Irrelevant.
Osama Bin Laden is Dead
- Thread starter SciWriter
- Start date
Irrelevant.
Indeed, very apologetic and irrelevant.
Total rubbish. No evidence that intel was cooked up? Bush said Saddam had WMD's, Saddam didn't have WMD's, I think that's more than enough evidence to start the war crimes proceedings. There has never been an independent inquiry into what info was attainable, nor to what extent US foreign policy was actually based on said info. If such an inquiry ever takes place, only then can we even begin to discuss the evidence in detail, when the appropriate authorities are subpoenaed and independent access to the relevant documents has been granted. 'Til then, we have millions of dead and wounded in a foreign country based on claims that proved 100% false, and a CIA which insists it never claimed there was a smoking gun. By refusing to face justice, the Bush administration and its supporters essentially plead no contest to the charges, and I don't expect there will be many rushing to their defense outside the US when foreign countries start applying personal sanctions.
No, Congress did not see the same info, because that would compromise classified intelligence sources in the same way that enabled Pvt. Manning. The Bush administration fed them reports, and they voted to authorize him to take whatever actions he deemed necessary. Congress did not vote to go to war, they voted to let Bush make the final call. Cowards yes, war criminals no- at least I hope not, unless you think Americans should be held collectively responsible and punished as a collective.
I'll quote from the relevant Wikipedia article, so you can stop your stonewalling now (unless you want to dispute the sources).
How do you spin that into a direct vote for war?
The Bush admin repeatedly asserted that there was.
Your stats about Iraqi lives saved are speculation, whereas the number of deaths and injuries in the conflict is known to number in the hundreds of thousands by even the most conservative of estimates. The possibility many/most of these casualties might have been the result of internal fighting does not absolve the US of its contribution to the war which sparked much of that fighting in the first place. You intervene in a foreign country and spark a civil war, you share the blame, unless you think it's ok for foreigners to do the same to America in 200 years.
Even factoring out suicide bomb attacks and sectarian warfare, there are tens of thousands of deaths directly attributed to US actions, and war crimes were committed that even the US admits to (i.e. Abu Ghraib), yet none of its officials want to take responsibility for authorizing the actions which in turn enabled such crimes to take place. If you march into a foreign country which isn't attacking you, without international consensus, and you kill people, then you're responsible. It's not your entitlement to dictate how they're to manage their society as if they were a pack of inbred headhunting jungle savages, and if it's simply ok to go after anyone supporting any form of tyranny, then plenty of American officials should be doing time for allying themselves with regimes like Saudi Arabia, Pinochet's Chile, or any number of other dictatorships.
Again, you wouldn't dare disagree with me if these rules were applied to someone invading America, but I guess you must think you deserve exemplary treatment because you (currently) have the world under your jackboot.
I'm sure Cheney bawled for days over every single one of them.
Do you mean reasonable costs to Americans, or to Iraqis? And as for profits- more than 6-fold rise in stock price due to involvement in a war managed by a former CEO and his longtime associates, yeah that sure sounds like a reasonable profit to me.
So I take it you have no problem with foreign invasions being conducted on completely false pretenses, and would happily cede the same authority to a bigger fish who wants to take similar liberties with you, or with your descendants 200 years from now? You're ok with positioning yourself as a willing accomplice to murder?
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Hmm. Seconded.
Unfortunately, if Bush is brought up on charges, he can just flee. They have already prepared for just such a contingency. Or if the economic situation gets so bad after looting the country's wealth that war breaks out with China, they have a safe refuge to flee to was well. . . .
BUSH REPORTED TO HAVE PURCHASED 99,000 ACRES IN PARAGUAY
BUSH REPORTED TO HAVE PURCHASED 99,000 ACRES IN PARAGUAY
You are conflating the effort to remove Saddam which was beneficial and Bush's reasoning and selling of the war, which was full of distortions. I don't care how Bush sold it, Republicans and Democrats had been calling for his removal for years. Even if this was accomplished under the guidance and cooperation of the UN, many people would have died.
It doesn't need to be absolved, it needs to be praised. It was a tough and bitter struggle that isn't completely over. If you don't think the absence of Saddam and his brutal sons isn't an improvement, you are nuts.
Correct.
Actually they did:
And the President shared the PDFs with members of Congress, so yes they all had the same information.
Well because the resolution was called: the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002
They knew when they voted for this that it was going to lead to an invasion unless Saddam left Iraq.
What BS.
We didn't spark a civil war. Saddam was the one that kept his boot on top of the Shiites and Kurds, started wars with Iran and Kuwait.
What we did was END the years of brutality and hundreds of thousands of annual deaths in that country and those near to Iraq.
Again total BS as we are NOT dictating to them how to manage their society and you very well know that. The Iraqis have written their own Constitution, Elected their own leaders. Established their own Judiciary. Created their own Police force and Military.
It's called SELF RULE.
I know you want to keep ignoring that part, but we didn't get it without a fight either.
Again, total BS.
