Mortkat wrote:Parados- It is clear that you are selective when you view my post.
Do you deny that Clinton said, in his speech of Dec, 16th, 1998-
"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of the region, THE SECURITY OF THE WORLD."
or perhaps, you subsribe to the doubtful principles laid out by the unfortunate Neville Chamberlain who, according to William L,. Shirer in his classic- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, was viewed by Hitler as a man who would sacrifice the Czechs rather than go to war.
Quite the argument there Mortkat. When did I say we should allow Iraq to occupy any country? You aren't even selective, you just make stuff up to argue against. Iraq was not allowed to occupy a country. Iraq was not given carte blanche to keep its military unlike Germany. Iraq was under sanctions. Iraq was under inspections. Iraq was kicked back out of Kuwait. Saddam unchecked was perhaps a threat but it wasn't like he was going to invade France or Russia anytime in the next year or two. He had no military capable of doing it. Your argument is BS. Try addressing what I actually said next time.
Quote:
Winston Churchill. of course, viewed this capitulation at Munich as disasterous and commented:
"We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat...All the counties of Mittel Europa and the Danube Valley, one after another will be drawn in the vast system of Nazi Politics,,,radiating from Berlin....And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning>'
Saddam was the one that sustained a defeat after he invaded Kuwait.
Quote:What part of "The hard fact is that as long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of the region and THE SECURITY OF THE WORLD" don't you understand, Parados?
You are, I hope familiar with the Oil For Food Scandal. It has been documented by the Washington Post that "beneficiaries of Hussein's largess( bribes) received oil allocations pegged to their level of opposition to sanctions"
I hope you are familiar with the scandals that continue today in Iraq. Billions of dollars unaccounted for, kickbacks and bribes, torture by Iraqis. It doesn't seem much different than before we invaded.
Quote:
I am sure that you realize that without these bribes the sanctions may have possibly included the use of force by the UN. The fact that Russia's stance was heavily influenced by the receipt of 19 BILLION in oil contracts and France by its acceptance of 4.4 Billion in Oil contracts MAY have had a great deal to do with the eventual stance of the UN.
The bottom line, Parados, is that the American People will decide, at the ballot box in November whether you are correct or I am correct.
I predict that, despite the objections of the left wing,who, if truth be told, are furious about the loss of power they held until 1994 when Bill Clinton lost the House and Senate for the Democrats( never to be returned) the Republicans will continue to hold the Majority in the House and the Senate.
You may, of course, strongly voice your oppostion when that occurs.
Keep repeating this refrain Mortkat. The people will speak and they are voicing their opinions today in spite of the arguments that doing so is "unpatriotic."
Mortkat wrote:Well, where shall I begin. Debra Law? Shall I begin with the leader of the Democrats?
I think that I can show that Democrats do lie and obfuscate.--- ALL of them---- but you must give me time to prove it.
It should take a couple of years to do so.
Are you game?
You have proven that you hold yourself to less honorable (almost nonexistent) standards in comparison to the standards you demand of others. That's all one needs to know from you.
I don't recall that I ever mentioned the Democrats, except indirectly in that one flip reference to Bill Clinton in the last sentence. Fyi, Mort, I am not nor have I ever been a member of the Democrat Party. Unlike all you party faithfuls (Dem and Rep), I have no party line to push. I try to stay objective.
Cheney's Challenge
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; 1:33 PM
Recognizing that the White House's trash-talking of its opponents had gotten a bit out of hand, President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the past few days have publicly acknowledged that dissent over the war is not in itself unpatriotic and that the administration's newest nemesis, Congressman John Murtha, is no Michael Moore.
But that doesn't mean that they're backing off.
Cheney yesterday took point in the massive PR blitz aimed at salvaging the administration's reputation. He lashed out at the suggestion that "brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood," calling it "revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety" and saying that "it has no place anywhere in American politics."
But he was a bit late: Opinion polls show that fully 55 to 57 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration was intentionally misleading in the run up to war. That kind of mistrust is why the question of the administration's integrity has become absolutely central to modern American politics.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/11/22/BL2005112201025.html
You are correct, Debra LAW. How foolish I was to ever have thought I could debate with anyone named Debra L A W. Why the very name is redolent with emenations. When you read the name you feel you are on the steps of the Supreme Court Building.
