The next president Vs. The Soldiers

JTT, Isn't it amazing how these neocon's brains has lost all sensibility? That is just frightening, because so many American brains have been washed with garbage - - - and they believe it!

Hussein was provably involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9-11. That means that George Bush had very few options unless you call letting somebody poison the US senate office building with anthrax and just skate an option, which is brain-dead. He could do what he did, which was try to take the high road, eliminate the Hussein regime, and try to construct a rational regime in Iraq both to prevent further attacks and to provide an example of rational government in the region, or he could do what I would have done, which would have been to level both Mecca and Medina, and ban the practice of I-slam not just in the US but throughout the world.

Most people would probably want to try what W. did first.

Oh, yeah, I know, you guys don't believe Hussein had anything to do with 9-11 or the anthrax attacks which followed...


The first case of anthrax after 9-11 (Bob Stevens) showed up about ten miles from where Mohammed Atta himself had been living, i.e. the short drive from Coral Springs to Boca Raton.

The last previous case of anthrax in a human in the United States prior to 9-11 had been about 30 years prior to that.

There are other coincidences. For instance, the wife of the editor of the sun (where Stevens worked) also had contact with the hijackers in that she rented them the place they stayed.

Atta and the hijackers flew planes out of an airport in the vicinity and asked about crop dusters on more than one occasion. Indeed, Atta sought a loan to try to buy and and modify a crop duster.

Atta and several of the hijackers in this group also sought medical aid just prior to 9/11 for skin lesions that the doctors who saw them now say looked like anthrax lesions.

Basically, you either believe in the laws of probability or you don't. Anybody claiming that all these things were coincidences is either totally in denial or does not believe in modern mathematics and probability theory.

While the anthrax in question originally came from a US strain, it isn't too surprising that Iraq might have that strain since that strain was mailed to laboratories around the world years earlier. That is, it wsa mailed out for the purpose of allowing other nations to develop medicines to cure it, not to make weapons out of it...

Nonetheless, it was highly sophisticated, and went through envelope paper as if it weren't even there; many thought it to be not only beyond the capabilities of Hussein but of anybody else on the planet as well including us. Nonetheless, later information showed Husseins programs to be capable of such feats:


http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html





Basically, the anthrax attack which followed 9/11 had Saddam Hussein's fingerprints all over it. It was particalized so finely it went right through envelop paper and yet was not weaponized (not hardened against antibiotics). It was basically a warning, saying as much as:




There is no way an American who had had anything to do with that would not be behind bars by now. In fact the one American they originally suspected told investigators that if he'd had anything to do with that stuff, he would either have anthrax or have the antibodies from the preventive medicine in his blood and offered to take a blood test on the spot. That of course was unanswerable.


The basic American notion of a presumption of innocence is not meaningful or useful in cases like that of Saddam Hussein. Even the Japanese had the decency to have their own markings on their aircraft at Pearl Harbor; Nobody had to guess who did it. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, is like the kid in school who was always standing around snickering when things went bad, but who could never be shown to have had a hand in anything directly. At some point, guys would start to kick that guy's ass periodically on general principles. Likewise, in the case of Saddam Hussein, the reasonable assumption is that he's guilty unless he somehow or other manages to prove himself innocent and, obviously, that did not happen.


At the time, the US military was in such disarray from the eight years of the Clinton regime that there was nothing we could do about it. Even such basic items as machinegun barrels, which we should have warehouses full of, were simply not there. Nonetheless, nobody should think they would get away with such a thing and, apparently, Hussein and his baathists didn't.

Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War" documents some of this:



I mean, we didn't even have fricking machinegun barrels anymore. A friend of mine called up several barrelmakers about a barrel for a target rifle in the early spring of 02 and was told they were working 24/7 making machinegun barrels and didn't have time for any sort of civiliam firearm business.

A country with any sort of a military at all has to have warehouses full of that sort of thing and we had ******* none. We basically needed to go into Iraq the day after 9-11 and we were not able to due to the state Slick KKKlinton had left the military in, it took two years of building.


In the case of nuclear weaponry there appears to have been a three-way deal between Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and Libya in which raw materials from NK ended up in Libya to be transmogrified into missiles pointed at Europe and America by Saddam Hussein's technical people and with Iraqi financial backing (your oil-for-terrorism dollars at work), while Kofi Annan and his highly intelligent and efficient staff kept the west believing that their interests were being protected:



Muammar Khadaffi has since given the **** up and renounced the whole business. That sort of thing is one of the benefits of having our government back under adult supervision since 2001.

The Czech government is sticking with its story of Mohammed Atta having met with one of Saddam Hussein's top spies prior to 9-11 and there are even pictures of the two together on the internet now:

http://thexreport.com/atta_and_al-ani_photo_and_analysis.htm



Then again as I mentioned, there's the question of the anthrax attack which followed 9-11. Saddam Hussein's the only person on this planet who ever had that kind of weaponized anthraxs powder.

http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html

Moreover it does not take hundreds of tons of anthrax powder to create havoc.

