Bush says night is day

[Ion]

...
Ion - what do you know about the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies - the esteemed body that undertook the study you so proudly proffer to all comers? I'm certain that you have researched it thoroughly, to be such an ardent disciple of its pronouncements...

I know nothing about the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies.

I buy major U.S. newspapers to keep me informed.

The information that I gather from newspapers and from the internet, I make it out into a vision of what happens elsewhere.

I figure that major U.S. newspapers are often -but not always- more trustworthy than many sites on the internet.

The article that I quoted endorsing -among other data that I printed- the poll of "...Only 15 percent view them as 'liberating forces'...", is from yesterday's The San Diego Union Tribune, a major U.S. newspaper.

I keep this article as an insight into the war in Iraq.

 

[crackmonkey]

Ah... you endorse a conclusion by a group you know nothing about merely because it appeared in a newspaper.
I'm awed by your honesty as much as your credulity.

 

[Ion]

Well, yes, that's all.

This major U.S. newspaper endorses the poll as a fact.

Do you know better?

I mean, do you know a poll that says otherwise and that you can make The San Diego Union Tribune, print?

This is important: "...and that you can make The San Diego Union Tribune, print?".

So that I can be confident it passed some scrutiny.

Notice, that the anti-Bush data like in this poll is written in small print in The San Diego Union Tribune, while the pro-Bush trumpeting is in big print in The San Diego Union Tribune.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Re: Re: Re: Bush says night is day

What are we still doing there? Saddam is gone and there are no WMDs.

And perhaps the Iraqis think they are better off without us! Are we going to install a government like our own? Complete with a puppet favorable to us? After all, we helped the Shah stay in power for years in Iran, something I am sure has not been forgotten by many. And for that matter, we supported Saddam until he strayed.

All we have to do is declare victory and come home. We shoulda done that in Viet Nam, too. Don't we ever learn?

Do you consider the possibility that there would be a bloodbath of a civil war in Iraq if we pulled out now?

 

[peptoabysmal]

Hmmmm...

Here's a little tidbit of the story that was left out by MSNBC:

Commanders have noticed that more attacks are being launched from a distance, said Odierno, head of the 4th Infantry Division. That is probably because attackers realize they will suffer more casualties if they come in direct contact with coalition troops, he said.

Because fewer people are willing to participate in attacks, the price paid by organizers has increased significantly, he said.

"What we've seen is more mortar attacks and more improvised explosive devices," he said, adding that in his area north of Baghdad there haven't yet been any car bombs. "But I suspect that that's the next step."

Commanders have reports that at the outset, people were paid $100 to conduct an attack against coalition forces and $500 if they succeeded, whereas they now get somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 for an attack and $3,000 to $5,000 for a successful one.

It seems that perhaps cold, hard cash is a little bit of the motivation of these "Iraqi resistance fighters", eh?

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031027_1096.html

 

[Mr Manifesto]

It seems that perhaps cold, hard cash is a little bit of the motivation of these "Iraqi resistance fighters", eh?
[/URL]

Yes, very capitalistic suicide bombers.

 

[DrChinese]

Hey, I opposed the war from the start, but now that we are in there we can't just walk away.

It's like starting a remodeling job on a house.

Maybe you have a house and you say, "Hey this house looks old, let's remodel it, starting tomorrow!"

An arthitect says "no, bad idea, first of all it does not need to be remodeled, and secondly if we do then we need some detailed plans and we need to hire a bigger crew of people."

Then you say no, screw that , are you with me people!" And the some people in the crowd say "No, listen to the architect!" but the majority says "Yeah, let's do it!"

So then you start in, you do some demolition and then decide, "Well this is going to be more expensive then we thought, I don't know how to fix the plumbing, and the owners doesn't like our design."

Your suggestion is then to "just walk away"

Nope, sorry dude, now you have a mess on your hands and it has to be fixed somehow.

