Ican your logic is totally beyond me.
I've always said the root motivation for the invasion of Iraq was oil. Even you must realise the truth of that by now.
BUNK! Yes, you have always said that, presumably because you truly believe that. I don't believe that!
I have always said that the root motivation for the invasion of Iraq was stopping the rate of worldwide mass murder of civilians. I truly believe that. I cannot understand why you do not realize the truth of that by now.
Iraqi oil was plentiful and more than adequately available at fair market prices while Saddam's regime ruled Iraq. The market availability of Iraqi oil was never at risk then. But it certainly is at risk now after the invasion of Iraq.
The worldwide rate of mass murder of civilians was rapidly increasing while the Saddam Regime ruled Iraq. Saddam's regime contributed to that increasing rate and so did Osama's. While it is obvious that rate has not yet been significantly reduced since the invasion of Iraq, that is not itself evidence that reducing that rate was not the root motivation. Our current failure to reduce that rate is only evidence of our current lack of adequate competence to reduce that rate.
What infuriates me is that the United States and Britain have gone about the whole adventure in such a naive, incompetent and self-serving manner that we, and I mean specifically you, have created a situation that has jeopardised oil supplies, failed to install democracy in the middle east and made terrorism much worse here and catastrophic there.
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps our incompetence has caused things to be worse than they would have been had we not invaded Iraq. I for one do not believe that based on evidence that I have posted here several times regarding the real goals of these mass murderers. I believe we at the very least reduced the rate of growth of the mass murder of civilians worldwide. But regardless, oil is not the root cause of our incompetence.
I think the root cause of our incompetence is our joint unwillingness to treat the mass murderers of civilians as malignancy, like any other malignancy, that must be ruthlessly exterminated before the rate of the mass murder of civilians can begin to be reduced.
Lawrence J. Haas: If we don't wobble, we'll win in Iraq
01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Providence Journal
WASHINGTON
AS THE WAR in Iraq continues and casualties mount and other costs escalate too, more political leaders, commentators, and activists raise the haunting specter of Vietnam. That is of a military quagmire from which America must extricate itself lest the venture end in ignominious defeat.
The problem with this is not that Iraq is becoming "another Vietnam," as critics say, for the differences between the two wars far outweigh the similarities. The problem is that our fear of "another Vietnam" could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with more references to Vietnam feeding more public doubts about Iraq, causing support to erode, the media to fixate on casualties, and politicians to call for retreat.
We must overcome our fears. At stake are our efforts to plant the seeds of democracy in the Mideast, which is a key element of our war with Islamo-fascist terrorism. Simply put, we must continue to win in Iraq -- and, yes, we are making progress -- not talk ourselves into defeat.
Recently, Sen. Charles Hagel (R.-Neb.) raised the specter of another Vietnam in high-profile media interviews. Former Sen. Gary Hart (D.-Colo.), who ran the anti-Vietnam-War campaign of George McGovern, echoed the sentiment, as did a bevy of Vietnam veterans and pundits. The analogy to Vietnam makes no sense for Iraq for at least three reasons:
First, we are numerous military victories, and a revolution in military technology, removed from Vietnam. Our forces and their weapons are smarter and more nimble, and we rely more on air power and less on massive armies to reach our goals. Rather than flatten villages and rice paddies, we deploy our laser-guided missiles to wipe out the enemy's leaders while saving the physical infrastructure for the people whom we seek to liberate.
Second, we are fighting an Iraq enemy much different from that in Vietnam. Vietnam was a proxy fight in a Cold War between two superpowers, propelled on one side by the desire to spread communism and on the other by the commitment to "contain" Soviet expansion. We lost Vietnam, but won the bigger war as the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Soviet Union splintered. In Iraq we are fighting not a political ideology but a combination of terrorists, Ba'athists and Sunnis who share only the fear of democratic rule.
Third, and also unlike Vietnam, we are making progress in Iraq. While the violence is frightening and the bloodshed regrettable, the Iraqis defied threats to their lives to vote in January, drafted a constitution in August, and planned for a referendum in October and elections soon thereafter. That this is happening in a land where, until recently, the people had only known decades of servility to a brutal dictatorship is remarkable indeed.
Unfortunately, perception can become reality. The more we hear about "another Vietnam," the more Americans will view Iraq through the prism of Vietnam. The more that the media focus on violence and casualties, the more Americans will think that Iraq is a land of only bloodshed. The more the media focus so much on bumps in the road to political progress, the more Americans will miss Iraq's remarkable transformation from dictatorship to freedom.
