We probably would have been more interested in Syria if we hadn't just finished a war in Iraq over non-existent WMDs

6/23/2014 1:09:58 PM

I wonder if they will ever release the intel that led the Bush administration to think that there were WMD's. I'm surprised wikileaks didn't get ahold of it.

6/23/2014 1:16:14 PM

Could it be that it doesn't exist?

6/23/2014 1:24:15 PM

Democrats in Congress would not have voted for war had they not been presented with something compelling.

I don't doubt that Bush wanted to tie up Sr's loose ends, but there had to have been intel.

6/23/2014 1:26:40 PM

Quote :

"I don't think the invasion of Grenada was necessary or wise."

So the 2003 invasion of Iraq was unnecessary, but still wise?

Quote :

"I don't doubt that Bush wanted to tie up Sr's loose ends, but there had to have been intel. "

There was certainly a fierce amount of will from the White House etc, but who knows about intel...seems that was mostly manufactured. Is this the same BS intel Colin Powell presented to the UN (after discarding the bullshit-est of the bullshit handed to him)?

Pretty interesting to revisit - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/woodward.html

[Edited on June 23, 2014 at 1:49 PM. Reason : link]

[Edited on June 23, 2014 at 1:50 PM. Reason : VV hahah i remember those]

6/23/2014 1:38:18 PM

Quote :

"Democrats in Congress would not have voted for war had they not been presented with something compelling. "

you're smarter than this, you know why congress voted for the war

Quote :

"but there had to have been intel."

today we know that they willingly covered up contradictory intelligence, and you are still holding onto hope that you weren't lied to? you were lied to.

[Edited on June 23, 2014 at 1:45 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2014 1:44:26 PM

6/23/2014 1:44:50 PM

I guess I'm not.

Earlier you intoned that we as a nation went to war so Dick Cheney could line his pockets from Haliburton, so I guess he must have been handing out dividends to members of Congress?

6/23/2014 1:46:38 PM

no, i said that's why war criminal Dick Cheney wanted to go to war, and its pretty transparent

6/23/2014 1:48:19 PM

Quote :

"Democrats in Congress would not have voted for war had they not been presented with something compelling"

Claiming Saddam was in cahoots with the perpetrators of 9-11 would be pretty compelling stuff in October of 2002.

6/23/2014 1:53:23 PM

i mean christ, even the guy with GOP in his username recognizes that the justification was false and only thinks the war was okay "because maybe, under the right circumstances, things wouldn't be any better today, so the hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars spent were probably worth it"

6/23/2014 2:01:23 PM

I'm not saying what we did was right. I just said that I would like to see the intel that justified going to war.

I would just like to personally believe that it existed.

6/23/2014 2:15:09 PM

i like to personally believe that gnomes live in rocks

6/23/2014 2:16:54 PM

There was no intel. The intel they thought they had was from one Iraqi who we now know lied to fulfill his own agenda.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/16/curveball-rafid-ahmed-alw_n_824175.html

And we KNEW he was lying too (at least that's what intelligence agencies said). The administration wanted to go to war, and they were cherry-picking reasons to sell to the public. The obama administration wanted to go to war with Syria and was using the specter of chemical weapons until putin clowned them by offering up the compromise kerry flippantly mentioned wouldn't be possible.

The public probably never hears the real reasons for wars (because it's never really as simple as "they are evil"), because a pres. can't go on CNN explaining the history of the factions involved and the strategic positions at play. They have to pick something simple the public will swallow and lobby their representatives to support (WMDs, he helped Osama), and this worked.

The real reason is likely commercial interests related to oil, pushed by Cheney, as well as neocon fantasies of bombing countries into democracies that love America.

6/23/2014 5:15:34 PM

Quote :

"So the 2003 invasion of Iraq was unnecessary, but still wise?"

"Necessary" is a word that doesn't leave much wiggle room, which is why a thing can be unnecessary and yet still wise. It would not have been necessary to invest in apple shortly before the ipod launch, but it would have been wise. Likewise the world would keep on turning regardless of whether Saddam lived and ruled and Iraq, so getting rid of him wasn't necessary, but I still maintain it was wise -- or at least, not inherently unwise, which is what the prevailing position here seems to be.

Quote :

"i mean christ, even the guy with GOP in his username recognizes that the justification was false and only thinks the war was okay "because maybe, under the right circumstances, things wouldn't be any better today, so the hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars spent were probably worth it""

This is bullshit. None of this is what I have said.

You come closest with "recognizes that the justification was false," because the primary justification -- the presence of WMDs or advanced WMD programs -- has been revealed as false. Absolutely. I do not dispute it, nor do I dispute that shady means were used to present that justification. And even I thought the direct 9/11 link was dubious at best. However, there were numerous other justifications for what we did -- Saddam's support for other terrorists, if not OBL himself; his attempted assassination of a former US president; his record of invading neighbors and committing war crimes; the very high likelihood that his lunacy would persist for another generation; the government and military apparatus that encouraged future attacks on neighbors and peoples within the country itself.

As for things being "any better today," that was -- as I admitted -- a response to very specific comments I had encountered outside of this thread.

6/23/2014 5:32:08 PM

How could you think it was a "wise" decision when the decision makers didn't even anticipate the insurgency? It's one thing to sell the war to the American public/congress on trumped up BS because the real reason isn't marketable, but it's another thing to be drinking so much of your own Kool-Aid that you actually think our forces will be greeted as liberators instead of thinking that perhaps they won't want us there, and perhaps they might mount an insurgency as a result.

Do you believe that the positive outcome of removing Saddam from power was worth the costs of 4489 American military lives (32,000+ wounded), $1 trillion+, 200,000+ Iraqi lives etc? If I'm missing some positive outcomes when include them in your answer too.

6/23/2014 6:19:11 PM

^ not to mention an early post by Grumpy acknowledges long-standing baathist tensions.

