Actually, I reread the whole thread a little later just to be sure. I stand behind precisely what I said there in the context that I said it.
Again, I feel that if you have an issue or wish to judge me on it, it really is only fair to quote me directly rather than ask me to explain what I feel is an incorrect paraphrase of my viewpoint.
But at any rate, you’ve been very nice. I’ve enjoyed talking with you, and appreciate the good will you’ve shown.
If not WMD’s and not Saddam Hussein=Osama Bin Laden, then what exactly was the reason to invade Iraq? I believe that this may be the biggest disconnect I have with you.
This is probably the biggest disconnect I have with you. I think that this administration knew that they had to sell the war on Iraq as something that was directly related to 9/11 or as something that preyed on the fears caused by 9/11 so they told us that there was an imminent threat of WMDs and that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved with 9/11. On the eve of the invasion, more than half the country believed that Saddam Hussein was DIRECTLY involved with 9/11 and almost the entire country believed we were going to war either because of the imminent threatr of WMDs or because Saddam hussein was involved in 9/11. We could not have gone to war otherwise.
You believe that there was an independent list of reasons to invade Iraq that I just haven’t gotten my arms around yet. Could you please explain these other rationales and if you think these rationales would have been sufficient to get the sort of public support that would have been necessary to launch an invasion? I keep hearing that neo-cons had wanted to invade Iraq for quite a long time and I’m not sure why, do you have any idea?
Y’know, guys, it’s so much easier to follow Scylla’s arguments if you just keep one thing in mind: He’s a lying weasly fact-mangling contortionist who will exploit any opportunity to defend Republican excesses anywhere.
It’s the logical step in the war on terror. I’ll explain at the end.
I don’t understand why you need to characterize it. I just linked to the President’s speech to the UN assembly on Iraq. He lays the case out there, plainly, in his own words.
Read that, quote that.
Half the people in this country have an IQ below the mean, and I don’t see how the opinion of the man in the street affects CINC powers. What are you saying “Mr. President, we just got the poll #s in from moron PAC, and they’re confused so we better not invade!”
I don’t beleive, there is. Read the President’s speeches from Summer of '02 up to invasion beginning with the UN speech. He goes over these reasons again and again, almost every speech.
I did list them already, and I’ve linked to a speech. I’ve recommended a book, suggested reading other speeches…
…as for the second half of your question, it doesn’t make any sense. You don’t need sufficient public support to launch an invasion. I don’t really see what part public support has in it. What you need is CINC to the give the order and a military that follows the chain of command.
I do, and it’s probably close enough to my beleifs, so I’ll just share mine:
We are the most powerful nation on the planet. Usually liberals roll their eyes at that and consider it to be bragadoccio or machismo, but they don’t really consider it as both a fact and a problem. And, it is a problem.
Because we are so powerful, no intelligent enemy, especially one with limited resources and technology, will fight us head on.
What has emerged, as a very intelligent way to fight us, is Terrorism. Terrorism takes some of the most effective aspects of guerrilla warfare and combines it with spectacle and PR. It uses our mores and ethics against us. It scares and frightens us more than it damages us. It uses and depends on the media to diseminate its messge. It hides within the populace and encourages misery and provokes atrocity (or fakes it) to generate sympathy and moral outrage.
It’s evolved over the last 50 years or so, and it’s a pretty damn effective technique. It continues to evolve. It has done so, as a reaction to us. Our enemies have displayed adaptability and intelligence.
For a long time, we’ve watched this form of warfare come in under the radar, and considered it criminal activity rather than warfare. Israel knows better. We didn’t after the Marine baracks bombing, the Cole bombing, the first WTC bombing, but we began to get the point when they struck us on our homeland as hard as we’ve ever been struck by any foreign enemy.
We are at war with militant fundamentalist Islam making use of terror tactics.
We are the good guys.
How do I know this? Simple. If they lay down their weapons and stop attacking, there is no war. If we lay down our weapons there will be no us. Same for Israel. They are our ally.
