GOP congressmen: Everyone agrees Iraq war a ‘horrible mistake’
Superdave
ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
http://rawstory.com/2010/03/gop-iraq-war-horrible-mistake/
Gracchus
> ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahttp://rawstory.com/2010/03/gop-iraq-war-horrible-mistake/
Interesting story, but I still get the impression that if the war
could have been finished in 6 months and cost 20 percent of what it
did, these guys would still be comfortable with the "collateral
damage."
Hearing Condi still defend the enterprise, I wonder how many of her
family members she had to sacrifice. Almost certainly the same number
of losses the Bushes had, or the Cheneys, Rumsfelds, etc.
Calimero
Rabid isolationalists said the same about the Roosevelt and Truman
families during WW2.
Dictators like Americans like you ...
Max
Gracchus
> Rabid isolationalists said the same about the Roosevelt and Truman
> families during WW2.
>
> Dictators like Americans like you ...
blanders-lite weighs in again.
It might well have been true of those families as well. It stands out
glaringly that so many who are comfortable sending many thousands to
their deaths don't want one of their own family members within a
thousand miles of a war zone. When someone pointed out that Mitt
Romney was championing the war but had 5 young, healthy sons happy to
stay safe and sound at home, he had no satisfactory response.
What did he say? They were busy working on his campaign? That's akin
to Cheney's remark that he had "other priorities" during the Vietnam
war. I wonder how many guys are lying forgotten in V.A. hospitals who
wish they had the option of choosing such "priorities"--getting
multiple deferments and making loads of money.
These are sad truths, but you apparently think that pointing any of
them out empowers dictators and undermines democracy. To you, any war
is a "good" war if it is waged by a country you support.
stephenJ
>
> ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
> http://rawstory.com/2010/03/gop-iraq-war-horrible-mistake/
the iraq war was a great idea in 2003, and still is today. no other
option, really.
--
I wanted to see the powerful, mystical Elvis
that had crash-landed from a burning star onto
American soil .. that's the Elvis that inspired us
to all the possibilities of life. But that Elvis
had left the building.
- Bob Dylan
Gracchus
> the iraq war was a great idea in 2003, and still is today. no other
> option, really.
So even knowing now that there were no WMDs, no involvement with 9/11,
and the country not a base for those who planned it, it was a "great
idea" because some impotent dictator ran the country? You amaze,
stevie.
Superdave
wrote:
jaros embraces the idea of blowing up a trillion dollars for nothing that his
children and grand children will have to pay for in tazes. he's a sadist.
stephenJ
> On Mar 22, 10:07 am, stephenJ <sjar...@pop.com> wrote:
>
>> the iraq war was a great idea in 2003, and still is today. no other
>> option, really.
>
> So even knowing now that there were no WMDs, no involvement with 9/11,
> and the country not a base for those who planned it, it was a "great
> idea"
yes .. saddam had shown he was capable of anything. couldn't risk him
being in power any longer.
of course it would have been better if we could have just got him with a
smart bomb or something, but ...
--
It is easier to win over people to pacifism than socialism.
We should work first for pacifism, and only later for socialism.
- Albert Einstein
stephenJ
> On Mar 22, 9:52 am, stephenJ <sjar...@pop.com> wrote:
>> > Gracchus wrote:
>>> On Mar 22, 10:07 am, stephenJ <sjar...@pop.com> wrote:
>>>> the iraq war was a great idea in 2003, and still is today. no other
>>>> option, really.
>>> So even knowing now that there were no WMDs, no involvement with 9/11,
>>> and the country not a base for those who planned it, it was a "great
>>> idea"
>> yes .. saddam had shown he was capable of anything. couldn't risk him
>> being in power any longer.
>
> American economic interests and
> 2) can be taken out militarily without risk of reprisal ????
it's not cowardly to look at risk of reprisal. e.g., it would be a very
good thing if we could knock out the north korean communist regime, but
the costs of doing so would probably exceed the benefits, even though
those benefits would be considerable. sadly, we can only do so much,
don't have unlimited power.
not the case in iraq, where the costs were well worth it. just ask the
iraqi people.
--
What is liberalism, generally speaking, but an attack
on the existing order of things?
- F. Dostoyevsky
Superdave
ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
don't be so fucking dumb ok.
stephenJ
you're probably too stupid to realize that a majority of iraqis have
favored the invasion since day one, right?
