Bush's Handling Of The War

[spencerny]

Tons of things Bush could have done differently: Don't jump the gun on questionable if not fudged intel, wait a bit to gather more intel and also the support of the U.N. , anticapated a huge friggin' insurgency that would make building a 'new' Iraq damned near impossible, better preparing our troop's with things like actual armour for their vehicles, and thinking about the fact that he'd be stretching our armed forces to the limits in a time when one bad incident with N. Korea, China, Seria and any other middle-east country would all but necesitate the draft because we just plain don't have enough troops.

[chrisfan]

shin said:

chrisfan said:

And if Bush and his administration were to step down, you'd havea President Hastert, not Kerry ... but you know that.

Kinda like I know the tax cuts won't be repealed.

Why repeal them if the government gets more money by keeping them low?

[Artknocker]

So if I'm to understand spencer, Bush should have been psychic, and if I'm to understand shin, Bush should have ignored all the atrocities and oppression carried out by the Hussein regime (not to mention Saddam's providing safe harbor to Al-Qaeda terrorists). And I thought liberals were supposed to be the compassionate humanitarians. Silly me.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Here's something to think about, to chew on for a little bit so to speak:

To me, it seems frightening that history has only repeated itself from an American perspective only forty years later. You take Bush out of the equation and speak of LBJ and you remove Rumsfeld and add Macnamera and you've basically gone down a road that we have trodded down before. For one thing, it's been proven that the Gulf of Tonkin never happened. It was a fudge from the get go and this is where the similarity between Vietnam and Iraq arise. Johnson and his administration was stubborn to admit mistakes and the idea was to contain communism. Look later on down the road and Vietnam is still a Communist state as well as China and Cuba. We didn't contain communism and eradicate it off of the face of the earth. It's still alive and well today. If you watch the debates between Goldwater (the father of actual conservatism) and LBJ, you see a conservative blast the Democrats for going to war and following down a dark path. Vietnam did nothing to further any American ideals, other than stick our noses somewhere where it didn't belong.

My opinion on Iraq is that you will never convince me that there was a correspondance with Saddam and September 11th. The intelligence doesn't support it and the historical record of his bad relationship with Bin Laden proves this. We have no buisness there.

Eradicating Terrorism would be for us to pull out of the middle east all together. I thought we should be more concerned with our country and quite honeslty I am not interested in bringing democracy to other countries when our own has been losing steam for some time now and it was way before Bush was ever in office. Bush is just another example of our government being a sickness on it's own people. Republican or Democrat doesn't matter to me because I don't think there has ever been a time in this country where the people have been not represented at all by blind power greedy morons.

I also think shaking a finger at a country and saying "you will be a democracy or else" is about the most undemocratic thing you could do. Americans should really stop being so selfish and learn that not all the countries in the world are not going to fall in line with us and shouldn't be villified in the process.

I honestly think that if you started a draft and started making WWII measures where there were rations, we'd get the real opinions of what the public thinks of the war. I honestly can't understand why the public at large thought that this was going to be a short and sweet "year of kicking ass" and then our boys would be home with low casualties. This just wasn't a realistic attitude to approach it with. For one thing, Bush the first could have avoided this by removing Saddam when there was a popularity for it in this country and in Iraq. We left them high and dry the first time and now all of sudden there are supposed to trust us? How? We've failed them several times over the last fifteen years, to them, why should this be any different. Also, if it comes to the consesus during the talks of an Iraqi constitution, Bush has said he would not support a federation that would allow an Islamic state in the south of Iraq but would like for them to continue with their special treatment of the Kurds. Is that democratic? Are we respecting the wishes of a sovereign people in their own backyard? Why is the support of militant Jewish state okay, but a muslim one isn't? Why do you never hear of the Palestinian Christians that are wanting have their own country along with the Muslims?

Hmmmm......it's not a matter of being unpatriotic, it's a matter of learning the lessons of stupidity and paying attention. The whole thing is a waste of time and a money sucker. Our economy would be kicking much more right now if we didn't have a wasteful war to pay for. To me, the ultimate support of the troops would be for us to pull out and bring them home. It makes me sick that almost 2000 young people have had to die for the misguided wishes of our own President. Yes, it's a volunteer Army and it was their choice, but unless our own country is truly threatened, we should do away with military operations for our POTENTIAL interests.

Side note: Think about this, to the British crown we were insurgents and the war for our independance was really fought over a very minute tax. Interesting to think about.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

artknocker said:

So if I'm to understand spencer, Bush should have been psychic, and if I'm to understand shin, Bush should have ignored all the atrocities and oppression carried out by the Hussein regime (not to mention Saddam's providing safe harbor to Al-Qaeda terrorists). And I thought liberals were supposed to be the compassionate humanitarians. Silly me.

