Which is it Mr. President?
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| Which is it Mr. President |
| Removal of WMD. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Removal of Terrorists. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Liberate Iraq. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Removal of terrorists associated with 9-11. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Nobody knows, we are just making it up as we go! |
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100% |
[ 10 ] |
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| Total Votes : 10 |
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copteacher
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 Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:04 Post subject:
| marathonrnr262 wrote: |
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is ok to send our boys after 12 weeks? Basic training, some AIT and welcome to Iraq.
Sheldon |
That is not the way it is. The soliders are getting a great deal of training before going over there. All of the guys I personally know who were there had years of training and months of training before even going over there. Since most of the soliders are reservists, they have been getting trained for years anyway.
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robp
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:05 Post subject:
| marathonrnr262 wrote: |
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is ok to send our boys after 12 weeks? Basic training, some AIT and welcome to Iraq.
This blind acceptance is horrible. With a child in harms way you should be rioting in front of the White House. This war is wrong and gets worse everyday.
Sheldon |
Basic training in itself is 12 weeks and very intense as you know. Infantry training (I don't remember the duration of infantry training) is the same. And that is for the basic grunt who carries a rifle. Who the hell is going to lead these guys into a battle? Who is going to lay out a strategy for a counterattack or an offensive maneuver? You going to take 500 newly trained grunts and say "go get 'em boys!"? Do you think the facilities being used to train new Iraqi soldiers permit the type of training our military receives?
Blind acceptance? I resent that kind of assinine comment. Just because I don't see things from your point of view doesn't mean I'm blindly accepting anything. Personally, I think you and your liberal cronies have blinders on concerning the whole thing.
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copteacher
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:06 Post subject:
| marathonrnr262 wrote: |
Ya Go, whats wrong with you? He lied about everyting and ROob is gonna follow no matter what he says. Why argue about something he feels so strong about?
Sheldon |
pretty sarcastic isn't it. Rob's point is let's not rehash points that have been berated here for long.
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robp
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:08 Post subject:
You don't need to speak for me Sheldon. I'm quite capable of it all by myself.
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AlaninTX
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:12 Post subject:
Ok, so now I am very torn. Clean this thread up and let y'all rock? Shut it down? Give one more warning?
Each "side" has been pretty sarcastic. I undertand this is a very emotional topic for discussion...but we need to not attack each other. Positions? Sure...that is fair game. But don't attack each other...reagardless of how wrong-headed you think they are.
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Wicked Flea
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:18 Post subject:
| sonnylax wrote: | Regardless of why we went in there initially... we are there now. We can't change that.
We have help develop a free Iraq, begun writing a new Constitution and freely elected leaders from a variety of Islamic groups across their country, and now training local security to take over once we leave.
Let's finish what we started. |
Well we have to finish what we started otherwise we leave in a mess.
But that's not the point.
The point is that Bush is using everything to justify a war that shouldn't have been started in the first place.
AND he is still trying to link 9/11 to Saddam even though it has been shown that there is no link.
I think his past actions have a very direct view on his future actions and maybe that's why liberals or anyone else who was against this war from the beginning will continue to bring up issues concerning how we were duped into thinking that there were WMDs and that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11.
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marathonrnr262
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 11:27 Post subject:
| Quote: | | Iraqi's are being trained and they are contributing. Currently only about 2000 of them have been trained to what our military considers a level high enough for them to go about it alone. |
2+ years and 2000 troops. Now thats progress. Our troops are in for 2 years before they are sent to Iraq? No, Basic, AIT and hello Iraq. 4-6 months, max.
Just answer one question.
WHY are we there?
| Quote: | "Bush's speech does not change anything for the Iraqi people and does not meet their needs for water, electricity, transportation and security from car bombs. I think the Iraqi people do not care about the speech because they are so preoccupied with their daily needs," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of parliament.
Before the U.S.-led invasion, residents of Baghdad had about 20 hours of electricity a day. Today, they get about 9.4 hours a day, usually broken into two-hour chunks. A year ago, they were getting an average of 10 hours a day. There are also frequent fuel and drinking water shortages, and only 37 percent of the population has a working sewage system. |
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TOsteve
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 12:27 Post subject:
How anyone can think that this war is about anything other than securing control of energy resouces is beyond my comprehension.
The US government thought they could buy control of the oil in Iraq by funding their military in their war with Iran. It seemed to be working for a while in the '80s but as soon as Saddam proved non-compliant they began plotting the use of force.
This is the culmination of those plans that began in the the late days of the Reagan administration (which is basically the same group running your country today with a new front man).
It seems clear to just about anyone not biased by a near religious zeal for partisan politics.
None of this is new - but I think it gets clouded sometimes with talk of WMDs or no WMDs, liberation or occupation, terrorism or security, Christianity or Islam....
Nope, its about oil in a world that is on the brink of running out of oil.
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sonnylax
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 15:32 Post subject:
| Quote: | It’s All About 9/11
By Andrew C. McCarthy
President George W. Bush forcefully explained last night — some of us would say finally forcefully explained last night after too long a lull — why our military operations in Iraq are crucial to success in the war on terror.
