In the State of the Union he said that we couldn’t wait until the threat was imminent.

“… problems that have been brooding for about 30 years.”

The Crusades date back a tad longer than 30 years.
And the battle for oil didn’t begin in Pennsylvania with Drake.

As long as you accept suggestions for reading material, here’s another for your list: “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia” by Lutz Kleveman.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you when your opinions begin to evolve about how the monkey doth dance.

You seem to sound apathetic in your service to our country. If so, I’m sorry to hear that but thank you too for your service.

My only disagreement has been your choice of wording. I also have a problem with Bush and et al getting all the blame for problems that have been brooding for about 30 years. This is not a problem only of Bush and company. Previous presidents should share in the blame. I would rather the same litmus test be applied towards all and not have it be determined based on someone’s political orientation.

Thanks for the suggestion on the reading material. I will put it on my “To read” list.

I won’t comment more on this post as tempting as Mr. Fusion may make it. If he wants the last word, he can have it.

Bush & Clinton both claimed there were Weapons of Mass Destruction. There has been no lapse between these two in which any agency concluded prior to 9/11 that there were no WMDs.

We never cared about saving Iraq from itself. Outside of that, the whole reason for going into Iraq has been a National Defense matter, not a humanitarian / moral high ground matter. That’s a gripe for those who say the U.S. is a bunch of imperialists.

That’s odd, if the CIA knows the WMDs are destroyed, then why all the talk of much of it went to Syria? It was mentioned back in 2003, then for some strange reason the media hasn’t said much of it…. it gets mentioned every now and then.

One of the reasons why the inspectors were kicked out was that they wanted to do the inspections without a “tour guide” which Saddam insisted on. Basically, the inspectors were kept to a intinerary in which Saddam called the shots of where they went and when they went.

Also, this second chance you brought up being foiled by Bush. You might want to add that he had the “blessing” of the U.N. since the democrats like Kerry wanted this to be a global community consensus (a demand never made of with Clinton…. partisan politics?). If it got foiled by Bush, it would be proper to say the entire global community foiled that.

“We Have To Defend Our Future From These Predators Of The 21st Century. They Feed On The Free Flow Of Information And Technology. They Actually Take Advantage Of The Freer Movement Of People, Information And Ideas. And They Will Be All The More Lethal If We Allow Them To Build Arsenals Of Nuclear, Chemical And Biological Weapons And The Missiles To Deliver Them. We Simply Cannot Allow That To Happen. There Is No More Clear Example Of This Threat Than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. His Regime Threatens The Safety Of His People, The Stability Of His Region And The Security Of All The Rest Of Us.” (President Clinton, Remarks To Joint Chiefs Of Staff And Pentagon Staff, 2/17/98)

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destrucion program” (President Clinton, 2/17/98)

“Earlier Today I Ordered America’s Armed Forces To Strike Military And Security Targets In Iraq…Their Mission Is To Attack Iraq’s Nuclear, Chemical And Biological Weapons Programs And Its Military Capacity To Threaten Its Neighbors…” (“Text Of Clinton Statement On Iraq Attack,” Agence France Presse, 12/17/98)

I fail to recall President Clinton refuting his above comments from 1999 up to 9/11. There is a distinct possibility I could be quoting Clinton out of context and what he meant by “weapons of mass destruction”. Afterall, he had a different meaning to the word “is”, so why not on “WMDs”? Unless you say still say otherwise or argue that Clinton changed his mind prior to 9/11 or us going into Iraq, then YES Bush echoed the same things Clinton did. Things did not change until Howard Dean came into the picture during the Democratic primaries and started the “Bush lied” campaign.

Also don’t forget that Russian Intel (according to Vladmir Putin… a very vocal opponent of us going into Iraq in the first place) warned the U.S. and Britain of Iraq planning an attack on U.S. soil relatively “soon” prior to us ever going into Iraq. But that doesn’t fit a moral high ground viewpoint, does it?

Under the circumstances and limited scope of time and potentially impending attack, Bush did the best he could. It wasn’t perfect, but he handled it what was passed onto him from the prior administration the best he could. In hindsight, there are things he could have been done differently as Lieberman astutely puts it…. but you guys got rid of him because of his stance on National Defense. As liberal as Lieberman is, I haven’t heard him say Bush lied.

