THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

horn, like you, i do not know that bill believes this way. but if so, talk about denigrating your allies...

whadda ya think bill?

most of which were filled during the war with iran.

others were filled when we didn't follow through on promises to back the "good insurgents" following gulf I



did you ever hear that phrase before sean hannity yammered on about it? did you ever write to bill clinton to insist that he do something about it?



unfortunately, and unfairly, most iraqis now associate abu ghraib with the "american occupation" even i, an accused "liberal" understand the difference between cutting off body parts, hanging, putting someone's feet into a shredder and humiliation. although, if it is shown that american soldiers did in fact beat unto death iraqi inmates, they certainly deserve to pay the penalty.



i can't say the the iraqi people were better off with saddam in the seat. but america was probably a beneficiary of having one less islamist theocracy in the region.

and trust me. without a secular leader, dictator or whatever; iraq will be a theocratic country before it's all over.

I think I already responded to this foolishness here.

And DTOM, the chambers in which prisoners were maimed, tortured, sometimes tortured to death, were in operation up to the time of the invasion. The 2004 Iraqi olympic team was the first to willingly compete in two decades and the first during that time who didn't fear being tortured if they didn't win. I didn't know about the rape rooms until just before the invasion, but since then learned that Amnesty International had known about them as did the Clinton and Bush administrations. I don't presume to advise the president on how to proceed on such matters, but do express my concern to my elected officials so they know I will support decisions to act. My most recent such concern was for the people of Sudan.

The Iraqi people associate Abu Ghraib with the torture chambers to this date, however they objected when the President proposed bulldozing the prison as they wanted to keep it as a prison. The Iraqi press and chatter never refers to the sex scandals at Abu Graib. Those were a far bigger deal to us than they were to them and I think those who know about them are satisfied that we dealt with it appropriately.

It is true that the majority of the victims in the mass graves occurred more than a decade ago. It is not true that there have been no victims since and, given the track record of Saddam and his sons, no reason to believe mass executions would not happen again if ever the Iraqi people presumed to challenge him again.

The most recent finding:
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/14004914?source=Evening%20Standard

bookmark. i gotta crash.

I don't think too many people are denying that saddam was a bad man who did bad things and the human rights situation there was horrible.

However that is not why we went to war nor should we have. If saddam was killing a lot of people and putting them in mass graves like the kosovo thing then that would have been different. I know he did in the past but that was the past.

Bush went to war becasue there was a "grave and gathering threat against the United States." Which turned out not to be the case at all and there were people telling him that and he chose to ignore it and go to war and kill lots of people in vain.

What Kerry and others have said is that saddam could be a threat if left unchecked, bush said grave and gathering threat and therein lies the difference.

Baloney Revel. Don't you read any of the quotes from Kerry, the Clinton administration, our allies, etc. at all? Can you not see that EVERYBODY was convinced Saddam was already a threat?

http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/kerry-iraq.html

Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.

In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law. The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize "yet." Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed. But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack.

What part in the bold do you not understand foxfrye?

So Revel, you pluck one of Kerry's many many positions on this as proof of where he stood on the issue? I gave you the links to his statements before he decided to use this issue against Bush. But I give up. Facts don't matter. Just ideology I guess.

His position did not change. He still thought that Saddam was a threat, just not a grave enough one to rush to war without exhausting all options.

like you i am through for a while. I am sick of this for the time being and I am going to totally indulge myself and read a sappy romance novel.

The threat was real. It was a threat, not an action. If someone were to threaten the poisoning of the town water supply, the police investigate and find that the person threatening doesn't have any poison, the threat is no less real.

Saddam was a threat. He was a threat to the US, Europe, the Middle East. Now he isn't.

We have discovered that his threat would take longer to coalesce than we thought, but the threat remained.

These arguments are getting weaker, just like GWB's position.
Thet are getting more plaintive, just like George's pronouncements.

Soon they will fade away, just like George.