Yes, we have a mess on our hands. We need to turn it over to another "contractor". We cannot - no matter how much you wnat it to be so - establish the stable democracy we would prefer. It is THEIR country, not ours. It is not our new social experiment.

Withdrawal does NOT mean abrogation of responsibility. It means turning over control to others. If we wait until our objectives are accomplished, we will still be there in 2013. We have done little in Afghanistan so far either. Ultimately, we will simply declare our mission accomplished and leave anyway. We may as well do that now.

 

[Dorian Gray]

Not really, if you get right down to it.

Egads, what a powerful argument.
/sarcasm off
We went in there with troops and air strikes, and it's still a hellhole. Yay, us.

Try again. The UN screwed up their security, they didn't simply get hit because they were there. Look up the facts:
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/news031023a.html
There were security measures the US put in place to try to protect the UN, which would have prevented the bombing that killed their top guy, and the UN demanded that we REMOVE those protections. That's stupidity, plain and simple. And it worked: it got the UN to mostly leave. That's part of the key difference you seem unable to comprehend: the UN HAD to leave, because they couldn't fix their security problems. The terrorists beat the UN. But unlike the UN, our forces CAN successfully adjust, and we're NOT going to be scared away. Unlike the UN, we were NOT defeated by 9/11.

NO NO NO, you retarded monkey. I was talking about 9/11. Look, I will do the work for you, since your comprehension is so damn vast:

Hell, The United States couldn't even manage their own security effectively. If the US can't protect their own people, how the hell can anyone expect them to provide security for Iraq as a whole?

See? The United States couldn't even protect its own people against terrorist attacks. couldn't manage its security effectively, and if you'll notice ( http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/GAO_boxcutters030913.html ), it STILL can't manage its security. There is an entire new department specifically created to prevent people from doing this, yet they are still able to do it.

How can a country protect Iraq when it can't even prevent people from bringing box cutters on planes in the exact same identical manner as 9/11 despite a crisis/disaster, two years of preparedness and the creation of a department of Homeland Security? That was my point.

The gallup pole, which showed that the majority of Iraqis think that the invasion was worth it to get rid of Saddam, and that the vast majority expect their lives to be better five years from now that it was before the war.

It wasn't a Gallup pole, it was a Zogby POLL, and the conflict of interest on that poll has already been discussed. How many people do you think they talked to? Do you think they talked to a fair representation of the people, or just to people who were easily accessible? I highly doubt they went into the hardcore war-torn regions of Iraq and asked THOSE people anything. Frankly, this poll is the suck.

Ah... you endorse a conclusion by a group you know nothing about merely because it appeared in a newspaper.
I'm awed by your honesty as much as your credulity.

Crackmonkey, I can't wait until you quote someone so I can shoot you with your own ammo.

 

[DrChinese]

1. It became our job when we decided we cared about that. Most of the world doesn't give a crap about democracy, in case you haven't noticed. Your point?

Paranoia and conspiracy theories abound.

2. But yes, it does serve as a warning. It warns dangerous regimes that they are not free to act with impunity. It tells places like North Korea that we are willing to step up to the bat and face them down, by force if necessary. It tells Iran that they better start dealing with the IAEA now because they DON'T want to be dealing with us one-on-one. And it tells dictators across the world that there IS a line that they cannot cross with impunity. Cry all you want to about American hegemony, but frankly those are good things.

This is our point of departure.

1. It cannot be our mission to reform the world at the end of a gun barrel. Even for the sake of democracy.

2. We are not the kings of the world. People respect and admire America for how we live our lives, not because we are the most powerful country on the planet. Our way to influence the world is BY EXAMPLE, not by force. What is capitalism except choice? What is democracy except choice? The world is already moving rapidly towards the ideas we cherish, we don't need to use force to speed the evolution. Use of force would be net counterproductive, anyway.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Yes, we have a mess on our hands. We need to turn it over to another "contractor". We cannot - no matter how much you wnat it to be so - establish the stable democracy we would prefer. It is THEIR country, not ours. It is not our new social experiment.

