic terrorism came to be a big factor.

What is that?

Kerberos

20th May 2006, 09:58 PM

Nope.

The Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq for a myriad of reasons.

The failure of Iraq to adhere to the U.N. resolutions legitimized it legally(whether you or anyone else likes it or not).
No, it was used a the legal pretext. Simply asserting that it was legal whether I like it or not, doesn't magically make it so. It's possible the war was arguably legal, but it certainly wasn't clearly legal.

Huntster

20th May 2006, 10:44 PM

Since Huntster is implying that the invasion of Iraq was primarily to eliminate a regional threat - which could then turn into a global threat. Then I guess we can all assume that the Bush Administrations policy was a complete success?....

That was not what I was implying.

Iraq was a regional threat, but that was only one of the reasons why it was invaded a second time, and occupied.

Huntster

20th May 2006, 10:49 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Nope.

The Bush administration invaded and occupied Iraq for a myriad of reasons.

The failure of Iraq to adhere to the U.N. resolutions legitimized it legally(whether you or anyone else likes it or not).

No, it was used a the legal pretext. Simply asserting that it was legal whether I like it or not, doesn't magically make it so....

Do you deny that Iraq was not in compliance with U.N. resolutions?

Do you deny that non-compliance with U.N. disarmament resolutions is illegal?

If a legal pretext is used to act, doesn't that make the act legal?

...It's possible the war was arguably legal, but it certainly wasn't clearly legal.

Do you argue that Iraq was "legal"?

Are you one who attacks law enforcement officers for fighting with violent criminals?

When would Iraq be "clearly" illegal?

a_unique_person

20th May 2006, 10:51 PM

That was not what I was implying.

Iraq was a regional threat, but that was only one of the reasons why it was invaded a second time, and occupied.

It was nothing of the sort. The Iraqi army was more or less destroyed after the wars against Iran and Kuwait. It had been a regional threat, but Saddam had nothing left to threaten anyone with.

Huntster

20th May 2006, 11:09 PM

It was nothing of the sort. The Iraqi army was more or less destroyed after the wars against Iran and Kuwait. It had been a regional threat, but Saddam had nothing left to threaten anyone with.

His refusal to disarm in conformance with U.N. resolutions was a threat.

Skeptic Ginger

20th May 2006, 11:11 PM

Hunster, there's no sense in responding to your post if all you are going to do is spout unqualified opinion. You demand evidence while presenting none of your own.

I believe the distribution of both wealth and income in this country is more level than at any other time in American history.Right. You live in fantasyland.

Re the commonalities with the Vietnam War you are so tired of, I said nothing of the million differences, only that without the support of the population whose country it is, there is no victory option. There is occupation, total destruction or withdrawal. Take your pick. And those were the same options we had in Vietnam because the people whose country it was were not in favor of our being there. It wasn't the war protesters it was the Vietnamese.

And you failed to answer the question, if we were all behind Bush what would change? You threw up a bunch of straw instead.

Re the Rather memo, you ignored the evidence (http://www.truthandduty.com/documents.htm) in favor of your already established opinion. The documents 1-4 at the bottom of the page confirm the typeface and spacing were indeed genuine. What's the real story here is who was the supposed typer writer expert who knew IBM selectric typeface so well and why hasn't the news continued the story since Mapes and Rather should be exonerated by this evidence, and why did the supposed forgery overshadow the fact we all know Bush got out of serving through his connections?

Since you ignored the evidence on the Rather memo, I'm not sure I should bother with evidence for the unemployed Iraqis while lucrative contracts were awarded to Bush cronies. However, I will post some of the evidence for this for the others reading the thread.

A lot is available as part of the public record. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for. Haliburton has been in the news over and over shown using expensive foreign drivers to truck Kuwaiti gas in while Iraqi drivers and cheaper gas were passed over. The Iraqis have astounding unemployment and we disbanded Saddam's army letting them leave with weapons in hand as well as let them loot the armories. The water sewer and electricity are still not on in Baghdad.

Zig, your links on the oil for food were excellent. But I have to take issue with the rosy picture from the Bennador Associates. I am glad you posted it. We all need to be looking at multiple sources for this information.

Democracy Now news program presents extensive interviews with all sorts of people and gives very detailed coverage of world news. You can complain that their choice of interviewees is the opposite of people you might expect to see on FOX news, but you can't complain that they don't do a very good job presenting accurate data from well qualified sources.

You have the choice of listening to the interviews or reading the transcripts.

One person they interviewed on a regular basis was Dahr Jamail who stayed in Baghdad outside of the Green Zone for extended periods of time. Note the dates of these interviews because they are not recent. However, I see no evidence a whole lot has changed.

DAHR JAMAIL's blog (http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/)

Here is a bit of the interview from Thursday, April 28th, 2005, Iraq Through the Eyes of Unemebedded, Independent Journalist Dahr Jamail (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/1346252&mode=thread&tid=25)now we have an estimated 65% unemployment in Iraq. Basic infrastructure remains in shambles. And this is a community then that is trying to support over 300,000 refugees [from Falluja] at this point.
......
Well, watching the corporate media back here, I see the disparity between that and what's actually happening on the ground continue to grow. If we look at corporate media, we're led to believe that after the January 30 elections, things are better in Iraq. We have a democracy there. Yes, it's -- there's still a little chaos, but things are getting better, but that is not the facts at all when we look at just the numbers. We have still an average of over a soldier a day dying, ten times that number wounded, infrastructure in shambles, and things continue to get worse. At least a car bomb a day in Baghdad and insecurity throughout most of the rest of the country.

the situation in Iraq is devastating. It's difficult to be there and see it day in and day out where there's no security whatsoever. There's complete lawlessness in the capital city and most other cities. The situation in the hospitals is an ongoing health care crisis. They're lacking medicines and basic supplies and things they need. Then we have the refugee situation where people are all over the city, hundreds of families in various places, trying to survive. It's really quite -- it's the ongoing refugee situation we have that -- over 300,000 there. We have rampant fuel crisis going on where people are waiting one, sometimes two days, to fill the tanks of their cars. We have the military responding to the security situation by closing various streets in Baghdad. At least 100 streets are now closed in the capital city to try to bring some sort of order to the situation. Gas lines stretching sometimes between six and ten miles. People waiting between one and two days to fill the tanks of their cars. Gasoline is being rationed. Even plates one day, odd the next. People are allowed seven-and-a-half gallons when they fill their tanks. Electricity in the better parts of Baghdad is about eight hours. In most places, including up in the north in the Kurdistan region, we have three hours or less of electricity per day and infrastructure is in worse shape in all of the main areas than it was prior to the invasion.

[RE US Pullout]
DAHR JAMAIL: I think it would begin a process of Iraq becoming a truly sovereign nation. I think it would bring lesser casualties to the Iraqi people, because the U.S. military is the leading cause of death and suffering right now in Iraq. The majority of the deaths in Iraq under the occupation are at the hands of the U.S. military, primarily by U.S. warplanes dropping bombs on people's homes and neighborhoods. So, that would stop. That would help the situation on the ground. That would bring greater stability to the situation there. There would certainly be chaos. It would certainly -- the instability would continue, but I think talk of the U.S. pullout can’t occur without including the fact that all of the contracts on the ground there for the reconstruction would have to be reopened to bidding, giving Iraqi concerns first priority. They know how to rebuild their country. They have already done this. And they're not being allowed to do so at this time. And then, of course, full compensation paid to Iraqis who have suffered during the occupation.I don't know how much bombing we are doing now. The interview was when the US was attacking Falluja.

For a second source on the unemployment issue with work fo rforeign contractors, We speak with journalist and author Naomi Klein about privatization and reconstruction in Iraq which is the subject of her new article in Harper's Magazine called "Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of a Neocon Utopia." (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/20/144210&mode=thread&tid=25)NAOMI KLEIN: Well, as it relates to the foreign contractors being targeted, I think in some ways they're more accessible than soldiers. That's part of the reason. There's another reason, which is that there is a massive unemployment crisis in Iraq. According to the U.S. government's own surveys, unemployment in Iraq is at 67%, possibly higher. I mean it, is be a absolute epidemic, and that is connected very clearly to what I would describe as the economic front of the war

And I think it's very telling that Paul Bremer's very first act in office, Paul Bremer, the former U.S. chief envoy or governor of Iraq, was to lay off 500,000 people. They called this “deba'athification,” but in fact what it was, was a full-on attack on the state...And in retrospect, many analysts and even military analysts trace the rise of the resistance to this very first act, which 400,000 of those layoffs were soldiers. And Paul Bremer did something very interesting, which was to say, you're fired, you are not going to get your pension, but you can keep your gun...The other thing to understand, if you look at just one industry, which is cement, which - if you think about what it means to reconstruct a country, especially like the country like Iraq where all of the official government buildings have been decimated - one of the key ingredients of the reconstruction, if you will, is cement. Iraq used to be a major manufacturer of cement. There's 17 cement factories owned by the state, most of them built under Saddam Hussein's regime that employed many Iraqis. In fact, they produced so much cement, that they were to export it. The U.S. occupation of Iraq, they have not given a single contract, reconstruction contract to any of the state-owned companies, in fact, they won't even give them the emergency generators that they need to keep running. And of course, the blackouts are the responsibility of the occupation of Iraq, because the reconstruction has been such a miserable failure. So instead, they import the cement. So, what Iraqis see is the reconstruction of their country not as a kind of new deal project, which is a process of healing from war, occupation and sanctions, which is rebuilding their decimated industries, which is creating jobs. They see the opposite. What they see is another kind of foreign invasion. They see jobs going to foreigners. They see products pouring across their borders from foreign countries and they see their own industry in the dark, and because of that, the reconstruction has become a target and contractors have become targets.

Here was an interview with more evidence Bush had full knowledge there were no WMDs. It wasn't just some error or misjudgement. Monday, March 3rd, 2003, Top Iraqi Defector Says Iraq Destroyed Its Wmds, But Bush and Blair Continue to Cite Him to Drum Up Support for War, and the U.S. Media Buries the Story: An Interview with Former Unscom Chair Rolf Ekeus and Others (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0320205&mode=thread&tid=41)

Take your pick of interviews from this search for Unembedded reporter (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=unembedded+reporter) on the Democracy Now Web site.

Or this search, Iraqi voices. (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=&op=stories&tid=9&section=middleeast&sort=1&boolean_type=and)

One of the more disturbing facts well documented by Democracy Now is the attack on journalists in Iraq. The US has purposefully bombed media sources and arrested and killed reporters, both foreign and Iraqi. It's no secret the US has successfully stopped any pictures of returning flag draped coffins. But they have also thwarted reporting of any facts about Iraqi casualties especially any pictures of those injured or killed. This is not to protect military secrets, it's is to keep Bush looking smart in his terror fighting outfits while the reality of what is happening is whitewashed away.

So tell me, Zig, if the Bennador Associates' report is accurate, why can't reporters just mosey on out of that Green Zone and show us?

Kerberos

20th May 2006, 11:52 PM

Do you deny that Iraq was not in compliance with U.N. resolutions?

Do you deny that non-compliance with U.N. disarmament resolutions is illegal?
No and no. That has no direct bearing on the legality of the war though. Any act that alledgedly happens in response to an illegal act doesn't automatically becoome legal. If that was the case I doubt there would have been many illegal wars in the history of the world.

If a legal pretext is used to act, doesn't that make the act legal?
It's possibly my statement was ambigious, but using UN resolutions as a pretext AKA "An ostensible or professed purpose; an excuse." most certainly doesn't automatically make the action legal.

Do you argue that Iraq was "legal"?
No. I don't really argue one way or another. Due to the lack of actual courts international law is a lot less weldefined than national laws (which aren't unambigious either). you however claim it's clearly legal, so: Evidence?

Are you one who attacks law enforcement officers for fighting with violent criminals?

Not that I recall. Are you one who uses straw men and ad homs in place of arguments? Or did you just answer that?

When would Iraq be "clearly" illegal?

You'll have to be more specific, there are about ten trillion different circumstances under which a war would be clearly illegal. Not that it's really relevant, you said it was legal "whether I liked it or not", so the onus is on you to show when the war would be clearly legal, and demonstrate that these conditions were met.

Kerberos

20th May 2006, 11:54 PM

His refusal to disarm in conformance with U.N. resolutions was a threat.
Yeah, all those big nasty WMDs.

Huntster

21st May 2006, 12:09 AM

...Re the commonalities with the Vietnam War you are so tired of, I said nothing of the million differences, only that without the support of the population whose country it is, there is no victory option....

Actually, the problem is the support of the population of our own country that's the problem.

...There is occupation, total destruction or withdrawal. Take your pick....

No, you really don't want me to "take my pick".

...And those were the same options we had in Vietnam because the people whose country it was were not in favor of our being there....

Was it?

Than why were we not permitted to bomb Haiphong into the sea?

...It wasn't the war protesters it was the Vietnamese..

Really?

Funny how the NVA came down and saved Charles, precisely the same time Jane and the homeys in the colleges started to act up.

...And you failed to answer the question, if we were all behind Bush what would change?...

Domestic politics.

But you don't want that, do you?

...Re the Rather memo, you ignored the evidence in favor of your already established opinion. The documents 1-4 at the bottom of the page confirm the typeface and spacing were indeed genuine. What's the real story here is who was the supposed typer writer expert who knew IBM selectric typeface so well and why hasn't the news continued the story since Mapes and Rather should be exonerated by this evidence, and why did the supposed forgery overshadow the fact we all know Bush got out of serving through his connections?...

A conspiracy theory here?

With poor Dan Rather as the victim?

Please..............

...A lot is available as part of the public record. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for....

Than produce it.

You can't. I know. You can't even get it with a FOIA request. I know.

Been there, done that.

All financial records with defense contractors are proprietary information.

It's bs, but it's true.

Obviously, you don't know what you're writing about.

...Haliburton has been in the news over and over shown using expensive foreign drivers to truck Kuwaiti gas in while Iraqi drivers and cheaper gas were passed over....

American truck drivers, kidnapped by terrorists, have been the ones in the news.

Huntster

21st May 2006, 12:14 AM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Do you deny that Iraq was not in compliance with U.N. resolutions?

Do you deny that non-compliance with U.N. disarmament resolutions is illegal?

No and no. That has no direct bearing on the legality of the war though.

Sorry. That is the direct bearing on the legality of the war.

...Any act that alledgedly happens in response to an illegal act doesn't automatically becoome legal....

It becomes justifiable.

Are you as stupid as Saddam and Rodney King?

Huntster

21st May 2006, 12:16 AM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
His refusal to disarm in conformance with U.N. resolutions was a threat.

Yeah, all those big nasty WMDs.

Yup. Those were the ones.

Polaris

21st May 2006, 12:50 AM

Right. You live in fantasyland.

Can you name another time in American history when the income disparity was so small?

Kerberos

21st May 2006, 01:19 AM

Sorry. That is the direct bearing on the legality of the war.
Now if only that sentence made sense...

It becomes justifiable.
moving the goalposts and also: No, it doesn't.

Are you as stupid as Saddam and Rodney King?
Coming from somebody of your obvious inteligence and legal expertise that really hurts. Trully I'm wounded.

corplinx

21st May 2006, 01:33 AM

Man, I've never been as dissappointed with this forum than reading some of the kookery in this thread. I loved AUPs post especially where he espouses kookie views without saying he actually believes them.

corplinx

21st May 2006, 01:39 AM

Tricky

21st May 2006, 02:23 AM

Can you name another time in American history when the income disparity was so small?
I realize you may not accept a biased source like the Associated Press (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002007291_income17.html). Also, it's two years old, but I doubt the situation has changed much since 2004.
Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.

The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant, and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared. The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent.

a_unique_person

21st May 2006, 03:03 AM

a_unique_person

21st May 2006, 03:04 AM

a_unique_person

21st May 2006, 03:05 AM

His refusal to disarm in conformance with U.N. resolutions was a threat.
As intelligence agencies knew, he was no threat. The whole threat hoopla was for our consumption.

Polaris

21st May 2006, 08:01 AM

I realize you may not accept a biased source like the Associated Press (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002007291_income17.html). Also, it's two years old, but I doubt the situation has changed much since 2004.

Ok, so no, even when the gap grows, the situation is still the best it's ever been.

Still, income isn't wealth. This just means that people have more to spend on stupid stuff, rather than invest it wisely.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 08:43 AM

You left out the bit about why Islamic terrorism came to be a big factor.

Your point?

If you're implying it's because of something the US did, you're way off base. Islamic terrorism is rooted not in oppression, not in poverty, not in the imperialism of the west, but in the abject failure of traditional Islamic cultures to adapt to the modern world.

And what makes cultures and states fail? There are a number of consistent factors, and they are all internal to those cultures and states, not external:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/98spring/peters.htm

Terrorism is the method that losers use to try to fight the winners. It is parasitic warfare. We are in danger from it merely because we are the winners.

Polaris

21st May 2006, 09:41 AM

Your point?

If you're implying it's because of something the US did, you're way off base. Islamic terrorism is rooted not in oppression, not in poverty, not in the imperialism of the west, but in the abject failure of traditional Islamic cultures to adapt to the modern world.

And what makes cultures and states fail? There are a number of consistent factors, and they are all internal to those cultures and states, not external:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/98spring/peters.htm

Terrorism is the method that losers use to try to fight the winners. It is parasitic warfare. We are in danger from it merely because we are the winners.

And as winners, we afford a lot of idiots the luxury of debating the merits of terrorism. I would imagine they'd feel a lot less apt to wax philosophic on Wahhabi barbarians if they were picking pieces of car bomb out of themselves.

I sometimes wonder if the left knows who exactly it is who they're casting their lot with when they use the war on al-Qaida to bash Bush. As repugnant as Dubya is, he's not nearly as bad as a Zarqawi or a Zawahiri. They should think before they choose a poster boy for tolerance.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 10:08 AM

Re the commonalities with the Vietnam War you are so tired of, I said nothing of the million differences, only that without the support of the population whose country it is, there is no victory option.

Interesting little detail, though: why do you think it is that not a single major political party in Iraq (and there are a lot of them) made the demand that we withdraw part of their platform? They had that ability, they had that option, they could easily have said so and we wouldn't have stopped them. So why didn't anybody? Well, quite frankly, because getting us to withdraw right now isn't a priority for pretty much anyone in Iraq except the terrorists. The Shia want us there to help rebuild, the Kurds love us, and even most Sunni know that we're the main thing that keeps the Shia and Kurds from exacting a bloody revenge on them. Few people besides the terrorists really want us gone right now: plenty of people want us to hurry up so that we CAN leave, but that's not the same thing.

Re the Rather memo, you ignored the evidence (http://www.truthandduty.com/documents.htm) in favor of your already established opinion. The documents 1-4 at the bottom of the page confirm the typeface and spacing were indeed genuine.

What the hell are you talking about? You've got a few extra documents from the same source which weren't originally aired, and they're supposed to act as confirmation? Sorry, but you're being lied to. None of that addresses ANYTHING of substance about the typeface. How could it? Mapes never had any experts in typeface ever look at the damned thing. And the experts who supposedly did authenticate it were only asked to look at particular aspects in isolation, and never actually authenticated the memos as a whole.

If Mapes had done due diligence, she would have discovered that not only is the typeface Times New Roman, but that it also contains features like proportional spacing (differences in the width for different letters), pseudo-kerning (the overhang of letters like f when placed next to certain other letters such as o but not letters like l), and of course the famous superscript which appears on some documents but not others (Microsoft Word will by default automatically superscript th after a number like 5, as in 5th, but won't do so if you put a space between them, like "5 th", as is the case in the un-superscripted documents). These features simply did not exist on anything Killian would ever have had access to, and his secretary confirmed that. The documents are forgeries, plain and simple. I don't know how you can persist in your delusion that they're authentic.

What's the real story here is who was the supposed typer writer expert who knew IBM selectric typeface so well

You don't need to know selectric at all. All you have to do is know a little bit about typeface technology. Do you KNOW what pseudo-kerning is? Do you UNDERSTAND why it's not possible that a 1970's typewriter had that capability? Do you even get that the documents are a complete match for what you'd produce with Microsoft Word using the default settings for font, margins, etc?

and why hasn't the news continued the story since Mapes and Rather should be exonerated by this evidence,

They aren't going to be exonerated. Ever. The best you could ever possibly hope for is that someone retyped original memos on a modern word processor, so that the contents might be accurate even though the documents themselves are just copies. But at that point, well, you're grasping for straws if you want to actually use them as evidence.

and why did the supposed forgery overshadow the fact we all know Bush got out of serving through his connections?

You really don't know why the memos were important, do you? You're so set on proving them correct, but you don't even know what significance they would have if they were real!

Well, let me clue you in, then. The significance of the memos isn't in showing that Bush got into the guard through connections. The significance is that they alledge that Bush violated a direct order by not showing up for a physical. That would be a big no-no. Missing a physical (which he did) is not in itself a violation of any Guard rules, but had he been ordered to and not done so, that would be a big deal. But these fake memos are the only "evidence" that he was ordered to attend the physical in question. So they would have mattered quite a lot had they been true. But they aren't.

A lot is available as part of the public record. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for. Haliburton has been in the news over and over shown using expensive foreign drivers to truck Kuwaiti gas in while Iraqi drivers and cheaper gas were passed over.

Now why on earth might a company hire foreign drivers instead of Iraqi drivers?

Maybe, just maybe, they have to worry about screening the Iraqi drivers for possible security threats (because terrorists are trying hard specifically to infiltrate such jobs), but don't have to with foreign drivers. Just a thought.

"The situation in the hospitals is an ongoing health care crisis. They're lacking medicines and basic supplies and things they need."

Claims like this have the nice effect of making it seem like we've created some horrible new problem, when in fact this problem pre-dated the invasion. Iraq was spending something on the order of 60 cents per person per year on medical care. THAT was an ongoing medical crisis, one which the world ignored because Saddam kept most press out and managed to coerce the press he did let in (such as CNN) to keep them from publishing what they knew about how bad life really was under Saddam. I'm sure health care in Iraq probably sucks right now. It probably will for a long time. But we didn't break the system, Saddam did, and it's only because of our invasion that medical care is actually improving.