McG wrote:


Sure he's no longer a threat........now we have Bush to contend with. We're better off, huh McG? Iran is stronger and threatening and the Saudis are blaming the US for the terrorist attacks in SA. And they're right on.

Better off? I don't think so......

Much better off. Extremely better off. That people can't see that speaks volumes.

The dead Iraqis can't see that.

You can tell the mother whose kids were killed in an airstrike that she's better off, but I doubt she'll buy that, McG.



Um, yes it is? Saddam wasn't threatening to attack anyone. He didn't shelter AQ. He didn't have anything to do with 9/11. What exactly was the threat? I'm sure the response was, 'well, we THOUGHT he had WMD.' But that doesn't hold water; the UN weapons inspectors, right up until the invasion, were saying that Saddam DIDN'T have WMD. We presented a ton of evidence to the UN and to Congress, ALL of it false.

A police matter based upon such false evidence would have been thrown out of court so fast, it wouldn't have been funny.

What IS funny is watching you conservatives (especially you, McG, who was arguing strongly just a few months ago that we were still going to find WMD) come up with retroactive justifications for a war that has killed thousands of innocents.

-First, it was WMD
-then, WMD progams
-then, WMD program-related activities
-THEN, he WANTED to have WMD programs
-Now, it's that Saddam was a 'bad guy who needed to be removed.'

Keep reaching. You people should seriously attempt to look at this from an objective point of view for once; how would you feel if Germany was doing what we were doing, and we were removed from the situation? Would you judge them as acting honorably? Somehow I doubt it.

Cycloptichorn

The live Iraqi's can, though. Ask the lady in Occom Bill's signature.

WMD's may yet be found. Like when Syria brings them forth and says "Yoohoo! Saddam gave us these to hold onto while he played puppet master to the UN."

They may be uncovered the same way the mass graves keep getting uncovered.

I don't need to keep reaching as the deed is already done. I am glad we did it and there are many, many people equally grateful.

Bah! You conservatives and your rose-colored glasses. Do you even acknowledge that mistakes were made? At all?

Do you acknowledge the reports that wmd and nuclear material have gone missing SINCE we invaded Iraq? That we don't have a clue where they are anow?

Do you really feel safer because of this?

Cycloptichorn

Do the conservatives on here feel the only way to respond to a threat is with force?

If not, then what are some other ways we COULD handle situations such as Iraq? And why didn't we use any of those methods?

Cycloptichorn

Try it, Cyclopticorn (or anyone else). Send me an Email request for the "Iraqi Woman File" and I'll send it right of way. I dare anyone to tell me this is staged propaganda…

I'll leave this email up for 3 minutes.

Edit= removed email... if someone else wants it, let me know.

I don't need to hear the file.

I've never doubted that there are people out there in Iraq who are overjoyed we are there. I also have never doubted that (despite the faulty reasoning leading to the war) if things are handled properly in Iraq, the US has the ability to create a great ally in the Middle East.

I just have big problems with the way things have been handled by the people who are supposed to be experts at this sort of thing.

If we are not extremely careful, we could easily end up creating more hate for the US than we ended by invading. I don't think we were careful to begin with (though we are doing better now).

I suppose part of my reservations have to do with actually attempting to put myself in an Iraqi's shoes - they can probably hate Saddam and hate the U.S. simultaneously, yaknow.... logic tends to fall by the wayside when your family has been killed, or you can't get a job for months, or you only have running water a few days a week.

Face it, this has been a poorly run occupation, no matter what your beliefs are about whether or not we should have gone in the first place. Between our problems with insurgents, to the Chalabi ordeal, to Abu Ghraib, our inability to secure borders or ammo dumps, our massive push to have Americans reconstructing Iraq instead of Iraqis, huge amounts of money simply unaccounted for (the financial books of Iraq are a mess), and our lack of control of several areas of Iraq -- things sure aren't going as well as they could over there.

To not face that truth, despite your belief of whether or not we should have gone, is to hide from reality.

Cycloptichorn