After Seven Years, Final U.S. Combat Brigade Leaves Iraq

[LnGrrrR]

Consensus is not fact. My point remains. There is no evidence anyone has been able to come up with yet that has republican leaders showing any connection between 9/11 and Saddam. The media twisted our presidents and others words, creating their own dogma among viewers. Of course, their viewers are going to reflect in, polls, what the media made them believe.

Hey, you're the one that asked for a link proving that many people did link the two. I just provided it for you as you asked.

[LnGrrrR]

Others don't because they limit who they hear the news from. We cannot force the mainstream media to report what they don't consider mainstream.

How nice of you to discern that anyone who doesn't agree with your views on the war is obviously not well-read enough. Are you saying that, if well-read enough, everyone would support the war? I find that to be an incredibly foolish thing to say.

Again, blame the MSM's. If you listen to other news sources enough, you know progress was ongoing in so many other important ways. Decades of instilled behavior cannot be changed abruptly.

And yet, wasn't the war sold as a slam-dunk? Weren't we told the oil would pay for itself? That we would be greeted as liberators? When the people who believed this found it wasn't true, don't they have the right to take back their approval of the war? Again, you say we must "finish" if we start, but what if you found out that the justification for war was non-existent? What if we were UNJUSTLY waging war? (Not specifically in this case, but as a hypothetical.) Would you argue that we must continue an unjust war?

Sure, but liberal policies are damaging to this nation. You forget, prominent democrats signed on to this war. This was bipartisan. When you have almost no republicans agreeing to liberal policies, you know something's wrong.

Democrats, by and large, are pussies. Heck, many Democrats agree with the civil liberties injustices that Obama has continued just because he's a D. That's besides the point though, I think. As you pointed out with the polls, majorities don't prove the right or wrong of an action.

Not in my experience if watching politics these last couple decades.

I'd say their praise for Democratic policies/lawmaking is quite limited, wouldn't you? When's the last time a Republican congratulated a liberal for a LIBERAL or LEFT-LEANING policy? It doesn't count if the Democrat caves/agrees to a Republican position.

There is keeping the other side in check, and there is ramrodding policies that infuriate so many of us.

That's the beauty of democracy though, isn't it? Obviously one side screwed up enough to allow the other the numbers to ramrod things through; if people don't like it, the side in power will give sway to the other, etc etc.

Well if they were initially agreeing with the war, then those pussies can go home and cry with their mommies holding them.

Why the ad hominem? Do you think that people can't rationally change their mind? See my "unjust war" comment above.

I haven't decided where to draw that line for my own viewpoint. I would be happy if we could restore the freedoms most the population had before Saddam took over.

So, let's get this straight. You can't say for sure where the "finish" line is, but you demand that the American public keep pressing forward until we find where the finish line is? Do you trust the Democrats when they say that you must sign on to their plans until they find where the "finish" is?

I'm not sure what works best for their culture. I just know we cannot leave when things are fragile enough to resort back to a Saddam style leadership.

Will we EVER know when things aren't fragile enough? What if it takes 20, 30, 40 years? Should we waste precious natural resources for another country with no tangible gain?

i think we have to become more ruthless than we have been, and simply kill on site anyone whi claims to be Al-Qaeda, Taliban, etc.

Well, if they were theoretically carrying arms openly, and wearing a uniform, they'd probably be considered legal combatants under the Geneva conventions. I personally don't think we have to change how we've waged war for centuries.

Let me stay free with my money.

Wars cost money as well. Sure, they're cons utionally protected, but nowhere in there does it say that the American public has to pay them a certain amount each year. If the American public wants to pay less to the military, or reduce the military's capabilities, that's the public's choice.

A majority support until after the images of war and news hit. partisan reporting, all the bad they could dig up, with little or no good. I went backwards from 2008... Funny how it's not updated for 2009 and 2010! Looks like a partisan wiki entry to me. Anyway, I didn't see where people said we should "pull out." Just that they disapproved.

I'm not going to search the internets forever for specific polls. And there's nothing wrong with negative reporting; it's a sign of the freedom of press. If people are so upset with negative reporting, then they can start up their own media business and report the other side. That's what Fox News did, after all.

