Many people on this board do not accept that Iraq had anything to do with international terrorism - so you can’t simply state that it’s part of TWAT ( ) and expect us to accept that. Many people believe that TWAT was a pretext for what Bush & Friends wanted to do anyway, which was invade Iraq. And quite a few, including me, see TWAT as a sinister Orwellian creation.
Now, Bush is talking about the ‘current conflict’, which really can only mean the ongoing occupation of Iraq, in terms of 9/11. He’s exploiting widely-held (among the US public) misconceptions about 9/11 to further the posthumous defence of the invasion of Iraq.
Hang on. Look, it’s quite simple. In the period between 1939 and 1945, a lot of Bad Shit happened. Some of it was rather directly related, some of it tangentially. But on the whole, the whole shebang was in hindsight refered to as a World War. Not because Japan and Germany had that much to do with each other: it’s not like Hitler had tea with Hirohito like he did with Mussolini. It was named a World War because several wars were being fought simultaneously around the globe, with some of the engaging parties fighting multiple adversaries even, like in America’s case.
I think we can all agree to that, right? That “World War” is a descriptive term rather than a proof of relation between all fighting parties?
They’re related in that it took Pearl Harbor to get the US to pick up arms. Other than that, the liberation of Europe stands apart from the counterattacks on Japan.
See above. The term “World War” is merely there to signify a large portion of the world was involved in simultaneous, though not necessarily directly related, conflicts. That’s it. You can’t throw this one back at me, for the simple reason that the two situations are not comparable. Which is exactly why everyone’s saying Bush is an opportunistic idiot.
It is certainly possible to have more than one enemy at one time, yes. Although you somehow fail to recognise that Italy was allied with Nazi Germany, and hence WAS indirectly related (though not responsible) to the invasion of Poland.
Saddam never allied himself with Al Qeda. Iraq never harboured Bin Laden. In fact, Bin Laden probably thinks Saddam is a lapdog of the West, and a bit of a sissy.
Hence, deliberately trying to connect the two conflicts by vaguely asserting they’re somehow related is WRONG. It is nothing more than GWB trying to capitalise on the patriotic post-9/11 Zeitgeist (shit, did I really use that pretentious word?) in order to justify his own pet project (Iraq) to the American people, when all of his previous explanations have already been found to be complete lies. There were no WMD’s. There were no links to Al Qeda. Saddam could not have London bombed within 45 minutes. Saddam did not seek to buy urnamium in Niger. LIES. And now all the other myths have been debunked, Dubya is mounting the ol’ “Terra” horse again, spices it up with a nice shiny WWII-coat, and expects people to suddenly think, “Well, gee, if you put it that way, it’s actually quite heroic that we’ve killed more than 10,000 Iraqi citizens - it’ll keep our skyscrapers free from penetrating 737’s. Fucking Iraqi terrorists, blowing up our fair cities. Why, we oughta.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let’s keep it simple: terrorists are not synonymous to nations. Sure, there are countries harbouring what “we” consider terrorists (and they consider freedom fighters, or whatever), but Bush made the mistake of trying to equate terrorism with states. Afghanistan and Iraq are NOT enemies of the American people. Hell, if Saddam hadn’t become such an unruly child, invading Kuwait and all, the US still would have shipped weapons over by the shipload, to this fucking day. Stop kidding yourself.
Remember who invented the term “axis of evil”? Think real hard now. Remember?
That’s right. And ooh, guess what? Saddam and Kim Jong Il didn’t exactly have scones every week, either. It’s only an “axis” in Georgie’s mind because he likes to shuffle all his enemies neatly on one pile. I’m not saying Saddam wasn’t an asshole. I’m not saying North Korea is a nice country. But they have very little to do with each other, apart from being on Dubya’s shitlist.
Most agree the first Gulf War was a clumsy world power trying to reign in a formerly obedient puppet, when said puppet decided to use its American-bought toys on something other than teasing it’s Evil Neighbour Iran (who were secretly supplied with weapons as well, natch). Are you seriously labouring under the impression that the majority of the world’s population doesn’t know it was all about oil interests and under-the-table diplomacy gone wrong?
Hatred of Bush? Hatred of historical ignorance, more likely.
Meaningless. You could have said the fucking ‘Dali Lama couldve made that speech’ - the point is that moronic statements don’t come out of Kerry’s mouth nearly as often as out of Bush’s.
