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Old 09-06-2006, 01:58 PM   #1 (permalink)
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ok, whats going on with all the oil?

im surprised that i never hear an "oil update" in any news, print or tv. i wonder a lot of stuff like....

1) whats happening in iraqi oil fields?

2) whats haliburton up to there?

3) is there some kind of arrangement from the result of our occupation in the middle east?

i find the dearth of info on something so important to be amazing... you'd think there'd be entire cable stations devoted to keeping us up to date.

are there any news sites on the web that deal with this. is the silence on it particularly american?
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Old 09-06-2006, 02:18 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by high_jinx
im surprised that i never hear an "oil update" in any news, print or tv. i wonder a lot of stuff like....

1) whats happening in iraqi oil fields?

2) whats haliburton up to there?

3) is there some kind of arrangement from the result of our occupation in the middle east?

i find the dearth of info on something so important to be amazing... you'd think there'd be entire cable stations devoted to keeping us up to date.

are there any news sites on the web that deal with this. is the silence on it particularly american?
Mainstream media reporting on Iraqi oil fields, what Haliburton is up to, and the result of our occupation of the Middle East?!


Oh, man. Good one.

If they reported on such things the illusion would be dissolved. America is one of the main offenders, but they aren't the only one.

Edit: Sorry. Most mainstream media outlets would be negatively effected by reporting such things. I won't go off on a rant, but they are not dependable sources on this kind of information. Free Speech TV would be a good place to go for that kind of news.

Last edited by Ch'i; 09-06-2006 at 02:46 PM..
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Old 09-06-2006, 02:42 PM   #3 (permalink)
 
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nothing is wrong.
capitalism is rational.
all is well.
all is always necessarily well.
corporations are nice.
they like you, you like them.
dont you feel better about gas prices and iraq and halliburton and everything else now?
we like each other.
let's have a nice big hug, shall we?



this is how capitalism, which is necessarily rational, floats all boats.
dont you feel better now?
this is what the always rational workings of those necessarily rational markets looks like.
doesnt it feel nice knowing how rational everything is?
i do.
i hope you do too.

ok, now all the below are today's secret words.
whenever anybody says any of the secret words,
scream real loud.
ok?

yay capitalism!
yay petroleum industry!
yay american hyperconsumption of petroleum!
yay everything!
yay cronyism!
yay bush administration!

of course there is nothing to be done about oil, its price or anything else.
this is the best of all possible worlds.

yay capitalism!
yay petroleum industry!
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Old 09-06-2006, 02:59 PM   #4 (permalink)
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There's a fair amount news about oil out there, usually in the business section (although I haven't seen much of Halliburton or Iraqi oil news).

Here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5318776.stm

This is from yesteday or so. It was on CNN, BBC, and NPR. I don't know about any other news sources. Maybe they thought that a car chase or cat up a tree was more newsworthy.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/06/mark...reut/index.htm

Looks like oil is doing what it does - up and down, up and down. There's a lot of oil speculation type reports this time of year due to the end of the traditional driving season in the US and also the onset of hurricane season (which is feared to disrupt supplies).

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/06/news...reut/index.htm

This one is interesting; sort of whistle-blowing-ish.

As for Iraqi oil and Halliburton? Maybe there is nothing to report or maybe there is a conspiracy, I don't know. But maybe some digging will reveal info.

Here are two different "news" reports for fair and balanced reporting on the 3 most recent news regarding Halliburton and oil in Iraq.

Halliburton
http://www.halliburton.com/default/m...ws_110505.html

http://www.halliburton.com/about/community_0512c.jsp

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/kbraward.html

And from Halliburton Watch
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/4150680.html

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/kbraward.html

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/hal.html
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Old 09-06-2006, 03:27 PM   #5 (permalink)
 
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Quote:
As for Iraqi oil and Halliburton? Maybe there is nothing to report or maybe there is a conspiracy, I don't know. But maybe some digging will reveal info.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is required by Congress to provide quartertly reports on all aspects of Iraq reconstruction and the expenditure of US funds.

These are the highlights of the oil and gas sector in the July 2006 Quarterly Report:

* More than 95% of the sector’s allocation has been obligated, but less than 60% has been expended.
* Oil production, which hovered around 2 million barrels per day (BPD) throughout 2005 and most of the first half of 2006, reached 2.5 million BPD in mid-June. In the two weeks following this peak, however, production decreased to 2.35 and 2.23 million BPD, respectively.
* Exports averaged 1.6 million BPD throughout the quarter and closed at 1.67 million BPD for June, slightly above the end-state goal of 1.65 million BPD.
* The volatile security situation and limited provisions for sustainment continue to be challenges for developing the sector.
* Corruption threatens not only Iraq’s capacity to fund new capital investment, but also its ability to sustain and increase production.

http://www.sigir.mil/sectors/oil.aspx

The July report also notes that the cost of corruption in the overall reconstruction effort is estimated at $4 billion/year.

http://www.sigir.mil/reports/quarter...s/default.aspx
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Old 09-06-2006, 03:49 PM   #6 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by high_jinx
im surprised that i never hear an "oil update" in any news, print or tv. i wonder a lot of stuff like....

1) whats happening in iraqi oil fields?
They are being parcelled out to coalition governments. I suspect that bidding is still going on between companies like BHP and Halfayah.
Quote:
Originally Posted by high_jinx
2) whats haliburton up to there?
As of April this year, the KBR part of Haliburton is being traded publicly on the NYSE. They still "employ over 30,000 men and women in Iraq. Halliburton's work in Iraq is diverse and complicated. In addition to troop support, Halliburton also provides air traffic control support; produces 74 million gallons of water a month for consumption, hygiene and laundry; deploys as many as 700 trucks a day to deliver essentials to American forces; and provides firefighter and crash-rescue services, as well as working to restore Iraqi oil infrastructure."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#2000s

As far as I know, Haliburton still has notm apologized about the botched food and water problems the summer of 2005. Current information is sketchy at best.
Quote:
Originally Posted by high_jinx
3) is there some kind of arrangement from the result of our occupation in the middle east?
Yes and no. You see the idea is that we are rebuilding their country. The money is coming from our government in the form of debt, and it's being paid to (mostly) American corporations in exorbitant amounts.

Silence is policy.
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Old 09-06-2006, 04:02 PM   #7 (permalink)
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Shell believes they have identified a major oil field in the Gulf of Mexico per today's newspaper.

And here is a lovely little article sent to me by a friend that deals with the ten worst war profiteers in Iraq.

War Profiteers

Numbers 8, 9 and 10 will be the big winners:

Quote:
No. 8, No. 9 and No. 10: Chevron, ExxonMobil and the Petro-imperialists

Three years into the occupation, after an evolving series of deft legal maneuvers and manipulative political appointments, the oil giants' takeover of Iraq's oil is nearly complete.

A key milestone in the process occurred in September 2004, when U.S.-appointed Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi preempted Iraq's January 2005 elections (and the subsequent drafting of the Constitution) by writing guidelines intended to form the basis of a new petroleum law. Allawi's policy would effectively exclude the government from any future involvement in oil production, while promising to privatize the Iraqi National Oil Co. Although Allawi is no longer in power, his plans heavily influenced future thinking on oil policy.

Helping the process move along are the economic hit men at BearingPoint, the consultants whose latest contract calls for "private-sector involvement in strategic sectors, including privatization, asset sales, concessions, leases and management contracts, especially those in the oil and supporting industries."

For their part, the oil industry giants have kept a relatively low profile throughout the process, lending just a few senior statesmen to the CPA, including Philip Carroll (Shell U.S., Fluor), Rob McKee (ConocoPhillips and Halliburton) and Norm Szydlowski (ChevronTexaco), the CPA's liaison to the fledgling Iraqi Oil Ministry. Greg Muttitt of U.K. nonprofit Platform says Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips are among the most ambitious of all the major oil companies in Iraq. Shell and Chevron have already signed agreements with the Iraqi government and begun to train Iraqi staff and conduct studies -- arrangements that give the companies vital access to Oil Ministry officials and geological data.

Although Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said in August that the final competition for developing Iraq's oil fields will be wide open, the preliminary arrangements will give the oil giants a distinct advantage when it comes time to bid. The relative level of interest by the big oil companies depends on their appetite for risk, and their need for reserves. Shell, for example, has performed worse than most of its peers in finding new reserves in recent years -- a fact underscored by a 2004 scandal in which the company was caught lying to its investors. At this point the key challenge to multinationals is whether they can convince the Iraqi parliament to pass a new petroleum law by the end of this year.

A key provision in the new law is a commitment to using production sharing agreements (PSAs), which will lock the government into a long-term commitment (up to 50 years) to sharing oil revenues, and restrict its right to introduce any new laws that might affect the companies' profitability. Greg Muttitt of Platform says the PSAs are designed to favor private companies at the expense of exporting governments, which is why none of the top oil producing countries in the Middle East use them. Under the new petroleum law, all new fields and some existing fields would be opened up to private companies through the use of PSAs. Since less than 20 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have already been developed, if Iraq's government commits to signing the PSAs, it could cost the country up to nearly $200 billion in lost revenues according to Muttitt, lead researcher for "Crude Designs: the Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth."