You know, sometimes we drive a different path to go to work, the store, etc. and find it's not worth it. maybe it took longer to drive it. that doesn't mean we turn around, and start over. Even when we disapprove of our chosen route, most of us drive it to our destination.

You yourself admitted you didn't know where the destination (finish) is though.

Another BS poll.

Where's the poll that says we should pull out, leaving Iraq to fend for themselves?

You can feel free to find that specific question. I just wanted to prove that a majority have opposed the war for sometime. Pew has been shown to be a fairly balanced research organization.

Thanks for taking the time to respond WC, by the way. It's fun debating with a member of the other side without too many ad hominems.

[boutons_deux]

"Vice President Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks."

"most Bush officials did not explicitly state that Iraq had a part in the attack on the United States two years ago.

But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks."

"A senior defense official with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate anything like this,"

... so there was head suggesting the Saddam-WTC link. And the administration was very effective by innuendo, fogging, bull ting, that :

"A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed "gaps" in America's knowledge of history and current events. Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered 'Yes' to the question "Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?" That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004."

http://atlanticreview.org/archives/7...ed-in-911.html

"fact that the administration's disinformation campaign was entirely successful is evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three weeks before the last presidential election, which reported that 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had ''strong links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had ''helped plan and support the hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11."

"The original Iraq war obsession originated at the American Enterprise Ins ute (AEI), a conservative think-tank that served as a home base for the many neocons who were rendered powerless during the Clinton years such as Richard Perle, who became chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, who moved into the number-2 position at the Pentagon, and Newt Gingrich and John Bolton, to name just a few."

"The original Iraq war obsession originated at the American Enterprise Ins ute (AEI), a conservative think-tank that served as a home base for the many neocons who were rendered powerless during the Clinton years such as Richard Perle, who became chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, who moved into the number-2 position at the Pentagon, and Newt Gingrich and John Bolton, to name just a few."

http://911blogger.com/news/2007-01-0...nd-911-lawsuit

As the blogger pointed out, there was so many bull "reasons", about one new one per week in late 2002, early 2003, why US had "evidence" of Saddam's WMD, "curveball", etc, etc, that most Americans, as the WH intended, for years after the invasion, thought Saddam was involved in 9/11.

[Winehole23]

If I hadn't read the le, I woud've assumed that this was a 5 year old thread.

Agree 100%

[Winehole23]

Turn it around, D: imagine you're the broken record.

[boutons_deux]

An incomplete rear view look at the the criminals suckering USA into Iraq war-for-oil

=========


An Unsanitized Look at the Origins of the Iraq War


Neo-conservatives within the Bush Administration -- Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and others, repeatedly told us on TV that individuals who opposed President George W. Bush's attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq value democracy and human rights less than they do.

But the people and organizations who tried to prevent this "preventive" war included the United Nations; people of faith (Muslims, Christians, and Jews); the governments of France, Germany, Russia, China; the Islamic Conference (including Indonesia, the most populated Muslim nation); the Organization of American States; the Arab League; the Organization of African Unity; former President Jimmy Carter; Pope John Paul; 133 members of the U.S. Congress; 10 to 15 million people who took to the streets for peace all over the world on February 15, 2003; Senator Robert Byrd (who articulated a critique of Bush's war aims on Cons utional grounds); a half dozen intelligence analysts and career civil servants from the State Department and CIA who either resigned or spoke out against this course; and many others.

To assuage these voices of dissent and to win over the American people to this endeavor, the neo-cons who dominated the foreign policy of the Bush Administration and their allies among the pundit and chattering classes at Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and all the rest, capitalized on the fear created by September 11, to win the support of Congress and the American people for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq.

The neo-conservatives said that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. He didn't.

They said he was in league with Osama Bin Laden. He wasn't.

They predicted that no major post-war insurgency in Iraq would occur. It did.

They said there would be a wave of pro-Americanism in the Middle East and the world if the United States acted boldly and unilaterally. Instead, there was a regional and even global wave of anti-Americanism.