So, we can’t fight them conventionally. They won’t meet us in a battlefield. They aren’t really a country we can invade, because they hide out within other countries (sometimes with cooperation.) They are, as Bush describes them “Countries within countries.”
They’ve adapted to fight us, to bypass our strengths and exploit our weaknesses.
What do we do? Do we continue to try to guard against the attacks, think of everything? Do we negotiate or talk? We’ve been trying that for a while and things escalate and get worse, culminating in 9/11.
So what do we do? What our tactics, and what is our strategy?
I don’t think it’s easy to win a war on defense. You have to choose offense. You have to hurt your enemy and gain the initiative. So, the first logical step is to take out Afghanistan which was an active sponsor of Bin Laden, and 9/11. No longer will countries be able to disavow the activities that occur or are planned or supported within their borders. We will no longer respect the sovereignty of a country that harbors terrorists. So, we do that.
Well, with every stick there has to be a carrot. The best carrot also functions as a stick. The carrot that we offer is freedom, self-determination, humanity, our western values of equality and fair-play. After removing the old regime we help the occupants of the country attain this.
This is a dual threat to the terrorists. It not only removes their havens but it seeks to turn them against them, turn them into the very thing that they are fighting.
So we proceed down the long road to do this in Afghanistan.
Will this solve the problem? No. We need to fight this enemy on all its fronts and all its havens. People seem to forget that Hussain provided financial support, rhetorical and moral support to these terrorists. Hussain had also started a war of aggression against one of our allies and staunches strongholds of western values by attacking Kuwait. Saddam Hussain was in violation of the terms of peace after that war and was actively flaunting them to make us look like a paper tiger. He had committed genocide against his people and we were committing serious resources to the half-measure of containment.
IF we seek to take action and commit resources on other fronts in the middle east, we have Hussain to worry about at our backs to cause mischief and trouble. You don’t leave an enemy behind you if you can avoid it. So, we really have to worry about operating in the Middle East because Saddam can just go off adventuring while we are occupied, or, just as badly come after us and make the engagement we are in much more serious.
For these, and other reasons, he is the logical next step. We already have all the motives and evidence and history, and violations against him.
There’s a bonus as well.
To win, I told you that we needed to adapt to new tactics. Turning Iraq into an ally would make us stronger if we can do it. The possibility that we can do it is a scary thing to militant Islam. We’d be removing their ability to operate from the map a step at a time. They can’t afford to allow us to succeed, so they have to give it all they’ve got in Iraq.
That suits us just fine. We have now taken the fight from our land, to a foriegn land, an enemy land, and we are using our superior force to change it to our benefit. They must fight us. They must commit there. We’ve drawn them out as best we can. We’ve taken away some of the benefit of the terror tactics and forced them to fight us on out terms. We’ve changed the rules.
They’re not stupid either and they are doing everything they can, everything they learned in decades against countries like Israel, and even Russia, all the tactics of PR, terror, guerrilla warfare, and subversion against us.
But, we have them now at a disadvantage. We have a process and a strategy that will wipe them out. We’ve changed the rules, and we are attempting to change the world so that terrorism is no longer a viable form of warfare.
War is terrible and it’s ugly but there are just wars and unjust peace. This is a just war. Iraq was the smart decision.
All we have to do now is win. We can’t let them win on the PR and media front, and disillusion us to make us give up. Really, it is the only way they can win. That’s why I’ve said before that the media and the democratic party are the biggest allies against us.
The democrats want power back. The best way to get that is to make the Republicans look bad. The way for the terrorists to win is to make us look bad and incompetant and like we are failing.
Regardless of your political affiliations it is a fact that in this respect those interests are aligned, and its naive and disingenuous to think that our enemy is not going to exploit it when their whole methodology on warfare is based on creating and exploiting dissent.
It’s why I said what I said in the thread from Kaylasdad’s signature. To cooperate with this is stupid. Our troops must comport themselves properly. When they don’t it is necessary to deal with it openly and fix it. But, if you are going to make the accusation that our troops torture dozens to death and state it as a fact, as a matter of policy, it is necessary that you can prove it to be fact. That you know it to be a fact.
