The Iraq War in retrospect: Victory on almost all fronts

Great Debates
141

Most polite. :slight_smile:

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al- Karim Qasim.

http://www.rise4news.net/Saddam-CIA.html

According to a former senior State Department official, writes Sale, “Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim’s office in Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim’s movements.” Adel Darwish (“Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam’s War,” 1997) told Sale that one Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attache at the Egyptian Embassy, was Saddam’s “paymaster” and that Saddam’s handler was an “Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish’s account.”

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Nimmo_Saddam-CIA.htm

“One thing is for sure, the US will find it much harder to remove the Ba’ath Party from power in Iraq than they did putting them in power back in 1963. If more people knew about this diabolical history, they just might not be so inclined to trust the US in its current efforts to execute “regime change” in Iraq.”

http://www.representativepress.org/CIASaddam.html

In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate Qasim and Saddam’s Ba’ath Party came to power for the first time. Saddam returned from exile in Egypt and took up the key post as head of Iraq’s secret service. The CIA then provided the new pliant, Iraqi regime with the names of thousands of communists, and other leftist activists and organizers. Thousands of these supporters of Qasim and his policies were soon dead in a rampage of mass murder carried out by the CIA’s close friends in Iraq.

’ "In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé in 1979. “It’s a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA’s) involvement there was really primary,”

142

Let’s see. First you handwave the idea away as unworthy of consideration with a sneer about tinfoil hats ( a favorite copout here for those with no argument ), and then pretend that if I say something, it’s wrong. Pathetic. Can’'t you at least try to debate in a forum called Great Debates ?

And I find it ridiculous that you are pretending that the accusation that a politician would do something underhanded to manipulate public opinion is so utterly implausible. So bizarre that it deserves nothing but dismissal. For your next trick, perhaps you should mock the next person who says that a corporation did something for profit.

143

Huh. That is queer.

Daniel

144

Terrorists attacked us on 9/11…did some of you forget already?

Should we just hang our heads and cry that it was our fault? That we deserved it because of our foreign policy? That we “meddle/d” in affairs that we have no business in “meddling”? You people who think that 9/11 was the first and last attack on the United States by these Islamic psychos are kidding yourselves. You don’t think we are at war with AQ? Give me a fucking break…we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t no matter what happens.

Remember Isolationism? Isolationism does not work, people! At the very least with bringing the fight to them we have some control over the situation. If those civilians over there get killed because of some terrorists than that tells me even more that our presence is needed over there…to erradicate the threat that threatens us all.

I say that AQ achieved what it ultimately wanted: to wake up a sleeping United States because they WANTED a fight. It’s a fight they wanted and it’s a fight they got. Does it suck ass that civilians get killed in any war? Hell yes! However, tell me what a western culture is supposed to do to stop AQ-types from attacking us over and over? Ask nicely? Beg? Bribe? Diplomacy does not work with these people. Everyone smugly points out how fanatic islamic terrorists are such a small number of muslims. What a crock. Even if it is “just” a million fanatics, or 250k it is a sizable number when they are all Hell-bent on wreaking havoc accross the globe to get whatever their sick minds desire.

Furthermore, the entire Western culture has ignored the problem of rabid, Islamic nut-job religious kooks who are willing to do the most brutal acts of terror, and other such disgusting examples of inhumanity on their own muslim neighbors and citizens. Not to mention that these ‘people’ targetted and attacked our civilians…our f-u-c-k-i-n-g civilians, people!

Rabid, violent, religious fanatic freaks of nature are a disease, and since no one else but the United States could have stepped up to the plate to meet these organisms face to face and utterly destroy them one by one…I say HELL YEAH to that! No mercy for our enemies whatsoever…to do so is pure suicide. I would think that Der Trihs as well as others see the postive in wiping out the worst of the worst when it comes to bad people mixed up with religion to violently further their agenda…and you know what? I say OUR agenda is worth a whole lot more than theirs, so screw them and all their apologists.

145

What does that have to do with Iraq?

146

Personally, I remember it well. It’s hard to forget because I’m being punished for it. My civil liberties have been decimated, probably irreversibly. I (and my great-grandchildren) are paying an empire’s ransom for an irrelevant war against people who did us no harm. I am enduring nearly $100 per barrel oil prices so that Haliburton and a few other interests can profit from the fucking goddamn shennanigans going on in a cesspool of corruption where money disappears by the billions and oil production is a fraction of its pre-war levels. Meanwhile the fucking goddamn criminal who actually attacked us on 9/11 relaxes in his Pakistani refuge while the murderous thug who is hosting him gets Carte Blanche from the worst presidential administration in the history of the United States. What the hell did *you * forget? I mean, besides everything.

