OK, I saw the video

[Molina]

[iceman5]

[NorthView]

[iceman5]

Theres a big difference between the goverment sponsoring and / or allowing terrorist activities and people who happen to live in a certain country funding terrorists. In other words, I wouldnt condone bombing the US because people here may have been sending money to the IRA. Obviously I dont condone the sending of money to the IRA and if that could be proven, I think those people should be prosecuted.

On a side note, one day while in Germany (near Munster) I was walking down the street with 2 other American soldiers. We were all in civilian clothes. A car drove by us. It approached a couple other guys abotu 200 yards from us. It slowed down and then shot them and sped away. We found out later that they stopped along side the guys, asked them if they were english and when they said "yes", they gunned them down. The guys who got shot were British soldiers. There is / was a British base in Munster, Germany. All American soldiers were told from then of that if we were asked if we were English, to say "NO, American".


Back to Libya, I wont say the exact purpose of my being there for 2 reasons. #1) Because I cant and #2) because I really doubt you would approve. But youre still way off base. There is no record of me or any other American being there. Let me just say that Quaddafi got the scare of his life and by the time we were done, he knew how serious the US was about calming him down.

[NorthView]

[iceman5]

[T-Rod]

Wow, I go away for a little while and a fire I thought was out, just roars back to life like the Phoenix.

I'm not going to go over all the different particular arguments. I'll just say this. I think there is an extremely biased hindsight is 20/20 approach going on here and in the press regarding the Iraq war. It goes like this, we don't like the Iraq war, we've seen some bad things there, we look back and see that some the intelligence was wrong, and so we conclude that we should have never been there and its just wrong.

Here are the reasons the US and allies did NOT (I repeat NOT) go to war in Iraq:

1) To stop terrorists. Go read the papers then. No one really gave terrorism as a reason for invasion.
2) To catch Al Queda. No one back then really believed that AQ was centered in Iraq. Linked to it? Well maybe, but certainly not worthy of a full divisional invasion. Hindsight is proving that there was less and less of a connection.
3) To steal oil. Pahleeze. If that were true, we would have invaded Venezuela and Mexico years ago.

Here is the real reason, the dominant, convincing reason of the time on why the US and allies invaded Iraq:

The lesson of 9/11 is that there are bad people out there crazy enough to commit suicide to kill innocents and if they were ever to attack with a WMD, there would be no way to prevent massive human loss.

THE REASON FOR THE IRAQ INVASION WAS BECAUSE WE COULD NOT (BECAUSE SADAAM WOULD NOT ALLOW IT) VERIFY THAT THERE WERE NOT WMDS.

Realize this has NOTHING to do with whether the intel on WMD was faulty, whether he really had them or didn't have them, whether he had ties to AQ.

In 2003, Iraq had continuously refused to allow UN inspectors to verify that there was not WMDs, so we invaded. In the post 9/11 world, you just can't take that chance.
Why? Because in the post 9/11 world, a country with WMDs could easily give them to AQ who would certainly use them. AQ didn't need to be in Iraq for WMD to be a threat.


On a different topic, I think it is pure non-sense to think that Libya decided to disband its nuclear program based on diplomacy. Ha! They disbanded it because they didn't want to be the next Iraq. They didn't want to be invaded.

[iceman5]

Exactly, they didnt want to be invaded full scale after seeing what a small scale covert "infiltration" could do. It hits really close to hime when relatives are involved.

[Allstar7]

What a great post.



quote="trodgers"]Wow, I go away for a little while and a fire I thought was out, just roars back to life like the Phoenix.

I'm not going to go over all the different particular arguments. I'll just say this. I think there is an extremely biased hindsight is 20/20 approach going on here and in the press regarding the Iraq war. It goes like this, we don't like the Iraq war, we've seen some bad things there, we look back and see that some the intelligence was wrong, and so we conclude that we should have never been there and its just wrong.

Here are the reasons the US and allies did NOT (I repeat NOT) go to war in Iraq:

1) To stop terrorists. Go read the papers then. No one really gave terrorism as a reason for invasion.
2) To catch Al Queda. No one back then really believed that AQ was centered in Iraq. Linked to it? Well maybe, but certainly not worthy of a full divisional invasion. Hindsight is proving that there was less and less of a connection.
3) To steal oil. Pahleeze. If that were true, we would have invaded Venezuela and Mexico years ago.

