What do you think of George W. Bush?

Post Reply New Topic

Does that mean we can invade Miami in response to the US invasions of Grenada or Vietnam then? Did the US invade Russia to defend Afghanistan's sovereignty, or China for Tibet, or Argentina for The Falklands, or England for Gibralta, or Israel for Egypt/Syria/Jordan on innumerable occasions? Who gets to decide who can invade who, when and for what reason anyway? Does the US get the right to make that decision simply because they have the biggest stick and everybody else just has to grin and bear it until somebody else gets a bigger stick?

And you defeat your own argument - Saddam may have been threatening and invading his neighbours 10 years, justifying, by your logic, the first invasion..... but he hasn't essentially said "Boo!" to a goose since then, so what's the justification now, then?

The US invaded Iraq because of oil, because they were relatively safe and easy to defeat, because George W. wanted to avenge his poor ol' daddy, because of a kneejerk reaction to 9/11, because of more different sinister agendas than you could shake a particularly large shaking stick at, but NOT for a moment for peacekeeping, defence of sovereignty, freedom, liberty or anybody's apple pie......

You could invade Miami......... dunno why you'd want to though.

If you were in Northampton 'round about now, that Miami weather would seem mighty tempting, trust me.

The neocon agenda of American imperialism is set out by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) www.newamericancentury.org; it will give you nightmares. The reality-based counteragenda is set out by the Center for American Progress www.americanprogress.org; it will give you hope. And try www.smirkingchimp.com just for fun when you really need to vent.

I respectfully disagree with many of your points. In your first sentence, Vietnam is not nearly the same. We did not invade, we simply picked up the slack left by the French, who could not hold onto their colony after WWII, and there was a South Vietnam goverment fighting to protect its territory. Still I don't think we should have gone, but there was a great fear of communisn then known as the "Red Scare" and it was part of the Cold War strategy to keep communism from spreading. Grenada as far as I know had some problems that effected the stability of the area and as far as I know we did not stay nor was it ever our intent to do so. We did help Afgahnistan, so this argument is also nil. We did so indirectly because no battlegronds of the Cold War were fought over directly if so it could lead to Nuclear War. And the few times direct friction was rubbed too hard Nuclear War was nearly the result, so it was not safe to do so directly. Tibet was a mistake, but what could have been done, China is larger and more powerful, and they have nuclear weapons. We do what we can. Falklands was taken care of by England, who did not need any help against Argentina on the Falklands. Gibraltar? how does that even apply? Israel are you kidding? Those nations tried to invade Israel several times over 40 years ago and support groups that try to harm Israel and its citizens. How do you get on innumerable occasions? Israel only responds to threats. They rescued citizens from a hijacker that hid in an African nation that supported terrorists, they responded to bombings or attacks in along the borders with Lebanon and Syria, and as far as I know Egypt was the first Arab nation who formerly attacked Israel, to come to a peace. Egypt should not even be in that statement since a peace was formed, so there is no longer any disagreement upon which to even think which side is right.

And I did not defeat my own arguement. He did attack others recently. It was only because he was being watched that he did not go outside his country, but that did not stop him from continuing attacks on his own people and I did say that part of the problem with Saddam was NONCOMPLIANCE with the peace his nation agreed to after the first gulf war, so there is direct correlation with "the recent attacks" I mentioned as the after math of three of those attacks (The Gulf War) was still hanging in the air.

Again you are WRONG. The U.S. did not invade Iraq simply over oil. Deception, U.S. and British and intelligence from many nations showed reason to fear an Iraq nuclear program and they did have WMDS - CHEM and BIO forms, they used them shortly after the GULF WAR and their whereabouts were unknown another part of the NONCOMPLIANCE issue.

You compel me to keep bringing up the same points I made earlier. You make statements such as that of Iraq being invaded for oil, yet my earlier points address this oppinion and render this statement useless. Do you not have any valid points to make about this or any way to county my points or not have any facts or resources to back your side. I must say good effort, but you are still failing to present a convincing argument.

I must respectfully disagree that the Iraq war was not for oil. That is the biggest BS I have heard. While it may not be the sole reason, it is a reason that is blatant to everyone except supporters of Bush. How can one not see the blatantly obvious connection between the Bush clan and oil? It always amazes me that the Red state supporters have never spoken to this issue. They seem to ignore it and hope that everybody will forget about it. Where do you think the Bushs' money comes from? I guess one could think it came from cocaine dealing, we all know how fond the Bush clan is of their 8 Balls.


