The Iraq War - Chapter 5

[Random]

Re: Setting the playing field

www.truthout.org/article/us-advised-iraqi-ministry-oil-deals

Oh, but wait, maybe this is how they'll finally make Iraqi oil pay off the one trillion $'s this fake war has cost, on paper, so far.

Did we also collected from previous wars, including WW II? Not from the Germans but from our Allies we have aided, including the French?

[timkona]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

I have patiently waited for a couple of weeks to see if anybody would mention the reduction in violence in Iraq, the increasing civility, or the fact that the troop surge has been a success.

Bush is finally saying it's time to start thinking about bringing home some of the troops. Over half the districts in Iraq are taking care of themselves.

All this good news must have liberals freaking out. With the election only 3 months away, libs again find themselves in a position where hoping for something terrible to happen in Iraq is desirable.

Peace in Iraq is the worst possible scenario for Dem White House hopes.

[TuNnL]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

I have patiently waited ... to see if anybody would mention the reduction in violence in Iraq, the increasing civility, or the fact that the troop surge has been a success.

Bush is finally saying it's time to start thinking about bringing home some of the troops. Over half the districts in Iraq are taking care of themselves.

All this good news must have liberals freaking out. With the election only 3 months away, libs again find themselves in a position where hoping for something terrible to happen in Iraq is desirable.

Peace in Iraq is the worst possible scenario for Dem White House hopes.

I think you’re completely mischaracterizing the situation in Iraq and how it affects politics, Tim. John McCain, the Republican, is the one predicting a massive surge of militant attacks as we draw nearer to election day. Peace is the worst possible scenario for GOP White House hopes, because the closer to peace we are in Iraq, the less justification there is for keeping troops there.

The dems would love nothing better than for a peaceful situation to occur in Iraq. This will make it that much easier for Barack Obama to withdraw the troops once he is elected. I haven’t heard Dubya mention that he is planning to do any such thing during the remainder of his tenure. He has after all, said a lot of things that just aren’t true.

[Ron Whitfield]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

Where do you come up with this stuff, TK?

[Random]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

You think we totally eliminated Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed insurgents? Dude, if I was them, I'd lay low and make sporadic terrorist acts. If I was them, I'd welcome US troop withdrawal, so I can further destabilize the US-backed government who probably won't get support from Democrats after the troop withdrawal. I mean, what they gonna do? Send a civvy agency to deal with Al Qaeda?

Dude, if I was them, I think like Data in Star Trek, where victory is not the objective but to bring prolonged stalemates and destabilization to my enemy until they are frustrated. After all, we are truly a nation of whiners.

[Ron Whitfield]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

This whole Iraq mess is now a never ending problem for the US and everybody else. Bush was saying to those in Washington about Saddam in at least March of '02, "We're taking him out", but playing the rest of us (who didn't know any better...) like there were real reasons for it, when he (and millions of thinking Americans) knew there wasn't.
It's been a scam from the beginning, and we are history as far as getting out without setting the area up for everything bad that could possibly happen, with millions of fine Iraqi people to become toast, and staying in is killing us.

[Frankie's Market]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

I have patiently waited for a couple of weeks to see if anybody would mention the reduction in violence in Iraq, the increasing civility, or the fact that the troop surge has been a success.

As the great Jerry Lee Lewis might say, "Woah baby. Whole lotta spinnin' goin' on."

The surge has reduced the number of American GIs dying in Iraq. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that many people still think the entire invasion of Iraq was a catastrophic mistake in the first place. And the blame for this mess squarely falls on the shoulders of the Bush administration. The president's record low approval ratings attest to that.

It's like a drunk driver causing a traffic accident being declared a "hero" for making a 911 call that saves the life of his victim. Nice try anyway, Tim.

Bush is finally saying it's time to start thinking about bringing home some of the troops. Over half the districts in Iraq are taking care of themselves.

And saying so *after* Iraqi's PM is saying that he and his govt. wants the US troops out of the country.

All this good news must have liberals freaking out. With the election only 3 months away, libs again find themselves in a position where hoping for something terrible to happen in Iraq is desirable.

Peace in Iraq is the worst possible scenario for Dem White House hopes.

LOL! I think there's a fine line between being an "optimist" and simply being "tone deaf" to what the American electorate is concerned.

1) The #1 issue that voters are concerned about is the economy. And in virtually every poll, more voters trust Obama with that issue.

2) Even if you think that the election will hinge upon the issue of national security, keep in mind that while the violence in Iraq is going down, it is now escalating in Afghanistan.

And, oh yes,... Osama Bin Laden still has not been brought to justice, nearly 7 years after 9/11.

All that the "surge" accomplished was to quell the chaos and violence that Bush himself started in Iraq. As far as the overall war on terrorism is concerned, Al-Queda and the Taliban are still alive and kicking. Looks like it will take a Democratic administration to take care of those organizations once and for all.

