What do you think of Mr. Bush Now?

Depends upon your leader . . . Saddam lied about having WMD . . .

Our president (& the majority of us Americans) believed Saddam . . . and the rest is history. If we could all go back and change the actions - we might. But, we cannot.

 

Oh, I believe democrats are just that dumb. As a matter of fact, I believe the road to impeachment is well into the planning stages.

Only one obstacle in the way...control of the House.

 

Then why do you think Reagon did trade arms to our declared enemies, the Iranians?

He did lie about the nukes, the centrifuge, the aluminum tubes, the mobile weapon labs. He chose to go with the flawed British intel instead of our own, better. Furthermore, he did not let the inspectors complete their inspection because he claimed he knew where the WMDs were (I wondered at the time why he didn't simply inform the inspectors of their location).

Oh, see, I think Jack Matthews was referring to their actual accomplishments in office rather than rooting for the Most Popular.

Right, most the postwar planning centered on how to secure the oilfields and leases extremely favorable to the US instead of securing civil order and a transitional government because....um, oh yeah, bad intel.

The first order of business post invasion was to fight the fires which weren't set in the oil fields. Haliburton (or one of its subsidiaries) had done the the preliminary preinvasion studies so they were the natural ones to get the multi-billion dollar contract overseeing the oil fields, fighting the fires and running them afterwards.

The plan was for Iraq to get the money on paper, then pay out hefty manangement fees, etc. and then use its profits to repay the US and UK for reconstruction and war debts. Don't you remember how the war & reconstruction were going to "pay for themselves"? The plan went awry as so oft happens.

 

What an insightful analysis of a well thought out, nicely expressed post. What's especially good is the way you addressed each of his salient points with evidence and reasoning.

No, it's true alrighty.

That is surely a large part of it. It had died down more than a little after the Oslo accords, then Sharon provoked the second infitada for his own political gain, which Arafat continued for his own, and things have gotten steadily worse. Another large part was US military presence in Saudi Arabia, which is one of the reasons Bush & Co. decided to move the permanent military stations to Iraq.

No, we had a huge boost in sympathy after 9/11. Instead of exploiting it and going after the actual intracountry terrorist network with the cooperation of the heads of state in the Middle East and much of the world as demonstrated by the true international forces that fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush squandered it by his invasion of a contained country which posed no true threat to the US.

 

The President didint lie about anything. This is a demonization tool and nothing more. Im sure it will serve its election purposes. But it wont be good enough.

It wasnt just British intelligence but Israeli intelligence. And as it turns out wmds were there. Deny it all you want to, it diesnt change the facts.

But good luck come November.

 

From Middle Eastern muslims?

Was that before or after the celebrations?

Any expressed sympathy was for public consumption only and most of it came with a lecture concerning our "policies" being to blame.

IOW We're really sorry it happened, but it was your fault.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by carpro
Oh pu leeeeeze.

Every bit as insightful as what you just posted in response.

At least my meaning was clear with no personal attacks, while yours is just....

well... typical Daisy.:thumbs:

 

Yes, if your president lied about having WMD - then your president was Saddam Hussein. Saddam and some of his top aids confirmed the reports that he had and was acquiring WMD before we went in . . . That was why our intel trusted the British intel . . .

Saddam picked the fight - he and God know why. I would guess he wants to become a martyr like his expressed enemy Osama. Their egos and their feud has more to do with our being in Iraq than any faulty intel.

The worst our President can be faulted for is being duped into a fight on the playground with a big bully . . . a bully that murdered around 1 - 2,000,000 (that is million) of his people. Some of those people were Christian . . .

 

If someone wants to be against the war - I don't have a lot of problem with that.

But, if you think that lying about what happened will change my memory of the events - you work for a totolitarian news organization or government.

Millions of Christians have been exterminated throughout the muslim empire over the last two decades (and almost as many during the previous decades). At some point in time, a rational person should be able to say, "They have killed a bunch of innocent people. They say that they want to kill all Americans. I wonder what the 'logical extreme' of killing all Americans would look like."

Yes, most of it is propoganda . . . until they build nukes, chemicals, biologicals, or dirty bombs . . .

Then it is a matter of when they get through.

