Justin24 said:What good have they done?
AEON said:The overall glee with any bad news regarding US forces is absolutely appalling.
The motivation of some people here seems to be very suspect.
AEON said:The overall glee with any bad news regarding US forces is absolutely appalling.
It almost seems that many in the thread would actually be disappointed if we succeeded in establishing a stable democracy.
Forget why our troops are sent into Iraq. The fact is - they are there now. Why would you WANT them to fail and have thousand if not millions killed in a brutal civil war? Why would you WANT the coalition to fail? Why would you WANT to post news about how bad things are going for troops? Why would you WANT to post articles about the few soldiers who have committed crimes?
The motivation of some people here seems to be very suspect.
Justin24 said:Fuck the UN. Move the building to somewhere in Europe or some thirdworld country.
Irvine511 said:'fraid not.
and BVS's point stands: the coalition above is in name only -- are we to see 99 troops as anything other than political -- and it's crumbling.
It almost seems that many in the thread would actually be disappointed if we succeeded in establishing a stable democracy.
Vincent Vega said:
And instead of searching for alternatives to oil to make you less dependent of the Arab region you attack Iraq.
How should Saddam have attacked any other country again? I don't think he had the power to block the oil supplies of Iran or Saudi Arabia.
Besides the incidents of the mass killing after the US pulled out and Saddam took revenge on the Kurds and Shiits most of the deaths occurred due to the sanctions against Iraq.
The interpretation of Resolution 1441 was very different in Germany, France and Russia, furthermore the majority of people all over Europe, in Australia and most over countries read it differently.
It didn't say "Go in and beat the crap out of 'em!", it rather said "Do what you can, and only when there is no other alternative start a war."
Aha, so it's justified again that the public and the UN was told a lie, so that America can go in?
Great
And everybody knows why the guesses about the amounts of WMDs still missing are so accurate.
And again, the UN weapon inspectors said that Saddam was cooperating and said they just needed more time. Of course they knew that Saddam might hide some weapon bunkers, but stll they said that it's is unlikely that there are huge amounts, or even factories.
Why didn't they get the time?
You call that heavy fighting? Everybody was saying that the resistance and the number of Iraqi soldiers was tremendously low.
Don't take "trapped" literally. More of, they can't abandon Baghdad, and the fight is in city areas where it's much harder to fight an enemy, especially an enemy you can't see.
Nobody said that no one would welcome the US, of course.
The strategy how they tried to bring peace to Iraq and establish a stable government failed, and the government didn't make any reasonable attempts to adjust to the new situation. Only some half-hearted steps.
Vincent Vega said:
Hm, I'm rather afraid I will just receive tons of figures and such showing me how dangerous Saddam was to the US, how successful everything went, and how great Iraq is doing.
The last time I've read Resolution 1441 was somewhere around 2003, so I don't know the exact wording anymore.
But to say that the UN supported the attack on Iraq is ridiculous. Germany and France said, they will participate in the war if the UN declares war, or if there is a clear UN mandate.
That never happened, and the UN was not in favor of the war.
The problem was that the UN could declare war with the USA.
They had to accept this war to happen, but they never approved it as the right thing to do.
STING2 said:Abandoning Iraq pre-maturely would risk turning it into a failed state, and more effective base for Al Quada than Afghanistan ever was. Nearly everyone does not want to withdraw from Afghanistan despite the fact that Al Quada attacks there are almost non-existent and only the Taliban is the threat. No one wants to see Afghanistan turn into a failed state, yet a failed state in Iraq would be more of a threat to US and global security than a failed state in Afghanistan. If you believe that US troops can safely withdraw from Iraq without there being severe consequences, then you should be supporting a withdrawal from Afghanistan as well.
STING2 said:
If the UN was not in favor of the war, why did the UN not issue a protest and pass a resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of coalition troops? Even if it was not possible to pass a resolution, they could have at least attempted one, like they always do against Israel.
Then, why on earth would they approve an occupation every year for the past four years that they were so against it?
Vincent Vega said:
Maybe because of the fact, that the US is such a big power in the UN, and many countries don't dare to oppose to the US, and because many of the countries feel the need to support the USA officially thanks to what the USA have done for them in the past (the former Polnish President Alexander Kwasniewski said in an interview that Poland couldn't say no to the war in Iraq), and maybe because Bush threatened those countries to cut trade with them if they are not with him?
Vincent Vega said:
Was this still a response to me?
Sorry, but I'm not in favor of a withdraw yet. It's too late.
And everybody knows that this kind of war isn't aimed at being large scale, or planned on being a short thing.
It's more like Gerry Adams's "Long War"- strategy.