"The majority of the deaths in Iraq under the occupation are at the hands of the U.S. military, primarily by U.S. warplanes dropping bombs on people's homes and neighborhoods."

Where exactly is he getting his evidence for that? Unless death totals were dominated by dead terrorists and insurgence (in which case, good), that's simply not true. Terrorists kill far more Iraqi civilians than coalition forces do. And why should that be surprising: they deliberately target civilians.

Here was an interview with more evidence Bush had full knowledge there were no WMDs. It wasn't just some error or misjudgement. Monday, March 3rd, 2003, Top Iraqi Defector Says Iraq Destroyed Its Wmds, But Bush and Blair Continue to Cite Him to Drum Up Support for War, and the U.S. Media Buries the Story: An Interview with Former Unscom Chair Rolf Ekeus and Others (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0320205&mode=thread&tid=41)

I'm afraid you simply cannot reach the conclusion you think you can reach.

First off, why was Kamel cited in the first place? Your link conveniently overlooks the most important intelligence that Kamel provided: the existence of the so-called "crash program" to create a nuclear weapon. Saddam had more than one nuclear weapon program in place before the first gulf war. We found out about a lot of his programs, but not all of them. The crash program was halted due to the first gulf war, but it was not discovered by investigators. Kamel revealed its existence, and Iraq finally admitted it after being pressed on the issue by inspectors after they had learned about it from Kamel. So the big piece of intelligence Kamel offered was confirmed by the Iraqis themselves.

But does that mean that everything Kamel told us was true? Of course not - he could easily have lied about one thing and told us the truth about something else. Why might he do that? Could be any number of reasons - maybe he'd hold something back so he could get something from us in exchange for that info at a later date. Maybe he didn't want to burn all his bridges in Iraq - that's something we definitely would have considered, because Kamel did indeed later return to Iraq (though Saddam apparently hadn't forgiven him and had him killed). But basically, the fact that he told the truth about one thing which we had confirmed didn't mean that he couldn't have lied about something else. So there's absolutely no reason to conclude that Bush knew there were no weapons just because Kamel had told the CIA that, because there's no basis on which to conclude that the CIA believed him over whatever their other sources were.

See, things tend to get a little bit more complicated when you don't try to force the facts to fit a pre-determined narrative. That fault has been widely used to criticize the failures of our intelligence efforts, and there's irony indeed in committing the same error in attacking Bush for those failures.

Take your pick of interviews from this search for Unembedded reporter (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=unembedded+reporter) on the Democracy Now Web site.

Or this search, Iraqi voices. (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=&op=stories&tid=9&section=middleeast&sort=1&boolean_type=and)

One of the more disturbing facts well documented by Democracy Now is the attack on journalists in Iraq.

Well, terrorist attacks against journalists are indeed disturbing.

Oh, you only meant coalition forces. Funny thing, though, but those attacks are pretty much all cases of reporters getting caught in the crossfire. If you want incidents of reporters being deliberately targeted, I'm afraid those have pretty much all been by terrorists.

It's no secret the US has successfully stopped any pictures of returning flag draped coffins.

Of course it's not a secret, because it's not true: the US military did not authorize the release of any such photos taken by military photographers (who would have thought the military might have a policy on how their own photographers release pictures? How dare they!). But there WERE such photos release, so how on earth can you claim that that they successfully stopped any pictures from being released? Regardless of what they tried to do, and regardless of what you think of that policy, it happened.

But they have also thwarted reporting of any facts about Iraqi casualties especially any pictures of those injured or killed.

You want to back that up with some facts?

So tell me, Zig, if the Bennador Associates' report is accurate, why can't reporters just mosey on out of that Green Zone and show us?

You already stumbled over that truth, but just picked yourself up and carried on as if nothing happened.

Journalists don't just mosey on out of that Green Zone because they are high-value targets for terrorists. The terrorists know very well that killing journalists is guaranteed to get headlines, and headlines are the only kind of victory they are capable of winning. Western journalists stick out like a sore thumb, they're not able to blend in, and so all it takes is a few terrorists to make their jobs unsafe.

So what do they do, stuck in the Green Zone all day? They rely on local gophers to go out and get pictures and interviews. But that presents a bit of a problem, for two reasons: terrorists and Saddam loyalists.

The terrorists are fighting a media war. They're trying damned hard to present a particular image, and they do that in part by trying to infiltrate the media. It's easy to get dramatic pictures of a terrorist attack if the terrorists happen to invite you along for the ride. And so the news organizations end up paying for terrorist propaganda, and nobody complains because hey, it is news.

The second problem is the Saddam loyalists: when Saddam was in power, any foreign journalist working in the country would have Information Ministry minders, who would also act as translators. It was their job to make sure that the journalists didn't see what Saddam didn't want them to see, or at least didn't print what he didn't want them to see. Well, those guys are still around. And when journalists came flooding back to Baghdad after the invasion, and they needed locals to translate, do interviews, and go where they couldn't go, a lot of those journalists just went to their old contacts, the Information Ministry handlers, because that's who they knew.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 10:19 AM

Was there a reason why the troops couldn't be taken out of Saudi?

Well, yes. Duh. Those bases were necessary in order to perform the expensive patrolling necessary to maintain the southern no-fly zone. Take that away and you've lost one of the most important parts of the "containment" you're so assured was sufficient to keep Saddam in line permanently.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 12:49 PM

Can you name another time in American history when the income disparity was so small?Apparently in 1930 it was smaller than in 2001.

Concentration of wealth: 1983-2001 (http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm)

Concentration of wealth: 1983-1998 (http://www.osjspm.org/101_wealth.htm)

The Concentration of Wealth [Bibliography] (http://marshallbrain.com/cw-articles.htm)

According to the University of Southern California, Figure 4, midway down page (http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html), the bottom 99% were worse off in 1930. The rest of the paper shows the concentration of wealth at the top increased through 2003.

The rest of the links in a quick search showed the trend continuing through today with greater and greater steepness to the curve. Most sites had single measures. So find one with complete data showing the bottom 95% are not losing ground to the top 5% if you can, perhaps wherever you and Hunster are getting your view of the world from?

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 01:01 PM

...American "progressives" were espousing these views pre-911. However, this would have allowed Saddam to re-arm.

Intel we have post-invasion shows that Saddam wanted to wait out sanctions and re-arm.

Is it really that hard to understand this? It doesn't take a degree in Poly Sci.Right. Saddam who we routed in no time at all when he invaded Kuwait just couldn't wait to re-arm and have it happen again?

And of all the threats in the world, Saddam cried out for immediate attention.

Why do you suppose the world was with us in the first Gulf War then somehow too stupid to notice the threat in 2002?

France and Russia may have been happily trading for oil in Iraq. Maybe it was time to lift the sanctions, maybe not. But was Saddam such a menace that we needed to invade? So get ready for N Korea, Iran, and while you're at it how about let's just get World War III over with, declare all out war on Islam?

Perspective here shows no matter what intelligence we had against Saddam, there have been in the past and were at the time and are still to this day, many other worse threats than Saddam. And we are now no better off having invaded, anyway.

Maybe you are disappointed with the thread because your opinion of the situation isn't as supportable with the facts as you believe.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 01:04 PM

Ok, so no, even when the gap grows, the situation is still the best it's ever been.

Still, income isn't wealth. This just means that people have more to spend on stupid stuff, rather than invest it wisely.What????? Do you have no concept that when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, eventually the foundation of a democracy is threatened. Slept through world history class, did you?

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 01:16 PM

Your point?

If you're implying it's because of something the US did, you're way off base. Islamic terrorism is rooted not in oppression, not in poverty, not in the imperialism of the west, but in the abject failure of traditional Islamic cultures to adapt to the modern world....Well, I'd say it is the result of a combination of these factors. To think the US is totally blameless is to ignore the last 100 years of our meddling in the Middle East and enjoying the resources while ignoring the human rights issues. You know, that blowback stuff?

I agree totally that we are facing a clash of traditional cultures with the modern. But quite a bit of modernization is and was occurring in the Middle East. My parents lived in Iran before the Shaw was deposed and we have a few Iranian friends. They hated the Shaw, but they aren't all gung ho for the religious extremists anymore than I'm happy the Evangelicals are trying to take over the government of this country.

The women's rights issue is another story. There is a big divide in how women are treated in both worlds and a clash in that respect is a huge problem.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 01:16 PM

Why do you suppose the world was with us in the first Gulf War then somehow too stupid to notice the threat in 2002?

Different parts of the world look at threats rather differently. Saudi Arabia, for example, doesn't generally care if countries fund Islamic terrorists. Kuwait was a problem even for the dictators, though, because even dictators don't like to be invaded, regardless of the reason, and so they couldn't let that precedent stand. So those countries found common cause with us on that issue. That they didn't find common cause over other threats (most dictators aren't that keen on establishing a precedent that dictators should disarm) is of little importance to me.

Another issue, of course, is that because the US was shouldering the cost of containing Saddam, other countries had no incentive to do anything which would remove the need to keep paying the cost. It was seen as our problem, not theirs, so why rock the boat?

Then there's the bribery issue - why derail the gravy train?

And finally, a number of countries opposed the invasion for purposes of domestic political posturing. Anti-americanism plays well to some electorates, and it was played to the hilt.

Plenty of reasons exist for why other countries wouldn't view the situation the same as we did which have little to do with the actual threat Saddam posed. So you can argue all you want to about why we shouldn't have gone to war. But don't even try to turn the issue into a global popularity contest. That kind of logic doesn't cut it, not by a long shot.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 01:19 PM

And as winners, we afford a lot of idiots the luxury of debating the merits of terrorism. I would imagine they'd feel a lot less apt to wax philosophic on Wahhabi barbarians if they were picking pieces of car bomb out of themselves.

I sometimes wonder if the left knows who exactly it is who they're casting their lot with when they use the war on al-Qaida to bash Bush. As repugnant as Dubya is, he's not nearly as bad as a Zarqawi or a Zawahiri. They should think before they choose a poster boy for tolerance.This is typical propaganda crap! You are either propagating it or you are a victim of it or both. Grow a brain. It would help if you'd learn to think instead of parrot what you hear from Rove's talking points memos.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 01:27 PM

Well, I'd say it is the result of a combination of these factors. To think the US is totally blameless is to ignore the last 100 years of our meddling in the Middle East and enjoying the resources while ignoring the human rights issues. You know, that blowback stuff?

For the first time ever, we're doing something that might actually change human rights for the better in the middle east. So if we assume that our past sin was ignoring human rights in favor of "stability" (because that, according to the argument, was what we got in exchange), it seems to me the logical conclusion is not more of the same but something radically different. Like, you know, actually toppling a bloodthirsty dictator for once.

But whatever our mistakes (and yes, we did make mistakes), none of them can account for Islamic terrorism. The North Vietnamese got shafted worse than anyone in the middle east by American policy, and yet, they don't really hate us, and they don't go around blowing themselves up. Why is that? Plenty of groups in plenty of places in the world have been treated very badly by other groups, but most of them don't resort to anything like the activities Islamic terrorists engage in. No, the peculiar institution of Islamic terrorism comes first and foremost from the failings of their own societies. If nothing else, the fact that their violence is primarily directed inwards should make that plain enough: Muslims are themselves the most common victims of Islamic terrorism.

The women's rights issue is another story. There is a big divide in how women are treated in both worlds and a clash in that respect is a huge problem.

Yes, indeed. It's one of the central failures of traditional Arab and Islamic cultures.

Rob Lister

21st May 2006, 01:43 PM

This is typical propaganda crap! You are either propagating it or you are a victim of it or both. Grow a brain. It would help if you'd learn to think instead of parrot what you hear from Rove's talking points memos.

That was nice, but I'd rather you depate the points raised.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 02:51 PM

What????? Do you have no concept that when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, eventually the foundation of a democracy is threatened. Slept through world history class, did you?

Who said the poor are getting poorer? They aren't.

What's mostly happening is that we keep getting new immigrants who start out near the bottom - want raise the average wealth of Americans? Seal the border and don't let anyone in - that would do a hell of a lot to fix the problem you claim we have. But I don't think that's really what you want (nor is that what I'm claiming we need to do).

But the other thing that keeps happening is that people move UP the wealth and income curve as they get older - almost every worker earns more money in their 50's (even inflation-adjusted) than they did in their 20's. So when you divide people into bands (top 1%, top 10% whatever), and try to compare those bands from different periods, you aren't comparing the same people. Starting in the bottom 25% and finishing in the top 25% is pretty darn common. Each individual will also have an income vs. age and a wealth vs. age curve, and for almost everyone it will curve upwards. The overall curve is a composite of all these individual ones, and even if everyone were payed exactly the same except for age differences, they're would still be unequal wealth and income distribution. But that wouldn't exactly be unfair, would it?

So when you talk about differences in the shape of the curve, there are a whole lot of different issues going on. How much of any change in the curve is due to changes in age distributions? How much is do to changes in the typical income vs. age curve? Can you actually separate out these different issues? No, I don't think you can. You actually know a lot LESS than you think you do about income and wealth inequality.

And of course, that's not even touching the fact that the rich can get richer faster than the poor get richer, so that income inequality can increase while at the same time the poor are still getting richer. And the poor today in America are undoubtedly richer than they were even just a few decades ago - the only way to make it look otherwise is by comparison to the rich, but as I already pointed out, even that doesn't mean quite what you think it means.

Tricky

21st May 2006, 02:51 PM

What????? Do you have no concept that when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, eventually the foundation of a democracy is threatened. Slept through world history class, did you?
While I agree with your principle here, I think the case in the US is that the rich get a whole lot richer and the poor get a little bit richer. That means that the gap grows, but the standard of living for the poor does not decline. Nevertheless, an increasing gap between rich and poor, whatever their gains relative to some historical standard, is not the mark of a healthy society. It is a recipe for class warfare. No doubt the peasants in France in the 18th century were better off than the peasants in France in the 16th century.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 03:56 PM

Interesting little detail, though: why do you think it is that not a single major political party in Iraq (and there are a lot of them) made the demand that we withdraw part of their platform? For one, the political leaders are hand picked and supported with US help. Do you see any grass roots candidates there?
And for two, these guys are in fat city with their hands in the till. Why would they want us to leave?

What the hell are you talking about? You've got a few extra documents from the same source which weren't originally aired, and they're supposed to act as confirmation?...This is an interesting reply since the additional documents
were photocopied at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas by researcher Steven Jones in the fall of 2004. All materials came from the Adjutant General's communication files.The Killian documents came from Bill Burkett, a completely different source and at a different time. Your reply confirms you didn't bother to look at the evidence at all. Or maybe you believe the additional documents were planted there? (And it was 12 additional documents, not 4 as I posted in haste.)They demonstrate a number of truths about the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War; that Guard and state government officials were under terrible pressure to let more young people into the Guard and that the pressure did not abate as the war went on.

There are references here to the various rules and regulations in place for Guard service at the time, some of which were not applied in the case of George W. Bush.

These memos also demonstrate a variety of format styles and typefaces, including proportional spacing and right hand signature blocks, which are common in the Killian documents.You really don't know why the memos were important, do you? You're so set on proving them correct, but you don't even know what significance they would have if they were real!I know the significance and you really shouldn't talk down to people as if you are the only one informed of the issues. I think my posts on this forum, if anything, show I am well informed on many issues. And I believe Bush did disobey orders among other bratty little fortunate son behaviors.

The documents are there for anyone to see. No report from someone comparing bits of the typeface. You really should look for yourself rather than rely on mere interpretations since you think it would be so significant if Bush had disobeyed orders without consequences. For me, that's a given considering everything I've read to date.

But let's not get too sidetracked here. Huntster made a snide remark about Rather as if it represented all the news media that doesn't report what Fox news reports. I don't even consider the major networks as that much different from Fox. Fox lies and the other networks have mostly whitewashed and superficial news.

Now why on earth might a company hire foreign drivers instead of Iraqi drivers?It's one example of thousands, Zig. Try to see the whole picture here. And yes, it's hard to trust anyone now that we've alienated them all.

BTW, if the workers are all so untrustworthy how does that square with the rosy picture from B.Associates?

Claims like this have the nice effect of making it seem like we've created some horrible new problem, when in fact this problem pre-dated the invasion. Iraq was spending something on the order of 60 cents per person per year on medical care. ...I am not making a case for anything here other than showing your rosy picture from B. Associates is not the same view everyone has. Attending to this detail or that detail just distracts people from the big picture.

The big picture: We didn't have a good enough reason to invade. There were and are many other countries that pose a worse threat.

Some people are better off with Saddam gone, some aren't. There are many people who could use a little US intervention to make their lives better. We haven't invaded their countries.

If you just want to look at intervention, think how many people we could have given a better life with the billions we have spent on the war so far.

The big picture: The war and aftermath were handled very badly. This is where the unemployed Iraqis watching the foreign cement trucks go by comes in.

The big picture: We can change course to correct the mistakes already made or just stay on the same course. There are many things we could be doing better such as those solutions I posted and many other well qualified people have recommended as well. There are many steps identified to correct the admitted to and well recognized errors. Bush has shown he is in denial about the significance of the errors and is not going to change direction.

Where exactly is he getting his evidence for that? Unless death totals were dominated by dead terrorists and insurgence (in which case, good), that's simply not true. ...I said the interview was when were were attacking Falluja. You are so ready to discount everything these people are saying you didn't even look at what I posted. We killed thousands of innocent people there. Anyone who believes otherwise hasn't read the complete record of the event. Massive civilian casualties have been reported everywhere but in mainstream US news.

I'm afraid you simply cannot reach the conclusion you think you can reach....[re Bush lied vs just erred on the WMD issue]Once again, you take a piece of additional evidence added to a mountain of evidence and then make an ironic statement likeSee, things tend to get a little bit more complicated when you don't try to force the facts to fit a pre-determined narrative. That fault has been widely used to criticize the failures of our intelligence efforts, and there's irony indeed in committing the same error in attacking Bush for those failures.I'm not going to post the case for Bush lying about WMDs, much has already been posted. I have read Paul O'Neil's book, both Woodward's books, Richard Clark's book, the Downing St memo, all the Valerie Plame/Ambassador Wilson material just to name a few sources. I have concluded these guys merely used the WMDs as an excuse and they knew full well it was a lie. The only counter evidence in all of the sources that it was an error and not a lie was Tenet's comment about it being "a slam dunk". That was not enough to sway me these guys didn't know full well they were faking the case to go to war.

Have you even bothered to read the Downing St memo? Bush's intent to go to war, long before they were supposedly giving Saddam another chance to comply, was spelled out in no uncertain terms. The idea was to make a demand they believed Saddam would refuse. Trouble is Saddam did not refuse. They went to war anyway. You took the time to investigate the oil for food scandal. Maybe you could spend a little time on this as well.

Take your pick of interviews from this search for Unembedded reporter (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=unembedded+reporter) on the Democracy Now Web site.

Or this search, Iraqi voices. (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=&op=stories&tid=9&section=middleeast&sort=1&boolean_type=and)I am very pleased you found other interviews on Democracy now. It is an extremely well done news program. They try very hard to do real investigative reporting and they always interview very credible guests.

Well, terrorist attacks against journalists are indeed disturbing....

Oh, you only meant coalition forces. Funny thing, though, but those attacks are pretty much all cases of reporters getting caught in the crossfire. If you want incidents of reporters being deliberately targeted, I'm afraid those have pretty much all been by terrorists.Again you make no effort to inquire about this important matter. I direct you back to the Democracy Now site where there is more than sufficient documentation of attacks by the US forces against journalists which have been deliberate and deadly. This is one story Amy Goodman has been covering in detail since the first incident near the beginning of the war.

Try a few Iraq articles from this search. (http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=US+targeting+Iraq+reporters&op=stories&tid=&section=&sort=1&boolean_type=and)

The US army may see their efforts as a propaganda war, the same way they saw planting news stories in Iraqi papers. And I understand your point of view about this two edged sword.

But a true democracy relies on a free press. The loss of credibility was more harmful than the benefit of planting the stories, and many of the reports the US wants to suppress are legitimate stories the US public should be seeing. The government may have learned there is a need to keep the truth from American TVs as well as Al Jazera's, but that assumes we all agree with the government. In a democracy, I'm supposed to be able to make my own judgment. Once someone is in office, in a democracy, they are still accountable. Getting elected doesn't mean you have the right to act in secrecy with no accountability.

So which is it? Democracy or democracy on hold indefinitely while Bush conducts this war he misled the country into?

You want to back that up [pictures of Iraqi casualties are being suppressed] with some facts?Are you serious? Did you see pictures of Falluja after we bombed it? I didn't. Are you going to watch Baghdad ER on HBO tonight? I think there is some news about attempts to block the show from being aired. Did you read the report in the medical journal estimating 100,000 Iraqi casualties? I did. Think there were really just a handful and these investigators are just lying or idiots? They went door to door collecting information. Where did you get yours? Think if we killed anyone in Iraq they must be a terrorist? I'm just not sure why you would even question that pictures of dead Iraqi civilians are being suppressed as much as possible.

You already stumbled over that truth, but just picked yourself up and carried on as if nothing happened.Your one rosy report from B Associates?

Journalists don't just mosey on out of that Green Zone because they are high-value targets for terrorists. The terrorists know very well that killing journalists is guaranteed to get headlines, and headlines are the only kind of victory they are capable of winning. Western journalists stick out like a sore thumb, they're not able to blend in, and so all it takes is a few terrorists to make their jobs unsafe.But the real story is the country is doing so well according to B Associates.

The second problem is the Saddam loyalists: when Saddam was in power, any foreign journalist working in the country would have Information Ministry minders, who would also act as translators. It was their job to make sure that the journalists didn't see what Saddam didn't want them to see, or at least didn't print what he didn't want them to see. Well, those guys are still around. And when journalists came flooding back to Baghdad after the invasion, and they needed locals to translate, do interviews, and go where they couldn't go, a lot of those journalists just went to their old contacts, the Information Ministry handlers, because that's who they knew.I'm really not sure of your point here. Are you claiming the news from the Green Zone is accurate or are you making excuses for why it isn't?

