THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

But Medussa of the many heads is beside the point.. we have logic to the attack in Spain, which should made every other contributor to the "thing" in Iraq very nervous.

Trembling here, thankee for asking...

So y'all think the simplest thing for the US to have done after 9/11 was to try to kill all the terrorists in Afghanistan and leave Saddam alone You think that then the Afghan based terrorists would certainly have played fair knowing they were not Palestinian terrorists, and would not have horned in and tried escaping to safety in Iraq No, of course not. Those terrorists are honorable and would have voluntarily remained in Afganistan to die at the hands of the Americans.

That's pretty simple Occam would have been proud.

Don't be simplistically stupid. It doesn't help.

Not only the simplest, but also the most intelligent. For the umpteenth time, for those in the audience who are apparently just plain stupid, Hussein had nothing to do with 11th Spetember, al-Queada, etc... Attacking iraq was a ploitically motivated decision by Bush and Co. in order to try out the "new" US doctrine of imperialism, among othe reasons, many haeving to do with corporate greed. It likley had nothing to do with humanitarianism, democracy, or WMD, or any of a dozen other reasons quoted by teh administration and its lackeys since March of 2003.


I think the Afghanistan based terrorists would not have been drawn to [Iraq to fight US invaders had those invaders not invaded! I think that had the US done the intelligent thing, and actually concentrated on terrosim and AQ, rather than their engaging in "my dick is bigger than yours-ism" and invading Iraq, the US would likely not be facing hostility from its putative allies, as well as its enemies. I think the US has lost any claim to "leadership of the free world" and become the sort of "terrorist nation" it claims to oppose.

I disagree. Perhaps my sources of information are more convincing to me than they are to you. Mine say Saddam aided and abetted the Taliban, and the Taliban aided and abetted al Quada. Also Saddam aided and abetted training of the 9/11 al Quada perpetrators.



That's silly proganda. Bush may be stupid or not, incompetent or not, or whatever, but being greedy, corporate or otherwise, for imperialsim is readily recognized as pure bunk. You are too willing a victim of your local snake oil salesperson.




That is a self-evident but irrelevant truth These terrorists would have been drawn instead to murder more innocent people than they have lately been murdering.

Many of the Afghani (Taliban and al Quada) terrorists fled to Iraq seeking sanctuary from US forces in Afghanistan. They obtained sanctuary and are now involved in terrorizing Iraqies and US troops.



That rivals Mother Goose's fairy tales for pure fantasy. Saddam was a demonstrated threat to his own people, to his neighbors, to their neigbors ... to their neighbors, and, yes, to Americans.

Maybe it would have been alright for the UN (world community) to go into Iraq and insist Saddam yield power, and/or took the whole country to war, if they found things FOR CERTAIN that were threatening, Ican...
But it is SICKENING the way Bush and the power mongers went into that tiny piece of real estate and blew it to bits, just to get one man and his crew of 50 or 60. It is sickening to hear people argue for the war, saying that it was justified to KILL a country's people to stop their dictator from doing it.
DON'T tell me we only killed and maimed a few hundred thousand to his millions. MY God---
that is like arguing with a man that you only will cut off one arm, but your leader would have cut off an arm and a leg. Who needs either???

The Politics of Self-Pity
March 14, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Republicans relished their philosophy of personal
responsibility last week with John Belushi's famous mantra:
Cheeseburgercheeseburgercheeseburger.

When the House passed the "cheeseburger bill" to bar people
from suing fast food joints for making them obese,
Republican backers of the legislation scolded Americans,
saying the fault lies not in their fries, but in
themselves.

"Look in the mirror, because you're the one to blame," said
F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, home of brats and
beer bellies.

So it comes as something of a disappointment that the
leader of the Republican Party, the man who epitomizes the
conservative ideal, is playing the victim. President Bush
has made the theme of his re-election campaign a whiny "not
my fault."

His ads, pilloried for the crass use of the images of a
flag-draped body carried from ground zero and an
Arab-looking everyman with the message, "We can fight
against terrorists," actually have a more fundamental
problem. They try to push off blame for anything that's
gone wrong during Mr. Bush's tenure on bigger forces,
supposedly beyond his control.