Saddam's human rights record was not an adequate justification to go to war and the Bush Administration did not seriously try to make it one, until long after the war began and all the other plausible justifications had been proven false.

Bush's grand strategy for the Middle East was hashed out in the 1990s by these same neo-cons who are few in number and have worked together in and out of government for years. The Project for a New American Century became the mouthpiece for this group disseminating the ideas of Administration insiders such as Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, and others. In January 1998, the PNAC wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton, forcefully calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "The policy of 'containment' of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding," they argued, and "we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold sanctions." These developments endanger "our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's oil supply." The letter never mentioned "terrorism" but raised the issue of WMD and concluded: "the only acceptable strategy" was "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

The January 1998 letter to Clinton was signed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Dov Zakheim, William Schneider, Jr., and Peter Rodman -- all top officials in the Defense Department; Richard Armitage, Paula Dobriansky, and John Bolton; Zalmay Khalilzad and Elliott Abrams; and Robert Zoelick. So potent was their call to remove Saddam, that in October 1998, amidst the heated debate of the midterm elections, Congress passed the "Iraq Liberation Act" that made it official U.S. policy to overthrow Saddam.

In December 1998, President Bill Clinton launched "Operation Desert Fox." In the following eight months, the U.S. and Britain fired over 1,100 missiles in eight months at 359 targets inside Iraq killing at least 300 Iraqi civilians.

The PNAC churned out other policy papers in the 1990s with the same general thrust: Now that the Soviet Union no longer existed, the U.S. must use its military power to secure dominance over the Earth, especially the oil producing regions thereby controlling the energy supplies of any future rival.


( Yep, Iraq was primarily, exclusively about OIL )


This Pax Americana would require an aggressive, unilateral foreign policy free from the hindrances of multilateral organizations or treaties, as well as new military bases, and the will and ability to project American power anywhere. An influential PNAC paper from September 2000 states: "At present the United States faces no global rival. America's grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible." It called for a major military build up and singled out Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as immediate targets.

In the run up to the war, these neo-cons in the Pentagon set up the "Office of Special Plans." According to Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski who worked with the group, "Instead of developing defense policy alternatives and advice, OSP was used to manufacture propaganda for internal and external use, and pseudo war planning." She watched Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith cook the intelligence from May 2002 to February 2003, often relying on dubious Iraqi exiles for information, to support the already made decision to go to war with Iraq.

Said Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski: "I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president."

Based on this spun and concocted intelligence, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations General Assembly on February 5, 2003: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That's enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."

On March 30, 2003, ten days after the war began, Rumsfeld said: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are -- they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat."

( hey, Yoni, you said they are in Syria! Give Rummy a call, please )


Repeated like a mantra by Administration officials was the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed "26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulin, one and a half tons of nerve agent VX, and 6,500 aerial chemical bombs."

In Cincinnati, on October 7, 2002, President Bush said: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is recons uting its nuclear weapons program. . . . Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." [This aluminum tube charge was later proven bogus by both the International Atomic Energy Agency and David Kay's Iraq Survey Group.]

An ABC News poll published on December 17, 2002 found that 89 percent of Americans believed Iraq "does possess chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons." In a similar poll, about 70 percent said they believed Saddam had something to do with 9-11 (which he did not).

( Terrorists ==> WTC

Saddam ==> terrorists

ergo

Saddam ==> WTC )

President Bush said during his State of the Union on January 28, 2003: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quan ies of uranium from Africa." Yet former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been charged by the National Security Council to follow up on the uranium from Niger story, went public in July 2003 saying that the White House knew this information was false well before the President's speech. In any case, it was a highly unusual step for a president to announce to the world sensitive intelligence information which is never done casually. The Niger uranium story was based on do ents that were shown conclusively to be rather amateurish forgeries. [I probably should add here that lying to Congress is an impeachable offense.]

Cheney said on Meet the Press on March 16, 2003: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, recons uted nuclear weapons."

Bush and his National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice both on occasion used the image of a mushroom cloud in sounding the alarm of the Iraqi threat.

