This will be my last post here, I don't have the time to carry on. Feel free to get the last word in though.
Censport said:
I wasn't laying all the blame on your country's doorstep, that's putting words in my mouth. I just reminded you of how they got here.
And exactly how many of the hijackers entered the US through Canada?
Censport said:
Then you're not paying attention. I never claimed to be in lock-step agreement with every Republican in congress. Stop trying to hold me accountable for the words of other Republicans.
OK, so you just think that everyone who supported withdrawing from Somalia is a coward (which is what you called Clinton)? That means that pretty much every US politician must be a coward, does it not?
Censport said:
Was Saddam in power? Yes. Who was going to have the power after him? His murdering, rapist sons. As long as the Husseins had power, the threat was there.
Yes but seeing as how there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that the US would end the no fly zones if Saddam's sons took over its kind of besides the point, isn't it? The US controlled the skies and could effectively deter any military incursions into the Kurdish areas. Unless the US relinquished that control, and there is no reason to believe they ever would, the Kurds were safe.
Censport said:
You clearly didn't read a single one of those articles. What I expect is for the UN to make immediate use of the helicopters provided to it and postpone the photo ops, delegate-hosting, condom distribution and worrying about their hotel's catering until AFTER they've saved some lives! What the UN has is a bunch of pompous, spoiled blowhards who are in love with their authority and status in the world community, and productive results apparently come second to all that.
You've got a point there, the UN certainly does have alot of problems. But just about any powerful body, including the US government for that matter, is going to be run by a bunch of "pompous, spoiled blowhards who are in love with their authority and status" so I don't see why it is fair to single out the UN for criticism here.
Censport said:
Now you're not reading my posts.
I'm reading them, but I'm just not following your thinking very well. Why did you even bring up Abu Ghraib in a paragraph about the UN's allegedly seeking to uncover US atrocities if you weren't trying to imply that they had something to do with that? It seemed to me that was your purpose, which I found a bit misleading. I may be mistaken though.
Censport said:
Nixon didn't lobby for a Nobel Peace Prize or go around pretending to be a great man of peace. Did Nixon travel the globe overseeing dubious elections? Carter did and does exactly that.
Actually Nixon did do a lot of globe trotting in his role as an elder statesman after he left office too. If you don't like Carter's grandstanding I can understand that but I don't see how you can fault Carter for trying to make a difference in his retirement.
Censport said:
No, Carter wasn't supposed to create a problem by waffling back and forth between supporting him and pressing for reform. Make a decision and stick with it, that's what a leader does.
Here we'll have to agree to disagree. In my opinion stubbornly sticking to a decision you have made even though events beyond your control are changing the situation makes no sense at all. A leader need to respond to changes and update policies when they no longer accord with reality. This "sticking to your guns" policy is one of the biggest weaknesses of the Bush administration, IMHO. For months after the insurgency in Iraq began the Bush administration stuck to its line that the war was over and they were just in the process of sweeping up a few regime "dead enders". This was long after it had become obvious that the insurgency was growing and would pose a major problem in rebuilding Iraq. If they had been willing to alter their approach early on they may have been able to head it off before it reached anywhere near the proportions it is now. Only recently, way to late to make a difference, has the Bush administration begun to quietly admit they have made mistakes. Better to admit your mistakes early on rather than to pretend they don't exist and wait until they become so big that you are forced to change your policies.
Censport said:
In the Spring of '78, Carter had three choices ahead of him:
-Back the Shah to the hilt as the policeman of the Persian Gulf: The traditional U.S. policy.
-Disassociate the United States from the Shah and seek a dialogue with Khomeini and other radical Moslems in the region.
-Continue to support the Shah while pressing Tehran and other governments for reform.
So what did Carter do? Shortly after the Shah declared martial law, President Carter called him to voice support. In November of 1978, security advisor Brzezinski called the Shah from the Iranian embassy in Washington to express his assurance that the United States would "back him to the hilt". Late in December, Carter dispatched the aircraft carrier Constellation to the Indian Ocean. Then Carter countermanded his own order. He then tried to press the Shah for some lucrative deals. Carter started by pressuring the Shah to release "political prisoners" including known terrorists and to put an end to military tribunals. The newly released terrorists would be tried under civil jurisdiction with the Marxist/Islamists using these trials as a platform for agitation and propaganda. Then there was a formal country-to-country demand that the Shah sign a 50-year oil agreement with the US to supply oil at a fixed price of $8 a barrel.
