Would you rather have terrorists target troops or children? There is no third choice, here, even if you wish there was one. The war is being taken out of America and to the terrorists’ backyard. In what reality is this a bad idea?
The entire point of a military is to put themselves in harm’s way so that civilians aren’t attacked. It’s called defending your country. I know that it’s hard to understand, given that some people seem to think that the Army is the Peace Corps with green uniforms.
You saw I just quoted the UNSCOM “Amorim” paper and also quoted a previous cite by Eolbo. Right there, the UN itself says that Saddam had WMD (or rather, they could not account for many WMD). Didn’t you read my post? What more do you want? Now sure, if you want to believe Saddam, he destroyed all them. But I think Hussain’s Propaganda Minister is still saying that the Republican Guard is driving the “Imperialist American Spawn of Satan” into the sea. 
I have not seen that about the labs/hydrogen in any other media source.
No one was killed in Watergate and I agree with the Gulf of Tonkin comparison.
The nice thing is that it is going on on both sides of the Atlantic. Parliament is after Blaire and Democrats can go after Bush. We may have a nice feedback loop that gets out of control in both countries.
Dal Timgar
X: He is a clear and present danger because he is the only arab leader who publicly call for the destruction of America and its people
Cite? When did Saddam Hussein “publicly call for the destruction” of the US (except when we were at war with Iraq)?
there is enuf justification found after the fact with the brutality, conventional weapons arsenal, documentation of weapons programs and plans to twart UN inspections, the issue of WMD, which may not be minor, is not the totality for justification to go to war.
Well, they told us that it was the major justification, that the danger from Iraqi WMD’s was so great and so imminent that we could not afford to wait any longer, or to complete UN inspections, before invading. If what they really meant was “Saddam Hussein is a bad guy and there are lots of good reasons to get rid of him even if he doesn’t pose a desperate imminent threat”, then that’s what they should have said, and we would have considered the case for war based on that.
He challenges the UN authority with every turn and even small defiances are considered great moral victories. He blows himself up greater and greater up to the point where a challenge is set and the one who blinks loses.
Sorry, but this sounds to me like incoherent boogeymanning. Exactly what is it you are claiming that Hussein was undertaking against the US and/or the rest of the world? Exactly what were the specific dangers that these undertakings posed? What was the assessment of those dangers based on?
Invading other countries because you think that not invading them means in some vague way that you’re “blinking” and therefore you “lose” is not grown-ups’ foreign policy. When you start a war, you have to know specifically what it is you’re trying to accomplish or prevent, and how you’re going to go about it, and what the likelihood of the various possible outcomes will be, and how you would handle them in each case. I am seeing very little evidence that we really had a realistic, clear and workable strategy for any part of this beyond the nuts-and-bolts combat and conquest operations.
They followed intelligence information they believed were reliable.
It’s by no means clear yet whether they really believed it. Certainly, as others have pointed out, even at the time there was well-publicized criticism of the quality of the information. The Administration seems simply to have ignored or downplayed whatever didn’t support their goal of going to war with Iraq.
It would be incompetent and highly irresposponsible NOT to act when there might be a chance of impending danger.
But your action has to be appropriate to the level of the threat. You can’t take any aggressive action you feel like just because you think that there “might be a chance of impending danger”. And you have to make sure that your action doesn’t just move you out of the frying-pan into the fire by exposing you to other dangers that are even harder to avert.
Chaos may have its own dangers, but is far less that organized violence.
The thing is, though, Saddam Hussein’s regime wasn’t carrying out any “organized violence” against us. I have no doubt he would have liked to, but so far there is no convincing evidence—and there wasn’t any convincing evidence at the time—that he was getting anywhere with it.
I fear that too many people, looking for some kind of single face to put on the enemy (since we haven’t yet managed to find Bin Laden), have seized on the idea of Saddam Hussein as sort of the root of all evil. He was opposed to us, he was bad, he wanted bad weapons, he didn’t cooperate with the UN—we must be safer now that he’s deposed, right? This sounds to me more like a clutching at psychological reassurance than a levelheaded weighing of real-life dangers and opportunities. Hussein isn’t some kind of Sauron or Lord Voldemort whose destruction automatically strikes at the heart of all the evil and terror in the world—he’s just a bad guy who ruthlessly exploited power (much of which we helped to give him). There are plenty of other power-exploiting ruthless bad guys out there. We have to ensure that we haven’t made the Iraq/Middle East situation worse for ourselves instead of better, before we can embrace the comfortable conclusion that deposing Saddam was worth it.
