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WHY WE ARE IN IRAQ

passin thru

Well-known member
WHY WE ARE IN IRAQ
Raymond S. Kraft

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could.Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.

I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere.
And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war - and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .. a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,500 American lives, which is less than the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.
But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60 minute TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.

We have four options
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken a little more than 2,500 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.

300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem? The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California.
Please consider passing along copies of this to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful TODAY - - history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts and truth of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.
 

sw

Well-known member
I believe that these men will have something to say about this. You are so right, why can't the lefties see this for what it is? I will not ever understand why evil cannot be called evil, and taken for what it is worth.

fouramigos.jpg
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Spin all you want, Passin Gas, but we're in Iraq because George Bush told us Saddam had WMDs and would give them to terrorists to bring to the US and blow us up like 9/11. It's on the record; Americans heard his State of the Union speech. They also have learned since that it was full of lies and misrepresentations. Comparing the Iraqi war to WWII is ridiculous. We were attacked and that led us into the war. Saddam did not attack the United States. He had no ability to attack the United States. He had no WMDs and he had no terrorist network to give WMDs to if he had them! Those are the facts, but continue to spin. It shows how desperate you're getting. :lol:
 

fulton

Well-known member
We are in Iraq because Saddam played games and didn't let inspectors in. He was given the chance to work with U.N. inspectors and failed to do so.

I am embassed that you still have the right to call yourself an american. Please leave the country. I will gladly pay for your ticket.
 

rjk

Well-known member
passin thru said:
WHY WE ARE IN IRAQ
Raymond S. Kraft

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could.Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.

I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere.
And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war - and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .. a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,500 American lives, which is less than the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.
But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60 minute TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.

We have four options
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken a little more than 2,500 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.

300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem? The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California.
Please consider passing along copies of this to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful TODAY - - history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts and truth of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.
Those who don't know/acknowledge history are doomed to repeat it.
 

Cal

Well-known member
And Disagreeable picks number...(drum roll)... 3

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
Do you suppose Dis learned at the foot stool of Tokyo Rose?

She/he sure seems to spout what every terrorist wants us to hear.

Funny, not many agree with her/him. :?
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
fulton said:
We are in Iraq because Saddam played games and didn't let inspectors in. He was given the chance to work with U.N. inspectors and failed to do so.

UN weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, inspecting, when George W. Bush told them to get out of the country so he could attack. You can spin all day, but Saddam was cooperating with the UN.

I am embassed that you still have the right to call yourself an american. Please leave the country. I will gladly pay for your ticket.

You're very kind to offer, but this is my country. I plan to do what I can to take it back from people like you who don't know what they're talking about and, worse, don't care.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Jinglebob said:
Funny, not many agree with her/him. :?

You're quite wrong. The last poll I saw said well over 50% of Americans said it was a mistake to go into Iraq. That makes me in the majority; you are a minority :shock: How does it feel?
 

BBJ

Well-known member
Folks I think in the past week or so we have seen dis drop down to a new low. (remember stevec?) Little stevieC, just before his/her departure, would spout off anything just to get a rise out of people. dis has basically resorted to this tactic. He/she/it will say what "it" thinks, will get others going.

In my opinion dis has no conscience, no pride in our country or itself. I enjoy having others here that I disagree with on political issues, but dis only has one agenda and its very obvious what that is.


Just to prove how ignorant :dunce: this person is, dis wrote the following: "You can spin all day, but Saddam was cooperating with the UN."
:clap:
WHAT?!?!?!? :evil:




ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
Disagreeable said:
Jinglebob said:
Funny, not many agree with her/him. :?

You're quite wrong. The last poll I saw said well over 50% of Americans said it was a mistake to go into Iraq. That makes me in the majority; you are a minority :shock: How does it feel?

Sweety, as a white male, rancher/cowboy, I've been in the minority, all my life. :wink:

I'd rather be in a minority and be right, than with a majority and be wrong. The problem with your polls that you quote, is that they don't ask real people. Just leftists and idiots. Most of the "real" people in this country, are too busy working to bother with answering the media's polls.

Just blather on Baghdad Dis. Most of us will be smart enough to just ignore you. :wink:

By the way, have you changed anyone's mind on this site?











I didn't think so. :wink:


And you have every right to your opinion. Just don't try shoving it down my throat and if you are of the praying kind, maybe a prayer for all of the fallen servicemen and women who have made it possible for you to be able to spread your discord.
 