The only reason Iraq happened was because of 9/11, it was rammed through despite all indications it was a bad idea, and it ended up being a bad idea.

The US should be doing good with its power, but Iraq was not on a war footing when we invaded.

6/23/2014 6:40:55 PM

Quote :

""Necessary" is a word that doesn't leave much wiggle room, which is why a thing can be unnecessary and yet still wise. It would not have been necessary to invest in apple shortly before the ipod launch, but it would have been wise. Likewise the world would keep on turning regardless of whether Saddam lived and ruled and Iraq, so getting rid of him wasn't necessary, but I still maintain it was wise -- or at least, not inherently unwise, which is what the prevailing position here seems to be."

lol comparing the Iraq war to Apple

that shit aint AAPL, it's ENE

6/23/2014 6:51:20 PM

Quote :

"The only reason Iraq was able to happen was because of 9/11"

I like that phrasing better.

I still can't get over how fucked up it was that the administration leveraged the tragedy of 9-11 and the resulting public concern/fear about terrorism to sell their pre-planned/desired war to the American public and congress on the idea of Iraq cooperation with Al-Queda and the possibility of the former supplying the latter with WMDs. That represents a special kind of fucked-up dishonesty.

[Edited on June 23, 2014 at 6:56 PM. Reason : ^ inorite]

6/23/2014 6:56:29 PM

Quote :

" the positive outcome of removing Saddam from power"

I think that calling Saddam's ousting a positive outcome is debatable.

There's no question that he was a brutal dictator who did a lot of reprehensible things. However, Iraq was a secular state under his rule, and compared to now, Iraq was far more stable.

I can't imagine what we were trying to accomplish by invading in 2003.

6/23/2014 10:17:41 PM

The conflict in Iraq going on now are the Saudis and the Iranians fighting a proxy war. That's what Syria has been for the past two years as well. Saudis are trying to overturn Iraq being a democracy because Iraq being a democracy means the minority Sunnis which controlled Iraq prior to Saddam's overthrow aren't in control, and the Shiites being in control means they side with Iran, which threatens Saudis' control of the greater Middle East.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also called ISIS) were based in northeastern Syria, crossed over the porous borders, and per some Iraqi posters on geopolitical affairs message boards, a few high up generals that were Sunni and likely sympathized with ISIL ordered the Iraqi Army to retreat and also leave their equipment in Mosul, resulting in a massive PR coup for ISIL and pretty much screwed Iraq's short-term political future. 3 generals have been arrested and will likely be executed.

No one in the country is happy with Maliki's leadership. The Kurds appear to have agreed some kind of deal where they and ISIL will not attack one another (although there've been skirmishes) and the Kurds seem to see this as their opportunity to create an independent Kurdistan, and the Turks and Iranians seem to be on board which they'd need to be for an independent Kurdistan to exist. They're heavily pushing how their peshmerga forces are securing areas that the Iraqi Army ran away from to the locals. The Iraqi government have brought in Islamic Revolutionary Guard (Iran) Major General Qassem Suleimani to shape up their military forces. Suleimani turned Hezbollah into the force it is today and was put in charge of the Syrian military after their laughable early performance against the Syrian rebels and he's made them far more credible.

ISIL look to have rich Saudi and Qatari benefactors. (In addition to getting about $400 million from Mosul banks when they took over the city.)

But pretty much one large Middle Eastern civil war. No one did anything to contain the Syrian conflict and it spilled into another state. Pretty predictable. Just a matter of time before it spills into more if borders get redrawn.

Personally, I say it's time to talk to the Iranians and become strange bedfellows if we determine the Saudis are funding this group.

Imagine in 20 years or so after this is all (hopefully) over, we'll remove the lines on a map and just call all of this one huge pan-Arab conflict where each side has multiple groups and governments belonging to it:

Quote :

"Iran/Syria/Alawites/Shiites/Assad/Hezbollah/Iraq/Maliki/Egyptian military vs. al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood/Free Syrian Army/Qatar/ISIL/Saudi Arabia/Bahrain/Libyan rebels/Sunnis/Islamists Locals on the outside for various reasons but have a stake in the game: Turkey/Israel/Kurds/Jordan/local Christians/millions of civilians that likely don't back either side"

ISIS target map published in a Turkish paper:



[Edited on June 23, 2014 at 11:18 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2014 11:05:11 PM

Quote :

"I think that calling Saddam's ousting a positive outcome is debatable. There's no question that he was a brutal dictator who did a lot of reprehensible things. However, Iraq was a secular state under his rule, and compared to now, Iraq was far more stable. I can't imagine what we were trying to accomplish by invading in 2003."

Saddam was castrated following the Gulf War, but it was better him to be in control for the Saudis because he was castrated and he wasn't someone that would get in bed with Iran. Him and the Sunnis also controlled Iraq, just as Saudi Arabia was controlled by Sunnis. Most of the guys behind 9/11 were Saudi and Sunni. We couldn't attack Saudi Arabia, they were and are our ally. So we took out their castrated proxy and put in place a government that directly challenged the Saudis to curb down their support for terrorist movements or allowing them to operate as well as putting in place a flawed democracy (well, all democracies are flawed).

This worked out greatly for Iran as it furthered their foreign policy aims of control of the Middle East vs. the Saudis who'd been the most powerful country in the region for circa 50 years without them losing a soldier. And Iraqi democracy = Iraq with closer ties to Iran than Saudi Arabia. So a group of Saudis led by Saudi Osama bin Laden from a group heavily funded by Saudis attacked us on 9/11, we took out Saddam and put in place a new government in Iraq, which structurally weakened the Saudis. I'll definitely agree with you it could've been carried out far better, but that myself and some others think was the reasoning.