If Obama staged a take over and did away with the Congress and used the Military and police to brutalize those who disagreed with him and then gassed those in Maine just to show what he could do and then attacked Canada for their oil, all the while killing and surpressing the White majority at will and plundering the country's resouces to build palaces for Michelle and the kids, then OF COURSE I would welcome foreign aid to help us depose of him and allow us to put back a Constitutional government.
And SO WOULD YOU.
Nope, they sold off KBR and they made their money in the oil business.
Not at all.
Democracy and Self Rule do seem worth fighting for though.
Seems you are more fond of brutal dictators like Saddam.
Arthur
I find your reasoning very problematic. When we start asserting that it's ok to tell blatant lies which are allegedly in someone else's interest while millions of lives are in the balance, where do we draw the line? If it was ok to lie to the American people and the rest of the world in this case, why shouldn't it be ok for leaders to tell their people similar lies towards similar aims in the future?
I'm sure there was no clean, painless way to have Saddam removed, and I too believe Iraq is ultimately better off without him. But as long as the Iraqi people feel that their present status was violently imposed on them against their collective will, they will not be convinced that they benefited from American intervention, and any arguments about how much worse it would have otherwise been will fall on deaf ears, because we have no way of rewinding the clock and testing other possible outcomes. War is supposed to be used as an absolute last resort in defending a nation's security and sovereignty, and in Iraq's case it most definitely wasn't the only option. Iraq had no WMD's, their military was little more than a marching band, sanctions were never enforced with anything more than a half-assed effort, and Iraq most definitely did not pose an imminent threat to any other nation.
If Saddam's use of poison gas was legitimate grounds to wage war on his supporters, where does that situate his former US allies who supplied him with such weapons when he fought Iran? How does the irony escape so many Americans that their leaders sent them to war on false pretenses to topple a tyrant who was previously empowered and supported by these very same leaders? You don't think Saddam only started torturing after he f*cked up in Kuwait, do you? And of course there's a whole history of devastating intervention to support violent dictatorships in places like Vietnam and South America, which most Americans seem very much interested in forgetting ASAP- why was it just and legitimate to provide extensive aid and support to folks like Batista and Pinochet, but it's ok to use lies and military force to topple Saddam, with millions of bystanders caught in the crossfire, and renegade "coalition" soldiers and contractors running amok on a crusade of butchery?
If the US had used nuclear weapons to take out Saddam, would you consider that an improvement? I wanted him out as much as anyone, but not at any cost and certainly not based on complete fabrications. If his past crimes were justification enough, then that's the story US leaders should have stuck to, but for whatever reason they didn't, and the buck has to stop somewhere. Either American intelligence is so absurdly unreliable that no one should ever accept a future war predicated on such information, or senior officials knowingly abused their positions of authority to lie to the American people and the world at large.
The war in Iraq has caused catastrophic damage to already fragile relations between the West and the rest of the world, American relations in particular, and it has catastrophically undermined the moral clarity and rationale behind the War on Terror. That's why I'm pissed off, that's why I believe the Bush admin needs to be accountable to domestic and international justice, because otherwise America's prosperity is only guaranteed insofar as it remains the toughest beast in the jungle. There's no logic in saying it's legitimate for one group of people to kill innocents based on lies and falsehoods, while another group doing the same thing is to be labelled as insatiable terrorists.
They have such intention. I can only try my best to reveal. You can't deny it because they didn't activate it yet. Do you know "Operation Northwood"? it was for war on Cuba. President Kennedy died for not approving it.
Here is my comment posted in thread "The true face of USA:
Re:
Osama Bin Laden Videos Released By The Pentagon Are a Hoax, Man In TV Video Identified
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJduLyB_yO4&feature=player_embedded
Quote, "That's Not Osama":Says Neighbor
A neighbor of dead terrorist leader Osama bin Laden says the man seen in new videos released by the US government is actually a friend of his and not the Al Queda founder.
“His name is Akhbar Khan (Han), He owns the house that was Osama’s house. I know him very well,” a Pakistani man named Shabir told the BBC.
Shabir says he is his a neighbor of the man.
“It’s all a fake, nothing happened,” Abbottobad resient Mohammed, who has been selling newspapers in the two for the last 50 years, told the BBC.
Out of the 50 Abbottobad residents interviewed by the BBC, only one believed that Osama bin Laden was in their town. Others claimed the pictures and video of bin Laden in his home are fakes made with a computer.
http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/05/10/thats-not-osama-neighbor/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJduLyB_yO4&feature=player_embedded
Quote, "That's Not Osama":Says Neighbor
A neighbor of dead terrorist leader Osama bin Laden says the man seen in new videos released by the US government is actually a friend of his and not the Al Queda founder.
“His name is Akhbar Khan (Han), He owns the house that was Osama’s house. I know him very well,” a Pakistani man named Shabir told the BBC.
Shabir says he is his a neighbor of the man.
“It’s all a fake, nothing happened,” Abbottobad resient Mohammed, who has been selling newspapers in the two for the last 50 years, told the BBC.