Ramsey Clark, who served as Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson, held a press conference where he reported on a trip to Iran and a Paris visit with Khomeni. He urged the US government to take no action to help the Shah so that Iran "could determine its own fate." Clark played a behind-the-scenes role influencing members of Congress to not get involved in the crisis. Perhaps UN Ambassador Andrew Young best expressed the thinking of the left at the time when he stated that, if successful, Khomeni would "eventually be hailed as a saint."
Now while most of Iran didn't want extremist Khomeni to come to power, Carter responded that Khomeni was a religious man -as he himself claimed to be- and that he knew how to talk to a man of God. Carter's mistaken assessment of Khomeni was encouraged by advisors with a desire to form an Islamic "Green belt" to contain atheist Soviet expansion with the religious fervor of Islam. Eventually, all 30 of the scenarios on Iran presented to Carter by his intelligence agencies proved wrong and totally misjudged Khomeni as a person and as a political entity. Khomeni was allowed to seize power in Iran and, as a result, we are now reaping the harvest of anti-American fanaticism and extremism.
Did Carter try to negotiate the release of the hostages? Yes, he tried to arrange the release to coincide with the November 1980 elections. Talk about your October surprises!
So what would you have had Carter do? You tell us that Carter had three choices and that the one he made was wrong, but you don't specifiy which one you think was right save to say that he should have "Made a decision and stuck to it", implying that his main sin was to change his mind. You have pretty much proved that Khomeini was a worse person than Carter though, but you haven't shown how Carter could have kept him out of power or even that if he had kept Khomeini out the alternative would have been any better. At that same time Saddam Hussein was coming to power in Iraq and he was recognized as an important US ally in the region and we all know how he turned out. Is there not an equal possibility that the Shah (or some other dictator Carter may have supported) would have turned out the same?
Censport said:
But hey, what do I know? I only lived through it.
Lived through it as in you were somehow personally involved in these events or lived through it as in you watched them unfold on your TV screen at home? The former might impress me, the latter doesn't really worth mentioning as in that sense I and half the population of the US "lived through it" too.
Censport said:
Okay, they made an error. And you're helping how, exactly?
Yes they made an error, a rather costly one at that. How exactly am I supposed to help? Am I somehow obliged to help the Bush administration conquer Iraq just because I'm discussing the subject on a message board? How exactly are you helping? Have you enlisted yet?
Censport said:
Am I? Please show me where I have put a happy face on terrorism. If there has been any misconception let me be clear: terrorists who go around blowing up innocent women and children are a much of sick F--ks who deserve to be killed. The fact that I disagree with the Bush administration's way of doing that DOES NOT mean that I sympathize with the terrosists.
Censport said:
I'd be interested in the names of these terror groups that Saddam was financing and how many attacks they have carried out against Americans because this is the first I've heard of that.
Censport said:
Indirect?!? Oh that's right, their main incentive was killing Jews. The fact that Ma got $25,000 compensation... well, I guess that was the icing on the cake, eh?
So...you are saying that Saddam's 25,000 dollars was the MAIN reason these people were strapping explosives to themselves and blowing up busloads of women and children? Does that make any sense? If someone came up to you, or anyone you know, and said "If you blow yourself up on that bus over there I'll give your mom 25,000 dollars" would you do it? If you did I would have to say that the 25,000 dollars to your mom would be pretty incidental because you would have to have been one pretty screwed up individual to begin with to do something like that. Its also worth mentioning that suicide bombings were going on well before Saddam started giving money to their moms and have continues well after Saddam's overthrow. So whatever impact that money had on suicide attacks would have to be described as pretty "indirect" by any reasonable standard.
Censport said:
Then you'll be comforted to know that Saddam had relationships with al-Qaeda members. Well, not in the Biblical or Michael Jackson sense...
Yes, his ENTIRE relationship with Al Quaida consisted of Al-Quaida asking Saddam for help and Saddam telling them to get lost. End of story.
Censport said:
Except the ability to harbor and finance terrorists.
Every country in the world has the ABILITY to harbor and finance terrorists. I believe Abu Nidal is the ONLY terrorist known to have been in Iraq prior to the invasion and as he hadn't been involved in an attack in nearly 20 years his presence there couldn't have been that high a priority that they absolutely had to invade Iraq to remove him as a threat.
