the saddam + al qaeda connection

[Sonart]

Also, your assertion was "killing 10,000 innocent civilians" implying that we killed 10,000 civilians which by the admission of the source you cited was not the case.

Well, Joshua, since, as you stated yourself, there aren't many other sources for such data, and since this site goes to the extraordinary length of breaking down the numbers incident by incident, I'm willing to accept it as reasonably accurate. As the site states...

--"This database includes up to 7,350 deaths which resulted from coalition military action during the "major-combat" phase prior to May 1st 2003. In the current occupation phase the database includes all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation."--

But let's assume a margin of error and go with a figure of only 6,000 non-combatant civilian casualties. That's about twice as many as we lost on 9/11, and 3,000 we lost then was a staggering number not only to us but the entire world. Which leads to...

Your tone suggests that X number of deaths is horrible, but I don't know what X is in your mind. Is any unintended innocent death an unacceptable cost to attain a greater good?

And the greater good being.....?

Saddam's threat to western civilization? There was no WMD, no connection to al-Qaeda, no powerful army, no threat whatsoever. And what's more, people had been telling Bush this all along.

Liberating the Iraqi people? Who elected us to be the all-powerful arbitor of how sovereign governments conduct themselves? Gawd knows there's regimes across the globe that are as brutal, certainly across Africa where they are dying by the millions. And gawd also knows we've supported more than our fair share of brutal dictators when it suited us - certainly under reign of Saint Ronald of Reagan, INCLUDING Saddam Hussein AT THE TIME he was using WMD on Iran and his own people.

Enforcing stability on the Mideast for the sake of a stable oil supply for the industrialized west? That's our problem, not the mideast's.

Israel? Again, what has Iraq done to Israel lately that Syria, Iran and even North Korea haven't done 100 times over?

So the rephrased question becomes, how many unintended innocent deaths are an unacceptable cost in a completely unjustified war of agression? I submit a hell of a lot fewer than there have been.

Your statement that the reasons for going to war was a mistake or a deliberate deception I also disagree with, but this post is probably too long already so I'll leave that to another reply.

Well it's not too long for me. We now know for a fact that Bush intended to go to war with Iraq from just about the day he took office. Paul O'Neil has stated so, Richard Clarke has stated so, Paul Wolfowitz has stated so (in so many words) and we know that the Bush's top Pentagon leadership had been pushing for an invasion of Iraq since at least 1998.

Why? They say Hussein's WMD, but they clearly KNEW that Hussein was, at the very most, a potential threat only to the Gulf Oil Region. Paul Wolfowitz stated as much; WMD was stated for "bureaucratic reasons" reasons, but continuing to garrison troops in Saudi Arabia was now a "huge" problem, the troops were there specifically to counter any threat from Saddam - who was actually not much of a threat - and therefore removing Saddam would solve the problem.

None of which would justify an all out invasion of Iraq. Along comes 9/11, and sure enough, the Administration wrestles with whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan first, despite there being absolutely no evidence of a connection to Iraq. But it was possible to terrify the American people into BELEIVING there was a connection, so as soon as Afghanistan was out of the way, it was on to Baghdad.

How did they mislead us? Hinting at the possible threat of Nuke-u-lar weapons, 'mushroom clouds as smoking guns'. This despite clear statements by the IAEA and our own intellegence that there was absolutely no nuclear program and had not been one since pre-Desert Storm. Yet Bush still insisted on using the 'Nigerian Yellowcake' nonsense despite the fact that there had been unambiguous statements from the CIA and State Department Intellegence that it was hogwash. Same goes for the 'Aluminum tubes' which our own atomic energy commission declared not fit for nuclear use. The mobile biolabs, the weapons stockpiles, the production programs and facilities -- all information Boy George and the NeoCons CHOSE to accept despite evidence to the contrary or simply evidence too ambiguous to accept as fact.

And the coup de gras? None other than Ahmed Chalabi, the DoD's Iranian mole, whom the CIA and State Department Intellegence repeatedly warned was a lying sack of sh!t. Yet the Bushies accepted everything the man told them as fact.

So however you look at it, Joshua, it's a clusterfug. Either they accepted all this ERRONEOUS information on good faith, in which case it was a massive >MISTAKE<, or they knowingly accepted bad information in order to justify a war they were clearly intent on launching, in which case they >MISLED< us.

