Posted on 01/25/2007 5:12:26 AM PST by RAY
We did not go into Iraq for glory, or for conquest, or for monetary gain. We went in to stop someone from acquiring nuclear weapons, at which point he would have been able to threaten a large portion of the Middle East (including Israel) and also a fair chunk of Europe. We also went in to depose a man who was torturing and murdering his population.
Right now Iran is ramping up to get nuclear weapons. Is your position that we should WAIT until they have a nuclear weapon and USE IT?
I take dispute with your claim that we went in to stop Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons. My understanding was that we believed he already had "weapons of mass destruction". Hence the thorough search and subsequent recriminations when it came up empty. I also believe that an Islamic Iraq is more of a threat to Middle Eastern peace than the previous version run by a secular dictator.
As for Iran, I consider any country with a radical Islamic leadership and nuclear weaponry to be a clear danger which may well merit a pre-emptive strike. However, we must be absolutely certain that it has the weapon(s), and not merely suspect it through half-baked intelligence. It's not sufficient simply to have "good intentions" when starting a war. Most errors are made sincerely and with the belief that the right thing is being done.
Do not let the media rewrite history for you. I realize when people get busy, memories fade, and the constant drumbeat of media lies can get into one's brain.
Remember the phrase "I will not wait while dangers gather"?
As far as Iran, I hate to tell you this, but NO intelligence is ever certain. No President is omnicsient; only God has that power. We make decisions based on the best intelligence we can get.
Iran, however, isnt hiding much of anything, are they? They are telling us that they are going to acquire a nuclear capability. They are telling us that they are launching a satellite missile. My personal opinion is that they are trying to bait us into an ambush, which is why the President is being so careful. However, there doesn't seem to be much doubt that they are working towards nuclear weaponry.
And since North Korea already has nuclear weapons, what are we to do with them?
I do not envy the President's responsibility. He alone has the burden of keeping this nation safe; to him the final decisions fall. He doesn't have the advantage of hindsight, nor the luxury of second chances or do-overs if he is wrong. He has to rely on the best intelligence he can get, which isn't always accurate, and he has to look into the faces of families who have lost loved ones in this fight.
I do not think he made this decision recklessly nor without the consideration of morality, despite what many think. I also think he is doing what any president of normal moral fiber and intelligence would have done in the same situation.
How easily people forget the months after September 11.
"we don't know exactly, and that's the problem."
He went on to state that "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."
However, with regard to chemical and biological weapons, I believe that the determination had already been made that Saddam was stockpiling those. When I used the term "weapons of mass destruction", I was using it to include both nuclear and biological/chemical weaponry. It was the failure to locate the supposed chemical and/or biological weapons which provoked strong debate.
The nuclear question was indeed up in the air.
If anything, that further strengthens my belief that this was a misadventure.
A good History lesson.
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,
-Horatius by Thomas Babington Macaulay
I just wanted to mention a few things:
1) Saddam was not secular. The media has tried to spread that particular lie and it's unfortunate that so many people bought into it and that the administration didn't have a spokesman who could go on national television to tell the truth about this matter.
Saddam wrote out the Koran in his own blood. It took him three years. He carried the Koran to his hanging. That doesn't sound terribly secular to me.
2) There were two primary reasons we went to Iraq:
Fear expressed by the UN itself and every single intelligence agency in the world was convinced he was working toward a nuclear weapon and had reconstituted his WMD program AND because of his ties to Al Qaeda.
Back in the 1990's, the media wrote frequently about the world's alarm at the growing relationship between Saddam and OBL and AQ. Links to that and more about the relationship here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698371/posts
You probably remember the president saying shortly after 9/11 we weren't going to just go after the terrorists but those who harbored terrorists? Well, Saddam was considered the ATM to terrorists. In fact there is a newspaper article by that title.
Saddam was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program. Joe Wilson told Congress privately a different story that he told them publicly. Sen. Roberts has said as much on national television. Roberts has stated that Wilson confirmed the CIA's fear that Saddam was trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Also, every single person charged with finding Iraq's WMD program has speculated that it's entirely possible they were shipped to Syria before the war. You will probably recall that Colin Powell showed the UN and the world watching satellite video of convoys of trucks leaving known WMD sites (according to the UN they were known WMD sites) and headed to the Syrian border.
John A. Shaw, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said Russian Spetsnaz units moved WMD to Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
"While in Iraq I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives," Mr. Shaw told NewsMax reporter Charles Smith.
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong was deputy commander of Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In September 2004, he told WABC radio that "I do know for a fact that some of those weapons went into Syria, Lebanon and Iran."
In January 2004, David Kay, the first head of the Iraq Survey Group which conducted the search for Saddam's WMD, told a British newspaper there was evidence unspecified materials had been moved to Syria from Iraq shortly before the war.
"We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program," Mr. Kay told the Sunday Telegraph.
Also that month, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who defected to an undisclosed European country, told a Dutch newspaper he knew of three sites where Iraq's WMD was being kept. They were the town of al Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria; the Syrian air force base near the village of Tal Snan, and the city of Sjinsar on the border with Lebanon.
In an addendum to his final report last April, Charles Duelfer, who succeeded David Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said he couldn't rule out a transfer of WMD from Iraq to Syria.
"There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation," Mr. Duelfer said.
In a briefing for reporters in October 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper Jr., who was head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency when the Iraq war began, said satellite imagery showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion.
