War on Iraq?

[Spanky McFarland]

Hello all Americans,

I'm curious as to public opinion on Bush's desire to go to war with Iraq. All we get in Europe is Rumsfeld, or some other spokesperson, telling us that the American people are behind the war. Is this the case?

Do you think America is right to go to war, and if so, why?

[Gav]

you might have opened a can of worms here...

[lochinvar]

Should the US attack Iraq? I don't think so. And I know many who share my viewpoint. As of this morning, the news carried a poll of the citizens of Michigan--the numbers were about even for and against, with about 20% undecided.

I just don't think there's been a compelling case made for attacking Iraq. Granted, Hussein is a thouroughly nasty individual and a tin-pot dictator that oppresses and kills his own people--but there's lots of 'em all over the world: South America, Southeast Asia, Africa... What makes him so special?

Or are we now going to try to depose all of them? We may be the only "super-power" left, but we don't have the money or resources for that kind of policing.

Unless there's some evidence that Iraq poses an immediate threat, we should stay home and work through the UN. And if there is such evidence, George W. should tell us (and the world) what it is. "Trust me! I know what I'm doing!" just doesn't cut it; I was born on a Tuesday, but it wasn't last Tuesday!

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

First off, I'll answer yes, I do support the US getting rid of Saddam Hussein.

Now, I'll give my thought on lochinvar's comments/questions.

I just don't think there's been a compelling case made for attacking Iraq. US intelligence has been tracking bin Laden and al Queda for years before the American public knew about them after 9-11-01. US intelligence did not act soon enough before 9-11 because they didn't have a compelling case to get bin Laden. US intelligence has information you and the public do not about Saddam and al Queda related activities.

Granted, Hussein is a thouroughly nasty individual and a tin-pot dictator that oppresses and kills his own people--but there's lots of 'em all over the world: South America, Southeast Asia, Africa... What makes him so special? Although others hate America, Saddam is an active threat not because he is directly going to attack the US but because he supports terrorist who will carry out terrorist activities against the US.

Unless there's some evidence that Iraq poses an immediate threat, we should stay home and work through the UN. And if there is such evidence, George W. should tell us (and the world) what it is. "Trust me! I know what I'm doing!" just doesn't cut it; I was born on a Tuesday, but it wasn't last Tuesday! Why does US Intel have to spread highly sensitive information to the public. That's plain stupid. There's strategy involved in not telling your enemies what you know what they don't think you know. The NSA, CIA, and US Military carry out clandestine operations that you have never heard of and will never hear. The US Intel wasn't born last Tuesday either.

[HilandDoug]

Well, on CNN.com, the poll question asked is:

Should Congress give President Bush the authority to take military action against Iraq?

So far it's 60% for, only 40% against, with 194,559 votes cast.

[lochinvar]

Sorry, 355, but that dog just won't hunt.

The fact that we tracked bin Laden and al Qaeda for years is irrelevant. Correlating that to our intelligence information on Iraq is a non sequitur. They are not parallel cases, and cannot be made so. One is a private individual, the other a sovereign state.

However, I infer that you are offering the following syllogism:
A. We didn’t stop bin Laden when we could have because we didn’t have a strong case for doing so.
B. Such non-action on our part led directly to the events of 9-11-02.
C. Therefore, we shouldn’t make the same mistake with Iraq, but should take them out now even if we don’t have a very strong case, because not acting may lead to another event like 9-11-02.

If that is your argument, then you are asserting that prophylactic action should be taken on the presumption of guilt, or even the suspicion of guilt--and frankly, that is one slippery slope I don’t care to venture onto. Once we’ve established the precedent in international affairs, it would only be a small step to applying it domestically. “Be careful what you wish for…”

Okay, so Saddam supports terrorists. Granted. But so do Libya, North Korea, Iran, and various other states around the globe. Why aren’t they on the list? What makes Iraq special--aside from the fact that it’s sitting on a lot of oil, that is?

I understand that not spreading intelligence to your enemies is a good idea. But we’re not sharing it with our friends, either. We’re not even sharing it with the senior leaders of Congress, or with the other heads of state that we want to support us. Why not?

If George doesn’t trust us to make the right decision, then why should we trust that he knows what he’s doing? The nation wasn’t founded on blind trust in the chief executive; that’s why we have checks and balances. If he has good reason to go after Iraq (besides the fact that he just plain doesn’t like Saddam) then he should present it to somebody, get a few more voices raised in support saying, “Yes, we’ve seen the evidence, and we think he’s right.”

