As far as I can tell, outside of the Poker Journals section, this is now the second longest post in history. I'm sure we can keep it going and get to 100 posts over the weekend.

Shame it's not the question for iceman thread, that was a beast. This may be the longest and also the most on topic Anything Goes thread ever. Not that I'm trying to jinx it.

Molina

...memogate?

Tim's Iraq Thoughts:

I believe one's opinion about whether or not we should have gone into Iraq should NOT be based on the current mess that it has become today. Hey, it's a mess, and they should have planned better for post-war Iraq. You can only judge a government based on the decision it made given the circumstances it knew at THAT time. Like poker, international poltics is a game of incomplete information.

Put yourself in George Bush's shoes AT THAT TIME.

CIA intelligence shows that after the first Gulf War, Iraq was within 1 year of nuclear capability and not the 5 years previously thought. Okay, so the CIA was underestimating nuclear capabilities. Yikes. So as W, that has to concern you.

Okay, you live in the post-9/11 world where it is abundantly clear that there are Islam-o-fascists who have no problem killing themselves in order to kill innocent westerners and they have been actively trying to obtain nuclear weapons.

Now, you've got a crazy tyrannt in Iraq. He's invaded his neighbors, used WMD in the past, and is pretty much considered an all around bad guy. If he had WMDs, would he sell/give them to Al Queda? I think at the time, the answer is unequivocably yes. He doesn't fear US reprisal as evidence by his assassination attempt on Georege H W Bush. He just want's even and his crazy in a Hitler way. Yuck.

Okay, so Sadam is refusing UN regulators for inspections. The CIA (perhaps wrongly) is saying there are WMD's there. Heck, we know they've been there before because Sadam used them. This looks bad.

Okay so you are George Bush... what do you do? Realize 9/11 is just 2 years old. Realize that the next 9/11 is not going to kill 3,000 people, it's going to kill 7 milliion when a terrorist uses a WMD in Times Square. Realize the CIA is saying there are WMDs there (perhaps incorrectly). It's clear Sadam Husein would be open to giving them to our enemies. Do you just wait for absolute evidence? Realize that waiting means that WMDs might be sold/hidden/transferred etc. to our enemies.

SUMMARY: WE DID NOT INVADE IRAQ BECAUSE OF WMDs. WE INVADED IRAQ BECAUSE WE COULD NOT PROVE AND IRAQ WOULD NOT HELP US PROVE THAT WMDs WERE NOT THERE.

In the post 9/11, nuclear world you cannot wait until you have absolute proof, because by then, your enemies have the abiltiy to destroy you and you can't stop them.

Pre-emptive policies are brutual and hard to defend, but unfortunately they are essential in this era. First strike defense is a must because the first strike is potential devastating.

According to a poll conducted last year before the election, 58% of the people think there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Saddam Hussein was no more the friend of Osama bin Laden than he was of George Bush. Saddam Hussein was a dictator, not a religious leader. He probably had no use at all for religion, except for what he had to show for his people. Osama bin Laden would have attacked Hussein as quickly as he would us, if he could have. They were absolute enemies, and that was well known, as well as logical to anyone who thought about it.

Saddam Hussein had been isolated by the world for a decade. He had no friends, anywhere. No one would sell him military material, even if he had the money, which the embargo had effectively taken away from him. He would not allow inspectors full access because they would find he had no WMD and little possibility for aquiring them. This would have diminished him in the eyes of the world, and made him much more vulnerable to his enemies, both outside Iraq and within. He played chicken on a huge scale and lost.

There were many who warned against exactly what is now happening in Iraq, many of them former military commanders. They were ignored. There were many of us who felt invading Iraq was a very bad idea indeed, but we were called unpatriotic, even traitors. There was a reason Saddam Hussein was not taken out at the end of the Gulf War: the leaders of the coalition were afraid of exactly what is happening. Take him out and replace him with what? Iraq is most likely to become another Iran, much more likely to do that than become a democracy. That area has no historical reference for democracy and places the most importance on ONE religion.

Democracy is something that must be fought for. People who are willing to die for their religion are not willing to die for someone who disagrees with them, which is the cornerstone of democracy.

All of this was easily foreseen by anyone with a small bit of logic and historical knowledge. I have no doubt that Tony Blair knew this. What was his purpose for ignoring it? We know Bush's and Cheney's and Rumsfeld's. But the very good question is, what was Blair's reason for ignoring it?

CJ

Once again I disagree with almost eveything you said CJ. But I will agree with one thing.

Democracy is without question the best system around. the world is a much better place now that communism is close to dead, but you CAN NOT force it upon people. They have to want it.

We need to find a way to make people want it. Almost everyone in Iraq (and most everywhere else) that spent 6 months in the US would not want to go back to their countries. These people are being bred to hate Americans and hate our system and society, and theve been hating us for a long time. Theyve been having these ridiculous religious wars forever and it continues to make the world unstable.

What if we were in Iraq long enough to start American style schools and we educated a generation of Iraqi kids who then believed in something besided religious jihad?

The children of the middle east are not born hating us and out ideals. It is drilled into their heads. they are brainwashed just like the child of a Klansman is brainwashed into rascism except at least these kids have contact with people outside the klan and have a chance to make up their own minds about things as they get older.

