Tonight while I was the gym, I saw that there was a protest going on in Downtown Atlanta against the Iraq war. According to CNN.com, there have been 2,001 Americans and NUMEROUS other people, that have died so far in this war. Enough is enough. And if that weren’t enough motivation to stop this madness, the Iraq war, as of 12:22 am, has cost $203,678,120,890. I think it is time to stop this madness, before these numbers are allowed to go up, and more people lose their lives.
For more statistics regarding soldier’s deaths, please check out this link. There is a complete list of names. Enough is definitely enough.
Not to be completely cynical, but don’t forget that war is good for the economy. Doesn’t it raise the GDP or GNP? How else is Mattel going to make more guns instead of Barbies? I personally think the war in Iraq is awful and I hate that Condoleezza Rice practially made her trip to Canada just a pitch for us to support the war. We don’t want our people dying for no good reason thank you very much.
so, should we have stayed out of WWI and WWII in Europe? that cost us a lot of lives and untold amounts of money to wage, win and rebuild. and i am sure the europeans would not like it if we had not done anything and stood idly by.
is this war costing money? yes. is it worth fighting for? history will tell. am i biased? of course since i am at the end of the poking the terrorist stick.
if this region is stabilized with a new government run by the people, i think the world will be a better place. after all, we are ‘friends’ with Libya now. just took some convincing of Omar with a few missles and years of sanctions. i also hope the Balkans will remain stable after our 10 year tour there.
Andy, I know that you are biased, and I totally get that, in fact, I just hope you know how much I do support the troops, but I don’t support the war. This war was started, led, and is maintained on false pretenses and false allegations. There may be some good to come out of it, but will it outweigh the bad? You are definitely right, time will tell.
In the mean time, please be careful. And you know that I definitely support you, and the rest of the people that are doing what I wouldn’t; and perhaps that is more reason for me to say enough is enough. I just want it to all be over.
I want it all to be over too! I want it to be over as much as I wanted Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror, intimidation, murder and torture to be over. As much as I want our volunteer force of troops to come home, I believe I share their desire to see this operation through to a reasonable conclusion: some semblance of security for the civilian population of Iraq. We could debate the merits of invasion ad nauseam (it’s been done and redone by better debaters than I), but the fact is that we’re there, and “up and pulling out” now would be disastrous and shameful.
Whatever one’s stance on the initial invasion and regime change (and the myriad justifications for it — not WMD alone), I don’t understand what vision people have of an Iraq suddenly left to its own devices before its own security forces are ready for the job.
It seems to me that an anti-war person in particular would embrace the “we broke it, we fix it” approach.
Comparing WWII to this war is very disingenuous. We didn’t go there to end Saddam’s reigh of terror intimidation, etc. If that was the case they should have said so in the first place. But they didn’t give that as a reason. Those reasons were given to use only after the original reasons were proven to be false and after it was proven they knew them to be false.
While I agree that unfortunately, we cannot “cut and run” at this point and we must see it through, that doesn’t mean we just forget that our government fabricated reasons to go to war (not just WMD but connections to Al Qaeda, terrorism, etc). They knowingly put forth false reasons to convince us and our congress to allow them to wage war. That is a HUGE deal! To say, “well, we’re there and it doesn’t matter how we got there, we’re there and need to see it through.” While the latter is unfortunatley true, to just say “oh well” and it doesn’t really matter about the reasons we got into this war is very dangerous and lazy. It certainly DOES matter how we got there.
It also matters how poorly this was planned and how our government ignored the generals who said we needed far more troops to secure Iraq after an easy invasion. This is what has caused so many deaths of our soldiers. And that is what folks should be focusing on as far as supporting the troops. Supporting the troops means to stand up against ignorant, reckless, government officials who throw our troops into harm’s way and then make things up as they go, and throw them out of office. But they don’t, they vote them in again, it is so frustrating.
