Time to pull out? How many dead will be the last straw?

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Lilly said:
rono - they are getting warm a welcome home.

why do you think they're getting a cold reception?
It is not only the flowers that they will get on the day that they come home,...it is the support they need after a couple of months.
 
communities are helping military personnel repair their homes, there are discounts on things like cars and mortgages available, long distance phone companies are offering either a reduced rate or free 30 minute calls to the troops, there are kiosks at malls to send care packages to the troops postage paid....there are other examples of big companies helping out with finances for troops who come home and haven't worked in a while because maybe they weren't on active duty when they were called.


there's a lot that's being done to aid these men an women financially and emotionally.
 
Despite the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons, some Iraq experts fear attacks against U.S. troops will persist even if the ousted Iraqi leader himself falls into American hands.

Those fears are based on doubts that all the attacks have been personally directed by Saddam and his sons Odai and Qusai. At least 11 American soldiers have been killed by hostile fire since the brothers died in a raid on a house in Mosul on July 22.

The goal of the resistance, some experts fear, has widened beyond restoration of the old regime and may be attracting followers, perhaps including Islamic extremists, who are motivated by their hostility to foreign military occupation.

That leads to the suspicion that some resistance would persist even if Saddam himself were killed or captured. Al-Baghdadi, of the University of Kuwait, believes some of the attacks are carried out by "scattered cells of nationalistic Arabs who come from Syria and the crazies who went to Iraq from Iran."


He predicted resistance would last "as long as there are fundamentalists seeking martyrdom."

<snip>

Khalidi believes it is a mistake to assume that opposition to the American role equates with support for Saddam. He noted that since the war began March 20, "everybody was pretty much happy to see (the regime) go and nobody was happy with the U.S."

Marr predicted that as a coalition best case scenario, U.S. troops would gradually wear down the resistance over time but that sporadic attacks may continue as long as American soldiers remain in Iraq.

"We're not going to see a popular uprising because that would be crushed but what I do expect to see is more of these hit-and-run attacks," Khalidi said by telephone.

entire article here on Yahoo/AP
 
No, I don't think it's time to pull out. We promised to rebuild the place. We have to live up to that promise. If we pulled our troops out now, the situation would become much much worse than it is now. I also fear that Saddam would be back in power within a year, if we leave Iraq in the unstable condition it is in.
 
Right, if the US would pull out yet, Osama Bin Laden would be happy.
Mr. Bush did what he couldn't do (removing saddam). Now he has the chance to take control over the country.
Without foreign troops there it is almost sure that he will get the control.

Mr. Bush and his administration f***ed it up, because they didn't listen to anyone who was oposing their opinion. Now, after he found out that the cheering iraqis and the nationbuilding in a few months was more than naive, he should start to talk to his critics as soon as possible and learn from them. The UN would be a good forum for that.

Klaus
 
where does osama bin laden come in?


saddam and osama weren't friends.


the invasion of iraq wasn't an invasion of al-quaeda or a shakedown on osama.
 
Lilly said:
where does osama bin laden come in?


saddam and osama weren't friends.


the invasion of iraq wasn't an invasion of al-quaeda or a shakedown on osama.

Ask your goverment, they said they had prove for a Saddam - Bin Laden conection.
 
well one thing for sure, the US failure to finish what they started in Afganistan in order to shock and awe Iraq has been a boon for Al Quaida.

A former national security official in the Bush administration tells NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers the White House was warned that the buildup against Saddam might provide a respite for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen. ?There were decisions made,? says Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House, ?to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam.?

Leverett, a former senior CIA analyst, talks with the professorial precision of an academic. ?We see today,? he says, ?that al-Qaida has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and it would seem in Eastern Iran.?

more at MSNBC
 
i didn't think they were still trying - i was under the impression that it came out (embarrassingly of course) that saddam wouldn't even give money to osama or al quaeda.

at the beginning (kinda around september 2002) - it seemed like the war in afghanistan was just moving toward iraq. but then it became more clarified that the war with iraq had nothing to do with the war on terrorism or, consequently, osama bin laden.

it came out that saddam had gone on record that he didn't like osama's tactics and policies (pretty sad when a genocidal leader doesn't like your "policy"), and that he never gave money to al quaeda or the taliban.

the news networks broke that story in...maybe...january or february.


so really, there is no connection, and the US government isn't looking for one.
 
Actually, the latest rhetoric from the administration is definitely insinuating the connection even if not stating it outright. :tsk:

Dick Cheney in a speech last week "In Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror."

Pres. Bush in a speech on Monday "And our current mission in Iraq is essential to the broader war on terror; it's essential to the security of the American people".

Tuesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terror."

Small wonder that consistently in polls, the American public seems to be under the impression that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks.
 
words blow

ok - so there i was wrong.


they're copping out saying it was a continuation of the war on terror - i didn't think they were using that.



it's not like saddam isn't a terrorist to his own people.


so i guess that's where it "fits in" in the war on terrorism.


eugh.


at any rate - there still isnt' a direct connection between bin ladn and saddam, regardless of the different battles being fought under the same name. and insinuating that they're in cohorts or whatever is innaccurate.
 
yeah, i suck

Lilly said:
at any rate - there still isnt' a direct connection between bin ladn and saddam, regardless of the different battles being fought under the same name. and insinuating that they're in cohorts or whatever is innaccurate.

nope, there isn't a direct connection as much as they might wish it. and yeah, it's a cop-out. :down:
 
Lilly:
Saddam had a hard time with radical islamists in his country, actually he supported many Christian churches in Iraq because of that (even with money). The radical Islamists in Iraq (who are in contact with mr. bin laden) never got much infuence in this country because mr. hussein is a cruel dictator. Now we can see how that region develops when people are allowed to choose what they want. I guess they will chose the islamic way, maybe the radical islamic way.

Just because someone is a curuel person who dosn't care about human rights he isn't a terrorist - that's called dictator.
If you add that to terrorism - good luck, you can invade another 50 countries emediately.

The connections between The Bush family and the Bin Laden family are much much closer than the connections between Mr. Hussein and Mr. Bin Laden. And i noone really thinks that killing the Bush family and showing them on TV would be a strike against terrorism

Klaus
 
It annoys me that people think that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attack. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but there's no evidence he had anything to do with 9/11 although he probably didn't give a damn that 9/11 happened in the U.S. He had disputes with the Islamic radicals, and bin Laden denounced him as an "infidel" and a "socialist". I got really pissed off when they had the pro-war rally at Ground Zero. *Very* pissed off. :rant: :yell: :censored: :censored:
 
Re: words blow

Lilly said:
it's not like saddam isn't a terrorist to his own people.


so i guess that's where it "fits in" in the war on terrorism.

Him and how many others around the world?

How come they're not invading Zimbabwe to get rid of Mugabe? If you want a lunatic, here's a good start.

Maybe Tony Blair thought this was for humanitarian reasons, but the Bush administration clearly argued WMD and then terrorism as the main points. That is what was presented to the global community, and so we are to assume was the casus belli.
 
I agree with you Verte76. As much as I hate Saddam, he was an ENEMY of Bin Laden and they were not connected at all. There is no way he was behind 9-11. But the worst conspiracy theory I've heard is that the US govt was behind it to boost the economy. Sadly I know some very intelligent people who fall for that one:crazy:
 
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