Compounding the problem, we live in an era of constant news and instant gratification. As Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) notes, round-the-clock cable television makes the nearly 2,000 deaths we've suffered in Iraq seem like the 58,000 we suffered in Vietnam.
Our sitcom mentality, through which we expect problems to be solved in 30-minute increments, makes us decry the continuing struggle between Shi'ites, Kurds and Sunnis to develop a new polity. Never mind that we struggled for more than a decade in the late 18th Century to do the same thing here.
Let's step back, take a deep breath, and look at the bigger picture. In the words of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, now is no time to "go wobbly." We've got too much at stake.
Lawrence J. Haas, a former communications director to Vice President Al Gore, is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, a think-tank that concentrates on national security.
"New twist on aid for Iraq: U.S. seeks donations
By Cam Simpson
Washington Bureau
Published September 18, 2005
WASHINGTON -- From the Indian Ocean tsunami to the church around the corner, Americans have shown time and again they are willing to open their pocketbooks for charity, for a total of about $250 billion last year alone.
But now, amid pleas for aid after Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to raise charitable contributions for another cause: the government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.
Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq."
Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.
But taxpayers already finance the projects for which the administration is seeking charitable donations, such as providing water pumps for farmers. And officials say any contributions they receive will increase the scope of those efforts rather than relieve existing taxpayer burdens.
The campaign is raising eyebrows in the international development and not-for-profit communities, where there are questions about its timing--given needs at home--and whether it will set the government in competition with international not-for-profits.
On a more basic level, experts wonder whether Americans will make charitable donations to a government foreign aid program and whether the contentious environment surrounding Iraq will make a tough pitch even tougher.
"I'm a little skeptical, and the timing certainly isn't the best," said James Ferris, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. "It's going to be a hard sell."
Cost of rebuilding skyrockets
The U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government's primary distributor of foreign aid, said Friday, "Charitable contributions play an important role in enriching and extending U.S. government efforts."
The effort is just the newest twist in the administration's struggle to rebuild Iraq. Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, first predicted it would cost taxpayers no more than $1.7 billion. The tab has since risen to more than $30 billion, with congressional Republicans and Democrats sharply critical of the high cost and slow pace of progress.
In addition, the new campaign comes amid increasing concerns that some of the administration's major projects in Iraq will be scrapped or only partially completed because of rising costs, especially for security. Some officials fear money may run out before key projects are completed.
Natsios announced the campaign in a speech Sept. 9. In a press release issued the same day, USAID said its new Web site "will help American citizens learn more about official U.S. assistance for Iraq and make contributions to high-impact development projects."
Although USAID has received private donations from corporations in the past, this might be the first time it has geared a charity pitch for U.S. foreign aid dollars to citizens.
Initially, the Web site, called Iraqpartnership.org, is offering potential contributors a choice of eight projects, each seeking $10,000 or less. They include purchasing computers for centers designed to assist Iraqi entrepreneurs, buying furniture and supplies for Iraqi elementary and high schools, paying for the production of posters to promote "awareness of disabilities and rights issues," and buying water pumps for farmers.
There is also a general Iraq country fund, offering donors "another high-impact giving opportunity without making them have to specify a project."
All of the projects are from USAID's existing portfolio of reconstruction programs in Iraq, according to the agency.
Security issues obscure details
Heather Layman, a USAID spokeswoman, said the efforts are being carried out by five private organizations working on Iraq reconstruction with USAID funding. The site does not provide details about the groups involved or the project locations because of "security issues in Iraq."
The government says all contributions are tax-deductible.
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yep agree completely lost the plot.
perhaps we can search out mr bin Laden and ask him what he wants us to do in order to stop killing us?
Victor Davis Hanson
September 16, 2005, 8:57 a.m.
Our Rock of Sisyphus
How goes our hard labor in Iraq?
Where does the United States stand in its so-called global war against terror, four years after the September 11 attack? The news is both encouraging and depressing all at once.
The Home Front
On the plus side, we have not seen another attack on our shores. No one is quite sure why, but there has at least been a radical change in Americans' attitude about tolerance for Islamic extremism. It is generally felt that the populace has become a collective powder keg ready to go off at the next attack. And perhaps that fear has awed and silenced radical imams and their hate-filled madrassas — for a while at least.
Hundreds of terrorists and their sympathizers, from Lodi and Portland to New Jersey and Florida, have been arrested or deported for either planning attacks or seeking to spread their venom. Nevertheless, our borders, especially with Mexico, are porous. It is a parlor game now among pundits to speculate how easily a Middle Eastern terrorist could come northward without much worry of interdiction.
