Twotimer said:
Why there are only about 5 people who post here regularly? So far there are few threads with pleasant factual debates. The rest are dominated by some fringe polarizing posts. Everytime a decent thread starts up, it gets hijacked by the fringe.
OK, let's have a reasonable discussion on Iraq. I'll try not to rant and rave. Here's my take:
President Bush mislead the American people when he used information that the CIA told him was unreliable as a cornerstone of his justification to invade Iraq. We can follow that up with Carl Rove outing a CIA agent because her husband told the public that the Administration was not telling the truth about Saddam buying uranium from Niger. But that's a whole other can of worms; I won't even go there right now.
General Shinseki told Congress that it would take "several hundred thousand" troops several years to invade and pacify Iraq. Immediately, Bush minions disrespected this professional soldier and assured Congress he was totally wrong. They assured Congress and the American people that Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. They assured us that Iraq had the money to rebuild their own country. Sec Rumsfeld assured us the war would only last a few weeks. They named Gen Shinseki's replacement and didn't give him a new assignment, thus forcing him to retire. That's another can of worms; I won't go there now either, but this link has a lot to offer:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/0228pentagoncontra.htm
President Bush promised us that he would use all diplomatic channels to avoid war with Iraq. He didn't do that. Saddam allowed UN weapons inspectors back into the country, but Bush ordered them out before they had time to complete their inspections. I think he did that because if they announced there were no WMDs, he'd have no excuse to invade. Some of our oldest allies, France, Germany, Canada, very sensibly refused to join in this fiasco. Toppling Saddam was a piece of cake. There's no military in the world that can stand up to ours and it was at the top if its game for this invasion.
Immediately after Baghdad fell, France, Germany, the UN, all offered to send help in the rebuilding of Iraq. The Bush Bunch refused all those offers of aid. They would only take UN help if the UN troops were under the control of the US. The War College released a paper last year that was written before the invasion. It correctly said the US had a window of about a year to make life for Iraqis better than it had been under Saddam or a resistance group would likely form. Well, the Bush Bunch dillied and dallied around for that year. They threw money at Bush's Buddies, Halliburton, Bechtel, Shaw, got nothing done and, guess what, an insurgency developed. Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" has fallen apart. Member after member has withdrawn their troops from Iraq and more will withdraw after the Constitution is approved. Some of Iraq's neighbors claim to support the new government, but they won't send diplomats into the country. They also refuse to send military troops to support the "establishment of Democracy".
We were told that the insurgency was a few Saddam loyalist and when he was captured/killed, they'd go away. He was captured. The insurgency is stronger than when he was on the loose. We were told the insurgency was only a few diehards. But the military has killed thousands and there's no end of insurgents or terrorist bombers in sight. Several credible agencies, including US generals on the ground in Iraq, say that Iraq has become a training ground for terrorism. That was not true before the invasion. Saudi Arabia says the Saudis that have been captured trying to enter Iraq were motivated to join a terrorist organization because the US invaded a Muslim country.
We were told that when an election was held and Iraqis elected a government, the insurgency would go away. Didn't happen. It's only gotten worse. The "government" can't agree on a new Constitution. Though there's one being printed and will be voted on next month, the Sunnis will try to defeat it and it certainly won't defuse the insurgency. There are also serious concerns about the ties of this new government to Iran, the rights of women, and the part Sharia Law will pay in the everyday life of Iraqis. Abu Musab Zarqawi has announced a war on the Shiites. Baghdad has been a bloody mess for about a week now, 150 civilians die one day, 30 the next, 20 the next, who knows tomorrow? Neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shiites once lived side by side in peace are coming apart. Almost every day bodies of men bound, gagged, tortured, shot in the head, are found in different neighborhoods. Some of them are killed by government agencies, some by Shiite milita, some by Sunni militia, some by Kurds.
And yet the President of Iraq stood up at the UN yesterday and told them ""We are marching toward political stability and economic prosperity." Is the man an idiot? Or does he think the rest of the world isn't watching this bloodbath?
The US Army has not met its recruitment goals for this year, even though they've drawn down their waiting lists. Normally, they like to have several thousand delayed entry recruits, but they've had to use them, too. If this thing drags on another year, the Army will simply be broke and I don't mean just moneywise. The cost of recruiting has gone up tremendously. They've increased advertising, increased bonuses, shortened the enlistment term, raised the enlistment age and still can't get the new bodies they need. The National Guard belongs to the various states and I don't know of a site that tells how, overall, Guard recruiting is going. Both the Army and Guard are doing well in retaining their soldiers, but new recruits are the lifeblood of a strong military. The Air Force and Navy met their recruiting goals apparently without much trouble. But there aren't a lot of Air Force puks on the ground in Iraq.
The Cost of War calculator is set to reach $204.6 billion on Iraq at the end of fiscal year 2005. Story after story tells us of corruption and mishandling of the money we're trying to spend in rebuilding the country. There are millions of dollars unaccounted for in Iraq. Some money designated for rebuilding Iraq has had to be spent on security because no one can rebuild a hospital if they're under attack. 1,899 American military members have died since the invasion.
We're running one of the largest Federal budget deficits ever. A deficit run up by an Administration that claims to be Conservative. And now we've got Katrina. Some experts say it will take $200 Billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Republicans in Congress say we have to be careful how much money we devote to helping out Americans in that region. But very few of them, if any, are saying we have to be careful how much money we spend in Iraq. I say that's wrong. Poll after poll shows that the American people think Bush's priorities are in the wrong place. But he's the Commander in Chief. He's the only person who can bring out troops back from Iraq. If he refuses to do that, I think he should be impeached.
I won't go into what I consider fraud in the passing of "Medicare Reform" last year. Or the passing out of $million contracts to Bush Buddies in New Orleans. Or allowing setting aside the Davis-Bacon Act. Why should this disaster allow contractors to pay employees less money for doing the same work? I say it's a sell out to big business again. Or the Abu Grahib. Or torture at Guantanamo Bay.
There's no doubt in my mind that this country is less secure than we were before the invasion of Iraq. Look at the thousands of illegals that cross our southern border every year, and the thousands of containers that aren't inspected at our major ports. Homeland Security is a joke, filled with political pals of the president.
All right, so I couldn't refrain from a rant or two,
but I can link everything in this post to a newspaper or government report. Believe me, I could go on and on. But I won't. I've laid out my case against this war; let's hear what you've got to say.