Meanwhile, in a kind of pincer movement, the parliament has begun to feel pressured from the IMF to adopt the new oil law by the end of the year as part of "conditionalities" imposed under a new debt relief agreement. Of course pressuring a country as volatile as Iraq to agree to any kind of arrangement without first allowing for legitimate parliamentary debate is fraught with peril. It is a risky way to nurture democracy in a country that already appears to be entering into a civil war.

"If misjudged -- either by denying a fair share to the regions in which oil is located, or by giving regions too much autonomy at the expense of national cohesion -- these oil decisions could fracture, and ultimately break apart, the country," Muttitt suggests.
Does anyone still believe that we didn't go there for the oil?
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Old 09-06-2006, 05:12 PM   #8 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
Does anyone still believe that we didn't go there for the oil?
I supported invading Iraq long before we actually did. The fundemental underlying reason was oil. I would often say I supported the invasion because of the need for stability in the Middle East. But the only reason I cared about stability in the Middle East was because of the oil. I never thought people didn't understand that. When Sadaam invaded Kuwait it was because he wanted to control the oil in Kuwait, and we came to Kuwaits defense because of the oil or "stability in the Middle East" I didn't think there was any doubt. If there was no oil we would not of cared, or at least not me - about getting rid of Sadaam. Sadaam wanted military power to control Middle East oil, he was a threat because he threatened the stability in the Middle East, in other words he was a threat to America. He knew it and we knew it, and it was all about oil. Our American life-style depends on oil. I am willing to fight to defend my life-style as have many others. Those who are not willing to fight to defend our oil dependant life-style should sell the rest of us on the alternative.
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Old 09-06-2006, 06:03 PM   #9 (permalink)
 
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"i am willing to fight to defend my lifestyle?"

i was joking.
you are not.
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Old 09-06-2006, 06:13 PM   #10 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
Those who are not willing to fight to defend our oil dependant life-style should sell the rest of us on the alternative.

Well in that case, the next time I see you perhaps I should shoot you and take your wallet. You see, I've become accustomed to a certain lifestyle but the economy has forced me to cut back on that lifestyle. By your logic, it is therefore OK for me to steal whatever I need in order to maintain my former lifestyle.


Are you starting to see the morality issue here?
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Old 09-06-2006, 06:20 PM   #11 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_dux
* Exports averaged 1.6 million BPD throughout the quarter and closed at 1.67 million BPD for June, slightly above the end-state goal of 1.65 million BPD.
* The volatile security situation and limited provisions for sustainment continue to be challenges for developing the sector.
* Corruption threatens not only Iraq’s capacity to fund new capital investment, but also its ability to sustain and increase production.

Ding, ding, ding. This is probably why we never hear about it on the news. There's not really much good news to report in this sector, and unlike the bad news about deaths and such, when people here about oil, especially from a country we are occupying, they probably want to hear something good.

I won't go on a rant about corruption in Iraq on this one... I'll either be too right, or absolutely wrong, and both situations would scare me (I'd rather be found wrong though).

I'm sure most of that oil not being exported is going to our military installations to feed our war machines, but it would not surprise me if we are importing oil from halfway across the world to go to our military bases. Some of the other frivolous expenditures I saw while out there, this would not surprise me one bit.

Thanks for the info dc_dux, and thanks for asking this question high-jinx, I've been curious about this myself.

Oh, and when reading about Halliburton, also look up KBR (Kellog-Brown-and-Root, Root may be spelled differently), they hold most of the contracting positions out in Iraq, and this is where my bitching about corruption would start coming into play. I believe they are a subsidiary of Halliburton.
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Old 09-07-2006, 06:21 AM   #12 (permalink)
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Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA
Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
I supported invading Iraq long before we actually did. The fundemental underlying reason was oil. I would often say I supported the invasion because of the need for stability in the Middle East. But the only reason I cared about stability in the Middle East was because of the oil. I never thought people didn't understand that. When Sadaam invaded Kuwait it was because he wanted to control the oil in Kuwait, and we came to Kuwaits defense because of the oil or "stability in the Middle East" I didn't think there was any doubt. If there was no oil we would not of cared, or at least not me - about getting rid of Sadaam. Sadaam wanted military power to control Middle East oil, he was a threat because he threatened the stability in the Middle East, in other words he was a threat to America. He knew it and we knew it, and it was all about oil. Our American life-style depends on oil. I am willing to fight to defend my life-style as have many others. Those who are not willing to fight to defend our oil dependant life-style should sell the rest of us on the alternative.

You may have known, but why did this president's administration work so hard to sell Iraq as being part of 9/11, dangerous to us and having WMD's????? None of which were true.

It's not up to those who want alternative fuels to "try to sell their ideas to the rest of us"..... It's up to the car companies, the oil companies and so on to RELEASE the patents they bought up, stole, extorted and so on.

American car companies are going to die very painfully (and so is this country's economy) when the Japanese and other foreign car makers really push out the hybrids and electric cars. It'll be interesting to see how the leadership of this country will prevent massive imports and sales of hybrids.

It will also be interesting to see those people who favor a "laissez faire" business government react to the government protection of the big oil companies. How will they react to the laws that are going to be passed that will prevent or push hybrids and electric cars into legal messes?

How is this government going to react when they lose the taxes from oil?

How are these big business neocons going to handle it when because of their own greed and refusal to change, the Japanese and others develop and start selling massive amounts of hybrids here? The oil companies will be obsolete, the tax money will dry up, the US car companies will be on their last legs and this country will be going into a Depression like we have never seen.

Sound far fetched? How much of our nation depends on the auto industry, in one form or another? And those companies have how many hybrid ideas?

Meanwhile, Toyota, Honda and soon Nissan and Mitsubishi have Hybrids that can not stay on the lot. They are moving very fast and there are waiting lists to buy them.

But the US auto industry wants to blame the workers pensions, retirement benefits and so on. While if they had just 10 years ago started using those patents for non-gas cars, or worked on mass producing hybrids or other form of car they'd still be industry leaders and not dying dinosaurs blaming the workers.
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Old 09-07-2006, 06:29 AM   #13 (permalink)
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Why aren't we hearing about reconstruction of the oil industry in Iraq? Because frankly, no one really cares. Oh sure, we all want lower gas prices, which some of the hawks now conceed was an important reason we invaded in the first place, but really, other than the human interest angle, who cares about infrastructure construction? If it's going to inconvenience your commute, you care, but who here really wants to know about local construction projects. Yes, these particular projects happen to be important to our self-interests, but they are going to have no immediate impact on us so no one cares.

Show of hands for who wants regular updates on the progress of the repairs to the Alaskan pipeline that's going to have a much more immediate impact on all our lives? There will probably be a little blurb somewhere when it's done, but pipeline construction doesn't sell papers.
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Old 09-07-2006, 09:03 AM   #14 (permalink)
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Location: Ventura County
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
Well in that case, the next time I see you perhaps I should shoot you and take your wallet. You see, I've become accustomed to a certain lifestyle but the economy has forced me to cut back on that lifestyle. By your logic, it is therefore OK for me to steal whatever I need in order to maintain my former lifestyle.


Are you starting to see the morality issue here?
No I don't. Stealing someone's property is different from paying a fair market price for it. Being willing to defend a free market is not stealing. I think we fight to make sure the market for oil is free, not to steal oil.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pan6467
You may have known, but why did this president's administration work so hard to sell Iraq as being part of 9/11, dangerous to us and having WMD's????? None of which were true.
I find that Bush speaks in ways some don't understand. The current conflicts in the Middle East relate to power and control, this in turn directly relates to control of Middle Eastern Oil. Terrorism is a strategy used by some in this struggle. Iran, specifically Sadaam, encouraged terrorism to create chaos in his efforts to control the region. Although not directly related to 9/11 there is a base connection.

You are correct about WMD's. He did not have any. In hind-sight I guess if he actually had them, he would have used them - don't you agree.

Quote:
It's not up to those who want alternative fuels to "try to sell their ideas to the rest of us"..... It's up to the car companies, the oil companies and so on to RELEASE the patents they bought up, stole, extorted and so on.
I don't understand.

I say - I am willing to go to war for the reasons stated. I support candidates who support my view. My candidates get elected and convince the American public, congress, UN, and others that it is o.k. to go to war. Then you, being against the war say - It is not up to you to sell your ideas on alternatives to war?

If we let Islamic extremist control the Middle East, our lives would be dramtically different. I think in a negative way, therefore I am willing to fight. What do you think? And what are you willing to do?

Quote:
American car companies are going to die very painfully (and so is this country's economy) when the Japanese and other foreign car makers really push out the hybrids and electric cars. It'll be interesting to see how the leadership of this country will prevent massive imports and sales of hybrids.
Many of those Toyota's Honda's an Hyunda's are being made here in the USA. Toyota's stock trades on the NYSE. Chrysler is owned by a German company. Ford and GM have been on a downward slide for the past 40 years.