So what happened later? The Arab Spring which our media are such fucking dumbshits they thought this was a massive uprising call for democracy and a bunch of well meaning but naive liberals in Cairo didn't realize it'd just mean they'd get thrown out of the way by the Muslim Brotherhood. Ditto Libya although Gaddafi is even less of a nice guy than Mubarak. Iran tried to further the Arab Spring by the majority Shiites of Bahrain attempting to overthrow its Sunni monarchy which resulted in the Saudi military deploying into another country to defend the Bahraini monarchy, which was quite the step up in rhetoric (Bahraini protests were dead within a couple weeks which only confirms to me they were Iranian-pushed.) And Sunni governments in response have illicitly funded rebels in Syria to alter the map in their favor as Assad and Hezbollah were Iranian-supported. Iran and Hezbollah and Syria fought back and they've been in a 2-year-long stalemate as the battle lines were drawn.

This all existed before. It's just it was talked about behind closed doors and now it's out in the open. The people calling for us to bomb Iran was Arab states. These countries have all hated one another, more than they hate Israel, Israel is just a convenient whipping dog to keep popular with the public. And our intentional withdrawal from the region has helped to create this conflict because there's a power vacuum and states and groups are attempting to fill that power vacuum (do you think ISIL would advance to take Mosul if U.S. troops were there? no). Conflicts resulting out of power vacuums has happened time and time and time again throughout the history of mankind, it's not exactly a shock.

The maps will be redrawn and Iraq and probably Syria will not exist as they look now in 10 years' time. Such things are not bloodless. I really feel sorry for Abdullah II of Jordan. I think he's a sitting duck, and Abdullah for his part I think knows it.

Aren't you all happy that this World Cup we're enjoying so much currently is going to be in the middle of this shit in 8 years' time?

[Edited on June 23, 2014 at 11:53 PM. Reason : .]

6/23/2014 11:31:16 PM

Quote :

"Saddam's support for other terrorists, if not OBL himself; his attempted assassination of a former US president;"

Ummm, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am pretty certain that both of these talking points have been revealed to be false. The first was basically bullshit from day 1, because al Qaeda had a bounty on Saddam's head, so why the hell would he collaborate with them? The second was originally trumpeted years ago, but I seem to recall reading a few articles and columns a couple years ago that said this, too was false...

I see little to no justification remaining for invading Iraq in 2003, other than "Saddam was a dickbag," but the fact is that Saddam was a better option than a completely destabilized Iraq, which pretty much anyone with any intelligence saw happening as soon as Saddam was removed from power. And I certainly see no justification for attacking Iraq over any other nation with a dickbag leader, other than "hell, we can probably take him out pretty easy," which is a bullshit justification from the get go.

6/23/2014 11:42:11 PM

But wait, Iraq would have been destabilized anyway at this point anyway...it's not our fault that we accelerated the process!

[/bullshit]

Quote :

"I think that calling Saddam's ousting a positive outcome is debatable. "

Agreed. I was pretty much trying to speak for GOP there...not necessarily agreeing with it.

[Edited on June 24, 2014 at 12:09 AM. Reason : ^ and yeah, those two justifications are also bullshit]

6/24/2014 12:08:40 AM

Judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death 'is captured and executed by ISIS'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2665360/Judge-sentenced-Saddam-Hussein-death-captured-executed-ISIS.html

6/24/2014 1:19:30 AM

^^^In the goddamn sentence you quoted I said he didn't collaborate with OBL but with other terrorists. Saddam morally and financially supported suicide bombers in Palestine shortly before the war.

The last I heard about the assassination claims was that they were some doubts, not that they'd been revealed as false. If they are false, that would be upsetting, but it's not an error that can be pinned on Bush and Co. Clinton believed it sincerely enough that he retaliated at the time.

Quote :

"to sell their pre-planned/desired war to the American public "

Why do you say it is pre-planned or desired ahead of time? Prior to 9/11 the Bush people had expressed a strong aversion to getting involved abroad.

Quote :

" The Kurds appear to have agreed some kind of deal where they and ISIL will not attack one another (although there've been skirmishes) and the Kurds seem to see this as their opportunity to create an independent Kurdistan, and the Turks and Iranians seem to be on board which they'd need to be for an independent Kurdistan to exist."

This is very interesting. I don't get much news where I'm at but the last I'd heard, the Kurds were supposedly collaborating with Maliki in attacking ISIS. Is that bullshit? And Turkey is actually on board? That's a big change. I remember after the invasion when people talked about partition, Turkey's position was "if you create an independent kurdistan we will attack it immediately."

6/24/2014 4:53:42 AM

Quote :

"This is very interesting. I don't get much news where I'm at but the last I'd heard, the Kurds were supposedly collaborating with Maliki in attacking ISIS. Is that bullshit? And Turkey is actually on board? That's a big change. I remember after the invasion when people talked about partition, Turkey's position was "if you create an independent kurdistan we will attack it immediately.""

The Kurds per where I’m reading have moved in to secure areas the Iraqi Army has abandoned. They’re not moving outside of what they say is Kurdish territory. They may publicly say they’re fighting ISIL but in practice they’re doing little combat outside of the skirmish here and there. This ISIL military maneuver has worked out very well for them: while losing very few soldiers they’ve taken military control of Kirkuk, an important oil-producing city that would be economically necessary for Kurds to have in an independent state and Kurds have long claimed their own. So while the Sunnis and Shiites look like they’ll be shooting one another, the Kurds in northern Iraq are in Dream Land at their gains as they look like the ones with order and stability while the Iraqi Army went off and ran away.

Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kurdish Regional Government president Barzani yesterday, and Barzani stated “Iraq was in a new reality”. I doubt they want anything to deal with Maliki going forward, who all the native Iraqis on the board I’m on (Shiites and Kurds, no Sunnis there to give their opinion) say has pretty much failed as a leader and governed as a sectarian. Most of them seem to want partition.