--
the terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides,
turning a disaster into an epic.
- philip roth
Raja, The Great
Did you poll the dead Iraqis?
Superdave
the invasion was over years ago. who are we fighting there now then?
non-iraquis?
ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
when an invader kills tens of thousands of your women and innocent children
are you going to love or hate those fuckers?
oh wait ! it's jaros !
Superdave
I doubt if he polled the families of the tens/hundreds of thousands of innocent
women and children slaughered by the americans either.
Superdave
wrote:
58%/63% of Americans say Iraq war was a "mistake" !
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/17/gallop-poll-iraq-war-a-mi_n_237875.html
http://www.gallup.com/poll/106783/opposition-iraq-war-reaches-new-high.aspx
The War's One Simple Truth
Iraqis Do Not Want Us
By ROBERT FISK
A war founded on illusions, lies and right-wing ideology was bound to founder in
blood and fire. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He was in contact with
al-Qa'ida, he was involved with the crimes against humanity of 11 September. The
people of Iraq would greet us with flowers and music. There would be a
democracy.
Even the pulling-down of Saddam's statue was a fraud. An American military
vehicle tugged the wretched thing down while a crowd of only a few hundred
Iraqis watched. Where were the tens of thousands who should have pulled it down
themselves, who should have been celebrating their "liberation"?
On the night of 9 April last year, the BBC even managed to find a "commentator"
to heap abuse on me and The Independent for using quotation marks around the
word "liberation".
In fact, freedom from Saddam's dictatorship in those early days and weeks meant
freedom to loot, freedom to burn, freedom to kidnap, freedom to murder. The
initial American and British blunder--to allow the mobs to take over Baghdad and
other cities--was followed by the arrival of the far more sinister squads of
arsonists who systematically destroyed every archive, every government ministry
(save for Oil and Interior which were, of course, secured by US troops), Islamic
manuscripts, national archives and irreplaceable antiquities. The very cultural
identity of Iraq was being annihilated.
Yet still the Iraqis were supposed to rejoice in their "liberation". The
occupying power sneered at reports that women were being kidnapped and
violated--in fact, the abductions of men as well as women were at the rate of 20
a day and may now be as high as 100 a day--and steadfastly refused to calculate
the numbers of Iraqi civilians killed each day by gunmen, thieves and American
troops.
Even this week, as the promises and lies and obfuscations fell apart, the
American military spokesman was still only able to give military
casualties--this when more than 200 Iraqis are reported to have been killed in
the US attack on Fallujah.
Over the months, the isolation of the occupation authorities from the Iraqi
people they were supposed to care so much about was only paralleled by the vast
distance in false hope and self-deceit between the occupying powers in Baghdad
and their masters back in Washington.
Paul Bremer, America's proconsul in Iraq, started off by calling the resistance
"party remnants", which is exactly what the Russians used to call their Afghan
opponents after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Then Mr Bremer called them
"diehards". Then he called them "dead-enders". And, as the attacks against US
forces increased around Fallujah and other Sunni Muslim cities, we were told
this area was the "Sunni triangle", even though it is much larger than that
implies and has no triangular shape.
So when President Bush made his notorious trip to the Abraham Lincoln to
announce the end of all "major military operations"--beneath a banner claiming
"Mission Accomplished"--and when attacks against US troops continued to rise, it
was time to rewrite the chapter on post-war Iraq. "Foreign fighters" were now in
the battle, according to the US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld. The US media
went along with this nonsense, even though not a single al-Qa'ida operative has
been arrested in Iraq and of the 8,500 "security detainees" in American hands,
only 150 appear to be from outside Iraq. Just 2 per cent.
Then as winter approached and Saddam was caught and the anti-American resistance
continued, the occupying powers and their favourite journalists began to warn of
civil war, something no Iraqi has ever indulged in and which no Iraqi has ever
been heard discussing. Iraq was now to be frightened into submission. What would
happen if the Americans and British left? Civil war, of course. And we don't
want civil war, do we?
The Shia remained quiescent, their leadership divided between the scholarly and
pro-Western Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and the impetuous but intelligent Muqtada
Sadr. They opened their mass graves and mourned those thousands who were
tortured and executed by Saddam's butchery and then asked why we used to support
Saddam, why it took us 20 years to discover the need to stage our humanitarian
invasion.
