How many DUers think the war is acceptable?

Since some Democrats do think the war was worth fighting, it might be interesting to find out how many of those are here in DU-land.

The war with Iraq was:

Except hurt the people of Iraq.

Not for WMD, 9/11 etc.?

No I have never said Iraq was involved in 9/11. But no I also wasn't saying we should've invaded Iraq simply to end sanctions. I'm just saying sanctions weren't encouraging Saddam to end WMD programs.

I don't know a thing about them, do tell.

But maybe he lied.

Maybe you haven't read the report. He dances around and talks about possibility this, 10 years ago that, but it just isn't an indictment.

Nice try anyway. Remember also that we know to a certainty that Iraq did have the weapons we provided him to kill the Kurds, but that was 15 years ago. The outrage at the time by our administration was demonstrated by sending Donald Rumsfeld and lots of money to express our displeasure.

Attack on the Kurds but what does that have to do with anything? We need to learn from our mistakes.

his own people, remember? The truth is we didn't care that he gassed the Kurds then or now. Rumsfeld did not gain a conscience in the 15 years between the attack on the Kurds and the invasion. They were unrelated events, except in the hyperbole that led up to our attack!

Guess you went back and found that David Kay did not report a weapons program to Congress after all?

PS We did not ignore the massacre of the Kurds. Many of the men currently in power in the US today rewarded that act, you have quite a bit of homework to do.

I'm not a spokesman for the Bush administration,, my reasons for supporting the war is much more complex. Halabja showed Saddam's willingness to use WMDs even when facing destruction by an enemy.

If he had the weapons, which the administration knew he did not, he had shown that he wasn't going to use them.

You honestly thing the invasion had something to do with WMD? Where have you been? There is NO connection between WMD and the reasons for going to war, none, zippo, nada.

Looks like you educated yourself about David Kay, you have quite a bit more to learn.

Evidence of WMD programs in 98 as well as recently. Even if they found actual WMDs you'd say they were planted. Basically you believe everything is a conspiracy.

In the report to the Security Council, Blix said U.N. inspectors "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items."

Pat Robertson said God told him that.

LOL :D

Do you make it up as you go along?

What is typical of people with your views is that when the holes in your position are pointed out you just ignore the evidence. It is an easy way to not let facts interfere with your opinion isn't it?

Or Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc?

He used them against his own people and against the Iranians when he knew that no one who could destroy him would care - and no one did.

US soldiers.

THey are conventional weapons.

Serin.

so what's your point?

Chemicals were used on US troops. Not students of history are we?

Chemical weapons were not used on American troops period. You should find another school!

The only time our troops were exposed to any chemical weapons during Desert Storm was when bombed ammunition sites.

We would have faced some very grave casualties indeed if chemical and biological weapons had been used in Desert Storm.

Not knowing that is like not knowing the North won the Civil War.

and perhaps someone will believe it.

If they plugged the front of missiles with mustard gas so poorly in 1991 that they the gas was ineffective doesn’t that seem to confirm that there was no program which was a threat?

Oh yes, another fact that intrudes on your opinion so must be disregarded. And definitely not replied to, you will just bring up another distortion, without support, only to have that shot down also

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/news/na_gulfll1.htm

WASHINGTON, August 26, 1997 (GulfLINK) – The case assessment for the presence of chemical warfare agent on a fragment of a SCUD missile is "unlikely," Lt. Gen. (Ret) Dale Vesser, deputy special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense for Gulf War illnesses, announced in a press briefing held at the Pentagon August 13, 1997.

Based on metallurgical analysis, the sample provided for study probably was from a SCUD missile, the narrative reports. However, the chemical analysis found no evidence of chemical warfare agent contamination. "No compounds were found in either of the leachates of the metal submitted for analysis," Vesser said.

The Gulf War syndrom.

Give authority?

You cannot really provide evidence that the SCUD missiles used in the Gulf War had any chemical, biological, or nuclear agents or refute the findings of our own military that I am sure would have been more than happy to pronounce to the world if they had indeed used them during Desert Storm during Bush's little lie session that was known as the State of the Union last year.

I'm just supposed to take your word for it?

Yeah.

We're waiting...