And if they knowingly used information they knew to be false, which in many cases it certainly seems, then they >LIED<.

As far as bush's claims go, I think he did rather well avoiding directly saying that Iraq and Al Qaeda had cooperated on 9-11. That said,

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...poll-iraq_x.htm

This is a poll done by USA today, showing that 70% of americans were led to beleive that Saddam had a role in 9-11. Bush is clever, in that he formed this connection in peoples heads (introducing the case to invade iraq with "a great tragedy occured on sept. 11th 2001"), without actually explicitly saying that this connection actually existed. Regarless: 70% MEANS MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AND THE PRESIDENT HAS A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO NOT DO THIS.

So if bush lied or not, he still decieved. He still mustered the support for a war that more and more people now recognize as unnecessary, and he got done what he wanted to get done.

Well, sort of. Now we have to get out of Iraq, and this report's not gonna look good for bush in the polls.

And please people, June 25th, go see Moore's new film. Quintin Tarintino (among other jury members) voted this the best film of the year at cannes, and as Tarintino stated, it wasn't because of politics, it was simply a great film. So farenheit 9-11, june 25th.

So back to the whole topic thing, the 9-11 report makes it clear that saddam didn't cooperate with 9-11, even though 70% of american's thought he did.

What does this mean to you?

B

[bishop]

So if bush lied or not, he still decieved.

yup.. that's the crucial point indeed.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/17/...aeda/index.html

the most pathetic answer ever:

Bush, in a brief appearance before reporters, was asked why the administration insists that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had a relationship "when even you have denied any connection between Saddam and September 11, and now the September 11 commission says that there was no collaborative relationship at all?"

The president answered:"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

bush, you're a dimwit. didn't osama hate saddam? yes, i think so.

[bishop]

i need to get a book of bush-isms..

he's the anti-yogi berra with those one liners.

[Evil Baby]

Disarm Iraq, from the White House webpage




Here is tthe best part, I will bold it for everybody.


Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including al-Qaida members. He could provide hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own. It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known




Funny, no mention of Saddam's past crimes against Iraqi citizens

[Sonart]

LOL, my gawd, Evil, where did you find that? It's, like, a year and a half old. Priceless.

[JoshuaRGodinez]

Originally posted by PatrickHenry, Josh, try Waxman for how Bush lied about Al Qaeda/Iraq: http://www.house.gov/reform/min/feat...on_the_record/

Thank you for that link. I followed it and read the report. It reinforced my belief that the President was acting on the best information he had while keeping an open mind to the possibility it might be even worse. First, this report was compiled by Howard Waxman, a fierce political opponent of the President. The letterhead says "House of Representatives" and makes it sound like Waxman asked for an independent review of the President's statements. However, you'll also notice that the special investigations division is a subset of the staff of the democrats on the committee and that Waxman is the minority ranking member of that committee which means he's the boss of the special investigations division his party employs. I'm not sure an "independent" report on the energy crisis requested by Enron and performed by Enron employees would really be credible, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't have any true facts in it so I went ahead and read (most of) the report.

The assertion of Waxman's report is that the President misled the country by either himself, Cheney, Powell, or Rice saying things in a manner that indicated iron-clad assertions of fact while the facts were actually disputed. First, I'm not sure it's appropriate to hold the President responsible for every syllable uttered by all of these people, but I can accept the premise that he could have taken control of the tone of the statements being made if he had so chosen. Second, the tone was one of alarm and suspicion almost exclusively. "we also have reason to believe they’re pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons" (Cheney). They did have reason to believe it. They didn't have proof of it, but neither did we have diagrams of planes hitting the WTC. Does that mean the field agent reports of suspicious flight training should have been ignored? I haven't found Waxman's report lauding the FBI and CIA for keeping the nation calm in the face of insignificant suspicions by low-level bureaucrats. So, the administration in effect said "we have experts who believe x y and z" without saying "we have other experts who don't".