Hey Art, until Sept 11th, we ignored those atrocities performed by Hussein and his cohorts. Not to mention that the Al Qaeda connection is totally false and I don't know how many times people have covered this. Saddam was a secularist who was not into Islam. You're argument is weak at best. Even guys like Michael Savage were against the war from the beginning.

[chrisfan]

Couple of fact check corrections for you skvor ...

First, no one but a few numbnuts is making any connection between Iraq and Sept 11. The connection is between Iraq and TERRORISM. Terrorism IS NOT a synonym for Sept 11.

Second, BEFORE September 11 - in fact, before George W Bush was elected president - the official policy of the US towards Iraq was regime change.

[chrisfan]

One more question Skvor -- You talk about how wrong it is for the US to FORCE democracy on the rest of the world. I would assume that when you talk about our telling a country "you will be a democracy or else", you're speaking of Iraq.

Iraq is a mess right now, no question. There is too much violence there, and it's a problem. But it's been pretty well established that a great deal of that violence is comingfrom people who have come in to the country, and not from the Iraqi people themselves. When you take that, and you apply it to the pictures we all saw of the Iraqi elections - the people celebrating with their purple fingers - what was FORCED about that joy?

[skvorisdeadsorta]

chrisfan said:

Couple of fact check corrections for you skvor ...

First, no one but a few numbnuts is making any connection between Iraq and Sept 11. The connection is between Iraq and TERRORISM. Terrorism IS NOT a synonym for Sept 11.

Second, BEFORE September 11 - in fact, before George W Bush was elected president - the official policy of the US towards Iraq was regime change.

No shit. I do find it kind of funny that the line "Terrorism is not a Synonym for Sept. 11th". So was that not a terrorist act or was that just tea time for a couple of EGYPTIANS and their 19 SAUDI friends?

I am well aware of the position was, it's funny to me THAT THEY DIDN'T DO IT WHEN THEY HAD THE CHANCE FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, THE FIRST TIME AROUND. Seriously, fucking read.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Forced because the Pentagon has produced the documents that have said and I'm quoting from Drudge and a few other news sites that many were blackmailed with the withholding of their food rations and provisions if they did not show up for the election. I have a couple of friends back from Iraq who have corroberated this for me.

[chrisfan]

Look dude - you're the one who is claiming that the side supporting Bush is making claims that THEY ARE NOT MAKING. Don't make idiotic claims that and blame me for not being able to read.

[Artknocker]

I don't believe that is true about Savage. But, yes, Bush Sr. should have taken out Saddam when he had the chance. So if it was OK then, why was it not OK now? He was still the same Saddam. Just because we turned a blind eye to him before 9/11, we should continue to do so after 9/11? That doesn't sound very wise. Maybe we should have just continued to ignore terrorism altogether, and continued to take our lumps, no matter how many more thousands of innocent civilians would have had to die on our soil while we'd sit on our hands. See, I just can't understand the pacifist approach. Our intelligence exists for a reason, and it's not for the president to ignore it when they tell him Iraq has WMDs and connections to Al-Qaeda. If Bush failed to take action after being presented with that information and we got hit again, you libs would still be screaming about what an idiot he is and you'd probably throw in for good measure how he's his father all over again. The bottom line is that Bush was diplomatic for an entire year--he went the UN route--but Hussein continued to defy UN resolutions (that he had agreed to) to disarm and allow weapons inspectors full access. Instead, for whatever reason, he led us to believe that he had stockpiled WMDs and he refused to cooperate with every reasonable request set forth by Bush and the UN. He forced our hand, so we forced him out, and eventually we captured him. But anti-war libs don't want to acknowledge any of that--they'd rather blame Bush for everything and can't give him a shred of credit for anything. So we haven't hit the jackpot on the WMD trail yet. What if we were able to find the stockpile? Would that finally prove that he was a threat to us? Also, I find it so ironic that some people can in one breath express such concern about our troops' welfare and in the other breath keep harping on the mild-by-comparison abuses at Abu Ghirab and Guantanamo Bay. That doesn't sound like support to me. When one of our troops captures an innocent civilian and cuts his head off, then you let me know.

[Artknocker]

You don't replace one dictatorship with another dictatorship. What would be the point? So what's the alternative? Democracy. How can you be against promoting freedom, when that's what will protect and benefit both us and the Iraqis in the long run? Dictatorships have a track record of supporting terrorism. Democracies don't.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Chrisfan, you're not getting it. Try to think insteadof back peddling into the something that I am not insinuating. I don't even really know what you're talking about.

Art, where to begin? Here goes.

