Originally posted by Sushipunk
As opposed to... other politicians? :p
Not every politician gets your whole country involved in meaningless wars.
Sushipunk
quote:
Originally posted by Zharen
Not every politician gets your whole country involved in meaningless wars.
Sure, but I meant it in a more general sense :p
pkcRAISTLIN
i dunno how killing darkie could ever be described as "meaningless".
but in seriousness, what kind of retaliation should the US have taken after 911?
Zharen
^
They should have just focused on Afghanistan and taking out OBL. Iraq was never a threat. Were any WMD's found in Iraq after 8 years of occupying the country? No. Did Iraqis participate in the 911 bombings? No. Has sectarian violence increased between Sunnis and Shiites since we've gotten involved in their country? Yes. Maybe had we simply engaged in trying to win one war instead of fighting two at the same time, we could have gotten Osama back in 2004 or 2005, not 10 years later. How embarrassing is that? Greatest ing country in the world with the most superior military and surveillance equipment. Still takes them over a decade just to find the guy? Oh but then we find out from our great leader Bush, only 9 months after the September 11th attacks, that suddenly Osama is no longer the priority. The one who supposedly masterminded the largest terrorist attack on the US since Pearl Harbor, and now he's no longer of importance because terror has more than one face? I'm sorry but I think there was something extremely fishy about that, and to this day I still do. Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but it seemed to me all that Texan ever was interested in was Iraq from the get go.
So, you ask why I called the Iraq war meaningless? Well generally, when you're trying to attack the enemy, you don't go invading a country that said enemy isn't a part of. Call me crazy, but that just sounds counterintuitive.
And don't get me wrong, I don't think that highly of Obama either, but the main thing that sets him apart from Bush was that Obama finished the job. He didn't go on tv and say "Well, he's been marginalized. He took out 300 or so American lives but he has no command structure now so we don't need to find him." He actually got the bastard and made him pay.
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by Zharen
^
They should have just focused on Afghanistan and taking out OBL. Iraq was never a threat.
yeah i agree but your original statement was "meaningless wars" which can only mean iraq AND afghanistan to my mind, so i was just clarifying.
OrangestO
Saddam Hussein was as good of a dictator as any for Iraq, all things considered.
Zharen
quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
yeah i agree but your original statement was "meaningless wars" which can only mean iraq AND afghanistan to my mind, so i was just clarifying.
Oh ok. Had some vodka and beers last night while typing. My bad.
zGoogleman
A very boring time when people in their 40s dressed just as bad as their children.
DJ RANN
quote:
Originally posted by Zharen
^
They should have just focused on Afghanistan and taking out OBL. Iraq was never a threat. Were any WMD's found in Iraq after 8 years of occupying the country? No. Did Iraqis participate in the 911 bombings? No. Has sectarian violence increased between Sunnis and Shiites since we've gotten involved in their country? Yes. Maybe had we simply engaged in trying to win one war instead of fighting two at the same time, we could have gotten Osama back in 2004 or 2005, not 10 years later. How embarrassing is that? Greatest ing country in the world with the most superior military and surveillance equipment. Still takes them over a decade just to find the guy? Oh but then we find out from our great leader Bush, only 9 months after the September 11th attacks, that suddenly Osama is no longer the priority. The one who supposedly masterminded the largest terrorist attack on the US since Pearl Harbor, and now he's no longer of importance because terror has more than one face? I'm sorry but I think there was something extremely fishy about that, and to this day I still do. Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever, but it seemed to me all that Texan ever was interested in was Iraq from the get go.
So, you ask why I called the Iraq war meaningless? Well generally, when you're trying to attack the enemy, you don't go invading a country that said enemy isn't a part of. Call me crazy, but that just sounds counterintuitive.
And don't get me wrong, I don't think that highly of Obama either, but the main thing that sets him apart from Bush was that Obama finished the job. He didn't go on tv and say "Well, he's been marginalized. He took out 300 or so American lives but he has no command structure now so we don't need to find him." He actually got the bastard and made him pay.
Well, If that riles you up, wait until you see this:
Yes, she annoys me too sometimes, but Bush is honestly trying to re-write history with his own version of both the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina.
It actually asks, during the Decision Points Game, for you to make decision about "removing Saddam from power" and your options are:
1) "get another UN resolution" (er, we didn't actually have the first)
2) Lead a Coalition against him (love the use of "lead" and coalition)
3) Do nothing (yeah, because that's your only other option as the leader of the free world).
Somehow, he actually wants us to now think that deposing Saddam was a legitimate basis for war.
There was a personal reason for going in to Iraq. Has to do with Rumsfeld, Haliburton and Oil companies getting fleeced by Saddam, and W's desperate need to be more successful than Daddy (as Daddy failed the first time and pulled out of Iraq when he actually had a somewhat legitimate reason to at least support Kuwait).