In a Vanity Fair interview after the occupation of Iraq was a fait accompli, Wolfowitz said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason" for going to war.

In April 2003, the United Nations requested that its weapons inspectors be allowed back in to Iraq, they, after all, possessed the knowledge and experience to find the WMD; but the Bush Administration firmly rebuffed this idea. Instead, David Kay's Iraq Survey Group of 1,400 inspectors spent 30,000 hours scouring Iraq for WMD. They found none.

Buried deep inside Dr. Kay's report to Congress is the following statement: "Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large scale capability to develop, produce, and fill CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions, and UN inspections." Kay chose not to include this telling admission in either his introductory remarks or his conclusion.

Buried even deeper inside Kay's report was this: "To date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material."

The imminent threat posed by Iraqi chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons turned out to be not so imminent.

When the statue of Saddam came down on April 9, 2003, there was great rejoicing in America -- Administration mouthpieces proclaimed a victory for liberty on par with the fall of the Berlin Wall -- but when two American soldiers were killed in Firdos Square by suicide bombers about 36 hours later, the incident wasn't even reported, let alone the irony pointed out.

When Bush landed in a Navy plane on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 looking martial and gallant in a fighter pilot uniform, helmet tucked under his arm, declaring "Mission Accomplished," his approval ratings were soaring at around 75 percent.

By August 26, 2003, 139 Americans had died in Iraq since Bush's triumphant carrier landing; by September 24, it had climbed to 341 killed, and so on and on and on for the next seven years. Today it stands, (as President Obama pointed out in his speech), at 4,426, with at least 30,000 wounded.

Although the Pentagon says that it is not interested in enemy "body counts," conservative estimates range between 100,000 and 150,000 Iraqi civilians killed.

( these people are better off dead that living under Saddam, who was a "bad man" )


American soldiers in Iraq still find themselves in a confusing combat environment (even though the "combat" is over), forced to fight in a foreign land where winning the "hearts and minds" of a people they know little about is crucial to the success of their mission.

Hand crafted bombs began claiming the lives of more Americans in Iraq than any other weapon. At first, they were usually made from discarded artillery s s with a detonator wired to a garage door opener or doorbell. They could be set off just about anywhere, buried along roadways or dropped out of vehicles. Fake bombs were set to waste the time of explosive disposal squads or to draw soldiers into ambushes with small arms. New bombs showed up in Iraq wiring together multiple explosives in a "daisy chain" to explode in several places, several yards apart, killing or maiming for life American service men and women. Lately, assassins using silencers are murdering Iraqi police officers in broad daylight.

Then there are the suicide bombers and the enormous car and truck bombs. Missiles attached to donkey carts or fake electricity generators have been used to deadly effect -- often with booby traps of explosives hidden in the wheel wells of vehicles.

American soldiers are still risking their lives every day in Iraq, "combat" or no "combat," and many more will die for this policy our neo-con leaders handed down to us.

The debacle in Iraq is not merely a result of errors in planning or poor decision-making. In devising their plans for Iraq, the neo-cons in the Bush Administration repeatedly and insistently dismissed the vast array of research assembled by think tanks and warnings of its own officials in the State Department and the CIA and the military.

For a small group of men with little understanding of Iraq, warfare, or "nation-building," or "counterinsurgency," is just the arrogant belief that they, and they alone, knew better than anyone else about what was in the United States interests. Their view required not just monumental arrogance but also a cavalier disregard for the life and death consequences of being wrong.

The "threat" Saddam Hussein posed was not "imminent." The war made Americans more hated in the world, especially in the Islamic world; and has made our people more vulnerable to attack both at home and overseas.

The neo-cons and President Bush claimed to know what was in America's interest, but they refused to debate it honestly.

If the Congress and the American people knew the truth about Iraq in 2002 and 2003, they would never have gone to war.

To be silenced by a complacent media and the attack dogs of the jingoistic Right -- to remain silent when we have been systematically lied to would be to betray the fundamental ideals for which our troops have sacrificed their lives on that "battle field" half a world away.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph...tml?view=print

[Stringer_Bell]

Yea, I'm still not convinced the Iraq War was about oil. Gas prices still suck. American taxpayers paid for the war. The pipelines are still being attacked (I think).

