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Originally Posted by The Jolt
I don't believe that our government is perfect in any sense of the word. I KNOW that Democracy is a much better form of government because it allows people to change their leaders easily and without bloodshed.
I believe that even though Saddam did not have WMD's he was trying to make us think he did. He was probably financing terrorists and paying the famlies of suicide bombers. Would you rather defend the US on American soil or on Iraqi soil?
But the main point of this point host, is to ask you one question:
<h2>How Do You Know?</h2>
Don't quote me newspaper articles, my dad (a lawyer) won't even comment to the press anymore because 90% of the time they distort his words to support the article they've already planned to write, or they just don't understand enough about what he is saying to use it correctly.
All you have is an impression that our presence in Iraq is making terrorists and found a few journalists who share it. I believe that Iraqis, just like everyone else I know, simply want to live a shrapnel free life and see the benefits of democracy.
The New York Times, CBS News, Houston Chronicle - all of these are only symptoms of a major disease in the news media.
If you've been there you KNOW, If you know people there you KNOW, otherwise you are simply giving an opinion.
That's what most of world politics is about - opinions.
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The Jolt, by your logic, the Bush administration instigated aggressive war in Iraq via military invasion to, as you stated, "rather defend the US on American soil or on Iraqi soil?"
Defend America, from what ? You are skeptical about news reporting, but in your skepticism, you make a strong case that it is of vital importance for the Bush administration to release, timely, frank, and reliable reports concerning the rebuilding of Iraq and the status of the war on terror. I know that this is not happening, because journalists' reports of Iraqi electrical production do not collide with reports that our government releases, because it has ceased to release such reports, now that the news is unfavorable.
Journalists and the non-partisan GAO agree that Bush admin. info releases concerning the progress in training Iraqi security forces are incomplete and
misleading. Now the report to the public on terrorists incidents of the previour year will not be published on the order of Secty of State Rice, because the information that it reports is inconsistant with Bush admin. claims of progress in the "war on terror".
I do not have to rely on news reports vs. Bush admin. reports or withholding of reports to make accurate assessments of important events. For example, Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, David Kay, and Charles Duelfer all refuted the assertion that you and the Bush admin. made that "Saddam did not have WMD's he was trying to make us think he did". These weapons inspector's reports, since Dec., 2002, three months before Iraq was invaded, up until Scott Mcllellan's Jan. 12, 2005 press briefing, quoted above, allow me to know well that you still buy into inaccurate opinions very similar to the ones touted by Bush spokespersons and sympathetic media personalities.
Saddam complied with the UN in the Dec. 2002 release of 12,000 pages of info concerning the status of Iraqi WMD programs, which turned out, after the US spent several hundred million dollars in a futile attempt to refute them, turned out to be an accurate Iraqi account, yet you just wrote that "he was trying to make us think he did". I know that Saddam was attempting to comply with the UN, Bush promised to seek a UN resoution before invading Iraq, and then ordered the invasion without seeking the resolution that he pledged to seek.
The Jolt, please provide examples of Saddam "financing terrorsts". "Probably" is not good enough to justify aggressive war, especially when you offer no durable evidence that the US was directly threatened. Bush did not choose to respond to Saddam in a manner that was anywhere near proportional to acts that threatened US security. Every example cited by Powell in his infamous UN briefing in Mar, 2003, have since been exposed as unreliable. French journalists perceived and reported this when it happened (see my earlier post), you still do not seem to accept it, now.
The Jolt, my avatar is a tribute to SCOTUS Justice Robert Jackson, the chief
US prosecutor of war crimes at Nuremberg. Here is what he had to say about
waging a war of aggression. No journalist need sway my thinking that the
US executive branch is now populated by several as yet unindicted war criminals, Justice Jackson persuaded me of that as this run up to war unfolded:
Quote:
<a href="http://www.roberthjackson.org/theman2-7-8-2.asp">http://www.roberthjackson.org/theman2-7-8-2.asp</a>
..........The central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact. Have we established the Plan or Conspiracy to make aggressive war?
Certain admitted or clearly proven facts help answer that question. First is the fact that such war of aggression did take place. Second, it is admitted that from the moment the [ ] came to power, every one of them and every one of the defendants worked like beavers to prepare for some war.....
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