American immigration policy is nebulous: why do we still let in almost anyone from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia. or any of the other Middle Eastern autocracies that are known for laxity toward their anti-American terrorists? If we really were in either a hot or even a cold war, then we should have adopted a policy similar to the past restrictions on German nationals entering in 1941-5 or on those from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the 1950s through the 1970s.
A more serious lapse is the absence of a radical energy policy that forces greater production and conservation. Our present dependence is analogous to America needing German coal in 1936 or counting on the Ploesti oilfields of Romania of 1933 to run our Model As.
True, the administration has good grounds to be wary: earlier expensive efforts to subsidize alternative fuels proved boondoggles when OPEC turned on the spigots and recessions cut demand. And it is not clear that the Left would tolerate new drilling off our coasts and in Alaska, or more nuclear power as a trade-off for stepped-up mandatory conservation.
But three points are missed here, aside from the entrance of oil-hungry India and China into the world market and the steady depletion of known reserves, that have made things far different from 30 years ago.
First, enemies like Iran and triangulators such as Saudi Arabia are increasingly immune from American political pressure, not just because we are dependent on imported petroleum, but also because an energy-sensitive world will blame the United States for any action that endangers a now-fragile global market.
Second, in the past 24 months hundreds of billions of dollars in windfall profits have been propping up the Iranian theocracy and have bailed out Saudi Arabia, which by 2000 was facing a real need for structural and political reforms.
Third, some of that new petro-money will find its way to al Qaeda and Hezbollah to hire ever more mercenaries to attack us in Iraq or at home. We are fighting a culture in radical Islam that cannot make or earn anything. It is entirely parasitic, counting only on stealthy petro-handouts from terrified regimes, which themselves create no capital of their own other than by maintaining oil production that others crafted and, for a price, mostly still operate and maintain.
Abroad
A majority of Americans have tired of Iraq. Reasoned reflection would suggest that the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and their replacement by constitutional governments — at a tragic cost of two-thirds of those civilians lost on the first day of the war — might instead have come as mostly positive news, especially given antebellum warnings of thousands of our dead and millions of refugees to come in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Two-thirds of Al Qaeda are scattered. Bin Laden's popularity is waning, as it always does in the Middle East when former romantic killers remain incognito, cannot come out of hiding, and resort to issuing stale videos. It is hard to account for the end of Libyan and Pakistani nuclear trafficking, of Syrians in Lebanon, or of unquestioned dictatorship in Egypt, without the prior American resolve to remove Saddam.
Whether we like it or not, consistency with the democraticizing efforts in Iraq has gained a life of its own and will force us gradually to distance ourselves even more from autocracies throughout the Middle East. That in turn will both rekindle their establishment's short-term hatred and yet at the same time weaken Arab strongmen's long-term efforts to deflect popular anguish against us via terrorist intermediaries.
Oddly, the successful prevention of another 9/11, coupled with the amazing military victories over the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, may have prompted a sense of laxity in the public, which apparently detects no evidence of a dangerous war that still threatens our very existence at home.
Mistakes, some fundamental, were made in Iraq; but given earlier long (and still ongoing) postwar presences in Germany, Japan, Italy, the Balkans, and Korea, Americans might have been able to appreciate that we have been in Iraq for far less time, and had lost far fewer troops than in past conflicts (except, of course, in the air campaign against Milosevic). Instead, World War II is ineptly raised as the benchmark of our "quagmire," since from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki is no longer a span than September 11 to the present — as if 2,000 lost is comparable to 400,000 Americans or 50 million worldwide and the near destruction of the European continent.
Hysteria surrounding non-news (like flushed Korans and the Cindy Sheehan carnival) seems to suggest that a non-attentive public is not worried about being gassed or nuked or even terrorists killing thousands of Americans abroad. Fewer still appreciate that the brave 2,000 Americans lost in Iraq were responsible for killing tens of thousands of deadly terrorists and insurgents. In a rare showing of idealism, American soldiers alone were the catalysts for a reform government in the most dangerous region of the Arab world, that also alone offers the only chance to end the old non-choice between dictators or theocrats.
There are other disappointments. In an iconic war, the symbols of radical Islam fighting against the United States — bin Laden, Dr. Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Zarqawi — are all loose to inspire our enemies with mythologies of American impotence. Iran and Syria, unlike in the spring of 2003, are convinced that their efforts at subverting Iraq will either pay off with a perpetually crippled neighbor, or at least cause so much chaos that the tired American public would never support retaliation against either Teheran or Damascus for their support of terrorism. And they are absolutely right in their calculations — unless Iraq stabilizes soon and Americans can see a radically different government in a secure country as the dividend of their sacrifices.