I don't call it a total failure. But blatant mistakes were done, and in deny of any facts Rumsfeld and Bush went on and changed more or less nothing.
For the rest... well, leave it. It's always the same. I think this has been argued over the past five years. It's moving in circles.
I'm amazed at Irvine's perseverance, but can spend my time different. I don't buy into this "Saddam was such a risk we had to kill him better yesterday than today.", and it won't change.
And yes, history has happened, and now you have to lie in the bed you made.
Another question is regarding democracy (Oh, what a success!): Can we really be that arrogant to believe that everyone welcomes democracy as we do and hence we can just go into a country and change a culture so different by means we have seen in Iraq?
Vincent Vega said:No, we didn't like that.
But we simply don't agree by trying to solve every problem by just going into the country.
The opposition to US's policy regarding it's Israel policy didn't carry the risk of these heavy economical disadvantages, and also this "Friend or Enemy" mentality wasn't existing.
Regarding the oil, at least Germany installed huge depositories for oil (don't know how to call them ) after the oil crisises of the 1970's, so a cut off of Arabian oil wouldn't have such a dramatic impact in short-term.
It might not have that back. A new "oil crisis" might have pushed a support of alternatives much more as the latest findings about climatic change.
Mind the word "might" as my government sucks, and the governments prior to this one haven't been that great either. Especially Kohl in the 1990's
Vincent Vega said:Regarding the oil, at least Germany installed huge depositories for oil (don't know how to call them ) after the oil crisises of the 1970's, so a cut off of Arabian oil wouldn't have such a dramatic impact in short-term.
ntalwar said:
The US has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the same purpose - about two months worth of oil, with plans to double it. That is in addition to existing oil inventories (by oil companies).
anitram said:
Not to mention you'd probably just invade us in Canada and take what we've got.
I joke, except only sort of.
STING2 said:
Saddam had a military force of 2,700 tanks, over 2,000 armored personal carrier's, over 2,000 artillery pieces, 300 combat aircraft, and 430,000 men. Kuwait had a military of 10,000, a few hundred US troops, and some pre-positioned equipment. It only took Saddam 12 hours in August of 1990 to overrun Kuwait and because of political constraints, the US was never allowed to have more than a few hundred troops on the ground in Kuwait during most of the containment period after the first Gulf War. In 1994, Saddam sent two Republican Guard Divisions towards the border, and the United States was forced to deploy over 140,000 troops to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but this took several months to complete the deployment. Saddam's divisions were only hours away from going into Kuwait if they had chosen. CIA analysis had shown that if Saddam was determined he could have at least overrun Kuwait, an event that the United States and its allies did not want to repeat because of the damage and greater risk to the region it would cause.
This is one of the difficult situations caused by the fact that it was not politically possible during this time to have large numbers of US troops stationed in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the numbers needed to repel the largest most determined attack that Saddam could send into the south.
Much of Saudi Arabia's oil fields are very close to the border area with Kuwait and Iran's are also nearby in their southwestern province of Kuzistan.
Saddam only needed a few dozen miles to do massive damage to the global economy as so much of the planets oil located in this small area of southwestern Iran, Southern Iraq, Kuwait and Northeastern Saudi Arabia.
It was indeed a major concern that only worsened when one took into account the possible use of WMD by Saddam. Verifiable disarmament of WMD was a key requirement for security in the Persian Gulf as it removed that threat as well as would show a change in behavior by Saddam given his past actions.
Most deaths in Iraq were because of Saddam. If Iraq had distributed the humanitarian supplies he was given and allow to buy during sanctions, most of these deaths could have been prevented. Instead, Saddam used it as a way threaten and punish various tribes and communities as well as make money on the Black Market. Humanitarian supplies meant for Iraqi people would often show up on the market in Syria and Jordan.
Interpret resolution 1441 how you like, but its just as much an authorization of the use of military force as resolution 678 was for the first Gulf War in 1991. In fact, the Soviet Union even protested and had the USA remove the words "military force" from resolution 678, so they could make the same arguement that French, Germans and others make about 1441 not being an authorization of the use of military force.
It only took Ukraine, Kazakstan, Belarus, and South Africa a couple of years to verifiably disarm large stockpiles of WMD and thousands of nuclear weapons. In March 2003, it had been 12 years since Saddam had agreed to verifiably disarm of all WMD. It simply does not take 12 years to do that provided those disarming are actually serious about doing so.