The point was people who are in Baghdad streets, if you would take a bit more time to read a few more sources of information, have consistently reported that the reporters in the Green Zone are not giving an accurate picture at all about what is going on. I have heard lots of news from reporters actually in Baghdad. You just don't hear them on the usual TV news.

Despite everyone's effort to characterize me as an irrelevant left wing argument, I do not think everything in Iraq is all bad. I try very hard to find the balance in the news. Everyone does not see the world from the same viewpoint. I think in your haste to see the good in the war we are in, you don't seem to be as willing to try to get a complete picture of what is really going on.

I have never felt our government has done the right thing by the people in the world yet they always claim human rights are so important. Our government typically acts via money, politics and might. I traveled through Central America for several months as a young adult. I've traveled to many other countries since. It had a very strong impact on me to see first hand the bad things my government was doing in Central America. So I admit to that bias.

But I want to hear the things that are going well in Iraq and I don't think everything the US does is bad. I believe in responding to the evidence, not just taking sides and digging in.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 04:01 PM

That was nice, but I'd rather you depate the points raised.The point that one is either for Bush and the war or one is for the enemy? Like I said, get a brain. There actually are patriots who don't agree with Bush. What a concept!

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 04:03 PM

Different parts of the world look at threats rather differently. ....Anything but the fact we were wrong? Which BTW, history is proving to be the case.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 04:07 PM

While I agree with your principle here, I think the case in the US is that the rich get a whole lot richer and the poor get a little bit richer. ....And where is your evidence for this? Just where is this increased wealth coming from? Do you see any evidence of inflation adjusted wages going up for anyone except the CEOs of those big corporations?

Will your kids be able to buy a house (or grandkids) in the neighborhood you bought your first house in?

It sounds nice, but show me the data and I'll see if you are correct. None of you taking issue with the data I posted put any of your own up. I would like to see it because that would be nice to know.

Too hard? Can't find the data? Wait, let me help you here.

Weak Recovery Claims New Victim: Workers' Wages (http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib196)

Economy up, wages down (http://www.jobwatch.org/)

Here's one showing wage growth. (http://www.scb.se/templates/tableOrChart____70547.asp) Too bad it's SWEDEN!

articulett

21st May 2006, 04:10 PM

I remember Bush's January state of the union address telling us how we were in Iraq "fighting a war on terror" to keep "evildoers" off American soil. To me this sounded like--we're causing war on their land because otherwise they will do it here.

But with the whole UAE...and the Dubai ports--how can anyone pretend it's not about oil? The UAE has much closer ties with "evildoers" (Al Quaeda) than Iraq. And control of our ports would make evil doings quite possible on American soil. A lot of people are dead from this war...not just Americans...a lot of people from all over...a lot of Iraqi civilians...a lot of destroyed lives...a lot of dead children...a lot of suffering--for what? Exxon is richer. Haliburton is thriving. How can Bush look at himself in the mirror? Americans want those trillions to be spent domestically. This war is obscene--and it is terrible to silence those who speak out by calling them flip floppers or "unpatriotic". The emperor has been naked for quite some time.

I do not want to perpetuate the lie: "yours is not to wonder why, yours is but to do or die". It may be fine to indoctrinate a volunteer army with such thoughts--but it is also the key to getting men to kill other men, women, and children. Certainty of rightness makes for poor diplomatic relations. And it's way too easy to get men to kill--just tell them it's for god, or good, or an "ideal"--make sure it sounds "noble". Hitler did it, right? And to those who expect blind obedience to a stupid rich religious liar--I suggest you read the bill of rights--freedom of speech is supposed to be what we are fighting FOR.

Tricky

21st May 2006, 04:38 PM

And where is your evidence for this? Just where is this increased wealth coming from? Do you see any evidence of inflation adjusted wages going up for anyone except the CEOs of those big corporations?

Will your kids be able to buy a house (or grandkids) in the neighborhood you bought your first house in?

It sounds nice, but show me the data and I'll see if you are correct. None of you taking issue with the data I posted put any of your own up. I would like to see it because that would be nice to know.

Too hard? Can't find the data? Wait, let me help you here.

Weak Recovery Claims New Victim: Workers' Wages (http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib196)

Economy up, wages down (http://www.jobwatch.org/)

Here's one showing wage growth. (http://www.scb.se/templates/tableOrChart____70547.asp) Too bad it's SWEDEN!
How big of a time period are we talking about here? I think I can find evidence that real buying power among the poor has increased in the US over the last twenty years, but before I go to the trouble, I want to get a better idea of what sort of info you want. Wages? Inflation? Buying power? Percentage of people below the poverty line? Owning a house is but one mark of wealth.

Mostly, I speak from personal experience (yeah, I know, anecdotes aren't evidence.) and it tells me that the percentage of people who don't know where their next meal is coming from has declined since my youth (in the 60's and 70's) A lot of that is due to Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society", but for whatever reason, economy or social conscience, my observation is that in this respect, things are better.

However, that does nothing to diminish the dangers of the disappearing middle class. Having enough to live on and a bit of education can be the thing that advances people to the next step on Maslow's pyramid and allows them to realize just how downtrodden they are. It's a ticking bomb, if you ask me.

Huntster

21st May 2006, 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
His refusal to disarm in conformance with U.N. resolutions was a threat.

As intelligence agencies knew, he was no threat. The whole threat hoopla was for our consumption.

It was intelligence agencies telling the President that Saddam was still rearming, and British and other intelligence agencies seemed to confirm it.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 04:55 PM

For one, the political leaders are hand picked and supported with US help. Do you see any grass roots candidates there?

Umm... YES. Most of the political parties had no US support at all. And there was a rather large turnover of political power from the election: the people who, in essence, won the election were NOT the same people whom we had picked to run the country under the interim government. That wasn't because WE wanted it that way, it's because the Iraqis wanted it that way.

And for two, these guys are in fat city with their hands in the till. Why would they want us to leave?

You missed my point. If you want to GET elected, you have to run on a platform people respond to. If people wanted us gone immediately, then the easiest way to get elected would be to run as the only party demanding that. But nobody did that. It would be a different matter if some party ran on the premise of kicking us out, but then changed their minds once in power, but that's not what happened. Nobody ran on that platform, for the very simple reason that it wasn't going to attract votes.

This is an interesting reply since the additional documents
The Killian documents came from Bill Burkett, a completely different source and at a different time. Your reply confirms you didn't bother to look at the evidence at all.

I did not look at every single document. Care to point out a single document that actually shows the Burkett-sourced documents aren't forged? I missed that one.

I know the significance and you really shouldn't talk down to people as if you are the only one informed of the issues.

Then you shouldn't claim the issue is something other than it is. The Burkett documents were significant because of the allegation that Bush disobeyed an order. But those documents are forgeries, and crude ones at that, and so they got rightfully blasted out of the water. Mapes cannot defend them, and yet continues to try. Why you would source anything to her at this point is beyond me.

And I believe Bush did disobey orders among other bratty little fortunate son behaviors.

But there's absolutely ZERO evidence ANYWHERE to this effect other than the forged Burkett documents. Believe all you want to, but don't expect anyone else to, or to respect you for holding that belief.

It's one example of thousands, Zig. Try to see the whole picture here.

And it's an example without merit. How many other such examples don't have merit?

BTW, if the workers are all so untrustworthy how does that square with the rosy picture from B.Associates?

Because all it takes to really screw things up for a private company trying to turn a profit is one person to infiltrate. But you totally missed the point of Taheri's article: he's not claiming that everything is rosy, because it's obviously not. He's saying that, despite all the problems, things are still better than they were under Saddam, and not nearly as bad for most Iraqis as the press makes things seem. And your "one example of thousands" doesn't actually dispute than basic claim.

I am not making a case for anything here other than showing your rosy picture from B. Associates is not the same view everyone has.

Again, you miss the point. This isn't about what "picture" people have: people have all sorts of pictures, and a lot of them are just plain wrong. I care about the reality. Reality that can best be judged by objective measures. Taheri presents some of those measures which have proven to be reliable indicators of trouble in the past, and shows that they're all pointing in the right direction right now. But you don't even have to take his word at it: you can go find out for yourself how stable the Iraqi dinar has been, for example. If someone's got a "picture" that differs from that, but it's not actually ACCURATE, then I could care less about what they think.

Attending to this detail or that detail just distracts people from the big picture.

Umm... that's what YOU are doing, not me. The indicators I presented, such as refugee flow and currency stability, are not just details (like whether or not Halliburton hires Iraqis or foreigners). They are macroscopic indicators.

The big picture: We didn't have a good enough reason to invade.

No, YOU don't think we had good enough reason to invade. Others think differently. Your opinion does not dictate reality.

There were and are many other countries that pose a worse threat.

And yet, these other countries have a funny habit of not being named, nor do alternative courses of action to actually deal with these supposedly far worse threats ever get advanced. I call ************: you're making excuses for yourself.

Some people are better off with Saddam gone, some aren't. There are many people who could use a little US intervention to make their lives better. We haven't invaded their countries.

So? In the end, we try to act for our own interests. It is good when we help others, and we should try to do so, but it isn't our responsibility to solve all the world's problems. We solve the ones that matter to us.

If you just want to look at intervention, think how many people we could have given a better life with the billions we have spent on the war so far.

That's a mighty big if. Since I DON'T only want to look at intervention, your point is irrelevant.

The big picture: The war and aftermath were handled very badly.

And? Does the fact that things were mishandled mean that we shouldn't have acted at all? Does it mean that our efforts are doomed to failure? No, it does not.

The big picture: We can change course to correct the mistakes already made or just stay on the same course.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that we aren't doing anything differently than we did before. That simply isn't true, though. The situation, as well as our tactics, have evolved considerably.

I said the interview was when were were attacking Falluja. You are so ready to discount everything these people are saying you didn't even look at what I posted. We killed thousands of innocent people there.

Like I said: do you have an actual source for hard data on this? How many people died in Fallujah? How were they identified as civilians versus combatants? How was it determined whether they were killed by coalition forces or by terrorists? I looked at what you posted, but none of it had answers to these rather basic questions, and without them, I think those numbers are simply false.

Anyone who believes otherwise hasn't read the complete record of the event. Massive civilian casualties have been reported everywhere but in mainstream US news.

I could give a damn about them being reported. I care if they actually HAPPENED. And I see no evidence that they did in the numbers alleged, nor do I see any evidence that they were primarily killed by coalition forces.

Have you even bothered to read the Downing St memo? Bush's intent to go to war, long before they were supposedly giving Saddam another chance to comply, was spelled out in no uncertain terms.

You place a lot of weight on one guy's ambiguous phrasing of what he thought someone else thought.

The idea was to make a demand they believed Saddam would refuse. Trouble is Saddam did not refuse.

See, you might have a case, had Saddam actually cooperated fully with the inspectors. Funny thing, though: the inspectors themselves will tell you that he never did, even to the end, offer his full cooperation. So the claim that Saddam didn't refuse the demands made of him is simply wrong.

Again you make no effort to inquire about this important matter.

Wrong again. I've seen these issues come up before - I remember looking into one such story about a tank firing on a hotel in Baghdad that killed some journalists, and I remember concluding that it was very unlikely that it was a deliberate attempt to kill journalists, despite the hyperventilating that came from certain quarters. I'm not going to spend a lot of time digging around their website trying to find what specifically you're referring to. If you want me to look at something in particular, you'll have to give me a direct link.

Are you serious? Did you see pictures of Falluja after we bombed it?

You mean after the November assault? The one where pretty much the entire civilian population evacuated before we went in?

Are you going to watch Baghdad ER on HBO tonight?

Sorry - don't have cable.

Did you read the report in the medical journal estimating 100,000 Iraqi casualties? I did.

Ah yes, the Lancet article. Yeah, I've looked into that. I also know the figure is worthless. There are major methodological problems with it (the sampling was NOT random, but became concentrated), and the error bars are just enormous. There was a MUCH more extensive survey done after that by the UN Development Program, with a much bigger sample size that didn't have the methodology problems the Lancet study did, which came to a figure of about 30,000 excess death (IIRC), and a MUCH smaller error bar. The Lancet's error bars were so large that even the lower bound on the UNDP survey was within the Lancet's error bars. There is simply no possible reason to use the Lancet's numbers in preference to the UNDP numbers, unless you don't care about the actual facts.

Another rather important point which gets overlooked by much coverage is that these numbers all refer to total excess deaths, not just civilian deaths. That is, they INCLUDE Iraqi military casualties, they include dead terrorists and insurgents, and they include Iraqi security forces who have been killed fighting the terrorists.

Think there were really just a handful and these investigators are just lying or idiots?

Oh no, they're not actually idiots, though their sampling method had problems. But the fact that their error bars encompassed the later much more reliable UNDP numbers suggests to me that they were basically honest, just not nearly accurate enough, and that the statistics of small numbers (and methodology problems involving non-random selection of which provinces to sample) happened to throw off their estimate quite a bit.

But the EDITORS of the Lancet ARE liars, because they called the deaths "civilian" deaths even though the study itself specifically denied being able to categorize them, and made it quite clear that their total involved all deaths above pre-war level, regardless of the cause. Were you aware of that little detail?

They went door to door collecting information. Where did you get yours?

From the UNDP. Google it. They too went door to door. They just went to a lot more doors.

Your one rosy report from B Associates?

Um, no. It's a column from that site, which points out a number of indicators. Look for those indicators elsewhere if you wish: go to the UN Refugee stats, for example. You'll find the same thing. I'm not relying on Taheri to tell me the facts. I'm listening to his reasoning about what the facts mean, and he's right: refugee flows is one of the best ways to gauge overall status of a country. That the flow has been back into the country is easy to check, and you don't have to rely on him to find that out. But either he's got a point, or he doesn't, and if he doesn't then you only need to point out the flaw in his logic.

I'm really not sure of your point here. Are you claiming the news from the Green Zone is accurate or are you making excuses for why it isn't?

Accurate? Sure, in the sense that when they say something happened, it probably happened. Representative? No reason to think so. That's my criticism.

CapelDodger

21st May 2006, 05:06 PM

Well, yes. Duh. Those [Saudi] bases were necessary in order to perform the expensive patrolling necessary to maintain the southern no-fly zone. Take that away and you've lost one of the most important parts of the "containment" you're so assured was sufficient to keep Saddam in line permanently.
Surely the US has sufficient carrier capacity to support patrolling of the no-fly zones? I'd have thought it would be easier and cheaper to do it that way.

I suspect those bases were there because the Sauds (as distinct from the Saudis) wanted them, until they didn't any more. What the US wants, strategically, is an uncontested entry-point into the theatre (preferably with a well-stocked depot). Qatar and Kuwait provided that. It's why the Brits created Kuwait in the first place - something that was sadly lost on the US before Saddam's invasion. Just a battalion or two of Marines in Kuwait, on "long-planned joint manoeuvres", at the right time ...

Huntster

21st May 2006, 05:08 PM

...Your opinion does not dictate reality....

thaiboxerken's does. (http://206.225.95.123/forumlive/showpost.php?p=1646609&postcount=58)

Just ask him.

See sig line below.

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 05:08 PM

I remember Bush's January state of the union address telling us how we were in Iraq "fighting a war on terror" to keep "evildoers" off American soil. To me this sounded like--we're causing war on their land because otherwise they will do it here.

This exact same argument can be used regarding Afghanistan. Is it also your position that we shouldn't have invaded there? Or is it maybe not quite so simple as your question suggests?

But with the whole UAE...and the Dubai ports--how can anyone pretend it's not about oil? The UAE has much closer ties with "evildoers" (Al Quaeda) than Iraq.

Not really. The UAE has provided quite a bit of cooperation in tracking down and capturing terrorists. Saddam never provided any. That's a rather critical difference.

And control of our ports would make evil doings quite possible on American soil.

You really don't know what you're talking about. The UAE deal would have changed the management firm that owned the port facilities. However, these companies do not handle security, and they do not handle customs. This would not have provided them with any additional means to infiltrate the US, even had they wished to do so.

A lot of people are dead from this war...not just Americans...a lot of people from all over...a lot of Iraqi civilians...a lot of destroyed lives...a lot of dead children...a lot of suffering--for what?

You aren't under the delusion that people weren't getting killed before we showed up, are you?

Americans want those trillions to be spent domestically.

Why are you just inventing figures?

Hitler did it, right?

Are you TRYING to get us to treat you like a loon?

Polaris

21st May 2006, 05:14 PM

This is typical propaganda crap! You are either propagating it or you are a victim of it or both. Grow a brain. It would help if you'd learn to think instead of parrot what you hear from Rove's talking points memos.

Sit in a room with Bush and Zarqawi. Which one do you think would cut your head off with a butcher knife?

Ziggurat

21st May 2006, 05:16 PM

Surely the US has sufficient carrier capacity to support patrolling of the no-fly zones? I'd have thought it would be easier and cheaper to do it that way.

No, it would have been WAY more expensive to do it that way. Carriers have a lot more operating costs than an airbase does, and you can't really fly refueling jets off a carrier. If carriers were more cost effective than airbases, we'd have a lot more carriers and a lot fewer airbases.

I suspect those bases were there because the Sauds (as distinct from the Saudis) wanted them, until they didn't any more.

That's part of it, certainly. But we wouldn't have been there unless we wanted to be there too - and we did, because that was the best way to patrol the no-fly zone.

davefoc

21st May 2006, 05:51 PM

I mean really, is it that non-obvious? We had a painful base in Saudi Arabia, expensive no-fly zones, and an Iraq that wouldnt comply with its cease-fire. The momentum in the world was moving towards a pullout and end to sanctions. American "progressives" were espousing these views pre-911. However, this would have allowed Saddam to re-arm.

Intel we have post-invasion shows that Saddam wanted to wait out sanctions and re-arm.

Is it really that hard to understand this? It doesn't take a degree in Poly Sci.

For what it is worth, Corplinx, I think that you are basically correct that these were among the major reasons that Bush opted for war.

I think most of the confusion and controversy as to why the US actually went to war has occurred because Bushco was involved in an organized, intentional effort to mislead people about the strength of evidence that Hussein had WMD and that Hussein was involved with 9-11.

Since it is now clear that Bushco was lying about that, the tendency of people who disagree with the war is to find the Bush-is-evil theories credible.

I think in fact Bush did not base the decision to go to war on evil or self serving motivation and instead his thinking was along the lines of what you suggest. I base this at least partially on Woodward's "Plan of Attack".

This doesn't mean that I think the war in net was a good idea. While there were many difficult issues associated with not going to war, I thought then and I think now that in balance without the existence of WMD in Iraq, the US, the UK, Iraq and the world in general would have been better off without the war.

One thing, that confuses the issue about whether the war was a good idea or not in my mind was the unexpected incompetence and corruption of Bushco in the execution of the war. I think Skeptigirl and others have it exactly right. Bushco looked at a sea of unemployed Iraqis and ignored them so as to transfer vast sums of money to their corporate buddies with the idea that a bunch of unemployed Iraqis were going to sit around idly while the Americans rolled in and rebuilt their country.

It didn't work and it continues not to work. I for one, in my wildest speculation could not have imagined how corrupt and stupid Bushco would be with regard to this. Essentially American soldiers are killed everyday so that Bushco could make their buddies wealthier.

CapelDodger

21st May 2006, 06:55 PM

No, it would have been WAY more expensive to do it that way. Carriers have a lot more operating costs than an airbase does, and you can't really fly refueling jets off a carrier. If carriers were more cost effective than airbases, we'd have a lot more carriers and a lot fewer airbases.
The US has a lot of carriers, and has done for a good while. Nobody suggested de-comissioning any of it because of the Saudi bases or the collapse of the Soviet Union, so the marginal operating costs of an active carrier group vis-a-vis a passive one are the relevant measure. Was it really that much cheaper operating from Saudi Arabian land-bases? If the US Navy requires land-based refuelling flights to patrol Iraq it does not have the reach it boasts. And is not, perhaps, worth the expense.

That's part of it, certainly. But we wouldn't have been there unless we wanted to be there too - and we did, because that was the best way to patrol the no-fly zone.
Kuwait was far and away the better option. The presence in Saudi Arabia was always a matter of diplomatic strategy, not military.

a_unique_person

21st May 2006, 07:19 PM

Kuwait was far and away the better option. The presence in Saudi Arabia was always a matter of diplomatic strategy, not military.

Kuwait is the most obvious one, not 'holy' land, and owes the US big time. Also Turkey has US bases already, IIRC.

CapelDodger

21st May 2006, 07:20 PM

For what it is worth, Corplinx, I think that you are basically correct that these were among the major reasons that Bush opted for war.

I think most of the confusion and controversy as to why the US actually went to war has occurred because Bushco was involved in an organized, intentional effort to mislead people about the strength of evidence that Hussein had WMD and that Hussein was involved with 9-11.
One of the people misled by Buscho, IMO, was Bush himself. He's not particularly bright, by any evidence.

One thing, that confuses the issue about whether the war was a good idea or not in my mind was the unexpected incompetence and corruption of Bushco in the execution of the war.
Had it just been corruption there wouldn't have been a problem. We're talking Mesopotamia here, a cradle of civilisation. It's the incompetence that is mind-boggling, and at its root are the twins "Arrogance" and "Ignorance".

CapelDodger

21st May 2006, 07:53 PM

Kuwait is the most obvious one, not 'holy' land, and owes the US big time.
The US actually let Kuwait down by not preventing Saddam's invasion. Kuwait was created by the Brits because it could only survive with a foreign patron - expected to be the British Empire. That role was passed on to the US and they fluffed it.

Kuwait chokes Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf, so it will always be a strategic interest of any Iraqi regime. Kuwait can never defend itself against Iraq - US-supplied hardware was used to get the influential out of the place as fast as possible come the day. It requires a patron, a foreign power that any Iraqi regime will back-off from.

Liberating Kuwait was one thing, not preventing its occupation was more serious. Not just for Kuwait.

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 08:13 PM

Umm... YES. Most of the political parties had no US support at all. And there was a rather large turnover of political power from the election: the people who, in essence, won the election were NOT the same people whom we had picked to run the country under the interim government. That wasn't because WE wanted it that way, it's because the Iraqis wanted it that way.Thursday, April 7th, 2005, Iraq's New President Jalal Talabani: Ally of CIA, Iranian Intelligence and Saddam Hussein (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/07/1343226)

Name me some more of these guys that have no connections in the US administration and let's see what else we turn up.