Turkey's current ruling party AKP appear to be on board with an independent Kurdistan as long as it doesn’t take land away from Turkey. It’s also in their interest if they think an independent Kurdistan is inevitable that they have friendly relations with this state. And since the Kurds don’t care much for their previous Sunni rulers, it also gives over more territory to a Turkish/Iranian-friendly state on their borders and removes it from what has historically been a more Saudi-friendly state. So it weakens the Arabs and strengthens two states on the periphery of the Middle East that have historically had long periods of control in the region.

Fun fact I remembered during this recent mess I haven't seen anywhere in the media: In the 2008 Democratic Party debates for president, a candidate that was said to have strong foreign policy credentials amongst the Democratic candidates was asked about Iraq and stated he supported a 3-state federal partition of a Kurdish north, a Sunni triangle in the middle, and a Shiite south.

Candidate’s name? Senator from Delaware Joe Biden.

[Edited on June 24, 2014 at 8:05 AM. Reason : /]

6/24/2014 7:44:38 AM

That's why I'm excited to hear this about Turkey -- partition always seemed like the best (well, least terrible) choice, except for the Turkish position on the Kurds. My understanding is that they thought an independent Kurdistan would by its very existence encourage Kurds in Turkey to press harder for independence, to say nothing of presumed material support to those groups.

6/24/2014 10:34:23 AM

Quote :

"Why do you say it is pre-planned or desired ahead of time? Prior to 9/11 the Bush people had expressed a strong aversion to getting involved abroad."

O rly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#PNAC_role_in_promoting_invasion_of_Iraq
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/376-bush-administration/4932-bush-rumsfeld-and-iraq-is-the-real-reason-for-the-invasion-finally-emerging
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042700550.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/

Are you not going to address my other questions?

6/24/2014 11:11:06 AM

I'm not going to read anything from the opinion section of "readersupportednews." Bandwidth in Africa costs too much money for that. The wikipedia articles do a good job of showing that a lot of people wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and had wanted to for a long time. No shit. I don't trust O'Neill further than I can throw him and the Tenet article pretty much singled out Cheney. I'll give you Cheney and you're welcome to him. There's also some talk about "plans for a post-Saddam Iraq," which means nothing. The US government has plans to invade France, Canada, Bermuda, and every other speck of land on God's green earth. My only problem with our planning for a post-Saddam Iraq is that we clearly didn't do it very well.

What I don't see is any evidence that the Bush administration as a whole had long intended to invade Iraq.

Quote :

"How could you think it was a "wise" decision when the decision makers didn't even anticipate the insurgency? It's one thing to sell the war to the American public/congress on trumped up BS because the real reason isn't marketable, but it's another thing to be drinking so much of your own Kool-Aid that you actually think our forces will be greeted as liberators instead of thinking that perhaps they won't want us there, and perhaps they might mount an insurgency as a result. Do you believe that the positive outcome of removing Saddam from power was worth the costs of 4489 American military lives (32,000+ wounded), $1 trillion+, 200,000+ Iraqi lives etc? If I'm missing some positive outcomes when include them in your answer too."

I don't recall having called anything "wise" in this thread, except for the hypothetically timely purchase of Apple stock. My statement was that the invasion of Grenada was unwise. You decided to pick that up and run straight to crazytown. I'l refer you to my second statement in this thread, "I'm no longer 100% convinced that invading Iraq was a good idea."

At this point, most of what I'm doing in this thread is trying to spark discussion rather than just a bunch of guys jerking each other off to how stupid they think conservatives look.

Obviously, our lack of deep thought or planning about post-invasion Iraq was unwise. We thought that everybody was going to love us, and that's not how it goes. But there were people, and many of them, who were happy to see us. If we'd had a plan in place to preserve and expand upon that feeling rather than squander it through incompetent management, Iraq could be a different place today.

As to the figures you mention...you know, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we'd gone in, stayed until we shot Saddam, then just left. No effort to run that hellhole whatsoever. Far, far fewer American lives lost -- the invasion was a breeze compared to the insurgency at its worst, which came later. A lot cheaper, obviously. We get rid of the bad guys, we absolutely annihilate Iraq's ability to make war, and if they want to build a nation, great, we'll send them the tools to do it. If they want to murder each other over who should have succeeded the Prophet instead, they don't need our help.

I can't get too worked up about the number for Iraqi lives. Not because their lives don't matter, but because we didn't kill most of them, other Iraqis did. We didn't go over and make them fight for our amusement.

4,500 dead Americans is too many, but given the circumstances it's an astonishingly low number. And Americans waste a trillion dollars without even noticing it. The things that really bother me are the intangibles that we completely squandered -- international goodwill, America's remaining faith in its government, support for the military and intelligence services, and our will to act in situations that urgently call for it.

Taking all this into account, good idea? I'm leaning towards "no" but I don't think it's the slam dunk you portray.

6/24/2014 12:13:19 PM

Good idea? Hindsight is 20/20... sometimes... except when you don't get the whole story on anything.

I still think W acted on the information he had and believed he was doing the right thing. Maybe not. Either way, I've never thought that the invasion was carried out properly, but I'm not a 5* general either.

I will say one thing though. I think if the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan have achieved anything at all, it's that many Americans no longer want to go to war with anyone if possible. Even for the right causes or good intentions, things just don't go well. I think WWII is one of the few prime examples of a long and destructive war being absolutely necessary.

6/24/2014 12:20:15 PM

So I see this:

Quote :

"Prior to 9/11 the Bush people had expressed a strong aversion to getting involved abroad."

has turned into this:

Quote :

"What I don't see is any evidence that the Bush administration as a whole had long intended to invade Iraq."

Douglas Feith - Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Donald Rumsfeld - Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz - Deputy Secretary of Defense
Richard Perle - Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee
John Bolton - Undersecretary of State For Arms Control
Richard Armitage - Deputy Secretary of State
Elliott Abrams - National Security Council Senior Director
Dick Cheney - Vice President

All of these people are on the record advocating for military action in Iraq prior to 9-11. No doubt there are more than that, but I'm not gonna dig them up.

