4,000 dead Americans

[snuffbox 0]

So, you seem to be saying that there's no possible way to win and we should've never invaded in the first place, correct?

 

Could we stifle a foreign civil war & simultaneously nation build even with a force of at least a half million well-equipped troops? - Probably not, though there might have been a chance.

 

Could we do the above with a sleek agile poorly-equipped force led by simple-minded idealogues who knew nothing about combat? Not a chance.

 

Could we topple Saddam with said sleek agile...etc? Yes, could & did. Didn't work out, though, and we learned that nation building was the actual goal of our leadership after the fact. Beyond that, they didn't even consider the possibilities of insurgencies, civil wars, foreign meddling, etc....and when those things all happened our leadership downplayed them all at the expense of our troops. Except for the foreign meddling part which is discussed constantly in hopes of getting a drumbeat for yet another poorly-conceived war.

 

And the 'the troops are volunteers, they get what they deserve stuff' is putrid and wrong. No volunteer soldier is a toy & they shouldnt be used as such. They risk their lives by their own choice & dont deserve to have the matter made more dangerous by being sent into pointless wars, without reasoned strategies or proper equipment.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

So again, how and when will the president be punished for all of this? It really makes me angry to think that Bush is just going to get to walk off to his ranch after his term ends, and probably never face any real consequences, only to blame the next president when we inevitably leave the Iraq quagmire.

[BorneAgain 0]

Any chance of a remotely stable Iraq disappeared when the CPA pissed away every opportunity to successfully rebuild the infrastructure.

[World's Worst Man 0]

bigolsmitty's Leo X avatar was so rocking that I had to copy his idea.

 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That sums up my thoughts on this war. Whether the Bush administration really did have good intentions or not (I really have no clue what their real intentions were), the idea of liberating a country from a pestiferous despot is rather altruistic I think. The problem with this specific war was a) falsifying information and lying to the public about the casus belli; and b) not knowing that the job would likely lead to more problems than it solved. Now the current administration is left with a complete mess, which I guess is fine and dandy, since it will be someone else's mess before too long.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Pope avatars are all the rage where I live.

[NoCalMike 0]

So it looks like the Whitehouse officials are already spinning the September Report which is likely to be filled with the reality of horribly failed benchmarks by saying, "the benchmarks were unrealistic to begin with"

 

"Ashamed" has never felt like a more appropriate word. Not so much in the President, well yes in the President, but more in the american public for not wanting this guy tarred, feathered, and thrown out of office.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I want the administration to pay for their sins. It's apparent Congress doesn't care that much.

[EricMM 0]

Congress is still afraid of being painted as "weak on security"

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

"Ashamed" has never felt like a more appropriate word. Not so much in the President, well yes in the President, but more in the american public for not wanting this guy tarred, feathered, and thrown out of office.

Oh but you know why it doesn't happen. It is almost like anyone who says anything about GW that is remotely critical gets the verbal stink face. Right-wingers absolutely HAVE TO keep their shit together, not so much in a truthful gear, but in controlling the discussion. Otherwise they know deep down that all of their beliefs will crumble like a house of cards. It is pathetic.

[At Home 0]

A friend told me today she supports george bush because her dad is his doctor and his dog is cute.

[At Home 0]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That sums up my thoughts on this war. Whether the Bush administration really did have good intentions or not (I really have no clue what their real intentions were), the idea of liberating a country from a pestiferous despot is rather altruistic I think. The problem with this specific war was a) falsifying information and lying to the public about the casus belli; and b) not knowing that the job would likely lead to more problems than it solved. Now the current administration is left with a complete mess, which I guess is fine and dandy, since it will be someone else's mess before too long.

 

Altruistic? Come on, man. You can do better than this. When have the iraqis fucked with us? Never. We supported their shit, in fact. There wasn't one fucking good intention in the entire bunch. There are a handful of countries infinitely worse than Iraq. Why did we go into Iraq in the first place? I don't know. Oil? I doubt it. I don't see us bathing in black gold. A pretty good theory I've heard is just the fact that a superpower like America just has to slap around a little country every once in a while. Perhaps it was just to stimulate economic growth; America's economy (sans recent events) is pretty much en fuego right now, anyways.

 

Plain and simple, there weren't any good intentions. We didn't want to instill democracy and all that bullshit, nor remove Saddam from power, nor rid them of nuclear weapons. It was clear that we were gonna do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. Is Iraq better off without Saddam? I dunno. They don't have an autocratic authoritarian as a leader, but the entire region is getting assraped by the specter of civil war and political, social, and military instability, not to mention insurgency.