...It's a column from that site, which points out a number of indicators. Look for those indicators elsewhere if you wish: go to the UN Refugee stats, for example. You'll find the same thing. I'm not relying on Taheri to tell me the facts. I'm listening to his reasoning about what the facts mean, and he's right: refugee flows is one of the best ways to gauge overall status of a country. That the flow has been back into the country is easy to check, and you don't have to rely on him to find that out. But either he's got a point, or he doesn't, and if he doesn't then you only need to point out the flaw in his logic.Let's look a little closer at the Benador Associates. Seems they are a public relations firm with a lot of highly credentialed members whom Benador act's as an agent if one wants a speaker from the list.

According to Sourcewatch: "Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months."
— Jim Lobe, The Andean Condor among the Hawks (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EH15Aa01.html), Asia Times, August 15, 2003."

And how about looking at a few members at random from the list.

Arnaud de Borchgrave was the former editor-in-chief from 1985 to 1991 of the Washington Times, and of Insight magazine between 1998 to 2001, both of which are publications owned by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Borchgrave often appears on TV, and is a pundit pushed by Benador Associates.

Norman Lamont was John Major's Chancellor from 1990 to 1993. He is a co-chairman of the Bruges Group.
The Bruges Group is a euro-sceptic organisation connected to the Conservative Party. It claims to be "an independent all-party think tank."

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a weekly columnist for the National Review Online and is a board member of the Claremont Institute. ...(http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/hanson.html)
The Claremont Institute's mission statement includes: "The public sector continues to grow at the expense of the private. Regulations intrude into every corner of our lives. Schools no longer perform. Police and courts no longer protect. Good businesses are being driven to extinction by excessive and discriminatory controls, and as a result good jobs continue to disappear. Dependence grows and opportunity wanes with each passing year."
The Hoover Institution, within Stanford University, is a Republican public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy--both domestic and foreign--as well as international affairs. It has also been called the West's citadel of anticommunism, or Bush 'brain trust'.

Hanson is also a member of the Committee on the Present Danger.
The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) is a hawkish "advocacy organization" first founded in 1950 and re-formed in 1976 to push for larger defense budgets and arms buildups, to counter the Soviet Union.

Ah yes, the Lancet article. Yeah, I've looked into that. I also know the figure is worthless. There are major methodological problems with it (the sampling was NOT random, but became concentrated), and the error bars are just enormous. There was a MUCH more extensive survey done after that by the UN Development Program, with a much bigger sample size that didn't have the methodology problems the Lancet study did, which came to a figure of about 30,000 excess death (IIRC), and a MUCH smaller error bar. The Lancet's error bars were so large that even the lower bound on the UNDP survey was within the Lancet's error bars. There is simply no possible reason to use the Lancet's numbers in preference to the UNDP numbers, unless you don't care about the actual facts.What is here besides your opinion? Are you an epidemiologist? You think in this peer reviewed journal the researchers did not adequately address any sampling bias in their conclusion? Even if you don't like 100,000 civilian casualties do you suppose the number is at least in the ten thousands? If you can dismiss 100,000 as an overestimate, does that make 10,000 OK?

But the EDITORS of the Lancet ARE liarsThis is the level you retort on?

I was hoping, Zig, that with the oil for food link you posted that you would have replied with more than opinion. While your posts are not as knee jerk as several others in this thread, I went to a lot of trouble to support what I posted, only to have you reply like you are in a pissing contest.

There was more than enough evidence on the Rather documents. You just whined, show me, show me. Why don't you look first and then ask? Where's your supporting evidence that the Mapes book, web page and documents do not prove the National Guard letters were genuine? We should just believe you because....?

As for the hiring of cronies while qualified Iraqis went unemployed, I presented 2 separate sources and described a third. You attacked the third, which was just an example, and completely ignored the two other sources. As well you have presented no counter evidence at all. And you failed to explain why given the rosy Benador Associates report, the evidence coming out of Iraq is inconsistent with that report. More soldiers are dying daily than a year ago, everyone is still holed up in the Green Zone, the utilities are still not fully functioning in Baghdad, etc, etc. According to the Benador Associates, everything is wonderful and the expats are flooding back in.

I am most certainly not the only one who has concluded from the evidence the war was knowingly begun on false pretenses. You really should read more than just the right wing hawks' points of view. I try to read all sides. That's how I know both the rosy picture and the real one. And until someone in this thread comes up with more than the Benador Associates, I don't see a lot of evidence weight in support of Bush, nor trust in his honesty, nor confidence in his competence.

It is a complex situation. You can't boil it down into war for oil though that certainly underlies the pyramid to a great extent. You can't say Islamic terrorism is completely rooted in any one thing. There are many factors involved and if you don't consider all of the factors the solutions you come up with are as faulty as your data. The Benador people have a lot of expertise, but they also have a very strong slanted viewpoint from the corporate/military industrial complex/Republican side of the isle. Democracy Now reports on all the news our current media have no longer included in what they call the news. Democracy Now has a strong anti-Bush bias but part of that is because the pro-Bush side is already covered on every news outlet in the mainstream.

It is only with an informed public that we are going to remain a democratic country. Right now that is threatened by a large consolidation of news media in the hands of a few corporations who know only too well that they prefer the news to match their corporate goals. How many people can tell you who Teri Schiavo, Natalie Holloway and Lacy Peterson are that wouldn't know who Dick Cheney was if he introduced himself?

We have an administration of neocons tied directly to the oil industry and heavily influenced by the military industry. All you have to do to see that is follow the money.

We have a side show of very well funded and very well organized Evangelical Christians who have been active in politics since Reagan who threaten to change government to unseparate church and state. A Google search of 'faith based institutes' is quite revealing. Especially when you find out that every department in the Federal government from the CDC to the DOD have a web page for faith based grants.

The marriage of neocons and Evangelicals is frightening in itself.

I'm interested in different points of view here. But how about less unsupported opinion and a bit more substance?

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 08:22 PM

...Kuwait can never defend itself against Iraq - US-supplied hardware was used to get the influential out of the place as fast as possible come the day. It requires a patron, a foreign power that any Iraqi regime will back-off from....Not to mention we armed Saddam in the first place watching him fight with Iran. And we armed the mujahideen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan because we wanted to control the oil pipeline route to the Gulf and didn't want the Soviets to have it. And the Soviets armed Iran and the Chinese armed the North Vietnamese and so on and so on.

You reap what you sow.

Polaris

21st May 2006, 09:18 PM

Not to mention we armed Saddam in the first place watching him fight with Iran. And we armed the mujahideen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan because we wanted to control the oil pipeline route to the Gulf and didn't want the Soviets to have it. And the Soviets armed Iran and the Chinese armed the North Vietnamese and so on and so on.

You reap what you sow.

Not to mention we armed Saddam in the first place watching him fight with Iran. And we armed the mujahideen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan because we wanted to control the oil pipeline route to the Gulf and didn't want the Soviets to have it. And the Soviets armed Iran and the Chinese armed the North Vietnamese and so on and so on.

You reap what you sow.

America never armed Saddam. His weapons were from the Communist Bloc - and had been for decades before 1991. We gave him satellite photos, and that's pretty much it. If we gave him all these weapons, where are they? How come I've never seen a single burning American-made AFV or aircraft in Iraq that wasn't part of the American armed forces?

As for arming the Mujahideen...this was a bad thing? It fed a guerrilla war which ended in Soviet defeat - a defeat which hastened the end of the Soviet Union altogether. The error of US policy was abandoning Afghanistan after 1989, when it sank into civil war, creating conditions for a Pakistan/Saudi-funded Taliban.

Or maybe you're right. Maybe containing the Soviets and Iranian Revolution was a horrible, mean thing to.

pipelineaudio

21st May 2006, 10:03 PM

Lots of STUPID mistakes regarding the mooj, but to end the soviet union? Small price

These mistakes could have EASILY been fixed by Bush I or CLinton, but instead these two bozos made it worse. I believe a very great BUNCH of the terrorist crap we are dealing with right now are directly the fault of stupid actions and non actions taken by Bush and Clinton

a_unique_person

21st May 2006, 10:23 PM

Skeptic Ginger

21st May 2006, 11:56 PM

America never armed Saddam. His weapons were from the Communist Bloc - and had been for decades before 1991. We gave him satellite photos, and that's pretty much it. If we gave him all these weapons, where are they? How come I've never seen a single burning American-made AFV or aircraft in Iraq that wasn't part of the American armed forces?

As for arming the Mujahideen...this was a bad thing? It fed a guerrilla war which ended in Soviet defeat - a defeat which hastened the end of the Soviet Union altogether. The error of US policy was abandoning Afghanistan after 1989, when it sank into civil war, creating conditions for a Pakistan/Saudi-funded Taliban.

Or maybe you're right. Maybe containing the Soviets and Iranian Revolution was a horrible, mean thing to.Polaris, your world is just too black and white.

According to Wikipedia, on the Iran-Iraq war, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War) oh what a tangled web that military industrial/US government/various financial institutions weave. And I had left out, we armed Iran when the Shaw was buying the planes.Beginning in September, 1989, the Financial Times laid out the first charges that BNL, relying heavily on U.S. government-guaranteed loans, was funding Iraqi chemical and nuclear weapons work. For the next two and a half years, the Financial Times provided the only continuous newspaper reportage (over 300 articles) on the subject. Among the companies shipping militarily useful technology to Iraq under the eye of the U.S. government, according to the Financial Times, were Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, and Matrix Churchill, through its Ohio branch [15].

Even before the Persian Gulf War started in 1990, the Intelligencer Journal of Pennsylvania in a string of articles reported: "If U.S. and Iraqi troops engage in combat in the Persian Gulf, weapons technology developed in Lancaster and indirectly sold to Iraq will probably be used against U.S. forces ... And aiding in this ... technology transfer was the Iraqi-owned, British-based precision tooling firm Matrix Churchill, whose U.S. operations in Ohio were recently linked to a sophisticated Iraqi weapons procurement network." [16]

Aside from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and ABC's Ted Koppel, the Iraq-gate story never picked up much steam, even though The U.S. Congress became involved with the scandal. FAS report

In December 2002, Iraq's 1,200 page Weapons Declaration revealed a list of Western corporations and countries—as well as individuals—that exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq in the past two decades. Many American names were on the list. Alcolac International, for example, a Maryland company, allegedly transported thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, to Iraq. A Tennessee manufacturer contributed large amounts of a chemical used to make sarin, a nerve gas implicated in so-called (Persian) Gulf War Syndrome. A full list of those companies and their involvements in Iraq was provided by The LA Weekly in May 2003. (See also The Independent (UK) report on Wednesday, 18 December, 2002)

On 25 May 1994, The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released a report in which it was stated that pathogenic (meaning disease producing), toxigenic (meaning poisonous) and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq, pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It added: These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. [17]

The report then detailed 70 shipments (including anthrax bacillus) from the United States to Iraqi government agencies over three years, concluding It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the UN inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program. See another list here, and another here.

A report by Berlin's Die Tageszeitung in 2002 reported that Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council listed 150 foreign companies that supported Saddam Hussein's WMD program. Twenty-four U.S. firms were involved in exporting arms and materials to Baghdad [18].

Donald Riegle, Chairman of the Senate committee that made the report, said, "UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs." He added, "the executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control sent Iraq 14 agents "with biological warfare significance," including West Nile virus, according to Riegle's investigators [19]

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust, released a list of U.S. companies and their exports to Iraq. See page 11 of this report...Who knows what the truth is in all this. These guys do a good job of keeping back room deals out of public scrutiny. Unless you get a gun laden plane crashing in Central America or a whistle blower or a Deep Throat, the rest is often just known about in the board rooms.

Skeptic Ginger

22nd May 2006, 12:03 AM

As for arming the Mujahideen...this was a bad thing? It fed a guerrilla war which ended in Soviet defeat - a defeat which hastened the end of the Soviet Union altogether. The error of US policy was abandoning Afghanistan after 1989, when it sank into civil war, creating conditions for a Pakistan/Saudi-funded Taliban.

Or maybe you're right. Maybe containing the Soviets and Iranian Revolution was a horrible, mean thing to.Well let's see,... why was that bad....maybe because it led to Bin Laden coordinating the crashing of planes into various targets in the US?

Again, try to imagine trade offs, multiple reasons for things, unforeseeable events, a little corruption, a little ego, a little misperception, a little ignorance of culture and religious beliefs, a lot of pissing off of people all over the world for various reasons some related, some not, instead of imagining John Wayne fighting the bad guys in an old war flick.

Skeptic Ginger

22nd May 2006, 12:04 AM

pipelineaudio

22nd May 2006, 12:41 AM

Care to point these specific actions out?

Would love to, just hope you arent too blinded by religion to consider them.

First of all, and I find this SOMEWHAT understandable, finding the absolute CRAZIEST and most violent guys to add to the mooj ranks. Great when theyre attacking your enemies, not so cool when theyre mad at you. The mooj were always teetering between somewhat stable and totally battle berzerk. We may have helped tip it to the fanatical.

Second, not collecting as much weaponry as possible back from the mooj. Not cool to have them running around with american anti aircraft weapons as we have seen

Third and I believe most important of all, NOT nation building in Afghanistan. Horrible blunder by Bush I, inexcuseable by Clinton especially after all the horrors came to light in the early 90's of what life had become like there. Perhaps too late, Bush 2 had a chance, but he didnt even TRY.

Fourth, pussing out in Somalia. We showed that we really were in their eyes lazy chickens who would run away at the hands of determined jihadis ( I realize there was a lot more to somalia than this but jihadi sites and chatrooms like to take credit for chasing the americans out). Subset of fourth: not realizing then and there that the UN were full of crap and wouldnt back up JACK, ever

Fifth, fighting on the sie of Al Queda in the Yugoslavian conflicts. Seen as an act of repentance and begging for forgiveness from the islamic world.

Sixth,perpetual dhimmitude, not just in the form of PC, but actually moving back quite a few of the nuttiest Mooj and giving them housing and money welfare here in the states, resulting in the first WTC attack

Skeptic Ginger

22nd May 2006, 01:52 AM

Would love to, just hope you arent too blinded by religion to consider them.....
Sixth,perpetual dhimmitude, not just in the form of PC, but actually moving back quite a few of the nuttiest Mooj and giving them housing and money welfare here in the states, resulting in the first WTC attackI'm an atheist so I don't know what your religion comment meant. I think I agree with some of your ideas though I can't exactly tell the details you are describing. I'm not sure I'd blame Bush Sr or Clinton. Both Presidents had all sorts of constraints and issues to juggle.

Everything Clinton did was attacked ad nauseum by the Republican spin machine and it's ability to spike the media with talking points. If the people who attacked Clinton relentlessly throughout his term in office had had the country's interests in mind instead of their own political ambitions Clinton would have had a lot more leeway to act appropriately to some situations.

I don't know that Somalia would have turned out differently. The world's media showed the suffering and there were echoes of "do something". Then when we did, the results were not what the country was ready for. Pretty ironic that some of the same people crying Clinton screwed up by sending troops there are the same ones claiming we are in Iraq to spread democracy.

The Taliban in Afghanistan needed serious action. The treatment of women there was totally unacceptable. I don't know what our options were. Certainly arming the mujahedin and not doing much else was not the best action to take.

Your last conclusion there is quite a stretch. I don't think you can connect the dots there as you stated it anyway. Richard Clarke reveals quite a bit (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4595173/) the public wasn't aware of that Clinton had done against terrorism.President Clinton requested the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to develop follow-on military strike plans, including the use of US Special Forces. The Chairman recommended against using US forces on the ground in Afghanistan, but placed submarines with cruise missiles offshore awaiting timely intelligence of the location of Usama bin Ladin.

The President also requested CIA to develop follow-on covert action plans. He authorized lethal activity in a series of directives which progressively expanded the authority of CIA to act against al Qida in Afghanistan.

The President authorized ten security and counter-terrorism programs and assigned leadership on each program (e.g. Transportation Security) to an agency lead.

7. 1999: The Clinton Administration continued to pursue intelligence, including covert action, military, law enforcement, and diplomatic activity to disrupt al Qida.

CIA was unable to develop timely intelligence to support the planned follow-on military strikes. On three occasions, CIA reported it knew where Usama bin Ladin was, but all three times the Director of Central Intelligence recommended against military action because of the poor quality of the intelligence.

In December, 1999 intelligence and law enforcement information indicated that al Qida was planning attacks against the US. The President ordered the Principals Committee to meet regularly to prevent the attacks. That Cabinet level committee met throughout December, 1999 to review intelligence and develop counter-measures. The planned al Qida attacks were averted.

At the senior policy levels in the Clinton Administration, there was an acute understanding of the terrorist threat, particularly al Qida. That understanding resulted in a vigorous program to counter al Qida including lethal covert action, but it did not include a willingness to resume bombing of Afghanistan. Events in the Balkans, Iraq, the Peace Process, and domestic politics occurring at the same time as the anti-terrorism effort played a role.

The Bush Administration saw terrorism policy as important but not urgent, prior to 9-11. The difficulty in obtaining the first Cabinet level (Principals) policy meeting on terrorism and the limited Principals' involvement sent unfortunate signals to the bureaucracy about the Administration's attitude toward the al Qida threat. Here he describes the problems with the FBI and CIA communications. In his book, Clarke elaborates more on the lack of response from Bush's team re terrorism and on much of the problems in the Middle East. We all heard the infamous memo, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US", that Conde Rice tried to downplay as merely "historical information". That was a crock of s@#$.

And for those of you ready to write off Clarke's claims as a disgruntled Democrat, he served in his position as national security advisor for 30 some years under more Republican years than Democrat. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke) And if you think he was just covering his own ass by blaming Bush, there is corroborating evidence in the public record he tried in vain to get Bush to take the Bin Laden threat seriously, including the memo above.

provided national security advice to four U.S. presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, consulting on issues of intelligence and terrorism, from 1973 to 2003. Clarke's specialties are computer security, counterterrorism and homeland security. He was the counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council when the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred.

He resigned in January of 2003 to work on his book, Against All Enemies, which came out in early 2004. He testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States on March 24, 2004.

pipelineaudio

22nd May 2006, 02:22 AM

[QUOTE]Everything Clinton did was attacked ad nauseum by the Republican spin machine and it's ability to spike the media with talking points. If the people who attacked Clinton relentlessly throughout his term in office had had the country's interests in mind instead of their own political ambitions Clinton would have had a lot more leeway to act appropriately to some situations.

THAT religion

Pretty ironic that some of the same people crying Clinton screwed up by sending troops there are the same ones claiming we are in Iraq to spread democracy.

Anyone who cried about Clinton screwing up by sending troops to somalia would be an idiot. Bush I sent them there

Your last conclusion there is quite a stretch. I don't think you can connect the dots there as you stated it anyway.

I really dont have to, they connected themselves

And for those of you ready to write off Clarke's claims as a disgruntled Democrat, he served in his position as national security advisor for 30 some years under more Republican years than Democrat. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke) And if you think he was just covering his own ass by blaming Bush, there is corroborating evidence in the public record he tried in vain to get Bush to take the Bin Laden threat seriously, including the memo above.

bush bush bush, its some sort of mantra

Ziggurat

22nd May 2006, 07:54 AM

Name me some more of these guys that have no connections in the US administration and let's see what else we turn up.

I didn't say that there weren't ties between Iraqi politicians and the US - that shouldn't really be surprising, because a whole lot of people with influence in Iraq who weren't friends with Saddam would have come to us at one point or another, and those people are rather obviously going to have an easier time in politics now that Saddam's gone. But Iraq is largely run as a party system - candidates are elected by party to parliament, and party alliances are who get to appoint the ministers. And those various parties are not supported by the US. SCIRI, for example, is not a party we'd ever support, but it did quite well.

Let's look a little closer at the Benador Associates.

Why? The article I linked to was by Amir Taheri. The other people on the site aren't really relevant to him.

According to Sourcewatch:

Oh my god! They're NEOCONS! Well, of course we can't trust them, then.

Sorry, but that's just pathetic. First off, I don't even know if Amir Taheri qualifies as a neocon, but I doubt it. Second, so the hell what? This is essentially an ad hominim attack. You can't come up with any argument for why his reasoning is bad, you can't dispute the facts he cites, so you try to smear him. Pathetic.

And how about looking at a few members at random from the list.

Irrelevant. I didn't cite a few random members from the list, I cited ONE person. Somehow, I suspect that if I tried to do something like this with your favorite website, Democracy Now!, you'd be up in arms.

What is here besides your opinion? Are you an epidemiologist?

I don't need to be. Nor do you to be able to evaluate it. Look, the problem is quite simple. They randomly distributed samples between provinces based on population. Because they wanted to reduce driving time, they decided not to actually sample each province. So they paired up provinces, and randomly picked which of the two provinces to actually sample in each pair. But the pairing procedure wasn't random, it was an essentially arbitrary human choice, and introduced the possibility of increased sampling error.

But as I pointed out, EVEN IF you don't think that's a problem, their own bloody error bars are huge. Absolutely monstrous. So when a MUCH larger survey (around 21,000 households versus around 900 for the Lancet) comes along in the form of the UNDP survey, and gets an answer with MUCH smaller error bars, why on earth would you stick with the Lancet numbers? It simply doesn't make sense. And as I said, the Lancet error bars are so big that the UNDP results are WITHIN those error bars. So the UNDP numbers are in every way, shape and form preferable to the Lancet numbers, REGARDLESS of whether or not you think the sampling problem made a difference. If you think that prefering a study with a much larger sample size and much smaller error bars is merely my opinion, well, I'm afraid I can't help you any more.

You think in this peer reviewed journal the researchers did not adequately address any sampling bias in their conclusion?

I've had too much personal experience with peer review to think that problems can't slip through. But it's actually not so much sampling bias (which suggests you know a priori which way it should push results) but sampling error (meaning the results are less reliable than they should be).

This is the level you retort on?

