Posted on 02/20/2007 8:59:49 AM PST by OrthodoxPresbyterian
"Iran won't fall into chaos. It is a cohesive nation whose people identify strongly as Iranian."
That's fine. Probably better. The point is to destroy the means of production of nuclear weaponry.
"The price of oil, btw, will skyrocket."
Maybe. At the $70 range, oil shale, secondary recovery, and the like start putting downward pressure on the price, making Iran's supply shock irrelevant. So $75/80 tops, then drops down to $high 60's or 70. (Oil pricing is a large part of how I made my money.)
"And unless you're willing to bomb the place into glass (and we aren't), all the bombs and planes in the world won't hold territory."
Specifically not the stated intention. The stated intention is to destoy manfacturing capability. No need to occupy land for any extended period.
The Fox News parallel article specifically quotes several persons regarding the ability of 2 tonnes of low-enrinched Uranium of this type being made into at least one fission weapon.
The 2006 NYT articles are similarly clear on Saddam's clear, on-going, progress toward an actual weapon.
And let's address the immediate point as well, shall we?
With the Saddam regime deposed, just WHO is the enemy at this point? The Sunnis, most of whom are fleeing into Syria and Jordan, or the groups we've enabled as the de facto rulers of the country, the Shi'ite militias allied with Iran? That is our problem: an escalation of the war against al-Sadr and others only further isolates that bunch we call the Iraqi government, holed up behind a mile of barricades inside Baghdad.
Can't parse that.
Don't need to his vote 'for' the congressional non-binding resolution on Iraq was a prelude to 'binding him [the President] with resolutions designed to please our UN detractors leftist blogs and socialists'.
You're not going to win here. Your man has failed conservatives and appears a non-starter.
Keep pinging the Thread, and help to continue the Ron Paul groundswell. Ron paul for President!
In my dreams, I see a Ron Paul / Walter Williams ticket. Add me to the ping list, please.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1786527/posts
He voted AGAINST both our troops and victory. He's finished.
Yah? So what? I think a lot of Obama's beliefs are principled and fit into his warped idea of what the Constitution says. I still won't vote for him.
Now, the issue is:
(A) honoring our word to the Kurds, et al, who trusted us, (if for no other reason, so that other will trust us in the future);
(B) not allowing Iraq to become a chaos s-hole like Somalia and/or Afganistan, which breeds jihadis; and
(C) not allowing Iran to take over Iraq, which it would do if we let things run the course.
Complex? Certainly.
But Ron Paul's and Jack Murtha's cut-n-run approach is not the answer.
The Saddam regime has been deposed and its members dead or shortly to be so. What would you define as "victory" at this point? What's your metric for its achievement?
Ron Paul will probably get fewer write-in votes than Patrick from Spongebob.
Sheesh, are YOU ever naive!!! This is Free Republic, where anything less than building a new Maginot Line and expelling 12 million plus illegals is "open borders." Get with the program. Oh yeah, anything that does not expel all immigrants here illegally is "amnesty".... whoops, "shamnesty." The idea that someone might pay a fine in the process of becoming illegal is just too difficult a concept to get into the blocks of wood substituting for heads around these parts.
That is a Constitutional position, and is one which I support.
Also, Ron Paul did vote to authorize military force in Afghanistan after 9/11 and he never called for a declaration of war then.
"Ron Paul will probably get fewer write-in votes than Patrick from Spongebob."
Of course, Patrick from Spongebob is not a cowardly supporter of terrorists.
You're on. I've already got a big Ron Paul list from running the GRPPL thread on the Religion Forum... but, the more the merrier!
Blasting the whole damned country into oblivion. That's my definition of victory.
Then we shouldn't be so foolish to give our word to people who wouldn't do the same for us. In any event the Kurds can take care of themselves. And I actually agree to an extent. We can wait out the Sunni-Shia civil war in Kurdistan as well as Kuwait and Qatar.
Iraq is already a training ground for jihadists, and continued occupation won't change that. By the way, the outcome of imperial wars is for some of the natives to repatriate to the mother country. The same thing is going to happen here, and the odds are near certain we will import a terrorist cell.
Iran already operates with a relative free hand in southern Iraq. Again, an additional 20,000 troops in the Sunni region won't change that. (We don't dare step heavily in the areas controlled by Shi'ite militias, as they enjoy broad popular support.)
No good solutions at this point, frankly, which is what some of us were saying from the start.
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