The children of the middle east know nothing about us except what the leaders tell them.

If a child was born on an island and was told his whole life that he should worship a head of lettuce and that that head of lettuce is all powerful and holy, then thats exactly what he will do.

Now is our chance to educate the children of Iraq. It will take along time, but it could change the region forever. I have no idea if any of this was in Bush's plans or not, but it seems to me that now that we're there, we should take advantage of it. Imagine if that WAS what he was planning all along. He would be considered a genius forever if he was able to stablize the middle east this way.

Like Ive said a million times. We shouldnt have to police the world but the fact of the matter is that we do have to. When one of these maniacs in the middle east or N.Korea gets long range nukes , what are we going to do then? It will be too late.

CJ, there were also plenty of people who warned about the dangers of Bin Laden a long time ago and they were ignored also. Did you want Bush to ignore the people who thaught Iraq would turn into a nightmare or ignore the people who said Saddam was the next Hitler?

iceman, I really have no idea how you and I can have a dialogue. We're like the blind men with the elephant. We simply "see" things too differently. So far, the only thing you agreed with wasn't what I meant. You can't "force" democracy on them, but how do you "make" them want it? What's the difference?

You may be the only person I've heard of who is afraid of long range missles? Uh, doesn't that take a bit more knowledge, real estate, money, and infrastructure than any of these countries possess at the present or even future time? Saddam Hussein bought missles from the Soviets that could barely, BARELY reach Isreal. Where they gonna put 'em? Cuba? Toronto? There's no credible evidence N. Korea has missles that can reach Seoul.

Nukes are extremely worrisome. Satchel charge type. The kind that could be smuggled in too easily. However, there's a threat out there far more serious, an enormous amount more. A virus that could wipe out 1/3 of the population. The SARS virus, which could at any time mutate into a virus that can be transmitted from human to human. No one owns it. It doesn't even exist, at THIS moment. But it could, soon. And there's nothing we can do about it. Just like there's nothing we can do about the people of the Mid-East.

Saddam Hussein as the next Hitler? Serious? Ever heard of Ferdinand Marcos, Pinochet, Pol Pot? All of these guys were on the same level as Hussein. Burma is a terrible regime, and what about the genocide in Africa? We didn't attack any of them. So, that's an argument that doesn't hold water. We contained him when we kicked him out of Kuwait. He wasn't a threat to us. Not anymore. If you believe he was, I know I cannot change your mind, but you're in a small minority of people who still believe he was. The evidence, now, indicates otherwise.

We supported the Shah of Iran for years. He was as close to an enlightened despot as you could ask for in that part of the world. His secret police was legendary for its harsh treatment of the enemies of the state, raising torture to an art form. He wasn't a nice guy, but he tried very hard to bring his country into modern times. We withdrew our support and let him fall, and look what happened. We got the Ayatollah Khomeni, our embassy people taken hostage, and an extremist regime that supports terror around the world.

We supported Hussein against Iran. We didn't invade him when he used chemical weapons on the Iranians. Now, we've taken him out--which was fine by me, btw--but what have we got now? A training ground for insurgents. More hatred of us in the Islam world. And more fear of us. Yeah, those who do not hate us certainly fear us. Lettuce doesn't make war on you. We do.

I was watching Nightline last night. The President of Venezuela was being interviewed. He claims America is going to invade his country and try to take him out. Are we? Would you believe we're not? Would they believe it in Panama? Pat Robertson--a so-called man of God--called for his assassination. After what we've done in Iraq, this guy is making a lot of noise we can't refute. He's getting a lot of mileage out of it. Latin America could be a real problem for us, because of this guy, and because of what we've done.

Iceman, I do not have any answers at all. That's the truth. The questions are too complicated for my simple mind. We Americans like simple answers. We think everyone in the world wants what we have. It's not true. We don't understand those who don't want what we want. And when our leaders lie to us, we don't know what to know anymore.

Ice, you may believe we weren't lied to, but surely you can see that a LOT of people feel they did.

CJ

What if we were in Iraq long enough to start American style schools and we educated a generation of Iraqi kids who then believed in something besided religious jihad?

Well as an atheist I believe religion is a crock of shit but does have some redeeming values as far as keeping people in check for the most part, at least the forms practiced in most of Europe and the Americas. There is no way setting up "American style schools" is going to have an impact on the religious beliefs that these people have followed for hundreds of years. We have a President that says the jury is still out on evolution and a multitudes of folks cowtowing to religious fanatics like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in the US. Religion is a nasty business and the people who follow whatever brand they follow are not easily broken from its spell even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is a crock of shit. As much as Americans like a relative Democracy sometimes that is just not the best type of government for a given area given the peoples history and mindset.

We have a democratic government here in Venezuela where the people OVERWHELMINGLY support President Chavez (the minority that don't are the extremely wealthy folks that he has had to curtail because of the first coup that was supported with a vast amount of US dollars.) I certainly hope that the friction that exists between Chavez and Dubya doesn't come to more than postering and I don't think it will because I don't see how the US could justify a war or a US led coup here but then again Venezuela is one of the leading producers of petroleum in the world.