Irvine511 said:
sorry, but the UN decides how it enforces it's resolutions, not you.
[q]Dismissal of the dead?, I leave that one for those that opposed the removal of a man that murdered 1.7 million people.[/q]
so you're happy to add 600,000 more? and the hundres of thousands more to come? and the nearly 2 million refugees? and the wider Shia/Sunni war? do you ignore US support for Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war that you use to get your 1.7 million number?
[q]90% of the sectarian violence in Iraq happens within 30 miles of Baghdad. Thats a fact, reported by the US military that is dealing with the situation on a daily basis.[/q]
Baghdad is a city of 6 MILLION people. you cannot have a country if you cannot have a capital city. Anbar is in chaos as well. violence happens all over the country -- Basra, Mosul -- of COURSE the violence is concentrated around Baghdad, that's where a HUGE percentage of the Iraqi population lives.
[q]So what do you think constitutes a real coalition? Do you have to have France and Germany in the coalition for it to be a real coalition? Honestly, just look at the forces in the 1991 Gulf War that did the actual fighting, and it is essentially the same coalition that is in Iraq today.[/q]
show me all the Muslim troops that were on the ground in 2005. show me all the countries that are still in Iraq 4 years later. show me the worldwide support for the invasion. show me the countries that didn't have their support bought off -- remember our coalition of the Billing.
where is Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Qatar, the UAE, France, Bahrain, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Turkey? come on, they had such a good time in 1991, surely they were fully convinced of the right for the US to enforce UN Resolutions and supported the US to protect the "global energy supply" from Saddam Hussein!
and, yes, France is a big deal. Germany is a big deal.
because they are shattered by the failures, violence, and instability that is spreading throughout the region. because the United States has destroyed it's international reputation.
this is quite funny coming from you, someone who's even more blinkered and self-deluded than even Bush himself and all his yes-men.
not a single accomplishment you've offered comes close to justifying what's happened.
yolland said:Giving it a rest might be a good idea...
anitram said:Irvine, I don't know how you can even find the energy anymore.
I'm willing to concede every point to STING just so I don't have to read these rosy dissertations anymore.
Yes, but the factors that led to the invasion of Kuwait included things like the debt incurred in defending the Gulf from Iran, the flooding of the market with oil lowering it's price and the miscommunications between Iraq and the USA - these had all changed in the succeeding 10 years (as had the state of the Iraqi military - and the rise of the Fedayeen Saddam), I think that most of us agree that taking action when Saddam annexed Kuwait was the right thing to do, some of us think that following it to completion and removing Saddam would have been better done then than delayed.STING2 said:
Funny, but thats what some people used to say prior to August 1990. The largest deployment of US forces since World War II followed Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
In the fall of 1994, the United States and its allies agreed to the deployment of 140,000 troops to the region two Republican Guard divisions moved within just a few miles of the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border. It took several weeks to deploy the entire force.
Saddam's WMD and the possibility of proliferation was always a problem, but the chief threat from Saddam was always what he was willing to do with HIS capabilities vs. his neighbors and how WMD could enable and support his regional goals which could seriously impact the planet given the proximity of key natural resources in the region. This is what Saddam was after in his invasion of Iran in 1980, with all of his incursion attempts into Iran taking place in Iran's primary oil rich region, Kuzistan. Unlike Iran, Saddam primarily acted against his enemies directly, as opposed to using proxies like Iran, which is part of the reason why he was so dangerous.
STING2 said:
McCain has had differences with the Bush administration on Iraq since before the invasion of Iraq itself. Thats a fact!
Ormus said:
Just like the GOP should have when they couldn't control Congress in over 40 years?
Right. Let's get some perspective here and fewer histrionic statements. The Democratic Party was dominated by Kennedy/Johnson, and when that fell apart, the Democratic Party went into a tailspin. RFK's assassination certainly contributed to their problems. Then Bill Clinton dominated(/ates) the party, and it's back into that same old identity crisis that they're currently digging out of.
Think the GOP is immune from that? Here's a party that has so closely identified itself with religious fanatics that its presidential choices are limited. McCain is probably their only hope, which means that he's an easy target for the Democrats to rip down over the next two years. Giuliani? Too much baggage to make the religious fanatics support him.
