No, they fucked up they opportunity to possibly not have to go to war. The people responsible for the fucked up situation now are Saddam, Bush and Co., Al Qaeda and other muderous terrorist barbarian scum.
No, he’s saying he would call the cops rather the American soldiers. If those are two valid choices, there’s nothing wrong with that. If he says he’d never call the American soldiers, even if he couldn’t get in touch with the Iraqi police, or if there simply weren’t any in the area, that would be a different matter.
Is this only confined to the current situation in Iraq or does it apply generally to anyone trying to kill members of the U.S. Armed Forces anywhere in the world?
Certainly Mr. Dibble doesn’t need anyone speaking on his behalf, but you’d have to be a complete imbecile to ask such a question.
Here’s a C-note vs a dollar that Mr Dibble would have sided with the Americans during WW-II.
Fuck. How dense can people be? Rhetorical question. No answer needed as is has already been given.
Considering that one of the other prominent posters mentioned in this thread is Der Trihs, I certainly don’t think it’s “imbecilic” to ask such a question.
Actually, the Iraq war is the direct responsibility of Bush and Company with a strong minor role played by Saddam Hussein. Neither the French nor al Qaida had anything to do with it.
The French said they would not support a war vote in the UN unless Hussein interfered with the inspectors.* After the UN inspectors had pulled out a couple years earlier due to US spying, Hussein let them re-enter in 2002 and was complying with their inspections (which were not finding anything because there was nothing to be found).
Given that the U.S. had already demonstrated that they could destroy the Iraqi military with ease, a UN declaration would not have changed anything inside Iraq–which was already complying with the existing resolutions while Bush kept moving the goalposts (and lying about both Hussein and the UN inspection teams).
*(Later claims that the French would never, ever support a war vote under any circumstance used clipped quotations that ignored the context of Chirac’s remarks.)
But you asked it directly to MD. I think it’s safe to say that it was “imbecilic” to ask it of him. Had you proposed the hypothetical as a stand alone post, addressed to the general audience, you might have a point.
I vote that you make this post a sticky.
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Spot-on, John. I doubt MD could be more explicit about his views. Add that to the fact that they pretty much mirror mine.
As for Der Trihs, even though I can understand/follow his logic, I simply respect *all * lives too much to be able think that way. Just want you to bring your boys home – and punish BushCo in the harshest way possible. If it is, indeed, possible. Which unless you Americans do it yourselves, I don’t think it is.
The comment I was responding go did not specify “the war”. I was responding more to the general state of Iraq fuckedupness. And to say that the French acted honorably, or at least without trying to hide their dealings with Saddam, is overly generous. Al Qaeda was cited as a terrorist organization that had trained in Iraq, now clairvoyantly claimed by the apologists to be completely without Saddam’s knowledge. And, I forget which muderous scumbag it was, but didn’t one of those AQ cowards receive safe haven in Baghdad? But these particulars I view as noise to this discussion. We can even assume the this war is immoral. My interest is how that paints every soldier who goes over as immoral.
You know what? I have to admit I don’t know the personalities involved in this at all. I’ll bow out now. Have at it.
What? I thought your question was a really good one. Based on MrDibble’s logic, should not that badge of immorality extend to all who would choose to serve in a military that answers to an immoral man and so many of whom take part in an immoral world? Hang around.
I disagree about any suggestion of meaningful lack of culpability of soliders who signed up pre 2002. Look back at the history of US usage of military force over the last 30-40 years. What percentage clearly counts as defending the US? What percentage is at most nominally defending the US while actually engaging in a fuckup of major proportions that kills scores of innocents while achieving little or nothing?
If you can justify US military efforts as 70% valid and useful defence of the US over the past few decades I’d be surprised. If I gave you a gun and said: “Your job is to fire into this crowd. 70% chance you’ll hit a bad guy, 30% chance you’ll hit an innocent” would it be moral to take it?
I don’t buy the “the soldiers are justifiably innocent pawns” bullshit for a second.
By now, you’ve more than earned your reputation as one of the most clueless posters on the SDMB. Good for you I say – something to be proud of, a mind like closed a steel-trap: nothing ever gets in.
Meanwhile your comments are not only clueless but ridiculous. Saddam and AQ – Sunnies and Shiites, moreover Sunni Baathists – are about as compatible as oil and vinegar. See the situation in Iraq now.