[Jingus 0]

We didn't want to instill democracy and all that bullshit, nor remove Saddam from power, nor rid them of nuclear weapons. It was clear that we were gonna do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. Is Iraq better off without Saddam? I dunno. They don't have an autocratic authoritarian as a leader, but the entire region is getting assraped by the specter of civil war and political, social, and military instability, not to mention insurgency.

Fewer Iraqis die by violence every year now than they did during Saddam's reign. A LOT fewer compared to the days of the Iran-Iraq war and when Saddam was merrily genociding entire villages. I'd say that's an improvement. Even if the Iraqi citizenry turned out to be a mightly contrary and violent bunch. After all, it ain't the American soldiers who are out there planting bombs every day that intentionally target civilians.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Fine, less Iraqis are dying now than during Saddam's regime. Don't know where you're getting that figure, but let's go with it.

 

Mission accomplished, then. Can our troops come home now?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

I'd like to know where he's getting that figure.

[Jingus 0]

Well, an estimated 10 million+ died during the Iran war alone. The highest estimate of post-invasion casualties is around seven hundred thousand. You do the math. You think I'm just exaggerating when I accuse Saddam of genocide?

[BorneAgain 0]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That sums up my thoughts on this war. Whether the Bush administration really did have good intentions or not (I really have no clue what their real intentions were), the idea of liberating a country from a pestiferous despot is rather altruistic I think. The problem with this specific war was a) falsifying information and lying to the public about the casus belli; and b) not knowing that the job would likely lead to more problems than it solved. Now the current administration is left with a complete mess, which I guess is fine and dandy, since it will be someone else's mess before too long.

 

Altruistic? Come on, man. You can do better than this. When have the iraqis fucked with us? Never. We supported their shit, in fact. There wasn't one fucking good intention in the entire bunch. There are a handful of countries infinitely worse than Iraq. Why did we go into Iraq in the first place? I don't know. Oil? I doubt it. I don't see us bathing in black gold. A pretty good theory I've heard is just the fact that a superpower like America just has to slap around a little country every once in a while. Perhaps it was just to stimulate economic growth; America's economy (sans recent events) is pretty much en fuego right now, anyways.

 

Plain and simple, there weren't any good intentions. We didn't want to instill democracy and all that bullshit, nor remove Saddam from power, nor rid them of nuclear weapons. It was clear that we were gonna do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. Is Iraq better off without Saddam? I dunno. They don't have an autocratic authoritarian as a leader, but the entire region is getting assraped by the specter of civil war and political, social, and military instability, not to mention insurgency.

If the neo-cons that pretty much lined up most of the CPA is any indication of their will, what the White House wanted was a free market, secular, government to serve as a model in the middle east, evidently believing that they could somehow achieve that in less than two years. Of course hiring a great deal of inexperienced staff who were chosen merely due to their political affiliations and placing Paul Bremer, a stubborn micromanager whose fuck-ups linger to this day as the viceroy, will probably hurt one's chances.

 

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

This kind of put things in perspective.

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story...at_iraq_swindle

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Well, an estimated 10 million+ died during the Iran war alone.

 

Casualty figures are highly uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties -- perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees. Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war; estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000. Iraq suffered an estimated 375,000 casualties, the equivalent of 5.6 million for a population the size of the United States. Another 60,000 were taken prisoner by the Iranians. Iran's losses may have included more than 1 million people killed or maimed.

 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/wor...r/iran-iraq.htm

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Jingus, you're comparing a direct military war between two neighboring powers that went on for roughly eight years with the current conflict, which isn't closely similar. It's not a good comparison.

 

Cheesala, that is the same article I referenced a while ago. I hope everyone reads it, because it shows how corrupt the current administration is. I hope they pay for their sins in some fashion before they get off the hook completely, because that article just shows how completely messed up the whole "nation building" thing is, and how we really can't come out ahead in this. The only people winning this war are the contractors.

[World's Worst Man 0]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That sums up my thoughts on this war. Whether the Bush administration really did have good intentions or not (I really have no clue what their real intentions were), the idea of liberating a country from a pestiferous despot is rather altruistic I think. The problem with this specific war was a) falsifying information and lying to the public about the casus belli; and b) not knowing that the job would likely lead to more problems than it solved. Now the current administration is left with a complete mess, which I guess is fine and dandy, since it will be someone else's mess before too long.

