Apr 22, 2006 8:39:34 PM
- Crash
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- Loc: Never been to , Antarctica
- Posts: 8287, Gallery
- Registered on: Oct 17, 2002
- Reply to: SoCal Alan
Re: just sailing...in Dubai, UAE
Quote:
SoCal Alan said:Quote:
Ferdie said:Quote:
SVNSVN said:
Fair enough Crash!As long as we're willing to acknowledge the good too! ...
That's what I like about this board - properly educated people that you can share a discussion with in a civilized manner.
I think all of us are mature enough not to take anything personal!
Bottom line to the above topic: I don't think people lack the acknowledgement about the effort US troops put into their duties in the Iraq, neither do they question the rightousness of the vast majority of them. What people rather have a problem with was the initial intention - and as I said above, the problems that occur where sadly forseeable.
Cheers, guys!
Obviously, the major disagreement we have is that the people who are in support of the operation believe that the intention was genuine, whereas the the opposite holds true for those who don't have that initial support. What you believe is what you believe. It's going to take a lot of compelling evidence to change either of our minds.
Right now, there is no compelling evidence that there was a lie or a deliberate attempt to mislead. If so, please point that out to everbody. On the other hand, there is a lot of compelling evidence that the administration believed that there were WMD's present in Iraq.
Do we remember the threats made days before the invasion by Saddam that he had ordered his generals to get ready to use chemical weapons agains the American troops?
Do we remember the amount of times our troops were warned to put on it's chemical protective gear during the initial month of the invasion of Iraq?
Do we remember when troops were asked to put on it's chemical protective gear when Iraqi missles were headed towards the troops.
Do we remember during the operation, the attempts by special ops to secure sensitive locations because we believed that WMD's were there?
Do we remember the trailers that we said were mobile chemical weapons labs?
Do we remember the large nuclear facility which we suspected containing enriched uranium which we found had certain levels of radiation, but later turned up to be nothing of significance?
This was a time when everyone believed that there was a genuine threat of WMD's being used on our troops.
In my opinion, the argument to disarm Saddam was reasonable at the time. The fact that Saddam is out while no significant WMDS's were found is quite embarassing. But remember one thing which is indisputable: Saddam did have WMD's which were not accounted for. The UN inspectors established that because they inventoried the WMD's beforehand. Remember the demand that Iraq account for all their WMD's and that it be placed in a report, which Saddam complied with? That report was inconsistent with the UN inspector's previous inventory. What happened to the WMD's? That was the main bone of contention which forced us to disarm Iraq.
I don't believe that there is any evidence that the administration was lying or misleading the public. I do believe that the administration was using as much information it believed to be correct to "make it's case". If you believe that this was misleading the public, then maybe we just have a different interpretation of the term.
If you believed beforehand that the Bush Administration is corrupt, then yes, you would probably believe that he misled or worst, lied to the American people. If you didn't believe beforehand that the Bush Administration is corrupt, then you would probably believe that the intention was correct, based on the beforehand evidence and the behaviour of the Saddam government before and during the invasion. I have no evidence that the Bush Administration is corrupt as far as the WOT is concerned.
Finally, if you believe that Bush lied, you also must believe that Clinton lied too. Remember Operation Desert Fox? In fact, one could make an argument that Bush was copying Clinton's speech exactly as far as the arguments for military action against Iraq was concerned.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/
Regarding Clinton, I never claimed he was a saint - I'm not an American an thus not divided via party lines.
The question whether or not Bush misled your country is a very ungrateful topic, since our beliefs and, national pride and party loyalties all come into play.
Personally, I don't think Bush himself is the culprit, as his father's old circle is pulling the strings from the background and Bush is just a puppet. I wo}'t lie that I dislike the current administration (which I fervently supported after 9/11), due to its conduct regarding the UN during the pre-war buildup, where Bush and his delegates had repeatedly stated how irrelevant the UN are and after two years they come and ask the UN for help and, on top of that, nominate Michael Bolton, who has been caught on record, claiming that "the United Nations are nothing".
Chemical equipment wasn't being handled by the White House pencil pushers, but by the military. If I were one of the joint-chiefs, you can be damn sure I'd prepare my troops for the worst, especially if my commander-in-chief informed me that the country I'm attacking had chemical and biological weaponry. Even if he only said that there MIGHT be weapons, I'd still want everyone equipped with protective gear, just in case.
The thing is, the military believed it, much of the public believed it, the only question is whether or not the Bush administration truly believed it. I wouldn't go into that discussion though, since we could debate all month long and not come to a conclusion.
Regarding WMDs themselves, the biological agents Saddam had don't last more than ten years (and that's stretching it).
However, I digress. I'm voicing my opinions and so is everybody else and I'm glad that we're having a civilized debate, as SVN and Ferdie have both said.
BTW, I agree with Alan regarding most folks opinions. For the most part, I believe the world was pretty much united- even if only briefly. President Bush vowed to take the fight to terrorism... to "... confront threats to America before it's too late." The terrorists had been at war with us ( and the free/ modern world) for decades and we were finally about to enter the fight. Unfortunately, I was a bit too old to enlist.
It's very reasonable to believe that Saddam(and eventually his ruthless sons) would have continued to fill mass graves for years...