Quote:
It will also be interesting to see those people who favor a "laissez faire" business government react to the government protection of the big oil companies. How will they react to the laws that are going to be passed that will prevent or push hybrids and electric cars into legal messes?
If people want hybrids and electric cars they will be produced. I don't have any close friends or family that own one, have ordered one, or is even thinking about getting one. Some are liberal, they tend to complain about oil consumption but still want enough horespower to pull a 15,000 boat (the one they dream about owning).

Quote:
How is this government going to react when they lose the taxes from oil?
Tax other things. Perhaps a internet usage tax.

Quote:
How are these big business neocons going to handle it when because of their own greed and refusal to change, the Japanese and others develop and start selling massive amounts of hybrids here? The oil companies will be obsolete, the tax money will dry up, the US car companies will be on their last legs and this country will be going into a Depression like we have never seen.
Company's will follow the market leaders. Oil companies will diversify with the profits made from oil. The depression in the '30's was pretty bad, I don't know of any respected economist saying we are headed for another depression like that in the '30's.

Quote:
Sound far fetched? How much of our nation depends on the auto industry, in one form or another? And those companies have how many hybrid ideas?
At one point the horse and buggy industry dominated transportation. The railroads where huge. Then automobiles came along, the airplanes. I am looking forward to what is coming next. change happens all the time. Out with the old in with the new.

Quote:
Meanwhile, Toyota, Honda and soon Nissan and Mitsubishi have Hybrids that can not stay on the lot. They are moving very fast and there are waiting lists to buy them.
Isn't that a good thing from your point of view?

Quote:
But the US auto industry wants to blame the workers pensions, retirement benefits and so on. While if they had just 10 years ago started using those patents for non-gas cars, or worked on mass producing hybrids or other form of car they'd still be industry leaders and not dying dinosaurs blaming the workers.
Perhaps you are correct. If manageent is incompetant at those companies, those companies will die. Kind of like natural selection. Perhaps the new companies will be leaner, meaner, and more profit oriented.
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Last edited by aceventura3; 09-07-2006 at 09:41 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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Old 09-08-2006, 10:44 AM   #15 (permalink)
Lennonite Priest
 
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Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA
Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
No I don't. Stealing someone's property is different from paying a fair market price for it. Being willing to defend a free market is not stealing. I think we fight to make sure the market for oil is free, not to steal oil.

I find that Bush speaks in ways some don't understand. The current conflicts in the Middle East relate to power and control, this in turn directly relates to control of Middle Eastern Oil. Terrorism is a strategy used by some in this struggle. Iran, specifically Sadaam, encouraged terrorism to create chaos in his efforts to control the region. Although not directly related to 9/11 there is a base connection. You are correct about WMD's. He did not have any. In hind-sight I guess if he actually had them, he would have used them - don't you agree.

Ace, I am not trying to be a smartass because I like the points you have made and the way you made them. However, Saddam and Iran were enemies and had fought a few wars, I am assuming you hit the wrong letter.

Ok, show me anything anywhere that shows Saddam's regime promoted terrorism before 9/11. He did not have anything to do with 9/11, nor did he train the terrorists nor did he have WMDs.... all 3 of those were used to sell this war, not the fact "it was to preserve the free market of oil" or whatever.

So this administration flat out lied to the people and other nations about why they wanted war. If I recall, anyone that spoke out against the administration at the time were called unpatriotic, "didn't have the facts, because those weapons did exist...." and so on.

As for your last sentence, yes, I do believe he would have used them. So in just saying that, the proof that the administration lied about the whole reason we went to war is sickening.

Then there are the people who say "he tried to buy yellowcake".....really and who states this? The same people we believed that said Saddam had Anthrax, Mustard gas and all kinds of nasties. Then were proven and in their own ways admitted to lieing?


Quote:
I don't understand.

I say - I am willing to go to war for the reasons stated. I support candidates who support my view. My candidates get elected and convince the American public, congress, UN, and others that it is o.k. to go to war. Then you, being against the war say - It is not up to you to sell your ideas on alternatives to war?
And as talked about above those people lied, were given false data and were cajoled, harrassed, and had their patriotism questioned if they said anything.

It wasn't a very "free speech" oriented congress then, just go back and read the posts, the papers and watch C-SPAN archives of how vicious that era was.

Quote:
If we let Islamic extremist control the Middle East, our lives would be dramtically different. I think in a negative way, therefore I am willing to fight. What do you think? And what are you willing to do?
But Saddam was a moderate. We in essence are putting extremists in power by this war based on lies.

Iran was the country that needed to be invaded not Iraq. Now it is too late, and Iran has the power to be a far greater threat now than Saddam ever could have been.



Quote:
Many of those Toyota's Honda's an Hyunda's are being made here in the USA. Toyota's stock trades on the NYSE. Chrysler is owned by a German company. Ford and GM have been on a downward slide for the past 40 years.
Very true, and they are very good employers. Nissan also.


Quote:
If people want hybrids and electric cars they will be produced. I don't have any close friends or family that own one, have ordered one, or is even thinking about getting one. Some are liberal, they tend to complain about oil consumption but still want enough horespower to pull a 15,000 boat (the one they dream about owning).
Well there are hypocrites on both sides and we all know this. People want a better world but most are unwilling to change any aspect of their life, they expect everyone else to.

Quote:
Tax other things. Perhaps a internet usage tax.
Perhaps, or go after the oil companies like you did the tobacco companies and sue them for billions..... billions supposedly earmarked for programs that help people and yet..... the money never showed up.



Quote:
Company's will follow the market leaders. Oil companies will diversify with the profits made from oil. The depression in the '30's was pretty bad, I don't know of any respected economist saying we are headed for another depression like that in the '30's.
Time will tell. I hope we don't get that bad.

Quote:
At one point the horse and buggy industry dominated transportation. The railroads where huge. Then automobiles came along, the airplanes. I am looking forward to what is coming next. change happens all the time. Out with the old in with the new.

Isn't that a good thing from your point of view?
I love this argument. The horse and buggy industry???? ahhh I miss watching Wall Street.

Yes, moving forward is always needed, however, you must also take into account the present. We're not training our workers to make the needed moves, our education system is shit and where the US was once the beacon of progression we are sorely lagging behind and becoming dinosaurs. Partly because our society became too lazy and partly because of greed from the top down.

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Perhaps you are correct. If managment is incompetant at those companies, those companies will die. Kind of like natural selection. Perhaps the new companies will be leaner, meaner, and more profit oriented.
But again, the US lags, we are not the leader anymore and we are leaving great debts and horrific financial and infrastructural futures for our children.

It's sad that the attitude this last quote shows is what the biggest problem is.

Management and the workers aren't working together to advance the companies anymore. It's sad, it's pathetic because of the greed, and it is suicidal to the economy and future of this nation.
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Old 09-08-2006, 12:19 PM   #16 (permalink)
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Ace, I am not trying to be a smartass because I like the points you have made and the way you made them. However, Saddam and Iran were enemies and had fought a few wars, I am assuming you hit the wrong letter.

Ok, show me anything anywhere that shows Saddam's regime promoted terrorism before 9/11. He did not have anything to do with 9/11, nor did he train the terrorists nor did he have WMDs.... all 3 of those were used to sell this war, not the fact "it was to preserve the free market of oil" or whatever.
$25k to families of suicide boombers to name one.

I don't recall Bush or anyone in his administration saying Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. They did state that there was an indirect connection, which is what i believe.

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So this administration flat out lied to the people and other nations about why they wanted war. If I recall, anyone that spoke out against the administration at the time were called unpatriotic, "didn't have the facts, because those weapons did exist...." and so on.
People were called unpatriotic for failing to support our troops. Some people want us to lose the war, they too are unpatriotic in my opinion. There is difference between dissent and encouraging our enemy, which some people did and still do.

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As for your last sentence, yes, I do believe he would have used them. So in just saying that, the proof that the administration lied about the whole reason we went to war is sickening.
I see this totally different. Even if I thought Bush lied, given the fact that a mad man would have used nuclear weapons against innocent people would trump the lie.

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Then there are the people who say "he tried to buy yellowcake".....really and who states this? The same people we believed that said Saddam had Anthrax, Mustard gas and all kinds of nasties. Then were proven and in their own ways admitted to lieing?
I thought that information came from intelgence agencies. I have not followed the Sadaam trial, but some important questions are: how many people did he actually have killed and how did he kill them? I know we can not prove what he intended to at this point, but I feel better now that he is no longer in power.

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And as talked about above those people lied, were given false data and were cajoled, harrassed, and had their patriotism questioned if they said anything.
O.k., if you call someone a lier, they normally respond in a mean way.