Third, this report is itself misleading in the way the information is presented. Page 26 describes claims about mobile biological laboratories. The vans were found, the CIA and DIA said they were mobile biological laboratories, later the DIA said it was probably not, Bush said we found the bio labs, Powell said we found the labs, Powell said we have no doubt they were bio labs, Dr. Kay said the consensus is that they weren't for bio weapons use. Doesn't that make it seem like Bush and Powell ignored the DIA and made false claims? Careful attention to the footnotes shows that at the time Bush and Powell made their statements, the only report was from the CIA and DIA which said they were almost definitely bio weapons labs. A month later the DIA said that the consensus was that they weren't. They may have been intended for dual use, but they probably weren't. The report clearly states the correct dates, but puts them out of order and footnotes the actual references. At this point I stopped reading because the clearly partisan nature of the report was overwhelming clear.

With all that being said, was the report accurate? It was just as accurate as the President's words. If you use this report as a reference of validity then you also must believe the President. Clearly the President tried to build political backing for the use of force. He told the truth. He didn't footnote every caveat and dissenting opinion. He even went so far as to believe that the British might have had better intelligence than us on Saddam's attempt to acquire uranium . How could he possibly doubt the complete omnipotence of our CIA after their stellar display of counterintelligence on 9/11?

This report only reinforces statements that there were many reasons to believe that Saddam had once had chemical and biological weapons and that they were not all accounted for. He had tried to develop a nuclear weapons program and there were indications he might be trying to do so again. Ignoring him may have led to disasterous consequences. We didn't even see 9/11 coming. We saw Saddam coming from a mile away. Containment was a viable policy pre-9/11. Afterwards, it was a risky proposition at best. The only thing the war proved was that Saddam was either a good liar or his own people lied to him about his WMD's. It didn't prove that we could have known ahead of time that they weren't there or that we should have taken the chance that terrorists would never again reach our shores.

Thank you for the information, but the only thing it proved was that there were a couple of false statements (Rice saying that no notice about uranium doubts had come to her when, in fact, a memo had been sent specifically to her). The only reason this is significant is Waxman's assertion that doubts and caveats should have been stated. What the President said was true. He lobbied vigorously to take action to keep America safe.

I really do appreciate your attempt to inform me of the true facts. I also appreciate that it supports my argument. Thanks.

[Evil Baby]

Originally posted by Sonart, LOL, my gawd, Evil, where did you find that? It's, like, a year and a half old. Priceless.

I've had it bookmarked for a while just incase I ever had to use it

[bishop]

It reinforced my belief that the President was acting on the best information he had while keeping an open mind to the possibility it might be even worse.

best information he had... that's not saying much.

[JoshuaRGodinez]

Originally posted by Sonart,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Well, Joshua, since, as you stated yourself, there aren't many other sources for such data, and since this site goes to the extraordinary length of breaking down the numbers incident by incident, I'm willing to accept it as reasonably accurate. [/b]

Sorry, I wasn't being clear there I guess. The site itself states that Americans did not kill all of the dead referenced. That's what I meant. I wasn't talking about the validity of the figure.

Originally posted by Sonart+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>And the greater good being.....? [/b]

I'm going to have to do a better job of making my points clearer. My question to you was, is there any greater good in any situation in any part of history or the future that justifies the unintentional death of an innocent person? I wanted to find out what your definition of unacceptable loss of innocent life was.

Originally posted by Sonart So the rephrased question becomes, how many unintended innocent deaths are an unacceptable cost in a completely unjustified war of agression?

Um, that really wasn't my question.

Originally posted by Sonart How did they mislead us? Hinting at the possible threat of Nuke-u-lar weapons, 'mushroom clouds as smoking guns'. This despite clear statements by the IAEA and our own intellegence that there was absolutely no nuclear program and had not been one since pre-Desert Storm. Yet Bush still insisted on using the 'Nigerian Yellowcake' nonsense despite the fact that there had been unambiguous statements from the CIA and State Department Intellegence that it was hogwash. Same goes for the 'Aluminum tubes' which our own atomic energy commission declared not fit for nuclear use. The mobile biolabs, the weapons stockpiles, the production programs and facilities -- all information Boy George and the NeoCons CHOSE to accept despite evidence to the contrary or simply evidence too ambiguous to accept as fact.

I understand this viewpoint, but I completely disagree with it. Yes, there were dissenting opinions on these points. However, Bush's argument was that there were strong and various indications that Saddam was a threat, in light of his contact with terrorists and the terrorists obvious desire to do anything, including suicide, to kills us, that had to be taken seriously and dealt with forcefully. Give 100% access and cooperation to the weapons inspectors or we'll have to assume you've got something to hide. Saddam didn't and we did.