Well, that’s enough for now.
“Make the Republicans look bad”. “Make us look bad.”
Notice the difference between those two sentences. I think right there is the core of all that’s wrong both with this pretty little speech and your vicious hateful little tirades of before. The United States is larger than the Republican party, Scylla. At some point, the magnitude of this Republican administration’s errors outweighs whatever moral fibre the United States gains by standing behind them. Change horses or drown.
Put frosting on the turd all you want, Scylla. It’s still not a wedding cake.
Yes. Notice the difference between those sentences. Republicans are us. About half.
It’s why I supported Clinton in his attacks against Iraq when dumbass Republicans were talking about “wagging the dog.”
I think you live in a fantasy world. To accuse me of spewing hate is laughable.
I’ll tell you this, and anybody else as well who simply wants to ignore my arguments and debate by mischaracterization, character asassination, or semantic criticism rather than ideas…
If you want me to take you seriously, go back in the thread and take everyone else to task who has said mean and hateful things who’s on your side.
Than come and criticize me, and I’ll listen.
Failing that, it’s just empty hypocritical rhetoric, and ad hominem attacks.
I’d prefer to debate ideas that personalities.
Do you have any ideas that you would like to debate?
Yeah, ok.
It does have a tiny little man stuck on top of it, though.
Wow, Scylla, thats the rhetorical equivalent of a human wave assault, just keep piling on the verbiage and hope the enemy line collapses. I’ll confine myself to a few of the choicer nuggets of buttwhistle. But where to begin? So much crap, so little time, doctor says I probably only have about 30 or 40 years on my warranty.
OK, first off…the repeated theme that the WMD were not the main thrust of the Bushivik argument for war, a claim supported by Bush’s speech at the UN and, you assert, many, many other speeches. None of which you cite, though you have so many. You simply baldly state that this is so. Presumably, you’re hard won reputation for scrupulously non-partisan truthiness is expected to carry the day. I fear you have a disappointment in store.
We were here, Scylla. Here, in the larger sense, and here, in the specific sense of being aBoard. We all listened, and read, and argued. We remember what we heard, what was said, and by whom. How is it, then, that only you (and who?) remember the events that way?
If we were to play a drinking game where I must down a shot every time you find a Bushivik speech/statement that emphasized our noble committment to Iraqi Freedom over the threat of WMD (in either Saddam’s hands or in the hands of his bestest buddy, ObL); and you must down a shot every time someone said “mushroom cloud”, you gonna be shitfaced toot sweet, like you hadn’t been since college (I"ve got the pictures, by the way…we’ll talk later…)
You memory is not only selective, its exclusive. Only you, of all of us, are correct, the rest of us are deranged and delusional. You sure you wanna go with that? Kinda weak, doncha think? Or don’t you?
OK, he made a speech at the UN, full of noble gestures and puffery. He does that. It means diddly.
But when he phrased his ultimatum on the eve of war: its all WMD. Saddam must disarm, Saddam must turn over his nuclear anthrax equipped Invisible Pink Unicorns of Death. Which, of course, he could not do, since, well, you know…
(Now there’s a pretty pickle: “Hand over your leprechaun gizzards or I’ll shoot you! You got one minute!”)
Don’t smart ideas tend to have better outcomes? In fact, isn’t that pretty much how we decide that an idea is “smart”? Do you have a different definition of “smart” that is 180 degrees out from the standard?
Thousands of innocent people are no more because of this “smart” decision. If that’s smart, then I’m not, but I am, and it isn’t.
No, it’s just the pathetic truth.
You’re wondering if I want you to take me seriously?
Let me set you straight. I have no burning desire to be taken seriously by you. That ship sailed, and you’re the one who broke the champagne bottle on the hull, not me. I don’t give two cents about your opinion because you’ve long since demonstrated how worthless your opinion is.
I don’t give a damn whether or not you take me seriously because I’ve long since stopped taking you seriously. You’ve shot your wad, Scylla; anything you say now can only be seen in the light of what you’ve already said.