"I think the people below Saddam Hussein and his sons' level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," Lt. Gen. Clapper said.
You haven't heard much about these reports, because they contradict the meme that Saddam either had no WMD, or destroyed it well before the Iraq war began.
There are few countries where people are not oppressed to some degree or other by a maximum leader whose personality cult reigns supreme or by some ideological system. The closest is not 90 miles from Miami. Is it our mission to "liberate" them all?
I've heard the various theories as to why no WMD were found. They don't alter the fact that none were. As I pointed out in my first post, I'm not among those who are accusing the president of having ulterior motives. I think this was simply a bad call.
America needs to recognize the enemy. It is not secular dictators like Hussein. They come and go and the danger vanishes when the man himself perishes. Ideological wars, on the other hand, outlive their current fighters and continue until the philosophy itself is discredited. Our enemy is a violent theology rooted in Islam. Hussein himself was a total non-factor in this battle, in my opinion. Once upon a time he was in fact, our man on the front lines when he waged war against a neighboring Islamic state which had just embraced fundamentalism. Khomeini's Iran was our enemy then too and we stood back and applauded while Saddam gassed and bombed women and children. If he is evil now, he was evil then.
American foreign policy ebbs and flows with the vicissitudes of the moment. It always needs to be measure against the teachings of our faith.
2. I refuse to wait until the other side strikes first, when it comes to nuclear weapons. That was okay in during the Cold War, when mutually assured destruction kept everyone's fingers off the trigger. When dealing with the terrorists, however, we are in a whole new world, because they don't care who or what we hit in retaliation. All they care about is killing lots of us.
3. How is it that you think that Iraq is worse off than before Saddam? The Kurds certainly aren't. Most of the country is far better off. Baghdad is a violent cesspool, but I imagine that will be cleaned up within the year.
4. The misery of the Iraqis wouldn't have ended with Saddam's death. Besides his too evil sons, there were plenty of generals like Chemical ALi who were ready to take over. The misery would have continued.
As far as the misery in the world, no, we don't have the resources to take on all of it. But when the source of misery is also a threat to the safety of a good portion of the world, I don't see what else is to be done.
In an age of radicals trying to get nuclear weapons, I don't think waiting until we are 100% certain is the best policy, especially since the event that might convince us is the detonation of a nuke in a major American city.
Once again: Saddam was NOT secular. He wrote the Koran in his own blood. Does that sound secular to you?
And you think that Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States? You might want to re-think that. You do know that
Clinton and his entire administration thought Iraq was a thread and said so when they signed the Iraqi Liberation Act which called for regime change.
Two of the 1993 WTC bombers were ultimately captured and had Iraqi passports. Another bomber, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was never captured and took refuge in Iraq. You knew that, right?
Laurie Mylroie charges that global "terror networks" such as bin Laden's al Qaeda are nothing more than decoys, "false flag" operations which provide cover for our real enemies.
Mylroie is a leading expert on Iraq. She has taught at Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College, and is currently an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. During the 1992 presidential campaign, she advised Bill Clinton on Iraqi affairs.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey is one of several high-level intelligence officials who have endorsed Mylroie's theory that Iraq masterminded both World Trade Center attacks.
In her book The War Against America, Mylroie notes that James Fox, the FBI official in charge of investigating the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, fingered Iraq as the chief suspect. However, Fox noted that the bombing appeared to be a "false flag" operation -- an attack that is deliberately designed to appear as if someone else did it.
The rank-and-file terrorists involved in the plot were Muslim fanatics from Egypt and Palestine. They were true believers, men who followed orders and asked no questions. In short, they were the perfect patsies.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey agrees that the 1993 World Trade Center attack bore all the earmarks of "a classic false flag operation," in which the mastermind escaped, while leaving "a handful of Muslim extremists behind to be arrested and take the full blame."
Also in keeping with the "classic" false flag pattern, the mastermind of this attack had little in common with the co-conspirators. His name was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and he was no Muslim fanatic. Yousef was a professional intelligence operative, indifferent to religion, a dapper dresser, womanizer and dedicated nightclubber, who often cursed like a longshoreman in fluent English when annoyed.
He was also an Iraqi agent, according to Mylroie.
That would be one of the more optimistic assessments I've heard recently. Even the President himself refuses to give a timeline. I notice you didn't mention our Christian brothers and sisters. Have you seen what's been happening to them? Many are fleeing the country. According to one of the bishops, half of Iraqi Christians have fled since 2003. Those remaining are congregating in enclaves for protection. Nothing that results in an increased suffering of Christians is ever a step forward. "Liberating" Muslims at the expense of Christian suffering is not an exercise in which America ought to be involved, in my opinion.
The Baker-Hamilton report was succinct. "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.
I doubt if anyone knows where Iraq will be in one year.
I am more optimistic than you because I read the troop blogs. Yes, the Baker group said things were grave and deteriorating. In Baghdad, things ARE bad. In Kurdistan, things are good. You have to look at the whole country.
Would you judge the whole USA by the situation in South Central Los Angeles?
Are you reading any of the other replies to you above, such as the excellently documented one by Peach?
I've read a variety of conspiracy theories about 9-11.
I won't be rude, but simply will say good night.
Again, I won't be rude, but lets just say that's an .....interesting.....theory.
The whole Islamic world is in an uproar. Terrorism is occurring from Indonesia in the east to America and Europe in the west. Fundamentalism is on the march. Iraq is not the mastermind of this chaos, but it is certainly now caught up in it.
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