<!--QuoteBegin-Sonart@
And the coup de gras? None other than Ahmed Chalabi, the DoD's Iranian mole, whom the CIA and State Department Intellegence repeatedly warned was a lying sack of sh!t.[/quote]
I don't know about the CIA, but the State department certainly did. I agree this certainly looks bad on the face of it, but I've yet to investigate why the DoD chose to believe in him so much. That is currently the second most disturbing thing regarding Iraq I've seen so far.

<!--QuoteBegin-Sonart
So however you look at it, Joshua, it's a clusterfug. Either they accepted all this ERRONEOUS information on good faith, in which case it was a massive >MISTAKE<, or they knowingly accepted bad information in order to justify a war they were clearly intent on launching, in which case they >MISLED< us.

And if they knowingly used information they knew to be false, which in many cases it certainly seems, then they >LIED<.[/quote]
Here I have to disagree again. The fact that the President chose to accept as a strong, valid possibility information that was disputed does not constitute either misleading or lying in my book. He believed that Saddam was a grave threat to this country which leaves the possibility that he was mistaken. It's uncomfortable, but I have to get a little Clintonian about this point.

Your next door neighbor hauls out a gun and shoots another neighbor. You tackle him and take away his gun. His wife says he's got more 5 more guns in the house. You go in while he's rearranging the furniture and moving stuff from one room to another. You find 3 more guns while he's talking crap about how you'll never take him alive and he'll be the last man standing so you'd better watch your back. He admits to the 5 guns. Meanwhile, somebody else just broke into your house and shot on of your kids. You ask where the last gun is. He says he doesn't know while still talking crap about God being on his side that you'll be ground under his heel. Are you going to go back to life as normal and figure he's not going to get that last gun and take you on or are you going to try to get him out of the house so you can take that gun away? You have your friend haul him out while you look for the gun, but don't find it. Were you mistaken because you didn't find it? He admitted he had it, said you were going to be sorry, never proved he didn't have it any more. Was it a mistake to believe he had the gun he said he did?

Saddam admitted to having WMD's and couldn't prove he had gotten rid of them because he wouldn't let the inspectors have full access. With his support of suicide bombers, meetings with terrorists, vocal support of American deaths, and reports of suspicious (albeit disputed) activity, plus the knowledge that this was a guy with an ax to grind if ever there was one, I still don't think it was a mistake to invade Iraq. We just couldn't risk it. There are still reports that the WMD's may have been moved or hidden. I don't believe that because there's really no much to lose on the part of the Iraqi's to come clean so something like that would have to have some sort of trail that we could find. The fact is it's still something we can't have taken a chance with after 9/11. That's why I don't think it could even be classified as a mistake. I know I'm debating a very fine point here, but just because you believed an untrue fact that someone told you doesn't mean you made a mistake.

[Sonart]

Joshua -- Sorry, I wasn't being clear there I guess. The site itself states that Americans did not kill all of the dead referenced.

Would they be dead if we had not invaded?

My question to you was, is there any greater good in any situation in any part of history or the future that justifies the unintentional death of an innocent person?

Sure there is, but my point to you is that this was not the situation.

Um, that really wasn't my question.

So? It's my question to you. How many unintended innocent deaths are an unacceptable cost in a completely unjustified war of agression?

I understand this viewpoint, but I completely disagree with it. Yes, there were dissenting opinions on these points. However, Bush's argument was that there were strong and various indications that Saddam was a threat, in light of his contact with terrorists and the terrorists obvious desire to do anything, including suicide, to kills us, that had to be taken seriously and dealt with forcefully.

I'm at an absolute loss to understand how you justify this. Not only were there dissenting opinions, Joshua, the dissenting opinions were CORRECT! And I don't care how many indications Bush had, he has a responsibility not only to protect this nation, but to NOT abuse his power by destroying nations and people BY MISTAKE! Do you honestly care so little about people not American that merely thinking there might possibly be a threat justifies such an error? What would it have cost him to wait another month or two as the UN had asked? Nothing. They, or at least Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle, simply wanted to go to war, and whether or not there were WMD had nothing to do with it. Of that there's not a doubt in my mind.