And it sounds like we can lump President George W Bush in with that group too:

Quote :

""I'll tell you, he was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," Herskowitz told Baker. "One of the things he said to me, is 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it. "He said, 'If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.' " Herskowitz is disturbed that what he described as an off-the-record conversation, albeit taped with his consent, has surfaced."

Quote :

"Asked about his policy toward the rogue nation in a Dec. 2, 1999, Republican presidential debate in Manchester, N.H., Bush said simply: “I’d make darn sure that [Saddam Hussein] lived up to the agreements that he signed back in the early ’90s,” Bush said. “And if I found — in any way, shape or form — that he was developing weapons of mass destruction, I’d take ‘em out.” Moderator Brit Hume of Fox News sought a clarification of the Texan’s twangy pronunciation. “Take him out?” Hume asked. No, Bush explained; “take them out,” as in, take out the “weapons of mass destruction,” he said."

Quote :

"[Richard] Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit."[12] After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events.[13][14]"

Quote :

"Consistent with Clarke's account of the period, [Marine Lieutenant General Greg] Newbold told an interviewer in 2007 of his dismay over the focus on Iraq, which seemed "irrelevant", in meetings in late 2001, and "that Saddam, and not Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, was most on the Bush administration's mind." Batiste, who would go on to have a primary role in the war in Iraq, saw the Iraq war plan develop "even before 9/11" and then "solidify" thereafter, in his position on the Wolfowitz staff according to a 2007 interview"

6/24/2014 3:11:09 PM

Quote :

"I don't recall having called anything "wise" in this thread"

Quote :

"so getting rid of him wasn't necessary, but I still maintain it was wise"

Quote :

"I still think invading Iraq was a good idea. "

Quote :

"My statement was that the invasion of Grenada was unwise. You decided to pick that up and run straight to crazytown."

Run straight to crazytown? I simply asked you to apply those same necessary and wise metrics to our invasion of Iraq. Not seeing the "crazytown" there.

Quote :

"Not because their lives don't matter, but because we didn't kill most of them"

We might not have killed "most" of them, but we killed a bunch of them.

Quote :

"The things that really bother me are the intangibles that we completely squandered -- international goodwill, America's remaining faith in its government, support for the military and intelligence services, and our will to act in situations that urgently call for it. "

I was gonna start listing all that stuff but figured I'd start simple with the numbers.

Quote :

"Taking all this into account, good idea? I'm leaning towards "no""

Great so you're coming around

6/24/2014 3:19:49 PM

Quote :

" Prior to 9/11 the Bush people had expressed a strong aversion to getting involved abroad."

This is definitely not true. Bush was angling for Iraq before 9/11. I distinctly remember the summer before 9/11 seeing him on TV trying to convince congress Iraq was a problem (and they weren't biting).

And during this time period, there were worse atrocities and worse dictators that the US could have taken action against, oil was the main thing that made Iraq stand out (and its role in other mid-east drama). We can't really use the excuse that it was a "situation that needed action" considering all the other situations then that need action, and still do now.

[Edited on June 24, 2014 at 4:23 PM. Reason : ]

6/24/2014 4:19:40 PM

Quote :

"oil was the main thing that made Iraq stand out (and its role in other mid-east drama"

yeah the oil really...fueled Cheney's interest in military action pre-9/11.

Quote :

"4,500 dead Americans is too many, but given the circumstances it's an astonishingly low number. "

It's especially too many when you consider 50%+ of US troop deaths in Iraq were due to IEDs, laid by an insurgency that the administration didn't think would exist and thus didn't plan for.

6/24/2014 5:17:22 PM

Quote :

"Run straight to crazytown?"

At least to misquotesville, apparently.

Quote :

"We might not have killed "most" of them, but we killed a bunch of them."

Well you can't provide me with a huge number of people we didn't kill and then ask me if I regret having killed them.

Quote :

" I distinctly remember the summer before 9/11 seeing him on TV trying to convince congress Iraq was a problem (and they weren't biting)."

I wanna hear more. This isn't what I remember so maybe my 18 year old self missed something. But saying "Iraq is a problem" is different from saying "we must invade Iraq." I think Kansas is a problem, but I'm not advocating sending in the 182nd airborne to suppress it.

Quote :

" oil was the main thing that made Iraq stand out (and its role in other mid-east drama)"

Maybe. Or maybe it was the low-hanging fruit if you're a person who wants to remove threats North Korea is worse but attacking them levels Seoul and puts you up against a much more monolithic force, ideologically and racially speaking, in rough terrain, and with China's backing. We have terrible intel on NK. Invading NK is hard to do, even if it would be done in an ideal world. Iraq, meanwhile, is already weakened, has weak international support, we've been studying it hard for a couple of decades and all their neighbors would be happy to see the back of the leadership. Add into that the fact that we as a nation are gung-ho to whip anybody even tangentially linked with terrorism and have considered Saddam an asshole for at least a decade.

Quote :

"It's especially too many when you consider 50%+ of US troop deaths in Iraq were due to IEDs, laid by an insurgency that the administration didn't think would exist and thus didn't plan for."

I don't know what you expect me to say here. I've already repeatedly pointed out that the greatest flaw in this whole thing was the failure to account for post-invasion issues, chiefly the insurgency. I agree. The numbers could have been lower. They should have been lower.

On some level I think an issue is that I consider "removing Saddam's regime" to be distinct from "governing and rebuilding Iraq," and you take them as part and parcel. We did one of those things really well. We had Saddam all beat to shit in double quick time. Possibly the world would have been better off if we'd left it at that. Certainly the whole world would have been better off if we'd had a solid plan. Put another way, there's a difference between me saying "It's a good idea (nay, a wise one) to get rid of Saddam" and me saying, "If I could choose to do the whole thing over again exactly as we did it, I would."

