Because I beleive I have a large amount of integrity even though I have done pretty much the same thing myself. If you are sure that something is true, it’s easy to be negligent with information which contradicts your viewpoint. After all, you know it’s false.
Similarly, it’s an easy thing to go fast and loose with the facts when you’ve assumed your conclusion, since you’re sure the end result is correct.
It happens all the time. It’s a rarity when people admit they are wrong, even when they’ve been factually proven wrong (witness these boards.) Certainly, one of the people Bush defrauded was himself.
I still support the war, and think it justified.
I have fears as well. 1990-1991 I worked for Lehman in the World Trade Center. I see the attack on Iraq as a desirable move in the war against terror.
The job of our military is not to attract recruits. It’s to protect the nation’s interests. They’re doing it, and I think they’re doing it well, and we’re winning Iraq bigtime.
I don’t think anybody said it would be easy or that their wouldn’t be problems. IMO, we are about as close to a best case scenario over there as is reasonable to expect.
Look, you weasel. Not one page ago, you admitted that the motherfuckers lied. None of this negligence bullshit: They knew the truth, and they fucking lied to sell their motherfucking war.
So what the fuck is this “negligence” bullshit? Either they fucking lied or they didn’t.
Look, you fraud. Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Nothing. At all. So don’t even think about pissing on the corpes of the WTC dead to justify this folly in Iraq. That is utterly reprehensible.
Considering your recent detailed semantic cross-examination, I think it’s reasonable to expect that you will not subsequently misrepresent my statements.
If there is no other option. Don’t vote. Do you have a “none of the above” box?
I couldn’t vote for somebody after that kind of lie. Meaningless in the big picture I agree but at least I’d know that I had registered my disapproval.
Michael Ellis and Airman Doors, USAF I know that it’s not all pro-war people that feel that way. I apologise for the war-monger dig. I’m on the drunk side of several Guinness
Airman Doors, USAF is “duty” that blind? I realise that your buddies and you put and are putting their lives on the line but they and you are the people that really have to live and die with the consequences of these lies. Are you not livid about it.
I fully respect your decision to serve.
On preview
Please explain? Iraq had fuck all to do with 9/11.
I know. The Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor either, but I think Saddam’s Iraq had to be removed from the equation if we’re going to beat the terrorists.
Sir. I find your weaseling distressing. Not one page ago, you admitted that the motherfuckers intentionally lied to sell their damn fool war. This concession came after I called upon you to cease with the bullshit weaseling about whether they were merely negligent and tell us whether they fucking lied. You responded that they were fucking liars.
An admirable response.
Now, one page later, you apparently retreat from your earlier concession and return to the fucking weaseling negligence bullshit.
Are they, sir, a pack of motherfucking liars, or were they merely too stupid to realize their own falsehoods? And if liars they be, why do you continue to weasel with the negligence excuse?
Yrs trly &etc.
minty green
Am I livid? Yes and no. I still think it was the right thing to do, even if the excuse used to justify it was not. Maybe the United States was the wrong country to do it, but I think that the people of Iraq will ultimately be better off without Saddam. I think the attacks going on right now are from a few different groups, the first being the people who liked having Saddam in power, having lost their status they feel the need to lash out at the people who did that to them, and the second being the extremists who resent the United States and what we represent, people in the similar vein of Osama Bin Laden. I cannot take seriously anyone who claims that the people of Iraq en masse hate us, because from what I’ve seen and heard that simply isn’t true.
One of my contentions from the get-go was that the people will ultimately have better lives post-Saddam, and I still believe that.
But I hate being lied to. Enough said about that.
As far as my “duty”, yes, it is that blind. It has to be, or one day I might cease to follow orders, in which case it won’t be just me in a body bag but several of my fellow airmen. I will not allow that to happen. Besides, when the bullets start flying the last thing on my mind is what the circumstances that led me to that point were. I’m thinking about how I can get the hell out of that position as fast as possible.
There’s a lot bullshit. You’ll have to be specific about what you think is bullshit that I might be buying.
That’s a tough question. I think they are both ally and enemy. They have to be polarized so that they can’t have it both ways in terms of being our trading partner and ally but still having cultural sympathy and citizens providing financial support to terrorists.
Agreed, but the way to change is from within without that you end up in situations like this.
I’d add another group to that list. People who are angry about “Shock and Awe”, saw their families destroyed by “liberators”. Believe me the feeling of resentment against perceived invaders is strong. Look at my location and think about how western Christians dealt with invaders in my country. A lot of true believers said prayers before fighting the good fight in their opinion.
