What should we do about the war in Iraq Poll

[Joel W.]

I think we should help.

We will help, but we are going to have to work with all the other contries to fix the killer bee problem, this means sharing things like information to stop the bad bees where ever they may be nesting. This does not mean 130,000+- soldiers out of the country for half a decade or more in my opinion. The people here like you and me can not afford that much longer.....


Just look at what happened in Britan/London recently, They did that pretty much on their own with the help of concerned citizens...They shared that info with us. Seems to be working.

 

[SupraDerk]

That would be a good idea, but the division in our country is keeping that from happening due to politicians using the war and personal agendas. The NSA wiretapping program? Profiling? Searching a house without a warrant?

When newspapers tell of government intel operations because they think people NEED to know (because they want to make more money)... Yes it would be nice to know, but did it really help us in the long run alerting the terrorist of what we were doing?

People here won't make those kinds of sacrifices for a limited time in order for something like that to happen.

 

[Joel W.]

Yeah, I do not know where to draw the line at with what the media reports sometimes. Yes I want to know, but at the same time, I do not think they should be telling the secrets to those we are fighting..

For example, The news says there was a plot to destroy something, fine... But when they go into great details on how it was supposed to happen and with what exact tools they were going to use. Even giving us diagrams of how to make one, how we caught them, over and over. it educates the bees on how to beat us next time.

I don't have anything to hide. I would like to change my screen name to Jerry T. now though..j/k admins...

We are getting united, 66/34+- now.. The cool thing is, with the internet, people can now be educated on the issues.

 

[Joel W.]

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/08/23/india_police_say_possible_terror_plot_foiled/

From Tuesday

MUMBAI -- Indian police said they had foiled a possible terrorist attack in the financial hub of Mumbai after they shot dead a suspected Pakistani national and arrested another following a gun battle in the metropolis yesterday.

The shootout occurred less than a month and a half after serial bomb blasts hit packed commuter trains and stations in the city, killing 186 people and wounding about 700.

Acting on a tip-off, police surrounded a dilapidated building in a central neighborhood and began searching for suspects linked with the July 11 attacks, A.N. Roy, Mumbai's police chief, said at a news conference.

``We intercepted a car last night and arrested a person who led us to the hideout of his accomplice," Roy said. ``There, the other man did not surrender and fired 18 rounds from an AK-47 rifle. We returned fire in which he was killed."



That is how to do it..

 

[SupraDerk]

Yeah, I do not know where to draw the line at with what the media reports sometimes. Yes I want to know, but at the same time, I do not think they should be telling the secrets to those we are fighting..

For example, The news says there was a plot to destroy something, fine... But when they go into great details on how it was supposed to happen and with what exact tools they were going to use. Even giving us diagrams of how to make one, how we caught them, over and over. it educates the bees on how to beat us next time.

I don't have anything to hide. I would like to change my screen name to Jerry T. now though..j/k admins...

We are getting united, 66/34+- now.. The cool thing is, with the internet, people can now be educated on the issues.

Yeah exactly. Sometimes I think they try to instigate situations too. But like when they showed how liquid explosives work after those planes were almost blown up. What the hell...

Stupid tv haha

 

[Nick M]

It is too close to the weekend for me to deconstruct the misstatements by CandyBlue. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Maybe Sunday night I will take an hour or two and go through them line by line.

edit: sorry Joel, I didn't anwer the question as none of the answers are correct to me. We do not stay at all cost. If Iraq tells us to leave, we will. And we are getting closer to that point with their Army.

 

[Joel W.]

No need to be sorry Nick, It was some what of a loaded poll as I did not refer to what needed to be done before we can leave on purpose. (mainly because I did not know)

I hope your right.

 

[ross1]

my choice wasn't in the poll list so i'll just put it here... pull the troops out and drop a couple of nukes and turn it into a sheet of glass


ross

 

[Shytheed Dumas]

I can't believe how polarized the results of the poll are. But listening to talk at work and with friends, maybe it's about right - people see this as very black and white with almost no middle ground. That's fine, and without reading the entire thread or going into specifics on current foreign policy, I think the issue is pretty suggestive of a serious problem today, and it's known as instant gratification.

People want to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but who has ever cared to compare it to Europe following WWII? Really, who thought Germany would ever reunite, much less become stable 2 years after the war ended as so many have demanded of Iraq? And look what happened. Now look at America today. Whether you like the fact that we went into Iraq or not, we went in and stabilization of the country, not to mention the entire middle east, could take decades. Ultimately the USSR fell, so did East Germany, and a peaceful Europe emerged. But not Iraq and certainly not the Middle East by today's standards. No, in today's world satisfaction had to be immediate, and failure to achieve instant stability seems to be defined by a lot of people as instant failure. A far cry from the attitude of Americans 50 and 60 years ago. To bad imo.