6/24/2014 5:48:45 PM

Quote :

" This isn't what I remember so maybe my 18 year old self missed something."

i think you need to review the timeline

we were bombing Iraq in February and August of 2001, before 9/11 even happened. Bush was talking about Iraq and building international consensus in February of 2001.

In March of 2001, before 9/11 happened, Cheney 's task force received a Pentagon document on Iraqi oilfield contracts with a map of areas to explore for oil.

The Bush admin knew the aluminum tubes couldn't be used for nuclear centifuges in August of 2001, again before 9/11.

On August 7, in a press conference, Bush calls Hussein a menace. On August 24 Bush talks about the threat of some nation in the Middle Eastern area developing WMDs. Similar statements throughout the year.

We know that minutes after the 9/11 attacks, literally minutes, Rumsfeld told his aid "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Usama bin Laden."

They wanted to go into Iraq before 9/11

6/24/2014 6:07:00 PM

Quote :

"we were bombing Iraq in February and August of 2001, before 9/11 even happened."

Something we'd done sporadically for about a decade, since Gulf War I.

Quote :

"Bush was talking about Iraq and building international consensus in February of 2001. "

Not a statement that helps, out of context. You need international consensus to do a lot of things -- for example, like inspecting weapons.

Quote :

"In March of 2001, before 9/11 happened, Cheney 's task force received a Pentagon document on Iraqi oilfield contracts with a map of areas to explore for oil. "

I've already accepted Cheney as a lunatic in the ointment, and I've pointed out that having a plan doesn't imply intent to carry it out.

Quote :

"On August 7, in a press conference, Bush calls Hussein a menace"

If that's where it ends, no shit. Calling Hussein a menace was not some wild-eyed radical claim.

Quote :

"On August 24 Bush talks about the threat of some nation in the Middle Eastern area developing WMDs."

That's bold talk right there, it's a wonder we didn't launch all the ICBMs at "some nation in the middle east"

Quote :

"We know that minutes after the 9/11 attacks, literally minutes, Rumsfeld told his aid "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Usama bin Laden.""

I'm not familiar here and will welcome further information, assuming it isn't from somedudewithawebsite/anotherdudesopinion.myspace or whatever that shit synapse was trying to peddle.

6/24/2014 6:19:18 PM

Quote :

" Iraq, meanwhile, is already weakened, has weak international support, we've been studying it hard for a couple of decades and all their neighbors would be happy to see the back of the leadership."

See, that's the thing, based on literally everything that happened post-invasion, you'd think we'd never heard of Iraq before. As you pointed out, literally from day one of the war, our intelligence failed us. We attempted multiple decapitation strikes against military leaders in Iraq, not just Saddam, in the early days of the war and basically all of them missed.

That's why it all comes back to oil for me. I don't think their post invasion plans failed, I think this was their plan, especially after Bush won re-election. Most of Iraq's oil fields are in South, they were the first things we secured, and they've been relatively safe since the opening days of the occupation. Who cares if the Sunnis and Shias in the north want to murder each other, it was already "mission accomplished" right? Even the US lives lost were relatively low compared to previous occupations, totally worth the prize. Cheney's thinking "worst case scenario, they can only blame this on us for the next 6 years, then we hand it off to the next idiot and blame it on him when it all falls apart".

That's another thing I think is revealing about the nature of the previous administration. Cheney is out there vigorously defending their decisions while Bush is in Texas painting. You don't hear Al Gore out there defending shit they did while Bill sits on the sidelines. It's clear who was really in charge.

6/24/2014 6:30:00 PM

there are dozens more escalating statements by Bush or his administration about Iraq in the year before 9/11.

regarding the statement, i was wrong it was 5 hours later, but its real
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline

9/11/01 Al Qaeda attacks. Minutes taken by a Rumsfeld aide five hours later: "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]." [Date the public knew: 9/4/02]
9/12/01 According to counterterror czar Richard Clarke, "[Bush] told us, 'I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.'" Told evidence against Al Qaeda overwhelming, Bush asks for "any shred" Saddam was involved. [Date the public knew: 3/22/04]

[link]http://web.archive.org/web/20080525162254/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml[/link]

Quote :

"With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden. "

[link]http://web.archive.org/web/20080610035521/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/24/freedomofinformation.september11[/link]

Quote :

"The actual notes suggest a focus on Saddam. "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH at same time - not only UBL [Pentagon shorthand for Usama/Osama bin Laden]," the notes say. "Tasks. Jim Haynes [Pentagon lawyer] to talk with PW [probably Paul Wolfowitz, then Mr Rumsfeld's deputy] for additional support ... connection with UBL.""

you were lied to and no good game from this war

[Edited on June 24, 2014 at 6:44 PM. Reason : haha, good game was an autocorrect but i like it]

6/24/2014 6:31:14 PM

Quote :

"9/12/01 According to counterterror czar Richard Clarke, "[Bush] told us, 'I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.'" Told evidence against Al Qaeda overwhelming, Bush asks for "any shred" Saddam was involved. [Date the public knew: 3/22/04]"

The intelligence guys must have been ripping their hair when they heard this shit. Mostly because they knew almost right away who did it, because they already had most of the evidence. The CIA had fucking passport pictures of one of hijackers from 2 years prior, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and they knew he was Al-Qaeda. We're talking less than 24 hours before it was basically iron clad that it was Al-Qaeda, whom Saddam could not have possibly had any involvement with.

[Edited on June 24, 2014 at 6:54 PM. Reason : :]

6/24/2014 6:52:55 PM

Jesus. In the day or two after 9/11 the country was a shitshow of confusion. We'd barely hammered down what structures had been hit. I remember evening of, going home to reports that the state department had blown up. I know suspicion had coalesced early around Osama but I'm not surprised they were considering other possibilities, and I suspect the list didn't end at Saddam.