Michael Savage has voiced his unhappiness over the handling of the war and the Bush administration because he is a CONSERVATIVE, not a republican and has done so on several occasions of his broadcast. Did you know that he is also an environmentalist and animal rights advocate? In fact most conservatives disagree with Bush vehemently on a plethora of issues because, in my opinion, Bush is not a conservative.

The US government has supported the Hussein regime in much darker times in the 80s. Need I remind you of our support of them during the Iran war and the fact that most of their weapons came directly from us. We've been supplying despot regimes with old weapons for decades now, this is nothing new. It's also honestly not my idea to ignore terrorism, but to just pull out of the Middle East all together. Is it really that wrong for us to just simply leave them be and let them run their governments how they want? Must I also cite the obvious that this game of my enemy is my friend is now my enemy, is my friend again and is sometimes my enemy on Tuesdays game is really just ridiculous? We supported Bin Laden and built his infrastructure to combat the "evil soviets" during the Soviet/Afghanistan conflict only to have us support Putin's war on the Chechnyan rebels now, which wasn't that long ago.

For one thing, I am not a pacifist by any means. If there was a suicide bomber across the street from me tomorrow, since we do have the second amendment, I'd shoot his ass on site. That's defending, actually defending my country. Going to Iraq to surmise on the experiment of stabilising the least Islamic country in the middle east, in my opinion, is not the furtherment of democracy or the American ideal. Bush is not the first to use unilateralism though and I have always hated the fact that the moveon.orgers seem to have forgotten their history lessons. We've done that for a very long time with the Monroe doctrine, Roosevelt Corrollary, and Manifest Destiny. He's not the first and he most definitely won't be the last and he certainly hasn't really set a dangerous prescendent. In my opinion that prescedent was selt long ago and it's one that I have never agreed with.

Yes our intelligence exists for a reason but I personally think their is more to the Downing memo than just being "taken out of context".

If we got hit again Art, I wouldn't be screaming about what an idiot we are, I'd just go about my buisness. You see I don't believe that there is freedom in the pursuit of sercurity, but quite frankly, we've never been a true democracy and congress violated the First Amendment with the Sedition Act the first chance it got.

Capturing Hussein did nothing to further my interest or freedom. Nothing.
As far as supporting the troops thing, complaining about some troops playing Abu Grab Ass is the biggest example of rhetoric I have ever seen and is just reaching for something to complain about. The one credible complaint that I do find is holding "enemy combantants" indefinitely is a bad idea for the safety of our own soldiers. We should lead by example and holding someone indefinitely is just a bad idea. We didn't even do that to the Nazis.

Also, Art, we have been supporting and replacing dictatorships with other dictatorships for years. YEARS. One example would be that of what happened on Sept. 11th of 1973 in the country of Chile.........look it up. Democracies don't support Terrorism? Really? Hmmmmm, what about the example of Nicaugra and El Savador with the whole Iran Contra thing?

Man, seriously get off of the lib thing, too because there are several of us that don't buy into the pack of poisonous snakes that is our current two party system. Really, in my opinion, the terms "lib" and "conservative" have been thrown around way too much by the media and others to create this us and them atmosphere, which quite frankly, it's just much more complicated than that.

[chrisfan]

Skvor - In post #33 you said:

My opinion on Iraq is that you will never convince me that there was a correspondance with Saddam and September 11th. The intelligence doesn't support it and the historical record of his bad relationship with Bin Laden proves this. We have no buisness there.

and in #34 you said

"Hey Art, until Sept 11th, we ignored those atrocities performed by Hussein and his cohorts."

Your words -- not mine. No one is TRYING to convince you that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 - so why mention it? And your claim to Art that we ignored the atrocities before 9/11 is false. Not sure why you are so insistent on using false statements to bolster yourarguments. But I'm even less sure as to why you depend so much on insults to make your arguments. Unless of course it is that your actual arguments are so incredibly weak and not based on fact.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

No one is trying to? Did you put your brain in a mego brain case or did you walk into a real life Men In Black minderaser? I remember that Bush, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and several others in the administration have made that correllation that Hussein had ties to the actual act of September 11th. I remember Cheney stating so on "Meet the Press" very vividly, it was also mentionable because people HAVE tried to convince me of it. Holy shit, because you didn't argue the point personally does that make it untrue? Man, I didn't think you were that narcissistic.

My claim that we ignored the atrocities is false? Did we go in and shut down Hussein when he gased his own people, with Serain gas bought from us mind you, in the Iran/Iraq war? NO!Jesus, Chrisfan, I'm also not being that insulting for you to actually read my post. I thought it was pretty clear. Seriously, I have nothing against you personally, other than you are the king fo semantics and redundancy. Man.