Resolved: Iraq is NOT the "central front" in the war on terror

[journalist3072]

To our Republican friends:

RESOLVED: Iraq is NOT the "central front" in the war on terror.

The orchestrator of the 9/11 attacks is not hiding in Iraq. He is hiding in Afghanistan.

After 9/11, our government was right to go into Afghanistan to try to prosecute this "war on terror." They were wrong to drop the ball and take their focus off the real war on terror, and turn their attention to a country who has never attacked or threated to attack us before.

RESOLVED: George W. Bush should have asked for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation the minute he suggested going into Iraq instead of Afghanistan to avenge 9/11, stating that there weren't enough good targets in Afghanistan.

[Avalux]

1. Are you saying it was Rummie's idea to invade Iraq?

I get the first part of your post, but not the second. :shrug:

[journalist3072]

2. Richard Clarke said that

After Bush returned to the White House on 9/11, they began holding meetings on how to respond and retaliate.

And Clarke was thrown for a loop when Rumsfeld suggested going into Iraq to avenge 9/11. He said Afghanistan didn't have enough good targets.

After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.

"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."

Read here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

[Poiuyt]

3. Not only Rumsfeld, Bush wanted to go to Iraq right away too

From the same link:

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

more -

I remember Clarke saying how Bush was pointing his finger at him, almost poking him in the chest while he was saying this.

[Cleita]

4. There is no war on terror. Terror is an emotion.

There are terrorists out there that we should be looking for, but we don't need a war to do that. All we need are some good field agents to smoke them out and arrest them in cooperation with Interpol. That's how terrorists have been dealt with in the past and how they should be dealt with now.

What we are having is a war for profit. So let's talk about what the war we are waging really is about.