 

Altruistic? Come on, man. You can do better than this. When have the iraqis fucked with us? Never. We supported their shit, in fact. There wasn't one fucking good intention in the entire bunch. There are a handful of countries infinitely worse than Iraq. Why did we go into Iraq in the first place? I don't know. Oil? I doubt it. I don't see us bathing in black gold. A pretty good theory I've heard is just the fact that a superpower like America just has to slap around a little country every once in a while. Perhaps it was just to stimulate economic growth; America's economy (sans recent events) is pretty much en fuego right now, anyways.

 

Plain and simple, there weren't any good intentions. We didn't want to instill democracy and all that bullshit, nor remove Saddam from power, nor rid them of nuclear weapons. It was clear that we were gonna do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. Is Iraq better off without Saddam? I dunno. They don't have an autocratic authoritarian as a leader, but the entire region is getting assraped by the specter of civil war and political, social, and military instability, not to mention insurgency.

 

I said the idea of liberating a country from a malevolent dictator is altruistic, but I did not say that was the intention of the Bush regime. I said I didn't know what their intentions were. If I had to guess, it would be something nefarious, given that they felt the need to fabricate evidence and lie to the public. The point was that even an incompetently handled war that was started on false pretenses could theoretically create more positives than negatives. Whether it really will create those positives (the improvement of life in that part of the world) - or if the misery of a long war and occupation are really worth that "improvement" - is obviously still up for debate.

[Jingus 0]

Of course the handling of the occupation has been clumsily done. Of course the contractors make a lot of money in their no-bid contracts. (When they're not getting beheaded.) Of course civil war sucks. But I can't believe any of you would seriously say that Iraq was better under Saddam. That's like saying East Germany was better off back when Adolph was in charge.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

It's not that Iraq is better or worse off. It's that our country is involved over there when we have no real reason to be. If it was truly for humanitarian reasons that Iraq needed to be invaded, then it should have been the UN's job, not ours.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Even granting that (I don't entirely agree--Maliki and co. are just as corrupt and incompetent, so you're talking a step or two up at best), it's a clear case of the ends hardly justifying the means. Everything you've listed--the terrible occupation, the miserable misallocation of our troops, the constant grandstanding and complete disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians--makes it absolutely not worth it.

 

All we've done is kill or displace hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, completely destroy the country's infrastructure and absolutely fail to redevelop it (a stupid goal in the first place--neither Germany nor Japan had democracies for many, many years after the end of WW2 and this was an infinitely more fragile situation), and get thousands of American soldiers killed with several thousands more maimed or psychologically crippled. Oh, and we've spent what, several trillion dollars for the privilege of doing all this?

 

The best thing that can be said about this monstrous mess is that America has probably accelerated the inevitable Iraqi civil war. It has been an absolute farce.

[At Home 0]

Well hopefully we can just get back to the real enemies: The British. They created Iraq, make their asses pay for it.

[EricMM 0]

LOL @ Jingus being off by about eight million.

 

Very LOL.

 

Where did you get your 10M figure, anyways?

[Jingus 0]

That's my bad, I read it wrong. Miscounted the zeroes and thought 1000000 was 10000000. But even though my numbers were flagrantly off, my original point was right: the Baathists killed way more people than the civil war has. Iraq is doing better. Not because it's doing all that GOOD, but because of how bad it was before, I really think you're strongly underestimating just how much of an evil mass-murderer Hussein was.

[snuffbox 0]

Anyone else in an area damaged by floods recently? It seems like we have to jump through a million hoops just to maybe receive the benefits we have already paid taxes into. Meanwhile, we plop down pallets of cash by the billion in Iraq.

 

Ignoring America is the new Patriotism.

[EricMM 0]

Well, Jingus, the Baathists were at it longer. We're certainly making headway...

 

But by all means, continue your rah-rah'ing of this, Bush's Debacle.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

snuffbox, if you were a contractor in Iraq, you could have probably just driven to one of the stockpiles of wrapped up hundred dollar bills, offered to build an abstinence education office, and made off with more than enough to rebuild any town in the US affected by recent flooding.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

In all likelihood, fewer Iraqis would have died from March 2003-September 2007 if the United States had not invaded.

 

To go ahead and preempt (hehe) Jingus, yes, Saddam was a bad guy. That alone doesn't make the invasion justifiable. A fairy-tale-alternate-reality invasion based on different stated premises & sane ideology, executed competently, could have been justifiable.

 

But to borrow a Rumsfeldian turn of phrase, you go to war with the premises and the leadership you have.