 

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost10.html

Palestinian president Yasir Arafat has joined the growing list of world leaders to confirm that Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign did try to disrupt President Carter's negotiations to free 52 Americans then held hostage in Iran.

Arafat shared the secret with Carter 15 years after the end of Carter's presidency, according to an article by historian Douglas Brinkley in the fall issue of the scholarly journal Diplomatic History. Arafat informed Carter about the Republican sabotage efforts during a private meeting between the two men last Jan. 22 at Arafat's bunker-headquarters in Gaza City.

"There is something I want to tell you," Arafat said, addressing Carter. "You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal [for the Palestine Liberation Organization] if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the [U.S. presidential] election."

Arafat insisted that he rebuffed the offer and Brinkley's account of the Arafat-Carter meeting supplied no other details about the alleged GOP initiative. It was unclear, for instance, which Republican representative made the overture to the PLO and exactly when or where.

Although Arafat had never before commented publicly about the so-called October Surprise controversy, his statement to Carter does not stand alone. Since the late 1980s, one of Arafat's senior aides, Bassam Abu Sharif, has given journalists a similar account of a Republican approach to the PLO. It is also true that the PLO had close ties to the Islamic government in Iran in 1980.


More than two dozen Iranian officials, international leaders, intelligence operatives and arms dealers have come forward in the past 15 years to allege that the Reagan-Bush campaign did sabotage Carter's hostage negotiations and his hopes for an "October Surprise" of a last-minute hostage release.

Those witnesses include former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr who offered a detailed account of the internal Iranian deliberations over whether and how to collaborate with the Republican sabotage plan. [See The Consortium, Oct. 14] In 1992, Alexandre deMarenches, former head of French intelligence, described to his biographer how he arranged secret meetings between the Iranians and Reagan's campaign chief, William J. Casey. Israel's former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir also has endorsed the October Surprise allegations, which have implicated Shamir's predecessor, Menachem Begin.

 

A truly in...

credible source.

 

ok . . . I admit it is a source of something.

And I admit that it is a true source . . .

but, credible? We are supposed to trust the Iranians that were behind the hostage taking, that 15 years later they remember new information that contradicted what they said then?

oh I missed the in...credible . . .



:thumbs:

 

It's the only natural resource Iraq has that produces revenue. They need it.

Whoever controls the oil in Iraq eventually controls Iraq.

 

because of all the natural resources that terrorists can impact the quickest and easiest - o&g (oil and gas) is the best target. The explosive (flammable) nature of the product and its relatively easy exposure (there are tanks, pipes, and other distribution vehicles all over the place) make it an easy target.

And the economic impact of a major terrorist strike against oil would cost the economies of the world billions of dollars. The WTC terrorist attack cost the economies over 1 trillions dollars (US).

If you were in charge would you want the terrorists to be able to do that kind of damage?

I pray not.

 

Pure conjecture.

 

PS why would terrorists want to murder, displace thousands of workers (layoffs), and inflict that kind of damage upon civilians?

Why wouldn't the President of the US want to protect the country from that cost.

 

Did you mean pre-war?

Preposterous.

The oil fields had been part of the planning because Saddam used them as WMD during GW1. The fields have large concentrations of poisonous gas. It was the intent during the first GW was for the burning gas to become acid (H2SO4) and defeat the gas masks and suits of American soldiers (*). Had there been much research done, they would have known that carbon filters 1/4 of an inch thick are sufficient to protect against rotten gas (H2S).

However, the pollutants did negatively affect the soldiers and was one of the contributing factors to Gulf War Syndrome.

Any reasonable commanding officer would have expected the enemy to act in accordance with his previous battle plan.

Hence, the oil fields were secured. This was a military necessity.

The fact that it helped your pocket book by keeping down prices - is just a side effect that you should be thanking President Bush and the Congress of the United States of America for. You should also thank each and every politician that voted to enact war powers so that this great country could be kept safe.


(*) All of this is based upon open source information and a study that I personally conducted at the University of Texas Library. Some soldiers do take their jobs seriously and assess the enemy's course of action in the face of CNN news . . .

 

Your right . . . but, conjecture is cheap.

Freedom is not. Freedom is paid for in the BLOOD OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS.

Or the BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST.

It would be a shame to have one of the freedoms and not the other.