The Politics of the War
Abroad anti-Americanism is on the wane, for a variety of natural reasons, and some very smart efforts on our part. While critics screamed hegemony, we withdrew troops from South Korea, Germany, and Saudi Arabia, with promises of more withdrawals to come elsewhere. That prompted reflection on the part of noisy allies who formerly wanted it both ways, and reminded the world we don't enjoy the United States playing global policeman any better than it does. Such responsibility is not easy, as the frustrated Europeans are learning with their humiliating nuclear negotiations with the Iranians.
The EU dream is fading as the union is devolving to a logical trading organization and loose political alliance rather than a utopian pan-government. Desperate socialists and statist are no less anti-American, but now they must offer up something other than the Pavlovian kicks to the United States — such as explaining why at peace they have worse unemployment, economic growth and racial relations than does America at war.
Third, the bombings in London and Madrid proved sobering to old Europe. So has the pro-American stance of most of Eastern Europe, the UK and Australia, and India and Japan — all seeking leadership from the United States on everything from an ascendant China to radical Islam.
A nose-wrinkling Germany, France, and South Korea have almost talked themselves into military isolation at a time when the world is growing far more unpredictable. While they all boast of their anti-Americanism, they are clueless about the most radical shift in American public opinion in recent history: quite literally, many, if not most, Americans simply don't wish to have much formal ties with either Paris, Berlin, or Seoul, considering them hardly allies or even friends, but sneering neutrals at best. While these three still ankle-bite, the remnants of the old friendships continue to vanish.
At home the Democrats are in a quandary. Most supported the war, at least if their votes on an October 2002 Senate resolution are any indication. Timetables for withdrawal and financial cut-offs don't make any sense if we are, in fact, on the verge of success and will see a new Iraq take over its own security.
The anti-war crowd brought no traction in two national elections. The Cindy Sheehan phenomenon — like Michael Moore, George Soros, and moveon.org — is too loose a cannon for anything other than occasionally useful loud wild salvos that can be disclaimed when they crudely miss.
So the strategy remains one of attrition: everything from a fabricated Newsweek story on Guantanamo to Hurricane Katrina (against the backdrop of the media gloom and doom on Iraq and blackout of continual progress) brings one or two polling points a month in advantage. A John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore, and others will play down American success, grimace and groan — but not go the McGovern route until it is absolutely clear the American people are convinced that we cannot win and thus want out, no conditions asked.
The Next Year
If on September 12, Americans could have been asked whether they were willing to make the sacrifices we have already tragically incurred to achieve the end of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein , the democratic stirrings in the Middle East, and the avoidance of another September 11, most would have reluctantly done so.
But after two-and-a-half years of televised beheadings, suicide bombers, and improvised explosive devices, most would now not. Two elections and four years later the country is polarized in the manner of 1864 or 1968.
Former advocates of the war employ the trite "I supported my successful war, but not your messy reconstruction." Detractors, who were quiet in the victories over the Taliban and Saddam, now boom out they were never for the use of force at all.
Many on the Right assure that we blew it by not waging full-scale war, convinced that our half-measures lost support for further incursions elsewhere — but without a clue how to convince a skeptical 60 percent of the public that we need more, not less, fighting in the Middle East.
The responsible Left offers nothing other than what George Bush is already doing — more training of Iraqis, more pressure on regional autocracies, and building bridges with allies. The lunatic leftist fringe utterly turns most off since they come across not so much anti-war as anti-American.
Where does this leave us four years later?
Not in as bad a situation as most would argue. If the trends of the last month — more Iraqi participation, constitutional discussions, fewer attacks on Americans, Iraqi predictions of fewer U.S. troops needed — hold steady, then the public will grudgingly restore their support, the Middle East really will be forever altered, and the anti-war left will retreat to lick its wounds. The administration can tell the gung-ho right it prevailed while avoiding deploying several hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East and sapping its entire war-making potential — while a restive China of a billion people scares far more than radical Islam.
As always the pulse of the battlefield determines political perceptions. Just as some hard-core neo-cons who once wrote President Clinton to take out Saddam Hussein now swear that the Iraqi war was someone else's colossal mistake, so too they will reclaim its democracy as their own if we prevail.
But right now all this is in the hands of a brilliant U.S. military that must stabilize Iraq, train a viable military, ward off foreign intruders — and do that without losing very many more soldiers and in very little time. An impossible task for any other military — but just possible for ours.
So I think we will accomplish all that, as we have pushed the rock almost to the summit. But it is heavier than ever and one or two more of our stumbles and it could come crashing back — just as it was ready to roll over the top and cascade down the other side.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a teaching fellow at Hillsdale College for the month of September. His book A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Random House) appears this month.