The sum total which was used was a few teaspoons full. In other words, a lifetime supply of that sort of thing for a guy like Saddam Hussein could easily amount to a hundred pounds worth, and I guarantee that I could hide that in a country the size of Iraq so that it would not be found.

The question of whether or not Hussein had 1000 tons of anthrax powder is simply the wrong question. The right questions are, did the guy have the motive, the technical resources, the financial wherewithal, the facilities, and the intel apparatus to play that sort of game, and the answers to all of those questions are obvious.

gunga wrote:

You really don't know your history do you? It was Ivens who worked for the US government that sent those anthrax in the US. The anthrax found in the envelope was also the same composition as the one found in his lab. He committed suicide.

Let me clear the air as to what I was saying or meant.

Lets start with this.
In Iraq, the rules are simple, don't shoot unless shot at. Or if the enemy military has uniforms, that also grants us the option of shooting. But in this war, there is no military. There is an organization. An organization of the people who don't want us in their country. By all means even though I fight against them I understand why they are fighting. If we were invaded, and our military failed, I don't think the entire US would surrender and let us be taken over. Looking at it from that perspective, there really isn't a way to stop uprisings, it's going to happen as long as they're being forced with our presence in their homeland.

Before I joined, I was fresh out of high school, the war was well under way. The enlistment bonus looked great, $25,000. The college money sounded great $69,000. But I really didn't want to get involved with something where I would end up across the world to fight to keep that organization who wasn't in Iraq until we were in Iraq, I'm talking about Al-Queda. The neighborhood I lived in was horrible, and as a single young man with nothing else to do but get into trouble and no college m0ney to further my education, I decided leaving and joing was my best option.

After finishing Basic Training, AIT, And Airborne school in Georgia, directly after finishing my training I was sent to Alaska. I was in Alaska about a month before my unit deployed for the gut wrenching 15 months. After 15 months, I came back, I found my wife, she's pregnant with my child, due in 5 days actually, and exactly one year and 5 months later I have to go to Afghanistan to fight a war there.

Even though I am honored to serve the US, and protect the civilians around our nation, even my own family, I'd lay down my life for everyone, and thats what would happen in any situation that I found myself in. But just the thought of leaving my family that I had time to build, my new daughter, and serve in Afghanistan is a horrible feeling. Once I get there it'll be even worse. And the thought of being taken away from them for good just hurts even more. I guess I'm just saying that people should think of soldiers as people, and not just war machines that dont mind going anywhere.

You don't have to support the war to support the troops. Not supporting the war isn't unpatriotic, but not supporting the people following orders because they have to is pretty fucked up

Well said, Ferostie. I joined the US Air Force back in the late fifties, because I was in a similar situation. No good jobs for someone with no real skills except typing, and that barely eeked out a "living." Lived from paycheck to paycheck with no opportunity to advance. I did that for a couple of years after high school, then joined the service. That was the best decision I made, because from there everything was uphill. As luck would have it, it was also peace time.

In the long term, everything worked out very well; probably better than "most" living in this country. A miracle for somebody who barely graduated from high school. I retired early, and engage myself in world travel.

Keep your chin up, and good luck.

Here's the perspective as I see it.

There were real reasons for the military actions against the Taliban and Iraq, as I noted above. We were not "lied into" a war; that's democrat propaganda.

The "wars" lasted a few weeks in both cases. What has been going on since then are occupations, and not wars.

Occupations occurred after WW-II as well, but they were easier to manage and less costly. There were no rogue political parties to back-bite then and political correctness did not exist. German pols were told in no uncertain terms that guerilla activities ("werewolves" etc.) would result in the towns and villages they emanated from being torched and with the recent memories of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and 70 Japanese cities fresh in their minds, they did not have to spend any time wondering if the Americans really meant it.

Again as I see it, the only other thing Americans could have done would have been to Nuke Mecca and Medina, and outlaw Islam throughout the planet. I believe it could have been done but most people would not want to go there. Yet......

We were basically attacked by a religion and, again, the Japanese had the decency to have their own insignia on their aircraft at Pearl Harbor. 9-11 Was the most dastardly piece of bullshit in human history since Adam and Eve and Alley Oop.

gunga already forgot why we went into Iraq: WMDs.

That's liberal propaganda. LOL

Occupations tend to go better when they are run by competent people and when they are planned for. Bush/ Rumsfeld had zero understanding about occupation management, they would not let the Army officers prepare for it nor resource it. For a long time they did not want the Army to run the occupation, they brought in outside idiots to staff a new "authority" which of course failed miserably. It was only after Bush put the Army in charge, and got a General who knew what he was doing (Petraeus), that the occupation gained traction.

Actually, Bush never understood "war" management. Remember when he spoke on that aircraft carrier with "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" on it?

Yeah, "Mission Accomplished". Now we just have to maintain and support the the Iraqi government and army so they don't get overran and taken over by the "extremist"

As you probably know, the so-called Iraqi government is in a shambles, because Al Sadr, the head of the Sunnis, does not want to cooperate with al-Maliki, and the Iranians are telling Iraq not to agree to the US lead security agreement for a longer occupation of their country.