Or Pakistan.
Remeber that country that helped fund and found the Taliban, helped fund and train those who would become al Qaeda, whose military and intelligence services have sympathies for al Qaeda and other violent Islamist jihadists, who is one of the biggest sources of the proliferation of nuclear know-how to rogue states in the world, (including NK & Iran), are run by a dictator, and so on. They’ve got strong ties to terrorists, (al qaeda even), have WMDs, proliferated WMDs, etc. In short, Pakistan fulfills the criteria we use to justify the invasion of Iraq, except that pakistan fulfills these criteria more fully than Iraq did. Go figure.
If you don’t mind, could you please expound on this? What is the connection between the invasion of Iraq and the tWoT exactly?
I can see a few similarities between World War II and TWAT.
[ul]
[li]The whole thing got started because a bunch of right-wingers started another war in the region 25 years earlier.[/li][li] Those right-wingers then got in charge again and set about starting wars of aggression in a delusion of imperial grandeur.[/li][li]Everyone fighting against this imperialist nation is on a different landmass, except for a few freedom fighters/terrorists.[/li][li]The evil imperialists responded by setting up camps in which to put unreliables and talking nationalism.[/li][/ul]
That’s right, kids, Dubya’s analogy is all but perfect - so long as you equate America with the Nazis.
It is hard to have warm fuzzy feelings for an Admin that has actively sought to undermine the US’s WMD anti-proliferation efforts for their own political gain, and has allowed sensitive intel to fall into the hands of the Axis of Evil through their own incompetence, (incompetence is the charitable view).
Maybe other people can love this sort of thing in politicians. IMHO, these are less than stellar.
No, that’s not what he said–he said that moronic statements do not come from Kerry as often as they do from Bush. It’s that it’s Bush sayiung thing, it’s that the things Bush says are more often than not stupid.
And you bland dismissla of anti-Bush rhetoric reflects badly on your intellectual integrity.
I originally supprted the war in Iraq and was giving Dubya the benefit of the doubt but then:
It turned out that Bush lied about Saddam’s possession of WMDs.
Bush also lied about Saddam’s supposed collusion with Al Qaeda re: 9/11.
Bush’s secretary of defense waived the rules of war to allow the torture of inoocent people, including children. That’s right, US forces have tortured kids to get their relatives to talk.
Bush’s administration has tried to cover up instances of homicide during interrogations accomplished through torture authorized by Rumsfeld.
Bush’s adminsitration has decided it can hold US citizens in prison indefinitely without access to legal counsel.
Bush’s administration revealed the identity of a CIA undercover operative to retaliate against her husband for conflicting with the administration’s lies about Saddam buying uranium from Niger.
Bush’s handpicked leader of Iraq has turned out to be an Iranian spy who has seriously handicapped American intelligencen gathering.
These are all facts.
If you can continue to support Bush, despite his lies, despite the revelations of the torture of Iraqis, despite the gross mismanagement of the Iraqi occupation, not to mention the erosion of civil liberties, the irresponsible tax cuts that benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poor, then you are not merely a debaser, but debased.
So, because I point out that you folks have gotten rather out of control with your irrational hatred of all things Bush, I’m responsible for all that, huh?
I could debate your rediculous and silly accusations point by point, but I won’t. I think it might do better to state things more simply at a more direct level…
I (and about 50% of the voters in this country with me) don’t agree with you.
Us folks that aren’t rabid Bush haters don’t like the torture that happened, but we don’t think that it means Rumsfeld woke up one morning and gave the order to start torturing children.
We don’t agree that there has been gross mis-management of the occupation. Some things have gone poorly, but for every setback there has been a victory.
We don’t agree that there have been erosion of civil liberties. I’ve read thread after thread on the patriot act and have yet to see a single thing that is improper. I’ve even read the act. It doesn’t scare me, and I’m a libertarian type of guy. (Small ‘l’).
Many people don’t think that tax cuts only bennefit the rich. They bennefit everyone across the board. The rich get more cut, because they pay more. Everyone bennefits when taxes are cut, not the other way around.
I know you and the other Bush bashers won’t agree with any of this. I don’t want this to become a mini-debate on each of these issues. At this point I’d be happy if you folks could simply wrap your minds around the concept that many people disagree with your view of these things. That doesn’t make us immoral, evil or debased. We just have a different opinion than you do.
