Why I supported the war.

The thing I wanted to point out is that it does not matter if there were terrorists in Iraq. It doesn't matter if we *really* wanted all his oil. it doesn't matter if he beat his kids and wiped his ass with old glory.

We can only go to war if there is absolute imminent danger of the US being attacked, the only reason you can shoot someone is if they are about to shoot you.. if you fire and they didn't even have a gun.. excuses like "the CIA told me they had a gun", and "He was a bad guy" don't cut it.. and just like the war, you have committed and unforgivable action that you can never repair.

Let me put it this way: "On a scale of 1 to 5 how likely is it that Sadam would have launched a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack on the United States?" Unless you say 5, absolutely he was going to, then the war is unjust.

I just had the same conversation with two people in the last few hours. One kept repeating similarly to the Huckabee crap: broke it/fix it. Makes me sick. They think we can't just leave Iraq...it would be a mess. We all know it's a mess either way. Why spend billions and our soldiers lives to have the same result and a much worse result in the way or them hating us more in the future? It makes no sense and we all know it's not the reason we are there....just an excuse.

As for those type peope, as I've stated in previous posts: there are the ignorant and there are the foolish. Let's not waste too much time on the foolish as there are some people we'll never convince until they see themselves. Let's focus on the ignorant, like many of us were until we investigated the truth. Give these people a few minutes and move on to the next.

voted for Bush twice. Crazy thing...I was a registered Libertarian and just wanted the Demoncrats to lose. How foolish of me...your path is also my path and I am ashamed...so ashamed. I consider myself fairly intelligent and inquisitive...but I was completely ignorant......trying to make up for it now between my daily bodily lashing :D

I would have done so if it mattered, being from a deep blue state and one top of that a deep blue county.. but I figured I would make a stronger statement by throwing my vote away for Badnarik rather than throwing it away for Bush. Although at the time. I did vote for the Republican Governor in 2004 (who naturally lost).

Hmm.. Patriot Act, I thought it was necessary and had proper restraints against abuse of government ... before I actually read what it does.. after I read that I was against it.

I was actually against the Patriot Act before the war.. so perhaps that was a factor that started to get me thinking about the war itself.

There is no such thing as peak oil. When people talk about a coming oil shortage, they're refering to light sweet crude that is economically viable to extract with current technology.

It ignores the possiblility for advancements in technology, higher prices that would make more fields economically viable, heavy crude, oil shale, tar sands, natural gas, coal...

It also ignores the possiblility of increasing reliance on other sources, such as solar, wind, uranium, helium 3 isotopes, and other such sources that would extend the lifespan of oil.

I'm not looking it up, but I seem to remember that Venezuala alone had enough heavy crude to power the entire world at current levels for 40 years. And there is enough oil shale in the US that we could stop importing oil for 200 years at current usage levels.

The bottom line is, the world has used about 1 trillion barrels of oil in its entire history. That's less than 1/4 of the world's total oil reserves, assuming it isn't abiotic as the Russians believe.

Build a garden.

http://www.energywatchgro...

But first, yes I whole heartedly agree with you, that everyone knew Saddam presented no military threat to us. In fact, no one in the world does, then or now. Period.

Now, the reason we know that Iraq had NO WMD, in small or large quantity, despite your undisputed claims, since 1999, is because one of Saddam's defected relatives actually gave a solid verifiable intel to the CIA, stating that Iraq had destroyed most of its stockpiles, as per UN agreement after 1991 and under Clinton's NoFlyZone era. Unlike the "Curb Ball," whom the CIA willingly bought the "yellow cake from Niger," lie hook line and sinker, the relative's intel was legit.

Besides you have to wonder how stupid someone has to be to accept info from a source calling himself "Curb Ball." Because that's what this administration used to lie us into a war-occupation. Let us all absorb that for a sec. Whether the German Intel named him that or our own CIA did, the name alone warrants doubt. Perhaps spooks do have a sense of humor after all.

And that whole BS about a secret meeting between Saddam's and OBL's agents in Prague, is also utter nonsense. OBL/Alqaeda and Saddam were mortal enemies. No enemy of my enemy, is my friend meme here.

OBL is, though a tool and a calculating biz man, not a religious zealot, despite what the public myth may be. OBL is a no more a devout Muslim than GWB is a genuinely devout Christian; they are both lunatic offsprings born with Silver Spoons in their mouths who use religion to drive their agenda. But for the sake of argument, let's go with that. So OBL wanted full reign of Sharia law. Under Saddam, there were females in high political office, doctors, lawyer and judges. OBL would have none of that.