Tumbleweed

Well-known member
Below is a link to an article I came across with another view and more reasons why we need to be in Iraq and maybe we need to whoop Iran to. We need their oil and so does China and I think we dare not let them get control of it. We've been giving them our factories, technology and dollars. Chinas need for oil grows. I think we are helping china grow stronger and some day when they are strong enough it may be them we face in the mideast along with the Arabs. I tried to copy and paste the article but couldn't get it done but this is the link to it.


http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/wakefield/2006/0324.html
 

andybob

Well-known member
Passin Thru, don't forget the New Zealanders and Southern African States have been allies in all the major conflicts, in fact New Zealand and Rhodesia contributed the highest per capita percentage of their manpower than any other allied country.
Rhodesia wholly financed their military involvement in all the wars from the Boer war, through both world wars Malaya and were serving with the British S.A.S in 1965 when U.D.I.was declaired and we became the pariahs of the world.
Despite having the highest per capita income, highest education and health services for our native population, the Liral western press managed to portray us as being oppressive and racist thus turning the world against us.
We won the military conflict against the communist supported terrorists, but were still forced by the U.N. to hand over to the only representitives they recognised,and the results can be seen today!
I served in the "rebel' army to defend my country from 1975 to 1980,we were considered the most effective counter insurgency army in the world,but by the end of the conflict our per capia losses were 5 times Americas Viet Nam losses, most of my comerdes were proffessional black soldiers not the racial war depicted by the liberals.
There are presently 200 Zimbabweans serving in the British forces, my daughter being one of them untill recently, with one of the earliest casualties at Basra being a Zim born soldier.
Untill recently our designes for landmine and ambush proof vehicles have been ignored, but now two of the South African versions of these vehicles are being manufactured under lisence in the U.S.A. I trust they will save many lives.
As to the conflict on hand, the logical military conclusion to the first Iraq war would have been to take Bagdad while world opinion was on the side of the allies,not just appease the political pundits by merely forcing them out of Kuwait this is just a belated extention to that conflict.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Tumbleweed said:
Below is a link to an article I came across with another view and more reasons why we need to be in Iraq and maybe we need to whoop Iran to. We need their oil and so does China and I think we dare not let them get control of it. We've been giving them our factories, technology and dollars. Chinas need for oil grows. I think we are helping china grow stronger and some day when they are strong enough it may be them we face in the mideast along with the Arabs. I tried to copy and paste the article but couldn't get it done but this is the link to it.


http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/wakefield/2006/0324.html

You dont need there oil. We would be better off and have cheaper gas prices if there wasnt any oil in Iraq!
Look Alberta alone has enough oil for North America.
Problem is this AB oil costs $15 a barrel. Iraq oil costs $5 a barrel.
If an American company invests billions in an AB, OPEC could simply open up production and drive the price of crude down below $15 a barrel until the American plants were bankrupt. Then OPEC could cut production and drive the price up again.
We are ending up paying over $70 a barrel because of what might happen in the middle east which is a bunch of $hit if you ask me.
I think if we started thinking in terms of Canadian/American trade instead of World trade or NAFTA that includes Mexico we would be a lot better off.
Our economies and culture is basically the same. We have the resources and you have the markets. Fair trade is possible. The problem with free trade is when you broadened it to include all these third world countries.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Andybob it was terrible what we did to South Africa and Rhodesia. But you have to understand that the majority of North Americans did not have a clue about the political reality of South Africa. We were basically fed a bunch of crap by the media about exploitation and slavery of blacks over there. Most N. Americans have never been there and dont have a clue about the region or its history.
Plus now all we did was just really make it worse for the blacks over there.
Even just writing what I just did would have me labeled as a racist in most circles :(
 

Econ101

Well-known member
RoperAB said:
Andybob it was terrible what we did to South Africa and Rhodesia. But you have to understand that the majority of North Americans did not have a clue about the political reality of South Africa. We were basically fed a bunch of crap by the media about exploitation and slavery of blacks over there. Most N. Americans have never been there and dont have a clue about the region or its history.
Plus now all we did was just really make it worse for the blacks over there.
Even just writing what I just did would have me labeled as a racist in most circles :(

You have a lot of truth in that, Roper. It isn't always about race. Mugabe has been the worst thing for Zimbabwe and rates up there with Idi Amin (minus the Jeffrey Dahmer aspect).

We have some good friends who were missionaries over there, and the wife was from South Africa.

Good governance is not a race issue.
 

Ben H

Well-known member
Having the Islamic people divided makes thing difficult, it would be much more simple if they were all the Inquisition type so we could just NUKE them all back into the stone age.

Does Dis really believe the crap that flows from her (or his) mouth, or is it to just upset people?

I certainly didn't join the military to fight for the rights of these (Dis) type of people.
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
A different perspective from the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure dis doesn't approve...

The Voice of Iraq
"Nobody is for a withdrawal, even a timetable," says the foreign minister.
BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK
Saturday, June 24, 2006


NEW YORK--"That was the center of all that happened in Iraq after the war. The people who were meeting there are the new leaders of Iraq, but nobody took them seriously in those days."