Here is the real reason, the dominant, convincing reason of the time on why the US and allies invaded Iraq:

The lesson of 9/11 is that there are bad people out there crazy enough to commit suicide to kill innocents and if they were ever to attack with a WMD, there would be no way to prevent massive human loss.

THE REASON FOR THE IRAQ INVASION WAS BECAUSE WE COULD NOT (BECAUSE SADAAM WOULD NOT ALLOW IT) VERIFY THAT THERE WERE NOT WMDS.

Realize this has NOTHING to do with whether the intel on WMD was faulty, whether he really had them or didn't have them, whether he had ties to AQ.

In 2003, Iraq had continuously refused to allow UN inspectors to verify that there was not WMDs, so we invaded. In the post 9/11 world, you just can't take that chance.
Why? Because in the post 9/11 world, a country with WMDs could easily give them to AQ who would certainly use them. AQ didn't need to be in Iraq for WMD to be a threat.

Thank you for making such a well-reasoned post dude.


On a different topic, I think it is pure non-sense to think that Libya decided to disband its nuclear program based on diplomacy. Ha! They disbanded it because they didn't want to be the next Iraq. They didn't want to be invaded.[/quote]

[NorthView]

"I think Saddam may actually be so warped and so out of touch with reality that it probably wouldnt have worked"

I agree that's always a possibility with someone as deranged as him.


"Here is the real reason, the dominant, convincing reason of the time on why the US and allies invaded Iraq: ... The lesson of 9/11 "

Oh come on. You're not saying that you honestly believe that plans to invade Iraq were only drawn up after 9/11?


"I think it is pure non-sense to think that Libya decided to disband its nuclear program based on diplomacy. Ha! They disbanded it because they didn't want to be the next Iraq. They didn't want to be invaded. "

That's illogical. Iraq was known to be non-nuclear, and was invaded. If Libya's chief aim was to avoid invasion the logical step for them to take would be to develop a nuclear option, just as Iran is probably doing.

I think you guys are in denial, and as Republicans are having trouble admitting what an even bigger mess the current administration has made of the world.

[k3nt]

Trod,

In a normal, rational world, you would be right. A fear of WMDs getting into the wrong hands, and the possibility of nuclear terrorism, would be the reason we went into Iraq. But in this world, you're not. Plans to invade Iraq had zippo to do with WMDs.

Three very important sets of facts:

Fact set #1: the administration wanted to invade Iraq well before 9/11. Tons of evidence for this: people inside and outside, for all sorts of reasons, had their panties in a bunch about Iraq.

When Bush talked to Richard Clarke about 9/11, his first request to Clarke was: Go find out if Iraq had anything to do with this. Clarke said no, they didn't. Bush wanted to believe that they did. He wanted the rationale to do the invasion that he had wanted to do for years.

Fact set #2: the facts on the ground right before the invasion actually happened do not support the theory.

During the weeks and days leading up to the invasion, we were finding out, every day, that there were no WMDs in Iraq. We had inspectors on the ground, every day. Saddam was playing games but they were checking out all of the sites the U.S. thought would have weapons. And no weapons. Every day the US said go check this site. And they checked it. And nothing was found.

And, at that precise moment, as every day started to bring more evidence that there were no WMDs in Iraq, was the moment the administration actually began the invasion.

Fact set #3: nonproliferation in general. There are tons of old nukes from the USSR. An administration that was truly most concerned about stopping nuclear terrorism would do everything in its power to make sure these were all tracked down and locked up. This administration has dragged its feet and done as little as possible in this issue. They just don't care.

WMD's were a smokescreen, a reason that would make sense. They were not the real reason for the invasion. There are statements from administration officials to this effect: WMDs weren't the reason we went in, but they were the reason we could all agree would sell well to the public.

.....

If there had been these WMDs, for real, then everything would be different. The invasion would be justified. And no matter how badly it went afterward, we would be able to say that we did something reasonable. We were acting in self-defense.

God, how I wish that we could say that. How I wish that it were true. But it isn't.

[Allstar7]

[T-Rod]

[T-Rod]

[k3nt]