Tyrant bastard or not, under Hussein, whose wife is a Christian, by the way, various religious communities lived in peace, relatively speaking in a despotic state, granted, that included Jewish communities. In fact, much like the commies of the past, it was more or less a secular state, without the commie-style religious persecution, though there were no shortage of public executions and torture at OG AbuGhraib, pre-CIA/Blackwater, for speaking out against the State & Saddam. But there were relatively few public stoning for speaking against Allah. Though there were plenty of public tongue snipping. Yes, tongue snipping, literally, along with various limb dismemberment, for theft. How do I know? Because for a research project a few years ago, I had the unfortunate and distasteful pleasure of watching videos of these disgusting torturous methods committed against political dissidents, elderly, thieves, etc.

Not saying Iraq, pre-March2003, was perfect, but we must put it in perspective.

But there's nothing funny about a nation with over 35,000 nuclear arsenal, still pointed at China and Russia, with the most heavily armed populace the world has ever seen, at over 300-500 million firearms in private hands (thank God, for the 2nd Amendment), us, yes us, the United States of America, to be duped and cowered into fearing a bunch of "terrorists" most of whom we've funded since 1950's and a third world former puppet state we've bombed to smithereeens, Iraq. This is like a 6ft10 linebacker being afraid of a 5yr old gay male ballet dancer, no offense intended against 5yr old gay ballet dancers of the world. But you get my point.

We had all the diplomatic and military, and economic leverage at our disposal, but the NeoCons never used it. We, like it or not, share complicity in their atrocity, at a moral level. Yes, this nation's power base has always been in the hands of a few oligarchs, nevertheless, since all those bombs are purchased using, albeit fiat FedRes notes, as a Republic, whether true in practice or not, every time a bomb is dropped onto a non-military civilian target by intent or accident, it has our names written all over it.

Worse still, our reps in gvt are traitorous in abdication of their own Constitutional duties, in letting a small group of momma boy chickenhawks who's never even been in a fist fight in their entire lives, but they talk like they're Rambo, to hijack our nation and our foreign policy for their delusional utopia of corporate welfare corporatist-fascist military industrial complex driven fake "free-market" monopoly based economy, in Iraq and at home here in US, in what Naomi Klein would call "The Shock Doctrine."

Plus, how we do know that he DID have bio/chem weapons, but were destroyed in late 1990's? Because we have the receipts for the sale of those bio-weapons. Yes, WE SOLD Saddam those weapons. To be more precise, Donald Rumsfeld sold it to them while working for the chem weapon manufacturer, Cerl, in the 1980's. Yes DC is a revolving door of "scum and villainy," as Obi-Won would say.

I know it's painful, but it's necessary for catharsis. But as always, the Truth shall set all of us free.

In closing, to reiterate the pertinent facts, at the time of March 2003 invasion, Saddam NEVER:
-had WMD.
-had chemical/bio-weapons, mobile anthrax labs, like Colin lied to us at UN.
-supported Alqaeda.
-had terrorists in Iraq before we invaded
-sought out yellow-cake uranium from Niger.
-had anything, absolutely nothing, to do with the 9/11 attacks.
-supported suicide bombers in Israel. In fact Mossad and Shinbet are known supplier of arms to the PLO. Ariel Sharon's own bodyguard was indicted a few yrs ago, for selling American made M16's to the PLO, at any where between 50-4000% profit margin. Because we certainly, directly didn't sell M16 assault rifles that you often see in the hands of Palestinian fighters on Israeli TV. You'd think they'd prefer AK47's which are a dime a dozen in the region. Why? Because 5.56mm NATO ammo that the IDF uses are much easier to come by than the 7.62x39mm AK rounds. Unfortunately, that is not an isolated incident of a disgruntled employee out to make a buck.

-met OBL to discuss tactics, or train his forces.

OBL had the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistani villages that supported his presence. Plus all the arms he needed, he could obtain from his Saudi cousins, lest us forget the 15 out of 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis? Or he could simply buy weapons from international black market arms dealers, like the infamous Russian "Merchant of Death," Victor Bout.

Victor Bout supplies arms to everyone and anyone, including the CIA, KGB/FSB, Interpol, UN, NATO, Taliban, Alqaeda, and any thug or despot willing to cough up the dough. He is truly a free-agent marketeer in the very best, twisted sense of the word. http://en.wikipedia.org/w...
The following is a NewYork Times article on Bout.
http://query.nytimes.com/...
Also, watch Nicholas Cage's Lord of War (2005), which is loosely based on Victor. http://en.wikipedia.org/w... http://imdb.com/title/tt0...