As for AO “training in Iraq” you are conveniently forgetting that the small contingent that did was outside Saddam’s sphere of (military) influence, as they where camping and training under the US ‘invented’ no-fly zones.
Read and learn, you fuckin’ dunce:
Claims and Facts: Rhetoric, Reality and the War in Iraq
As for Chirac’s France, they were right every step of the way.
Don’t like it? Find some anti-French ointment.
More: Senate: No Prewar Saddam-al-Qaida Ties
Uneducated dipshit, plenty more where those came from. Including disclaimers from Bushit himself.
Have some more Kool-Aid.
Missed the edit window. Add to my above post:
Plus “70% worthy” is extremely generous. Without looking at actual statistics I would assume that all other active military effort by the US since WWII pales into insignificance compared to Vietnam and Iraq II on any reaonable measure, and both of those conflicts were/are monumental fuckups where the worthiness of the US position is best described as somewhere between highly dubious and virtually non-existent.
Pink Pussy,
You sadly mistake me for someone who holds your opinion in high regard. Or anything other than scripted and laughable. Especially after that last time we met and you threw down some mighty gauntlet which I picked up slapped you with and off you went. And do you really think that because you have nothing better to do with your time than bugger your Indian houseboy and search for cites that you post over and over and over again, that they actually prove anything. Here’s a revelation you soon-to-be-if-not-already-drunk shithead, they don’t, other than there are some people who agree with you. Pretty amazing, actually, but not much in the way of proving your case.
My default is to simply avoid the shitheadiest of posters—congratulation you’re in the top ten or so—so thanks for getting my attention so I could piss on your shitty Spanish self with your stupid but oh-so-tough-looking goatee. Another newsflash, people already know you’re a pussy you didn’t have to make your face look more like one.
With slightly less venom than Red Fury: wrong on both counts.
Hussein probably did know about al Qaida training in Iraq. However, U.S. forces would not allow him to send his troops into the area in the Northern Kurdish section where al Qaida was hanging out. The U.S. was protecting the al Qaida training camp. 
)
Al Zaqawri did become associated with al Qaida–but only after the invasion when he later teamed up with the al Qaida forces that were crossing into the country from Syria after the U.S. destroyed the Iraqi border patrols without replacing them with effective troops. Before the war, he was a free-lance terrorist who had not actually attacked U.S. targets (preferring to kill his fellow Middle Easterners).
As to French sales to Iraq: they were never a secret and were never really denied by France. Most of that was propaganda put out by the administration’s media to try to pretend that France’s reluctance to start up a destabilizing war in the Middle East was based solely on a desire to protect their trade, while ignoring the fact that France’s actual arguments in the UN were not only morally correct, but prophetically correct.
I’ve tried to give you space, as I think you were giving me. It appears you no longer care for that arrangement. Now while I can fairly easily muster slightly less or considerably more venom than that drunk, Pink Pussy, I have little desire to do so and go through the same dance with you yet again. Especially since past experience shows that it will be for naught for both of us.
He had been an associate of ObL’s for some time before he even went to Iraq, having been to Afghanistan. He was there just as the Russians were leaving, and he went back soon after 9/11/01 during the US invasion to fight with the al Qaeda and the Taliban. I believe he initially parted ways with ObL because ObL was not sufficiently anti-Shiite (if you can imagine that). I don’t know if they had a falling out (again) after his return to Afghanistan in '01, but it’s incorrect to say that he became associated with al Qaeda only after the US invasion of Iraq and that he had never attacked US targets.
Short summary: I don’t have any cite whatsoever for the deliberate lies I post, let alone any cite to compete with one from a Senate Intelligence committee. So I’m just going to spew bile so that the red mist it generates will smooth over the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance created by knowing, in some trodden upon part of my higher brain function, that what I desperately want to believe to be true, is not.
Or, there art parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings that support my position, but I understand that a debate does not go to He With The Most cites. Also, if oyu read my involvement in this thread, I am interested in the moral culpability of the troops and have stated that for the purposes of that discussion I am willing to asssume complete moral failiing on the part of Bush & Co. So, it is not an issue.
Yet, you and others feel the need to derail that discussion to attempt to hold me up against the wall and force me to admit that I agree with you. I assure you, you have better ways to spend your time. Now, if you’d care to be act as proxy for MrDibble, who seems to have taken a break, what you have to offer may be of interest. So far, not so much.