 

[outofstep]

I hope we are somewhere after I get out of WOFT. Go blow some stuff up next time around instead of being stuck in a TAC-39.

 

[SP 7M]

It is too close to the weekend for me to deconstruct the misstatements by CandyBlue. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Maybe Sunday night I will take an hour or two and go through them line by line.

edit: sorry Joel, I didn't anwer the question as none of the answers are correct to me. We do not stay at all cost. If Iraq tells us to leave, we will. And we are getting closer to that point with their Army.

I love that kind of shit.

That was an epic quote, Nick.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."

 

[robeats91t]

A couple of points to ponder:

- What we see and hear in the US is what the media wants to show us and that is determined by the people at the news service. Depending on their agenda (and what sells news)...we see killing, protestors, and what looks like set back after set back. I know for a fact there is a lot of good being done in Iraq...schools being built, services restored...but you don't hear of the success. I question why? Politics? Money? I don't know, but I do know the whole story is not being told in the US media.

This is a very good point, and I would like to elaborate upon the topic of media and information control--One thing we have gross excess of in this country is hyped, biased journalism. Thankfully it's not quite as bad as the propagandized "news" that was deilvered to the Iraqis by Saddam's Information Ministry, but most would agree it's still presented with an ulterior agenda. However, as westerners we do have much easier access to information--we still have access to whatever news we can get ahold of through several different mediums--radio, television, internet, print, word of mouth...we get to decide for ourselves, as individuals, what we believe.

Most Middle Eastern Muslims don't seem to have this luxury, which in turn puts the opinion of millions in the hands of a select few leaders. If the leaders don't like us, guess what--they can choose to release all the news they want about how evil the West is, how the US is satan, et cetera. Plus since the dispersion of information is so tightly controlled, any dissidents are quickly labelled Western sympathizers or infidels, and the fear of the consequences seems to keep the average person in line with leadership's agenda.

And in response to the thread's title question:

Pulling out would be a terrible blunder at this point. We've stirred up a hornet's nest and now we've got to clean house. If we walk away now we'll have many more hornet's nests to look forward to, each just as bad as this one. Western approval (read: US approval) depends greatly on how well Iraq recovers from this mess. By walking away now, the "war on terror" would look to be a very poor guise for a selfish desire to meddle in foreign affairs, namely oil. The US needs Iraq to be a successful state in some form before pulling out, otherwise we gain no allies in seeking out and eliminating these corrupt, terror-funding extremist governments and groups.

 

[Joel W.]

I don't think Iraq will ever be stable with the US there. The 3 groups will never get along. Saddam was able to keep them some what stable by employing most people in the military service. This gave them paychecks. Sure he did it with an iron fist, but that is what they seem to understand best. It is sad, but I think this it is a fact.

I think we made a big mistake by disbanding their military and police when we got there. It left too many people out of work with no income to support their families. Our biggest mistake was bypassing the UN and creating a "coalition of the willing" to get in there. I think we really need to turn the control back over to the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police force and do every thing we can to try and get the UN back in there to replace us. Draw new map lines and bail.

This also has problems because the land is "holy land" and all the groups will not be able to agree on where to draw the lines. If you look at similar situations where we have removed dictators to try and establish a democracy, as soon as we left, they return to their religious tribal leaders and things go back to the way they were shortly after. Usually not without much bloodshed. That is the problem with mixing government and religion.

 

[Nick M]

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 destruction program.

 

[Joel W.]

Search for WMD's on youtube and you will see a Fox News report claiming 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq. Where are these now and why are we not hearing about them?? The answer is they were either so old or not what they thought they were when they found them... Fox claimed them as proof..but yet today everyone is saying that "No WMD's were found in Iraq", Even Bush!!!

I believe this to be fact that none were found so someone please correct me if I am wrong. We warned Saddam to get rid of them, they were not found, so he must have complied with us and he removed them or he never had them..... If he did, they probably went to Syria by truck before the invasion.

 

[SP 7M]

...and why are we not hearing about them??

That's a question that could be raised on so many topics. The general answer is because the mainstream media is liberal.

I'm not going to get into the WMD thing because I haven't chosen to make myself well-informed on the subject.

Lets not forget, in a general sense, that war is necessary.

 

[Joel W.]

Ok, I will dig some also on WMD's.. I would say the military is necessary, war can be necessary...

 

[SP 7M]

Yes or no, Joel.

You and I wouldn't be here if it weren't necessary.

 

[Joel W.]

Ok, but your not going to like it. (I already said it once here)

Here it is as far as I can tell.. I refer back to the 9/11 commission report. It's very long and very informative....It appears that the Bush Admin planned and conceived the entire invasion into Iraq under false claims of WMD's. They were looking for any excuse imaginable to gain access into Iraq...