It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against terror. Specifically, against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans — as their leader put it in 1998, all Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world where they could be found.
It is not the war for democratization. It is not the war for stability. Democratization and stability are not unimportant. They are among a host of developments that could help defeat the enemy.
But they are not the primary goal of this war, which is to destroy the network of Islamic militants who declared war against the United States when they bombed the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, and finally jarred us into an appropriate response when they demolished that complex, struck the Pentagon, and killed 3000 of us on September 11, 2001.
That is why we are in Iraq.
On September 12, 2001, no one in America cared about whether there would be enough Sunni participation in a fledgling Iraqi democracy if Saddam were ever toppled. No one in lower Manhattan cared whether the electricity would work in Baghdad, or whether Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia could be coaxed into a political process. They cared about smashing terrorists and the states that supported them for the purpose of promoting American national security.
Saddam Hussein’s regime was a crucial part of that response because it was a safety net for al Qaeda. A place where terror attacks against the United States and the West were planned. A place where Saddam’s intelligence service aided and abetted al Qaeda terrorists planning operations. A place where terrorists could hide safely between attacks. A place where terrorists could lick their wounds. A place where committed terrorists could receive vital training in weapons construction and paramilitary tactics. In short, a platform of precisely the type without which an international terror network cannot succeed.
The president should know he hit the sweet spot during his Fort Bragg speech because all the right people are angry. The New York Times, with predictable disingenuousness, is railing this morning that the 9/11 references in the speech are out of bounds because Iraq had “nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and the tedious David Gergen, among others, are in Gergen’s words “offended” about use of the 9/11 “trump card.”
If the president is guilty of anything, it's not that he's dwelling on 9/11 enough. It's that the administration has not done a good enough job of probing and underscoring the nexus between the Saddam regime and al Qaeda. It is absolutely appropriate, it is vital, for him to stress that connection. This is still the war on terror, and Iraq, where the terrorists are still arrayed against us, remains a big part of that equation.
And not just because every jihadist with an AK-47 and a prayer rug has made his way there since we invaded. No, it’s because Saddam made Iraq their cozy place to land long before that. They are fighting effectively there because they’ve been invited to dig in for years.
The president needs to be talking about Saddam and terror because that’s what will get their attention in Damascus and Teheran. It’s not about the great experiment in democratization — as helpful as it would be to establish a healthy political culture in that part of the world. It’s about making our enemies know we are coming for them if they abet and harbor and promote and plan with the people who are trying to kill us.
On that score, nobody should worry about anything the Times or David Gergen or Senator Reid has to say about all this until they have some straight answers on questions like these. What does the “nothing whatsoever” crowd have to say about:
Ahmed Hikmat Shakir — the Iraqi Intelligence operative who facilitated a 9/11 hijacker into Malaysia and was in attendance at the Kuala Lampur meeting with two of the hijackers, and other conspirators, at what is roundly acknowledged to be the initial 9/11 planning session in January 2000? Who was arrested after the 9/11 attacks in possession of contact information for several known terrorists? Who managed to make his way out of Jordanian custody over our objections after the 9/11 attacks because of special pleading by Saddam’s regime?
Saddam's intelligence agency's efforts to recruit jihadists to bomb Radio Free Europe in Prague in the late 1990's?
Mohammed Atta's unexplained visits to Prague in 2000, and his alleged visit there in April 2001 which — notwithstanding the 9/11 Commission's dismissal of it (based on interviewing exactly zero relevant witnesses) — the Czechs have not retracted?
The Clinton Justice Department's allegation in a 1998 indictment (two months before the embassy bombings) against bin Laden, to wit: In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.
Seized Iraq Intelligence Service records indicating that Saddam's henchmen regarded bin Laden as an asset as early as 1992?
Saddam's hosting of al Qaeda No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri beginning in the early 1990’s, and reports of a large payment of money to Zawahiri in 1998?
Saddam’s ten years of harboring of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin?
Iraqi Intelligence Service operatives being dispatched to meet with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998 (the year of bin Laden’s fatwa demanding the killing of all Americans, as well as the embassy bombings)?
Saddam’s official press lionizing bin Laden as “an Arab and Islamic hero” following the 1998 embassy bombing attacks?
The continued insistence of high-ranking Clinton administration officials to the 9/11 Commission that the 1998 retaliatory strikes (after the embassy bombings) against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory were justified because the factory was a chemical weapons hub tied to Iraq and bin Laden?
Top Clinton administration counterterrorism official Richard Clarke’s assertions, based on intelligence reports in 1999, that Saddam had offered bin Laden asylum after the embassy bombings, and Clarke’s memo to then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, advising him not to fly U-2 missions against bin Laden in Afghanistan because he might be tipped off by Pakistani Intelligence, and “[a]rmed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad”? (See 9/11 Commission Final Report, p. 134 & n.135.)
Terror master Abu Musab Zarqawi's choice to boogie to Baghdad of all places when he needed surgery after fighting American forces in Afghanistan in 2001?
Saddam's Intelligence Service running a training camp at Salman Pak, were terrorists were instructed in tactics for assassination, kidnapping and hijacking?