You imply that I'm stooping, but you can't actually address whether or not I'm right. So let me clue you in, since you've already refused to acknowledge the point that the Lancet study never measured civilian casualties.
Here's the headline the editors of the Lancet decided to go with when they published the piece:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041029040552/http://thelancet.com/
"100 000 excess civilian deaths after Iraq invasion"

But did the study claim 100,000 civilian deaths? No, it didn't. It specifically denied the ability to categorize deaths in terms of civilian versus combatant. Therefore, the editors were liars. Plain and simple. No stooping involved.

There was more than enough evidence on the Rather documents. You just whined, show me, show me. Why don't you look first and then ask? Where's your supporting evidence that the Mapes book, web page and documents do not prove the National Guard letters were genuine?

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You can come up with a million ways in which a forgery matches the genuine article, but all you need is one discrepency to prove it's fake. The pseudo-kerning evident in the document is just such a smoking gun.

Like I asked, do you know what kerning is?
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/Kerning.png
That overlap is IMPOSSIBLE to do automatically with a typewriter, and NOBODY does it by hand. But it's in the memos in multiple places. For example, just look for when the letter "f" is followed by the letter "e" in this nice little graphic:
http://img20.exs.cx/img20/5/animated_aug18bigger2.gif
Oh, and the animation? The blue is the memo, the red is Microsoft Word with default settings. Quite the coincidence, don't you think? MS Word doesn't do "true" kerning, which is done with pairwise operations on every possible letter combination, but does pseudo-kerning which can produce that overhanging effect with fewer calculations. But the result is the same: the f overhangs the trailing e, something typewriters are completely incapable of doing withing manually backing up each time. But NOBODY types like that.

We should just believe you because....?

You don't have to believe me, you just have to actually look at the documents and think for a moment about how typewriters work, why so few do proportional space, why superscripts are so unusual, and why centering text (especially proportionally-spaced text) and kerning cannot be done automatically at all with a typewriter.

As for the hiring of cronies while qualified Iraqis went unemployed, I presented 2 separate sources and described a third.

You misunderstand my criticism, then. I'm not claiming it doesn't happen, so how many sources you present is rather beside the point. Can you guess what I AM trying to argue?

According to the Benador Associates, everything is wonderful and the expats are flooding back in.

No. Again, I already made this clear, but you chose to ignore it. The claim isn't that everything is rosy. It most certainly isn't. The claim is that things are BETTER than they were. If you think things are terrible now, then to reconcile those two things, you don't need to necessarily change your opinion about the current status, it is enough to change your opinion about how things previously were. And they were absolutely horrific under Saddam. But that's not the impression we get, because reports weren't reaching us under Saddam, but they do now, so we get this false impression that things are worse when that's not the case.

I am most certainly not the only one who has concluded from the evidence the war was knowingly begun on false pretenses. You really should read more than just the right wing hawks' points of view. I try to read all sides.

So now you're telling ME what I've already read? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. Just because I haven't concluded what you have concluded doesn't mean I haven't looked at "all sides".

We have an administration of neocons tied directly to the oil industry and heavily influenced by the military industry. All you have to do to see that is follow the money.

Yeah, I keep hearing that kind of claim. But it's hollow. Follow the money? Well, there would have been a MUCH easier way for the military-industrial complex to have made tons of money than the Iraq war: don't bother with an invasion, but keep the Crusader artillery system. That would have meant billions of dollars in profits. Plus it would have kept a lot of those disaffected generals happy and quiet. Same with the Comanche helicopter. But Rumsfeld axed them both. Why? Because maybe it isn't just about the money.

Ziggurat

22nd May 2006, 08:01 AM

Not to mention we armed Saddam in the first place watching him fight with Iran.

Not really. The vast majority of weapons he got from the Russians and the Chinese. He also got a number of weapons from the French. He got very little in the way of weaponry from us - we cam in behind Brazil in that regards. What we mostly gave him was intelligence on the Iranians.

And we armed the mujahideen fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan because we wanted to control the oil pipeline route to the Gulf and didn't want the Soviets to have it.

You mean that pipeline we're finally building now that we have control? Oh wait, we're not building any pipeline in Afghanistan. Now I'm confused.

Ziggurat

22nd May 2006, 08:14 AM

More soldiers are dying daily than a year ago,

Really?
http://icasualties.org/oif/US_chart.aspx
I don't get that impression from the graph.
Unless maybe you mean that THIS week more soldiers died per day than this week one year ago. Or something. But overall? Doesn't really look like an increase to me.

How about wounded?
http://icasualties.org/oif/woundedchart.aspx
Uh-oh. That one looks like it's a decidedly downward trend. Hmmm....

Polaris

22nd May 2006, 03:46 PM

Polaris, your world is just too black and white..

Radical Muslims are our #1 enemy - that's an area where I'm not interested in a shade of gray.

According to Wikipedia, on the Iran-Iraq war, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War) oh what a tangled web that military industrial/US government/various financial institutions weave. And I had left out, we armed Iran when the Shaw was buying the planes.Who knows what the truth is in all this. These guys do a good job of keeping back room deals out of public scrutiny. Unless you get a gun laden plane crashing in Central America or a whistle blower or a Deep Throat, the rest is often just known about in the board rooms.

The Shah, nefarious bastard that he was, was our ally. Why wouldn't we arm him? If these guys do a good job of keeping things out of the public eye, how do you know about them? Where's the proof? I've already shown the notion that we flooded Iraq with American weapons to be untrue.

Iran is a different story - you were talking about Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

Polaris

22nd May 2006, 04:00 PM

Well let's see,... why was that bad....maybe because it led to Bin Laden coordinating the crashing of planes into various targets in the US?

Again, try to imagine trade offs, multiple reasons for things, unforeseeable events, a little corruption, a little ego, a little misperception, a little ignorance of culture and religious beliefs, a lot of pissing off of people all over the world for various reasons some related, some not, instead of imagining John Wayne fighting the bad guys in an old war flick.

Blowback, by its very nature, is unforseeable. It's ridiculous to hold someone accountable for such things decades after the fact. How much have you studied the Soviet-Afghan War? How much have you read into al-Qaida? Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and the Mujahideen were three separate entities, are you aware of that? The Mujahideen alone was several entities with many facets (the CIA, the ISI, the Saudis, the internal Muj, the external Muj, the foreign fighters, the different Afghan ethnic groups, etc...). I've already said the big error was ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviet defeat, when the leaders of the Mujahideen waged civil war on each other until the country was so devastated that the Taliban (funded by the ISI and the Saudis for differening reasons) looked like a good alternative - an impression that didn't last long.

9/11 was dreamed up primarily by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, an Egyptian, who only started putting it together in 1997, before bin Laden was even in Afghanistan. The only connection the Afghan Mujahideen had with 9/11 was it was their power-hungry savagery that laid the red carpet out for the Taliban, who needed bin Laden's money to keep things running (this is a government in which the national treasury was kept in a lock box under Mullah Omar's bed). The Mujahideen and the Soviet Afghan War had about as much to do with 9/11 as Kaiser Wilhelm had to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bin Laden fought briefly in Afghanistan at the end of the war (the final battle in fact) and was a financier, albeit a minor one. Bin Laden's main beef with the US had to do with Desert Storm and the stationing of US troops in Arabia (God forbid). He only started using other Muslim sore-spots (and it's not difficult to make Muslims killing-mad about something) when he was facing a manpower shortage - which is why he only started mentioning things like Lebanon and Palestine after 9/11.

Polaris

22nd May 2006, 04:40 PM

And I might add, you're in no position to talk to other people about condescention.

Skeptic Ginger

23rd May 2006, 04:11 AM

...Anyone who cried about Clinton screwing up by sending troops to somalia would be an idiot. Bush I sent them thereForgot about that, but it reminded me, the public certainly didn't accept spreading democracy or ridding a country of despots there.

...I really dont have to, they connected themselvesSorry, I misread your post. I see now you said the first trade center bombing.

bush bush bush, its some sort of mantraYou lost me here Pipeline.

a_unique_person

23rd May 2006, 04:25 AM

The Shah, nefarious bastard that he was, was our ally. Why wouldn't we arm him?

An excellent question.

Skeptic Ginger

23rd May 2006, 04:48 AM

To recap Zig, you said your evidence things were going relatively well in Iraq was based onUm, no. It's a column from that site, which points out a number of indicators. Look for those indicators elsewhere if you wish: go to the UN Refugee stats, for example. You'll find the same thing. I'm not relying on Taheri to tell me the facts. I'm listening to his reasoning about what the facts mean, and he's right: refugee flows is one of the best ways to gauge overall status of a country. That the flow has been back into the country is easy to check, and you don't have to rely on him to find that out. But either he's got a point, or he doesn't, and if he doesn't then you only need to point out the flaw in his logic. So I asked then why, if these people are flooding back in is Baghdad still too unsafe to leave the Green Zone and why couldn't the US hire some of these guys, or contract with their businesses instead of cronies?

Oh my god! They're NEOCONS! Well, of course we can't trust them, then.

Sorry, but that's just pathetic. First off, I don't even know if Amir Taheri qualifies as a neocon, but I doubt it. Second, so the hell what? This is essentially an ad hominim attack. You can't come up with any argument for why his reasoning is bad, you can't dispute the facts he cites, so you try to smear him. Pathetic.If you'd have read my post instead of acting like a baby here you'd have seen that I said the members of the Association looked well qualified but had a neocon bias. I cited equally observant and qualified people who were also in Iraq and who had a different view from the one you posted.

And to tell you the truth, the neocons in the Bush administration aren't exactly the most trusted people in America these days so it does go to the credibility of your source to be associated with that crowd.

All of your concerns about the Lancet article ignore the civilian deaths. That's the issue. That's the point I made. If it was 10,000 is that OK by you? How many kids do you think have been killed in Iraq by US arms?

The claim is that things are BETTER than they were. If you think things are terrible now, then to reconcile those two things, you don't need to necessarily change your opinion about the current status, it is enough to change your opinion about how things previously were. And they were absolutely horrific under Saddam. But that's not the impression we get, because reports weren't reaching us under Saddam, but they do now, so we get this false impression that things are worse when that's not the case.The position you take here is that you believe things are better in Iraq now than they were under Saddam. I take the position that some things are better and some are worse. If it were me and my country, I would have wanted to make the decision to take the casualties in order to achieve the gain. Instead, we made the decision for these people. We made the decision they should suffer thousands of dead in order to be "better off". I don't think I had the right to make that decision for the Iraqi people.

There are many people in Iraq who have said they are glad Saddam was overthrown. But others have said the situation now is worse. Whatever your opinion is that they are better off now, do you really have the right to decide that for everyone?

As to the measure of progress, so more soldiers are dying now than 2 years ago rather than a year ago. My bad :rolleyes:

I'll look at the Mapes stuff more closely tomorrow.

Skeptic Ginger

23rd May 2006, 04:54 AM

And I might add, you're in no position to talk to other people about condescention.I have indeed been condescending to you. You made the most ludicrous statement that anyone who didn't agree with you was supporting terrorism. Imagine that? Merely for believing I have the right to free speech in this democratic country, and for not agreeing with the President, I must therefore only have one other possible position. And in case you haven't noticed, only 30% or so of the people in the country agree with him right now as well. Guess we're all just evil.

Ziggurat

23rd May 2006, 07:54 AM

To recap Zig, you said your evidence things were going relatively well in Iraq was based on So I asked then why, if these people are flooding back in is Baghdad still too unsafe to leave the Green Zone and why couldn't the US hire some of these guys, or contract with their businesses instead of cronies?

Why does hiring some Indian guy to drive trucks in Iraq hardly qualifies him as a crony? You're certain that the situation in Iraq must be terrible, and you're searching for ways to try to punch a whole in the argument that it's not. Fine. But you haven't actually defended your position. What do I mean by that? Simple: why do YOU think that Iraqi refugees have been returning? If things are as bad as you think they are, why are Iraqis making that choice? How do YOU reconcile a stable currency with your images of an unstable country? Can you even sort that out to your own satisfaction?

And to tell you the truth, the neocons in the Bush administration aren't exactly the most trusted people in America these days so it does go to the credibility of your source to be associated with that crowd.

Amir Taheri isn't a neocon. He's not part of the administration. Hell, he's not even American, and he doesn't live in the US either. But you're trying to smear him with guilt by association? That's weak. Really weak.

But like I said, his credibility isn't the issue, because you don't need to rely on him for the facts. You can independently verify that refugees have been returning. You can independently verify that the Iraqi dinar has been stable. What he presents is not evidence, but an argument based on logic. Either the logic is good, or it is bad. If it's bad, it doesn't matter who he is, you should be able to shoot it down on its own. And if it's good, then it STILL doesn't matter who he is, you can't discredit bad logic based on who said it. Come now, you should know this, I shouldn't have to tell you.

All of your concerns about the Lancet article ignore the civilian deaths.

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm trying to establish the facts, and get at the best information we have available. The Lancet results do not represent the best information we have available, and so simply should not be used.

If it was 10,000 is that OK by you?

OK? No. But it wasn't OK that Saddam was in power, either. It wasn't OK that he filled mass graves with political opponents. It wasn't OK that he built palaces while people died of easily preventable diseases. We never had a choice that was "OK". We had a choice between bad and worse. And I think that leaving Saddam in power was the worse option, not the bad option.

If it were me and my country, I would have wanted to make the decision to take the casualties in order to achieve the gain. Instead, we made the decision for these people.

That would indeed be nice. But you aren't suggesting we should have done public opinion polls to try to find out what Iraqis wanted before we invaded, are you? I hope you can see how impossible that would have been. The truth is, we never had access beforehand to how Iraqis felt, and any decision we made was going to be made without that knowledge. And that includes the possibility of not invading even if the Iraqis all wanted us to. So yes, it would be nice if everyone could have such a say. But that was never a possibility to begin with, so it's simply not relevant to the decision we had to make.

We made the decision they should suffer thousands of dead in order to be "better off". I don't think I had the right to make that decision for the Iraqi people.

The decision not to invade is a decision too. It's a decision to leave them to suffer under Saddam for likely another decade, to be followed up by decades more of the brutal reign of whichever of his sadistic sons ended up on top. Did you have the "right" to make that decision for the Iraqi people? I don't see any basis for claiming you had more right to that decision. Iraq was under a dictatorship. Whatever happened, the ONLY guarantee is that the Iraqi people wouldn't be deciding either way. Now they have a chance to have a say for the first time. You want me to regret the decisions that made that possible? Sorry, not going to happen.

I'll look at the Mapes stuff more closely tomorrow.

I wait with baited breath.

Tricky

23rd May 2006, 08:37 AM

Simple: why do YOU think that Iraqi refugees have been returning? If things are as bad as you think they are, why are Iraqis making that choice?
Because they need a place to live. And even then, I'll bet not all of them are coming back. Plus the middle class is leaving in droves (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0522/dailyUpdate.html). They have a lot more options about where they can live.

How do YOU reconcile a stable currency with your images of an unstable country? Can you even sort that out to your own satisfaction? Is a stable currency the only mark of a stable country? Even the Air Force says Iraq is embroiled in a civil war (http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1764639.php). Somehow that doesn't jive with the image of a stable country.

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm trying to establish the facts, and get at the best information we have available. The Lancet results do not represent the best information we have available, and so simply should not be used.
Lancet is a respected medical journal. It's not an extremist blog. All one need do is follow the news to see that civilians are still dying in fairly large numbers in Iraq. Why look. Thirteen more today (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/23/iraq.main/index.html).

OK? No. But it wasn't OK that Saddam was in power, either. It wasn't OK that he filled mass graves with political opponents. It wasn't OK that he built palaces while people died of easily preventable diseases. We never had a choice that was "OK". We had a choice between bad and worse. And I think that leaving Saddam in power was the worse option, not the bad option.

Maybe, but a whole lot of Iraqis don't seem to think so (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anas_altikriti/2006/05/a_government_built_upon_sectar.html).

Once again, ask any Iraqi and they will tell you Saddam represented no one: he brutalised and terrorised everyone. Among his victims were Sunnis and Shia as well as Arabs, Kurds, Turkmans and others; those who carried out the crimes on his behalf were also Sunnis and Shia as well as Arabs, Kurds and others.
...
It is truly amazing what Bush and Blair have managed to achieve in Iraq. Not only have they managed to contribute to a climate in which human rights can be violated in far worse ways than they were under Saddam's Ba'athist regime, they have actually driven Iraqis, all Iraqis, into openly stating that life was much better under Saddam, something that this writer, like most Iraqis, never, ever imagined possible only a few years ago.

The decision not to invade is a decision too. It's a decision to leave them to suffer under Saddam for likely another decade, to be followed up by decades more of the brutal reign of whichever of his sadistic sons ended up on top. Did you have the "right" to make that decision for the Iraqi people? I don't see any basis for claiming you had more right to that decision. Iraq was under a dictatorship. Whatever happened, the ONLY guarantee is that the Iraqi people wouldn't be deciding either way. Now they have a chance to have a say for the first time. You want me to regret the decisions that made that possible? Sorry, not going to happen.
I don't believe for one second that the "compassionate conservatives" gave a ratsass about the brutal reign of Saddam. A large number of conservatives I know can't tell an Arab from and Indian and they call them all vulgar names. To suggest that we had suddenly began to care for these downtrodden people, many of whom were dancing in the streets after 9/11, is to ask for a level of credulity that I can't seem to manage. We didn't care when Saddam was slaughtering Kurds. We didn't care when he was killing Iranians. Now all of a sudden we care? That does not pass the sniff test, Ziggy.

I wait with baited breath.
Unless you've been grazing at the sushi bar again, Ziggy, I think you mean "bated breath".;)

Ziggurat

23rd May 2006, 09:02 AM

Plus the middle class is leaving in droves (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0522/dailyUpdate.html). They have a lot more options about where they can live.

And now they can safely choose to leave without having to abandon everything in the process. Yes, make it easier to leave, and some people will choose to do so.

Is a stable currency the only mark of a stable country?

No. But it's a damned good indicator of people's opinions about the prospects of a country. When things look like they're going to get bad, people dump the currency and try to buy up foreign money that they have faith in (like the dollar or the Euro). If the currency is stable, that means people aren't doing that. Which means they have faith that the government is going to stick around, the economy won't collapse, and the money they're holding onto will still be worth about the same a year from now. So it's a very good indicator of people's confidence in the overall situation. Every single time that the **** hit the fan under Saddam, the currency went into freefall. It hasn't done so since we established the new currency. Why is that?

Lancet is a respected medical journal. It's not an extremist blog.

What's your point? The editors lied when they mischaracterized the results, the survey results themselves are unreliable (and self-admittedly so, considering the size of the error bars), and better and more reliable information has come along since. Whether or not the Lancet is "respectable" is rather beside the point.

Maybe, but a whole lot of Iraqis don't seem to think so (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anas_altikriti/2006/05/a_government_built_upon_sectar.html).

From the name of your link, I was expecting to see some poll results. But that wasn't the case, was it? Instead we get claims like this:
"Not only have they managed to contribute to a climate in which human rights can be violated in far worse ways than they were under Saddam's Ba'athist regime, they have actually driven Iraqis, all Iraqis, into openly stating that life was much better under Saddam, something that this writer, like most Iraqis, never, ever imagined possible only a few years ago." (emphasis mine)

So he's trying to convince me that one cannot even find a Kurd who would think life is better now than under Saddam? Because that's what he's saying, and it's simply not believable. And he's got no evidence to support it either, just his own contention. You'll have to pardon me if I simply don't take his claims seriously.

I don't believe for one second that the "compassionate conservatives" gave a ratsass about the brutal reign of Saddam.

I've been over this point too: I don't give a damn about what someone ELSE's motive was. I care about my OWN motives. I'm not supporting someone else's motives, I'm supporting their ACTIONS. So you can tar and feather them all you want to about what you presume they did or did not really want, but I simply do not care about that argument.

A large number of conservatives I know can't tell an Arab from and Indian and they call them all vulgar names.

I'm sorry the people you hang around suck, but that's really not my problem, that's yours.

Unless you've been grazing at the sushi bar again, Ziggy, I think you mean "bated breath".;)

OK, you got me on that one fair and square. :blush:

davefoc

23rd May 2006, 09:07 AM

...

We didn't care when Saddam was slaughtering Kurds. We didn't care when he was killing Iranians. Now all of a sudden we care? That does not pass the sniff test, Ziggy.

I think you are wrong here. I think the administration did care and some Americans and Brits cared. If for no other reason there was the self serving reason that we abandoned people that had sided with us after the first gulf war to be slaughtered to Hussein and abandoning people that have helped you is a good way of discouraging people from helping you in the first place.

Tricky

23rd May 2006, 09:26 AM

And now they can safely choose to leave without having to abandon everything in the process. Yes, make it easier to leave, and some people will choose to do so.
Even so, middle class flight is not the mark of a stable country.

No. But it's a damned good indicator of people's opinions about the prospects of a country. When things look like they're going to get bad, people dump the currency and try to buy up foreign money that they have faith in (like the dollar or the Euro). If the currency is stable, that means people aren't doing that. Which means they have faith that the government is going to stick around, the economy won't collapse, and the money they're holding onto will still be worth about the same a year from now. So it's a very good indicator of people's confidence in the overall situation. Every single time that the **** hit the fan under Saddam, the currency went into freefall. It hasn't done so since we established the new currency. Why is that?
I'd say it has more to do with the Iraq economy being bolstered by the very stable and dependable dollar. Everyone knows it's not in the interest of the US to have the Iraqi economy floundering. That gives them a measure of security. Will it stay once the US pulls out?

What's your point? The editors lied when they mischaracterized the results, the survey results themselves are unreliable (and self-admittedly so, considering the size of the error bars), and better and more reliable information has come along since. Whether or not the Lancet is "respectable" is rather beside the point. Yet all of the information still shows that people continue to be killed at very high rates. Yes, it fluctuates some. It is still much higher than it was under Saddam in his last few years when the UN had put the screws on him. That says to me that the UN plan for dealing with him was better than the US plan.