I gave you that chance. You responded by calling me “disgusting and reprehensible”, one of “a bunch of scumbags”, “responsible for the damage to our Nation”, “petulant”, one of “a bunch of stupid dishonest yahoos”, “not to be trusted”, and “a loser and a dishonest asshole”. Then you wonder why I don’t want to debate ideas with you any more.
I’m truly astounded by the seeming fact that you think I owe you that much respect. Needless to say, I don’t owe you shit.
Orbifold:
Hey. Thanks. I’m pretty proud of that post. It goes pretty well with some of the sentiments I’ve discussed here, and I stand behind it.
Now I understand where you’re coming from in this thread. You’re still pissed from 2005 where you thought you could wage substanceless generalized attacks without recrimination, and are surprised where I took issue with the irresponsible slanders you were espousing and called a spade a spade. Now you seek revenge.
That it made such a lasting impression on you, and that you took it too heart is gratifying.
Yep. Don’t care if you despise him so long as you don’t forget him.
I genuinely wish you would actually quote me when responding instead of paraphrasing me. You have a tendency to change what I said and then argue against that.
It slows things down when I have to correct you. I didn’t say “the repeated theme that the WMD were not the main thrust of the Bushivik argument for war,”
An accurate paraphrase would be to say that there were many reasons given in most speeches, WMDs being one. This was the most controversial one, and the one focussed on and Bush allowed this emphasis to occur and went with it.
You seem to be trying to get me to respond to the idea that there were speeches specifically about things other than WMDs that make no mention of them and are looking for a cite for such.
As for there being many many other speeches… there are. You can google “Bush speech transcripts 2002” and “Bush speech transcripts 2003” and read them to your hearts content. It’s not hard. You will find that most go through the same rationale as the UN speech. Not all. Most.
Nobody asked. You still haven’t asked. I offered the first one of my own volition. It’s not tough. I also don’t like the “endless cite” game that you play with me.
Well sure. I’m sure you’ll remember us talking about the resolutions, the paper shredder, the genocide, the gas against kurds, the rape rooms, etc etc. We discussed most of the points, you and I.
Again, I didn’t say he emphasized one over the other. Please. Please. Quote me.
Don’t think I said those things either.
I think I’ve said several times that as things went on the debate became focussed on WMDs and Bush went with this. So, I agree with that part.
It ain’t over, and I think it’s going pretty well. And, no. “successful” and “smart” are not synonyms. Some smart ideas don’t work, some stupid ones do.
There are just wars and unjust peaces. Innocent people died fighting the Nazis. Millions. That doesn’t mean it was stupid.
Well, then, brother, one of us is nuts.
It does define you pretty well. You seem to think that’s a good thing.
No, you really don’t get it. I’m not pissed at you, Scylla, certainly not after all this time. I don’t seek anything from you. I don’t need anything from you, not respect, not revenge, not debate, nothing. You don’t have anything to offer that I need. Get the fuck over yourself.
The only reason I popped into this thread was the continuing spectacle of you trying to reconcile your own past behaviour with your lofty calls for “ideas” and “serious” debate. It’s like watching a man shitting on the rug and then yelling at you for not using a coaster. You don’t need “revenge” on him for shitting himself, you just want to tell him “Dude, seriously. Look at yourself”. When you get right down to it, that’s really all I’m saying.
Ah, the ever popular “passive voice”. Bush didn’t focus on WMD, the focus on WMD just sort of happened as “things went on”. Then, of course, he had no choice so he “went with this”, carried along in the stream.
How could poor GeeDub have known? Why, all he was saying was “Saddam coming to get yo Mamma with his death rays!”. How could he have known that such a point would seize the attention? Carried along on the crest, all he could do was sacrifice the last scrap off his integrity for his patriotism!