Tallgirl.

So.


(Their fields are not in Iraq.)

Their fields are now in Iraq.

[/u]

No. Presiding over an intelligence network that is in decline is not the same as using the information from that to wage war and then attempt to absolve yourself because you were unaware of the very intelligence gathering that has (by your own claim) been in decline for years. As I stated before, Clinton can share the blame for the intelligence funding. It is not logical to say he deserves all of the blame when an opposition congress went along with it. However, Bush alone started the parade for war, and he should take some personal responsibility for the mistakes made.

If Clinton starved off and killed the CIA, why would Bush (and members of his cabinet) parade the information from them around the world trying to convince everyone to invade Iraq with him? What was such an imminent threat about Iraq that required we send more forces there than we did into Afghanistan, which really did house people who were posing an immediate threat to us? If we had held nothing back for Iraq and had sent everyone into Afghanistan, we might have actually caught Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. Now we are getting bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden is speaking out at least as often as he did prior to November 2001.



Have you heard of Jose Padilla? He was arrested in Chicago. He is a US Citizen. He has been labeled as an "enemy combatant" and has not yet had any charges filed against him. He has been held for approximately two years. A challenge by an attorney attempting to work on his behalf (while denied contact with him) has had a lot of trouble working his way through the legal system. The Department of Justice has argued that they do not have to give Jose Padilla due process, although he is a citizen of this nation and was detained on US soil. Going even further, despite being ordered by the US Supreme Court to allow hearings for all Guantanamo detainees, very few have had one and last I read they had postponed all the remaining hearings after having a few token ones immediately after the ruling.



Why do I keep talking about WMDs? I do that because that was the primary reason put forward by Bush, Powell, and Blair. I didn't make it the primary argument. They did. Certainly it would have been better if they had made a different decision, but hindsight is 20/20. They should be held to the fire for the claims they made. Bush and Cheney claimed we were under imminent threat from Iraq, but have yet to provide material evidence of such. As far as violating UN resolutions, Israel has been in violation of at least one resolution for decades...but we like them, so they get a free ride from us. The US government itself admits now that Iraq did not have the facilities or materials to pursue any meaningful WMD program at the time of the invasion. Bush's hand-picked commission on 9/11 could not even find a meaningful link between those events and Iraq, despite claims from the government that Hussein was financing part of that. There is more Al-Qaeda involvement in Iraq now than there ever was before.

Additionally, what country has Iraq battled over the past 20 years that did not have US approval and support? Kuwait? How many others? It is relatively well known that the US government approved of his war with Iran and wanted him to win, or at least keep Iran busy for a long time. As far as caring about him using chemical weapons on his own people, he only used them against the Kurds. We don't mind too much when Turkey attacks their Kurds, but we feign outrage when Iraq does it (since they got off of our friendly list in 1990/91)? Why did we wait until the invasion of Kuwait to want to do anything? Even then, why were we so quick to make peace even though Hussein was so evil and a threat to the entire world? Even more so, why did we wait until after 9/11 to take action against this evil threat to the world? The Bush administration has been talking out of both sides of their mouth. Hussein was both an evil dictator who posed a threat to the entire world, while at the same time being a small-time tinhorn dictator.

In the words of Mrs. Merton: "Let's have a heated debate"

I'm not using exact, literal, like-for-like, verbatim comparisons: of course Vietnam != Iraq .... I'm just using random examples to illustrate the broad point - nations invade other nations all the time, and most of the time, no one lifts a finger (including the mighty US), unless it a. directly threatens their specific foreign interests (tum, te-tum oil tum, tum) and b. is carried out by an army that they can easily defeat (i.e. we flew the old flag and kicked Argentina out of the Falklands with much bravado and posturing, but I somehow imagine a non-military solution would have been pursued if instead, say, China had invaded Hong Kong....) A point you even allude to:



Indeed - "We stand for liberty, peace and the freedom of all nations and will fight to defend them..... errrr, as long as they're not threatened by another nation who's ass we can't easily kick - in which case, you're on your own.....". The "might is right" doohicky.....