“Trust me; I know what I’m doing” just isn’t enough. The last guy that said that to me walked away with my wallet, and I haven’t seen him since.

And if the US intelligence community is so blessed good at covert operations, then they should just go in and take him out. Nobody needs to ever know (if they’re as good at keeping secrets as you believe), and it would save us all a lot of time, money, blood, and aggravation.

[Peach]

A country in which the sitting president lost the popular vote but won with electoral votes by the skin of his teeth and a bit of badly-designed voting apparatus is likewise not exactly unanimous on the subject of Iraq. The water has been muddied because of the immediate public urge to show support for said president, an urge caused by terrorist action last year. The opinion of a large proportion of the populace is that the president, deprived of the immediacy of an attack on Afghanistan, decided a war with Iraq was just the thing to rally popular support again, not to mention his dad did it before with some success. The president did not justify his advocacy of war sufficiently to convince many of his generals, a large number of members of Congress, or the chief executives of most countries both adjoining Iraq and far from it, nor did he convince the UN.

In other words, he may have very good reasons for wanting to attack one of the many evil dictatorships out there in the world, but he didn't do a good job of convincing people, even those who liked him.

[135711]

Okay, without putting down George, whom I love, I don't think we should go to war with another country, unless we are attacked. What I think we should do, is reduce the number of people we bring into the united states, especially through our University system. New populations have not had an opportunity to assimulate, that's why there's so much friction in some parts of the nation over jobs and money, then there's culture clash. Some people immigrate because of war, poverty or believe it or not, because they want to disrupt the society in which they are immigrating to. The floods of Irish and Italian immigrants who came in through ellis island during the turn of the century, at least had religious beliefs in common with much of america.

Energy: We need to reduce the amount of friction we experience with the middle east, by reducing our dependence on oil; but using solar energy in the warmer climates, making better and cheaper electric cars, using gas when possible, and other sources on small local levels. The entire nation does not have to use the same type of energy sources, we sould be able to use various sources in different places. We also should be willing to use public transportation, and make cheaper, cleaner buses, trains, and streetcars.

Food: we don't need to import every last scrap of food we eat, we should eat foods that are locally grown, and only use imported goods for special occassions. What happened to American farms in 1985 was so pitiful, it never recovered. We don't need as many huge cash crops as we currently have, more americans need to get into farming, on small scales, rather than the corporate farms, and what ever happened to subsitance farming?

Luxury Items: we need to stay away from the diamond/saffire mines in africa, and leave those resources to those people. Don't buy saffire or diamonds, stay with cultured pearls or other trinkets, like enamel or whatever.

Military Presence: do we really need to be on bases around the world [all of your bases are belong to us.......remember space cadet? what do you think he meant by that?]

[edew]

People tend to forget that the US is one of the largest (in terms of money and interest) supporters of terrorists. Bin Laden was supported by Bush-ites (from the first Bush dynasty). Even during the Clinton years, Halliburton was doing business with Saddam. And how did Saddam come into power? Why, the US supported him into power. We gave him chemical weapons to fight the Iranians. That he chose to use it on Kurds living in Iraq wasn't even totally against US interests, either.

How about the Iran-Contra drugs for weapons deal? We supported the contras, who were terrorists in Nicaragua. Who supported Pinochet and assassinated the popular leader of Peru (or was it Chile?). Kissinger is being indicted for that little world play.

But, those are neither here nor there in respect to the current Saddam question. (I don't want to be accused -- even more -- of blaming the US. Those events were in our past, and should be relegated to history, not be reasons to frame our current policy on Iraq or North Korea or China.)

My feeling is that Saddam will die of old age in his 80s or so. Maybe after Castro dies of old age. That guy Castro has been around since JFK. Castro has lasted through nine different US administrations. Given the state of the US economy, he might last through ten different ones.

Saddam is Bush's dog that needs wagging. But it's going to be all bark and no bite. Bush ain't got the balls and Saddam's playing him like a puppet. Heck, Saddam might come out of the inspections smelling like a rose. If he's quick to hide or somehow get rid of his arsenal, he'll score a much bigger political victory over Bush than what Bush can do by waging a war on Saddam.

These dictators, they get mellow with age, like Qaddafi. He's a toothless lapdog now.