So says Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. He's talking about an unassuming little hotel in central Baghdad called Burj al-Hayat, where his Kurdistan Democratic Party set up headquarters in the heady days immediately following Saddam Hussein's fall from power. And his recollection of the period is vivid enough to include the hour or two he spent with your humble correspondent in early May of 2003. Perched on bar stools, we drank only water then to combat the heat of a sweltering afternoon. And Mr. Zebari held forth expansively and optimistically about the future of Iraq.

Portly, with penetrating eyes and a kind smile, he exuded intelligence and decency. And with leaders like him waiting on the wings, it was hard to imagine that things wouldn't turn out pretty well in the months and years ahead. On the streets of Baghdad, too, there were good reasons for hope. Not only was the tyrant who had tried to wipe out Mr. Zebari's Kurdish people gone, there was also a genuine feeling of liberation in the air. The looting--always exaggerated in any case--was done, and Americans (journalists and soldiers alike) mixed freely with Iraqis at kebab stands and ice-cream shops. The main worry was not avoiding a kidnapping or roadside bomb but how to politely turn down the day's sixth invitation for tea.

But even those of us who suspected that such peace--which former U.S. regent Paul Bremer remembers as "chaos" in his recent memoir-- would be challenged by extremists have been shocked by the extent of the violence that grew and grew after the U.N. headquarters was attacked that August.

Now at least the perpetrator of that evil deed is dead. Not enough people understand that what's just happened is a "breakthrough," Mr. Zebari tells me. It shows "that Zarqawi's terror network was penetrated, that those groups are not invincible, especially through hard work and patient work. Fighting this terrorist insurgency really in the end is an intelligence operation."

"That was the difference between many of us Iraqis and our American friends," he adds, suggesting the coalition has too often preferred to try "overwhelming force." In fact, the fundamental flaw in our approach, he says, was our reluctance to let Iraqis get on with political reconciliation and their own security and intelligence efforts earlier than we did.

This time we're meeting on another sweltering day. It's only 9:30 a.m. and the thermometer is headed toward what will be a muggy 90. But we are much more comfortably ensconced in a room at the Council on Foreign Relations on East 68th Street in Manhattan. He's just addressed a breakfast meeting of the group. And the day before saw him in meetings with the U.N. secretary-general and The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, among other commitments.

Mr. Zebari has established himself as the great survivor of postwar Iraqi politics, holding his post through four governments--the Bremer period, and prime ministers Ayad Allawi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and, now, Nouri al-Maliki. That alone bespeaks a great deal of diplomatic skill--though Mr. Zebari is hardly afraid to offend where justified. Just ask the likes of Arab League head Amr Moussa, or others with whom he has publicly tangled. But neither does Mr. Zebari seem to delight in contrarianism like his friend and longtime colleague in opposition, Ahmed Chalabi. Perhaps that's why the same criticisms of U.S. policy that would put Mr. Chalabi on President Bush's bad side starting in late 2003 never seemed to hurt Mr. Zebari's standing.

Mr. Zebari's critiques, it should be emphasized, are always offered with a liberal dose of thanks for the coalition's "sacrifice" in "a noble cause." But he also seems eager that Americans and others learn the right lessons from what's happened over the past three years. And he clearly doesn't buy the lazy journalistic trope that the main mistakes were the failure to stop the looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army, and excessive de-Baathification. Instead, he seems to think many problems could have been mitigated had Iraqis been allowed to move toward self-government much, much sooner.

"The biggest mistake, honestly, if you go back, was not entrusting the Iraqis as partners, to empower them, to see them do their part, to fill the vacuum, to have a national unity government," he says. According to Gen. Jay Garner, who briefly ruled Iraq before he was peremptorily replaced by Mr. Bremer in May 2003, that was exactly the plan. His provisional government probably would have included Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, secular Shiites Ahmed Chalabi and Ayad Allawi, religious Shiite Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and the Sunni Adnan Pachachi. The idea was that free elections would soon follow.

But "if you read Bremer's book ["My Year in Iraq"], when he came, one of his tasks was to stop these 'exiles,' " Mr. Zebari says. "I think the biggest sin was to change the mission from liberation to occupation. That is the mother of all sins, honestly."

With his use of "exiles," Mr. Zebari is deploying--with some irony--the derogatory term many U.S. diplomats used to refer to the leading anti-Saddam opposition figures. Never mind that the term hardly fit the Kurdish leaders, who had already built what amounted to an autonomous state in Northern Iraq under cover of a U.S. "no-fly" zone. But there was an idea that the group was somehow too "unrepresentative" to serve even as a temporary government.