Former CIA Director George Tenet’s October 7, 2002 letter to Congress, which asserted:
Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade.
Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
There's more. Stephen Hayes’s book, The Connection, remains required reading. But these are just the questions; the answers — if someone will just investigate the questions rather than pretending there’s “nothing whatsoever” there — will provide more still.
So Gergen, Reid, the Times, and the rest are “offended” at the president's reminding us of 9/11? The rest of us should be offended, too. Offended at the “nothing whatsoever” crowd’s inexplicable lack of curiosity about these ties, and about the answers to these questions.
Just tell us one thing: Do you have any good answer to what Ahmed Hikmat Shakir was doing with the 9/11 hijackers in Kuala Lampur? Can you explain it?
If not, why aren't you moving heaven and earth to find out the answer?
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TOsteve
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 16:10 Post subject:
If it's all about the war on terror, then how have the Saudi's managed to avoid the ire of the Bush administration?
Why put all your eggs in Iraq's basket? Similar connections to terrorist activity could be made to Syria or North Korea or Israel or Palestine - let alone Saudi Arabia - why sink billions into the conflict with Iraq? Is this the most effective way to fight the terrorists? If its all about 9/11 the Bush administration made a ridiculously incompotent miscalculation invading Iraq.
Incompotent miscalculations aside - maybe it's about something else? Something that wouldn't garner even the meagre public support that all the current excuses have achieved.
I may be a social liberal but I'm a moral conservative. My opinions are not based on partisan politics. I wouldn't have voted Democrat in your last election any more than I would have voted Republican. Just seems like common sense points to something other than the terrorists.
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runaroundsue
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 18:13 Post subject:
| TOsteve wrote: | If it's all about the war on terror, then how have the Saudi's managed to avoid the ire of the Bush administration?
Why put all your eggs in Iraq's basket? Similar connections to terrorist activity could be made to Syria or North Korea or Israel or Palestine - let alone Saudi Arabia - why sink billions into the conflict with Iraq? Is this the most effective way to fight the terrorists? If its all about 9/11 the Bush administration made a ridiculously incompotent miscalculation invading Iraq.
Incompotent miscalculations aside - maybe it's about something else? Something that wouldn't garner even the meagre public support that all the current excuses have achieved.
I may be a social liberal but I'm a moral conservative. My opinions are not based on partisan politics. I wouldn't have voted Democrat in your last election any more than I would have voted Republican. Just seems like common sense points to something other than the terrorists. |
This is how I look at it. However, I had to vote even if the choices were incredibly bad.
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cherylpf
crazy cat lady
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 19:13 Post subject:
| TOsteve wrote: | If it's all about the war on terror, then how have the Saudi's managed to avoid the ire of the Bush administration?
Why put all your eggs in Iraq's basket? Similar connections to terrorist activity could be made to Syria or North Korea or Israel or Palestine - let alone Saudi Arabia - why sink billions into the conflict with Iraq? Is this the most effective way to fight the terrorists? If its all about 9/11 the Bush administration made a ridiculously incompotent miscalculation invading Iraq.
Incompotent miscalculations aside - maybe it's about something else? Something that wouldn't garner even the meagre public support that all the current excuses have achieved.
I may be a social liberal but I'm a moral conservative. My opinions are not based on partisan politics. I wouldn't have voted Democrat in your last election any more than I would have voted Republican. Just seems like common sense points to something other than the terrorists. |
Such good points. Again, how many of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia? Like 15?
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gretriever
Hipster Doofus
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 20:53 Post subject:
| Gogirlgo wrote: | | Who wants to bet that when his ratings sink a little further, the terror alert will go up? Orange by the end of July, anyone? |
Other than trying to get/keep a favorable legacy upon leaving the office, what would the advantages be? He is, although with nearly 3 1/2 years in the term, a lame duck.
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robp
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Posted: 06/29/05 - 21:42 Post subject:
| TOsteve wrote: | If it's all about the war on terror, then how have the Saudi's managed to avoid the ire of the Bush administration?
Why put all your eggs in Iraq's basket? Similar connections to terrorist activity could be made to Syria or North Korea or Israel or Palestine - let alone Saudi Arabia - why sink billions into the conflict with Iraq? Is this the most effective way to fight the terrorists? If its all about 9/11 the Bush administration made a ridiculously incompotent miscalculation invading Iraq.
Incompotent miscalculations aside - maybe it's about something else? Something that wouldn't garner even the meagre public support that all the current excuses have achieved.
I may be a social liberal but I'm a moral conservative. My opinions are not based on partisan politics. I wouldn't have voted Democrat in your last election any more than I would have voted Republican. Just seems like common sense points to something other than the terrorists. |
Other than supplying warm bodies is there proof that Saudi Arabia intentionally assisted, trained and provided a safe haven for al-queda terrorists?
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TOsteve
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Posted: 06/30/05 - 06:07 Post subject:
| robp wrote: |
Other than supplying warm bodies is there proof that Saudi Arabia intentionally assisted, trained and provided a safe haven for al-queda terrorists? |
More terrorist funding comes from the private citizens of Saudi Arabia than any other country in the world. I guess that falls under 'assisted'.
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