[135711]

80 years old, why should he be so lucky? didn't we just see some old nazi **** just get out of prison today i think.
the us will probably support any leader who is a leader, it is foreign policy to support other world leaders, even if they're not so good in human rights. if a world leader goes wacky like pinochet, we may begin taking diplomatic measures, but then it's still a risk, because eventually the fickle public will take his side at some point, that part of human nature is something we need to take a good look at. it is the shallowness of it all.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

I could read all of this, but, I won't I just got in and I wanna put my two cents in. So if I restate sopmones point, sorry about that.

My opinion, we need to attack raq now, not later. We already know that they have nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, but they don't have the means to deploy them properly. Why wait untill they do?! It makes no sense.

Also Iraq has broken the Chemical test Ban Treatie (CWC) and the Biological Test Ban Treaties (BWC). Now I could rant on how and what the repercussions should be, but i won't cuz it would just take up space and noone wold read it. But in short, after breakng these treaties, and avoiding weapon inspectors, he should be attacked/invaded.

Oh well that is my opinion.

[135711]

once you attack, that's it, you have to go all out, invade, take the land and do what we did in japan, new constitution, and the whole deal, think a-bout it.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

135711 yuo are 100% correct. We go all out.

We go all out and stop Iraq from nuking our @$$, or using some other for of a weapon of mass destruction.

So let's go all out and not get America nuked, good idea.

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by KShan5[PrFC]
135711 yuo are 100% correct. We go all out.

We go all out and stop Iraq from nuking our @$$, or using some other for of a weapon of mass destruction.

So let's go all out and not get America nuked, good idea.

I am completely in favor of expedient action, preferably under UN auspices but unilateraly if it cannot be had. The costs of waiting, if those who counsel waiting are wrong, are monstrous---like nothing the world has experienced before.

This argument has been raging for some time in almost every forum of public discourse, and we're all probably familiar with all of the point and counterpoint, so I'm not going to rehearse them here. Suffice to say that no other state has accumulated the track record of multiple offenses that Saddam has. A few others are ruled by dictators and either have or are diligently trying to get WOMD; a few support terroism; a few have perpetrated atrocities against their own people or against opposing forces in wartime; a few have violated the Geneva Accords against using chemical weapons; a few are in violation of UN stipulations to which they are signatories; a few have fired on US forces; a few have invaded neighbors without provocation. Only Iraq is guilty of ALL of these at once. Only Iraq has been targeting or actually shooting at US and British planes daily ( around 120 times in the last month alone ). Only Iraq has been thumbing its nose at the UN inspections ordered as a condition of a cease-fire after a war of its own making. Only Iraq can be accused of ALL of these actions.

When the consequences of inaction are a ship bombed or a few building destroyed, even a few thousand lives lost, a nation can absorb a blow or two in order to comply with the expectations of the old world: that self-defense can only be reactive, that there must be a 'smoking gun' ere action can be justified. The consequences of being bound by the strictures of a simpler and safer time today may well be mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv or New York and Washington, or millions dying horribly from the dispersal of some bioagent thoughout the interconnected channels of world transportation between population centers. And the fact that we might thereafter kill Saddam would be small confort to the survivors, and probably mean nothing to Saddam if he could thus find glory as the "greatest Arab since Mohammed" by being the "man who destroyed the Jews and mortally wounded the imperialist devils of America"...

[Spanky McFarland]

Inq,

I would expect the reason the Iraqis are targeting American and British planes has something to do with the fact that every day for the last ten years, our planes have bombed Iraq. If Iraqi planes were flying over your country, dropping bombs on suspected military targets, would you just let them get on with it?

I, personally, am against war, for all of the reasons above and more, but, the situation can't continue as it is. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died over the last ten years because of UN sanctions which prevent medical supplies and food from entering the country. This needs to be resolved. If Saddam doesn't comply with the weapons inspectors absolutely, then this situation willl continue. Let's face it, the West is already at war with Iraq.

I think Bush/ Blair want to attack Iraq for all the wrong reaons, but that something good could come out of their harebrained scheme. If we do attack Iraq and topple Saddam, then sanctions can be lifted and fewer people will die in the long run. It's a choice between slow strangulation of the population, and an unjustified, yet perhaps ultimately beneficial war.

Having said that, the wider consequences in the Middle East could be extreme. If the West wants to encourage another 9-11, attacking Iraq is definitely the way to go about it.

[latenight]

My only addition to the discussion is that we had better have a pretty good idea of who is going to fill the vacuum if and when Saddam is gone.

Saddam is a known entity. We know how he operates.

We may not have that advantage over his successor.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

Originally posted by lochinvar
... Okay, so Saddam supports terrorists. Granted. But so do Libya, North Korea, Iran, and various other states around the globe. Why aren’t they on the list? ...