From the name of your link, I was expecting to see some poll results. But that wasn't the case, was it? Instead we get claims like this:
"Not only have they managed to contribute to a climate in which human rights can be violated in far worse ways than they were under Saddam's Ba'athist regime, they have actually driven Iraqis, all Iraqis, into openly stating that life was much better under Saddam, something that this writer, like most Iraqis, never, ever imagined possible only a few years ago." (emphasis mine)

So he's trying to convince me that one cannot even find a Kurd who would think life is better now than under Saddam? Because that's what he's saying, and it's simply not believable. And he's got no evidence to support it either, just his own contention. You'll have to pardon me if I simply don't take his claims seriously.

I admit, it was an opinion piece by one Iraqi. I am not the tireless Googler that you and skeptigirl are. But I think there has been a pretty good indication that a whole lot of Iraqis don't like us and don't want us. And of course, they'll scream like a banshee if we "abandon" them. It's a no-win situation. Why did we get ourselves into this no-win situation?

I've been over this point too: I don't give a damn about what someone ELSE's motive was. I care about my OWN motives. I'm not supporting someone else's motives, I'm supporting their ACTIONS. So you can tar and feather them all you want to about what you presume they did or did not really want, but I simply do not care about that argument.
Yes, but the topic is about the real reasons for the invasion, not your reasons for justifying the invasion. It is based on observations of the words and actions of others. I'm guessing you don't really have many ACTIONS of your own WRT Iraq. Talking about the actions and reasons of others is what you do in political discussions. I'm sorry you don't care for it, but "sest luh vie" as they say in South France.

I'm sorry the people you hang around suck, but that's really not my problem, that's yours.
Well, most of them are my family, so I don't have a lot of choice. But the point is that it is ludicrous to suggest that a majority of those now support this war actually cared about the Iraqis before Bush started his advertising campaign. Perhaps you are that rare exception. I commend you on your humanitarian nature.

OK, you got me on that one fair and square. :blush:S'okay. You can give me grief in my new thread about misspelling "Bentsen".:blush:

Tricky

23rd May 2006, 09:30 AM

I think you are wrong here. I think the administration did care and some Americans and Brits cared. If for no other reason there was the self serving reason that we abandoned people that had sided with us after the first gulf war to be slaughtered to Hussein and abandoning people that have helped you is a good way of discouraging people from helping you in the first place.
That makes it sound like a sort of "image saving" sort of caring. I agree that could be important. But I also know that many conservatives (at least in my family) were eager to invade Iraq because they wanted to kill (and this is their word, not mine) "rag-heads". They saw them celebrate 9/11 and they wanted to punish them. Some were advocating nuking them. I'm not saying that is the core of the pro-war movement, but I guarantee you it is a significant faction.

I'd even be willing to bet that a significant number of conservatives who have dropped their support for the Iraq war have done so because they no longer wish to help those ungrateful bastiges.

Polaris

23rd May 2006, 04:02 PM

I have indeed been condescending to you. You made the most ludicrous statement that anyone who didn't agree with you was supporting terrorism. Imagine that? Merely for believing I have the right to free speech in this democratic country, and for not agreeing with the President, I must therefore only have one other possible position. And in case you haven't noticed, only 30% or so of the people in the country agree with him right now as well. Guess we're all just evil.

Really? Why don't you be so kind as to link to that statement.

I think Bush is a moron - but I happen to agree with the War on Terror, so I support him on that issue. You seem to read a hell of a lot into what I think about certain issues, considering I haven't said anything about it.

Tricky

23rd May 2006, 04:06 PM

I think Bush is a moron - but I happen to agree with the War on Terror, so I support him on that issue.
So do I. But what does that do with Iraq? It's more like "The war to recruit for the terrorists".

Polaris

23rd May 2006, 06:20 PM

So do I. But what does that do with Iraq? It's more like "The war to recruit for the terrorists".

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq war. That's the point - I've never stated one way or the other my stance on the Iraq War. All I've done is a little mythbusting of some common misconceptions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan in the 1980s, and hinted at my indescribable loathing for fundamentalist Islam.

That didn't stop skepticgirl from making the leap to assuming that I'm in lock-step with Dubya.

Tricky

23rd May 2006, 10:13 PM

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq war. That's the point - I've never stated one way or the other my stance on the Iraq War. All I've done is a little mythbusting of some common misconceptions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan in the 1980s, and hinted at my indescribable loathing for fundamentalist Islam.

That didn't stop skepticgirl from making the leap to assuming that I'm in lock-step with Dubya.
Well I'd have to say that point was missed by me too. My apologies. It sounded like you were saying that you agreed with Bush about the Iraq invasion which you considered to be part of the "war on terrorism". It is so hard to convey subtle nuances using the written word.

It is almost always a mistake to try to pigeonhole anyone because of a single position. Skeptigirl and I don't agree on everything, but she supports her arguments in ways that not many people do here, Ziggurat also being in that group. I have to respect that, even when they occasionally succumb to the heat of battle and become flame warriors. I do the same.

But better.:D

a_unique_person

24th May 2006, 12:09 AM

Really? Why don't you be so kind as to link to that statement.

I think Bush is a moron - but I happen to agree with the War on Terror, so I support him on that issue. You seem to read a hell of a lot into what I think about certain issues, considering I haven't said anything about it.
You would want it to be fought properly, though, and not incompetently, at least? Families are being destroyed, people permanently crippled, lives lost. It's not something you would want incompetents to be running.

Skeptic Ginger

24th May 2006, 02:51 AM

The only way I can deal with this discussion is to stop going back and forth and just post information.

There is no simple Bush is wonderful and he's freed the slaves crap here. Nor is it Bush's oil war, we're all in on that one.

But there are a couple of truths in amongst the multiple viewpoints.

There were big mistakes made by the Bush administration as a consequence of misjudging the Iraqi people and not being prepared for more than one contingency in the aftermath of the war.

The US government is trying to control information coming out of Iraq. (You can argue all you like about why this is and whether or not it is good or bad but the facts are irrefutable about the intent and attempts to control information.)

There has been a lot of our tax dollars being spent and a lot of that money is going to corporations with ties to Bush and Cheney or at least to companies with heavy lobbying efforts and connections. This is part of the public record.

There is very high unemployment in Iraq and there can be no doubt that when you have a lot of men sitting around, without work, watching soldiers in their streets and foreign workers with jobs the men believe they should have, you have a recipe for an insurgency.

Back to the disputed issues.

Re the returning expats, I think that's been covered. If they are returning, which may be disputable, there has been sufficient citations of reports all is not rosy. If you have any more besides returning expats as an indicator, Zig, I'd be interested in seeing it. So far it seems that's all you had indicating things were looking up in Iraq unless I missed something. The elections haven't resulted in significant change so I don't think they are much of an indicator for the moment.

Re the Lancet report. Here is an interview with the lead investigator answering Zig's concerns about the work. It seems Zig is repeating what the conservatives spread as talking points to downplay the report. It appears the real critics were concerned the numbers were not exact enough, which the researchers acknowledge, but it was whether the numbers should be much higher, not lower. Somehow I think an epidemiologist working at John Hopkins School of Public Health understands sample bias. :rolleyes:
Wednesday, December 14th, 2005
Study Shows Civilian Death Toll in Iraq More Than 100,000 (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/14/154251&mode=thread&tid=25)President Bush was asked about the Iraqi civilian death toll on Monday following his speech at the Philadelphia World Affairs Council.

* Q: Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.
* THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

President Bush’s comments took many by surprise because the administration has said little over the past 1,000 days on how many Iraqis have died because of the war and occupation. Since Bush spoke on Monday, several officials denied the government was keeping a tally on Iraqi deaths. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that Bush was "citing public estimates," not a government-produced figure. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said there is no official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq. However, Venable said the U.S. military does collect data on deaths from insurgent attacks. If the government did keep close tabs on Iraqi civilian deaths, they might likely find the number is far higher than 30,000.

Last year the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet published a study estimating that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died because of the war. The study determined that the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the US-led invasion. We are joined in Washington by the lead researcher of that report.

* Les Roberts, co-author of a 2004 study on civilian mortality in Iraq since the invasion. He is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health....

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your study, when it came out, came under enormous attack, especially from conservative forces here in the United States. Do you still stand by the methodology, and could you talk a little bit about that methodology?

LES ROBERTS: Sure. What we did was the standard way of estimating malnutrition and immunization coverage and mortality in the developing world. We got a list of how many people lived in what cities and towns and villages. We randomly allocated 33 points, in which we would go visit, and we went out to the villages or towns and picked up that point, and visited the 30 houses close. We’ve got 33 neighborhoods. We visited 30 houses in each one. And we asked people: Who lives here now? Who lived here the first of January, 2002? Had anyone been born? Had anyone died? And at the end of the interview, if they had reported someone dead, on a sub-sample, we asked, can you show us the death certificate? And about 82% of the time, they could do that. And we found that the death rate after the invasion was far, far higher than before.

The criticism of our report isn't in the method. It isn’t in the validity of our conclusion that mortality is up. It's in the imprecision. And the reason that the imprecision was so high was in part because one of the randomly picked neighborhoods was in the city of Fallujah, and while in most neighborhoods about 2% of the population had died, in Fallujah about a quarter of the population in those houses left, where we knocked on the door, had died. And as a result, we had this really huge death toll attributable to Fallujah, less than that in our other 32 neighborhoods. So, what we did was we said, okay. We're going to set that Fallujah number aside and report that we think in all of those other neighborhoods, essentially, outside of Anbar Province, we think 100,000 are dead. And we're only 90% sure it's more than 44,000. So there's a distribution around that, and it's possible it could have been 90, and it's possible it could have been 110. But we said, well, when you consider then Anbar Province, as well, the chances that it’s under 100,000 are very, very low.

That was a little nuance, I think, for the press to pick it up as a sound bite. And so, those who attacked us did not attack us for our methods. In fact, I think, if you read the reviews in the Wall Street Journal or The Economist, of what we did, the scientific community is quite soundly behind our approach. The criticism is of the imprecision. But realize the imprecision is: Was it 100,000 or was it 200,000? The question wasn't: Was it only 30 or 40? There's no chance it could have been only 30 or 40.

Here is a discussion and links to an article about Bush distorting the information prior to the war, including a rebuttal. Interested parties can read for themselves. None of us here are likely going to persuade anyone with our opinions alone. This is one of many pieces of evidence I will post more.
Monday, November 21st, 2005
The Man Who Sold the Iraq War: John Rendon, Bush's General in the Propaganda War (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/21/1516257&mode=thread&tid=25)Investigative journalist James Bamford examines how the Bush administration and Iraqi National Congress used the PR firm Rendon Group to feed journalists - including Judith Miller -- fabricated stories in an effort to sell the war. The firm has received millions in government contracts since 1991 when it was by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Iraq wasn't the first regime change case for Rendon. In 1989 the CIA turned to Rendon to use a variety of campaign and psychological techniques in Panama to put the CIA's choice, Guillermo Endara, into the presidential palace to replace Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Wiki on the Rendon group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendon_Group)

Bamford's Article in Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8798997/the_man_who_sold_the_war/)

Rendon group Denials re Bamford's story (http://www.rendon.com/letter.php)

There is additional example in the above citation on how money and prepositioning puts US selected politicians up for election in situations like occurred in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, how freely elected are these guys when they have control of the media and the money? It distorts the outcome no matter how one believes the system is free elections.

I have additional material on the Mapes/Rather memo issue which rebuts all that stuff Zig posted. I want to make it a complete report so will finish it before posting.

Ziggurat

24th May 2006, 06:08 AM

Re the Lancet report. Here is an interview with the lead investigator answering Zig's concerns about the work. It seems Zig is repeating what the conservatives spread as talking points to downplay the report. It appears the real critics were concerned the numbers were not exact enough, which the researchers acknowledge, but it was whether the numbers should be much higher, not lower.

Look, you can defend the Lancet numbers all you want, it doesn't matter. The error bars are simply huge. The UNDP numbers are in every way, shape and form preferable, AND they fall within the Lancet error bars. Even if you think the Lancet did everything right, the larger sample size alone makes the UNDP numbers vastly preferable, and their much smaller error bars (even relative to their lower means) show that pretty clearly. So why don't they get used more instead? Simple: they're not as useful for trying to prove a point, even though they're more accurate.

And actually no, the guy did NOT answer my concerns about methodology. Nothing he said addresses the arbitrary (NOT random, but human-made) pairing of provinces.

Earthborn

24th May 2006, 09:48 AM

Ziggurat, this (http://iraqmortality.org/iraq-mortality) might interest you. There is a lesson to be learned there: just because studies give different figures does not mean one must necessarily be more accurate than another. It is also possible that they don't measure the exact same thing.

articulett

24th May 2006, 11:22 AM

So how many dead civilians does Zig think there are as of today? What are his/her estimates. Who isn't biased according to Zig? Who does he trust for the total Iraqi death count estimates. And let's remember, it is the survivors who suffer--not the dead. It's those who lose limbs, property, sanity, children, and loved ones in a war based on a lie. If our leaders think what Osama did was so bad (killing civilians because their government was "evil"), how can they justify doing it to so many others--and on their own land where there is no choice but to participate. Grief over the loss of loved ones is the same no matter what (if any) god you pray to. What is gained for all this suffering and money spent? How repulsive it is to me that men can so easily justify killing others--just so long as you label the others "evil".

So Zig, how many lives are you willing to destroy and what exactly do you think this war is accomplishing and how much of our countries budget are you willing to waste outside of our country--and why the hell aren't you over there fighting for some inane "ideal"? And did you know the Natzi's reasoned very similar to you? And do you think the war might end a little sooner if the Bush twins were taken hostage? Give up you kid or your leg or your sanity or your loved one or your money if you think there is something good and noble about this war

Ziggurat

24th May 2006, 11:56 AM

So how many dead civilians does Zig think there are as of today?

My guess? Around 15,000. But that's only a guess. And neither the Lancet numbers nor the UNDP numbers actually measure that quantity, either.

Who isn't biased according to Zig?

I don't detect any bias in the UNDP report. I don't have much reason to suspect the Lancet authors deliberately tried to bias their results, but they did create methodological problems with their non-random province pairing technique, their error bars are so large that their results are almost useless, and the EDITORS of the journal are clearly guilty of bias by lying about the results within their own journal. I do not trust the Iraq Body Count numbers because it's easy for even a small group to plant false reports even among reputable journalistic sources, and we know that our enemy tries to do so.

Who does he trust for the total Iraqi death count estimates.

The UNDP numbers.

If our leaders think what Osama did was so bad (killing civilians because their government was "evil"), how can they justify doing it to so many others--and on their own land where there is no choice but to participate.

Wow. What a pathetically transparent effort to equate an attack whose SOLE PURPOSE was to kill innocent civilians in as large a number as possible with a war in which we have taken great care (greater care than any army ever has during a war of this scale) to minimize such casualties despite our enemies violating every rule of war to make that goal as hard to achieve as they can. You slander men and women far better than you, and you should be ashamed of yourself. But I doubt you are.

So Zig, how many lives are you willing to destroy and what exactly do you think this war is accomplishing and how much of our countries budget are you willing to waste outside of our country--and why the hell aren't you over there fighting for some inane "ideal"?

Lives were being destroyed all the time under Saddam. And they would continue to get destroyed, chewed up and crushed by the Ba'athist state, for decades to come had we not intervened. But you, apparently, thought that was all just fine and dandy, because hey, as long as that blood isn't on YOUR hands, what do you care how much of it got spilled? Sorry, but that's not a morally superior position to take. How much blood is it worth to free a nation from absolute tyranny? How much blood is it worth to free a country from pathologies that have trapped it in a perpetual state of misery? Quite a lot, actually.

As for what I'm doing, well, you don't know me. You don't know what I'm doing, you don't know why I'm doing it, and you don't know why I'm not doing something else. At the end of the day, I don't really have a problem with posters like Tricky with whom I disagree strongly. But when you presume to judge me personally like that without knowing me at all, well, you can just go to hell.

And did you know the Natzi's reasoned very similar to you?

You're an ignorant fool. First off, it's spelled "Nazi" not "Natzi". Secondly, ever hear of Godwin's law? This post is a case study for it. And third, no, they didn't use reasoning that resembled mine. They believed in concepts of racial superiority, that genetics determined loyalty and worth. I believe nothing of the sort. I believe loyalty is a choice, that worth is determined by our actions, not the circumstances of our birth.

This battle isn't about race, it isn't about genetics, it's not even about nationality. It's about ideology, and that is something we can CHOOSE, regardless of our birth. Those terrorists aren't terrorists because they had arab genes, they're not even terrorists because they're muslims, they're terrorists because they chose to kill innocents (mostly other arabs) in pursuit of a backwards and barbaric fantasy. How is that choice NOT evil? And what choice do you make? What values do you think are worth fight for?

Skeptic Ginger

24th May 2006, 03:12 PM

Earthborn

24th May 2006, 03:15 PM

I do not trust the Iraq Body Count numbers because it's easy for even a small group to plant false reports even among reputable journalistic sources, and we know that our enemy tries to do so.How do you know that? Has that happened, and has Iraq Body Count failed to subtract that number from their count when it did happen?

The UNDP numbers.If you compare those figures to the ones of the IBC (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/3.6.1.php), the IBC figures show themselves to be most likely an undercount, which is an inevitable effect of their methodology. Most of its critics complain that it is an undercount (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/2.php), no where does IBC feel the need to defend itself against critics that complain about it including deaths that did not happen.

My guess? Around 15,000. But that's only a guess.Very brave of you to admit that you are taking that number out of your behind. It is of course far lower than even the minimum number of what is inevitably an undercount (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) and that is the prefered number for most advocates of the war in Iraq.

How much blood is it worth to free a nation from absolute tyranny? How much blood is it worth to free a country from pathologies that have trapped it in a perpetual state of misery? Quite a lot, actually.Easy for you to say. It is not your blood.

Skeptic Ginger

24th May 2006, 03:24 PM

If our leaders think what Osama did was so bad (killing civilians because their government was "evil"), how can they justify doing it to so many others--and on their own land where there is no choice but to participate.

Wow. What a pathetically transparent effort to equate an attack whose SOLE PURPOSE was to kill innocent civilians in as large a number as possible with a war in which we have taken great care (greater care than any army ever has during a war of this scale) to minimize such casualties despite our enemies violating every rule of war to make that goal as hard to achieve as they can. You slander men and women far better than you, and you should be ashamed of yourself. But I doubt you are.

Lives were being destroyed all the time under Saddam. And they would continue to get destroyed, chewed up and crushed by the Ba'athist state, for decades to come had we not intervened.

Those terrorists aren't terrorists because they had arab genes, they're not even terrorists because they're muslims, they're terrorists because they chose to kill innocents (mostly other arabs) in pursuit of a backwards and barbaric fantasy. How is that choice NOT evil? And what choice do you make? What values do you think are worth fight for?I for one do not buy the concept that killing 40,000 civilians is OK because "they weren't targeted" while killing 3,000 that were targeted is not OK. Neither is acceptable.

In addition, targeted or not, poor decisions in how to manage Iraq after invading resulted in many of those deaths. And, good information was available to Bush about what would be needed after the invasion. He chose to ignore that information in favor of the wishful thinking of his circle of friends. It is also well documented that Bush surrounds himself with like minded advisers rather than seeking more comprehensive advice.

You are also falling back on the rationale we went to Iraq to save people from Saddam. If our goal was to save people there were many better places to invade than Iraq, and there were many better things we could have done with the money to save people by the millions. Clean water for people where they have no access would have been a good start. It's a straw man as far as justifying the war.

Ziggurat

24th May 2006, 03:47 PM

How do you know that? Has that happened, and has Iraq Body Count failed to subtract that number from their count when it did happen?

I cannot believe that it would not be attempted (because it's easy, it's low-risk, and the terrorists are first and foremost fighting a war of perception). I have no way of determining how often it has happened, nor do they have a way of determining this either. So I do not trust it.

The household surveys, on the other hand, are NOT easy to deliberately taint from the outside, because terrorists and their sympathizers cannot determine who will be contacted for the survey beforehand.

If you compare those figures to the ones of the IBC (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/3.6.1.php), the IBC figures show themselves to be most likely an undercount, which is an inevitable effect of their methodology.

But it's NOT an inevitable NET undercount, and the failure to see this possibility tells me that they have done nothing substantive to make sure of that. There is indeed a clear mechanism by which an undercount can, and to some unknown extent probably will, occur (unreported events). But they seem to consider themselves basically immune to false reporting of casualties as long as two English language sources report. But that's hardly proof, is it? It's hardly an impossibility that casualties could be staged, or numbers inflated, and that multiple western sources would pick up on the resulting wrong numbers without finding out about it. After all, what reporter cares if some story from 3 months ago reported 10 dead when there were only 5? They're not going to bust their hump to make what will be seen as a minor correction to an old story. Characterization of casualties is another problem: a terrorist gets killed, his buddies hide his weapon, and then they run to the press to report a "civilian" casualty. The press simply cannot reliably separate out combatant deaths from non-combatant deaths, and the terrorists are going to try to pass off every single death of theirs as a civilian death if they can. How many times do they succeed? I don't know, but I'm pretty confident it's not zero. There's just no real incentive to put in the work to verify every story, nor in most cases really the capacity to do so, especially old ones which were reported during the initial chaos of the invasion.

Very brave of you to admit that you are taking that number out of your behind.

Someone asked me for an estimate. I have no reliable source FOR THE INFORMATION REQUESTED, so yeah, I made a guess. What's your point?

It is of course far lower than even the minimum number of what is inevitably an undercount (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) and that is the prefered number for most advocates of the war in Iraq.

Not quite. Some advocates think that number is closer to the total number of violent deaths in Iraq. But that wasn't what I was asked for. I was asked for an estimate of the number of civilian deaths. And I gave my guess. It's a different (and larger) answer if you want the total deaths.

Easy for you to say. It is not your blood.

That argument cuts both ways: it's easy for you to say we shouldn't have toppled Saddam, because you didn't have to live under him. Both statements are true, but neither actually helps us arrive at a conclusion about what we should do. It is mere moral posturing, and it serves no purpose.

Ziggurat

24th May 2006, 03:56 PM

Neither is acceptable.