Whom do you suggest as the contractors? The same idiots who created the Israel / Palestinian crisis and had Berlin split into East and West for 40 years or so?

Withdrawal does NOT mean abrogation of responsibility. It means turning over control to others. If we wait until our objectives are accomplished, we will still be there in 2013. We have done little in Afghanistan so far either. Ultimately, we will simply declare our mission accomplished and leave anyway. We may as well do that now.

Fear of failure is not a good enough reason to back out of our responsibility.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Yes, very capitalistic suicide bombers.

If you read the story you would know that they are not suicide bombers and are firing mortars from increasing distance to the US troops now.

 

[Ziggurat]

We went in there with troops and air strikes, and it's still a hellhole. Yay, us.

We went in with minimal ground forces. Afghanistan was also much worse off than even Iraq. There was no infrastructure to speak of, literacy rates are abysmally low, and we don't have a lot of forces there. Yeah, the situation isn't improving nearly as fast as I would like. But it has improved. Hell, just look at what the refugees do, that'll tell you just how bad things are compared to under the Taliban. But Afghanistan is NOT Iraq. Iraq does have infrastructure, though it has been badly neglected, and more importantly, it does have a skilled, literate workforce, which means that Iraqi police are competent to take over (there just aren't enough of them yet). And we are on the ground with large forces.

NO NO NO, you retarded monkey.

I remember a Dorian Gray on another message board who got driven away for random outbursts of bile like this. I wonder if you're the same one?

How can a country protect Iraq when it can't even prevent people from bringing box cutters on planes in the exact same identical manner as 9/11 despite a crisis/disaster, two years of preparedness and the creation of a department of Homeland Security? That was my point.

And it's a worthless point. Protecting a country isn't comparable to protecting a single building. Again: the UN deliberately removed effective precautions for their own safety. When they got hit, they mostly pulled out of Iraq. The terrorists defeated the UN. Why the hell would we want to put people like that in charge of the whole country?

It wasn't a Gallup pole, it was a Zogby POLL, and the conflict of interest on that poll has already been discussed.

I'm talking about a Gallup poll.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/focus/sr030924.asp
http://www.gallup.com/subscription/?m=f&c_id=13919

 

[DrChinese]

Fear of failure is not a good enough reason to back out of our responsibility.

That is 100% the opposite of what I said. We do have a responsibility, and we should fulfill it. But the responsiblity is to allow self-determiniation for Iraq, not for us to put our stamp on it. Such a process is not likely to work, and we should go another path. We should work with other nations to transition to a multi-lateral effort without US control.

 

[Ion]

...
Protecting a country isn't comparable to protecting a single building. Again: the UN deliberately removed effective precautions for their own safety. When they got hit, they mostly pulled out of Iraq. The terrorists defeated the UN. Why the hell would we want to put people like that in charge of the whole country?
...

You don't understand much, do you?

Let me spoon feed you:

.) the U.N. pulled out of a mess that Bush's U.S. created, to dissociate with Bush's U.S.;

.) the U.N. is a forum of discussion between countries, within rules, like the U.N. Chart;

.) the U.N. doesn't have a permanent army;

.) Bush's U.S. went to war in Iraq, without the support from the U.N. forum, which is to say without support from the massive majority of people on this globe;
arrogant, dumb Bush (and arrogant dumb Ziggurat) deem the majority of people on this globe, the U.N., as "...irrelevant..." (and "...schlerotic...");

.) the U.N. forum gives mandates in line with the U.N. rules -like the U.N. Chart-, to an international coalition of military forces;
Bush's U.S. never got that, and he doesn't get now U.N. financial and a mandate for military help because he is obstinate to rule Iraq under his interests only.

Feeling better now, O'Rat?

 

[Ziggurat]

[B
.) the U.N. pulled out of a mess that Bush's U.S. created, to dissociate with Bush's U.S.;
[/B]

Nope. The UN pulled out because it couldn't ensure an even minimum level of security for its own personel. They pulled out because the terrorists beat them.

