Clarke on Daily Show

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-09-22 12:00am

Richard C. Clarke was on the Daily Show, and he was charming and insightful as always. He brought up a few things that got me thinking.

1. We have lost track of WHY we are in Iraq in the first place. The people fighting us now have nothing to do with Sadamm, WMD, or al Qaeda (thats right, nothing to do with al Qaeda). These truly are freedom fighters who want us out of their country and especially out of their holy cities. Why "stay the course" when the course is kind of a fuzzy, twisty line that goes from somewhere to nowhere?

2. After Nov. 3, casualties are going to go up in a big way. Bush is planning to retake cities like Falujah, but he won't do it now when the high casualties will make him drop in the polls. He will talk about staying the course and all these nice things, then the second he is reelected he will throw soldiers into the middle of the biggest areas of resistance. Clarke said he got this info from a Times article, but seeing as you have to pay for the times online, I couldn't get this myself.

3. Bush is making plans for regime change in Iran. Again, from the Times, so I don't have a source other than what I heard Clarke say, but this scares me. I know some must be very happy to hear this, but I think we bit off much more than we can chew in Iraq and are just cramming more in. Ugh.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-22 12:15am

1. We have lost track of WHY we are in Iraq in the first place. The people fighting us now have nothing to do with Sadamm, WMD, or al Qaeda (thats right, nothing to do with al Qaeda). These truly are freedom fighters who want us out of their country and especially out of their holy cities. Why "stay the course" when the course is kind of a fuzzy, twisty line that goes from somewhere to nowhere?

Even if the Al-Queda thing is true, and I'm not at all sure it is, we still have a lot of fundamentalist terrorists running around. We need to deal with them and hard. They're terrorists of the same stripe at the very least.

And quite frankly we have a moral obligation deal with them.

2. After Nov. 3, casualties are going to go up in a big way. Bush is planning to retake cities like Falujah, but he won't do it now when the high casualties will make him drop in the polls. He will talk about staying the course and all these nice things, then the second he is reelected he will throw soldiers into the middle of the biggest areas of resistance. Clarke said he got this info from a Times article, but seeing as you have to pay for the times online, I couldn't get this myself.

I'm very, very wary of these supposed insider information stories. They've been all over the map and all seem to be equally reliable.

As for the real plan, it'll be a hell of a fight. And to say the least I have friends that'll be over there that I'll worry about. But we need to agressively confront these terorrists. Sitting back as we are now isn't working. It's best to confront them and since we can't just light the place up from the air this is the only real way to do it.

3. Bush is making plans for regime change in Iran. Again, from the Times, so I don't have a source other than what I heard Clarke say, but this scares me. I know some must be very happy to hear this, but I think we bit off much more than we can chew in Iraq and are just cramming more in. Ugh.

Again, I'm more than a little skeptical about this. I'm sure Bush is looking at regime change for all the Axis of Evil. That doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to be invading any time soon. Regime change could be as simple as putting some serious muscle into helping the less fundamentalist elements gain ascendancy.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2004-09-22 12:32am

Stormbringer wrote:
1. We have lost track of WHY we are in Iraq in the first place. The people fighting us now have nothing to do with Sadamm, WMD, or al Qaeda (thats right, nothing to do with al Qaeda). These truly are freedom fighters who want us out of their country and especially out of their holy cities. Why "stay the course" when the course is kind of a fuzzy, twisty line that goes from somewhere to nowhere?
Even if the Al-Queda thing is true, and I'm not at all sure it is, we still have a lot of fundamentalist terrorists running around. We need to deal with them and hard. They're terrorists of the same stripe at the very least.

And quite frankly we have a moral obligation deal with them.

Of course we do, if we didn't outright create them, we sure as fuck created the atmosphere in which they thrive.

BTW people, Clarke's point wasn't about them being "freedom fighters", it was about Najaf and Fallujah etc. not being a threat until we manufactured that threat with this moronic war.

Bugsby · Post by **Bugsby** » 2004-09-22 01:15am

I know he didn't say freedom fighters, I was paraphrasing and extrapolating. "If they're not terrorists, then what are they...?" Sorry for any confusion my poor phrasing may have caused.

And I don't get the logic behind "America NEEDS to stay in Iraq." Our very presence there is why they hate us. Sticking around will do.... what now? We're killing people yet fueling hatred. Not to say that we should leave - in fact, I agree with Kerry's position that we should stay but try to make ourselves one faction of a stabilizing coalition, not an occupying army - but I'm trying to give a bit of depth to the issue.