That's a fine position to take, but it's not what articulett was arguing. He was arguing based on comparing the two, and there simply is no comparison. If the casualties we have caused are wrong, they are wrong on their own demerits, period. If he has a case to make, he needs to be able to make it without such hollow moral equivalency arguments.

You are also falling back on the rationale we went to Iraq to save people from Saddam.

No, actually, I'm not. You and articulett are the ones who decided that what happens to the Iraqis should be the basis on which we decide whether or not it was OK to invade, because it's the negative consequences they have suffered which forms the basis of your argument against it. My point is that if you want to make that the centerpiece of your argument, then you CANNOT consider only the consequences to them of our invasion, you MUST consider what would have happened to them had we decided not to invade. That's your criteria, I'm just pointing out what you need to do to be consistent.

Let me know how that typeface analysis of yours is going.

Ziggurat

24th May 2006, 04:17 PM

Re Iraq civilian Body Count from the UNDP

I Googled it as you suggested and, this page (http://google.undp.org/search?output=xml_no_dtd&client=undp_frontend&proxystylesheet=undp_frontend&site=default_collection&q=iraq+civilian+deaths&x=0&y=0) led me to this page (http://www.undp-pogar.org/countries/links.asp?cid=6&thid=2) which led me to this page and these numbers. (http://www.undp-pogar.org/countries/links.asp?cid=6&thid=2)

You messed up somewhere, because the last two links are the same.

Reported civilian deaths resulting from the US-led military intervention in Iraq as of Tuesday, 23rd May 2006

reported minimum: 37848
reported maximum: 42216

A might higher than 15,000.

Several problems here. First off, those numbers are from the Iraq Body Count project, NOT from the UNDP survey. So they aren't the numbers I was talking about, and I have some issues with the reliability of those numbers (which I detailed in my response above to Earthborn).

You didn't manage to find the numbers I was actually referring to, that's OK (sometimes google searches are harder than they should be), so I'm linking to the survey now:
http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm
Look up "Volume II - Analytic reports" on the left side: it's a link to a big PDF file. On page 54 (actually the 55th page because the cover isn't numbered), it gives the TOTAL war-related deaths as 23,743, with a 95% confidence interval of 18,187 to 29,299. That is total war-related deaths, and it will include civilians, military, police, terrorsts, and insurgents. Note also that the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval for the Lancet study was actually smaller, at 14,619. In both the UNDP and Lancet case, the civilian fraction of those deaths could not be separated out. That's why, when asked, I had to guess, and I admitted I was only guessing.

Earthborn

24th May 2006, 05:09 PM

On page 54 (actually the 55th page because the cover isn't numbered), it gives the TOTAL war-related deaths as 23,743True, but that is the total war-related deaths up until the end of 2004. We are now well in 2006.
The same page shows the Iraq Body Count for the same period, and it is lower than 23 743. The UNDP estimate includes more people, so it gives us no reason to assume that IBC got it wrong.

That's why, when asked, I had to guess, and I admitted I was only guessing.Remember that you were asked "So how many dead civilians does Zig think there are as of today?" not "So how many dead civilians does Zig think there were until 7 december 2004?" So you should have based your 'estimate' on figures up until now. The UNDP report tells you nothing about that.

Tricky

24th May 2006, 06:57 PM

Not quite. Some advocates think that number is closer to the total number of violent deaths in Iraq. But that wasn't what I was asked for. I was asked for an estimate of the number of civilian deaths. And I gave my guess. It's a different (and larger) answer if you want the total deaths.
One thing I consider odd is that pro-war advocates are always throwing out numbers of how many people the Butcher of Bagdhad killed as a reason for justifying the invasion. Yet they make no attempt to separate those numbers into combatants versus civilian deaths. I'm not saying that Saddam had a right to kill anyone who opposed him, but if a whole lot of those deaths were armed enemies, then the accounting should make note of that, just as many in our post-invasions scenario are separating civilian versus combatant deaths to make the death toll seem lower.

I'm not justifying what Saddam did. I'm saying we're doing the same thing. We are suppressing an uprising. Maybe we have better reasons to do so, but if you're going to count casualties, then the way you count them needs to be consistant.

Huntster

24th May 2006, 07:25 PM

Re Iraq civilian Body Count from the UNDP...

...Reported civilian deaths resulting from the US-led military intervention in Iraq as of Tuesday, 23rd May 2006

reported minimum: 37848
reported maximum: 42216

A might higher than 15,000.

March 9 and 10, 1945. Two days. (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0310-08.htm)

Tokyo was firebombed.

The official death count was 83,000, but many put it at 100,000.

Two days.

Today's U.S. military has collateral damage minimized as much as possible.

Tricky

24th May 2006, 08:52 PM

Today's U.S. military has collateral damage minimized as much as possible.
Not as much as it would have been minimized if they hadn't invaded. You can't wash off blood with more blood. Frankly, the title of "not quite as bad as Saddam" isn't one I think the US should covet. Nor do I find it comforting to say "We used to be worse back in WWII".

Skeptic Ginger

25th May 2006, 02:03 AM

You messed up somewhere, because the last two links are the same.

Several problems here. First off, those numbers are from the Iraq Body Count project, NOT from the UNDP survey. So they aren't the numbers I was talking about, and I have some issues with the reliability of those numbers (which I detailed in my response above to Earthborn).

You didn't manage to find the numbers I was actually referring to, that's OK (sometimes google searches are harder than they should be), so I'm linking to the survey now:
http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm
Look up "Volume II - Analytic reports" on the left side: it's a link to a big PDF file. On page 54 (actually the 55th page because the cover isn't numbered), it gives the TOTAL war-related deaths as 23,743, with a 95% confidence interval of 18,187 to 29,299. That is total war-related deaths, and it will include civilians, military, police, terrorsts, and insurgents. Note also that the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval for the Lancet study was actually smaller, at 14,619. In both the UNDP and Lancet case, the civilian fraction of those deaths could not be separated out. That's why, when asked, I had to guess, and I admitted I was only guessing.

Sorry, Last link was the "Iraq Body Count" link on the page about midway. It should have been:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/

I can no longer edit the incorrect post.

Your link says 2004 in the headline.That would make the numbers off by 2 years worth of deaths. Did I miss something?

Skeptic Ginger

25th May 2006, 03:03 AM

Re the Killian memos (Dan Rather/Mary Mapes issue from above posts)

Starting with Wiki and following links from there:
"Dr. David Hailey, who holds a doctorate in technical communication and is an associate professor and director of a media lab at Utah State University, has issued a report in which he argues that the Killian documents were produced on a typewriter.[70]"

Finding the Fingerprints in the Bush Memo Fonts, David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D., Associate Professor - Technical Communication (http://imrl.usu.edu/bush_memo_study/supporting_material/bush_memos.pdf)Nature of the memos
In my opinion, there can no longer a question whether the memos were typed -- they were typed. In the executive summary of a 170 page 2nd report presented to Mapes and Smith, I express my results as:
Having examined the second set of memos and compared them to the first set, I am now confident that these memos were typed for the following reasons:
1. The evidence of character wear and damage is more apparent and persuasive than ever.
2. The evidence of character interaction is also more apparent and persuasive than ever.
3. With [no] exceptions, shape and proportion of characters are consistent with my original statements that they look like what I would have designed if I had been converting monotype (an IBM Pica) to proportional type.
4. Shape and proportion of key characters (e.g., “F,” “L,” “g,” “5”) do not fit Times New Roman or any other digital typeface I have yet found.
5. Headings are neither centered nor aligned with each other (an abnormal characteristic for any digital typeface).
6. Vertical spacing (12/13.8) is not consistent with Word defaults.
7. Vertical spacing includes fractions of carriage returns (digital software does not normally do partial carriage returns).
8. Lines in at least two memos increasingly penetrate the left margin in a manner consistent with a faulty platen.
9. Differences in wear in key characters [e.g., the “t”] occur in a manner consistent with the memos having been produced over a period of time (evolution of quality implies a mechanical process).
10. The left margin of the memos match the ragged nature of typed edges (digital edges are more nearly perfect).
11. There is clear evidence the signature interacts with the signature block in a manner consistent with a loosely held pen and typed text.
In short, the photocopied memos supported all of the contentions and predictions I made in the first report, and added a great deal more evidence. This evidence is all clear and available to anybody prepared to carefully examine the documents.

Are the memos done in Times New Roman? No.
In an examination of the possibility of Times New Roman being responsible for the memos, several characters prove to be mismatches. Most obvious is the “F,” but a few of the other mismatches include the “1,” “g,” “5,” “#,” and “L.”

Figure 1: Times New Roman “E” and “F” on top row and memo “E” and “F” on the middle row. The bottom row compared TNR to memos (green and black characters respectively) and to an “F” printed from an IBM Selectric Composer.If you go to the above link you can see all the details which don't match the computer font and spacing. In the blinking small image you posted as well as in the same one from Wiki, the tiny discrepancies are not visible.

In addition, Haily reports:The extent to which the red text fails to overlay the black text is the extent to which Times New Roman defaults fail when attempting to reproduce the memo. Certain factors become immediately clear: (1) the heading is not centered, (2) default horizontal spacing is not appropriate, (3) default vertical spacing is not appropriate.
Any argument that someone created a perfect copy of the memo in 20 minutes using Times New Roman should be immediately suspect. Furthermore, without adjusting every character independently, it is not possible to adjust Word to produce the first line. Adding
the minimum .025 pts of spacing between characters in the line results in the fit in figure 4.

I believe that by this point, it should be clear that anybody who “reproduced” this document using Times New Roman must, necessarily, have created an inexact fit or used an image management software to make their arguments work. The heading is not centered. There are multiple partial carriage returns. And the left edge behaves in a manner completely at odds with digital production. And that only includes the easily seen. A more careful examination of details shows numerous problems such as figure 6 throughout the documents.
One might argue that for some reason the author went through the document changing leading and character spacing for some unfathomable purpose, or one might suggest the following:
1. Tab in to preset heading position and type heading and date.
2. Space down to “MEMORANDUM” line, adjust platen (misaligning it), and type “MEMORANDUM.”
3. Ratchet to “subject” line and type it.
4. Type paragraph 1 and check it for errors, ratcheting it down one click too few.
5. Type paragraphs 2 and 3, then ratchet up again to check for errors.
6. Of course, you have to do nothing to get the misalignment on the left margin; typewriters do that as a matter of course – ratcheting up and down helps it along, however.

Killian documents authenticity issues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_authenticity_issues)Kerning is an option in Microsoft Word but is turned off by default. Joseph Newcomer, an expert cited by critics of the memos, explained that the memos do not display kerning, but instead use a characteristic of True type fonts he called "pseudo-kerning."

Kerning issue in detail and more from JOSEPH M. NEWCOMER, PH.D., computer science. (http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm)

NEWCOMER commenting on Hailey's work (http://www.flounder.com/bush2b.htm)

Rebuttal to what Hailey wrote to NEWCOMER. (http://www.flounder.com/bush2b.htm) It isn't as professional as I am used to but then I'm used to medical experts criticizing each other and they have a different style. I didn't see what Haily wrote to NEWCOMER, but I may have just missed it.

More from Hailey (http://wizbangblog.com/docs/Bush_Memos_v2.pdf)

Order to Report for Physical (http://www.truthandduty.com/documents/CBS001196.pdf)

Zooming in I find no letters under the previous letter (kerning issue). The way the word "Annual" appears after "SUBJECT" looks just like a typed word when you see the first A and the two 'n's slightly lower than the 'ual'. My computer printer never prints an uneven baseline like a typewriter does. Many other words in the document have the same uneven baseline.

While the title has 'th' regular script and the second to last line has 'th' as superscript, the computer default should have made them the same while a typist could have used the superscript key in one line and not in the other. Hailey states the typerwriter of the day had such a key for a superscript 'th'.

memo after missed physical (http://www.truthandduty.com/documents/CBS001193.pdf)

Same thing, I see no letters under previous letter. Some of the 'y's almost look like they cross over but if you look at an enlarged view you can clearly see they don't. And, again, the uneveness of the lettering baseline is evident all over the page. Look at the word, 'He' at the end of the second line, second paragraph, and the words 'working' and 'staff', 4th line, second paragraph near the end of the line. All of those examples have an uneven baseline that is very evident.

memo re Bush's lack of hours and can't get "rated". (http://www.truthandduty.com/documents/CBS001194.pdf)Uneven baseline again. It's hard to say if the 'p' in 'Grp', last line, middle, strikes under the 'r' and the 'th' superscript occurs again. If I had good evidence the superscript didn't exist on any typewriter at the time, that would be the only thing I see here that would be a clencher.

Frankly, being old enough to have seen many typed letters, they very much look typed at first glance because of the way the letters are not even on the baseline. And the supposed letters striking under a letter prior is not something that is clearly evident as the reports about these memos claim. Hailey certainly presented close ups of the letters showing they didn't match the Word default font as claimed.

Skeptic Ginger

25th May 2006, 03:19 AM

Media Matters has documented that not only are all the supposed inconsistencies not inconsistent, there was indeed a theme in the challenges to the authenticity of the memos.

Media Matters noted same uneven baseline as I noted. (http://mediamatters.org/items/200409100010)But these questions do not withstand scrutiny; there is solid evidence to support the authenticity of the documents, and reporters have often failed to note plausible explanations for the apparent anomalies. For example, Salon.com's Eric Boehlert noted in a September 10 article that a close examination of the documents reveals characteristics not found in word processing documents. Marty Heldt, an independent researcher Boehlert cited, "notes that when [Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B.] Killian's [alleged author of the documents] Aug. 14, 1973, memo is enlarged and the word 'interference' is examined, it's clear the two middle e's rest higher on the page than the other two e's; that is not something a modern-day word processor would likely do."And re the superscript and other typeface issues:EXHIBIT A: Superscript was available

Many news outlets and conservative publications have falsely reported that the documents' "use of the superscripted letters 'th' in phrases such as 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" raise suspicion because 1970s-era typewriters were incapable of producing such letters. In fact, journalist and weblogger Joshua Micah Marshall has pointed out that superscripted letters appear on other documents in Bush's military file that are known to be authentic. Moreover, IBM released a typewriter in the 1960s, the Selectric II, which was capable of producing superscript type....

But in fact, typewriters with proportional spacing had been available since 1941, when IBM introduced the first model. Typewriter advertisements from 1953 and 1954 suggest the feature was widely available. President Richard Nixon's official letter of resignation from 1974 used proportional spacing, as do many White House documents from the 1960s available on an online archive....

Several media outlets and conservative pundits have suggested that the apostrophes used in the CBS memos add credibility to the charge that the documents are forged. However, print advertisements for the IBM Executive Electric typewriter from as early as 1953 reveal that this typewriter featured a curlicue-type apostrophe similar to the type used in the CBS memos.....

Press reports have also emphasized that the documents appear to be written in either Times Roman or Times New Roman font, suggesting that they were produced on a modern computer word processor, not a typewriter. In fact, Times Roman font dates back at least to 1945, as this short history explains. According to another account, Times New Roman dates to 1931, and IBM specifically hired its designer, Stanley Morison, to adapt the font to the Selectric typewriter. In fact, the Selectric Composer typewriter, introduced in 1966, not only could insert superscript but also featured proportional type and a font called Aldine Roman, a font similar to Times New Roman that appears to match the font in the memos (hat tip: Daily KosThe link documents incident after incident of news media harping on the impossibility of these easily verifiable points.

Ziggurat

25th May 2006, 08:55 AM

Ziggurat

25th May 2006, 09:25 AM

Media Matters has documented that not only are all the supposed inconsistencies not inconsistent, there was indeed a theme in the challenges to the authenticity of the memos.

I note that they do not address the kerning (or more properly, pseudo-kerning) issue. Best to ignore that when you can't make a case. Yes, Media Matters is right that coverage of the issue was oversimplified and therefore wrong on a number of details. Ironic, though, that they should then turn around and ignore critical details on these same issues as well (see below).

And re the superscript and other typeface issues:The link documents incident after incident of news media harping on the impossibility of these easily verifiable points.

Yeah, funny thing about that. I looked up one of those examples of the use of superscript with a typewriter:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/9-Miscellaneous.pdf
It comes on the third page, second entry, '111th'. Yes, it's a superscript. But notice something else about it which I mentioned already: the superscript does NOT extend above the top of the line. Even typewriters that had a superscript 'th' character did not do this, because it cannot be done automatically. But of course, Media Matters wouldn't want to get into that kind of detail, would they? Readers don't actually need to know those important details, or judge for themselves, they just need to believe what we tell them to believe.

All someone has to do is produce, with a typewriter, a match that is as close to the Burkett documents as the MS Word document is, and the forgery claims won't stand. But nobody can do that. When they aren't actually lying about it (Hailey), they're reduced to picking out individual capabilities of different typewriters that could, on their own, match the document. And even then, as we see in the case of the superscript, it's not really much of a match at all. All to defend a document of unverifiable origin, from a man who cannot produce his source and claims he burned the originals, and who has lied about Bush in the past. Holding onto those documents as genuine is not a rational decision, it is a decision based purely on faith and hope. And you, as a self-proclaimed skeptic, should know better.

Ziggurat

25th May 2006, 09:36 AM

One thing I consider odd is that pro-war advocates are always throwing out numbers of how many people the Butcher of Bagdhad killed as a reason for justifying the invasion.

Not exactly. As I already pointed out above, I'm not the one making the casualties argument. The anti-war advocates are. The point about how many people Saddam killed is that if you want casualties to be your criteria, you cannot only look at casualties as a result of the invasion, you need to account for the casualties that would have happened had we chosen to not invade. And for the most part that simply doesn't happen among war critics. But ultimately, it's their argument, not mine. I'm just asking for consistency.

Yet they make no attempt to separate those numbers into combatants versus civilian deaths.

I do not claim to speak for others, but there's simply no good way for me to arrive at reliable numbers for that. Our enemies in Iraq are deliberately both creating civilian casualties AND trying to conflate civilian and terrorist deaths. I have no data I consider reliable that I can use to distinguish them. All I can do is guess, admit that I'm guessing, and catch the inevitable flack from not claiming to be omniscient.

davefoc

25th May 2006, 10:07 AM

Skeptigirl,
Thank you for the interesting links.

I was one who thought that it was very likely that Bush used family connections to avoid completing the six year stay in the national guard that he had agreed to, but despite that I also thought that it had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the "Killian memos" were fake.

I think to add anything to this discussion I would have to do some of the experiments that were suggested by Hailey and by Newcomer. And it would probably be helpful to read through some of the reports by others that have done research on this issue. I haven't done that, so any conclusions that I might have with reagard to this issue are reasonably suspect as a result.

But I have read through both Hailey's document and Newcomer's response. Based on this and previous readiing on the subject I believe that it is very likely that the "Killian memos" were faked.

Despite the patina of an objective report on the subject produced by a skilled individual I think that the Hailey report is not objective or reliable and Newcomer does an excellent job of explaining why. Although Newcomer makes a wide range of responses to Hailey's work two of his main points underly quite a few of his responses.
1. There is not enough resolution available in the available documents to justify many of Hailey's conclusions.
2. Hailey makes no attempt to find a typewriter that could have produced the "Killian memo" and instead relies on questionable critiques of the theory that the document was created by a modern word processor to prove that the document was written on a typewriter.

Having been old enough to live through the period of time in question I can tell you that there were very few devices available that did proportional typing and that to my knowledge they were used for typesetting applications. The idea that a routine memo would have been typed using one of them is highly suspect and there is evidence to suggest that no such device was in use by the individual credited with typing the memo.

At this point, a credible source claiming that this memo is genuine needs to locate a device that could have produced it. Despite lots of hand waving Hailey hasn't even attempted that.

ETA: Ziggurat made his posts while I was writing the above. I had not read his response when I wrote the above.

Huntster

25th May 2006, 10:21 AM

Not as much as it would have been minimized if they hadn't invaded. You can't wash off blood with more blood. Frankly, the title of "not quite as bad as Saddam" isn't one I think the US should covet. Nor do I find it comforting to say "We used to be worse back in WWII".

That's a two-way street:

Islamic terrorists killed nearly as many Americans with two stolen aircraft what took the Japanese Navy hundreds to achieve.

davefoc

25th May 2006, 03:18 PM

OK, I decided to waste a little time and recreate a Killian memo in word to do a little investigation on my own.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/566447626bc24931.gif

This is the word document that I created of one of the Killian memos. I screen captured it using Paint Shop Pro X.

I left word in the mode where all the edit characters are left visible so that it would be possible to recreate exactly what I had done. I left the tab set to the default position and used the tab to place text that wasn't centered and that didn't start on the left hand side. The default tab setting in word seems to be every four characters. I used Times New Roman set to 12 for the font and font size.

I printed out the CBS PDF copy of the document from here (using acrobat):
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf

I printed out the word document from paint shop pro at 91.5% of the original image size.

I compared the image I created from word (from office 97) and paint shop pro x with the Killian memo image.

There are no significant differences between the images when they are compared this way that can't be explained by a slight difference in the size of the documents produced in this way. If I had continued to mess with the printing proportion in paint shop pro x I am confident that I would have achieved two documents that were indistinguishable with the informal comparison method that I used in terms of font, letter spacing or letter alignment.

A few comments:
1. One of Haileys points seems to be that that there is an issue with the centering of the title. I had to add four spaces to the beginning of the first line and three spaces to the beginning of the second and third lines to achieve a nearly perfect alignment.

2. One of Necomer's points seems to be that there is not enough resolution in the posted documents of the image to be making detailed comparison of font details or to look for letter hammer wear patterns. This looks so obvious that I probably need to go back and look at what Hailey was talking about because if he started with the image that I found he is way past full of crap on all that stuff.

3. I recreated this document in about an hour of fidgeting on word. It borders on unbelievable that somebody thought they could get away with such a clumsy forgery and it borders on unbelievable that any 1972 typewriter or type setting device could have created this memo. This coupled with the fact that there are numerous external factors which support the idea that the memo is a forgery make the notion that this is anything but a forgery a very unlikely story. If one really wanted to attempt to make that case one needs to dig up images of the memo with more resolution, preferably the original and make the case that because of certain details that become apparent in the original that the document is unlikely to have been created with a word processor or one needs to dig up a 1972 era type setting device that could have created this memo and then one needs to make at least a credible case that TANG had that device. Barring any of this the Hailey document looks like one big pile of crap to me.