[Ron Whitfield]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

And let's not forget those vast record breaking poppy fields now feeding the world heroin like never before. Totally allowed by Bush/Cheney/Dumsfield on the basis that since we devestated local crop fields and the farmers their abilities to produce $, that it was the only legitimate recourse for them to survive.

If that alone doesn't go a long way in describing this pitifully sick joke of a president/administration..., but of course the CIA has been running drugs for decades.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

Bush is finally saying it's time to start thinking about bringing home some of the troops.

Actually - he wants to bring them home so he can send them to Afghanistan, where we failed in our mission to find Osama Bin Laden, because Bush wanted so badly to go after Hussein.

[Random]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

Looks like it will take a Democratic administration to take care of those organizations once and for all.

Riiight. Like what then-President Bill Clinton did when he had intel about Osama Bin Laden?

[TuNnL]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

Looks like it will take a Democratic administration to take care of those organizations once and for all.

Why not a Libertarian administration? Or a Green Party Administration? Or an independent administration? You are indeed being a bit presumptuous.

Riiight. Like what then-President Bill Clinton did when he had intel about Osama Bin Laden?

It’s sad I have to argue for both sides here. President Bill Clinton did everything possible to pursue Osama Bin Laden. Ultimately, declassified documents show that in 1998, Clinton authorized Cruise missile attacks targeting Bin Laden in Khost, Afghanistan and discussed assassinating him. Clinton has said publicly that he would have sent in U.S. Special Forces to invade Afghanistan in an effort to capture Bin Laden, but the ruling Taliban refused to authorize such an effort, due to what they described as a “lack of evidence.”

[Random]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

It’s sad I have to argue for both sides here. President Bill Clinton did everything possible to pursue Osama Bin Laden. Ultimately, declassified documents show that in 1998, Clinton authorized Cruise missile attacks targeting Bin Laden in Khost, Afghanistan and discussed assassinating him. Clinton has said publicly that he would have sent in U.S. Special Forces to invade Afghanistan in an effort to capture Bin Laden, but the ruling Taliban refused to authorize such an effort, due to what they described as a “lack of evidence.”

And when did he finally learned that the Taliban is protecting their son-in-law?

[Frankie's Market]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

Why not a Libertarian administration? Or a Green Party Administration? Or an independent administration? You are indeed being a bit presumptuous.

Presumptuous, no. Realistic, yes.

A Libertarian or a Green party candidate being elected President in 2008? Shurrreee, TuNnL. And why don't you hope for gas going back down to 30 cents a gallon while you're at it.

[Kalalau]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

At the end of World War Two in Germany, General Eisenhower marched German civilians through the death camps so they could see what their country had done. Footage shows the German people recoiling in absolute horror. Understandably so. Their government never told them. Their media never told them. They never knew.

Yesterday an Air America host passed along the information that a medical journal has estimated that the death toll in Iraq has now passed a million. Thats essentially everybody on O'ahu. For the sake of argument, assume that number is a vast over estimation, cut it by a factor of 10...that would still be approximately the entire population of the Big Island. But even if it was only a thousand, it is too much. This statistic went unreported by almost all of America's news media. I think they were doing Britany Speers' new eye shadow.

[Adri]

Re: The Iraq War - Chapter 5

Kalalau: Once when I went through the Holocaust Museum (I've been more than once), I followed a pair of German tourists who kept saying, over and over, that the German citizens never knew. In the early days, the Holocaust Museum's main exhibit was made so that you had to walk all the way through the exhibit. The path was narrow so people couldn't turn around and come back out the way they went in and there were no visible exits (that has changed since). One German woman was so upset that she kept trying to get out and she couldn't. I wondered then how it could be that something as big as the Holocaust went unnoticed by German citizens or whether it was just a self-protective thing ~ a denial of responsibility to lessen the guilt. We didn't know so we didn't do anything to stop it.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,404949,00.html

"SEOUL, South Korea — She was "The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America," a Seoul socialite said to have charmed secret information out of one lover, an American colonel, and passed it to another, a top communist in North Korea....Kim Soo-im and her love triangle are gone, buried in separate corners of a turbulent past. But in yellowing U.S. military files stamped "SECRET," hibernating through a long winter of Cold War, the truth survived. Now it has emerged, a half-century too late to save her."

The article in itself is sad and interesting but I find in it something else of particular interest. "Col. William H.S. Wright, head of the Korea advisory group, testified that her confession was probably forced through "out and out torture," probably near-drowning, or waterboarding, as it's now known."

So in the 1950s, the US considered waterboarding "out and out torture". But not so much now with respect to the waterboarding the US is doing or would like to do in Iraq and elsewhere.