Originally posted by Darth Kreiger
And this is why argueing politics is pointless online....
Originally posted by Soleran
Indeed, the shit piles up fast on both sides of the pile looking to be "right."
but i AM right. 600,000+ americans were never in danger of being killed by hussein, nor were 60,000....or 6000, or even 6.
im sorry if this isnt the special olympics where everyone's a winner just for trying. i mean, should i not speak the truth just so everyone feels happy and smart?
Originally posted by PVS
but i AM right. 600,000+ americans were never in danger of being killed by hussein, nor were 60,000....or 6000, or even 6.im sorry if this isnt the special olympics where everyone's a winner just for trying. i mean, should i not speak the truth just so everyone feels happy and smart?
Exactly.
The whole "well, if a few Iraqis have to die to save American lives" just makes me want to say "WTF?" If anything it has cost American lives - the soldiers and contractors killed. And the war ended up not being about protecting American lives since Iraq wasn't a threat to the US - in terms of WMDs or terrorists.
Essentially a lot of avoidable deaths for little tangible benefit - especially as one of the only upsides of the whole event is "democracy" which is only staying alive thanks to western protection.
Originally posted by Imperial_Samura
Though strangely enough one side often accumulates it a lot faster. What with "better them then us" mentalities.
Well you just added some fresh piles to your own section.
but i AM right. 600,000+ americans were never in danger of being killed by hussein, nor were 60,000....or 6000, or even 6.im sorry if this isnt the special olympics where everyone's a winner just for trying. i mean, should i not speak the truth just so everyone feels happy and smart?
I didn't single out every comment made by every member now did I?
Originally posted by Soleran
Well you just added some fresh piles to your own section.
Oh, of course, because the "better them then us" mentality is a sign of clear, constructive and rational debate isn't it? Hell, who wouldn't want people with such a philosopical grasp of the political situation on the debating team? Sure, they would be ripped apart, but if their views fall into the correct section of the political spectrum then logically they can't be all that bad.
Even more so when it is the "better them then us even though we weren't in danger from them to begin with." And of course to disagree with that view, no matter how rationally, somehow proves what you are saying? I wondered if I had posted something vaguely conservative and pro-whatever whether you would have responded the same way...
I didn't single out every comment made by every member now did I?
Technicality and one people can easily take the wrong way. You quoted another members opinion in regards to a specific poster and his post. Theoretically you simply added a middle man.
Originally posted by PVSThere's something sad about the state of humanity when 1 person dies and the US has a conniption (Terri Schiavo, JonBenet, etc) and close to half doesn't blink an eye when over half a million people are lost to the ravages of an unjust police action.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.htmlA team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
(read article for story, i dont feel like pasting it all)
http://www.attytood.com/2006/10/601027_study_suggests_twice_as.html
quite a stretch from bush's estimate of 30,000, which by his fuzzy math might equate to like 40,000-50,000 today. bush denies any truth in this johns hopkins study.
thoughts?
Originally posted by Imperial_Samura
Technicality and one people can easily take the wrong way. You quoted another members opinion in regards to a specific poster and his post. Theoretically you simply added a middle man.
Oh
It's a high death count, meaning it's horrible so many people died from conflict in the middle east.
It doesn't even matter if it's accurate, that many people suffering is never good.
In my first post in the thread I acknowledged that this is very sad, and that it's most definatley innocent civilains that have lost their lives.
Since the focus of the discussion has turned from that topic to the broader war in Iraq itself (understandable turn, though), I feel the need to adress a point:
I believe, and have said so in other threads, that Bush had different agenda than stated for this war.
(and no it isn't "oil", which we've so obviously seen our soldiers carting away by the barrel)
It's positioning, and pre-emptive removal of potential weapons supply.
Let me explain.
I believe that the President was going to go into Iraq not long after 9/11.
That day changed things in many ways, and one was the realization that the terrorism bombings in Israel, Palestine, etc..... which America saw for over 25 years on T.V. were not just part of "how it is over there" anymore. It became clear (to Bush, anyway) that this new era of terrorism was going to strike here at home, as hard and as often as it could.
When you couple this with the shift in the Middle-east (long Muslim dominated) towards radical Islam .... by and large who Bush was worried about......
He decides to invade Iraq and over-throw Saddam Hussein, to replace him with a democracy-based government that would be friendly to U.S. interests.