The simple fact is ther was no threat. Bush was wrong and the dissenters were right. 8,000 American troops are now dead, maimed or wounded. For a MISTAKE!! OUR mistake. My gawd, Joshua, doesn't our President also have a responsiblity not to allow that to happen?

I don't know about the CIA, but the State department certainly did. I agree this certainly looks bad on the face of it, but I've yet to investigate why the DoD chose to believe in him so much.

I've told you. Because they simply wanted to go to war with Iraq. Because 9/11 was not the motive. Read it for yourself.

--"The ideologues at the Defense Department were warned by doubters at the State Department and CIA that Chalabi was peddling suspect goods."-- Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball, for Newsweek magazine

The fact that the President chose to accept as a strong, valid possibility information that was disputed does not constitute either misleading or lying in my book.

Well, there is now a strong, valid probability that this entire chapter has been a massive blunder from beginning to end. Bush's information was wrong, the people who told him it was wrong were right, the post invasion policies have been one disaster after another, the heart of our military is now bogged down in an Iraqi quagmire we have no idea how to get out of, while losing American lives day after day, and the entirely real possibility that Iraq, rather than being the shining star of American corporate democracy, will descend into chaotic civil war as the new center for Muslim anti-Americanism.

Good call, George.

Your next door neighbor hauls out a gun and shoots another neighbor.

I am so tired of these labored analogies. I'll give you a better analogy, this one from real life. In 1992, in Baton Rouge, a 16 yr-old Japanese exchange student was on his way to a Halloween party, dressed in a halloween costume, with a mask. Not being from around there, he got lost and walked onto the lawn of a nearby home, presumably to ask for help in finding his way. The home owner, thinking there was some sort of danger, brought a gun to the door and trained it on the young boy, shouting at him to freeze. The kid, not understanding, continued to walk up to the doorstep, where the homeowner shot him dead. Oops, my bad. Americans, of course, thought it was sad but still, the kid should have known not to trespass, because someone MIGHT think they were a danger, and the court agreed.

So what do we have? A scary looking threat, defying our instructions, gets blown away, even though it turns out he's absolutely no threat whatsoever. Yet for some reason, because he had the power, the shooter thought himself completely justified and acting honorably and without fault. To me it was negligent homicide and he should be in jail.

With his support of suicide bombers, meetings with terrorists, vocal support of American deaths, and reports of suspicious (albeit disputed) activity

Albeit disputed? The 9/11 commission has just issued their report declaring that there was NO connection. Not only that, the bulk of the 'intellegence' about Iraqi-terrorist connections came from none other than Ahmed Chalabi, our favorite Iranian spy, and his parade of 'defectors', the same Chalabi that CIA and State were telling Bush not to trust. Read the Newsweek article.

I know I'm debating a very fine point here, but just because you believed an untrue fact that someone told you doesn't mean you made a mistake.

It sure as hell does if people tasked with the job are telling you you're wrong.

This is simply the height of imperial arrogance, Joshua, the assumption that an ambiguous suspicion of a threat, debated by the very people tasked with finding out such things, is justification for the destruction of a country and it's people. I'm convinced the Bush team was bound and determined to make war on Iraq for no other reason than Saddam was a geo-political nuisance and they thought this would be a nifty way to resolve the whole mid-east question in one fell swoop.

[JoshuaRGodinez]

Originally posted by Sonart,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Would they be dead if we had not invaded?[/b]

No. Different innocent people would have been dead because of Saddam, but not those specific people. What's your point?

Originally posted by Sonart,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Sonart,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>So? It's my question to you. How many unintended innocent deaths are an unacceptable cost in a completely unjustified war of agression?[/b]

None. Since this wasn't an unjustified war of aggression, what's your point?

Originally posted by Sonart, I'm at an absolute loss to understand how you justify this. Not only were there dissenting opinions, Joshua, the dissenting opinions were CORRECT!