If the occupation authorities had bothered to study the results of a conference
on Iraq held by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut recently, they might
be forced to acknowledge what they cannot admit: that their opponents are Iraqis
and that this is an Iraqi insurgency.
An Iraqi academic, Sulieman Jumeili, who lives in the city of Fallujah, told how
he discovered that 80 per cent of all rebels killed were Iraqi Islamist
activists. Only 13 per cent of the dead men were primarily nationalists and only
2 per cent had been Baathists.
But we cannot accept these statistics. Because if this is an Iraqi revolt
against us, how come they aren't grateful for their liberation? So, after the
atrocities in Fallujah just over a week ago when four US mercenaries were
killed, mutilated and dragged through the streets, General Ricardo Sanchez, the
US commander in Iraq, sanctioned what is preposterously called "Operation
Vigilant Resolve". And now that Sadr's thousands of Shia militiamen had joined
in the battle against the Americans, General Sanchez had to change the narrative
yet again.
No longer were his enemies Saddam "remnants" or even al-Qa'ida; they were now "a
small (sic) group of criminals and thugs". The Iraqi people would not be allowed
to fall under their sway, General Sanchez said. There was "no place for a
renegade militia".
So the marines smashed their way into Fallujah, killing more than 200 Iraqis,
including women and children, while using tanks fire and helicopter gunships
against gunmen in the Baghdad slums of Sadr City. It took a day or two to
understand what new self-delusion had taken over the US military command. They
were not facing a country-wide insurgency. They were liberating the Iraqis all
over again! So, of course, this will mean a few more "major military
operations". Sadr goes on the wanted list for a murder after an arrest warrant
that no one told us about when it was mysteriously issued months ago--supposedly
by an Iraqi judge--and General Mark Kimmitt, General Sanchez's number two, told
us confidently that Sadr's militia will be "destroyed".
And so the bloodbath spreads ever further across Iraq. Kut and Najaf are now
outside the control of the occupying powers. And with each new collapse, we are
told of new hope. Yesterday, General Sanchez was still talking about his "total
confidence" in his troops who were "clear in their purpose", how they were
making "progress" in Fallujah and how--these are his actual words, "a new dawn
is approaching".
Which is exactly what US commanders were saying exactly a year ago today--when
US troops drove into the Iraqi capital and when Washington boasted of victory
against the Beast of Baghdad.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He
is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The Politics of
Anti-Semitism.
Gracchus
> when an invader kills tens of thousands of your women and innocent children
> are you going to love or hate those fuckers?
>
> oh wait ! it's jaros !
And what is his source of his "information" I wonder. If I didn't know
better, I'd swear he was trolling, because even most of the dupes who
believed that crap before know better now. But as you said, it's
Jaros, and he (along with blanders and Calimero) have a remarkable
capacity for tunnel vision and limitless trust in the untrustworthy.
stephenJ
well, a majority has consistently said that, all things considered, the
invasion and elimination of saddam was a good thing, i don't think
hazelnut has a nut left to stand on.
--
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
- J. Fowles
Superdave
and now they are all saying that it was a mistake. i said it was a mistake all
along.
Gracchus
> well, a majority has consistently said that, all things considered, the
> invasion and elimination of saddam was a good thing, i don't think
> hazelnut has a nut left to stand on.
A majority of WHAT?
All I hear the few remaining defenders now say is "We knew Saddam
hated us." BFD. Half the world hates us. Do they need to be invaded
and their leaders removed and hanged as well? People like you would
say "yes." This is the idea of preventative war vs. preemptive war. Go
beyond dealing with actual threats, find someone who dislikes you and
*might* be a threat someday (no matter how toothless they are now) and
eliminate them at the cost of massive human casualties on both sides.
Each time one of these reckless, lunatic actions is proposed, it
should be mandatory for each of "the deciders" to send at least one
close family member to participate on the front lines. Then we'll see
if their support remains as unwavering.
Superdave
wrote:
>On Mar 23, 11:41 am, stephenJ <sjar...@pop.com> wrote:
that won't always work though. the Bush family would have been more than happy
to get rid of Neil.
Gracchus
> that won't always work though. the Bush family would have been more than happy
> to get rid of Neil.
True. I guess the way to do it is either let someone else choose the
family member or throw all the names in a hat and make them pull one
out. Seriously, it would make the bastards think twice or three times
before starting something reckless and stupid.