I'm not going to call you stupid, just uninformed. Saddam has opened up his country to allow remnants of al Queda to train at Iraqi military facilities. Libya, North Korea, and Iran aren't doing that. Sudan and Somalia are as anti-American and pro-al Queda as Iraq but they don't have the military facilities and resources to suuport al Queda in the way Iraq can. What the al Queda members are trained in is biological warfare and terrorist tactics which the Iraqi military learned from the Stasi, ex-East German organization. By allowing al Queda to regroup and continue its anti-American terrorist policy is a direct threat to America and its citizens.
The bombing of the USS Cole, the bombings of the US Embassies in East Africa, the first bombing attempt of the WTC, the attempted bombing of LAX, and the entire 9-11-01 attack were done with tactical, military and financial support on a scale that other countries and organizations have not even come close to doing. That's why they are not on the list.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

Originally posted by lochinvar
...If George doesn’t trust us to make the right decision, then why should we trust that he knows what he’s doing? The nation wasn’t founded on blind trust in the chief executive; that’s why we have checks and balances. If he has good reason to go after Iraq (besides the fact that he just plain doesn’t like Saddam) then he should present it to somebody, get a few more voices raised in support saying, “Yes, we’ve seen the evidence, and we think he’s right.”

“Trust me; I know what I’m doing” just isn’t enough. The last guy that said that to me walked away with my wallet, and I haven’t seen him since.

And if the US intelligence community is so blessed good at covert operations, then they should just go in and take him out. Nobody needs to ever know (if they’re as good at keeping secrets as you believe), and it would save us all a lot of time, money, blood, and aggravation.

George W. Bush and and the past US presidents rely on information provided by his staff. One man cannot know the details of everything from foreign affairs, economics, environment, etc. It is actually the Joint Chiefs of Staff who are providing the President with information and it is his decision to listen and act on what he hears.

Saddam is very paranoid and is not stupid about personal security so he is not going to expose himself to danger. It's not a secret that those around him are scared for their own lives. There is only so much US Intel can gather.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

Originally posted by edew
People tend to forget that the US is one of the largest (in terms of money and interest) supporters of terrorists. Bin Laden was supported by Bush-ites (from the first Bush dynasty). Even during the Clinton years, Halliburton was doing business with Saddam. And how did Saddam come into power? Why, the US supported him into power. We gave him chemical weapons to fight the Iranians. That he chose to use it on Kurds living in Iraq wasn't even totally against US interests, either.

How about the Iran-Contra drugs for weapons deal? We supported the contras, who were terrorists in Nicaragua. Who supported Pinochet and assassinated the popular leader of Peru (or was it Chile?). Kissinger is being indicted for that little world play.

The US does support enemies of US enemies. You can label them as "terrorist" if your point of view is from the enemy, the US labels them as rebels. The US supported Afghanistan rebels against the ex-USSR, the US used to have relations with Iraq when we were against Iran, the US used to have relations with Iran until the Shah took over... we can go on and on but it all comes down to what is in the US's best interest at the time. If you don't like it, then leave. Every country out there is looking out for its own interests.

[edew]

Originally posted by KShan5[PrFC]
I could read all of this, but, I won't I just got in and I wanna put my two cents in. So if I restate sopmones point, sorry about that.

My opinion, we need to attack raq now, not later. We already know that they have nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, but they don't have the means to deploy them properly. Why wait untill they do?! It makes no sense.

Also Iraq has broken the Chemical test Ban Treatie (CWC) and the Biological Test Ban Treaties (BWC). Now I could rant on how and what the repercussions should be, but i won't cuz it would just take up space and noone wold read it. But in short, after breakng these treaties, and avoiding weapon inspectors, he should be attacked/invaded.

Oh well that is my opinion.

Iraq has nuclear weapons? I don't think there is any evidence that they have nuclear weapons. Their chemical and biological weapons came from the US, so we know they have those.

But if just having them is a reason to attack, why aren't other countries attacking the US? We have all three such types of weapons. Thus, I think having them isn't (and shouldn't be) a good reason to attack the country owning them. Using them may be a good reason.

As for giving them to terrorists, well, that's also not a good reason to attack the country. Russia, with it's terrible economic shape at the moment are selling nuclear and other weapons to rogue states and possibly terrorists. Whoever has the money can buy mass destruction weapons from Russia. But they're not being targeted for attack by the US at the moment, right?