Current evidence seems to show that the Bush administration made use of Poor Intelligence. definitely not what you stated.
please specify how you concluded that Bush acted without logic or reason given that the information he did have, however lacking in actual evidence, was ominous. There was no way to get actual evidence without invading. Saddam made sure of that by his constant interference and non-cooperation of the UN inspections. How much more will you vilefy Bush had he been right but had not invaded?
It also says it can’t confirm that the WMD they can’t find ever existed.
JB: Would you rather have terrorists target troops or children? There is no third choice, here, even if you wish there was one.
(By “children” I assume you mean civilians in general, since AFAIK very few children were victims in the 9/11 attacks.) Nonsense, of course there’s a third choice—they could target both. Why wouldn’t they?
The war is being taken out of America and to the terrorists’ backyard. In what reality is this a bad idea?
If it’s a question of troops going overseas to fight terrorists, of course that’s not a bad idea (assuming they know who the terrorists are and can fight them successfully). But if it’s a question of troops going overseas to lure terrorists into attacking a comparatively easy target—in other words, letting terrorists sate their twisted revenge fantasies on Americans in uniform at a comparatively low cost—then I think that’s really immoral, and a shameless exploitation of the loyalty and courage of our servicepeople.
And if that was really one of the Administration’s reasons for sending troops into Iraq—which I must say I find hard to believe—then I definitely think they should have leveled with us about it in advance!!!
NO, it doesn’t. The UNSCOM papers carefully list thousands of tonnes of WMD that were destroyed, and a LOT which was “missing”. No sentient & literate creature would conclude from the UN papers that no WMD ever existed. :rolleyes:
If troops are targetted, are those who target them still terrorists?
X~,
Thw Nigerien uranium was poor intel, but there was good intel that said that the Nigerien documents were poor intel. So th egood stuff was there to let them know not to use thebad stuff.
Poor use of US intel.
Why should that be an exception? When we invaded Iraq, we didnt call for the destruction of the Iraqi people, we went out of our way to minimize civilian casualties. All along, we stated we wanted Saddam and his regime and had no conflict with the poeple to such an extent that some even wanted the Iraqis to join us.
Thats strange, because that was exactly how I based my opinions prior to the start of the Iraq invasion. I never believed Saddam had any nukes, I thought that Saddam had a moderate cache of nerve gas left (enuf for about 4 to 8 “scuds”) which in my estimation are probably in Syria by now, and I thought that he had one or two maybe 3 laboratories that were capable of producing anthrax…maybe. Heck I could hide that kind of quantity in california and it would take years to find and Im not a despot.
The thing is, I was convinced that something had to be done about Saddam during the Inspections. It was clear that he was doing the shell game again. For someone who didnt have anything, Saddam made a great show about being secretive about something. He was not acting like he was being cooperative. I was convinced Bush was only bluffing until the damn French had to get into the act. :smack:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish.html
We remove Saddam, arrest or detain his henchmen and cohorts, reconstruct Iraq, install a democratic system. Youre not seeing any evidence of this declared plan less than 6 months into it. Do You think countries and govts are reconstituted in weeks?
As for the grown-ups version of foreign policy… cite? The cold war ended several years ago but this was exactly how it was implimented. Since we are still standing here without glowing and still able to vote, I’d say it was moderately succesful.
OK, since it was not clear whether they really believed it, it would be logical to say they didnt? can i give a big HUNH??! 
I thought our actions was totally commeasurate to Saddam’s threat. We removed him from power. Iraq is intact except for the regime and its system of maintaining control. The fact that the country is in chaos when it is relatively “undamaged” shows the extent with which Saddam kept his power. Germany and Japan after the war were virtual wastelands compared to what Iraq is now yet both are now leaders in the world economy. Iraq could be as well.