As far as transporting WMD out of Iraq to Syria for hiding, it's just anecdotal. There is no proof of that. That claim has as much veracity as yellow cake uranium from Niger, which is nil. If we use that logic, we may also claim that just because we haven't found WMD in Iraq does not mean it ain't there.

But I'll be a Devil's Advocate for a sec. Say, for sake of argument, there is a parallel universe in which GWB and Cheney are as honest as Mother Teresa. And let's assume that they were truthful about the existence of WMD in Iraq. Now, either way, it'd be foolish to communicate to your electorate that your definition of victory in the upcoming military conflict, is to locate a stockpile of WMD in a country the size of California, led by a despot who has dedicated his entire life to evading assassinations by having multiple doubles, and hiding. I'd say one's success rate in finding something hidden purposefully, by a man who's spent a life time evading his enemies who would know a thing or two about not being found, is less than zero.

But once out of that parallel universe, to now, hiding nukes would be moot, as we've had ground penetrating radar and spectrography satellites for yrs. If not, we could have turned to 3D imaging based on tracing neutrinos and muon radiation, which penetrate anything and everything; it's one type of radiation no amount of Earth's thickness can blockout completely. In fact, a neutrino can literally penetrate from one side of the Earth to another, at varying degrees-which can be used to image. So either way, apparently, still no WMD.

Plus, your suggestion that Saddam had something to do with the 1993 WTC bombing is preposterous. The former Iraqi officer, whom I cannot recall the name or rank right now, but you can easily google it, involved in the first WTC bombing, was one of 2000+ Iraqi military intel and officers that defected to the US after the first Gulf War.

In order to not to digress too much from RP related issues, I'll keep this portion brief and just say that there is a well documented case of this particular fmr. Iraqi military officer who was involved in the first WTC bombing, that was a subject of a NYTimes expose. Suffice to say, he was a whistleblower, and NOT a suspect; he was not working for Saddam, but as an agent working through a handler in the FBI. The conversation was recorded and is a matter of public record. Again, you can google to verify for yourself. I'll just leave it at that, for now.

We've had over 7yrs worth of Orwellian propagandistic double-speak. After how far we've come, let us not fall for it again. No WMD. No Terrorist ties. ALL propaganda. And after reading most of the Good Doctor's speeches and listening to interviews, I'm sure he'll agree that, that is the case as well.

Cheers, mate. And keep up the good work and continue to spread Ron Paul's message.

This topic is a real can of worms, and in fact, I'd dispute just about all of your "undisputed" facts - and I'm sure someone would in turn take issue with my analysis. Whether you think it was a bad idea from the start or turned into a bad idea somewhere along the way, I think we can agree that the troops need to come home.

Why should we care if they support terrorists? If Canada supported the mob, are we to invade Canada?

Terrorists are a akin to an organized criminal element.. there are ways that we can attack them but invading the country they happen to be occupying at the time is not one of them. I'm kinda of the idea we should be paying Blackwater and any other group that wants the job, money for each real provable terrorist killed.

I really do dispute the WMD's and the ability to use them on us. If they have them why haven't they used them on us since? If our government stopped them do you not think they would champion it as a reason that the war is just?

I am with you, There is nothing left to do there, there is no real way to win because there is no set goal. I believe we will be there for 50 years. That may be a convincing argument if they fail to accept the "just war" argument above.. but I dont think its enough to push them over the edge.

A friend of mine just came back from Iraq, he was there for 1 1/2 years in the Army. So I asked him not knowing where he stood on the issue.. "Are you fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq or someone else?" - he told me that Al Qaeda is a phantom, and that he has never seen Al Qaeda or really much of an organized attack at all, he said the enemy is people who bury bombs in the street (and the Iraqi people watch them do it and say nothing) and punks that do drive by's on them.

Granted that is only one account.. but I trust him more than anyone on Fox News.

"their navy cant even make it out of their waters because we have a fleet in the arab peninsula."

It's worse than you might imagine. Iran put anti-ship mines on the bottom of the Persian Gulf. If war breaks out, or if they just want to disrupt oil flows...

I don't think cost, causalities, or world image hold a lot of sway for the war hawks. The left has been saying this for years and it hasn't had much effect. They would continue to support the war if the casualties were double and there were daily million man protests in France.

They believe its a fight for life and death because they think that Iraq is a threat to them .. they would pay any cost and practically any level of casualties. The key thing, at least I think, to harp on is Iraq is not a military threat to the US.

I believe cost is one of the big issues but I cant see that having much effect on the zealot war supporters..