I won’t be here when you come to realize what I’m saying is accurate so I will contend myself with knowing all but the truly stupid catch on someday. Since you are of a military mind, read Gen Rupert Smith’s book “The Utility of Force”. You may find it interesting and very enlightening as to why Bush, et al do not have the combined IQ of one of the stones hurled at that woman.

38, I have heard no “moral high ground” argument for going into Iraq.

Bush claimed that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. We had to conquer Iraq before they unleashed them on Israel. Later of coarse, this changed to we went into Iraq to save it from Saddam. We were the good guys, Saddam and the Revolutionary Guard were the bad guys.

What I will say is Bush echoed exactly what Clinton did before he stepped down as President. Bush has not said anything uniquely different from Clinton. If Bush is guilty of this “total fabrication” it was that he perpetuated it and used the very intel gathered under the Clinton Administration.

Not true.

Saddam kicked out the inspectors in 1998 for two reasons.

First because they kept demanding to further inspect places off limits, such as Saddam’s Palaces. The UN Inspectors, surreptitiously led by the CIA wouldn’t accept that the WMDs Saddam possessed earlier had actually been destroyed because the Iraqis didn’t keep perfect paperwork. (NOTE to guyver, they had been destroyed and the CIA knew it)

Second because Iraq was chafing under the UN sanctions (contrary to right wing claims to the contrary) and US & UK enforcement of the no-fly zone.

When the claim resurfaced under Bush that Iraq had WMDs, Iraq invited the UN Inspectors back. They were forced to leave when Bush decided he would attack anyway. Scott Ritter, former CIA and UN Inspector, was telling anyone who would listen there were no WMDs in Iraq.

Clinton never claimed Saddam still had WMDs. He knew that the CIA reported they had been destroyed by Iraq already.

Clinton didn’t make up intelligence reports about aluminum tubes.

Clinton never made up intelligence reports about links between Al Qaeda and Saddam.

Clinton never made up reports about purchases of “yellow cake” or appeared before Congress and told the world Iraq had an active nuclear program.

Bush cherry picked his intelligence to present to Congress. Suggesting Congress is culpable because they too were lied to is disingenuous.

This is too long by far. I apologize. But hey, I could reply to the entire post.

That’s funny. Anyone care to make a complete list?
I’ll start with the first Gulf War. Were the soldiers dragged through the streets in Somalia captured alive?

You roll up Marines who were truly guilty of murder along with unintended deaths?!? There is no equivalency to that. Those guys are guilty for what they did.

Last time I can recollect our troops being tortured has been under the previous administration. Can you say Somolia? What about the first ever female POW under Bush Sr. whereby she was briefed not to say much during Operation Desert Storm since she was raped by her captors and that would have put a bad spin on the war back then because the Army felt the public couldn’t handle a female POW getting raped? What about some of those American civilians who got beheaded? I suppose that is not as atrocious as having a snarling dogs inches from one’s face.

I will admit I am biased, I have been in the military and have been in operations overseas. So although in a perfect world it would be nice to ask our POWs the info we seek, it’s a pipedream to actually believe they ever would. Ultimately it seems you believe no method for extracting information is acceptable unless politely asked for in a time of war. Sorry to tell, it doesn’t work that way. If you would rather a bomb explode in the U.S. or more American Troops be killed by a car bomb instead of extracting life saving info through psychological methods, then there’s not much you and I will agree on in this matter.

Although I do not support any military service member who intentionally kills an innocent person, the military members who accidentally kill an innocent person have my sympathies. The military has a tendency to eat their own if they find the service member missed a single step in the ridiculous rules of engagement we hold our service members to. Although some rules are necessary, the sheer number and steps involved will potentially get you killed if you actually go through it step by step. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

40, They said the same thing during Desert Storm after Saddam had finished a long war with Iran. After Saddam took Kuwait, what do you suppose Saddam would have done with all that extra oil? He was starving for cash since the war he had just ended depleted his funds. Saddam would have flooded the market with oil against OPEC’s wishes. If oil was the motivating factor for us going in the first time, then we really screwed up because Saddam would have flooded the economy with abundant oil and we would have had really cheap gas. Saddam had no intentions on complying with OPEC at the time. If we went in because of oil, it was to keep the price of oil up, not down.