147

I just want to point out that you’re off by about 0.10005 orders of magnitude.

148

Jesus Christ this is ignorant. Repeat after me: IRAQ HAD NO CONNECTION TO 9/11. I agree that after 9/11 our chief goal should have been to kick Al Qaeda’s ass–in AFGHANISTAN, where Osama bin Laden was at the time. Why, then, have we diverted the majority of our military assets to overthrowing a government (Saddam Hussein’s) that, as far as I know, has never killed a single US civilian?

149

The battle within is greater than that to be found in the exterior. If one is able to overcome that which constricts freedom to be, then one is truly the master of one’s fate.

No one forgets, most of the time. Isolationism? Read your history. It is in the creation of an identity based on an ‘other’ that the first seeds of discrimination are laid. Manifest Destiny. It is in the imposition of the identity of the ‘other’ that one subjugates individuals to lives of invisible slavery. Such anger, such hate. And after you’ve ‘hit’ out, does the act of hitting out take this anger, this hate, does it take it away? I sincerely doubt it. Better to live a good life, aspire to something worth living, than waste your life dying.

AQ is a muppet organization if you compare it to the Nazi’s or the Japanese of WW2. They were truly opponents that one had to step up to confront or face destruction of the ideas forming the basis of ‘our’ character. Trust us from the other side of the atlantic, been there, done that. And then? That’s what gets us. There is no then, only empty rhetoric and biased foreign policy most see right through. Keep your mess, but wait, there is no ‘your’, nor an ‘our’ or a ‘them’. There is only the human and one earth.

Iraq, the current mess, is a good example of the complexities and intricacies in the relationships and groups with different interests and inherent valorisation of ideas. It’s complicated is an ignorant position to take, just as ‘bring it on’ really shows the shallowness of those pursuing a misguided policy, or maybe it says more to those who repeat it while those in positions of government, of real power, create the mental space within which regardless of the choice made one is reduced to nothing more than a battery, with an expendable lifespan, rooting through a selective informative medium conditioning the next choice made.

All relationships are constructed phenomena of the human, built upon a single common characteristic, power. Eventually everything turns to dust, but ideas, they live on in the mind of their respective beholders. Thus, America will not ‘win’ until it takes on the battle of ideas univocally across the spectrum of the ME, ‘victory’ is not so much a finality as the idea of a process valuing certain ideas of what it means to have human development, dignity and freedom. America can win, but to do so would require taking the moral high ground at ‘home’ and that it lost somewhere along the way. But what does it matter anyway? History will not be kind in the long run and after the generation who lived through WW2 passes away, nor will the people.

150

Given that the OP contained nothing but false claims, errors of logic, blatant misstatements of history, and so forth–all of which have been forcefully and handily rebutted–I am not sure why it would make a difference in the SDMB attitude toward the OP.

If anyone has evidence that the OP was part of a deliberate act by the government or some neo-con PAC, such evidence could be submitted to the staff (preferably by e-mail) and we might consider a banning on the grounds of spam or glurge disruption. On the other hand, given the inept presentation, so far, I would almost welcome such evidence for the chance to laugh at the administration for one more horribly executed misstep (as I wept for my tax dollars).

You need to read the thread more closely. The issue of the adminstration abandoning the pursuit of the terrorists as well as abandoning the opportunity to make genuine benificial changes in the country from which the attack was planned in order to go off on a pointless invasion of a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were addressed earlier in the thread.

151

OK. If you’ve got some evidence, let’s see.

152

Too many posts since last night for me to reply to individually…so I’ll try to address a few of the more pressing points.

Why did we overthrow Saddam instead of another dictator?
A. Because he was an avowed enemy of the US, while some other rulers are our allies. Plus Iraq is rather centrally located in the region which we are attempting to help drag into the 21st century (out of the 14th century where it seems to reside)–an important strategic reason for going in there.

But wasnt Saddam a secularist who actually protected women’s rights, etc.?
A. At first he was, which was one of the reasons the US supported him against the theocratic state of Iran early on. But after the Gulf War, he increasingly characterized himself as a devout Sunni Muslim. As for women’s rights, Saddam had prostitutes publicly beheaded (according to the International Federation of Human Rights League and the Coalition for Justice), and who can forget Uday and Qusay’s lovely rape rooms? Besides, all the Kurdish and Shi’ite women who Saddam had killed didn’t get to enjoy their right to life.

The US provided Saddam with WMDs in the first place!
A. We supplied military aid only during the Iran-Iraq war, at which time Saddam was the lesser of two evils. We didn’t know he would abuse those weapons and use them on civilians.