.) the U.N. forum van give a mandate in line with the U.N. rules -like the U.N. Chart-, to an international coalition of military forces;
Bush's U.S. never got that, and he doesn't get now U.N. financial and a mandate for military help because he is obstinate to rule Iraq under his interests only.

It's not Bush who will suffer if the UN doesn't contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq, it's the Iraqi people. But you don't care about them, you're happy to see them suffer if it will look bad for Bush. And that's why I call you a worm, because you can't put basic human decency ahead of your own personal politics.

 

[Crossbow]

Ziggy,

In case you forgot, in 1992 the USA encouraged an Iraqi revolt and when it looked like the wrong side would win, the USA withdrew their support and allowed these people to be crushed by Saddam.

And that is just one of the reasons why I doubt that the USA will be able to form a new government in Iraq that is stable, democratic, and supportive of USA interests.

 

[Ziggurat]

In case you forgot, in 1992 the USA encouraged an Iraqi revolt and when it looked like the wrong side would win, the USA withdrew their support and allowed these people to be crushed by Saddam.

I'm well aware of that fact. It's yet one more reason we cannot possibly afford to pull out now: we made the mistake of abandoning them once, we can't do it again.

And that is just one of the reasons why I doubt that the USA will be able to form a new government in Iraq that is stable, democratic, and supportive of USA interests.

Of the criteria you listed, we only need the first two. If Iraq becomes stable and democratic, that alone will be a major victory. Democracies do not pose a threat to us, even if (like the french) they really don't like us. And I think those goals can be accomplished, but they won't happen overnight. The pessimists have been wrong about a lot of things regarding Iraq already.

 

[Crossbow]

I'm well aware of that fact. It's yet one more reason we cannot possibly afford to pull out now: we made the mistake of abandoning them once, we can't do it again.

Of the criteria you listed, we only need the first two. If Iraq becomes stable and democratic, that alone will be a major victory. Democracies do not pose a threat to us, even if (like the french) they really don't like us. And I think those goals can be accomplished, but they won't happen overnight. The pessimists have been wrong about a lot of things regarding Iraq already.

Thank you for acknowledging the first point.

But as to the second, I ask you to remember about Israel. After all, assuming that Iraq does become stable then it will be the worlds second largest oil producer. We already have some idea of the kind of mischief regarding Israel and the cost oil that the world's largest producer (Saudi Arabia) has been up to, therefore the democracy you have such high hopes for may wind up working against your interests.

 

[Ion]

Nope. The UN pulled out because it couldn't ensure an even minimum level of security for its own personel. They pulled out because the terrorists beat them.
...

Do you have a proof for this?

I remind you that the U.N. endorsed the war in Iraq in 1991, the U.N. gave a military mandate to an international coalition of forces led by U.S. in Iraq, and that the U.N. didn't pull out.

So the U.N. has the ability to function and suceed, like in 1991.

Now, do you have any proof that "...They pulled out because the terrorists beat them."?

Because it looks to me like the U.N. steer away from what mess the Bush's U.S. does.

 

[Ziggurat]

But as to the second, I ask you to remember about Israel. After all, assuming that Iraq does become stable then it will be the worlds second largest oil producer. We already have some idea of the kind of mischief regarding Israel and the cost oil that the world's largest producer (Saudi Arabia) has been up to, therefore the democracy you have such high hopes for may wind up working against your interests.

But it's precisely the fact that Saudi Arabia is not a democracy that causes these problems with Israel. They try to play off domestic tensions by focussing hatred towards Israel and appeasing radicals, because they don't want to air any criticism of their own problems. A democratic Iraq is not going to become friends with Israel, but when they have the opportunity to manage their own affairs democratically, they're also going to realize that their own affairs are more important to them than the Palestinian issue. And for the most part they're going to keep out of that mess, because what the hell is in it for them? They won't support extremists either, because that won't be the only outlet for people's frustration, and with a free press, delusional ideologies won't flourish the way they do in a closed, oppressive system like Saudi Arabia.