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View Poll Results: Should we have invaded Iraq on 3/19/03? | |||
Yes |
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16 | 15.53% |
No |
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84 | 81.55% |
Too close to call at this point. Leave it to Gaz. Also, I'm a wishy-washy fop of a human being. |
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3 | 2.91% |
Voters: 103. You may not vote on this poll |
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#76 |
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#77 | ||
The 23rd Pillar
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#78 |
Banned
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FDR didn't warn the Navy of an imminent Japanese attack.
LBJ sent thousands of troops into a tropical environment to fight a war with a new rifle designed for urban fighting tactics. Clinton bombed Belgrade. And on and on and on. But Bush is a "war criminal". Gitmo still open? We still in Afghanistan? What was that whole thing about in Libya? Why are we in Chad? Syria? Hello, hello? Anyone, anyone? Moonbat? |
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#79 | |
Veteran
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[QUOTE=Comrade Crapski;9515780]
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Doesn't change the fact that GWB pulled the trigger in a pre-emptive, unnecessary war. And pushing Iraq into Iran's lap is EXACTLY what I said would happen a many years ago when we first went to war. There are threads saying that too. BTW, I actually fought in a war for this country, so perhaps you would grant me just a bit of integrity there. You, on the other hand, are the definition of internet warrior. |
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#80 | |
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Like I said fWIW I actually think it was worth it but it is an interesting what if had we done nothing |
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#81 |
Non Potestis Latere
Join Date: Sep 2000
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(Insurgent) Bombings in Iraq kill 65 a decade after invasion
http://durangoherald.com/article/20130319/NEWS03/130319546/Bombings-in-Iraq-kill-65-a-decade-after-invasion BAGHDAD – Insurgents sent a bloody message on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, carrying out a wave of bombings across the country Tuesday that killed at least 65 people in the deadliest day in Iraq this year. The nearly 20 attacks, most of them in and around Baghdad, demonstrated in stark terms how dangerously divided Iraq remains more than a year after American troops withdrew. More than 240 people were reported wounded. It was Iraq’s bloodiest day since Sept. 9, when an onslaught of bombings and shootings killed 92. Violence has ebbed sharply since the peak of Sunni-Shiite fighting that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007. But insurgents are still able to stage high-profile attacks, while sectarian and ethnic rivalries continue to tear at the fabric of national unity. The symbolism of Tuesday’s attacks was strong, coming 10 years to the day, Washington time, that President George W. Bush announced the start of hostilities against Iraq. It was already early March 20, 2003, in Iraq when the airstrikes began. The military action quickly ousted Saddam Hussein but led to years of bloodshed as Sunni and Shiite militants battled U.S. forces and each other, leaving nearly 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis dead. A decade later, Iraq’s long-term stability and the strength of its democracy are uncertain. While the country is freer than it was during Saddam’s murderous rule, its Shiite-led government is arguably closer to Tehran than to Washington. It faces an outpouring of anger by the Sunni minority that was dominant under Saddam and at the heart of the insurgency that followed his ouster. “Today’s attacks are new proof that the politicians and security officials are a huge failure,” said Hussein Abdul-Khaliq, a resident of Baghdad’s Shiite slum district of Sadr City, which was hit by three explosions that killed 10 people, including three commuters on a minibus. The apparently coordinated attacks around the country included car bombs and explosives stuck to the underside of vehicles. They targeted government security forces and mainly Shiite areas. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Iraqi officials believe al-Qaida’s Iraq arm is to blame. The terror group favors car bombs and coordinated bombings to undermine public confidence in the government. It has claimed it was behind two large-scale, well-coordinated attacks already this month, including an assault on the Justice Ministry in downtown Baghdad last week that left 30 dead. Sabah al-Nuaman, a spokesman for Iraq’s counterterrorism services, said al-Qaida is trying to exploit political instability in the country. He also linked the violence to the civil war across the border in Syria, where largely Sunni rebels – some with ties to al-Qaida – are trying to topple President Bashar Assad. “The terrorist groups are trying to move their operations back to Iraq. They want to make Iraq part of the regional struggle,” al-Nuaman said. The violence started around 8 a.m., when a bomb exploded outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad’s Mashtal neighborhood, killing four people, according to police and hospital officials. It blew out the eatery’s windows and left several cars mangled in the blood-streaked street. The deadliest attack was a 10 a.m. car bombing near the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in Baghdad’s Qahira neighborhood. Seven people were killed. Another car bomb exploded outside a restaurant near one of the main gates to the fortified Green Zone, which houses major government offices and the U.S. and British embassies. Six people died, including two soldiers. Thick black smoke could be seen rising from the area as ambulances raced to the scene. At one point amid the chaos, authorities shut bridges spanning the Tigris River in the capital, hoping to thwart further attacks. Car bombings, roadside blasts, suicide attacks and other mayhem were reported in other parts of the capital as well as in Taji, Tarmiyah, Baqouba and Iskandiriya. In the northern city of Mosul, a local police commander was killed along with two bodyguards by a suicide bomber. The U.S. and Britain, the two countries that contributed the bulk of the troops for the 2003 war effort, condemned the attacks. “The vast majority of Iraqis want to leave behind the violence of the past to build a peaceful and prosperous country,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement. Amid the political tensions, Iraq’s Cabinet decided Tuesday to postpone next month’s local elections in two provinces dominated by Sunnis. Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr blasted the decision and threatened to withdraw his bloc’s support from the government. “Staying in this government has become harmful and not useful at all,” he said. |