If you can’t understand this except to think that those of us not consumed by hatred for Bush are evil or debased, then it’s you who lacks any intellectual integrity.
As Starving Artist and others keep pointing out, Bush has never stated that Iraq is responsible for 9/11. He did not do so in this speech. All you clowns are trying to say he did, but you are wrong. He has not.
The fact that you so desperately want him to have said it means that you are misinterpreting what he actually said. Which is an example of what I mentioned earlier - that the near-obsessive hatred of Bush is leading many of you completely over the edge into irrationality.
Nope. You were doing fine up to that last.
The two situations are very much comparable. Multiple wars, happening on multiple fronts, against multiple entities, and for several reasons. Is this a description of WWII, or the war on terror?
Read your quote again.
The “War on Terror” is equally a descriptive term, rather than a proof of relation between all fighting parties. Therefore your assertion that Bush is claiming that Iraq is responsible for 9/11 is false.
Iraq and Afghanistan (and North Korea and others) are related in that it took 9/11 to get the US to pick up arms. If it is valid to refer to WWII as one world war, it is valid to refer to the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq as one war on terror. If you can refer to WWII without asserting that [Bluto Blutarsky voice]“the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor”[/Bluto Blutarsky voice], then you can also refer to the war on terror without asserting that Iraq attacked the World Trade Centers.
Which is exactly what Bush did.
Not my point.
We can not only have more than one enemy at one time; we can wage war on more than one enemy for more than one reason. We waged war on Imperial Japan because they bombed Pearl Harbor. We waged war (openly) on Germany and Italy because they declared war on us. We waged war on Afghanistan because they harbored bin Laden. We waged war on Iraq because she refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire of 1991.
Bullshit. There is nothing vague about my assertion, or yours either. I am using your terms and your definitions. Either Iraq and the Taliban (and North Korea and Iran) are “somehow related”, or Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are not “somehow related”.
Very good. No one is asserting that they are. Except the lefties trying desperately to find a way to claim that Bush thinks Iraq was involved in 9/11.
And here you simply lose contact with reality. Afghanistan under the Taliban harbored al-Queda and her training camps, giving aid and comfort to our enemies. Iraq under Saddam invaded Kuwait, and refused to abide by the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. That makes the regimes responsible enemies, not simply of America, but of the world in general. Deal with it.
More bullshit.
They don’t have to have lunch together. They all present, or presented a threat to the rest of the world, which is how they wound up on Bush’s shit list.
For heaven’s sake, Stalin and Hitler hated each other’s guts, and they cooperated just fine in invading Poland and otherwise presenting a threat to the rest of the world. It was only Hitler’s stupidity that broke up that alliance.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a maxim that applies as much to terrorists as to anyone else. Which is why Saddam sent money to the terrorist bombers in Palestine, harbored the terrorists of the Achille Lauro, tried to kill Bush Sr., and why some Iraqis tried to move their aircraft to Iranian air bases during the first Gulf War. And they fought a war.
How is my detestation for Bush irrational? Do you think it has no basis in the many failures of his administration? Do you think I dislike the man for no reason at all?
That’s because you can’t. Every accusation is factual.
[quote]
I think it might do better to state things more simply at a more direct level…
I (and about 50% of the voters in this country with me) don’t agree with you.
[/quotes]
Facts are not decided by a majority vote.
But do you deny that he gave the orders? Here’s a cite.
Let’s see: nearly 1,000 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq so far, Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority have failed to provide reliable electricity or water to the Iraqis (cite), and the US forces have lost any credilbity or support from the Iraqi people.
“Many people” are uninformed. From Paul Krugman’s Web site
Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait.
It’s not that you are “not consumed with hatred for Bush,” it’s that you plan to vote for a president who is a liar, who has violated his oath to defend the Constitution, who has pillaged the budget surplus he inherited in order to benefit his rich pals at the expense of the rest of America, who has acted more like a king than the leader of a democratic republic.
Hell, you won’t even denounce a man whose government practices torture on suspects and has kept Americans in prison for two years without access to a lawyer. If you can still vote for Bush after everything I’ve laid out, you’re either a villain or a fool.
Reasonable adults cannot agree to disagree on the violation of human rights by a government that is supposed to defend them.
) and expect us to accept that. Many people believe that TWAT was a pretext for what Bush & Friends wanted to do anyway, which was invade Iraq. And quite a few, including me, see TWAT as a sinister Orwellian creation.