[boutons_deux]

"I'm still not convinced the Iraq War was about oil."

RIF, or maybe you're just stupid, or ideological, which are pretty much the same thing.

"Gas prices still suck."

RIF Their was never any Repug/neo-c*nt intention of lowering gas prices or the price of a barrel by invading Iraq. The Iraq invasion was to get Iraq oil into US/UK oilcos because Saddam was contracting with France, Russia, and China to develop its oil in early 2003.

The higher the prices, the better for the US/UK oilcos, duh.

aka, "private oil profits, public pays for the wars and the high oil prices".

[Stringer_Bell]

RIF Their was never any Repug/neo-c*nt intention of lowering gas prices or the price of a barrel by invading Iraq. The Iraq invastoin was to get Iraq oil into US/UK oilcos because Saddam was contracting with France, Russia, and China to develop its oil in early 2003.

I thought Russia and China were who Iraq has chosen to work with post-invasion. Isn't that who their contracts went to?

You make it seem like the war was only to profit US/UK oil companies, but those s ain't seen from Iraqi oil. Or have they?

[hater]

Yea, I'm still not convinced the Iraq War was about oil. Gas prices still suck. American taxpayers paid for the war. The pipelines are still being attacked (I think).

this is because the we failed. when you lose/bail out you usually don't get the spoils.

[boutons_deux]

Saddam was totally cutting US/UK oilcos out.

Now, US/UK oilcos do have their criminal hands on ONLY SOME Iraq oil, but not under the type of predatory contracts they tried to impose on Iraq (Iraqi unions objected, Allah bless 'em) and France, Russia, China, AND Iran now have access to Iraqi oil.

The Keystone Kops look like Special Forces compared to these Repug/neo-c*nts assholes.

[DarrinS]

where's the oil?

[boutons_deux]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8407274.stm

http://www.iraqoilreport.com/oil/pro...oil-boom-4871/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/30/iraq.oil

etc, etc

[DMX7]

Yea, I'm still not convinced the Iraq War was about oil. Gas prices still suck. American taxpayers paid for the war. The pipelines are still being attacked (I think).

Of course we paid for the war, and Big Oil and the MIC got rich because of the re ed wannabe cowboy.

[boutons_deux]

Bush-Era Iraq War Architects Emerge To Demand ‘Credit’ For Iraq War ‘Success’

a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded — not blamed — for their incompetence.”

be awed by the comprehensiveness and generosity of the neocon welfare system.”

They’re on your TV screens, in your radio, and in your newspapers — shamelessly demanding credit for the work they’ve done.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/01/...itects-credit/

========

And you right-wingers are dying to hand Congress back to the criminal assholes who lied the US into Iraq and murdered 5000+ US military.
'

[Wild Cobra]

Hey, you're the one that asked for a link proving that many people did link the two. I just provided it for you as you asked.

Perhaps I stated my intent meaning wrong. How to word this... and when my recollection is not 100%:

Again, my point is that no officials from the Bush administration made a connection between Saddam and 9/11. The connection they made was between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, and/or the Taliban.

The media ran with this suggesting with their spin that Saddam and 9/11 were connected, according to the administration and/or Bush.

Any belief the people have is from mainstream media spin.

Back to not enough coverage of the facts? Just how can we keep the media honest and complete in their coverage?

[LnGrrrR]

Back to not enough coverage of the facts? Just how can we keep the media honest and complete in their coverage?

I think the rise of blogging reporters and whatnot IS in response to the poor reliability of the mainstream media. Are blogs slanted? Sure. But they're usually at a much lower and local level, and blogs seem to take their credibility much more importantly.

At the least, if you don't like/trust one blog, you can go to another. The good media will continue to be paid, the bad media will eventually die.

Edit: Note, I think Pew does great research and great polls.

[Winehole23]

( Yep, Iraq was primarily, exclusively about OIL )

http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/13/news...on_mobil_iraq/