I hope people never forget what a ing two faced moron that ****bag was.
Lagrangian
HERE WE GO!
George W. Bush was a great president and a fine leader. Historians will eventually come to that conclusion, despite the vitriolic rants of his unhinged detractors.
History usually rates our wartime presidents (Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman to name a few) as our best leaders. These men got us through grueling, bitter wars despite opposition from home and abroad. In that same vein, President Bush fought on a broad front against Al-Qaida, the Taliban, the waffling Democrats (they voted for the war before they voted against it), the biased news media, far-left characters such as Democrat Senator Harry Reid (he said the Iraq war was lost while it was being won) and Democrat Senator Dick Durbin (he compared American troops to Nazis), and even a handful of well-intentioned dopes such as Cindy Sheehan.
And all the while, the U.S. under Bush’s leadership, was winning this struggle. That’s why George Bush will go down in history as one of our great presidents. Also, he has freed more than 48 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan (especially Muslim women), which is more than anyone else in recent memory.
With regard to Iraq and WMD, historians probably will provide an entirely different slant on what is today’s popular opinion. A 2006 article in the National Review by Deroy Murdock ("Set WMD Truth Free") asserts that "Americans in Iraq have found 500 sarin and mustard gas filled artillery shells, live botulinum toxin, cyanide salt, and two tons of uranium." The 500 munitions out of 3,000 reported to exist in Iraq were found in scattered locations rather than at a single site, and the chemical/nerve agent rounds were still very deadly with an efficient built-in dispersion system triggered upon detonation.
In a related story, Pentagon Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, John A. Shaw, told an audience in 2006 at an Intelligence Summit in Alexandria, Virginia, that "Russian spetsnaz (special forces troops) were specifically sent to Iraq to move weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence."
In another article, the New Media Journal (April 5, 2006 "In Search of Saddam Hussein's WMD: Russian Intelligence, Belarus & Highway 11") describes in detail Russia’s complicity in moving very sensitive weapons/materials out of Iraq and into Syria by truck convoy (I doubt if they were moving furniture) and by aircraft into Belarus, which offered Saddam sanctuary if he fled Iraq before/during the US invasion.
Then there’s the statements by noted Democratic leaders linking Al-Qaida to Iraq: "An executive from the Al-Qaida linked plant in Sudan, travelled to Baghdad to meet the father of the VX (nerve gas) program." (said by Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen in 1998) .
In December of 1998, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi wrote, “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”
"Certainly there’s a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida." (said in 2002 by Wesley Clark, former Democratic candidate for president).
"He (Saddam Hussein) has also given, aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists including Al-Qaida members." (said in 2002 by then Senator Hillary Clinton).
We also have to consider this: even though the Iraqis signed a peace agreement after Desert Storm, they kept shooting at our aircraft and tried to assassinate former President Bush (the elder). President Clinton (in office at the time) even said the "Iraqi attack against President Bush was an ATTACK AGAINST OUR COUNTRY AND AGAINST ALL AMERICANS."
Democrat Senator Harry Reid (now the Senate Majority leadrer) seemed to concur when he said in October of 2002, “We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”
In that same vein, would anyone say that WWII really ended if the Japanese tried to kill a former president and kept shooting at our airplanes shortly after they surrendered? It seems to me (and Democrat Senator Harry Reid) that Desert Storm never really ended.
more interesting facts: Between 50,000 and 75,000 civilians have died since the onset of the war in Iraq. An excellent argument can be made that these numbers are inflated (see The Civilian Casualty Fable), however, for the purpose of debate, let's assign validity to that number.
Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq on July 16, 1979, and was deposed in April of 2003. Over that twenty-four year period, Saddam Hussein killed an estimated 800,000 Iraqi civilians, was responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Iraqi military personnel and over 700,000 Iranians and Kuwaitis. Utilizing ONLY THE IRAQI CIVILIAN NUMBERS, this is an average of approximately 2,800 Iraqi citizens killed by Saddam Hussein every month he ruled Iraq. And there were no indications that such killings would stop while he was in power. However, the United States toppled Saddam Hussein 120 months ago as of now.
So, if Saddam had remained in power for those 120 months, 336,000 additional Iraqi civilians would have died at his hands – children starved in prisons, whole villages gassed into oblivion, dissidents fed through industrial shredders, women strangled after visits to rape rooms, all to be eventually reunited in remote mass graves.
Therefore, the US saved a lot of lives by ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, whether that was our primary goal or not.
As I said in my opening sentence, George W. Bush was a great president and a fine leader. I'm confident that an honest historical and objective assessment garnered from 20/20 hindsight will eventually come to the same conclusion.