Where did Mr. Bremer get the idea to slow things down? I ask. "Many people collaborated. It wasn't his idea as such. There was Security Council Resolution 1483 that changed the whole thing. The Americans and British collaborated on that, relying on advice from international lawyers that one way to rebuild this country is to free it from the sanctions--from the U.N.-imposed sanctions--and sanctions can only be lifted when you have an Iraqi authority to negotiate. There isn't. And these bunch of people sitting in that hotel are not up to that job, so let's make ourselves the authority. . . . I think that was the big mistake."

Mr. Zebari is reluctant to name names. But the drivers of the anti-"exile" policy included Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage and former Bremer aide (and current deputy national security adviser) Meghan O'Sullivan. In the end, U.S. attempts to empower "indigenous" Iraqis proved worse than a failure. Not only were the "exiles" overwhelmingly victorious in Iraq's two elections (all three prime ministers have been "exiles"), but our attempts to "level the playing field" needlessly delayed the development of Iraq's institutions of self-government.

No doubt this has slowed security-forces development. Which brings us to the next topic: the continuing necessity of coalition forces in Iraq. Mr. Zebari's primary mission in New York, in fact, was to review the U.N. mandate of coalition forces. He tells me about a fascinating discussion among Iraqi political leaders shortly before he left for New York. He told them, he says, that the new government was perfectly within its rights to ask for the departure of foreign troops. But he says he found no takers. In fact, the loudest objection to the idea came from Adnan al-Dulaimi, who represents a Sunni community generally thought to be most hostile to the "occupiers." They know only too well that coalition troops are their best protection against shadowy Baathist thugs who would like to lay claim to the Sunni leadership mantle. "Before the Sunnis were raising the flag for a withdrawal of all occupying forces immediately, that they are the sources of all the ills. Now they are the ones asking that they should stay," Mr. Zebari says.

Intimidation "is a problem," he continues. "That is, an intimidation campaign carried out primarily by the Baathists." He also says he believes the Baathists are behind the majority of terrorist attacks: "Identifying the enemy is very important. I personally believe the incubator of this so-called 'insurgency' is the Baath Party, is the remnant of Saddam's regime. Even with Zarqawi and al Qaeda, who are very lethal. But without them [the Baathists] providing the infrastructure, the support, the intelligence, the hideouts--then the attacks would not happen."

What about the war debate here in the U.S., I ask him. Are Iraqis worried that U.S. troops will leave too soon? Does the Iraqi press pay attention when people like Congressman Jack Murtha call for troop withdrawal?
"It does. Yes, it does. This is one of things actually. The freest media in the world I think is in Iraq. Honestly. There is no censorship or restrictions or restraint whatsoever. Now you have about 15 or 16 satellite channels run by Iraqis and I don't know how many hundreds of newspapers." So "people have become more politically conscious and aware. . . . Nobody is for a withdrawal, even a timetable, for the troops."
I decide to move the topic back to Mr. Zebari's own experience on the job. How did he get it? "We were active in the Iraqi National Congress," he tells me. "I was then the person responsible for the foreign relations. It became very natural when the first government happened. I was recommended by many friends, by Ahmed [Chalabi], by Allawi, by Mr. Talabani."

What's surprised him most about the job? "We've learned many, many things. In the opposition we were struggling to open doors and to get to decision-making people in governments. Now you look from inside out it's a different world. It's much easier to work officially in a government than to work in the opposition."

Is he perplexed that international attitudes haven't been more helpful? Particularly the U.N., where he's just seen Kofi Annan? It was actually "one of the most amicable, friendly atmospheres," he tells me. "We've come a long way." But I can well remember Mr. Zebari's withering criticism of the Oil for Food program in 2003, long before the scandal ever broke. I guess he is a diplomat now, after all. And he does understand there's still a long way to go in Iraq--and that the country needs all the support it can get.

As we part ways, he offers a message for those in the international community and in the U.S. who would give up on the mission while there's still everything to play for: "There is too much at stake. Failure in Iraq means reversal of all democratic reforms throughout the region. Failure in Iraq means the power of the United States and the coalition cannot be used elsewhere in the same manner. Failure for democracy here would suggest that really these people are not used to this so its better to have one-man, one-party rule, a strong man to control this bunch of Kurds and Shia and militias and so on. Failure is a reversal of everything we've built."

Over to you, Mr. Murtha.

Mr. Pollock is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008564
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Ben H said:
Having the Islamic people divided makes thing difficult, it would be much more simple if they were all the Inquisition type so we could just NUKE them all back into the stone age.

Does Dis really believe the crap that flows from her (or his) mouth, or is it to just upset people?

I certainly didn't join the military to fight for the rights of these (Dis) type of people.

If you joined the US military you're expected to fight for the rights of all Americans, including mine. You don't get to pick and choose your fights.
 
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