Well, there you got me. I agree that Saddam had no current plans to activate some super weapon that will immediately threaten the continental US. But you said it yourself, He would like to. Given the opportunity he would. I would venture to say he was very adept in creating opportunities also. Do you really believe that it would be better to catch him in the act of just launching some kind of threat? Especially in this day and age where the unthinkable has become the norm? I believed it wise to get him now BEFORE he had opportunity.
Dangit forgot the last one…
There were a lot of power-exploiting ruthless bad guys. People like Milosovic, Hitler, Bin Ladin and Saddam practically beg someone to take them on, and someone did. I wouldnt say Saddam is the root of all evil, but that doesnt mean he wasnt pretty evil anyways. Removing him is an eventuality that needed to happen at our convenience not his. Its too soon to tell whether reconstructing Iraq would be worth all this fuss, but removing Saddam is worth it for just getting the opportunity to make Iraq a better place, for its people and secondly for the world.
Absolutely not. Terrorists use the weak and defenseless as a tool to propagate fear and terror to manipulate a political intervention. Targeting soldiers who are well qualified and able to defend themselves is not an act of terrorism. That would be trying to achieve a military goal by use of any means available.
X~,
Thw Nigerien uranium was poor intel, but there was good intel that said that the Nigerien documents were poor intel. So th egood stuff was there to let them know not to use thebad stuff.
Poor use of US intel. **
[/QUOTE]
Someone else makes a mistake, you didnt check it and it becomes your fault? Wouldnt you have your own stuff to check which would take higher priority? Checking the State of the Union speech, reference to the Nigerian Documents was neither used nor specified.
When you are the President of the United States of America? When you are using that mistake to justify the start of a war of choice? Hell yeah.
I don’t really think we can call it a mistake. For example there is a reason why Colin Powell didn’t include that statement 8 days later in his speech.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/iraq/main560449.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/eveningnews/main560449.shtml
This just in from CBS News Website (above)
Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False
Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address – despite objections from the CIA.
Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.
The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: “Iraq has … sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that’s how it was delivered.
I suppose it sort of depends on what the definition of “is” is.
But this could be the moment when the trajectory of the shit intersects the locus of the fan. One can only hope this doesn’t start one of those awful media feeding frenzys. That would be just terrible.
While there are legitimate reasons to suspect Iraq retained WMD (as they did have them at one point, and did make efforts to hinder UNSCOM) you should be aware that the ‘WMD labs’ is a very dubious proposition. To my mind, the notion that they existed for the purpose of making WMDs has now been comprehensively discredited, most especially by the official UK government examination. It concluded the trailers not only had not been used to make WMDs but that they could not be used for that purpose. They are what they are claimed to be, trailers to manufacture hydrogen for balloons. I have seen this poo-poohed by some Americans as if its an outlandish and unlikely use but I will point out that other armies employ similar vehicles for the same purpose, including the US Army for that matter (though it prefers helium). Your own equipment is a humvee mounted model called the AN/TMQ-42 Hydrogen Generator.
One article on the ‘labs’
Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds
A webpage on the AN/TMQ-42 Hydrogen Generator.
Finally, as response to the suggestion of taking Saddam’s word the WMD were destroyed, Saddam’s word has nothing to do with it. The revelation that the unaccounted for WMD were destroyed on Saddam’s orders came from the Iraqi defector Hussein Karmel. As this disclosure worked against Saddam, who was claiming he had never retained any and undermined his credibility, it is more likely to be true. Karmel was subsequently murdered by Saddam.
X: Why should that be an exception?
Because we were discussing reasons for deciding to invade Iraq in the first place. Saddam’s call for jihad after we actually invaded wasn’t a factor. (Likewise, I think it’s pretty silly for you to say that he was extra dangerous because “he is the only arab leader who publicly call for the destruction of America and its people”—well duh, he’s the only Arab leader whose country we were invading! If we invaded any other Arab country I bet it would trigger a similar response. Hell, if we invaded some European countries it might trigger a similar response.)
Youre not seeing any evidence of this declared plan less than 6 months into it. Do You think countries and govts are reconstituted in weeks?
Of course I’m not expecting to see the country or government reconstituted already, but I did expect to see some evidence that we had a workable plan to do so. (I wanted to see some evidence of such a plan before we invaded at all, as a matter of fact.) As you can see from the discussion over on the “hearts and minds” thread, the “reconstitution” process looks extremely disorganized and as though nobody really knows what they mean to do.