Yes, in Israel's case I am. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Israel's existence (that's another debate), they are a very small country surrounded by and massively outnumbered by overtly hostile and lunatic nations on all sides who's only intention is their outright destruction at any cost. Israel's desperate attempts to defend itself against massive provocation and ensure its own basic existence down through the years are clearly not the same thing as the other examples - devil's advocate they call it



Sadly, invading a country to protect its people from its own legal government, no matter how appalling that government may be, just can't stand as a justification, or else everybody would be invading everybody else all the time and you'd back into the 12th century or whatever..... And even if that is justification, why aren't we in Zimbabwe right now? Hmmmm? <cough> no oil <cough, cough> And Saddam did not directly threaten any foreign powers since the end of the first Gulf War, so quit it.



Oh come, come now - of course they invaded for oil...... WMDs were a pretext - that is obviously beyond any reasonable doubt now.....



Oooh, get her! I'll scratch your eyes out

All history must be viewed in context. The above statement indicates a serious lack of historical perspective. During the Reagan administration, yes, the US did help Afghanistan by providing weapons and training to combat the invasion by the Soviet Union. However, Osama bin Laden was a recipient of the weapons and training, and he was a stellar student. Our CIA provided the models for the terrorists training camps in Afghanistan. Because under Bush I we left after the Soviet withdrawal and the end of the Cold War, we enabled the rise of the Taliban and the unfettered advance of Islamic militantinism. Under Republican presidents (Reagan being the prime example), the US recognizes the sovereignty of any country under a dictatorship, as long as the dictator acquiesces to our wishes (see Central American history, e.g., Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc.).

Clinton sent our military into harm's way after the fall of the Soviet Union, under the auspices of the UN, at a cataclysm created when tribal, ethnic, regional, and religious groups oppressed for decades began to clamor to regain their identities, e.g., Bosnia-Herzegovenia. Our collective precursor to this type of nation-building was post-WWII, but atomic bombs tend to let you make the rules.

After Korea and Vietnam, the UN set limitations on each country's military efforts in their assigned territory, and these limitations persisted throughout the 1990s even as it tried to rescue African peoples in Somalia (1993) and Rwanda (1994). The US experience in Somalia specifically halted the UN from intervening as it should have in Rwanda. By 1996 when the Taliban at best relegated women to begging to sustain themselves and their children and at worst shot us execution-style in a soccer stadium, the national Republicans here had already begun their anti-nation-building chant that would rise ultimately to a false crescendo over Iraq. So we were stymied by that, not to mention by the ridiculous Republican outrage that Clinton got a blow job from Monica Lewinsky. I said it thousands of times then, and again now, "Who cares?" On a personal note, I love oral sex, giving or receiving, and realize not everybody does. So good for you who do!! !!

Meanwhile the reality-based community, mostly at the behest of RAWA (look it up for yourself), is trying to figure out what to do about the Taliban. They're blowing up thousands-year-old Buddhist statues because the statues are false idols (any wonder I hate religion?). Simultaneously, W is inviting them, all expenses paid, to Texas on a business trip. He wants their land rights for access to oil.

The synopsis is Reagan's CIA trained Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and W as governor of Texas gave the Taliban down-home hospitality to accommodate his family's vested interests in oil rights (pipeline flow in Afghanistan). W had never succeeded at anything. His family got him through college. His family kept him out of Vietnam. His family gave him a drilling company that he ran right into the ground (he must have been confused). His family got him elected governor of Texas (Democrats will never win elections as long as Republicans own the voting machines). Then, he was awarded the presidency. Then September 11, 2001. So, yes, the US did help Afghanistan.

I totally agree with you! He lied about some thing personal. It was a question that should have never been asked in the first place. Clinton's lie really only affected him and his family. BUSH'S LIES HAVE AFFECTED THE WORLD!

The administration only found out about these faults with the intelligence network after they were put through use just before and after 9/11. Which is part of the reason they did NOT depend solely on their own intelligence and why they cited allied and other such networks as confirming U.S. intelligence findings.

Even if Israel is guilty of one, it would still not be as bad as being guilty of many. The deal with Iran can be attributed to the cold war. The Soviets supported Iran, so the U.S. supported Iraq. If only they knew then what Saddam was like.

Maybe you don’t mind it when the Kurds are attacked but you should include everyone in your assessment.