1.) Position
With a U.S. friendly Iraq, we have gained an ally, and possibly a base for holding troops, planning attacks, etc when needed, in the broader war on Radical Islam. <----------(war on terror is code for war on radical Islam)
If Iran becomes hostile against the U.S. or U.S. interests, if Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebannon and others start to band together in the next 10-15 years,..... (which I believe he seriously thought could happen)
then the U.S. has somebody other than Israel over there that we can depend on for support.
2.)Pre-emptive removal of potential weapons supply
This is secondary, but I believe Bush feels that Saddam will sell/give chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons (were he ever able to develop them) to radical Islamic terrorists who would love to use them on U.S. soil.
Probably not at the time of the Iraq war (2003), but maybe 5 or ten years later (2013) would this be a concern.
All of the stated reasons we were given are just a smoke-screen.
WMD: wether he had them or not, we knew he did before, so it just sounded good
Killer of his people: True, and very bad, but as many have pointed out, Kim Jong Ill and Fidel Castro are just as bad, and we aren't moving against them.
Attempted to kill Bush I: true, and a nice personal touch on Georgie's part.
Those are some of the things that we were told, but I believe the real reason for the war is because Bush saw that things had changed, and (based on assumptions as to how they might continue to change over time), he felt that we needed to take measures against all of the middle east rising up in a jihad against everbody else.
We needed a foot in the door over there (besides Israel, which is already hated by almost every country in it's region) and Iraq was what our best option was. Seeing as how we had been there before, and most Americans' accept the idea that Saddam is an ass hole, it wasn't too much of a stretch for them to put together other convincing reasons and just push ahead and do it.
(the fact may well be that George Bush I saw the same vision of the future as his son, and went to war with Iraq the first time to lay the groundwork for this run.)
I'm not saying that this is good or bad.
Bush is doing it out of what I believe is a genuine concern for our country, our people, and our way of life, against a very real threat.
I would respect him a little more (seeing as how I'm a consevative Republican anyway) if he would have just come out and told people what the real thinking behind the whole deal was, but those are not acceptable reasons to go to war.
I think Bush is alot smarter than people give him credit for. Him and his advisers are looking at radical Islam and playing chess, not checkers.
He is either a villian or a hero, and my hopes are with him, but it will be history that decides if he took the events of 9/11 and judged the waters of the world right or not.
Originally posted by sithsaber408
In my first post in the thread I acknowledged that this is very sad, and that it's most definatley innocent civilains that have lost their lives.{edit for length}
Yes you have some good points. I think an easier way to say it is: "Look what nation lies between Afghanistan and Iraq."
Oil was also an issue, if we could garuntee a striaght supply, that would be beneficial to the US, especially with instability in Venezuela et al.
We know Sadaam had "WMDs" mostly because we gave him WMDs to use against Iran in another seemingly required "US supports another corrupt dictator just to gain support in the Cold War" scenario.
However, there wasn't fear the Iraq was going to develop nuclear weapons. If THAT were the case, we would have invaded North Korea, (which we already suspected had nukes) or Iran (which we knew were clearly trying to develop them). Iraq was the least "evil" of all three "axis of evil" nations. So we clearly went in for other purposes.
The Reason Bush I didn't go into Baghdad was his advisors (many the same as President Bush) said that the US would simply get bogged down in regional and ethnic civil war. History is ironic, but unforgiving.
Originally posted by Alliance
Yes you have some good points. I think an easier way to say it is: "Look what nation lies between Afghanistan and Iraq."Oil was also an issue, if we could garuntee a striaght supply, that would be beneficial to the US, especially with instability in Venezuela et al.
We know Sadaam had "WMDs" mostly because we gave him WMDs to use against Iran in another seemingly required "US supports another corrupt dictator just to gain support in the Cold War" scenario.
However, there wasn't fear the Iraq was going to develop nuclear weapons. If THAT were the case, we would have invaded North Korea, (which we already suspected had nukes) or Iran (which we knew were clearly trying to develop them). Iraq was the least "evil" of all three "axis of evil" nations. So we clearly went in for other purposes.
The Reason Bush I didn't go into Baghdad was his advisors (many the same as President Bush) said that the US would simply get bogged down in regional and ethnic civil war. History is ironic, but unforgiving.
Sounds like someone just watched good ole Bill on HBO.