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Topic:
The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
3/20 11:17pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Alpha-Red posted:
Actually, I do blame him for highlighting it, because fighting this war solely for removing Saddam Hussein still isn't worth it. Saddam wasn't Stalin, Saddam wasn't Hitler. Yes he murdered couple thousand people with chemical weapons, but invading Iraq obviously didn't bring them back. If we were doing it for humanitarian reasons....well, Sudan and North Korea top Iraq in that category by far.
That was a large part of my opposition at the time of invasion. I felt that between state of the country and threats made, North Korea was, by far, the top of the list.
Though, the one difference I do see is that Iraq was the only country we had a past with to use as further reasoning as to HOW we could go into the country, not just why.
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SuperWatto
Registered:
Sep '00
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Date Posted:
3/21 6:54am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Israel would be at the top of my list... Not that that would surprise anyone here.
But that could have been a very effective campaign in the 'war on terror'.
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Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon
Registered:
Dec '00
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Date Posted:
3/21 6:59am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Are you saying we should've invaded Israel instead of Iraq?
 
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Jabbadabbado
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
3/25 7:52am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
3/25 7:55am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Jabbadabbado
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I watched part 1 of "Bush's War" on Frontline last night. A phenomenal documentary. Part 2's on tonight.
Last night offered up a concise presentation of Cheney and Rumsfeld and their influence in Bush's cabinet relative to Rice and Powell, how Tony Blair and Colin Powell were outmaneuvered into support of the war, how Tenet blew it, the infighting between the State department and the Pentagon over planning for the post-invasion period in Iraq, Chalabi's sway over the neocons in the White House, etc.
Great stuff. Maybe no new revelations for those who have followed the war in detail, but definitely a big picture look at the major strategic decisions and tactical process that led to the Iraq war. Tonight will focus on the aftermath of the invasion.
I liked how the documentary goes out of its way to humanize Dick Cheney and why he was wary of the CIA intelligence on Iraq, why he and Rumsfeld felt it necessary to set up a special outfit in the Pentagon to promote faulty/flimsy intelligence about Iraq over the better intelligence that was coming from the CIA.
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SuperWatto
Registered:
Sep '00
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Date Posted:
3/25 8:32am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Hey folks, I had this thought yesterday.
We need a plan.
A workable plan that most people agree on that it's is a workable plan.
I don't think there is one, is there? That's pretty horrible, isn't it? Pretty bad for motivation, too, I suspect.
I think it basically comes down to (anybody please correct me if I'm wrong):
A
Americans pull out
Doesn't seem like a great solution to me, because who will replace them? If a civil war is anything close to likely, I don't think pulling soldiers out is going to do the greater good any good. Yet, it seems the Iraqis have grown utterly tired of them... So how much good are they doing?
B
Americans stay
And then what! It's not as if there's enough soldiers there. There should be... more. If you want stability. So, either way, you end up at
C
Americans rally more allies
Get those priorities straight. Cancel that war on terror... Call the beast by its name(s). If you preach human rights, practice human rights. Don't lie! Make up for wrongdoing. Close Guantanamo Bay.
It's an extensive list... but in singularly looking for a solution to the Iraq situation, I think there lies the solution.
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
3/25 8:39am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
3/25 8:41am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Gonk
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I forget, hasn't that (bush's war) been aired before?
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Jabbadabbado
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
3/25 8:56am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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A
Americans pull out
Doesn't seem like a great solution to me, because who will replace them? If a civil war is anything close to likely, I don't think pulling soldiers out is going to do the greater good any good. Yet, it seems the Iraqis have grown utterly tired of them... So how much good are they doing?
It isn't going to happen. We can't do it for humanitarian reasons, we can't do it for regional geopolitical reasons. We can't do it because it would be seriously detrimental to our national security intersts (not terrorism, but energy. The terrorism argument is bogus. But we have no short-term alternative to asserting hegemony over the world's most important oil producing region)
B
Americans stay
This is our future. We have built our permanent bases in Iraq. From Iraq, we can continue to dominate the region. We don't necessarily have to stabilize Iraq more than it is already stabilized as long as the flow of oil out of Iraq does not shut down.
C
Americans rally more allies.