But let's say there was a massive conspiracy to invade and nation build Iraq from the get-go. That means I'm wrong about this corner of the issue. It still wouldn't demonstrate that the invasion was a bad idea.

Quote :

"Cheney is out there vigorously defending their decisions while Bush is in Texas painting. You don't hear Al Gore out there defending shit they did while Bill sits on the sidelines. It's clear who was really in charge."

The last sentence doesn't follow from the first two. Whoever was "really in charge," Bush gets the rap for it. It was officially his decision. Whoever made it, he'd be defending his reputation if he cared about it. Obviously he doesn't. Or at least, he realizes it's inescapable for now. Meanwhile, everybody thought Cheney was evil, they always have, they probably always will. But he could pass the buck to W and he doesn't, he sits and fights about it. Why? I dunno, maybe he likes the attention or the money or maybe he has a guilty conscience, but if Cheney is the evil genius people portray him to be, he's smart enough to realize he's not going to talk his way out of his shitty rep now.

6/24/2014 7:13:14 PM

Sure, maybe I went overboard on that last bit, a lot of Presidents made bad decisions based on the advice of people they trusted. And Bush certainly doesn't deserve to be absolved of all responsibility, he clearly wanted this war as much as anyone. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy either, as they've been entirely transparent about their real motivations before, during, and since the war. The problem is that no one really cared, and roughly half the ones who did watch Fox News.

6/24/2014 7:29:30 PM

Quote :

"At least to misquotesville, apparently."

Or, you know, you could point out the alleged misquote, cause I ain't seeing it...

You said these things, in this order:

Quote :

"I still think invading Iraq was a good idea. "

Quote :

"Likewise the world would keep on turning regardless of whether Saddam lived and ruled and Iraq, so getting rid of him wasn't necessary, but I still maintain it was wise"

Quote :

"I don't recall having called anything "wise" in this thread"

Quote :

"Taking all this into account, good idea? I'm leaning towards "no""

[but now you're defending it again]

Sidenote: You seem to be all over the place here...is your position evolving or something?

Quote :

"Add into that the fact that we as a nation are gung-ho to whip anybody even tangentially linked with terrorism"

I don't remember this nation being gung-ho about Iraq, even after being presented with all the bullshit "evidence" by the Bush administration. Afghanistan though, you're probably closer to being correct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq

Quote :

"I don't know what you expect me to say here. I've already repeatedly pointed out that the greatest flaw in this whole thing was the failure to account for post-invasion issues, chiefly the insurgency. I agree. "

It shows the decision by the Bush administration to invade to be unwise.

Quote :

"On some level I think an issue is that I consider "removing Saddam's regime" to be distinct from "governing and rebuilding Iraq," and you take them as part and parcel. We did one of those things really well. We had Saddam all beat to shit in double quick time."

Considering the already weakened nature of the Iraqi military and the incredible clout of our military, this was a forgone conclusion. Hell we were able to establish air superiority with just a tiny fraction of our air resources. We're not talking about how successful the initial military operation operation, we're talking about the the decision to invade in the first place.

Quote :

""If I could choose to do the whole thing over again exactly as we did it, I would.""

No one is arguing that is your position...but given the beginning of this post, your position is hard to pin down.

Quote :

"we were bombing Iraq in February and August of 2001, before 9/11 even happened."

It was even earlier than that...more like 1993. I was a part of Operation Southern Watch in late 2000. Funny story...when we arrived on base in Saudi Arabia, the French were still there, but had suspended flight operations over Iraq a year or two before. The CO of the base told us to be careful of speaking about operations in the chow hall etc, as the French were not to be trusted.

Quote :

"but I'm not surprised they were considering other possibilities, and I suspect the list didn't end at Saddam."

I've haven't seen anything suggesting that Iraq was seriously considered as the perpetrator of 9-11. If you look at the language coming out of the administration in the days/weeks/months following 9-11 it was more like they were *trying* to establish a link of some sort out of practically nothing to justify military action.

Quote :

"But let's say there was a massive conspiracy to invade and nation build Iraq from the get-go. "

It's not really a conspiracy when a bunch of prominent members of the administration publicly sign a policy paper saying as much.

Quote :

"I wouldn't call it a conspiracy either, as they've been entirely transparent about their real motivations before, during, and since the war."

Exactly.

Quote :

""Bush was talking about Iraq and building international consensus in February of 2001. ""

If you read the quotes I included above he was talking about invading Iraq well before that.

Quote :

"That's why it all comes back to oil for me."

You're not the only one.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/20/iraq-war-oil-resources-energy-peak-scarcity-economy
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-iraqi-war-wasnt-waged-for-oil-greg-palast
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/17/iraq.oil
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2269610.html

Of course it was mostly about the oil. It's really pretty hard to dispute (but I'm sure GOP will try).

6/24/2014 10:04:43 PM

Quote :

"That's why I'm excited to hear this about Turkey -- partition always seemed like the best (well, least terrible) choice, except for the Turkish position on the Kurds. My understanding is that they thought an independent Kurdistan would by its very existence encourage Kurds in Turkey to press harder for independence, to say nothing of presumed material support to those groups."

The Kurds the Turks don't like is a Kurdish group that are not running the Kurdish Regional Government.

Still though, partition is going to result in a lot of death and bloodshed by its very nature. At that point you have pan-Arabian Peninsula conflict, which means U.S. and EU will get drawn back in eventually, either via NATO ally Turkey or via the UN. (And if the UN don't get involved in a pan-Arab conflict, the UN should just disband for comprehensively failing Article I of their Charter.) When Nehru and Jinnah of India and Pakistan respectively agreed to their borders post-World War II, there was some massive genocide going on of people moving to the side of the country they ethnically agreed with. And the borders are still disputed. It's not an easy process as this picture shows you the faces of the three negotiators (the middle is British viceroy Mountbatten) after the borders were agreed:



Rough map someone put together on a future map. The map has a couple flaws, so don't take it as gospel. "Shiastan" is an awful stand-in name. An ethnic Shiite I've read has called what he wants Southern Iraq to become as "Sumer and Akkad".