Hopefully.
No, not fucking enough by half IMO. YMMV
100% gotcha. It’s just a pity such honourable behaviour is/was pissed on IMO.
Well until you were almost bitchslapped with the facts about the lie re: the immediate threat you were beating that drum of shite.
You are now saying the war against Iraq was part of the war against terror born out of 9/11. BULLFUCKINGSHIT. It was a war born out of Neocon ideology nothing more.
Scylla, I too was impressed with your acknowledgment about the WMD; but it looks like this doesn’t matter at all, because for you, everything else regarding Iraq is hunky dory, or so it seems.
Problem is, already in this thread, me and others mentioned the inadequate actions the administration continues to follow.
Germany declared war on the US, after Pearl Harbor, if that had not occurred it would have been that we had only intervened in the Pacific theater. And I have already mentioned that if we want to follow WWII metaphors, one has to be ready to consider that Saddam could have been our Stalin in the war against terror.
Many other articles, not coming from the ministry of propaganda at FOX or Rush Limbaugh, mention that Iraq was not much of a factor in the war against Al-Queda.
I have already mentioned before that Saddam deserved to be removed, but we needed a better reason. IMO there are smart Muslims out there that could have gone to their fellow countryman and told them that the reasons for the war in Iraq were not BS; unfortunately, many of the reasons have turned to be BS. It is naïve to behave like if they have not noticed either. I do think this has hampered our efforts to get after the perpetrators of 9/11 in the Muslim nations.
That’s interesting, because knowing what we were capable of, there wasn’t much shock or awe at all. This war was nothing compared to the first Gulf War. I understand that there is resentment, but it really never manifested itself the way that I expected it to. I expected massive resistance when we got to Baghdad, yet there really wasn’t any, which I can only attribute to the idea that the populace wanted us to get rid of Saddam. Nothing else really makes much sense to me.
As far as my comments on lying, that’s as much as I can really say, since I’m legally not allowed to straight-arm my leadership. What I said was too much by half. Rest assured, though, that if we were to talk in person I’d have much more to say. Ask RTFirefly or Stoid what I really think. We’ve had this discussion and I was much more candid.
Well, that’s debateable, too. It can be argued that Saddam had been spoiling for a fight, and given his history of using WMD on his own people and our recent experiences with terrorism we were rather sensitive to the idea that those weapons might be turned on us.
It turned out to be false, but I don’t think it was completely out-of-bounds to make that kind of assumption. What was out-of-bounds was the contention that those weapons were cocked and locked and ready to be used against us.
Perhaps, if the inspections had gone on longer, we would have found out that the weapons didn’t exist. The problem was that Saddam had no credibility. If he had said that the sky was blue I would have looked out the window to check. So what the inspections thing came down to was this: Do you believe that Saddam was being honest and forthright with the inspectors, or do you believe that he was trying to sucker Hans Blix et al into falling for lies? I actually thought the latter, and so in my eyes it was justifiable nonetheless. But the “fiftenn minute” thing? That was obviously wrong. Unfortunately, I bought it. Oops.
As that was what was used to justify the war, I can see why people have such a problem with it.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.
“I still support the war, and think it justified.”
Gasp!
“I see the attack on Iraq as a desirable move in the war against terror.”
Getting dizzy. Toxic shuck syndrome.
“and we’re winning Iraq bigtime…Your “fuckup” is my unqualified success.”
Are you getting secret briefings? Some source of information denied to us who are not initiated? Or have you developed an addiction to snorting novocaine? I have heard more reasoned and intelligent opinions from guys huffing spray paint.
In a twisted and mangled way, maybe I could distantly reach the idea that all this mishigas is a “success”. In the same way I could think of Stephen Hawkins as a Chippendales dancer.
Bush resolved not to get the last resolution that would have justified this, and he choose not to do so because he found out that he was not going to get it.
The idea was to force Israel into the conflict and then break the coalition that did include many Muslim nations. Saddam failed, and as evidence has show: he god rid of virtually all WMD at the end of that war.
Maybe your expectations are wrong. My position on these things isn’t like a chain of dominoes where if one falls everything else falls and I do a 180 degree reversal.
I see no shortage of perfidy, lies or dishonesty on the part of those that oppose the war. I see what seem to me to be deliberate falsehoods perpetrated by Bush’s opposition, and they perpetrate them, I’m sure, because they beleive they are right.
And we had them. I wish we had not hung our hats on a falsehood.
I think you’re right. I think that’s the biggest problem with this.