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#82 | |
The 23rd Pillar
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1. Raw intel is composed of a lot of conflicting data of varying degrees of detail and reliability. It's never as easy to sort it out at the time as it is when you have the full benefit of hindsight. 2. Intelligence services are not monolithic creatures. They're made up of a large number of individuals with individual biases and the capacity for internal miscommunication. It's not surprising that at times, what one person within the organization "knows" is not known by another person and vice versa. It's also not surprising that sometimes a person has more confidence in his own opinion than he would if the entire universe of facts were known to him, which is obviously never the case. 3. The show is about a failure of intelligence and lies/fabrications made by intelligence sources, not about the lies of policymakers. 4. There were opinions that turned out to be right and opinions that turned out to be wrong within our intelligence community. It certainly doesn't add up to the idea that CIA and MI6 "knew there were no WMDs and that Iraq was no where close to making one." Some believed that and some didn't. But we can agree on one thing... the intelligence services failed our policy makers, by definition.
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Comrade Crapski |
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#83 | |
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First of all, I don't have to qualify any of my opinions with "I was in a war, man". That's terrific, Billy Jack. I'm proud of you. And between that status and being an American Indian, you've probably milked it dry for everything you got to get pushed to the front of the line for everything. You're just another self-important self entitled baby boomer crybaby. Your generation is the reason why America is in the ****ing toilet. You're a tenured professor, which is a nice way of saying for most of your adult life you haven't worked. What do you make, 6 figures? And you present yourself as some kind of DIY homesteader on the range? Give me a break with yor BS. You voted for Obama? It was a mistake? Sorry? Oh well? ha ha? How many people you report to the EEOC, Billy Jack? How many people you **** over? What did you do in Viet Nam? Saigan Cowboy, right? You can go **** yourself. Last edited by Comrade Crapski; 03-20-2013 at 01:38 PM.. |
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#84 |
MVP
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#85 | |
The 23rd Pillar
Join Date: Sep 2002
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Your characterization was a simplistic characterization of a complex situation. While it's true that a few individuals might have believed something that turned out to be both true and contrary to the final intel assessment, it's completely misleading and essentially false to say that the CIA (or MI6) knew that their final assessment was wrong. At best, you're guilty of the same thing this documentary accuses top level intel officials and senior policy makers of doing (i.e. seeing what you want to see and ignoring that which doesn't fit your preconceived notion).
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#86 |
Veteran
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The war (or, if you prefer, the determination that the conditions for the cease fire from the original Gulf War had been violated) had zero moral or legal justification. There's a lot of post-hoc rationalization going around that the war was based on false intelligence. Had any of those widely believed intelligence reports that are now known to be false had in fact been true, there still would have been zero moral or legal justification to attack Iraq, which had not attacked us and was not even capable of an imminent attack.
With regard to the intelligence for the war, the United States set a standard of proof for the claim of an imminent threat way back in the early 1960's, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our government didn't even meet that standard (convincing photographs) in 2003, despite the advances in technology that had occurred from late 1962 to early 2003. From what I could see, there wasn't a credible argument that Iraq posed an imminent threat. If there had been a misperceived imminent threat, then as far as I can tell, it hadn't grown in magnitude from the time that Congress gave permission to pursue the military option, which in my mind means that anybody who disagrees with me about whether an imminent threat existed should fault the Executive Branch of the American Government for taking so long to respond to whatever threat they supposedly were responding to. (In other words, if the President thinks that the Easter Bunny and his herd of flying unicorns are getting ready to tow their Winnebago of Death across the Atlantic Ocean in order to gas Americans, then the President needs to address that threat the moment that she perceives it, not after months and months of wasting everybody's time pretending that the U.S. needs to get permission from the United Nations and then deciding that, on second thought, the U.S. doesn't actually need that permission.) In fairness to the Executive Branch, the Congress asked them to pursue diplomatic options first. Still, if you don't actually feel like you need to get a particular endorsement for an action, don't waste time pretending you do. All that does is give the Easter Bunny more time to sharpen the unicorns' horns. |
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#87 |
Bucs, Pats, Noles
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Actually Dick Cheney has admitted he lied. Also those making those claims about Iraq knew he didn't have activated wmd.
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#88 | ||
The 23rd Pillar
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Quote:
Quote:
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#89 |
The 23rd Pillar
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Sure he did. Link?
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#90 | |
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You are an angry person. |
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