Censport said:
Oh really? According to the military, Congresswoman (-person?) Marsha Blackburn, and my own (admittedly anecdotal) sources, we've destroyed over 400,000 tons of weapons that Saddam had that wasn't allowed under the '91 UN cease-fire agreement.
I'd be interested to know exactly what KIND of weapons were included in this 400,000 ton figure as they obviously weren't of the WMD or ballistic missile type.
Censport said:
Wrong. Statements and known facts are two different things. Saddam stated that he had WMDs then stated he had destroyed them. The UN inspectors couldn't find any evidence that he had destroyed them, nor could they find them (in mass quantities, anyway). The question is: Where the *%&$ are they now?
Wrong, the UN inspectors found evidence that Saddam had in fact destroyed most of his weapons and it was only a small portion that were unnacounted for. The inspectors themselves had overseen the destruction of most of the weapons. Furthermore of that unnacounted portion it was also known that a significant quantity of it would have decayed in the 12 years since the Gulf war and been completely unusable. The Cheif UN weapons Inspector stated that of the remaining unnacounted weapons there were numerous possible explanations for the discrepancy, only one of which being that Saddam had them hidden. And of the weapons he was suspected of harboring it was KNOWN (they did have a list) that even if he DID posses them they would not have been significant enough to alter the military balance in the region.
Or to pay the Kurds another visit.
Censport said:
He in fact did have a history of harboring terrorists and financing them.
Yes, you've said that before without providing any details. And of course its somewhat of an irrelevant point, isn't it? If we are to accept that stopping Iraq's financing and harboring of terrorists was a main reason for the war (or even a minor reason for it) it must also follow that the post-Saddam Iraq that the US had a plan for creating would NOT harbor or finance terrorists. And yet both of these activities have increased exponentially in the new Iraq, which either indicates that stopping terrorism in Iraq was never really considered part of the plan or the Bush administration has been grossly incompetent in handling things. The third possibility is that it was the Bush administration's policy all along to draw terrorists to Iraq to kill them as you implied earlier, though this theory conflicts with every other Bush objective in Iraq so directly that it must be dismissed as ridiculous.
Censport said:
Which is why I posted the article you didn't read from that Iraqi and what he thinks of your political ilk. Also, I posted the article earlier about 80% of Iraqis strongly wanting those awful free elections we imposed on them. Maybe that's the same 80% that wants the US military to leave? Could be, since the fastest way to get the US military out is, as I stated before, to get their country up and productive again. But then does that mean that the 20% that wants the US military to stay are the ones fighting them? Think they took time out to answer a poll? And if that 80% are the want both free elections and US troop withdrawal, what are they planning to do, fight the terrorists -ah, insurgents- themselves? Where is your logic coming from?
Yes, you posted an article presenting the views of ONE Iraqi whose views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of everyone in the country. It wouldn't be particularly difficult for me to find an article written by an Iraqi supporting everything I've argued here either, but I didn't think it would serve any purpose so I haven't bothered.
I don't at all doubt that 80% of Iraqis want elections. But as I'm sure you are aware, the statistics gained from polls can be extremely subjective. For one thing, your argument is based on the assumption that having elections is THE most important issue to most Iraqis. That is, you feel that Iraqis are willing to make the significant sacrifices in other areas for the sake of voting. Voting means keeping the US troops in their country, which also means that the war between those who accept and reject the US presence and the associated violence will continue to tear significant portions of Iraq to pieces for the forseeable future. I don't have any accurate data, though intuition would suggest that if you asked Iraqis to prioritize their wants then ending the violence would probably be a higher priority than holding elections that will only sharpen the divide within Iraqi society and probably cause the violence to spread.
The Iraqis themselves have not been a part of the political process leading towards elections, all of the major decisions have been made by Washington, right down to the date the polls were going to be held. That isn't an insignificant point, the Occupation authority made significant, permanent changes to Iraq's legal and economic systems that severely limit the power of any future "soveriegn" government to actually govern the country.
My position is that the US should withdraw soon. They can't defeat the insurgency militarily and their efforts to do so over the past year and a half have only made matters worse. It seems that the issue of US troops is the biggest driving force behind the insurgents and by removing that issue it would be possible to defeat or co-opt them politically.
Crap, I've written too much. Feel free to respond but I don't think I can make any more posts here.