When a person says Bush lied, and then Bush says by calling me a lier - you aid the enemy - you are scum. Then that person starts to cry - I say that person is a wimp (using a G rated term rather than the one I would really use). Basically they need to get over it and fight, defend their position, get tough, get mean, get mad-dog mean.

I am tired of Democrats crying in the media about how Cheny hurt their feelings. The main reason I love Cheny and Rumsfeld so much is because they are two mean SOB's, and I don't like Gore and Kerry because they would be like jail-house girl friends of Cheny and Rumsfeld.

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It wasn't a very "free speech" oriented congress then, just go back and read the posts, the papers and watch C-SPAN archives of how vicious that era was.
Politics are for grown ups.



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But Saddam was a moderate. We in essence are putting extremists in power by this war based on lies.
Interesting theory. How does putting extremists in power helpful to anyone? Why would Bush want that?

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Iran was the country that needed to be invaded not Iraq. Now it is too late, and Iran has the power to be a far greater threat now than Saddam ever could have been.
Like I have written before. When you look at a map of the Middle East you clearly see Iran sandwiched between Iraq and Afganistan. Iran is militarily stronger than Iraq. We need control of Iraq if we are to take military action agaisnt Iran. Also having control of Afganistan helps. With military presence in strategic points we can put the squeeze on Iran.
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Old 09-08-2006, 02:44 PM   #17 (permalink)
 
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Like I have written before. When you look at a map of the Middle East you clearly see Iran sandwiched between Iraq and Afganistan. Iran is militarily stronger than Iraq. We need control of Iraq if we are to take military action agaisnt Iran. Also having control of Afganistan helps. With military presence in strategic points we can put the squeeze on Iran.
The result of our invasion of Iraq was to put the two most extemeist parties with ties to Iran (SCIRI and Dawa) in control of the Iraq government only increasing Iran's influence.

And we have control of Afghanistan? Perhaps we would have if we did not abandon it prematurely, for the most part, in order to pursue the folly in Iraq.
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Old 09-09-2006, 01:10 PM   #18 (permalink)
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The result of our invasion of Iraq was to put the two most extemeist parties with ties to Iran (SCIRI and Dawa) in control of the Iraq government only increasing Iran's influence.

And we have control of Afghanistan? Perhaps we would have if we did not abandon it prematurely, for the most part, in order to pursue the folly in Iraq.
Using the language of some, aren't we "occupiers" of those nations? Given our military presence, I think we can do what needs to be done, if an offensive military strategy is needed against Iran. If we did not have military presence in those countries an offensive military strategy would be far more difficult.

My biggest fear is the next President will undo what the Bush administration has masterfully orchestrated. People said he had no plan, I can see it pretty clearly - don't you?

Iran sees what has happened. I think that they believe world opinion is against the US and that is why they want to speed up their nuclear weapons development. (Ooops, "nuclear power" development, they don't have enough oil to satisfy their electricity needs - right?)
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Old 09-09-2006, 03:01 PM   #19 (permalink)
 
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Using the language of some, aren't we "occupiers" of those nations? Given our military presence, I think we can do what needs to be done, if an offensive military strategy is needed against Iran. If we did not have military presence in those countries an offensive military strategy would be far more difficult.

My biggest fear is the next President will undo what the Bush administration has masterfully orchestrated. People said he had no plan, I can see it pretty clearly - don't you?
WOW...I am really at a loss for words.

We cant even control the insurgency and sectarian violence in Iraq, not to mention the reemerging presence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and you honestly believe we can "do what needs to be done" militarily as a result of our increasingly unpopular occupation of Iraq?

What I see clearly is that this "masterful strategy" has only strengthened Iran's hand in the region and yes, has increasingly made the US the common enemy among the more militant muslims in the region and the world.
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Old 09-09-2006, 06:15 PM   #20 (permalink)
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WOW...I am really at a loss for words.

We cant even control the insurgency and sectarian violence in Iraq, not to mention the reemerging presence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and you honestly believe we can "do what needs to be done" militarily as a result of our increasingly unpopular occupation of Iraq?

What I see clearly is that this "masterful strategy" has only strengthened Iran's hand in the region and yes, has increasingly made the US the common enemy among the more militant muslims in the region and the world.
Our military has a secondary role in policing Iraq. Policing Iraq is not and has never been our primary mission.

Our primary mission was to overthrow Sadaam, lay a foundation for democracy, take the fight to the Islamic extremists, and begin the process of creating stability in the region.
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Old 09-09-2006, 06:37 PM   #21 (permalink)
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...lay a foundation for democracy...and begin the process of creating stability in the region.
Mission accomplished... America's attack on Iraq drew out the conflict longer than if we would have let a healthy revolution take place. This same thing happened in Vietnam. I forget who's signature this is but I like it; America cannot hope to win in Vietnam against an enemy fighting with guerrilla warfare, and doesn't care about its level of casualties.

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Old 09-09-2006, 06:48 PM   #22 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Our military has a secondary role in policing Iraq. Policing Iraq is not and has never been our primary mission.

Our primary mission was to overthrow Sadaam, lay a foundation for democracy, take the fight to the Islamic extremists, and begin the process of creating stability in the region.
My car got broken into about 2 years ago. I called it in immediatally. I explained everything, and was told to make out a report. They didn't even come by to investigate. They filed my report and it was never looked at again. I lost my stereo, my watch, several hundred cds (not burned cds, mind you, actual $14 cds), a window, and my sense of safety. I asked a sherif friend of mine why it wasn't investigated. He told me that the police man-power doesn't exist to investigate most minor crimes. Mind you I live in San Jose, a place known to be one of the safest large cities in the US. Hundreds of billions of dollars go to Iraq for purpouses such as policing. Not only that, we are going into debt much faster than ever before as a direct result of this war. I think we can all agree that Sadam was an evil man and should have been stopped, but should we be doing this at the cost of our own country? My daughter will pay for this. My daughter's daughter will pay for this. My posterity and yours will pay for our inability to make simple financial, ethcail, and moral decisions in their consideration. I am more concerned about solving our problems today instead of tomorrow. While on the surface this is an investment in resources, any scientist can tell you that oil isn't renewable, and will exhaust only faster the more we consume. Any invester will tell you that investing in something that is going to stop giving you a return soon is a bad move. Any democratic citizen can tell you that destroying a government because it might have posed a threat to you in the past is behavior befitting an empire. Any bleeding heart liberal can tell you this war has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with control, and more importantly with lining some very deep pockets. You don't need to listen to the bleeding heat liberal, but the scientist and the invester are nothing to sneeze at.
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Old 09-09-2006, 06:55 PM   #23 (permalink)
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Good post willravel. I wonder how much oil we've used up during this war.
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Old 09-09-2006, 09:30 PM   #24 (permalink)
 
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Our military has a secondary role in policing Iraq. Policing Iraq is not and has never been our primary mission.

Our primary mission was to overthrow Sadaam, lay a foundation for democracy, take the fight to the Islamic extremists, and begin the process of creating stability in the region.
We have lost more than 3,000 American men and women in Iraq, almost entirely after the fall of Saddam, because our policymakers in the White House and Defense Dept. believed we would be greeted as liberators.

What a sad commentary. What you in effect are acknowledging is that Bush/Rumsefeld did not understand or plan for the fact that an urban war creates an insurgency, not to mention the fact that, as many Middle East experts outside the Administration predicted, we would open the door to sectarian viiolence in a power struggle created by the post-Saddam vaccum......and we paid and are continuing to pay the price.
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Old 09-09-2006, 11:19 PM   #25 (permalink)
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Our military has a secondary role in policing Iraq. Policing Iraq is not and has never been our primary mission.

Our primary mission was to overthrow Sadaam, lay a foundation for democracy, take the fight to the Islamic extremists, and begin the process of creating stability in the region.
Unless Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, who seems to be on active duty status, by the way.....is a liar, or this interview is a contrivance, your "take" seems to be trumped by Schneid's account of Rumsfeld's pre-invasion planning.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid's account is remarkably consistant with what has been reported about the "early retirement" of COS, Gen. Shinseki.

It doen't seem that the reports about Rumsfeld overruling the reccomendations of troop strength of Gen. Shinseki, or the State Dept. post invasion occupation plan, has much influence on your opinion. Will this reporting change that? Will any reporting influence a revision of your opinion?

My tired question....how do you <b>know</b>, what you know? Where does all that resolve....that "certainty"....come from? I, by no means, have it....I have to qualify everything that I suspect....with "stuff" like this:
Quote:
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-21...dp-widget-news
Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, an early planner of the war, tells about challenges of invasion and rebuilding.
BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
247-7821
September 8, 2006
FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.

Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks.

Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's listened as other retired generals have done so.

"Everybody has a right to their opinion," he said. "But what good did it do?"

Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.

In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.

On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he said, "life just went to hell."

That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war."

A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast.

"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan ... Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."

Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."

Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days.

"There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet."

There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it.

"Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea," Scheid said.

Eventually other military agencies - like the transportation and Army materiel commands - had to get involved.

They couldn't just "keep planning this in the dark," Scheid said.