Really, Debra LAW, you have made enough doubtful statements in your interminable unclear posts to last a lifetime. You will just have to put up with my commentary. But I will pay proper homage. How could one do otherwise when one converses with Debra L A W.
Incidentally, Debra L A W, why are there so many women lawyers and so few in the equity partner positions in the top 100 law firms?
The joke of the year!!! Iraq was under sanctions!!
You apparently have not read about the Oil for Food Program- parados
Chicago Tribune Editorial-
A world of Deceit.
quote
"He( Hussein) exploited the Oil for Food Program, along with OTHER CHEATING ON THE INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS LEVIED AGAINST HIM, to buy important friendships. Hussein curried those friendships in 66 countries, but his pals were heavily clustered in nations such as France, Russia and China - COUNTRIES THAT REFUSED TO DEMAND THAT HE BE FORCED TO OBEY UN RESOLUTIONS IN A WAY THAT COULD H A V E P R E V E N T E D A W A R."
Rebut that- Parados-
H.D.S. Greenway: Yankee come home
By H.D.S. Greenway The Boston Globe
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2005
BOSTON Having come recently from Iraq, I find myself reluctantly agreeing with Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania. American troops have become "a catalyst for violence," and therefore more part of the problem than the solution.
I used to believe that, no matter what one thought of the war, Americans had to stay to keep Iraq from disintegration and civil war. If I thought the United States could prevent either, I would say stay the course. But I believe now that we Americans no longer control events in Iraq and that in the end we cannot hold the country together.
Nor can we prevent civil war, which is already gathering in the shadows, as evidenced by bombed mosques, secret torture chambers and the victims of death squads found in the desert. Only the Iraqis themselves can come up with the necessary compromises and accommodations to keep Iraq whole.
I now believe, as former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird recently wrote: "Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency."
Perhaps there was a chance right after Baghdad fell that things might turn out otherwise, but a combination of incompetence and ideology-driven blunders has lost that chance. America's reputation for torture has also hurt our efforts.
The Iraqi state is a Humpty Dumpty that is beyond the ability of the United States to put together again. Only Iraqis can do that, and the presence of American forces may actually be a disincentive to ethnic and sectarian compromise.
Victory on the battlefield, of the type President George W. Bush keeps insisting upon, is beyond our grasp. Military commanders on the ground know that they are not defeating the insurgency and that they can only keep it disrupted until, hopefully, Iraqis can manage their own defense.
An American officer in Baghdad told me: "There is less incentive for Iraqis to fight the insurgency if the Americans will do it for them." Too many Iraqi soldiers are seen - and see themselves - as puppet troops - "not good Muslims," and doing it only for the money, as some Iraqi soldiers said to Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid.
As it is now, insurgents can make a good case that nationalism and pride demand fighting the foreign occupiers. The hard truth is that more and more Iraqis are joining up with Al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Take American and other foreign troops out, and the nationalist element to the insurgency sinks.
Iraq today is "a black hole," as France's antiterrorism judge, Jean-Louis Brugière, said, sucking in impressionable youths from all over the Muslim world and radicalizing them. Donald Rumsfeld is said to have asked if we were creating terrorists faster than we can destroy them. The answer is yes. The Iraq war is harming us in the greater struggle against Islamic extremism and making the United States less secure.
There will still remain the antagonism between Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, but young men from abroad, recruited to kill Americans, will be less motivated to come to Iraq to fight Shiites and Kurds. Iraq may yet split into three or more parts, and that will be very destabilizing to the region. But the point is we can't prevent it. Only Iraqis can.
But wouldn't a U.S. pullout allow Al Qaeda to crow that it had forced the last superpower out as the Soviets were forced out of Afghanistan? Probably, but with an election next month and a new Iraqi government up and running by next spring, we can declare victory and go home, as Senator George Aiken once suggested we do in Vietnam.
The United States could continue to help Iraq reconstruct and train its armed forces. America would remain involved but behind the scenes. Taking foreign troops out of the field would not be a wholesale retreat, as it was for the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Melvin Laird might not agree with Murtha's timetable. The lesson of Vietnam, he wrote in Foreign Affairs, was that "the voices of the 'cut-and-run' crowd ultimately prevailed, and our allies were betrayed after all our work to set them on their feet."