Yes, by all means, let's try appeasement. It worked so well in the past ....
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Terrorist Incidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents#1996
1996
June 25: Khobar Towers bombing, killing 19 and wounding 372 Americans.
1997
---
1998
August 7: U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
1999
---
2000
October 12: USS Cole bombing kills 17 US sailors.
2001
September 11: The attacks on September 11 kill almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
October 12: Bali car bombing of holidaymakers kills 202 people, mostly Western tourists and local Balinese hospitality staff.
October 17: Zamboanga bombings in the Philippines kill six and wounds about 150.
October 18: A bus bomb in Manila kills three people and wounds 22.
October 19: A car bomb explodes outside a McDonald's Corp. restaurant in Moscow, killing one person and wounding five.
October 23: Moscow theater hostage crisis begins; 120 hostages and 40 terrorists killed in rescue three days later.
2003
March 4: Bomb attack in an airport in Davao kills 21.
2003
May 12: Bombings of United States expatriate housing compounds in Saudi Arabia kill 26 and injure 160 in the Riyadh Compound Bombings. Al-Qaeda blamed.
May 12: A truck bomb attack on a government building in the Chechen town of Znamenskoye kills 59.
May 14: As many as 16 die in a suicide bombing at a religious festival in southeastern Chechnya.
May 16: Casablanca Attacks by 12 bombers on five "Western and Jewish" targets in Casablanca, Morocco leaves 41 dead and over 100 injured. Attack attributed to a Moroccan al-Qaeda-linked group.
July 5: 15 people die and 40 are injured in bomb attacks at a rock festival in Moscow.
August 1: An explosion at the Russian hospital in Mozdok in North Ossetia kills at least 50 people and injures 76.
August 25: At least 48 people were killed and 150 injured in two blasts in south Mumbai - one near the Gateway of India at the other at the Zaveri Bazaar.
September 3: A bomb blast on a passenger train near Kislovodsk in southern Russia kills seven people and injures 90.
November 15 and November 20: Truck bombs go off at two synagogues, the British Consulate, and the HSBC Bank in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 57 and wounding 700.
December 5: Suicide bombers kill at least 46 people in an attack on a train in southern Russia
December 9: A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds at least 11.
2004
February 6: Bomb on Moscow Metro kills 41.
February 27: Superferry 14 is bombed in the Philippines by Abu Sayyaf, killing 116.
March 2: Attack on procession of Shia Muslims in Pakistan kills 43 and wounds 160.
March 11: Coordinated bombing of commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, kills 191 people and injures more than 1,500.
April 21: Basra bombs in Iraq kill 74 and injure hundreds.
April 21: Bombing of a security building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 5.
May 29: Al-Khobar massacres, in which Islamic militants kill 22 people at an oil compound in Saudi Arabia.
August 24: Bombing of Russian airplane kills 90.
August 31: A blast near a subway station entrance in northern Moscow, caused by a suicide bomber, kills 10 people and injures 33.
September 1 – 3: Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia, results in 344 dead.
September 9: Jakarta embassy bombing, in which the Australian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia was bombed, kills eight people.
October 7: Sinai bombings: Three car bombs explode in the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 34 and wounding 171, many of them Israeli and other foreign tourists.
December 6: Suspected al Qaeda-linked group attacks U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, killing 5 local employees.
December 12: A bombing at the Christmas market in General Santos, Philippines, kills 15.
2005
February 14: A car bomb kills former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 20 others in Beirut.
March 9: An attack of an Istanbul restaurant killed one, and injured five.
March 19: Car bomb attack on theatre in Doha, Qatar, kills one Briton and wounds 12 others.
April 7: A suicide bomber blows himself up in Cairo's Khan al Khalili market, killing three foreign tourists and wounding 17 others.
May 7: Multiple bomb explosions across Myanmar's capital Rangoon kill 19 and injure 160.
June 12: Bombs explode in the Iranian cities of Ahvaz and Tehran, leaving 10 dead and 80 wounded days before the Iranian presidential election.
July 7: London bombings - Attacks on one double-decker bus and three London Underground trains, killing 56 people and injuring over 700, occur on the first day of the 31st G8 Conference. The attacks are believed by many to be the first suicide bombings in Western Europe.
July 23: Sharm el-Sheikh bombings: Car bombs explode at tourist sites in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing at least 88 and wounding more than 100.
August 17: Around 100 home-made bombs exploded in 58 different locations in Bangladesh, Killing two and wounding 100.