Well, we’ve killed many more people than were taken from us. Wasn’t it 3500 in the WTC? Now we’ve voluntarily lost 2000 of our own and murdered 30,000 Iraqi civilians… This is not justice.
While I hesitate to get into an Iraq debate in the comments section of someone else’s blog, what the heck… Duane screens his comments before posting, so I’ll leave it up to him. =0)
Jay, I didn’t see anyone suggesting that “it doesn’t matter how we got there”, that’s a straw man. The politics of pragmatism say that, while it can matter a whole heck of a lot how/why we got there, the fact remains that we’re there and need to handle the job we’ve undertaken.
Now, I may be accused of alzheimer’s here, but in my memory of 2002, the administration busily went about providing a laundry list of justifications for regime change in Iraq; there was a mind-numbing litany of reasons, given one after another. The anti-war crowd has (justifiably) siezed on WMD in hindsight, but that doesn’t mean that, as is so often misstated, that was our “only justification for war”.
It is absolutely incorrect and unsubstantiated to assert that the government knowingly, intentionally disseminated false information. If you’re referring to the yellowcake deal, the only person proven to have lied in the Plamegate scandal thus far has been Joseph Wilson himself. In Wilson’s own CIA debriefing, he recounted how Nigeria’s president told him Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from them in 1999. Sounds like a long time ago now, but it didn’t sound so far away in 2002, with the ashes of One World Trade Center still wafting in the air.
The only official reason the CIA has ever given for backing off of the Nigeria assertions was concern over revealing the identity of the source — not of the veracity of the report. The veracity of supporting documents was later questioned, and the documents were proven a forgery, but this came much later, and did not affect the CIA’s opinion of the initial report.
Believe it or not I actually agree with PJS here. At this point the issue of should we or shouldn’t we have invaded is moot. I don’t think we should have, but I am not the man with the job. I don’t call the shots, (no pun intended). We are there now, and it would be an injustice to the soliders that have lost their lives not to see this through, and make some good out of an all around shitty situation.
The only thing I will say in regards to whether it is important to know why we went, or to continue to talk about and or rehash the reasons we went, is that it is always important to know the reasons things happen. It is also essential to understand and know the history of situations like this (the truth, whatever it may be), so that they are not allowed to happen again.
I think that it is time for this thing to finish seeing itself through. It is time to finish it, period.
“The politics of pragmatism say that, while it can matter a whole heck of a lot how/why we got there, the fact remains that we’re there and need to handle the job we’ve undertaken.”
I agree. We are there and to leave and let the country fall into civil war would be a mistake.
As far as the mind-numbing littany of reasons before the invasion, there weren’t. Existence of WMD’s and the expulsion of the weapons inspectors and the resulting violation of a previous UN resolution was the reason given to the UN to get their support for the invasion of Iraq. However, the UN gave no such support. The laundry list we have now was collected over a period of time as the invasion continued after the previous reason given were proven untrue, beginning with WMD’s and eventually ending up with Al Qaeda ties and Saddam’s a bad guy reasons (which all but the latter were proven false). These reasons weren’t stated all at once before the invasion, the laundry list was only such long after the invasion and occupation and was the result of a year of spinning it as they went. The only reason left that held true at the end was that Saddam was a bad guy.
As far as the CIA thing there are memos from the CIA expressing strong doubts over the yellow cake claims The CIA most certainly did question the veractiy of the reports long before the forgery was proven. “The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa, White House officials said Tuesday. - Washington Post, 7/23/03″
The Defense Secretary (Rice) in her testimony to Congress claimed to not have known about these doubts: “So the process is an NIE that is the basis of this, and then if the Agency had reservations about information that was in the NIE, then the DCI — and I think he will tell you that if he had reservations, he did not make those known to the President, to the Vice President, or to me — if he had reservations. [Source: Washington Post]“.