Planning continued to be a challenge.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Why did Rumsfeld think that? Scheid doesn't know.

"But think back to those times. We had done Bosnia. We said we were going into Bosnia and stop the fighting and come right out. And we stayed."

Was Rumsfeld right or wrong?

Scheid said he doesn't know that either.

"In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."

Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said.

"We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are.

"Now we're going more toward a civil war. We didn't see that coming."

While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the American public's view of the troops.

He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that patriotism among citizens will continue to decline.

"We're really hurting right now," he said.

Daily Press researcher Tracy Sorensen contributed to this report.
Quote:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc..._09/009469.php
by Kevin Drum
September 8, 2006

"HE WOULD FIRE THE NEXT PERSON THAT SAID THAT"....Today, via Orin Kerr, comes a remarkable interview with Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11, and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning.........

........In a way, this is old news. As much as it beggars the imagination, there's been plenty of evidence all along that Bush never took the idea of rebuilding Iraq seriously. The plan was to remove Saddam from power, claim victory, and get out.

However, this is the clearest evidence I've seen yet. The guy who was actually in charge of logistics has now directly confirmed that Rumsfeld not only didn't intend to rebuild Iraq in any serious way, but threatened to fire anyone who wasted time on the idea. Needless to say, he wouldn't have done this unless it reflected the wishes of the president.

And this also means that all of Bush's talk about democracy was nothing but hot air. If you're serious about planting democracy after a war, you don't plan to simply topple a government and then leave.

So: the lack of postwar planning wasn't merely the result of incompetence. It was deliberate policy. There was never any intention of rebuilding Iraq and there was never any intention of wasting time on democracy promotion. That was merely a post hoc explanation after we failed to find the promised WMD. Either that or BG Scheid is lying.

This is an astounding interview, all the more so for the apparently resigned tone that Scheid brings to it. It belongs on the front page of the New York Times, not the Hampton Roads Daily Press.

POSTSCRIPT: An alternative explanation, based on Rumsfeld's admonition that "the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war," is that Rumsfeld and Bush were planning to stay but simply lied about it in order to build support for the war. However, based on the rest of the interview with Scheid, as well as the other evidence that there was no plan to stay and rebuild in any serious way, that explanation seems unlikely. The bulk of the evidence continues to suggest that democracy and rebuilding were simply not on Bush's radar.
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Old 09-10-2006, 03:36 AM   #26 (permalink)
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Overall, it does very much look as it the US govt truly believed that people would welcome them with love, and tey seem totally confused that this did not happen.

I find that Americans (and to a lesser extent many Europeans, Canadians, Australians etc) are so clear about the self evident advantages of their own way of life and politico-economic arangements that they (we) feel that the poor benighted souls around the world that have the misfortune to live in non-western style ways will breath a sigh of relief as soon as we arive and thank us for the privilege.

Sadly, the people in the countries involved have a "live free or die" mentality. Just like the Americans had when they kicked out the British.

As the largest historical collonial power in history the British have slightly more experience of how the "natives" do not welcome all the advancements that are offered to them, even though it is obvious to us that they would be better off accepting them.

To me it beggars belief that anyone who has grown up in the USA, a country proud of its victory in an anti-collonial revolution, should be shocked in any way by the level of vehemence that the local population feel about their invasion and occupation.

In the case of the 13 collonies it was "no taxation without representation" as their money was taken to make the regime of George (III Hanover) wealthy and secure.

Is it any wonder that the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are unhappy about the reality (or prospect in the case of Iran) of their money being used to bring wealth and security to the regime of George (II Bush).

As you sow, so shall you reap.
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Old 09-10-2006, 10:39 AM   #27 (permalink)
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I find that Americans (and to a lesser extent many Europeans, Canadians, Australians etc) are so clear about the self evident advantages of their own way of life and politico-economic arangements that they (we) feel that the poor benighted souls around the world that have the misfortune to live in non-western style ways will breath a sigh of relief as soon as we arive and thank us for the privilege.
Social Darwinism has been around since Britain thought of it a few centuries ago. It was wrong then, and its still wrong today.
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Is it any wonder that the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are unhappy about the reality (or prospect in the case of Iran) of their money being used to bring wealth and security to the regime of George (II Bush).
Actually its taking more money out than its bringing in, and the lies used to protect the Bush administration are drawing attention, but I see what you mean. No one seems to be able to stop them until the comming elections.

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Old 09-10-2006, 08:17 PM   #28 (permalink)
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What a sad commentary. What you in effect are acknowledging is that Bush/Rumsefeld did not understand or plan for the fact that an urban war creates an insurgency, not to mention the fact that, as many Middle East experts outside the Administration predicted, we would open the door to sectarian viiolence in a power struggle created by the post-Saddam vaccum......and we paid and are continuing to pay the price.
What I acknowledge is the fact that "policing Iraq" or "winning the peace" in Iraq is not and was not our primary military objective. I think some people thought it was, but the folks making the decisions didn't. So, how do you measure success - by a standard not set by policy makers? I think far too many people are making this far more complicated than it is.

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Originally Posted by willravel
Hundreds of billions of dollars go to Iraq for purpouses such as policing. Not only that, we are going into debt much faster than ever before as a direct result of this war. I think we can all agree that Sadam was an evil man and should have been stopped, but should we be doing this at the cost of our own country?
True - there are costs, but what would the consequences be if we didn't pay those costs. I remember a slogan from a transmission commercial where the guys says - "you can pay me now, or you can pay me later". I think ignoring the Middle East now would be a grave error and cost alot more in the future. I guess you think the opposite. If you are right we have incurred a cost that we can recover from, if I am right and we do noththing, we incur costs that we will never recover from. I think the risk of doing nothing is too high.
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Old 09-10-2006, 08:58 PM   #29 (permalink)
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True - there are costs, but what would the consequences be if we didn't pay those costs. I remember a slogan from a transmission commercial where the guys says - "you can pay me now, or you can pay me later". I think ignoring the Middle East now would be a grave error and cost alot more in the future. I guess you think the opposite. If you are right we have incurred a cost that we can recover from, if I am right and we do noththing, we incur costs that we will never recover from. I think the risk of doing nothing is too high.
What would be the consequences had we not interceeded in Iraq? Well that's quite simple. Most political and military analists not on the administration's payrole have been saying for the past 10 years that Sadam's power has (had) been steadily weakening. His grip on the civlians in Iraq was slipping. Resistences were popping up all over Iraq, ESPICALLY IN FALLUJAH. While they were probably headed for a civil war of some kind, it would have been their war. They would have won their independance from tyrany. They might hav eve set up a democracy of sorts there. That's where it was heading. There were no weapons of mass destruction, there were no links to global terrorism. There were humanitarian rights violations left and right, most of which were against their own people. There was involvement with the Palestinian/Israeli problems. The Iraqi government was starting to fall apart. They were zero threat to the US, and a negligable threat to their neighbors, even Israel. If we had done nothing, nothing would have been done to us.

It was never my suggestion to completly ignore the Middle East, but as we can now see plainly, invasion was stupid. We've lost the souls of thousands of American soldiers, we have countless injured American soldiers, but more importantly we have tens to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians. Why more importantly? Well, because they never made a commitment to join a military. They never signed up to risk their lives. They were born. They lived under tryany, trying to survive. Just as the power that tyrant was yielding was beginning to slip, missles from warships hundreds of miles out to sea came and destroyed lives. Was that taken into account in your "incurred costs that we can recover from"? We can't bring those people back from the dead, American or Iraqi, so I'd say that's something we can't recover.

It's alright for us to stop being selfish for 5 seconds. It's alright to consider the harm we've done, and how to apologize for our mistakes. The best leaders in history understand that they are not Gods. They are the same as those they represent, and to err is human. I make mistakes and so do you. So does the president. If I'm right, that means that our future is broken on the rocks of ignorance. We have dug ourselves into a hole deeper than anyone else, ever. Our only safety net is other's dependence on us, and that won't last forever. The risk of invasion was and still is too high.
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Old 09-11-2006, 06:06 AM   #30 (permalink)
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
What I acknowledge is the fact that "policing Iraq" or "winning the peace" in Iraq is not and was not our primary military objective. I think some people thought it was, but the folks making the decisions didn't. So, how do you measure success - by a standard not set by policy makers? I think far too many people are making this far more complicated than it is.
I would suggest that the geo-politics of the Middle East is very complicated, requiring a thoughtful and deliberative foreign policy!

The problem is the simplistic black/white analysis and policy development process of the Bush administration, particularly in Iraq, at a cost of thousands of lives and billions of $$.
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Old 09-11-2006, 06:18 PM   #31 (permalink)
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"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
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Old 09-12-2006, 05:53 AM   #32 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
It was never my suggestion to completly ignore the Middle East, but as we can now see plainly, invasion was stupid.
How about saying invasion is not what you would have done rather than saying it was stupid?