Here is one piece..

The President noted that the attacks provided a great opportunity to engage Russia and China. Secretary Rumsfeld urged the President and the principals to think broadly about who might have harbored the attackers, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, and Iran. He wondered aloud how much evidence the United States would need in order to deal with these countries, pointing out that major strikes could take up to 60 days to assemble.34

They arranged evidence in such a way to gain approval by making it look like there was a real threat to the USA from Saddam himself.. The UN would not support us, so he bypassed them with the "coalition"...(this is very bad imo) We are there to maintain control of the oil for our future here in the USA and that is why we are still there and that is why we will not leave as long as Bush is president.

I will dig into the report and post the reasons why I say what I do (if you ask me to), here tomorrow.. Please do not hate me for this. I call them how I see them.. Most of this info I am just recently learning due to another thread here, so please bare with me. Again, It is not our soldiers fault when they take orders from politicians... I think it was necessary in Bush's view to get into Iraq any way we could... My view is different.

As far as our past wars, most were necessary (not all) imo...

 

[Adjuster]

By far, this has the be your worst post Joel.

Talk about poking a bee hive with a stick man. It's not even funny.

Ok, here is the short story on the USA in the middle east.

When we all realized oil was going to be important, everyone wanted a piece of the pie.
The Germans sided with the Turks and others.
The English already had much of this territory as part of their empire.
After WWII, everyone felt so bad about how we ignored the Jews, that England partitioned off part of Palestine and created Isreal as a place where the Jew's could live and build their lives.
The USA supported this move since we are allies of England, and we also felt guilty of ignoring the wholesale slaughter of Jews in Germany before we entered WWII.
At that point, we became enimies of radical islam. Simple as it get's.
Oh, England draws up countries when they leave, and split up the Kurds, and the Shites and Suni's to seperate areas of power, and try and keep the peace. (Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon are all results of this.)

Ok, fast forward to the 1950's and Iran. We were good allies with the Shaw who was a very great king. He was not a PUSSY king, but he kept the peace, educated his people, built roads, schools and promoted the kinds of freedom that Islam hates. (Freedom for everyone, including women and those not of Islamic faith.)
The son of Khomani (spelling error I know, but I really don't care about that piece of dog shit muslem.) Anyway, the son of Khomani tried to assinate the Shaw, was caught and publicly executed. (As is the way in the middle east.) Khomani vowed to get revenge, and fled to France. (Our allies hiding this asshole throuhout the 50's to the 70's.. THANK YOU FROGS!!! STUPID FUCKERS!!.)
Ok, spin up to Uber Liberal shit for brains President Carter. (You know, the peanut farmer turned liberal politician.) So Carter comes over to make a state visit to our best allies in the middle east, IRAN and the Shaw. We have tens of thousands of US citizens living and working in this country. We are making a difference.
In the 50's, only 3% of that country could read.
By the 70's, 95% were fluent in Farsi, and most could read Arabic and English as well as speak them. (Arabic is to read the Koran, and English is to work with everyone in the rest of the world since French ceased to be a universal language when France stopped being a superpower after that Short dude failed them at Waterloo....)
Ok, so president Peanut gets up and insults and embarrases the Shaw and the USA by talking about "human rights" and his narrow view of the world.. (Jimmy, stick to building houses for the poor, that's all your good for you piece of shit dumbass...)

Ok here is where it all fell apart. (And this corresponds to the Generals letter too if you notice the dates and events.)

At the time Carter was made president, the CIA was paying 40 million a year to the Shite leaders in Iran to stay slient, and keep the Ayatolah in France. Basicly not to rile up the citizens of Iran who for the most part are enjoying the most freedom and prosperous times they have seen since the Persian Empire was around.
The Shite's were not happy either. As the people of Iran learned to read, they could figure out for themselves what the Koran said, and the Mullah's were loosing power over the people. The freedom and Western type living that the Shaw was supporting was also a problem since Islam does not do well in a free society, especially radical Islam where they like to tell you that dying for your religion is the ultimate reward.... Wait a moment, if your living well, enjoy your life and have future goals and a family to think about, that whole dying for your religion sort of SUCKS ASS!!

So what does Nobel peace prize winning Carter do? He says that the CIA can't pay the money anymore, he does not think the Shaw has done enough for "human rights" and inside of a year, the entire country of Iran is thrown into anarchy while the Shite's preach hate and revolution every Friday at the mosques, and the Russians come in and get the student population stirred up with communist crap about the rich getting everything, and the poor getting nothing... (Sounds like UC Davis eh? Or any other Liberal school in this nation, or around the world for that matter.)