Tricky

25th May 2006, 05:36 PM

Not exactly. As I already pointed out above, I'm not the one making the casualties argument. The anti-war advocates are.
Some pro-war advocates have used the "look at all the people Saddam killed" argument. Perhaps you have not, but you know that others have. Apologies if it looked like this was aimed specifically at you.

The point about how many people Saddam killed is that if you want casualties to be your criteria, you cannot only look at casualties as a result of the invasion, you need to account for the casualties that would have happened had we chosen to not invade.
No you don't need to account for them. No "what if's" allowed because there is no end to that game. We cannot count as casualties all those we have failed to protect, or else the anti-war advocates can bring up how many people would have been saved in Afghanistan (or anywhere else) if we had deployed more troops elsewhere instead of invading Iraq.

The UN (with US input) was doing what it thought was feasible to bridle Saddam. It appeared to be working, even if not 100% effective. But even if it wasn't working, I don't wish to make it so easy to compare the US to Saddam.

And for the most part that simply doesn't happen among war critics. But ultimately, it's their argument, not mine. I'm just asking for consistency.
I do not think you are being consistant. Quite the contrary. You seem to be looking for ways to downplay the number of casualties rather than accurate counting. At least, that is my impression.

I do not claim to speak for others, but there's simply no good way for me to arrive at reliable numbers for that. Our enemies in Iraq are deliberately both creating civilian casualties AND trying to conflate civilian and terrorist deaths. I have no data I consider reliable that I can use to distinguish them. All I can do is guess, admit that I'm guessing, and catch the inevitable flack from not claiming to be omniscient.
The thing is, not being omniscient, neither you nor anyone else can reliably separate deaths into civilian and combatant, and that is my point. The only thing you can do is to consistantly call them all "casualties", both Saddam's and ours. Did Saddam kill combatants? Almost certainly he did. Some of them were most likely from the same groups of combatants we are killing.

davefoc

25th May 2006, 05:55 PM

I did a little more personal investigation on this Killian memo to get to a more precise comparison.

I changed my approach a bit.

I used Paint Shop Pro to print out a screen capture of the PDF of the May 4, 1972 memo so that it was exactly at the same scale as a microsoft word printout in my setup. The paint shop pro image was printed out at 88% of the PDF source of the Killian memo that I used.

I also used a different source for the Killian memo:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf

Then I attempted to get a microsoft word printout that matched up exactly with that.

I made a few changes to get to a near perfect alignment from what I described above.

I had to change the spacing for the bottom four empty lines to 13.5 from 14.

I changed to four spaces in front of all three lines in the heading from the 4,3,3 pattern that I used in my first test.

I added a space in front of Texas 77027.

One of Hailey's points is that the paragraph spacing is different than what Microsoft word produces. It seems that there is a minor difference between what Microsoft Word defaults to and what was actually used for the Killian Memo but at least to the accuracy of my comparison technique I had no trouble matching the vertical spacing of the Killian memo.

A second Hailey point is that the heading centering is off. He seems to be correct on this also but it doesn't seem to be much of a point if one just needs to add four spaces in front of the heading to be able to produce identical results to the Killian memo.

It seems to me that any researcher attempting to put out an objective report might mention these issues but to use them as an argument that the document couldn't have been created with a computer seems like such a biased interpretation of the situation that it suggests that Hailey is either overwhelmed by his own biases or that he is just not too bright.

articulett

25th May 2006, 07:34 PM

One thing I consider odd is that pro-war advocates are always throwing out numbers of how many people the Butcher of Bagdhad killed as a reason for justifying the invasion. Yet they make no attempt to separate those numbers into combatants versus civilian deaths. I'm not saying that Saddam had a right to kill anyone who opposed him, but if a whole lot of those deaths were armed enemies, then the accounting should make note of that, just as many in our post-invasions scenario are separating civilian versus combatant deaths to make the death toll seem lower.

I'm not justifying what Saddam did. I'm saying we're doing the same thing. We are suppressing an uprising. Maybe we have better reasons to do so, but if you're going to count casualties, then the way you count them needs to be consistant.

I agree. Moreover, let us not forget that Saddam was removed from power over 3 years ago! If our aim was to promote a democracy then perhaps we should let the Iraqi citizens vote as to whether they want us there or not.

If the people who had the most to gain from a war, were also the people who had the most to lose (loved ones, property, allegience, sanity, body parts, financially) then there would be a lot fewer wars. It is survivors who pay the biggest price in every war--not the leaders who wage them. Osama is still alive. Hitler killed himself. And soldiers always think they are fighting evil no matter what side they are on because that's the best way to get people to kill other people. I am disgusted at the mental gymnastics people go through to ignore the suffering and expense incurred by fighting for an "ideal". It's particularly vile when the ideal keeps changing--moreso, if you are the person paying the price for someone elses supposed better life. I am only interested in hearing defenses for this war from someone who has lost or stands to lose something in the battle. Every one elses motives are suspect as far as I'm concerned.

Huntster

25th May 2006, 10:01 PM

....No "what if's" allowed because there is no end to that game. .....

The converse is also true. If there are no "what ifs", then the very need for an army is void. Since we cannot ponder the consequences (no "what-ifs, because "there is no end to that game"), we simply wander blissfully ahead for the short period of time it would take for an aggressor to take control.

There are "what ifs". If you ignore them, they become events.

Ziggurat

26th May 2006, 07:10 AM

I agree. Moreover, let us not forget that Saddam was removed from power over 3 years ago! If our aim was to promote a democracy then perhaps we should let the Iraqi citizens vote as to whether they want us there or not.

Let them, or make them? Because they're free to do exactly that at this point. In fact, they were already free to do so in the last election by voting for parties which demanded our withdrawl as part of their platform. Didn't happen, though. Hmm....

If the people who had the most to gain from a war, were also the people who had the most to lose (loved ones, property, allegience, sanity, body parts, financially) then there would be a lot fewer wars.

And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his a** when he hopped. Quelle suprise! The real world isn't ideal!

I am only interested in hearing defenses for this war from someone who has lost or stands to lose something in the battle. Every one elses motives are suspect as far as I'm concerned.

If you had any consistency, you'd only want to hear arguments against the war from people who stand to lose something by letting Saddam stay in power. But that's not the case, is it? You're not really interested in fairness, you've just latched onto a convenient excuse to ignore an opposing viewpoint. How... noble of you. Really.

Tricky

26th May 2006, 09:00 AM

The converse is also true. If there are no "what ifs", then the very need for an army is void. Since we cannot ponder the consequences (no "what-ifs, because "there is no end to that game"), we simply wander blissfully ahead for the short period of time it would take for an aggressor to take control.

There are "what ifs". If you ignore them, they become events.
I'm just saying you can't use count "those that saddam would have killed" any more than you can count "those that the US would have protected elsewhere" in your statistics.

Huntster

26th May 2006, 09:12 AM

I'm just saying you can't use count "those that saddam would have killed" any more than you can count "those that the US would have protected elsewhere" in your statistics.

That's because we don't know what those precise numbers would be. But we can be very sure that the choice between the two is certain.

Tricky

26th May 2006, 09:51 AM

That's because we don't know what those precise numbers would be. But we can be very sure that the choice between the two is certain.
Not sure I understand you. Some people choose to support the war in part because of the people that Saddam would have killed. Some do not. So that choice is far from certain.

It is the ways we evaluate "Saddam deaths" versus "invasion deaths" that are not being done consistantly. One makes it "less wrong" to kill combatants. The other does not.

articulett

26th May 2006, 01:08 PM

If you had any consistency, you'd only want to hear arguments against the war from people who stand to lose something by letting Saddam stay in power. But that's not the case, is it? You're not really interested in fairness, you've just latched onto a convenient excuse to ignore an opposing viewpoint. How... noble of you. Really.

Saddam has been out of power for some time. The majority does not want us there. Other countries like Darfor want our help. Nobody in Iraq wants to give up their children to get rid of Saddam (who, once again, is out of power--not true of Osama of course). Tell me, how much of a tax break did you get from this president? And you don't have investments in oil or military supplies or Halliburton do you? Because These are the only people I know who think this massive suffering and expense inflicted upon others is worth it somehow for some magic ideal that keeps changing. Your self congratulating words can't hide your hypocracy any more than the presidents lies can hide his. Why don't you go be Mr. noble and volunteer yourself and your loved ones for this "war on terror"--or rouse up donations for kevlar vests and reinforced jeeps maybe--talk is cheap. Suffering is concrete. So is expense.
It's repulsive to sell "ideals" at such costs. And those who profit from this war have a very biased stake in selling lies to others.

Ziggurat

26th May 2006, 05:05 PM

Saddam has been out of power for some time. The majority does not want us there.

Really? How do you know? Got any poll results to back up that claim?

Other countries like Darfor want our help.

Darfur is not a country. It is a region of the country of Sudan. The majority of people in that region might want us to come in with our military, but the majority of the country does not. Similarly, the majority of people in the Kurdish provinces want us in Iraq, which kind of negates your point. You're an ignorant fool. Every reason used to attack our involvement in Iraq applies to Sudan as well.

Nobody in Iraq wants to give up their children to get rid of Saddam

How do you know that? Did you do a poll?

Tell me, how much of a tax break did you get from this president? And you don't have investments in oil or military supplies or Halliburton do you?

You got me. I'm actually one of the primary stockholders of Halliburton, and I've made billions of dollars off of killing Iraqi babies. I'm pure EVIL! EVIL, I TELL YOU!! EEEEEVIL!

Check your meds. I think you might need to up your dose.

Because These are the only people I know who think this massive suffering and expense inflicted upon others is worth it somehow for some magic ideal that keeps changing.

Your lack of friends who aren't as barking mad as you are isn't my problem.

Why don't you go be Mr. noble and volunteer yourself and your loved ones for this "war on terror"--or rouse up donations for kevlar vests and reinforced jeeps maybe--talk is cheap.

Why weren't you a human shield? Why haven't you volunteered for one of those NGOs which provide services for Iraqis? Talk is indeed cheap, worm. You don't know anything about me, and I'm not exactly inclined to inform you at this point.

Polaris

26th May 2006, 08:27 PM

Why don't you go be Mr. noble and volunteer yourself and your loved ones for this "war on terror".

Maybe because this is America and people can make decisions on their own - not be subject to the whims of others.

Huntster

26th May 2006, 11:49 PM

...Some people choose to support the war in part because of the people that Saddam would have killed. Some do not. So that choice is far from certain....

It's certain for them.

...It is the ways we evaluate "Saddam deaths" versus "invasion deaths" that are not being done consistantly. One makes it "less wrong" to kill combatants. The other does not.

So, it is less wrong to invade and kill combatants, isn't it?

Tricky

27th May 2006, 12:09 PM

It's certain for them.
LOL. Yes it is. And suicide bombers are "certain" that they are doing Allah's will. Strong belief is not the same as certainty, Huntster.

So, it is less wrong to invade and kill combatants, isn't it?That would seem to be the reasoning behind those who try to separate casualties into combatants and "innocent civilians". I don't even disagree with it. I just say that in a war like this one, it's often quite difficult to tell the difference. And it is impossible to tell how many of those who Saddam killed were non-combatants, but it is highly likely that it wasn't all of them.

Tricky

27th May 2006, 12:32 PM

Really? How do you know? Got any poll results to back up that claim?
I've had a hard time Googling hard data. This is the best I could find (http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbcpoll06-4.html)that seemed to be of an independant source (BBC). Taken last February, it does not show that an overwhelming number of Iraqis want troops to leave right now. In fact, it's about even.

The questions are a little too general to get a good view, but in general they do not support the view that Iraqis want us out, at least not right away. I was incorrect about this, based on this poll.

http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/images/bbc06-4_1.png

On the subject of whether it was right to remove Saddam, Iraqis are solidly in favor of it, 74 to 23%
http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/images/bbc06-4_3.png
But as to whether the invasion increased or decreased terrorism, most of the world agrees it increased terrorism.
In Iraq, it's 75%. In the US, it's 55%.
http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/images/bbc06-4_2.png

Huntster

27th May 2006, 12:35 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
So, it is less wrong to invade and kill combatants, isn't it?

That would seem to be the reasoning behind those who try to separate casualties into combatants and "innocent civilians". I don't even disagree with it. I just say that in a war like this one, it's often quite difficult to tell the difference....

That's what makes guerrilla war so difficult. It's difficult to find the enemy, and it's difficult to distinguish them from "innocents".

That's what makes it such an attractive tactic for entities who don't have the infrastructure of an army, and also makes it such a difficult struggle for an army/state (bound to behave under rules of war and morality) to defeat.

...And it is impossible to tell how many of those who Saddam killed were non-combatants, but it is highly likely that it wasn't all of them....

True. However, attacks like those on Birjinni on August 25, 1988 (http://www.phrusa.org/research/chemical_weapons/chemiraqgas2.html) with nerve agents clearly shows an attack, using WMDs, that the United States hasn't done, and which was clearly an attack which was indiscriminate and which would include innocents (like all 4 victims of that particular attack).

articulett

27th May 2006, 12:50 PM

Maybe because this is America and people can make decisions on their own - not be subject to the whims of others.

Indeed. We certainly are not forced to fight in wars or have wars on our land. Others do not have that choice. Sometimes it is because we inflict the war upon them. Killing people who have no voice and no choice ends those lives and devastates survivors. I think it imperative to understand what the goals are and how many lives are worth destroying and how much money is worth spending before beginning such an endeavor. I think that those who have something to lose should be the one's making the decisions in regard to war and those who have something to gain should be the targets of attack.

No matter how you slice it, war causes tremendous upheaval, suffering, expense, and damage-- I think there really ought to be more than "ideals" and "oil interests" and pretending to "fight a war on terror" propping up such horrendous ruination. These losses are measurable--and yet we have no measurable gains except for the toppling of Saddam (which had nothing to do with the reasons this war was sold to Americans and the world). I think it's time to cut our losses, but those who disagree, are always free to volunteer.

Huntster

27th May 2006, 01:38 PM

Originally Posted by Polaris :
Maybe because this is America and people can make decisions on their own - not be subject to the whims of others.
Indeed. We certainly are not forced to fight in wars or have wars on our land. Others do not have that choice. Sometimes it is because we inflict the war upon them. Killing people who have no voice and no choice ends those lives and devastates survivors. I think it imperative to understand what the goals are and how many lives are worth destroying and how much money is worth spending before beginning such an endeavor....

As I understand it, the goal was to end a dangerous, despotic regime, and offer the same kind of decision-making that we enjoy to those in that beleagured land.

... think that those who have something to lose should be the one's making the decisions in regard to war...

With regard to the people of Iraq, they are becoming able to make those decisions.

.......we have no measurable gains except for the toppling of Saddam (which had nothing to do with the reasons this war was sold to Americans and the world)....

It is my opinion that the toppling of Saddam was worthy enough of the war.

...I think it's time to cut our losses, but those who disagree, are always free to volunteer.

"Cutting losses" wasn't an option in WWII, it was a poor decision in both Vietnam and Korea, and it isn't a decent option today.

Engaging in war should be viewed as a one-way decision. Once it is decided upon, it should be conducted with only one goal;

Total victory.

CapelDodger

27th May 2006, 05:54 PM

As I understand it, the goal was to end a dangerous, despotic regime, and offer the same kind of decision-making that we enjoy to those in that beleagured land.
As presented to the electorate the goal was to end a dangerous regime, its despotism not being an issue. By dangerous I mean of direct danger to the US. The US electorate has never favoured intervention anywhere simply for the sake of oppressed people. Even the Nazis had to declare war on the US to finally bring it on.

The real motivefor the Iraq War is an entirely different matter from how it was sold to the electorate, the so-called decision-makers. For it to be sold, Saddam had to appear dangerous, which explains why WMD and terrorism dominated the presentation. The "brutal dictator" talk was froth on the substantive message, that this brutal dictatorship represented a direct threat to the US.

The real decision-makers decided on the Iraq War and set about squaring the nominal decision-makers - the kind of electorate that universal suffrage produces. The message tells us nothing about why the decision-makers decided on the war in the first place.

Huntster

27th May 2006, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
As I understand it, the goal was to end a dangerous, despotic regime, and offer the same kind of decision-making that we enjoy to those in that beleagured land.

As presented to the electorate the goal was to end a dangerous regime, its despotism not being an issue.

It's despotism was an issue. It wasn't a legal reason, but it is a moral reason.

Do you disagree?

...By dangerous I mean of direct danger to the US. The US electorate has never favoured intervention anywhere simply for the sake of oppressed people. Even the Nazis had to declare war on the US to finally bring it on...

That's because Americans are very slow to anger, and that's good.

Saddam had become a direct danger to the United States. The United States worked through the United Nations, and had gotten resolutions enacted against Iraq. Iraq screwed them up.

We went the political and legitimate distance. Iraq did not.

...The real motivefor the Iraq War is an entirely different matter from how it was sold to the electorate, the so-called decision-makers. For it to be sold, Saddam had to appear dangerous, which explains why WMD and terrorism dominated the presentation. The "brutal dictator" talk was froth on the substantive message, that this brutal dictatorship represented a direct threat to the US....

Do you deny that Saddam was "dangerous"?

Do you deny that Saddam was a "brutal dictator"?

Do you deny that Saddam was a direct threat to the U.S.?

...The real decision-makers decided on the Iraq War and set about squaring the nominal decision-makers - the kind of electorate that universal suffrage produces. The message tells us nothing about why the decision-makers decided on the war in the first place.

You have the sequence right. You'd better believe that insiders had made the decision to invade and conquer Saddam long before it happened.

That's the benefit of intelligence. You don't get it on a daily, real-time basis, and neither do I. The President and his cabinet does.

Lots on this forum have no trust beyond themselves. That's unfortunate, because the rest of us don't know them.

We (as Americans) elect our representatives, in both the Legislative and Executive Branches. We must trust them (until they prove otherwise).

Are you indicating that GW Bush has acted otherwise?

CapelDodger

27th May 2006, 06:33 PM

It is my opinion that the toppling of Saddam was worthy enough of the war.
No shame in bugging-out now, then. The Iraqis have been given democracy, they've had elections, they've formed a government (give or take a key Ministry or two), they have security forces and further training and back-up could be out-sourced. Maybe to Chinese companies - but best let that mature after the elections. It's definitely time to declare victory and go home. Has been so for a while. Whatever the real reason for the Iraq War, it hasnt been achieved and isn't going to be.

"Cutting losses" wasn't an option in WWII, it was a poor decision in both Vietnam and Korea, and it isn't a decent option today.

Engaging in war should be viewed as a one-way decision. Once it is decided upon, it should be conducted with only one goal;

Total victory.
There's a fallacy of scale in combining WW2 - which was two major wars at once for the US, the Pacific War and the War on Hitler, and a Cold War in the background - with such side-issues as Korea and Vietnam. Or Iraq, for that matter.

Victory over Japan was easily defined - unconditional surrender because their power to wage war has been destroyed. Victory over Hitler was as easily defined. What was victory in Indo-China, or Korea? And how much did it really matter?

The US-Japan contest over the fate of the West Pacific was inevitably going to be fought out. The outcome was of crucial importance to the US. The War on Hitler was more about not letting the Russians do the job alone and take control of continental Europe, which also mattered to the US. Korea and Vietnam were elective wars. As is the Iraq War.

Huntster

27th May 2006, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by Huntster :
It is my opinion that the toppling of Saddam was worthy enough of the war.

No shame in bugging-out now, then. The Iraqis have been given democracy, they've had elections, they've formed a government (give or take a key Ministry or two), they have security forces and further training and back-up could be out-sourced....

Yup. No shame. In fact, there should be a level of pride.

How about a tempered, thoughtful withdrawal? One that doesn't jeopardize the gains made?

...they have security forces and further training and back-up could be out-sourced. Maybe to Chinese companies.....

You think Chinese security companies can do better than American security companies?

Why so?

...but best let that mature after the elections. It's definitely time to declare victory and go home....

Is it? Says who? By what criteria?

...Has been so for a while. Whatever the real reason for the Iraq War, it hasnt been achieved and isn't going to be....

By your own admission, you don't even know the objective.

How do you know if it has been achieved?

"Cutting losses" wasn't an option in WWII, it was a poor decision in both Vietnam and Korea, and it isn't a decent option today.

Engaging in war should be viewed as a one-way decision. Once it is decided upon, it should be conducted with only one goal;

Total victory.

There's a fallacy of scale in combining WW2 - which was two major wars at once for the US, the Pacific War and the War on Hitler, and a Cold War in the background - with such side-issues as Korea and Vietnam. Or Iraq, for that matter....

Are you stating that the Cold War was foreseen before 1944?

Korea? Vietnam? Foreseen?

...Victory over Japan was easily defined - unconditional surrender because their power to wage war has been destroyed....

No, it hadn't. The atomic attack was designed to, and successfully, culminated the war and eliminated the need for a U.S. ground force invasion.

...Victory over Hitler was as easily defined. What was victory in Indo-China, or Korea? And how much did it really matter?...

That's the issue I figured you liberal types would be using all along. With Korea, the result is apparent. With Vietnam, after the past 30 years, the issue could be argued.

I suppose the reason most folks don't argue the Vietnam situation is that they simply don't know the situation, even though it may have defined their lives.

...The US-Japan contest over the fate of the West Pacific was inevitably going to be fought out....

Then credit the Japanese military for recognizing that and acting progressively.

You are free to condemn the American Pacific Command for not realizing that and dealing with it effectively.

But, then, if the U.S. Navy did deal with it effectively, you wouldn't like that either, would you?

...The outcome was of crucial importance to the US. The War on Hitler was more about not letting the Russians do the job alone and take control of continental Europe, which also mattered to the US. Korea and Vietnam were elective wars. As is the Iraq War....

You're a bit early, aren't you?

The United States government had no problems with Hitler's campaign with Old Joe. In fact, I'd speculate that FDR was heartbroken to support Stalin.