Out of the 50 Abbottobad residents interviewed by the BBC, only one believed that Osama bin Laden was in their town. Others claimed the pictures and video of bin Laden in his home are fakes made with a computer.
http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/05/10/thats-not-osama-neighbor/
Thank you Cpt Bork, we are getting to the heart of the matter.
No, I don't think it's OK for our leaders to tell us blatant lies, even if the cause is a good one. Surely some degree of "spin" is necessary in politics, but you are correct that the lies are extremely problematic. If I wasn't already convinced they were lying incompetent goons, it would have completely undermined any trust in the Bush administration. But, I am pained, because I still agree with the effort to remove Saddam.
I do not agree that the Iraqis as a whole feel this decision was imposed on them. Many Iraqis, many already refugees, wanted this, especially among the Kurds and the secular left. I can see how the average Iraqi might not care about the threat Saddam posed towards their political freedom, just like many Chinese who are happy with prosperity and unwilling to engage in activism that might be risky. Was it possible to take a vote? Would it have been ethical to deny all future Iraqis the chance to determine their own future?
I do agree with you that war in this case was used for purposes other than to defend the fatherland. I think war can be a force for good, to promote freedom and democracy, to come to the aid of oppressed people. I don't think an immanent threat constitutes the only ethical reason for war.
Iraq didn't have WMDs, but they retained the desire for them and the means to create them. They (actually just He, and his even worse sons) were a wounded tiger, which is often more dangerous than a healthy one. I don't think sanctions could ever be effective, given the inherent corrupt nature of the regimes responsible for implementing them. That only leaves one bad option.
On the subject of our supplying him with WMDs, that is undoubtedly a troubling factor. It was not a legitimate use of foreign policy, and could be considered a war crime. But we have to consider things as they are presently and go from there. Our past crimes are not reason to overlook present crimes. Our policies often look schizophrenic, because we change administrations every 4 or 8 years.
Innocent people did die in our effort to remove Saddam, and Bush did lie. But those people did not die for a lie, they died in the effort to remove Saddam. In hindsight, some of those deaths could have been prevented, but war is a brutal thing, justified or not. I do not respect Bush as a Commander in Chief, but the decision to go to war happened to be right. I would have liked to see our troops better equipped and sent in larger numbers, our tactics not involve massive bombings among civilian populations, the historical treasures of Iraq not looted, all torture prevented...these are all legitimate complaints. We also sent troops into the Battle of the Bulge without winter clothing.
Ultimately, I think our efforts will be appreciated. No one likes force to be imposed from without, but they may like the results. Without Saddam, sectarian divides that have been lingering have been brought out. This is what is happening in Egypt too. It's just another problem to deal with, but it must be done, because the potential for a flowering of human liberty is too promising to ignore.
Note that the "we" who did the supplying, includes pretty much all of Western Europe, Brazil, Egypt and Niger.
Or fought it or paid for it or took advantage of it or profited by it, apparently.spidergoat said:
Oath of office means nothing. Actual motive means nothing. Consequences to the country mean nothing. Saddam bad, Saddam smash, Hulk happy?
I do. I want a 100 million dollar independent investigation (the Clinton standard), with subpoenaed testimony from every principal and declassification of pertinent records.
Yes that is true, but only after Rumsfield's visit, and hand shake with Saddam, did the US provide near real time satellite photos of Iranian troop locations that made his gas attacks on them, about one month after Rumsfield's visit, successful for the first time. This is why in Saddam's trial not one word about gas attacks was allowed to be mentioned. That would have allowed Saddam to point out that the US added him to use poison gas, a war crime, against their mutual enemy, Iran.
PS - I don't know what Nigeria did. In fact they messed up part of the documentation about Saddam's interest in nuclear weapons. Either the US's CIA or perhaps Italy's had forged on Nigerian agency stationary a reply to what seemed to be a inquiry from Iraq about the purchase of uranium, but that agency had changed its name and had been using new letter heads for several months before the forgery was made on the old stationary. CIA said the forgery was not their goof up, and hinted it came from Italy.
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You misunderstand my position. I am just as much against those things as you are. But I'm still in favor of the war. I can approve of the decision to invade without approving of the details of that invasion.
I think the lesson learned from all this, no matter what you believe is:
NEVER be a "FRIEND" to the CIA. Conspiracy theory or not. Do not willingly work with them as a country, individual, or organization. They WILL eventually fuck you straight in the ass with bullets.
NEVER be a "FRIEND" to the CIA. Conspiracy theory or not. Do not willingly work with them as a country, individual, or organization. They WILL eventually fuck you straight in the ass with bullets.
It can work out ok for you but you must always do as you are told. The Shaw of Iran did (for example sold Iran's oil for about $15/ barrel) and was well taken care of in his old age after the Iranian religious leaders deposed him.
Madame Diem (wife of US's man in Vietnam did too but he got killed). When Saigon fell, they flew her out to France with quite a lot of gold in the plane. She died a few weeks ago in her vast estate / home just outside of Paris with about a dozen servants still, and had the good sense to keep a low profile - so not too many Americans became angry about the tax payers money she enjoyed so long.
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Right on.
This is the most sensible thing I've seen in a while.