This is one of example of them knowingly and intentionally presenting false information as a reason for war to Congress. But I don’t want to take up Duane’s whole comment section but at least it makes for a fun debate and lots of comments. Sorry
Jay, there is absolutely NO reason to be sorry. When I wrote this last night, I knew that there would be some comments, and I had hoped there would be a discussion. Comment on!!!
And PJS, you silly goose! I don’t “screen”, so much as “monitor” for spam and stuff. I have NEVER not posted a comment, with the exception of one. That was the day of coming out, and it was hatred. I then used it in the post, so, in essence, I have always posted all comments. Don’t worry about being censored here at duanemoody.com!!! WHOO HOO!!!
Well, ACTUALLY, Jay…
Interesting that you quote the Washington Post, as what I’ve recently read points out several specific instances of misreporting the incident on the part of that very newspaper. I think I’ll have to write a full post about this on my own blog to fully explain, but there are cases demonstrated where reporting on the incident by the Washington Post clearly don’t match the record of events released by a Senate review of the CIA briefings on this issue. I refer to the July 7, 2004 report released by the bipartison Senate Select Intelligence Committee — a report specifically on the intelligence that served as the foundation for the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq.
I’m not implying the usual “liberal media bias” stuff, or that the Post deliberately misled anyone (ahem), but it appears that at the very least Washington Post writer Walter Pincus reported versions of events relayed by Joseph Wilson that were simply untrue.
Again, Joseph Wilson, the very man who started the “Bush lied about Iraq/Niger” story, claimed in his own CIA debriefing that Niger’s Mayaki told him personally — face to face — that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger in 1999. In other words, the very man who came back from Niger saying he’d found no evidence of Iraq shopping for yellowcake PROVIDED that evidence in his own debriefing.
Of course, I’m sure Saddam never intended to do anything naughy with that yellowcake he was trying to buy in Africa.
and our president keeps asking, “what would Jesus do?” and PopMuse starts packing for canada.
Very interesting. I would love to read a post about this. Newspapers can and do get things wrong and as you rightly said doesn’t necessarily mean they are biased.
What is your source for this Joseph Wilson information? It is common knowledge the whole story about the yellowcake wasn’t true and the document the Bush administration used as justification for war was a forgery. Is this not true all of a sudden?
Interesting as well, today, a 5 count indictment on Irving Louis Libby (Cheney’s advisor akin to Karl Rove to Bush), for perjery, obstruction of justice, making false statements, lying to federal agents and lying under oath (with regard to the Joseph Wilson issue). Whooops. The Vice President and Libby withheld several documents against the advice of White House counsel about WMD’s, essentially cherry-picking the info to give to Bush in the run-up to war, not giving him all the information, only the information which made a case for war, much of it (like the centrifuge tubes) turned out not to be true. They often took fabricated info from guys like Chalabi (I’m sure you know who he is) and didn’t pass along the information that showed certain things couldn’t be used for WMD’s.
I think at this point, it’s kind of hard to take the position that the Bush administration had ample justification for a preemptive war.
I love debating this stuff. Getting back to the original topic, we cannot just get out right now. As much as I hate our guys getting picked off left and right, as well as thousands of Iraqi citizens being killed from collateral damage, we have to make sure Iraq can secure its own country and uphold their constitution which is pretty ground-breaking for a country in that region.
The fact remains, the administration fabricated and manipulated intelligence to justify a preemptive war and that is a galactically HUGE deal. When other countries see that our country, wheter we have the backing of the UN or not, can just attack, occupy, and overthrow their governments as we see fit, makes other countries scramble to obtain nuclear weapons. Because we have shown, that if you don’t have nuclear weapons and we don’t like you, we will overthrow your government in a couple weeks. If you have nuclear weapons, we talk to you and give you concessions (i.e. North Korea). So our actions are ironically, actually promoting nuclear proliferation around the world (i.e. Iran). So support Iraq becoming free and democratic (as I do) but don’t support the Bush administration and how they got us into this war. But I guess I shouldn’t tell you what to do hehehe.
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