Can he award himself the Medal of Freedom? A sacrifice like that…
That is probably a basic disagreement that makes our positions inbridgable. I think that public support was necessary to the invasion, you do not. If you don’t think that public support really matter then misleading people about the reasons for invading takes on a lot less significance than I have given it. You think that public support was not necessary to start a war in Iraq and that Bush could have just gone to war anyway, I think there was almost NO WAY that we would have gone to war with Iraq in the face of almost unanimous international opposition if there was no public support for the notion of invading Iraq. Invading Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein is a pretty big undertaking for even the Commander in Chief to pick up on his own. I’m not going to say that this opinion makes you a crackpot but it is probably a minority opinion.
I may agree with some of your statements below but we would NEVER have gone to war based on these rationales. We would not have gone to war without a link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, we would not have gone to war without the imminent threat presented by WMD.
So far so good.
still with you.
You start losing me here. It is a bit disingenuous to say that the most powerful nation in the world is entirely satisfied with the status quo so that makes us the good guys. Israel is an entirely different story and there is good reason to believe that we wouldn’t have Islamofascists if we put Israel in Germany or pretty much anywhere other than where we put it to begin with instead
You lost me a little bit on the Israel thing and the “we’re good because we are perfectly happy to maintain the status quo” thing but I agree with you here (although I would probably require some higher level of complicity than the mere fact that there are terrorists planning stuff in your country).
So regime change is the new strategy? By this rationale we have about a dozen wars ahead. I vote for a different strategy.
There is international recognition of the fact that our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are dissimilar.
Other than “financial support” (other than giving money to the widows of suicide bombers, I can’t find evidence of this, I would be interested to find some) I don’t see how any of this ties into the grand hypothesis you present other than as rationalization. I don’t like the rhetorical and moral support of terrorists but I can’t kill you over that can I? I pretty much dismiss the rest of that stuff as being irrelevent to your argument and only pertinent to the general argument of lets go invade Iraq.
Flypaper strategy? We could devote an entire thread to whether the Flypaper strategy is entierly bullsh*t or merely reflects the failure to grasp the basic nature of terrorism and how it works. see recent London hijacking conspiracy.
So let me get this straight. The Democrats are de facto traitors; all the Anti-American hatred being generated in Iraq is BAD for the terrorists who hate America; and we need to compromise what we believe to be right because doing the right thing is what the bad guys want? What if democracy (as in a government that represents the will of the people and not the will of the ivory tower conservative academics) and the Constitution (due process, right of privacy, civil rights) helped the terrorists, do we scrap those too.
BTW the terrorists aren’t the ones who are making us look bad (Haditha) and incompetant (the whole occupation) and like we are failing (a country spiralling into a civil war).
I have just realized that Scylla doesn’;t think the rationale for going to war doesn’t matter because the president can do whatever he wants regardless of public opinoon. He never had to sell us on anything so however the media wanted to interpret things was irrelevant because Bush weas going to war for the right reasons, for Scylla’s reasons.
Not always. The theory of relativity was a smart idea or are you defining smart ideas as the ones with good outcomes? However dumb ideas generally have bad outcomes, see Iraq War.
Well, col_10022, (OK if we just call you 10 for short?) that’s one of the hazards of arguing with Scylla. He is one of the most frequently misunderstood posters ever. You think you’re arguing to his main point and then, it turns out, he never said any such thing and you are misrepresenting and mischaracterizing his words. Usually this revelation only surfaces after you have totally clobbered what you thought was his main point. But it wasn’t, because you misunderstood.
How to cite a subtext (March 14, 2003):
You apparently didn’t like my response to one of your posts:
Well, that’s all very sweet, but here’s what you said to her:
Sure had the feel of a dismissive response to my post, a kind of “here’s why I don’t need to bother to respond to RTF directly” sort of statement. It certainly didn’t suggest that I should wait around for a direct response, so I went with what was there.
I think the verdict is clear on who most people don’t believe to be posting in good faith.
As I said on the last page of the Bush, you’re not at a frat party, you dick thread:
She managed to hang in there for the last six posts of that thread, but you succeeded here. Good on ya.
But don’t worry, you’re not crazy; everyone else is crazy.
Anyway, I slamdunked your piss-poor argument three years ago, and you’ve got nothing new now.
Nobody kicks the shit out of a stawman like you.