BobH,

I commend you on having reached 60 years of age. Hopefully in your short lifespan you have also experienced more than what most Americans have. I myself have been to more countries in this world and have been part of numerous military operations than most Americans ever will in their lifetime. I have seen and participated in a lot. However your age nor my unique experiences make us any better than the rest of the people on this forum who have an opinion.

I am not interested in any assertions we are in Iraq for humanitarian reasons or that we may / may not be “war mongers”. As I stated before, the military kills and destroys. That’s what it does. Those who sent the military into Iraq carry the burden and consequences of those decisions (rationalizing what a lie is or not). I don’t think the option for war should ever be removed, but it should ALWAYS be the last option.

Although the U.S. has overtly / covertly exercised its own agenda for anything within its grasp, no country I know of doesn’t do this. Yet somehow the U.S. only gets the blame for this. What do you suppose the Chinese, Russians, French, and Israelis are doing? Every country in the world is guilty of the very thing you’re singling the U.S. out for. As for your opinion of the U.S. exceeding the body count of Stalin and Hitler, I beg to differ. We have our own opinions on this matter and I’ll leave it at that.

I did not miss your point on “dead is dead”. Which is why I disagreed with it. You make absolutely no distinction. Your argument is that all deaths are murders. I disagreed. You roll up every scenario that leads to a death as one in the same.

I also do not see where “hundreds of thousands” of innocent Iraqis have died as a result of Bush. Yes, there have been innocent deaths, but the numbers are exaggerated. What is the lesser of two evils? Keep Saddam in power killing “hundreds of thousands” of innocent Iraqis while he takes his time acquiring WMDs, or for us to make an attempt to right a wrong that could potentially hurt us much later on? Both scenarios will lead to innocent deaths. Which is less evil? Which will bring more good?

I won’t debate whether or not the reasons for going into Iraq were fabrications. What I will say is Bush echoed exactly what Clinton did before he stepped down as President. Bush has not said anything uniquely different from Clinton. If Bush is guilty of this “total fabrication” it was that he perpetuated it and used the very intel gathered under the Clinton Administration. I don’t care one way or the other. Either Bush did not lie, or impeach both of them along with everyone else who voted on the war and saw the same intel. I see no middle ground in rationalizing what a lie is, or what the meaning of the word “is” for that matter. You can’t have it both ways. But this is what the extreme left want.

I believe at 60 I have seen more of what America does for a living than many posters here. We are, as the saying from the 60s accurately stated, ‘war mongers’. And if you believe we are engaged in that business for humanitarian reasons, let me gently suggest you are woefully mistaken and more than a little naive.

In my life, I doubt there were even a few years that the US was not overtly or covertly forwarding its own greed agenda by any means necessary. When the history of the world in the 20th century is written, the US will rival Stalin and Hitler in body count. And we did it for money.

My point, which you seem to have missed, is dead is dead. There is no justification simply because one individual or group believes that their life (or life-style) is more important… or that the other person’s life is less important.

That young lady died at the hands of people with a set of beliefs that justified their attack. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of Bush, et al and there is NO credible justification. The evidence is overwhelming none of the reasons proffered for invading Iraq were truthful. Many were total fabrications.

I loathe what that mob did to the woman; however, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. As a nation, we slaughter more daily than that mob will in their lifetime.

There is a direct connection. Only the blind fail to see it. We claimed the moral high road in invading Iraq. We have provided it in spades, but at the same time, many instances of prison torture, troops and Marines murdering civilians, dropping bombs on wedding parties, etc. etc. etc have all spoiled the good will. The lesson we have given the Iraqis is it is fine to show force through the end of your rifle.

…or how our troops are tortured when they are POWs. There is a stark contrast that you are blind to.

When were our troops tortured? The last war any Americans were captured was Viet Nam. In case you missed the memo, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners were most certainly tortured by Americans and again after they were turned over to the South Vietnamese. As were Americans caught by the North Vietnamese. So yes, there was tit for tat there. Again, the memo pointed out that that was over thirty years ago.

But then I guess shooting retreating soldiers stuck in trucks is just fine, when it is your side doing it. Holding snarling dogs inches from a prisoner’s face is allowed. Sensory deprivation is OK with you. Yup, all one needs to justify all this and more is to say “Geeze, our troops are tortured too”.