:freak:

So far pretty much every assertion this one has made has been met with hard evidence to the contrary and yet he continues to spiral his way down with one lame assertion after another, completely oblivious to the fact that most of the people he is arguing with are more informed than he is.

History? Sounds like revisionist history to me. :)

From a report titled "Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East:
Reported Use of Chemical Weapons, Ballistic Missiles, and Cruise Missiles in the Middle East" by Michael Barletta and Erik Jorgensen of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies:

On Iraq:


Chemical weapons

1983-88: Mustard and nerve agents used against Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War.

1988: Mustard and nerve agents used against Kurdish settlements in Iraq


Ballistic missiles

1980-88: Over 500 Scud-B and al-Hussein missiles, as well as hundreds of rockets fired at Iranian military and civilian targets during the Iran-Iraq War.

1/17-2/91: Over 90 al-Hussein and al-Hijara missiles fired at Bahrain, Israel and Saudi Arabia.


Cruise missiles

5/17/87: Mirage F-1 fighter aircraft damages the US frigate Stark with two Exocet missiles


Did I miss the part where they stated that chemical weapons had been used on American troops in the Gulf war??

Link: http://cns.miis.edu/research/wmdme/use.htm

...that the US is unable to detect using standard forensic tools.

:crazy:

and launched them from that???

Could be! ;)

You're little what if game is growing tiresome. The missiles used in Desert Storm were conventional weapons, not chemical, not biological, not nuclear, CONVENTIONAL.

It's a fact.

Another detail that just will be ignored.

Not WMD...

?....Saddam had/has NO, NONE, NADA WMD's!!!

Or do you assume war requires killing that many civilians.

However, we were told that we were going to war because Iraq presented an imminent threat. Not because Saddam was a bad guy or for humanitarian reasons.

We went to war on lies.

Can anyone produce a link where Bush stated imminent threat?

ok? need a link?

front-page headline in the L.A. Times

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

This is his speech where does he state imminent threat?

I don't remember just how it was qualified, but it didn't change the meaning. It is the new talking point of the right, sort of like blaming the "mission accomplished" banner on the crew. The administration isn't responsible for even what they say, much less what they do.

The problem with the new spin is that it begs the question of why we went to war. If the threat was not imminent, as they now claim * actually meant, then what was the hurry? But that is a follow-up question, and they don't do followups, it is strictly talking points. It is also laughable hypocrisy form the people who had grave moral indignation about the technically correct, but deliberately misleading, comment "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

You and I both know for a fact that Bush implied that Saddam was such a threat to America and/or our allies that we could not wait another moment to invade and it's intellectually dishonest to claim that he didn't purposefully give that impression in his speeches.

Senators were told by the administration that Iraq could attack east coast cities.

http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryN1216NELSON.htm

He even used the now discredited 45-minute claim at one point.

Perhaps next you'll be asking what the definition of "is" is.

just as he has implied the Saddam had something to do with 9/11.

Check out the history if the phrase:

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20031103.html

Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
So sorry for my mistake, georgie wouldn't try and confuse us would he?

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&edition=us&q=Bush+imminent+threat

have fun

I am not agreeing with Bush, it is just this argument comes up all the time and I have never seen a direct quote stating that, and it is hard to win an argument when your defense is he implied that.

but you have to wonder what's the point of arguing with those people in the first place? If they cannot even admit that the Bush administration for MONTHS claimed that Saddam was an "immediate danger" to the world, then they will never face facts. My hats off to you for even trying.

This selective memory stuff is as frustrating as the failure to respond to direct questions, but quite necessary to continue the charade for the right.

If the threat was not imminent, what was the hurry to go to war?

guide their judgement on world view, and not reasonable understanding of people or events. I am beginning to believe that they truly do see everything in black & white.

I remember everything that lead up to the war. My point and question was the argument is made so many times that Bush told the us that Saddam was an imminent threat and I just wanted to know where he said it. It seems weak to say he implied it and it almost makes this party look ignorant

Bush did make the case though that he wanted to get rid of him before he became an imminent threat.

I don't agree with the war.

when they said he could attack in 15 minutes. Hey, if you think that wasn't part of the sale of the war, fine. But if they weren't presenting Saddam as a threat what was the argument for the immediate need to go to war?