What you seem to be saying here is that the President must make life and death decisions based on the evidence he's presented. If any of the information comes with a caveat he can't use it because they might turn out to be correct. Some experts warned that using the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan might result in establishing it as the ruling body. Does that mean using them was wrong even though they helped defeat the Taliban and create a government with a new constitution? I see the appeal of using hindsight as the standard to which all decisions must be measured, but that simply results in paralysis. If you have to be 100% right 100% of the time you can never make any decisions. Again, the facts are that we had very little indication of what was going to happen on 9/11, but we might have been able to prevent it had we been more aggressive. We had indications that Saddam had ample desire to kill us and very likely an ability to help terrorists do so. After 9/11 you are insisting that Bush had to know with absolute certainty which experts were correct on every fact and take a chance with the lives of the citizens he is expected to protect? I don't agree that the majority of expert opinion was that Saddam was very unlikely to be a threat to America. After looking at the facts I see that the majority of expert opinion was that there were a lot of unanswered questions and that Saddam posed a significant risk to this country. We've already seen the reprecussions on 9/11 of not doing anything when there is a significant risk. That's a risk I'm glad the President isn't willing to take.

Originally posted by Sonart, Do you honestly care so little about people not American that merely thinking there might possibly be a threat justifies such an error? What would it have cost him to wait another month or two as the UN had asked? Nothing.

This made me angry at first, implying that I care little about people if they're not American. There's a whole raft of issues regarding people in other countries that concerns me. I might easily turn the question around and ask you if you think Iraqis are so savage and barbarous that they deserved to be slaughtered and raped by Saddam's regime just to make you sleep better at night knowing that we didn't fall for Saddam's trick of pretending he had WMD's. We'll never know what it would have cost. Some dissenting opinions believe that Saddam actually had biological weapons and that another month may have seen their use in our country except that our invasion caused him to ship them to Syria. Well, we can't play your hindsight game to see if they're right because the possibility of Saddam giving them to terrorists was eliminated. You can't state with certainty something that was disputed by a minority. You said so yourself.

Originally posted by Sonart, The simple fact is ther was no threat. Bush was wrong and the dissenters were right. 8,000 American troops are now dead, maimed or wounded. For a MISTAKE!! OUR mistake. My gawd, Joshua, doesn't our President also have a responsiblity not to allow that to happen?

Oh, sure. He also has the responsibility to make sure we're not attacked at home. He also has to know exactly what's correct at all times. He also has to walk on water and feed the nation endless supplies of bread and fish.

Originally posted by Sonart, I've told you. Because they simply wanted to go to war with Iraq. Because 9/11 was not the motive. Read it for yourself.

I've read. I don't agree on your conclusion or that Newsweek is an unbiased news source.

Originally posted by Sonart, Well, there is now a strong, valid probability that this entire chapter has been a massive blunder from beginning to end. Bush's information was wrong, the people who told him it was wrong were right, the post invasion policies have been one disaster after another, the heart of our military is now bogged down in an Iraqi quagmire we have no idea how to get out of, while losing American lives day after day, and the entirely real possibility that Iraq, rather than being the shining star of American corporate democracy, will descend into chaotic civil war as the new center for Muslim anti-Americanism. Good call, George.

Completely wrong. If your measuring stick is the net gain of this event then it has been a massive success. Saddam overthrown with a fraction of the casualties feared, a certain answer to the WMD question, freedom for the Iraqi people, terrorists engaged on foreign rather than domestic soil, massive reconstruction of infrastructure, greater tolerance for differing faiths, a discussion of human rights in the creation of the new country. I could go on, but I can already feel your eyes bugging out at my temerity in calling this a success. There are aspects that have gone poorly. We were wrong when we thought the newly freed Iraqi citizenry would treat their country with unbridled respect and pride. Some people looted their own national treasures while others stood by and did nothing. We assumed the nation would spring to arms to create a new defense force to ensure their domestic security. Instead, they've assumed we will be their police force and are angry that we didn't send more of our sons and daughters to protect theirs. We assumed they would turn against the radicals in their midst when they started killing Iraqi citizens. Too many of them have turned a deaf ear to the pleas to protect their own children. I agree that post-war clean-up has been badly screwed up. It's my biggest concern with the whole thing. It took us years to acquire our freedom and many more to get our government in some kind of working order. The expectation that Iraq could do it in months rather than years is something I fell for, too. I just didn't expect the extreme level of ingratitude. Did they honestly think there would have been fewer casualties when they finally did it for themselves? Saddam reportedly killed perhaps tens of thousands in the one uprising after the gulf war in 1991. That's one side killing the other on purpose, not aggregate numbers of anybody who got killed by anyone for any reason. If anyone believes lives are cheap it's the side that thinks hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths during a revolution would have been better because it would have only have been Iraqis and not Americans. I have serious problems with Bush and the planning for after the war, but the net effect of the entire operation has been an incredible success even discounting the lives saved.