One ad cites "an economy in recession. A stock market in
decline. A dot-com boom gone bust. Then a day of tragedy. A
test for all Americans."

Mr. Bush's subtext is clear: If it weren't for all these
awful things that happened, most of them hangovers from the
Clinton era, I definitely could have fulfilled all my
promises. I'm still great, but none of my programs worked
because, well, stuff happens."

It's as if his inner fat boy is complaining that a classic
triple cheeseburger from Wendy's (940 calories and 56 grams
of fat, 25 of them saturated, and 2,140 milligrams of
sodium) jumped out of its wrapper and forced its way down
his unwilling throat, topped off by a pushy Frosty (540
calories and 13 grams of fat, 8 of them saturated).

Mr. Bush has been in office over three years. It's time to
start accepting some responsibility.

Republicans have a bad habit of laying down rules for other
people to follow while excluding themselves. Look how they
beat up Bill Clinton for messing around with a young woman,
while many top Republicans were doing the very same thing.

Mr. Bush's whingeing was infectious. The very House
Republicans who greased the skids for the cheeseburger bill
got in a huff over John Kerry's overheard comment to some
supporters in Chicago that his Republican critics were "the
most crooked, you know, lying group" he'd ever seen.

These tough-guy Republicans, who rule the House with an
iron fist, were suddenly squealing like schoolgirls at
being victimized by big, bad John Kerry. J. Dennis Hastert,
the House speaker, said Mr. Kerry would have his
"upcomeance coming." Tom DeLay sulked that the public was
getting "a glimpse of the real John Kerry." The Hammer was
talking like a nail.

Marc Racicot, Mr. Bush's campaign chairman, accused Mr.
Kerry of "unbecoming" conduct and called on him to
apologize.

Oh, the poor dears. The very Bush crowd that savaged John
McCain in South Carolina, that bullied and antagonized the
allies we need in the real war on terror, that is spending
a hundred million dollars on ads that will turn Mr. Kerry
into something akin to the Boston Strangler; these guys are
suddenly such delicate flowers, such big bawling babies,
that they can't bear to hear Mr. Kerry speak of them
harshly.

Mr. Bush is not believable in the victim's role. He and
Dick Cheney have audaciously imposed their will on
Washington and the world.

We are not yet sure who is behind the horrendous bombings
in Spain, but they have already underscored how vulnerable
our trains and subways are. And they have reminded us that
the administration diverted resources from the war on
terror and the search for Osama to settle old scores in
Iraq, building a case for war with hyped and phony claims
on weapons.

In an interview with The Guardian, the weapons sleuth David
Kay said it's time for Mr. Bush to take personal
responsibility: "It's about confronting and coming clean
with the American people. . . . He should say: `We were
mistaken and I am determined to find out why.' "

In other words, Mr. Bush, look in the mirror.

E-mail:
[email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/opinion/14DOWD.html?ex=1080270037&ei=1&en=fe32847369014881

This administration is still pushing the idea that Saddam has WMD's. They're also pushing the idea that eliminating Saddam was good. They're going to cover every ground they can to CTA until November. After that, it won't matter.
********
U.S. Officials Defend Iraq War on Anniversary
Sun Mar 14, 2:40 PM ET Add Politics to My Yahoo!


By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One year later, U.S. officials steadfastly defended the decision to go to war against Iraq (news - web sites), saying on Sunday that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had posed an "urgent" threat more dangerous than North Korea (news - web sites), even though weapons of mass destruction have not yet been found.

Latest headlines:
· Rumsfeld: Iraq Weapons May Still Be Found
AP - 25 minutes ago
· New breed of "trailer trash" in Saddam Hussein's palace grounds
AFP - 34 minutes ago
· Spaniards Vote Out Government Over Iraq, Bombings
Reuters - 1 hour, 4 minutes ago
Special Coverage

"I do believe it was the right thing to do and I'm glad it's done," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on CBS' "Face the Nation."


The Bush administration, on the anniversary of the March U.S.-led invasion, is still dogged by questions of whether it exaggerated the threat from Iraq to gather support for the war.