Beyond that, we have the "neo-con" generation, which have, basically, been the same cast of characters since the Nixon era. As formidable of a group as they have been, they're not going to live forever, and a handful of them have already died. The GOP is going to have a rather huge power vacuum once they die, and they're bound to fall into a tailspin for at least a few years.
But let's not underestimate this: McCain is formidable in his own right, and he certainly has a great chance of winning this election. But, compared to the wave of popularity he had a few years ago, McCain is much more vulnerable. His actions since 2000 have seemed much less "maverick" and much more party loyal. His rather unpopular stance on Iraq is also a vulnerability. However, even if he is to win, there's still the issue of who's after him in the party. And currently? There's no one. The GOP is quickly becoming the party of dinosaurs and cavemen.
maycocksean said:Hey Sting2. . .back in 2003, whose approach to Iraq did you support? McCain's or Bush's?
A_Wanderer said:Yes, but the factors that led to the invasion of Kuwait included things like the debt incurred in defending the Gulf from Iran, the flooding of the market with oil lowering it's price and the miscommunications between Iraq and the USA - these had all changed in the succeeding 10 years (as had the state of the Iraqi military - and the rise of the Fedayeen Saddam), I think that most of us agree that taking action when Saddam annexed Kuwait was the right thing to do, some of us think that following it to completion and removing Saddam would have been better done then than delayed.
maycocksean said:And just in case you're tempted to spin that actually Bush and McCain have been on the same page all along. . .
Do you have to agree with Bush's motives to support Iraqi democrats?anitram said:Was this ever about the best interest of the Iraqis? As if Bush's altruism runs that deep.
STING2 said:
While generally supporting Bush's force levels in 2003, I would have prefered a larger force as advocated by McCain and others, but understood the difficulties and problems of having a larger force, and that there were indeed limits to how much you could send to Iraq given the size of the Army, National Guard, and Marine Corp. I could go into more detail, but I'm not certain it would be fully consistent with the topic of the thread.
STING2 said:
Bush and McCain have been on the same page in regards to the need to remove Saddam from power and the need to replace his regime with a stable government that is not hostile to its neighbors. Achieving that will require that the coaliton remain in Iraq, until the Iraqi military is capable of replacing the missions coalition forces do on a daily basis. Both McCain and Bush are on the same page there as well.
maycocksean said:
And it would seem McCain thinks so too. Only you have managed to somehow paint that this marvelously rosy picture in which McCain and Bush are on the same page.
Irvine511 said:
[q]McCain Bashes Cheney Over Iraq Policy
By: Roger Simon
January 24, 2007 09:46 AM EST
With his presidential hopes tied to an administration whose Iraq policy he supports but cannot control, John McCain for the first time blamed Vice President Cheney for what McCain calls the "witch's brew" of a "terribly mishandled" war in which U.S. forces are on the verge of defeat.
McCain also for the first time opened the door to the possibility of a U.S. troop pullback to the borders of Iraq should the president's planned troop surge fail.
Although McCain had once lavished praise on the vice president, he said in an interview in his Senate office: "The president listened too much to the Vice President . . . Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was very badly served by both the Vice President and, most of all, the Secretary of Defense."
McCain added: "Rumsfeld will go down in history, along with McNamara, as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." Donald Rumsfeld served as President Bush's secretary of defense from January 2001 to December 2006. Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.[/q]
and McCain was on CNN this morning talking about how this surge is the last chance effort. if it doesn't work, and he's not sure it will, then McCain will support a redployment of troops.
no matter which way you slice it, McCain does NOT think that the current policy is working, he does NOT think that it's merely a game of attrition and the US will win if they simply continue with more of the same, he does NOT think the Iraqi forces are capable of battling back the Civil War, he does NOT think the Maliki government is capable of protecting it's citizens.
McCain is far more in line with Democrats on this issue -- the exception being he thinks the surge might make a difference -- than with Bush and Co.
what everyone is beginning to realize, and McCain agrees, is that a military solution is impossible. the amount of violence it would take for the US to truly crush the "insurgency," or, more accurately, help the Shia win the civil war, would be thoroughly unacceptable to the American public, and it would probably also violate most of the rules of conventional warfare. we'd be asking American troops to facilitate a genocide of the Sunnis, and the repercussions of this -- the US siding with one ethnic group over another -- would be like dropping a nuclear bomb in the region.
there is no military solution (and there never could have been one to begin with). there are only political solutions enforced by military action.
i'm leaning towards partition.
i see no other option.
