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Junkie
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
on the precariousness of the american position in all this and a demonstration of the idiocy behind neo-con claims that the bush administration is in any way vindicated by people trying to make a democratic path for themselves.
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Or, how about the idiocy in revisionist history - to suggest the invasion of Iraq has had no influence on current events is beyond belief.
Quote:
A Free Iraq Prevented Nuclear Libya
Posted 03/02/2011 07:02 PM ET
Leadership: For years, Barack Obama called Iraq "a dumb war." But considering how that conflict undeniably scared Libya's Moammar Gadhafi into ending his WMD program, the 2003 invasion has never looked smarter.
'I don't oppose all wars," future President Barack Obama told Chicagoans Against War in Iraq during a 2002 rally. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war ... a rash war ... the cynical attempt by ... armchair, weekend warriors in this (Bush) administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."
Obama called the plan to liberate Iraq an "attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us." And he warned that it "will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida."
Goading the then-commander in chief, Obama said: "You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. (nuclear) inspectors can do their work ... let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people."
Today, after two years of President Obama, our "so-called allies" like Egypt are destabilized, or threatened, and in danger of becoming enemies — nothing "so-called" about it.
Turns out that if it hadn't been for those "armchair warriors" and their "dumb war" in Iraq, Libya might well be a nuclear weapons power today. All the U.N. inspectors in the world wouldn't be able to stop Gadhafi from using atomic and chemical weapons to slaughter tens or even hundreds of thousands of his own people to keep himself in power, instead of just conventional weapons to kill a fraction of that number.
Robert G. Joseph, senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy in Fairfax, Va., led the nuclear weapons negotiations with Libya nearly a decade ago as undersecretary of state for arms control and special envoy for nuclear nonproliferation during the Bush administration. Joseph recounts what may be the most successful nonproliferation success of modern times in his book "Countering WMD: The Libyan Experience."
"Multiple motivations were in play as the Libyan leadership worked through the decision to abandon WMD and longer-range missile programs," Joseph writes. The motivations included ending U.S. sanctions.
"There is no evidence to suggest, however, that the goal of ending sanctions would have been sufficient to induce Libya to acknowledge, remove and destroy its WMD programs," according to Joseph. "All evidence suggests that other motives were essential to this outcome."
Joseph stresses that "the timing of the Libyan approach to the United States and United Kingdom, coming as hundreds of thousands of coalition forces were being deployed to the region to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iraqi WMD, was more than coincidental."
Gadhafi, in fact, told visiting U.S. congressional delegations in January and March 2004 that "he did not want to be a Saddam Hussein and he did not want his people to be subjected to the military efforts that were being put forth in Iraq."
Italian Prime Minister Sergio Berlusconi, in a September 2003 interview, said Gadhafi told him: "I will do whatever the United States wants, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."
As Joseph points out: "Words — that those who seek such weapons will put their security at risk — were being backed by action. In Libya, which had long possessed chemical weapons and had embarked on a large-scale effort to be able to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, the message was clearly received ... after Iraq, it would be the next target for U.S. military action."
Had that then-unknown, anti-war Illinois state senator been listened to in 2002, he would today be a president facing possible nuclear war in the Mideast.
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http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnal...ear-Libya.aspx
Do you even stand with those wanting democracy in the ME?
Do you support freedom of expression, including the practice of a religion other than Islam in the ME?
What about homosexuality in the ME, do you stand in support of any rights for homosexuals in the ME?
Or are you all about the pretense, perhaps the switch from one form of tyranny for another? I guess your views are too complicated, I don't expect any type of a rational response. Just tell me, again, about how wrong it is to post something from IBD.
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"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."
Last edited by aceventura3; 03-03-2011 at 10:33 AM..
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