matthew330, 2525 dead American soldiers, thousands more seriously wounded, and direct, immediate costs detailed below, to remove the threat of WMD that you described, and even though U.S. and U.N. weapons inspectors have said for some time that no WMD, or their R&D and manufacturing infrastructure existed in Iraq, you're not buying their conclusions, and, even knowing what is now known, you wouldn't change a thing, if the opportunity to "do it all over again", existed. The invasion and occupation of Iraq ended a 12 year effort to hold Saddam Hussein "in check", that Wolfowitz told congress, cost $30 billion. Not a single allied aircraft patrolling the "no fly zone", in Iraq was lost in those 12 years.
Below is a description of only the direct cost of the first U.S. experience in waging what Mr. Bush described as "pre-emptive war"....what the Nuremberg Court described as "war of aggression". The long term cost has been estimated to ulitmately be as high as $2 trillion. The loss to the reputation and financial standing of the U.S., in the community of nations, and by the lessons learned by many of us who took the record of the Nuremberg Court seriously, are immeasurable...... Uncounted numbers of innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the new Bush doctrine of "pre-emption". The "humanity" of many in the U.S. has been dormant, as they labored under the misconceptions that enabled all of this to happen with so little resistance from fellow citizens who should have known better, but as the poll results below, indicate.....didn't.
Quote:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...aqspend14.html
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
Iraq is a political football in D.C.
By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
The Washington Post
....The House on Tuesday passed a record-breaking $94.5 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gulf Coast hurricane relief, border security and avian-flu preparation. With Senate passage expected later in the week, the bill would push the cost of the Iraq war to nearly $320 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Military and diplomatic costs in Iraq this fiscal year will have reached $101.8 billion, up from $87.3 billion in 2005, $77.3 billion in 2004 and $51 billion in 2003, the year of the invasion, analysts said.
Nearly $66 billion would go to the Pentagon to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an additional $4 billion would be spent on foreign assistance, including $66 million to promote democracy in neighboring Iran....
|
matthew330, from a quote box in my post (#8) on this page:
Quote:
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
Released: February 28, 2006
U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
.......The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. <h3>While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,”</h3> 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
|
and this link was posted directly below the aforementioned quote box, on post #8:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=84506">Are the Feb. 18 Harris Iraq Poll Results "The triumph of Opinion Over News"?</a>
and if you "clicked" on the above link, duplicated from it's original appearance on post #8.....you would have an opportunity to find:
Quote:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/har...ex.asp?PID=544
.......However, the public remains split on whether the invasion of Iraq strengthened (46%) or weakened (48%) the war on terrorism.
These are some of the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 1,012 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive between February 8 and 13, 2005.....
......More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:
<h3>* 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
* 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).</h3>
* 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).
Another interesting finding is that only 46 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors, a fact which most reports now support.
|
matthew330, you seem to project an impression....as my stepson in the military does, of someone who thinks that he knows what he's talking about.....here are your own words: (from post #7 )
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by matthew330
........I never needed WMD physically being found to justify going in there. The fact is that we had to go in there to make it clear, as you just pointed out. I've said this before, but I remember specifically President Bush saying "It's not up to us to prove he has WMD, it's up to him to prove he doesn't." He's had them, he's used them, and for 10 years he dicked with weapons inspectors. This was obviously never a good enough reason for the left, so why not throw out some of the other million and one reasons that justify this war, IMO.
And we're still bickering about weapons that were finding. Didn't we just find 500 containers of Sarin gas. The Dems saying "well that's not the WMD we were talking about". When Saddam should have been disclosing everything, why didn't we know about this 5 years ago.
He had proven himself willing to use WMD, he had booted the inspectors out for 4 years once leaving himself free to do whatever he wanted, and he continued to dick with inspectors. That's why we went to war. Not because we proved there was WMD prior to, but because there was evidence he did and Saddam didn't use the opportunity to prove us wrong...........
|
My response was to present my opinion, buoyed by much relevant and supportive documentation, that, in order for what you've said to be taken seriously, one would have to ignore the assessements of the most prominent three U.S. Iraqi weapons inspectors....including comments that I documented, from Mr. Duelfer and Mr. Kay, made just this past week.
I'm not willing to concede that your opinions on the subject of WMD, or on why the U.S. invaded Iraq, are accurate, or even informed, when they are compared to the record of what has been said by Ritter, Duelfer, Kay, and on the subject of why Iraq was invaded, compared to comments by Bush and Wolfowitz. The stature of your arguments is further diminished, by the lack of your provision of any backup references or supportive documentation. It appears to me that your opinions go directly against the record I've provided of news reports and the statements of all five of the men that I named in this paragraph.
Your tone and declarations in your last post are puzzling, since you've given me the impression that you think that you've made a convincing argument. Your conviction seems to hinge on your admitted refusal to read and consider what I've posted, yet you indicate a belief that you are qualified to comment and dismiss my efforts on this thread, anyway. What's up with that?