Bush, Cheney Concede Saddam Had No WMDs

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-09 06:10am

MKSheppard wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:I understand why you're saying this, but let me ask you this: what does the US stand to gain out of all this, apart from saving face? And is the price worth it?
Wait...you mean we're doing this NOT FOR THE OIL, KENNETH?

It's a rhetorical question, Shep. You're doing it in order to "secure the oil supply" and to protect Israel. Nobody believes this bullshit cover story about doing it out of humanitarian concern for the people of Iraq.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-09 06:15am

jegs2 wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:I understand why you're saying this, but let me ask you this: what does the US stand to gain out of all this, apart from saving face? And is the price worth it?
Mission accomplishment. Once we set to do something, we had better finish the job. The goals I earlier wrote seem now to be the definition of finishing the job.

In other words, saving face.

Unfortunately, Desert Storm likely set us up for failure by creating unrealistic expectations for modern warfare. From reports I've heard from my comrades over in Iraq, things are not nearly so bad as the news likes to paint it. We're making great headway, the Iraqi National Guard is already taking over a lot of the tasks carried out earlier only by US soldiers. One Reservist who went over to Iraq went under protest, saying he didn't believe in the mission. After a few weeks, he called his unit and said to forget everything he had earlier said -- "They need us over here," and "Don't believe any of that ____ you see on the news."

There are regions of the country which are relatively quiet, and regions which are not. Based on the maps I've seen, between one third and one half of the whole country is not pacified. Men who have been deployed to one of the regions that's fairly well under control will probably have a different story to tell than men who have been deployed to one of the hotspots, and they can only testify about their immediate surroundings.

The "media reports" which are so easily dismissed by you are not fiction; you complain that they merely exaggerate the importance of the horror stories they describe. But make no mistake: those horror stories are real; they're not made up, they're not fictional, and unless you can provide some cogent reason why a soldier saying "it's not that bad where I am" truly contradicts another soldier saying "it's a hellhole", this testimony you describe does not change anything.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2004-10-09 06:17am

Howedar wrote:
Sokartawi wrote:
jegs2 wrote:No. What to do now is to continue to destroy all insurgents and terrorists in country, empower the new Iraqi government, strengthening and training the Iraqi National Guard in order to facilitate their takeover of national security duties, strengthen the Iraqi infrastructure, and ensure the new government has firm control over the country and is friendly to US interests. Once that is done, the mission will be complete, and not before. IMO, any other COA spells only defeat, which is not tolerable.
If I had to choose between those 'insurgents and terrorists' and the US in there, I'd pick sides for the insurgents (freedom fighters IMO) without hesitations. It's THEIR country, not yours, and you are an illegal invasion force, which even fits in the definition of terrorist. This temporary government are not much more then a bunch traitors who deserve to be shot.
You will surely provide an argument to support this assertion.

The correct answer is, as always, whoever wins is a patriot, the loser a traitor. Remember, this is a war not a debate.

Sokartawi · Post by **Sokartawi** » 2004-10-09 07:45am

Badme wrote:
Sokartawi wrote:
jegs2 wrote: No. What to do now is to continue to destroy all insurgents and terrorists in country, empower the new Iraqi government, strengthening and training the Iraqi National Guard in order to facilitate their takeover of national security duties, strengthen the Iraqi infrastructure, and ensure the new government has firm control over the country and is friendly to US interests. Once that is done, the mission will be complete, and not before. IMO, any other COA spells only defeat, which is not tolerable.
If I had to choose between those 'insurgents and terrorists' and the US in there, I'd pick sides for the insurgents (freedom fighters IMO) without hesitations. It's THEIR country, not yours, and you are an illegal invasion force, which even fits in the definition of terrorist. This temporary government are not much more then a bunch traitors who deserve to be shot.
Why? So that said insurgents can establish a fundamentalist Islamic regime, as opposed to a (somewhat) democratic one that we're trying to implement?

If that is what they choose to establish, yes. They are the ones that must make that decission, and I think it's just plain wrong to force them democracy, or anything else for that matter, down their throats. It was their job to get rid of Saddam, not the job of the US or any other country. Now the US has interfered and done it for them, they haven't learned a thing of it, plus is clearly shows to the citizens of Iraq that they are NOT the ones that are in control of the future of their own nation, and if you want a real democracy to emmerge there eventually, that of course isn't a good thing. As for someone who said further in the thread that the winner is always the freedom fighter and the loser always the oppressor/terrorist, I disagree. The freedom fighter stays on his own soil while the oppressor/terrorist does not. Since it's Iraqi soil we're talking about, the US invasion force is the 'bad guy' and anyone resisting them the 'good guy', to put it in simple terms.