Just because you tell me over and over again that the war was wrong does not make it so. I've listened to your reasoning and I appreciate every detail of information you've given to support your argument. I think your reasoning is incredibly wrong. Not only is it short-sighted, but it is also unintentionally condescending to the very people you want to protect. You think it's worse that some people have died now rather than more later simply because the President didn't know for a certainty that Saddam was definitely going to use WMD's on us. You ignore the fact that all evidence has shown that Saddam was a tyrannical bastard who had killed possibly 2 million of his own citizens http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/S...rds_031215.html and wasn't debating when to step down as President of Iraq. Your assertion that it's just too damn bad for the Iraqis because some experts dissented on the threat of WMD's strikes me as incredibly cold-blooded.

Originally posted by Sonart, I am so tired of these labored analogies. I'll give you a better analogy, this one from real life. In 1992, in Baton Rouge, a 16 yr-old Japanese exchange student was on his way to a Halloween party, dressed in a halloween costume, with a mask. Not being from around there, he got lost and walked onto the lawn of a nearby home, presumably to ask for help in finding his way. The home owner, thinking there was some sort of danger, brought a gun to the door and trained it on the young boy, shouting at him to freeze. The kid, not understanding, continued to walk up to the doorstep, where the homeowner shot him dead. Oops, my bad. Americans, of course, thought it was sad but still, the kid should have known not to trespass, because someone MIGHT think they were a danger, and the court agreed.

Okay, so the Japanese student is Saddam and the home owner is the U.S. and Saddam didn't give access to the inspectors because he didn't understand the language and the UN agreed with the U.S.? No, that's not right. The kid is the Iraqi people and they didn't stop Saddam from throwing the inspectors out so we targeted them and said we were sorry afterwards. No that doesn't work. This is a better analogy?

Originally posted by Sonart, So what do we have? A scary looking threat, defying our instructions, gets blown away, even though it turns out he's absolutely no threat whatsoever. Yet for some reason, because he had the power, the shooter thought himself completely justified and acting honorably and without fault. To me it was negligent homicide and he should be in jail.

Oh, okay. Your analogy bears only passing resemblance to the situation at hand. You've equated the death of an innocent person who was killed because of an inability to communicate with the imprisonment of Saddam+soldier&civilian casualties by soldiers&terrorists+resolution of WMD issues due to the assertions and belligerance of Saddam+faulty intelligence. You've equated Saddam Hussein to an innocent, teen-age tourist. Good job.

Originally posted by Sonart, Albeit disputed? The 9/11 commission has just issued their report declaring that there was NO connection.

That's not true. I said there were disputes about the WMD activity not about connections to terrorists. The commission stated that Saddam did have connections to terrorists. Oh, you mean Bin Laden didn't get on the phone with Saddam to plan 9/11. Nice job disproving an argument that was never made.

<!--QuoteBegin-Sonart,@

It sure as hell does if people tasked with the job are telling you you're wrong.
[/quote]
So you agree that if people tasked with the job are telling you you're right then it's not a mistake. Of course, in that sentence you're also arguing that whatever the intelligence staff says is always right, but it didn't sound like you believe that's always true.

<!--QuoteBegin-Sonart,
This is simply the height of imperial arrogance, Joshua, the assumption that an ambiguous suspicion of a threat, debated by the very people tasked with finding out such things, is justification for the destruction of a country and it's people. I'm convinced the Bush team was bound and determined to make war on Iraq for no other reason than Saddam was a geo-political nuisance and they thought this would be a nifty way to resolve the whole mid-east question in one fell swoop.[/quote]
When you see American citizens holding most of the important government posts in a year you can tell me that it's imperial. Otherwise, that's just a slur. Your assertion that debate by its very existence renders decisions invalid is wrong. I can see you're convinced, but just because wider ramifications of the war may have been discussed doesn't prove that they were the pillars on which the decision rested. I myself have argued that part of Bush's desire to take care of Saddam was to get out of Saudi Arabia and stop getting our pilots shot at over the no fly zones, but I don't think he made his decision based on that. It was just part of the whole enchilada and not a significant part at that.