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option

My memory is that more was said to justify the war than just that speech. Not every lie was told was said by the * himself either. There was a factory of lies then as now. You want to think they didn't play the fear factor, fine. I read that very statement as a manipulation of the real facts as * knew them.

There was no threat, imminent or otherwise. It was all a lie.

This was Bush Administration POLICY leading up to the Iraq Invasion.

"Saddam was a global threat that could launch WMD at America in 45 minutes."

This was their dogma right up until the point of the farce being uncovered (no WMD, no immediate launch capabilities).

It is a very sound arguement, those links from google have Bush saying "direct" and "immediate", but alas, not the word you're looking for.

IMHO, getting hung up on semantics is childish. Those that do so are trying to dance around the facts.

The question is: did the sanctions help to contain and prevent the rearmament of Iraq after the Gulf War. The unquestionable answer is yes. He was not a threat to his immeidate neighbors, much less to the United States.

Ask Israel, ask the Kurds.

after a US strike on Iraq.

This was before the sanctions, before the inspections, and before the bombings in 1998.

Note also that he did not use chemical or biological weapons against Israel - because he knew he would be destroyed if he did so.

The Kurds were under the protection of the northern no-fly zone. Saddam was contained.

This is a logical fallacy.

UNICEF found that at least 1.5 million iraqis died as a direct result and that half them were CHILDREN!!!!

UNICEF never made any claim even close. The Iraqi government and ANSWER, Ramsey clark and others made such absurd claims but UNICEF never did.

I find it interesting to note that in kurdistan the UN ran the oil for food distribution program and the death rate was far lower than in the rest of iraq where Saddam's government ran the distribution.

check out http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0707-07.htm

...and absolutely none that I believe. The administration lied. An overwhelming majority of our senators (meaning repigs, dems, and independents alike) agreed with them, thereby either demonstrating appallingly poor judgement or willing complicity in a criminal misadventure.

results in the same thing: dead children


amazing that there are people that use the atrocities of the sanctions in order to justify the atrocities of war

killing your dog will stop it from barking too, but i think that's a little over the top

...witholding food seems a better metaphor.

Thanks, mike_c! I'll remember that one.

would have resulted in the same thing: dead children

saddam killed over 400,000 of his own people

The UN inspectors specifically said he had WMD programs.

Read 'Endgame' by Scott ritter.

In the report to the Security Council, Blix said U.N. inspectors "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items."

the UN inspectors NEVER said that Saddam had reconstituted weapons programs. NEVER.

I will dig up the link to the ElBaradei report to the UN that he gave just before the invasion. No weapons of mass destruction. No weapons programs. No evidence.

Period.

On Edit: That was Blix, not ElBaradaei, he was the IAEA head who showed the uranium documents were forgeries.

Here is Blix on weapons and programs:

www.abc.net.au/am/s760815.htm
Hans Blix report finds no Iraqi weapons AM - Friday, 10 January, 2003 00:00:00

LINDA MOTTRAM: Where is the world on the timetable for war, after the latest briefing to the United Nations Security Council by its chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix?

He's told the Council that there is, so far, no smoking gun proving a reactivated Iraqi weapons.


Blix to the UN: www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.irq.un.transcript.blix/

If you do nopt want war, and you do not want sanctions then what do you want?

Saddam grovelled on his knees to Ambassador April Glaspie and asked mother may I?
She said yes you may.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie

Later the transcript has Glaspie saying: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

How much money did we send to get them to stop? What government official was sent to deliver the message that the massacre of civilians is no problem? What year did that happen? Where did he get the gas he used against the Kurds?

I bet ya a dollar you can't answer any of those questions correctly.

I don't excuse the Reagan administration's coddling of dictators.

The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers' seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods has been fuelling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/issue13_part3.htm

The U.S. has been funding both sides of this war. Why don't you care about 3.5 million dead Congolese.

How can intelligent people believe such XFiles crap.

War in Congo has claimed over three million lives since 1998 alone. Innocent civilians have been brutalized, massacred, raped and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with the U.S. sponsored invasion of Congo (in 1996 and 1998). These are not the simple "civil wars" declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda "genocide" (in 1994) has to some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of tribalism. Meanwhile, American green berets and military advisors and Pentagon officials have participated from blackboard to battlefield.

Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan Rwanda and Congo are wars where factions are armed with U.S. made weapons (M16's SAMs tanks) where the U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations accountable to no one behind the headlines. They are wars where the CIA is deeply and maliciously entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is expediently advertised as such by our dubious media. At the roots, however these are wars like any other war.

http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/showflat/cat/WorldNews/48471/3/collapsed/5/o/1

Who says I don't care about civil wars in Africa?

motive for the invasion. That theory has been throughly debunked and the Congo is just another example of how flimsy the reason is.

I pity you.

You can go on and on. There was no humanitarian motive behind this war whatsoever. It's being touted because we have completely failed to find WMD's.

war was an attack which the current US players rewarded!when it happened. The very same people didn't care then, and don't care now. Why can't you understand that they had no change of heart, and more importantly, why would you think they did?

Guess you found out about the Kay report, I bring it up because you were so certain that it proved the administration correct when it did no such thing. If you followed more than the sound bites you would learn quite a bit.

I don't believe I've ever seen the proof for that many dead. Thanks.

I've heard about mass graves but I've haven't seen very many pictures. Can someone show me pics of 400,000 graves? I have seen a few in southern Iraq but those were from after the first Gulf War, when Bu$h I abandoned the Shiites. Also we shouldn't forget that Bu$hCo let both the Iranians and Saddam gas the Kurds?

While getting material and financial support from the Reagan/Bush administration ....

Reagan/Bush supplied the WMD's to him, and aided him in using it ...

and then ? .... They did nothing to stop it ..... Nay: they HELPED him do it, and didnt lift a finger to prevent it ....

They are, in fact, ... accomplices ....

One might wonder: what kind of Democrat fights so hard on behalf of two stridently violent GOP regimes ??? ....

so I opposed the war. Still do.

Do you believe Saddam had WMD programs?

What I mean is that Saddam was effectively contained by the blockade and no-fly zones, there was no real advantage to be had in invasion. The Iraq war was pointless from a military-strategic point of view, as Iraq posed no threat to anyone. The only advantages gained in invading Iraq were political and economic, as we all know. If Saddam had WMD Programs, they had long since fallen into disuse. It's possible of course that his scientists were lying to him, in order to save their skins.

In 1999 he attacked Kurdish villages beyond the no-fly zone while we were too busy paying attention to turmoil with Iran and a feud between the PUK and KDP, the two main Kurdish groups.

but I still would not have gone to war for them. Going to war for the Kurds would destabilize the region further.

...

...that was no threat to us on the grounds of a bunch of lies about WMD and 2 decade old sin against the Kurds certainly proves to me that Bush is unstable.

Statute of limitations? Doesn't having a dictatorship violate international law?

Believe it or not the US does not have the right to dictate the terms of foreign governments! PoliSci 101!

or did you forget about that

forbids having a dictatorship?

well put :-)

*

going to step in and save us from Bush! Heck, if he isn't unstable and a tyrant, I don't know who is!

gesture?

Please answer this, did you know that the invasion of Iraq was planned before * even was elected, by the actors who eventually invaded?

So I guess Bush went back in time and forced him to do it.

Please provide a link.

Yes, he did bomb the country, and agiain, containment worked.

...gave up on having WMD.

it was his penis!

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

You were funny at first, with your fictional claims, but now I see that anyone who replies to you is just wasting their time.

I see that like the truth, sarcasm evades your thought process...

-EOF-

Isn't bombing an act of war? Why did Clinton bomb again?

What we are doing in Iraq now is a war. A single strike is not a war. Let's move on now.

which is bad enough in and of itself

I googled 1999 + Kurds and got many articles about Kurdish intercine warfare and a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq to clean out the PUK. I am having trouble finding out what if anything Saddam did to Kurds that year.

No reported chem attacks on Kurds in 1999.

any proof he attacked anyopne inside the no-fly zones ? any? OTHER than your say-so?

What's the point? To win an argument with someone whose opinion doesn't matter?

And if our opinion doesn't matter why do you spout off this drivel? Without authority you aren't even going to sway anyone.

to find a report on the historic use of weapons by Iraq.