The US has alienated its allies and its reputation is irredeemably ruined.
A. The coalition of the willing was originally composed of 49 nations. And of these nations, we have the undying support of the UK. Even if you take away the other 48 allies in the coalition, we’d still have the British as our allies.

the situation is similar to the Cold War, when many people believed that the Soviet Empire would last forever–even people in the West! The US and the UK consistently maintained that the Soviets and their communist ideology were an “Evil Empire,” and people laughed at us then. But President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher didn’t laugh. They knuckled down and refused to give in to the Soviets and their leftist sympathizers. Even when the Berlin Wall fell, the leftists were still clinging to the idea that the Soviets would prevail…but the wise ones knew that we were witnessing the collapse of Communism.

And so it is today–as Al-Qaida is on the run, and Iraq is becoming a stable country once again, it’s not too early to say that the US–along with our old friends the UK–were right all along!

153

I’d also like to add that one of the reasons the US hasn’t withdrawn its forces is because the Iraqis don’t WANT us to leave. I’ve spoken with members of the armed services who have served in Iraq, and every one of them informs me that 1. morale is high among the troops and 2. the Iraqis want them (the Americans) to stay there.

And the Iraqis are beginning to take responsibility for their own security…although they’re not quite ready yet. But they’re proud of the progress they, with our assistance, have made against the terrorists.

Besides, historically-speaking, it’s not been that long since our intervention in Iraq. Post-WWII Japan was ruled by American military governors for 7 years after the Japanese surrender…and there are still American troops in Japan today.

Coalition forces will remain in Iraq for a similarly long time, as long as the Iraqis want us there.

154

OK, one more post tonight.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the 2003 intervention in Iraq was a bad idea.

That doesn’t get us anywhere! We’re in Iraq now, we can’t change the past. So we have to come up with solutions for the future. Complete withdrawal just isn’t an option right now.

The option that Bush came up with, despite the left’s protests, was the troop surge. And whaddayaknow? It’s working.

I’d like to quote a few selections from an op-ed piece by Ralph Peters (I linked to it earlier, but in case you missed it, here it is: TERROR ON THE RUN):

If the tide against the terrorists has already turned in Iraq…then who’s to say the same won’t happen all over the Middle East?

155

Iraq is a battle field of convience…would you rather the battle be fought upon US soil?

Everyone seems to pick on this point like it’s the Ace in the hole. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. There needed to be a battle ground that could pull in all kinds of crazy terrorists pissing in their pants at the prospect/chance of killing an American. Instead of sticking our heads in the sand like ostriches up until 9-11, we finally and thankfully woke up. Sucks for Iraq, but you know…war is Hell.

156

I don’t of course. That’s not the point. The point is that Cervaise came out with a perfectly plausible bit of speculation, and you are acting like he claimed that the Martians are behind it all. You didn’t ask for evidence, you didn’t even say it was just speculation; you just implied he was insane with your tinfoil hat comment.

We went there because it was part of the Project for a New American century’s plan for conquering the region and securing the oil. There was nothing noble about it. And we have no interesting in helping anyone there.

It’s called “throwing bones”. He just tossed some rhetortic their way; no one but war apologists like you actually believed it.

Still minor compare to what we’ve unleashed upon the women of Iraq.

We didn’t care that he did, and there’s no way to use such weapons that isn’t abuse.

We had a bunch of token forces, and our suck-up toadies the British. Not much of a coalition. And even most of the “allies” we pressured into sending token forces hated us for it.

All Iraq says is that America is evil. Something that should be broken so badly that it can never inflict it’s greed and malice on the world again.

And Al Qaeda is not on the run, and Iraq is not even close to stable. And never will be while we are there, not if we stay there a century.

Outright lies. They hate us and want us gone. For that matter, the majority support the killing of foreign soldiers, not surprisingly.

Terrorists that WE inflicted on them. That’s not a victory, that’s repairing SOME of the damage we did. Even assuming that it’s true.

Garbage. They don’t want us there, they have NEVER wanted us there. We are there because they our our victims.

157

Oh so it’s about money for Haliburton, but it seems like it’s all about money to you too…

158

Attacked who? This is the first i’ve heard of this.

Oh, 'scuse me. Some nice people at the door would like to introduce me to some “Jesus” fellow.

159

Look at a map of the region…Iraq is the ideal battle ground. You think people fight over hills because they enjoy the view? Its about tactical advantage for an entire region. Afganistan has what…mountains and dope? Whoop de doo…

160

Whatever.

I would rather defeat an enemy or at least cripple him before rather than after they attack me thereby preventing an attack.