| | Ronald:
John, I never said Bush was as bad as Hussein, I just said he deserves the same fate. A man who kills a single person in cold blood does not represent the same level of monumental evil that, say, a Hitler does--but he deserves the same punishment: death.
Ronald, when did Bush kill someone in cold blood? And why would he deserve the same fate as Saddam Hussein, who actually did kill in cold blood?
I'm well aware of the entire context of Iraq's history the past decade. Bush's motivation for lying about weapons of mass destruction? Simple: to provide an excuse and opening to invade Iraq. Why invade Iraq? Here are a few reasons: 1) To get the U.S. involved in a war-occupation to ensure that he and the majority of fellow Republicans would get re-elected, 2) To make hundreds of millions of dollars for his Haliburton buddies involved in rebuilding Iraq. 3) To establish a strategic U.S. military base in the Middle East. 4) Oil.
Your reason 1) is lacking as the Republicans have faced defeat in Congress because of the Iraq war and now faces losing the Presidency. 2) Bush did not advocate going to war in Iraq before 9/11 and in fact it was with Congressional approval under President Clinton the U.S.'s stated goal would be to seek the removal of Saddam Hussein. So I don't understand why after 9/11 he would seek to fill the coffers of Haliburton but before make no such effort? And wouldn't there be far easier ways toward corruption to make Haliburton and himself rich than launch a war? Does that not sound like a stretch to you? I also fail to see how Bush profits from this war through Haliburton and sounds more like conspiracy theory nonsense once we apply Occam's Razor to what is more likely to be true. Launch a costly and immensely unpopular war to make more money or try to establish a pro-western democracy as a means to combating terrorism? Which was the more likely motivation for Bush given the facts? 3) Establishing a strategic military base for what purpose? Just because? 4) Yes we realize oil is a component, but that alone is a poor reason to wage war with Iraq when we could've easily negotiated oil trade with Saddam Hussein and ignore his regime's brutality as we are now doing with Saudi Arabia. Perhaps because of oil it was what made Saddam Hussein's regime more dangerous because oil often is the means for a brutal dictator to amass his arsenal of weapons. So yes, perhaps it was because of oil but not just because of oil and definitely not because Bush wanted to get rich.
Bush could hardly, with no justifiable reason, invade Mexico for oil without inciting a world-wide uproar...
Funny, isn't that what precisely what the world did when it was decided Iraq was to be invaded?
...and all kinds of violent reactions domestically. But his lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction...
Ronald let me stop you right there. This is bogus since everyone thought Saddam Hussein for years had amassed WMD and everyone agreed he was actively seeking WMD. Including the U.N. and the European Union. To single out Bush and say he purposely lied about Iraq having WMD would also assume all of the International institutions during his Presidency and before it were also in on this conspiracy to lie to the world. Are you prepared to make an accusation like that, that include many of the intelligence agencies of Europe, Israel, the United Nations, and the European Union?
. Alan Greenspan himself says the Iraqi War is about oil. I second what Greenspan says, and if you disagree with his assessment, you've certainly got your head buried deep in some Middle Eastern sand.
And if you take his assessment as true only because he is Alan Greenspan, that certainly speaks a lot about how you regard the truth.
I did not say the War on Terror is rightly a war on Islam; I said it is rightly a war on Islam terrorists, rightly a war on those radical Islam groups, like Al-Quaeda, that have declared jihad,or "holy" war against the U.S. Your lack of reading comprehension is truly astounding.
Not as astounding as your lack of memory of what you wrote. And I quote from your post 44: "The War on Terroism is, rightly, a war on radical Islam"
Reading comprehension skills.....check. Everything seems fine on my end.
I do not advocate, and did not say that I advocate, any action against Islam or Muslim people in general. In fact, my postion is that if a country chooses to be an Islam state, that's its business. I am not into forcing democracy (which, without constitutionally guaranteed individual rights, is just majority mob-rule anyway) on any country.
I did not say we should have attacked Iran. I said we should declare war on any country that clearly, tangibly supports Islam terrorist groups, meaning groups that have declared jihad or "holy" war on the U.S.
Which exactly fits the description of Iran.
At some point soon, the U.S. should get out of Iraq and leave Iraq to the Iraqis.
In order to "declare war on any country that clearly, tangibly supports Islam terrorist groups" yet this essentially means you advocate abandoning Iraq to "Islam terrorist groups". This still does not make much sense.
The amount of death and destruction Bush's invasion has wreaked dwarfs the evil perpetrated by Hussein.
Ronald, what lead you to this conclusion? Do you know how many people Saddam's regime murdered while he was President?
Taken from Michael Dickey's blog:
The Iraq war has seen about 2,500 combat deaths of American Soldiers, and probably some 40,000 deaths of Iraqi Civilians, foreigners and combatants. The number of US Soldiers killed per year averages at around 780, and the number of Iraqi citizens and foreigners is around 12,000 / year... Saddam Hussein is estimated to have killed 2 million people over the course of 30 years, which is an astonishing 67,000 people per year, or 3,000 per month. Two million is 1/3rd the number of Jews killed in the holocaust. Saddam Hussein was perpetuating his own patient holocaust, and indeed his Anfal Campaign was a blatant systemic effort to kill all Kurds. Compared with the 10,000 people per year killed by the violence from the war, and the violence from insurgents and local terrorists, the US led Iraq war could be considered to be saving 50,000 lives per year.
http://www.matus1976.com/politics/reflections_iraq_war.html
You cannot win a military-police type occupation of a foreign country. History proves it, and our unsuccesful ordeal in Iraq further substantiates it.
Except this isn't true that history proves this assessment you made. It is a popular myth that insurgencies historically are militarily successful. When they have been successful it was due to a lack of morale by the forces fighting the insurgency. In fact historically according to a Pentagon study, only 41% of insurgencies have been successful. One very famous insurgency that was defeated (in yes a civil war) was the British defeating the communist rebels in Malaysia. Here's a link to the USA today article discussing this:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-05-08-insurgency-report_N.htm
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