Yup, a whole five minutes...

...to blur the obvious. Hussein "wanting" WMD's doesn't constitute a WMD "program." I don't care if he had nightly wet dreams about WMD's. Show me the money. One bioweapon. One nuclear device. One uranium enrichment plant or plutonium separation facility. Show me just one chemical weapons manufacturing facility. How about just one active WMD research lab? How about just one chemical or biological warhead or artillary shell? Donald Rumsfeld said specifically that he knew where they were. Guess what-- they weren't there. The administration LIED about the WMDs, then they switched their story to some vague threat of WMD "programs," but I think that's just as bogus. Kay's report is eyewash without substance.

...yeah! That's the ticket!

Lie after lie. There were no WMD, there was no threat to the US, there was no evidence of active programs to produce WMD. Their was no fleet of drones ready to unleash terror on the US. Simply put Saddam was completely contained. We could have lifted the sanctions (and it was proposed many times) and nothing would have happened. Simply put the world knew and Saddam knew that if made a military move outside his borders the world would have descended on him like a plague of locusts, just like we did in 1991. The myth of the threat of Saddam Hussein is much greater than the reality.

1. A sanction is just another word for siege. A siege is an act of war. As far as the sanction goes, the world at large (and not Saddam Hussein) is responsible for killing one and a half million people in Iraq.

2. No war is acceptable because war is an assault on the common people of both sides. War is nothing more than the robbing of natural resources and the killing of people that have limited options or no options.

And let Hitler take over Europe.

we entered the war. End of analogy!

That means all use of force.

There is a difference. Ask the troops on the ground and they might be able to help explain the difference.

and we didn't need to take up arms to gain our independence from the British Crown.

But hey, that's just us.

it's absolute fancy meant to demonize Saddam further and make stupid Americans think that our actions were justified

You did.

you implied that the same sort of thing might have happened if we didn't get Saddam, which is a direct implication that he's like Hitler

Well, you know, in a way, he is like Hitler...US conservative interests supported Hitler during his rise to power as well.

http://user.icx.net/~drherb/fringe.html

Take a look at the yellow fringe on the US flag the next time that you step in a court of law.

Thank you.

Saddam didn't have WMD, and was not posing an imminent threat to the U.S., and those were the excuses Whistleass gave for invading another country, and killing it's citizens.

One thing I'd like to point out, to those who say that Saddam killed his own citizens; the policies that have been started by Bush are doing the same thing. If a person dies because he can't afford food, or shelter, or medical care, he's just as dead as if he had been gassed.

If people die because of tainted food, or polluted air or water, they, too are just as dead. And people are dying because of the right-wing policy of catering to industry and business over being concerned for our wellbeing. We have cut services to the poor, let businesses pollute and poison, and still spend an ungodly amount of our nation's wealth to invade another country, rather than taking care of our own citizens here.

This war is unacceptable to me on every level.

There were no WMD.

There was no great Saddam/Al Qaeda connection.

No democracy can function with its industries under the control of foreign firms.

The occupation is brutal, and is causing the deaths of dozens more innocent Iraqis.

It wasn't worth it. It was and is an immoral and illegal war, and it was a devestating foreign policy failure.

.

I don't buy that.

Who , after reading all the links available here, could possibly buy that bogus bullshit? Whoever you are, you certainly are resistant to the truth.

One or two I can understand, but it's hard to fathom 20 people (so far) who've had much exposure to the dialog around here still buying the neo-con lies.

regardless of the issue.

Well since I can't start my own thread here's my message:

Check this out:

http://www.humanshields.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=274

And thanks for the link.

Can you start a new thread with my message?

That rule is quite annoying (although well intentioned I'm sure)

Anonymous, are you? What, no U?

Absolutely astounded, if indeed these aren't lurking freepers.

With all that we knew before the invasion and now all that we know afterwards, it just boggles my mind.

Who STILL believes this is going to work out ok for the Iraqis or this country?

It's illegal here to say someone is a lurking freeper so I won't do it.

worth fighting for. I'm a traditional American. We have no dreams of a new Roman empire of the 21st century. We think of our military in terms of defense and strength, but not as a new Alexander the Great scenario. What's going on now is un-American.