But the war in Iraq is not sustainable in this country, any more than the Vietnam War was in Laird's time. The longer we wait the harder the eventual pullout will be and the greater the betrayal of those who grew to depend on us. That's what we learned in Vietnam.
(H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.)
BOSTON Having come recently from Iraq, I find myself reluctantly agreeing with Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania. American troops have become "a catalyst for violence," and therefore more part of the problem than the solution.
I used to believe that, no matter what one thought of the war, Americans had to stay to keep Iraq from disintegration and civil war. If I thought the United States could prevent either, I would say stay the course. But I believe now that we Americans no longer control events in Iraq and that in the end we cannot hold the country together.
Nor can we prevent civil war, which is already gathering in the shadows, as evidenced by bombed mosques, secret torture chambers and the victims of death squads found in the desert. Only the Iraqis themselves can come up with the necessary compromises and accommodations to keep Iraq whole.
I now believe, as former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird recently wrote: "Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency."
Perhaps there was a chance right after Baghdad fell that things might turn out otherwise, but a combination of incompetence and ideology-driven blunders has lost that chance. America's reputation for torture has also hurt our efforts.
The Iraqi state is a Humpty Dumpty that is beyond the ability of the United States to put together again. Only Iraqis can do that, and the presence of American forces may actually be a disincentive to ethnic and sectarian compromise.
Victory on the battlefield, of the type President George W. Bush keeps insisting upon, is beyond our grasp. Military commanders on the ground know that they are not defeating the insurgency and that they can only keep it disrupted until, hopefully, Iraqis can manage their own defense.
An American officer in Baghdad told me: "There is less incentive for Iraqis to fight the insurgency if the Americans will do it for them." Too many Iraqi soldiers are seen - and see themselves - as puppet troops - "not good Muslims," and doing it only for the money, as some Iraqi soldiers said to Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid.
As it is now, insurgents can make a good case that nationalism and pride demand fighting the foreign occupiers. The hard truth is that more and more Iraqis are joining up with Al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Take American and other foreign troops out, and the nationalist element to the insurgency sinks.
Iraq today is "a black hole," as France's antiterrorism judge, Jean-Louis Brugière, said, sucking in impressionable youths from all over the Muslim world and radicalizing them. Donald Rumsfeld is said to have asked if we were creating terrorists faster than we can destroy them. The answer is yes. The Iraq war is harming us in the greater struggle against Islamic extremism and making the United States less secure.
There will still remain the antagonism between Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, but young men from abroad, recruited to kill Americans, will be less motivated to come to Iraq to fight Shiites and Kurds. Iraq may yet split into three or more parts, and that will be very destabilizing to the region. But the point is we can't prevent it. Only Iraqis can.
But wouldn't a U.S. pullout allow Al Qaeda to crow that it had forced the last superpower out as the Soviets were forced out of Afghanistan? Probably, but with an election next month and a new Iraqi government up and running by next spring, we can declare victory and go home, as Senator George Aiken once suggested we do in Vietnam.
The United States could continue to help Iraq reconstruct and train its armed forces. America would remain involved but behind the scenes. Taking foreign troops out of the field would not be a wholesale retreat, as it was for the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Melvin Laird might not agree with Murtha's timetable. The lesson of Vietnam, he wrote in Foreign Affairs, was that "the voices of the 'cut-and-run' crowd ultimately prevailed, and our allies were betrayed after all our work to set them on their feet."
But the war in Iraq is not sustainable in this country, any more than the Vietnam War was in Laird's time. The longer we wait the harder the eventual pullout will be and the greater the betrayal of those who grew to depend on us. That's what we learned in Vietnam.
I'm really tired of the Vietnam comparisons.
Brand X wrote
Quote:I'm really tired of the Vietnam comparisons.
Than continue to stick your head in the sand.
November 19, 2005
The Iraq War is Not Another Vietnam - Part I
By Richard Miniter
(Note: The following is the first of a two-part excerpt from Mr. Miniter's new book, "Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine The War On Terror')
"The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable." -George Lucas, Star Wars creator
Some people just prefer to look in the rear view mirror all the time...it's a poor attitude IMO.
Well, you know what they say about those who don't study history...
FreeDuck wrote:Well, you know what they say about those who don't study history...
Yeah, it's a cliche that doesn't apply to
everything. :wink:
Yes, sort of like "stay the course".