OK, since it was not clear whether they really believed it, it would be logical to say they didnt?
If it’s not clear whether or not they really believed the information, we can’t take it for granted either that they did or they didn’t. It seems to me that they probably didn’t, but I’m not asserting that as a fact.
The cold war ended several years ago but this was exactly how it was implimented.
And a cold war with Iraq might have worked very well along those lines. What I’m objecting to is the starting of a hot war—not to mention a full-scale conquest and occupation—on the basis of what seem to me unrealistic (and possibly even disingenuous) claims about the immediacy and severity of the threat.
removing Saddam is worth it for just getting the opportunity to make Iraq a better place, for its people and secondly for the world.
I don’t think so. I think if we succeed in helping make Iraq a better place, without increasing other damages and dangers too much in the process, that will be a powerful argument that starting a war was worth it. If Iraq ends up no better or even worse, I’ll be a lot harder to convince on that score.
JB: The war is being taken out of America and to the terrorists’ backyard.
X: Targeting soldiers who are well qualified and able to defend themselves is not an act of terrorism.
All righty, I think this topic needs its own thread. I’m off to go start one.
Are you not catching on on purpose? If I am a big, bad terrorist guy and I am trying to kill an infidel dog of a soldier in Iraq, it’s hard for me to go and kill that infidel dog of a child in Dairy Queen because I’m pretty freaking far away.
It’s a side-effect, not a main goal. If you want to get rid of Islamic terrorists easily and without putting American troops in range to be targets, you just start nuking every majority Musilim country on the planet, and round up and kill every Muslim in your own country. This is not acceptable for oh-so-many reasons. Therefore, you’ve got to put actual troops on the ground to go after the terrorists and to go after the countries which host them.
Look, pre-9/11, Al Qaeda was using Afghanistan to train tens of thousands of murderers. Now a good chunk of those murderers are dead, and the rest are dedicating their efforts into attacking the multinational force occupying Afghanistan in order to drive the troops out of the country. This is a good thing. Yes, the troops are now in harm’s way, but the terrorists are focusing their efforts not on mass murder, but on attacking well-armed and prepared soldiers.
The exact same thing is going on in Iraq. Never mind the WMD (I know, OP and all). Pre-war, Saddam was sending cash bounties for the murder of civilians in Israel (including several Americans). He was threatening his neighbors. He swore revenge on the US. He was murdering on average 30,000 of his own people a year (2500/month). He stole money that was supposed to go for food for his people and spent it on palaces and weapons. Now rather than murdering 2.5K a month, the Ba’athists and their terrorist thug buddies are lucky to kill 15 soldiers a month. Yes, each soldier’s death is heartbreaking. But that’s a heck of a reduced rate, from over 2,500 (if you count non-Iraqis) to 15.
If you can’t understand why this is good, then I can’t come up with the words to explain it to you.
JB: Yes, the troops are now in harm’s way, but the terrorists are focusing their efforts not on mass murder, but on attacking well-armed and prepared soldiers.
I started a new thread on this.
Except the guerrillas killing soldiers in Iraq right now are not the same people as the terrorists who targeted the United States. You are aware that the 9/11 hijackers were largely Saudi Arabian, aren’t you? And that there is no evidence whatsoever connecting SH to terrorist acts against the US?
It’s like someone punches you in the face and you turn around and punch the guy standing next to him. However much that second guy might have deserved to get punched, its pretty clear that it does nothing about the guy who originally attacked you.
**
In Afghanistan invasion was the right course of action. There was a clear connection between the 9/11 terrorists and the Taliban.
Of course, with the administration’s attention unnecessarily focused on Iraq the reconstruction of Afghanistan has been woefully neglected. Chaos, warlordism, broken promises … the ground in Afghanistan is fertile for a revival of the Taliban.
**
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Before the invasion SH was killing ZERO U.S. soldiers. And the Iraqi civilian death toll over the last few months has certainly exceeded SH’s average. Hopefully this will get better, but if the country continues its slide into chaos its possible that it will get worse … .
Yes, he was a very bad guy. But the question is, did he pose a serious security risk to the United States? It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the answer is NO. We could have kept him contained and impotent for a decade for a fraction of the cost in blood and silver than we’ve already spent in this war.
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