The White House justified the war by saying Iraq was dangerous because it had weapons of mass destruction, but since the invasion no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons have been found.


Democrats ahead of the November presidential election accuse the Republican White House of having exaggerated the threat to push for a war in which American soldiers are dying almost daily. About 550 soldiers have died, of which about 390 were killed in action in Iraq. Bombs in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers on Sunday.


"I believe to this day that it was an urgent threat," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "This could not go on and we are safer as a result because today Iraq is no longer going to be a state of weapons of mass destruction concern."


EMPHASIS SHIFT


Since the war, the administration has shifted its emphasis to human rights abuses by Saddam's regime and away from the elusive unconventional weapons that have not surfaced.


"No more mass graves are being filled," Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on the "Fox News Sunday" program.


"And we have taken this country that has been so brutally oppressed by a dictatorial leader and put it on a path to democracy," he said.


Powell made a public case for taking action against Iraq at the United Nations (news - web sites) last February with a presentation that included pieces of intelligence suggesting Baghdad had banned weapons.

He said he had used the best intelligence available at that time.

"And so we may not find the stockpiles. They may not exist any longer. But let's not suggest that somehow we knew this," Powell said on ABC's "This Week."

Administration officials now say regardless of whether banned weapons are found, Iraq had posed a threat because it had the intent to produce such weapons.

Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay when he stepped down in January said he believed there had not been any large stockpiles of weapons when U.S. forces invaded Iraq. His successor continues to try and determine why they have not been found.

"The president wants to know as much as anybody, probably more than anyone else, what became of the weapons of mass destruction. We are all somewhat surprised that we have not yet found them," Rice said.

But Iraq had been "more dangerous than North Korea," she said. "Yes the most dangerous regime in the world's most dangerous region."


North Korea, branded by President Bush (news - web sites) as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and prewar Iraq, recently threatened to boost its nuclear "deterrent" after little headway was made in six-party talks on dismantling Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons programs.

Not only are they more convincing to you than to hobbit, they are more convincing to you than to your president, to Rumsfeld, to Cheney, and to Powell, each of whom have now publicly acknowledged no evidence of connection (after a good deal of previous deceit). So, do get with the program, at least on this one terribly simple concept.

Quote, ""No more mass graves are being filled," Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on the "Fox News Sunday" program." I'm wondering what they term the killing of over 15,000 Iraqis? If that doesn't produce one hellava "mass grave," they need to rethink their math.

Yes, but they are being buried in seperate graves now. Woo hoo! We win again!

Thinking, retinking, digesting all of the good posts.

I am so glad that politicians don't think with their emotions like many at A2K do. Emotional thinking is wonderful for poets, but do crap to defend a nation.

I am sorry you "feel" bad for the dead Iraqi's. I am sorry you "feel" that the US has some imperialistic agenda and I am sorry you "feel" anything else that makes your heart bleed.

When you can start thinking rationally, maybe you will see that we were correct in our actions. But as long as you "feel" your way through life, you will remain deaf, dumb, and blind.

McGentrix:

Don't know to whom these comments are addressed. Achieving balance in thought and emotions is always hard.

Acceptance is another big one, but we keep on trying.

The AQ network won a big one in Spain. Where next?

s

I'd rather be "deaf, dumb, and blind" than a "insensitive murder while listening to the screams of death, cries of the living, with eyes wide open" - especially since Saddam posed no threat, he had no WMD's, Saddam was contained, and we had inspectors in Iraq. That's no better than al Qaida attacking the twin towers in New York to kill people that posed him no harm.

I can't think of any instances where blowing people up makes them less violently inclined towards you. Apart from the ones who are actually maimed, or killed. Can you?

So I don't think that "we" were correct in our actions, at all. I think these actions were guaranteed to increase the incidence of world terrorism, and so it seems to be.

You sad brute.

But, that's exactly what they are doing It's the dumbing down of America and we see numerous instances, continually right here on A2K Wait a few minutes and you'll probably hear another

Deaf, dumb, and blind is a fairly good description of the mindset that says attacking Irag made the US safer.