And why is that?STING2 said:Al Quada has a LARGER and more ACTIVE presense in Iraq than it does in Afghanistan.
Because Iraq, unlike Afghanistan is a day trip away from every wannabe Shahid in the Middle East.yolland said:
And why is that?
Then lets move the discussion aside, to partition; should it be put to referendum? What will define the borders? Will the Kurds maintain autonomy? Will resource allocation be fair? Should the Sunni Gulf states support a Sunni state economically or should we just wait for those areas to get ethnically clensed (via exodus not genocide)? What will prevent these new states from being security risks? Could genuine nations be demanded elsewhere in the region; could such demands be used to against some countries?it's interesting ... the more reading i do about both McCain's position and the actual situation on the ground, the more i understand the futility of continuing this discussion.
yolland said:
And why is that?
Irvine511 said:[q]THE RETURN OF AL QAEDA.
Where You Bin?
by Peter Bergen 1 | 2
Post date 01.22.07 | Issue date 01.29.07
Osama bin Laden will turn 50 this year. But, when we picture him today, most Westerners imagine a man who, addled physically by disease and psychologically by the repeated blows the United States has dealt his cause, looks much older than his age: a gaunt figure limping from cave to cave along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, one step ahead of U.S. forces--surrounded, perhaps, by a small group of loyalists but cut off from the rest of the world, his once formidable ability to mastermind dramatic acts of violence now rendered nearly nonexistent.
As for Al Qaeda, the terrorist group bin Laden founded nearly two decades ago, Americans have been told that it, too, is unhealthy, isolated, and in decline. A National Intelligence Estimate declassified in September 2006 opens with the observation that "United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of [Al Qaeda] and disrupted its operations." At a press conference the next month, President Bush affirmed, "Absolutely, we're winning. Al Qaeda is on the run." American officials aren't the only ones who believe this. In July 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told reporters that "Al Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan anymore." More recently, Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria opined that "Al Qaeda Central ... appears to have turned into a communications company. It's capable of producing the occasional jihadist cassette, but not actual jihad." In Washington, the consensus view is that, while Bush's foreign policy has been an overall disaster, he still can lay claim to one key achievement: severely weakening Al Qaeda in the five years since September 11.
There was a time when that was true. In the months and years immediately following the Taliban's ouster, Al Qaeda lost its main sanctuary and struggled to regroup in the largely lawless zone along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. Key leaders were captured or killed. Years passed during which the group mounted few major attacks.
But, today, from Algeria to Afghanistan, from Britain to Baghdad, the organization once believed to be on the verge of impotence is again ascendant. Attacks by jihadists have reached epidemic levels in the past three years, with terrorists carrying out dramatic operations in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, as well as multiple suicide attacks across the Middle East and Asia--not only in Iraq, but also in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. Meanwhile, jihadists have made inroads in the horn of Africa; the Taliban's efforts to turn Afghanistan back into a failed state appear to be succeeding; and Al Qaeda's Iraqi branch recently declared sovereignty over the country's vast Anbar province.
Still, many have clung to the view that Al Qaeda remains a shell of its former self. They argue, as Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte did last April, that Al Qaeda, "a somewhat weakened organization," is "more in the mode of serving as an inspiration for some of these terroristically inclined groups elsewhere." Newsweek's Zakaria echoed this analysis. "Al Qaeda Central," he wrote last year, "no longer has much to do with the specific terrorist attacks--even the most bloody ones, in Madrid, Sinai and London--that have taken place in the past three years. These appear to be the work of smaller, local groups, often inspired by Al Qaeda but not directed by it."
Certainly, there are plenty of examples of freelance terrorists acting in Al Qaeda's name--such as the seven men arrested in Miami last summer who allegedly plotted to blow up federal buildings in Florida. But the existence of Al Qaeda imitators does not prove the obsolescence of the real thing. Far from it: There is considerable evidence that, over the last few years, Al Qaeda has managed to regroup; and there is reason to believe that, over the next few years, it will grow stronger still. More than at any time since September 11, Osama bin Laden's deadly outfit is back in business. [/q]