I don't understand how you say you would not ignore the Middle East and then seem to totally rule out being willing to take military action. Negotiation (resolutions, sanctions, whatever) simply does not work without the threat of , and willingness to take military action.

So tell me - what would you have done - starting with Iraq invading Kuwait???
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Old 09-12-2006, 06:34 AM   #33 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
So tell me - what would you have done - starting with Iraq invading Kuwait???
Avoiding the power of hindsight, I'd go with my original opinions: be scared out of my head during the first gulf war (scared that it would escalate), but support it.

Invade Afganistan and do everything (all available resources and attention) to get Bin Laden and his band of merry men.

NOT invade Iraq. If Bush/Cheny/Rumsfeld/Wolfie hadn't had a hard-on for Iraq, there was no reason to do it. Imagine that none of that trumped up WMD talk had existed... there's no way we have invaded.


From there, who knows what would have happened? I'd like to think we could have done more damage to the baddies in Afganistan by putting our total resources on that issue. It seems like it would have made a difference in results. And perhaps used our stellar re-building skills to help with THAT country.

I'm no expert on body counts, but it seems like our war has killed more Iraqis than Saddam would have. I know it's speculation, but is it 2:1? 3:1? What is the point at which we say "saddam would have been better"? Or is "freedom" worth any body count?

Sure seems a better path, to me. And there were people on this very board advocating such a path at each juncture...

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Old 09-12-2006, 06:52 AM   #34 (permalink)
 
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What I and others have been saying is that before you go to war, you need to understand the geo-pollitics of such an invasion and plan for the worst possible outcome and not just the rosiest scenario ("we will be greeted as liberators") and reassess the worthiness of such an action.

The evidence is overwhelming that Bush/Rumsfeld had no understanding of the potential for an either an insugrency backlash or sectarian violence.

The results?
Quote:
Iraq's political process has sharpened the country's sectarian divisions, polarized relations between its ethnic and religious groups, and weakened its sense of national identity, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

In spite of a sharp increase in Sunni-Shiite violence, however, attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces are still the primary source of bloodshed in Iraq, the report found. It was the latest in a series of recent grim assessments of conditions in Iraq.

But the report was unusual in its sweep, relying on a series of other government studies, some of them previously unpublicized, to touch on issues from violence and politics to electricity production. Published on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the GAO report was downbeat in its conclusions -- underscoring how Iraq's deteriorating security situation threatens the Bush administration's goal of a stable and democratic regime there.

"Despite coalition efforts and the efforts of the newly formed Iraqi government, insurgents continue to demonstrate the ability to recruit new fighters, supply themselves, and attack coalition security forces," the report says. "The deteriorating conditions threaten continued progress in U.S. and other international efforts to assist Iraq in the political and economic areas."

The report relied on a number of findings made earlier this year by the United Nations, the U.S. State and Defense departments, U.S. intelligence agencies and other sources to reach its conclusions. Unlike the majority of those agencies, the GAO, which reports to Congress, has no responsibility for forming or executing policy in Iraq.

The GAO said Congress must ask several questions as it considers what to do next. Among them:

• What political, economic and security conditions must be achieved before the United States can withdraw military forces from Iraq?

• Why have security conditions continued to worsen even as Iraq has met political milestones, increased the number of trained and equipped forces, and increasingly assumed the lead for security?

• If existing U.S. political, economic, and security measures are not reducing violence in Iraq, what additional measures, if any, will the administration propose for stemming the violence?

The report, citing the Pentagon, said that enemy attacks against coalition and Iraqi forces increased by 23 percent from 2004 to 2005 and that the number of attacks from January to July 2006 were 57 percent higher than during the same period in 2005.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/new...=kansas_nation
What would I have done? I would have continued to focus all of our resources on al Queda in Afghanistan as well as agrressively pressuring Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to take out al Queda within their borders or diplomatically threatened to do it ourselves. Iraq was marginalized after the first Gulf war...its military was emasculated, two-thirds of the country was under a US-UK no fly zone, and he had no WMD. Saddam was certainly a threat to his own people, but not to us. Bush took his eye off the ball (ie focus on al Queda) for whatever reason and not only created a new quagmire in the Iraq, but lost the support of most of the world.

The more important questions now are those raised in this article. How do we make the best of this f*ck up? I dont have the answers, other than its not "stay the course".

The price of crude oil from 2001 - 2005

http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/crudeoilprice01_05.gif

Follow the red line from March 2003 and the invasion of Iraq.

A direct corelation? Probably not. An influencing factor? Probably so, along with our deteroriating relationship with many Gulf states as a result of our invasion.
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Old 09-12-2006, 12:39 PM   #35 (permalink)
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You guys seem to ignore the fact that Iraq continually ignored UN mandates.

With that it seems you would have allowed him to re-establish his nuclear program (assuming he did not have one at the time we invaded). Once he re-established that proram would you have let him develop nuclear weapons?

Would you let him attack his neighbors? would you let him control the Middle East? At what point would you use the military to stop his defiant activities?

For the record - I never gave a crap about being greeted as liberators. i wanted Saddaam out of power. I wanted a military foothold in Iraq. The "liberators" arguement is a strawman argument, that is why I ignore it.
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Old 09-12-2006, 12:48 PM   #36 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
You guys seem to ignore the fact that Iraq continually ignored UN mandates.
Did the UN invade?
Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
With that it seems you would have allowed him to re-establish his nuclear program (assuming he did not have one at the time we invaded). Once he re-established that proram would you have let him develop nuclear weapons?
He wasn't developing nuclear weapons. They discovered that Sadam had bought those infamous aluminum tubes and one unreliable CIA expert said they could only be made into a centerfuge for purifying uranium. The problem is that the real experts from the department of energy said that they weren't for enriching uranium. The "mushroom cloud" comment by Cheney was another layer of deciet. Sadam did not have the means to develop nuclear weapons. There exists no information or reliable testimony that suggests that Sadam was actively seeking nuclear weapons after Desert Storm or that he had the means.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
Would you let him attack his neighbors? would you let him control the Middle East? At what point would you use the military to stop his defiant activities?
We're not in the Middle East. The act of providing defence for Iraq's neighbors, such as arming them or posting troops, is a lot different than invasion. Sadam did not even have the means to control his own country, let alone the rest of the ME. His military power was diminished to almost nothing by 2003.

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Old 09-12-2006, 02:24 PM   #37 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
You guys seem to ignore the fact that Iraq continually ignored UN mandates.
So when does the US invasion or Israel being?
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Old 09-12-2006, 02:32 PM   #38 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
You guys seem to ignore the fact that Iraq continually ignored UN mandates.
I'm not really sure why Iraq should obey the rules when hardly anyone else is.
I'm curious to see if Russia will back-up Iran when/if the US attacks.

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Old 09-12-2006, 08:14 PM   #39 (permalink)
 
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Of Bush's "axis of evil," Iraq posed the least threat. Iran , with its fundamentalist regime was a the time of our invasion of Iraq, and continues to be a much greater state supporter of terrorism and North Korea has expanded its nuclear capabiliites and has a far greater need and willingess to sell to terrorists than Saddam everdid.

Yet, Bush spends $300 billion and still counting, tens of thousands of dead and injured, and Iraq is more unstable than ever.

Sorry, Ace....your analysis just doesnt wash by any rational standards.

BTW, I agree the liberator argument doesnt mean crap. And I hope you would agree that we demonstrated no viable plan to deal with the post-Saddam Baathist insurgency or sectarian violence, resulting in a vast majority of Iraqis increasngly turning against the US as more and more civilians die....a hell of a way to "establish a military foothold".
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Old 09-12-2006, 09:35 PM   #40 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
You guys seem to ignore the fact that Iraq continually ignored UN mandates.

With that it seems you would have allowed him to re-establish his nuclear program (assuming he did not have one at the time we invaded). Once he re-established that proram would you have let him develop nuclear weapons?

Would you let him attack his neighbors? would you let him control the Middle East? At what point would you use the military to stop his defiant activities?

For the record - I never gave a crap about being greeted as liberators. i wanted Saddaam out of power. I wanted a military foothold in Iraq. The "liberators" arguement is a strawman argument, that is why I ignore it.
aceventura3, as Gen. Zinni states below, and the Duelfer report confirms, we threw out ten years of planning, we had Saddam "boxed in", we had a cost effective, bloodless containment program, partially funded by our former 1991 Gulf War allies......and now we have excuses, lies, from our "leaders" and an expensive and increasingly uncontrollabe situation on the ground in Iraq, that may require a war with Iran to prevent that country, "the winner", from leveraging the strategic "reward" that Bush and Cheney have handed it:

Ace...in the last day, in my post (#3 in the thread at this <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2120124#post2120124">link<a/>)
I tried to bring to every reader's attention, my observation that Mr. Cheney was reduced to reciting "untruths", on a network TV news broadcast, to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
.....Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda......

........we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02......

.........Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda......
<b>Note that Cheney used "kermal, a poison faciltity", as a reason to link Saddam with al-Qaeda, and thus, justify the US invasion of Iraq.</b> Kermal is more often spelled as <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=khurmal&btnG=Google+Search">Khurmal</a> .....