The Weapons inspectors failed to resolve ANY of the outstanding issues from November 1998 when they had to leave the country and were unable to return for four years. At no point in late 2002 or early 2003 were they able to make any headway on the issue. Cooperation is turning over or accounting for ALL WMD, and Iraq did not resolve any of the issues from November of 1998 the whole time the inspectors were in Iraq. There are many theories about what happened to the missing stocks of WMD, but that is all they are, theories. Verifiable disarmament does not involve theories. Saddam NEVER complied with the UN resolutions or the requirement to verifiably disarm of all WMD. He had plenty of time to have complied, and it was unwise to wait any longer considering how sanctions, the weapons embargo and other compenents of containment has essentially crumbled.
Again, its not just a matter of what Saddam did or did not have in March 2003 as far as WMD, but also what his behavior was showing(as far as compliance) as well as the fact that even if there was no WMD as many claim, Saddam was never more than three years from having large stockpiles because he still had the infrustructure and the know how to build more WMD, just as he did when he first became the leader of Iraq in 1979. After the war, while inspectors did not find the weapons they were looking for, they did find programs under way that were in clear violation of the UN resolutions and could have easily been shown to UN weapons inspectors in late 2002 if Saddam was really serious about verifiable disarmament.
The US military fired off more conventional rounds from every type of weapons system in the 3 week race to Baghdad than they have done in any other 3 week period since then. There were thousands of coalition airstrikes, multiple tank battles, and all of the Republican Guards tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces were destroyed. Just because US casaulties were light does not mean there was not heavy fighting. The United States and it allies killed more enemy combatents during this time period than at any point since then. Operations in Fallujah in April and November 2004, the largest scale US of American combat power since the fall of Baghdad, can come close to comparing to the three week drive towards Baghdad.
Building a new government and society is not something that takes a few weeks or months. Its something that takes well over a decade. Building a new Iraqi military is also something that will take nearly as long. Much progress has been made in both area's. You can't be declaring failure or success 3 years into something that is such a long process.
Abandoning Iraq pre-maturely would risk turning it into a failed state, and more effective base for Al Quada than Afghanistan ever was. Nearly everyone does not want to withdraw from Afghanistan despite the fact that Al Quada attacks there are almost non-existent and only the Taliban is the threat. No one wants to see Afghanistan turn into a failed state, yet a failed state in Iraq would be more of a threat to US and global security than a failed state in Afghanistan. If you believe that US troops can safely withdraw from Iraq without there being severe consequences, then you should be supporting a withdrawal from Afghanistan as well.
STING2 said:
Its never stopped them from opposing US policy on Israel.
STING2 said:
The shock from the cut off from energy supply in Saudi Arabia would impact the global economy which would then impact every economy in the world.
Irvine511 said:
so many posts, so many words, so many poorly understood facts ... and you've yet to convince a single person of, well, anything, really. and if your reasoning were as blindingly obvious to everyone else as it seems to you, then, goodness, you should have no problems convincing peole in FYM, let alone the far less discerning American public at large. but they think you're full of shit, STING. why do they think that? where do you think you're falling short?
why, then, if you're so certain and smug, is Iraq widely considered a failure by everybody -- including the president. why does Congress not agree, why do the american people not agree, why does the military not agree? how long are you going to continue to lie to yourself? will it be for the next 30 years so you can continue to blame "liberals" -- like, you know, McCain who has said that if the "surge" doesn't work, he's for redeployment, and he says this when he's not bashing Cheney and Rumsfeld -- for undermining Iraq? are you going to be hanging Cindy Sheehan in effigy the same way the military likes to mock Jane Fonda? what scapegoats and boogey men are you going to have to creat ein order to excuse yourself of responsibility for this catastrophe?
Irvine511 said:
so many posts, so many words, so many poorly understood facts ... and you've yet to convince a single person of, well, anything, really. and if your reasoning were as blindingly obvious to everyone else as it seems to you, then, goodness, you should have no problems convincing peole in FYM, let alone the far less discerning American public at large. but they think you're full of s***, STING. why do they think that? where do you think you're falling short?
why, then, if you're so certain and smug, is Iraq widely considered a failure by everybody -- including the president. why does Congress not agree, why do the american people not agree, why does the military not agree? how long are you going to continue to lie to yourself? will it be for the next 30 years so you can continue to blame "liberals" -- like, you know, McCain who has said that if the "surge" doesn't work, he's for redeployment, and he says this when he's not bashing Cheney and Rumsfeld -- for undermining Iraq? are you going to be hanging Cindy Sheehan in effigy the same way the military likes to mock Jane Fonda? what scapegoats and boogey men are you going to have to creat ein order to excuse yourself of responsibility for this catastrophe?
AEON said:
Actually - STING is always able to back up what he says. I almost always agree with what he posts. It's more objective than the emotional tirades I usually see.