We cannot rally allies on Iraq. It simply cannot be done. The UN will never allow itself to be saddled with our mess, nor would it ever agree to come into Iraq as a junior partner to the U.S.
Get those priorities straight. Cancel that war on terror... Call the beast by its name(s). If you preach human rights, practice human rights. Don't lie! Make up for wrongdoing. Close Guantanamo Bay.
I think the real place where we can afford to admit defeat and walk away is Afghanistan. Our one-time slam dunk, Afghanistan is now "less stable than Iraq." Realistically, we have no strategic interests there other than our reputation. The Taliban or some similar successor is almost inevitably going to get Afghanistan back sooner or later.
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Gonk
Registered:
Jul '98
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Date Posted:
3/25 9:01am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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I think if relations were to somehow improve with Iran -- whether it be through changes in the US or Iran itself -- at that point we might begin to see the possibility of a serious removal of troops.
But we're a long way off from that day.
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Jabbadabbado
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
3/25 9:25am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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Gonk, I think "Bush's War" is new although it may have borrowed heavily from interviews/B-roll from its earlier documentaries on the war.
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SuperWatto
Registered:
Sep '00
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Date Posted:
3/25 9:28am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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So... Is it likely that Americans will stay?
Jabba, you say that it need not be more stable, as long as the oil flows. But don't forget that with the current level of stability, it costs the lives of six thousand Iraqis and a thousand US soldiers per year. Public outrage will continue to be tremendous.
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Jabbadabbado
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
3/25 9:46am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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I am outraged by it myself. But ever since the media concluded that "the surge is working," public interest has waned. Americans have demonstrated a new tolerance for the long slow bleed in life and money.
Understand that no American president of 2009, whether McCain (the most honest of the three on this issue) or Hillary or Barack, will be able to abandon Iraq to its fate. For a while, Iraqi civilians were dying at a rate so astonishing, during the worst of the ethnic cleansing, it didn't seem to matter whether the U.S. was occupying the country or not. Now, I think the U.S. presence is saving lives. Maybe we're not saving as many lives as would have been saved had we never invaded, but that's no longer the point.
No matter what other pretexts are offered up, asserting hegemony over the world's greatest oil producing region is the heart of American interest in the Middle East. Being able to maintain a massive troop presence on the ground in Iraq is now and for the foreseeable future, the mechanism for military dominance of the region.
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Alpha-Red
Registered:
Apr '04
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Date Posted:
4/1 9:53am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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I don't even think it was in American interests to attack Iraq in the first place. Even if it had economic benefit it undermined all moral considerations that our country used to adhere to, which is merely trading one American interest for another, and a lesser one at that. When you factor in all the violence and terrorism this whole thing has spawned, I'd say the war hasn't even fulfilled that economic interest.
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LtNOWIS
Registered:
May '05
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Date Posted:
4/6 5:57pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
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SuperWatto posted:
Jabba, you say that it need not be more stable, as long as the oil flows. But don't forget that with the current level of stability, it costs the lives of six thousand Iraqis and a thousand US soldiers per year. Public outrage will continue to be tremendous.
Wait... that's just not true. We lost 4,000 service members in 5 years. That's 800 a year, even without considering the fact that death rates have been a much lower since September.
These death rates, while regrettable, are historically very low. And, I think, quite maintainable. What's wearing out the military is the constant deployments and the strains entailed in that.
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KnightWriter
Title:
Administrator Emeritus
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
4/6 6:04pm
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
4/6 6:04pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
KnightWriter
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The death toll is highly misleading. Four thousand gives the impression of a relatively low number of casualties, when in fact there are more soldiers than ever surviving injuries that would have killed them in previous conflicts. Further, those injuries are taking a phenomenally heavy toll in the form of PTSD (the "lucky" ones), loss of limbs and mental impairment/brain damage, among other things.
The real number that we should be concerned about is into the tens of thousands, and probably more.
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xboxmasta
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
4/7 12:42am
Subject:
RE: The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
- Date Edited:
4/7 12:44am (2 edits total)
Edited By:
xboxmasta
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List of U.S Military wounded in Iraq.
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/oif-wounded-total.pdf
This Info was aquired from here.
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/index.html
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