In that same post, Aceventura3, I then provided at least 16 excerpts (most of them with links...)from news reports, from sources as diverse as the "Economist", the Jerusalem Post, from NPR, and from Fox News, dated between early 2002 and April, 2003, that all reported that "the posion camp", at Kermal, was located in Kurdish controlled territory, in the nothern Iraq, "no fly zone" airspace, and was reported, in multiple news articles, to receive supplies of weapons and life sustaining supplies, from Iran, not Iraq, and that the camp was located on the Iran border....or articles that reported around this state of affairs:
Quote:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...61575#continue
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The, February, 2003 by GREG MILLER
SHOWDOWN ON IRAQ

Why not hit terrorist camp?

Lawmakers question lack of military action

By GREG MILLER Los Angeles Times

Friday, February 7, 2003

Washington -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where al-Qaida affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with explosives and poisons.

But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it?

Lawmakers who have attended classified briefings on the camp say that they have been stymied for months in their efforts to get an explanation for why the U.S. has not launched a military strike on the compound near the village of Khurmal. Powell cited its ongoing operation as one of the key reasons for suspecting ties between Baghdad and the al-Qaida terror network.

The lawmakers put new pressure on the Bush administration on Thursday to explain its decision to leave the facility unharmed.

"Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Why have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?"

Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.

"I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds. And we have been tracing individuals who have gone in there and come out of there," Powell said.

<b>Absent an explanation from the White House,
some officials suggested the administration had refrained from striking the compound in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq.</b>


"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified. "If you take it out, you can't use it as justification for war."............
In 2002, Mr. Cheney seemed to have a high opinion of Gen. Zinni:
Quote:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20020324.html

March 24, 2002

The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press (NBC)

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Vice President Dick Cheney's trip to the Middle East; 12 countries in 10 days. What did he learn about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? What was he told about Iraq's Saddam Hussein? This morning: Our guest, the vice president of the United States, reports to the nation.

Then: Day 169 of the military operation in Afghanistan. The enemy continues to hide, regroup and resist. With us: The commander in chief of the United States Central Command, General Tommy R. Franks.

.......VICE PRES. CHENEY:.....What we have done--the president's been actively engaged in setting overall policy. Colin Powell, the secretary of State, has been actively engaged directly with Arafat and Sharon on a direct basis. Now, we've got General Zinni in the region now who's a superb officer who's on the ground every day actively working with the security officials on both sides, as well as Sharon and Arafat.....

.......VICE PRES. CHENEY: Again, this is--all is going to depend upon what happens on the ground in Israel. I'll be guided very much by General Zinni's thinking.....
Here is Zinni describing the reasoning for invading Iraq, where we were then, strategically speaking, and where we are now, and he faults the "planners":
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12067487/page/6/
Transcript for April 2
John McCain, Tony Zinni
Updated: 12:44 a.m. ET April 2, 2006

......MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe the American media is distorting the news from Iraq, or presenting an accurate picture?

GEN. ZINNI: Well, I think the American media’s being made a scapegoat for what’s going on out there. At last count, I think something like 80 journalists have been killed in Iraq. It’s hard to get outside the green zone and not risk your life, or risk kidnapping, at a minimum, to get the story. And it’s hard to blame the media for no good stories when the security situation is such that they can’t even go out and get the good stories without risking their lives. And you have to remember that it’s hard to dwell on the good things when the bad things are so overwhelmingly traumatic and catastrophic, you know? So I think that’s an unfair blame that’s put on the media..........

....MR. RUSSERT: I want to bring you back to a book you co-wrote with Tom Clancy called “Battle Ready.” And you wrote this: “In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption.” That’s very serious.

GEN. ZINNI: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: Where did you see that? At what level?

GEN. ZINNI: Well, I—first of all, I saw it in the way the intelligence was being portrayed. I knew the intelligence; I saw it right up to the day of the war. I was asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing a month before the war if I thought the threat was imminent. I didn’t. Many of the people I know that were involved in the intelligence side of this, or, or in the military felt the same way. I saw the—what this town is known for: spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses, or, or shading the, the context. We, we know the mushroom clouds and, and the other things that were all described that the media’s covered well. I saw on the ground, though, a sort of walking away from 10 years worth of planning.

You know, ever since the end of the first Gulf War, there have been—there’s been planning by serious officers and planners and others, and policies put in place. Ten years worth of planning, you know, were thrown away; troop levels dismissed out of hand; General Shinseki basically insulted for speaking the truth and giving a, an honest opinion; the lack of cohesive approach to how we deal with the aftermath; the political, economic, social reconstruction of a nation, which is no small task; a belief in these exiles that anyone in the region, anyone that had any knowledge would tell you were not credible on the ground; and on and on and on. Decisions to disband the army that were not in the initial plans. I mean there’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the secretary of state say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’re the ones that perform the tactics on the ground. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves this, it will be them.

MR. RUSSERT: Should someone resign?

GEN. ZINNI: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

GEN. ZINNI: Secretary of defense, to begin with......

.......MR. RUSSERT: I want to bring you back to August 26, 2002. The Veterans of Foreign War had a convention, a meeting. Vice President Cheney was the guest speaker. You were honored, as you can see the medal around your neck there. This is what the vice president said on that day.

(Videotape, August 26, 2002):

VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is not doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.

(End videotape)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12067487/page/7/

........MR. RUSSERT: After that event, The Washington Post captured your thinking in a conversation with you. “Cheney’s certitude bewildered [retired General Tony] Zinni. ... ‘In my time at CENTCOM, I watched the intelligence, and never - not once - did it say, “He has WMD.”’ Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and the military. ‘I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I’d say to analysts, “Where’s the threat?”’ Their response, he recalls, was, ‘Silence.’ Zinni’s concern deepened as Cheney pressed on. ... Zinni’s conclusion as he slowly walked off the stage was that the Bush administration was determined to go to war. A moment later, he had another, equally chilling thought: ‘These guys don’t understand what they’re getting into.’” Why did you think that on that day?

GEN. ZINNI: Well, first of all, prior to that, I heard the president say because this—these rumors of debates and people pushing for this entry into Iraq that the president said, “Well, look, I’m going to listen to the debate, and then I’ll look at the intelligence.” First of all, I thought that was a little backwards, but I said, “Well, the president hasn’t made up his mind to this point, and when he looks at the intelligence, takes an honest look at it, when he hears the debate, he’ll realize that this isn’t something that should be done now, and it should—and if you’re going to do it, you would do it in a way to try to restart the United Nations process, go back to what President Bush 41 had done.”

But what I heard on that stage today, or that day was not the case of restarting that process in any serious way. I heard the case being built to go to war right away. And what bothered me, I had been hearing about some of the assumptions on the planning, dismissal of the for—previous plans, and I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn’t fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD.

Now, I’d be the first to say we had to assume he had WMD left over that wasn’t accounted for: artillery rounds, chemical rounds, a SCUD missile or two. But these things, over time, degrade. These things did not present operational or strategic level threats at best. Plus, we were watching Saddam with an army that had caved in. It was nothing like the Gulf War army. It was a shell of its former self. We knew we could go through it quickly. We’d stripped away his air defenses. He was at our mercy. We had air superiority before we even—or actually air supremacy before we would even start an operation. So to say that this threat was imminent or grave and gathering, seemed like a great exaggeration to me.

MR. RUSSERT: The president, the secretary of state, all said he was not contained, he was not in a box, that he was a madman.

GEN. ZINNI: Well, I think that’s—that is an insult to the troops who, for 10 years, ran the containment: those brave pilots who flew the no-fly zones, those sailors who enforced the maritime intercept operations, our soldiers and Marines that were on the ground out there that responded to every crisis, our support for the efforts of the inspectors that were in there. You know, we—we had less troops on a day-to-day basis out there than go to work at the Pentagon every day doing this. And these were not assigned troops to CENTCOM. These were troops that rotated in and out. We had allies out there that helped foot the bill for this, $300 million dollars to $500 million dollars a year supporting us with bases, supporting us with overflights, supporting us with assistance in kind, joining us in places like Somalia and the Balkans when we required coalition troops. I thought the containment worked remarkably well, and it was a tribute to our troops and how they handled it......
The Duelfer report documents that there was no Iraqi plan to reconstitute WMD after the UN sanctions ended, or any organizing of scientists in Iraq, or recruiting of them, by Saddam's government, to accomplish that goal:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Oct6.html

U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons
Report on Iraq Contradicts Bush Administration Claims

By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A01

The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."

The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.

Duelfer's report, delivered yesterday to two congressional committees, represents the government's most definitive accounting of Hussein's weapons programs, the assumed strength of which the Bush administration presented as a central reason for the war. While previous reports have drawn similar conclusions, Duelfer's assessment went beyond them in depth, detail and level of certainty.