I read some of Bush’s statements before Iraq. He said they had the means and intent to produce wmds, had and had produced chemical and biological weapons, and intended to produce nukes. If they had no capability at all, why were any scientists in Iraq working in those programs? Why is the U.S. still paying 120 of them? I saw interviews of Iraqi scientists being compelled to develope nukes, but they had to often feed Saddam embellished news or results. So thus Saddam believed he was succeding at developing nukes. Whether he had them or not, that never stopped him and his government from trying to hide what they were working on or lying about it, or mismanaging funds from the Oil for Food program. I have also seen and heard many interviews and reports of the brutal treatment of Iraqis at the hands of Saddam and his two nutty sons.

It was only suspicion that the U.S. had about Al Quaida and Iraq based on some early accounts of an Al Quaida agent and his contacts and visits to Iraq, which Saddam’s regime tried to cover up, thus furthering U.S. suspicion about the link.


St

Your first two rebutals:
As I said before Steve, a Nation will only do what it can. If defeating a beligerent government is beyond their capacity, then they will not fight, at least not unless it was really necessary and probably more so than a lesser nation trying to become a bigger threat.

Third rebutal:
It was not. I never said that. It was for several reasons. WMDs he had and used for a fact included chemical and biological. Part of the question and compliance issue was what happened to these WMDs he did have, no doubts, because he used them against Iran and his population, but what happened to the rest of them, Saddam failed to show they were destroyed as per the previous U.N. agreements. I still say the aggressiveness was relevant, because it was under Saddam when it happened, he did it until he was outright defeated by the Allies in 1991. The remaining time was spent trying to weasal out of the peace accords so he could build up again and resume his empire buiding plans. You quit it. I’m right.

Fourth rebutal:
If that were so, that it was only for oil, then Peru, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, United Kingdom, Iran, and Libya would all be in danger from the U.S. And that is totally unrealistic, maybe a couple of these have less than friendly governments but they have not posed direct threats to anyone in awhile, not all diplomatic courses have been exhausted, and there is still hope for change. Libya has already taken the lead in this course. Iran is still deliberating its options.

Fifth rebutal:
Huh? I don’t get it. Where is the she?


Tallgirl, that’s funny. Bush owning oil fields in Iraq as part of his policy for sending in troops. Hehe. You are a comedian.

I still findamentally believe that if you're going to use a moral argument as justification for an action, then you either have to apply it in all cases, or none..... that's just me..



Again, if intention to build the capacity at some point in the future to beat up your neighbours is grounds for invasion, then that's an awful lot of places we've gotta start invading......



Of course its not only for oil, just mainly for oil.... and the point is Iraq was in a vulnerable enough position World-opinion wise to allow the States just enough leeway to get away with the invasion without too many ramifications. No way could the US get away with invading any of the other nations you mention without massive worldwide upheaval and anger or even declarations of war towards them (except, at the outside Iran and Libya - that's why Libya has just started to backtrack on its diplomatic position - to deny the US the excuse) - believe me, Uncle Sam'd be marching into all those countries if he could get away with it (well, except for the UK which he's got served up on a plate anyway.... )



Sorry - my warped version of a particular English brand of humour.... don't worry about it My sense of humour takes time for most people to 'get' apparently....

In a perfect world, yes Steve, we could apply to all cases. But this one falls far short.

You are still concentrating on one element of my arguements, I did not say intention was the excuse. Even if oil were part of it, I still do not see it as the main part by any stretch.

But look at it this way, if Kerry had been president, he would not make up his mind until monkeys and gorillas had nuclear missles and asked us humans to leave the planet, its getting crowded. Social security would be undecided until the Sun explodes and becomes a red giant, thus enveloping Earth and rendering the social security question moot.

If Gore had been in charge, he would be calculating how much money and how large a force it would take to defeat worldwide terrorism, but it would take so long to come up with an accurate assessment and good enough intelligence that over half the planet would fall to anarchy caused by growing terrorist attacks to undermine world authority, meanwhile the terrorist leaders would be hiding in some neutral government paradise counting the millions they exploited from the governments and laughing at all the idiots they manipulated into believing they gave a crap and that this stuff would work to create a better world. Social security would be alright for awhile but at 90% tax rate nobody can afford to buy anything anyway so they save virtually all their money while capitalism collapses, the country approaches bankruptcy, and even Bolivia would have a higher gnp then the U.S.

So what you're saying is that a spur of the moment, knee-jerk reaction to start randomly invading countries on a whim in response to 9/11 is the way to go instead?

I look forward to the Band-Aid "feed the USA" concert.