ISIL around 24 hours ago reportedly took control of border crossings going into Jordan and Saudi Arabia in far western Iraq. The Jordanians have mobilized their troops at their Iraqi border. The Iraqi defense minister was replaced with someone that's apparently very pro-Iranian, which appears to be the compromise agreed to by Maliki to bring back some structure and order with a little Iranian help.

Rough map of ISIL position:



[Edited on June 25, 2014 at 12:26 AM. Reason : .]

6/25/2014 12:20:57 AM

Quote :

"Not because their lives don't matter, but because we didn't kill most of them"

Sorry, I can't let this one go... "Hey, I didn't kill all those babies. I just let the bear out of his pen and put him in the room full of babies."

Quote :

"In the goddamn sentence you quoted I said he didn't collaborate with OBL but with other terrorists."

Sorry, I read it as "Saddam's support for other terrorists, if not [also] OBL himself".

6/25/2014 12:44:46 AM

The full quote, synapse:

Quote :

" Likewise the world would keep on turning regardless of whether Saddam lived and ruled and Iraq, so getting rid of him wasn't necessary, but I still maintain it was wise -- or at least, not inherently unwise, which is what the prevailing position here seems to be."

You're eager to read all sorts of things in the language the administration used after 9/11, so clearly you're not above recognize a little nuance here and there.

Quote :

" We're not talking about how successful the initial military operation operation, we're talking about the the decision to invade in the first place. "

They did not necessarily have to be separate issues. It wouldn't have been unheard of to just go in, overthrow the government, kill Saddam, and leave, which would have accomplished the good of removing Saddam and avoided the bad that came with hanging around for a decade. That's what I was suggesting.

Since you seem to be confused about my position, I will reiterate: my position is that I'm no longer sure about the whole thing. In this thread I have spoken as someone firmly behind the invasion mostly "spark discussion rather than just a bunch of guys jerking each other off to how stupid they think conservatives look."

Quote :

"Sorry, I can't let this one go... "Hey, I didn't kill all those babies. I just let the bear out of his pen and put him in the room full of babies.""

This metaphor isn't working. We didn't import some problem to Iraq. Worst case scenario, we moved the development of that problem up a few years. We weren't some force compelling Sunnis to hate Shias and everybody to hate the Kurds.

Quote :

"the UN should just disband for comprehensively failing Article I of their Charter."

For, what, the dozenth time?

6/25/2014 6:05:54 AM

Wow

6/25/2014 6:21:10 AM

Quote :

""the UN should just disband for comprehensively failing Article I of their Charter." For, what, the dozenth time?"

http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml

first paragraph of the first chapter of the first article of the United Nations charter.

Quote :

"The Purposes of the United Nations are: 1.To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;"

That's it. The UN was formed post-World War II to stop exactly this kind of conflict from happening. The non-security-related functions of the United Nations are all bullshit, the reason the body exists is the UN Security Council and to not create World War III. This conflict started in Syria, festered for two years as Hezbollah (Lebanon), Iran, and foreign volunteers/mercenaries were funded by outside states and private individuals, and has now spread into Iraq, and will likely enter Jordan and Saudi Arabia pretty soon. If it reaches into Turkey, they can call upon Article 5 of the NATO treaty, and then we will be involved, whether you like it or not. This is not some nothing civil war in an African country. How is this possibly good for global international security?

If a person is going to decry unilateralism, they better damn make sure that multilateralism works when problems exist. The international community as a collective did NOTHING in Syria and look what has happened. A conflict confined to one state is now going to engulf the whole region. They didn't even have to put troops on the ground in Syria, they could've made it perfectly clear to states like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Qatar and Iran that they better not be funding groups operating inside the country, which everyone knows is happening but no one in an official context says publicly, and actually put in place consequences.

Perhaps it's time to just declare it the League of Nations.

[Edited on June 25, 2014 at 9:51 AM. Reason : /]

6/25/2014 9:38:29 AM

Quote :

"You're eager to read all sorts of things in the language the administration used after 9/11"

I mean you don't have to "read all sorts of things in" to their words and extrapolate what's not there. They're clearly trying to pin the attack on Saddam, and then when that's not possible, at least link him to it.

Quote :

"so clearly you're not above recognize a little nuance here and there."

I saw what you posted after calling Saddam's removal wise, I just chose to ignore it. It was just another example of you being all over the place on this issue.

Quote :

"It wouldn't have been unheard of to just go in, overthrow the government, kill Saddam, and leave, which would have accomplished the good of removing Saddam and avoided the bad that came with hanging around for a decade."

Sure but that's a freaking fairy tale because that's not what happened. Again this thread is about the decision to invade, and what actually happened afterwards.

Quote :

"This metaphor isn't working. We didn't import some problem to Iraq. Worst case scenario, we moved the development of that problem up a few years. We weren't some force compelling Sunnis to hate Shias and everybody to hate the Kurds."

While it's not the best metaphor, you're acting like the only way Iraqi civilians died during and after the invasion/occupation was ethnic violence, which obviously is not the case.

Quote :

"In this thread I have spoken as someone firmly behind the invasion mostly "spark discussion rather than just a bunch of guys jerking each other off to how stupid they think conservatives look." "

So you've acted like you were 100% behind the invasion just to elicit reactions from the "bunch of guys jerking each other off to how stupid they think conservatives look." So the reason you keep bouncing around about the invasion is a mix of trolling and you posting your actual position. That makes your posting ITT make more sense.

6/25/2014 10:42:26 AM