"We were almost all wrong" on Iraq, Duelfer told a Senate panel yesterday.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

But after extensive interviews with Hussein and his key lieutenants, Duelfer concluded that Hussein was not motivated by a desire to strike the United States with banned weapons, but wanted them to enhance his image in the Middle East and to deter Iran, against which Iraq had fought a devastating eight-year war. Hussein believed that "WMD helped save the regime multiple times," the report said.

The report also provides a one-of-a-kind look at Hussein's personality. The former Iraqi leader participated in numerous interviews with one Arabic-speaking FBI interrogator. Hussein told his questioner he felt threatened by U.S. military power, but even then, he maintained a fondness for American movies and literature. One of his favorite books was Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." He hoped for improved relations with the United States and, over several years, sent proposals through intermediaries to open a dialogue with Washington.

Hussein, the report concluded, "aspired to develop a nuclear capability" and intended to work on rebuilding chemical and biological weapons after persuading the United Nations to lift sanctions. <h3>But the report also notes: "The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam" tasked to take this up once sanctions ended.</h3>

Among the most diplomatically explosive revelations was that Hussein had established a worldwide network of companies and countries, most of them U.S. allies, that secretly helped Iraq generate $11 billion in illegal income and locate, finance and import banned services and technologies. Among those named are officials or companies from Belarus, China, Lebanon, France, Indonesia, Jordan, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Duelfer said one of Hussein's main strategic goals was to persuade the United Nations to lift economic sanctions, which had devastated the country's economy and, along with U.N. inspections, had forced him to stop weapons programs. Even as Hussein became more adept at bypassing the sanctions, he worked to erode international support for them.

Democrats seized on the exhaustive report, which comes amid a presidential race dominated so far by the Iraq war, to argue that the administration misled the American public about the risk Hussein posed and then miscalculated the difficulties of securing postwar peace.

"Now we have a report today that there clearly were no weapons of mass destruction," Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said in West Palm Beach, Fla. "All of that known, and Dick Cheney said again last night that he would have done everything the same. George Bush has said he would have done everything the same. . . . They are in a complete state of denial about what is happening in Iraq."

Neither Bush nor challenger John F. Kerry spoke directly about the report yesterday, though at a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania the president emphasized that Hussein was a threat to the United States.

"There was a risk -- a real risk -- that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said. "In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

Supporters rallied around the administration, which has suffered a string of setbacks recently with revelations that the CIA had warned the White House about the strength of Iraqi insurgents, and from former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, who said this week that the United States should have put more troops in Iraq during the invasion.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said: "We didn't have to find plans or weapons to see what happened when Saddam Hussein used chemical and biological weapons on his own people. So just because we can't find them and Saddam Hussein had 12 years to hide them doesn't mean he didn't have them and didn't use them."

But Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said the report showed U.N. inspections and sanctions had worked in preventing Hussein from pursuing his weapons ambitions. "Despite the effort to focus on Saddam's desires and intentions, the bottom line is Iraq did not have either weapons stockpiles or active production capabilities at the time of the war."

Duelfer's report contradicted a number of specific claims administration officials made before the war.

It found, for example, that Iraq's "crash" program in 1991 to build a nuclear weapon before the Persian Gulf War was far from successful, and was nowhere near being months away from producing a weapon, as the administration asserted. Only micrograms of enriched uranium were produced and no weapon design was completed. The CIA and administration officials have said they were surprised by the advanced state of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear program, which was discovered after the war, and therefore were more prone to overestimate Iraq's capability when solid proof was unavailable.

There also was no evidence that Iraq possessed or was developing a mobile biological weapons production system, an assertion Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others made before the invasion. The two trailers that were found in early 2003 were "almost certainly designed and built . . . exclusively for the generation of hydrogen" gas.

Duelfer also found no information to support allegations that Iraq sought uranium from Africa or any other country after 1991, as Bush once asserted in a major speech before the invasion. The only two contacts with Niger that were discovered were an invitation to the president of Niger to visit Baghdad, and a visit to Baghdad by a Niger minister in 2001 seeking petroleum products for cash. There was one offer to Iraq of "yellowcake" uranium, and that was from a Ugandan businessman offering uranium from Congo. The deal was turned down, and the Ugandan was told that Baghdad was not interested because of the sanctions.
Nuclear Weapons

<b>Despite the U.S. intelligence judgment that Iraq in 2002 had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program, Duelfer reported that after 1991, Baghdad's nuclear program had "progressively decayed." He added that the Iraq Survey Group investigators had found no evidence "to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."</b>

There was an attempt to keep nuclear scientists together and two scientists were discovered to have saved documents and technology related to the uranium enrichment program, but they appeared to be the exception.

Although some steps were taken that could have helped restart the nuclear program, using oil-for-food money, Duelfer concluded that his team "uncovered no indication that Iraq had resumed fissile material or nuclear weapons research and development activities since 1991."
Biological Weapons

Duelfer's report is the first U.S. intelligence assessment to state flatly that Iraq had secretly destroyed its biological weapons stocks in the early 1990s. By 1995, though, and under U.N. pressure, it abandoned its efforts.

The document rules out the possibility that biological weapons might have been hidden, or perhaps smuggled into another country, and it finds no evidence of secret biological laboratories or ongoing research that could be firmly linked to a weapons program.

Some biological "seed stocks" -- frozen samples of relatively common microbes such as bolutinum -- were found in the home of one Iraqi official last year. But the survey team said Iraq had "probably" destroyed any bulk quantities of germs it had at the height of the program in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The team also found no evidence of stocks of the smallpox virus, which the administration had claimed it had.
Chemical Weapons

Duelfer's report said that no chemical weapons existed and that there is no evidence of attempts to make such weapons over the past 12 years. Iraq retained dual-use equipment that could be used for such an effort.

"The issue is that he has chemical weapons, and he's used them," Cheney told CNN in March 2002. The National Intelligence Estimate said that "although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents -- much of it added in the last year."

One of the reasons the intelligence community feared a chemical weapons arsenal was that U.N. inspectors said Iraq had not fully explained missing chemical agents during the 1990s. The report determined that unanswered questions were almost certainly the result of poor accounting.

Iraq's responses to U.N. inspectors regarding chemical weapons appear to have been truthful, and where incomplete, with differing recollections among former top officials, mostly the result of fading memories of when or how stockpiles were destroyed. Those were the identical reasons Iraq offered to U.N. inspectors before the war.

<b>One of the key findings of the report is that "Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a chemical weapons effort when sanctions were lifted."

The evidence included in the report to back up claims of Hussein's intent is described as "extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial." The report quotes a single scientist who reached that conclusion in hindsight and based on information he learned from the U.S. inspection team long after U.S. troops had captured Iraq.

After 17 months of investigation, the U.S. team was able to find only 30 of 130 scientists identified with Iraq's pre-1991 chemical weapons programs. "None of those interviewed had any knowledge of chemical weapons programs" or knew of anyone involved in such work, according to the report. There was one exception, the reported noted, from a scientist who maintained he was asked to make a chemical agent, but that story was uncorroborated and there was no follow-up.</b>
Delivery Systems

Iraq's secret quest to develop a more powerful missile was discovered and disrupted by U.N. weapons inspectors in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion. In the 19 months since then, the survey team has uncovered more evidence suggesting that Hussein intended to use the Al Samoud 2 and other proposed missiles to extend the reach of his military beyond the country's borders.

Iraq was allowed to continue developing short-range missiles for self-defense under the terms of the U.N. agreement that ended the 1991 Gulf War. But the Al Samoud 2, which Iraq began building in 2001, was clearly designed for flights exceeding the U.N.-imposed 93-mile limit, the new report says. And Duelfer's team found blueprints for missiles with potential ranges up to 10 times as far.

The team "uncovered Iraqi plans or designs for three long-range ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers (250 to 621 miles), and for a 1,000-km-range (932-mile) cruise missile," the report says. It adds that none of the planned missiles was in production, and only one of them had progressed beyond the design phase.

The report concludes that Iraq "clearly intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems," and maintains that the missiles, if built, could potentially have been combined with biological, chemical or nuclear warheads, if Hussein acquired them.

At the same time, the missile that U.S. military planners had most feared in the run-up to the invasion appears to have vanished. While Bush administration officials had asserted that Hussein had hidden a small arsenal of Scud missiles, Duelfer said interviews and documents suggest Iraq "did not retain such missiles after 1991."
aceventura3, General Zinni's comments, the findings in the Duelfer report, and the spectacle of Dick Cheney's justifications for invasion and occupation of Iraq, especially his reference to "Kermal", as a justification, have to be displayed alongside the news reporting about US avoidance of destroying Kermal, and it's accessibility to Kurdish and to American forces, and to Iran, but not to Iraq, are posted in response to your postition, and opinion.

What else have you got? ....and is there anything that could be presented to you that would lessen your certainty that invading Iraq was a wise, or a justified decsion for president Bush to make?

Last edited by host; 09-12-2006 at 09:46 PM..
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