Well, I can see we're just going to have to disagree on this whole thing. You think it wasn't justified because we didn't have iron-clad proof. I think we were justified because we believed Saddam and couldn't risk being wrong in the face of so many indicators. You think we're responsible for every bad thing in Iraq since the war started. I think the long-term result is a heroic saving of lives.

Just promise me that we'll always be friends and that we'll always have Paris to look back on.

Man, I've got to get some sleep.

[dotcoma]

Since this wasn't an unjustified war of aggression, what's your point?

So, what was it exactly? I'd really like to know. Our executive branch doesn't seem able to tell us.

[Osborn F Enready]

The million dollar question rox.

[dotcoma]

You mean the 4 billion per month question...

[Osborn F Enready]

You are right, I stand corrected, and humbled at the audacity of my "so called representative" government.

[Sonart]

No. Different innocent people would have been dead because of Saddam, but not those specific people.

You don't know that and even Saddam's prisons couldn't keep up with the going rate. Another big bomb today? 35 dead? Sure, Saddam was a butcher, but don't overestimate him. He's killed a lot of people, but he's done it over a 20 year period. He's certainly no worse than the Kmer Rouge or Jonas Savimbe or Augusto Pinochet, the last two of whom we supported.

None. Since this wasn't an unjustified war of aggression, what's your point?

Roxy's question. If not, what was it? Did they have WMD? No. Were they preparing a military adventure against one of our allies? No. Were they in collusion with al-Qaeda? No. None of these, he was simply defying us like the bratty little bully he was. That doesn't justify this war. And since we attacked Iraq, rather than them attacking us, that's defined as a war of aggression.

Does that mean using them was wrong even though they helped defeat the Taliban and create a government with a new constitution?

We defeated the Taliban because they were harboring Osama bin Laden and his organization, whom we wanted for attacking us on 9/11. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. And doing what we can to establish a democracy is probably the best way to prevent the Taliban's return. But if you look carefully at Afghanistan, you'll see that things are getting pretty dangerous. Much like the Soviets, we control Kabul and the major cities, but the vast countryside is pretty much up for grabs between the warlords, the bandits and the Mujahadeen.

This made me angry at first, implying that I care little about people if they're not American.

Well, then perhaps you might want to think about it. You're clearly suggesting that the mere idea that Saddam MIGHT be contemplating some sort of threat against our interests some years down the road is worth the guaranteed sacrifice of thousands of Iraqi civilians right now.

I might easily turn the question around and ask you if you think Iraqis are so savage and barbarous that they deserved to be slaughtered and raped by Saddam's regime just to make you sleep better at night knowing that we didn't fall for Saddam's trick of pretending he had WMD's.

Whatever I think about Saddam, I don't get to make that call. Iraq is a sovereign nation, no different than Sudan or Myanmar or us, and we have no say in their domestic policy. Sure, we can criticize them and threaten legal sanctions and try to make their lives as legally unpleasant as possible to alter their behavior... sort of like Bush is doing with North Korea. But what we CAN'T do simply invade them.

Some dissenting opinions believe that Saddam actually had biological weapons and that another month may have seen their use in our country except that our invasion caused him to ship them to Syria.

And the evidence? Any possibility it came from Ahmed Chalabi, our favorite Iranian spy?

You can't state with certainty something that was disputed by a minority. You said so yourself.

Well heck, I guess that justifies everything that's happened so far.

Okay, so the Japanese student is Saddam and the home owner is the U.S. and Saddam didn't give access to the inspectors because he didn't understand the language and the UN agreed with the U.S.?

I mean the homeowner could have fired a warning shot into the dirt or simply withdrawn into his house. I suspect that would get anyones attention, don't you? But he chose instead to simply shoot him dead, not because it was the right thing to do but because he thought he had the power and therefore the right to do it. Whether the kid was good or bad is irrelevent. He was no threat.

I've read. I don't agree on your conclusion or that Newsweek is an unbiased news source.

Here we go, the biased media. I assume you have some interesting websites, of course, to refute Newsweek? I've always rea