Non Partisan Question..Why do you think the US is in Irag and is it worth it

[Warham]

You could have asked that about WWII as well.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Warham
You could have asked that about WWII as well.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Not even in the same ballpark!

[Warham]

Same questions could have been asked.

I think what's going on in the Mideast is amazing. No one would have even dreamed of Iraq and Afghanistan being democratic countries twenty years ago. Perhaps Syria and Iran will be next. Most people dismissed the notion that freedom could take hold over there, that Arabs aren't the type of people would like democracy. I say bullshit! The fact that women are voting over there is amazing! Where's the women's lib faction in this country at right now? They should be doing cartwheels over the fact that women over there are voting. Of course they won't, because they have a liberal agenda.

I believe that democracy over there will keep us safer over here. And I'm sticking to that belief.

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Originally posted by Warham
You could have asked that about WWII as well.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Apples and oranges....

Two completely different scenarios, I know you realize that, so I won't expound on it...

But the main point being that Iraq didn't attack us, and was nowhere near any kind of imminent threat to us...

How many commissions need to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to prove that ??

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Warham
Same questions could have been asked.

We didn't start that war. We claimed War on Japan after THEY bombed us and Germany declared war on us eight days later! As I said, totally different situation.

Although I will say it's not that cut and dry; we were fighting the Germans in the North Atlantic in 1940-41 and we goaded the Japanese a bit.

[Warham]

I'd still be in favor of it, even with those questions you asked.

[Warham]

Originally posted by Va Beach VH Fan
Apples and oranges....

Two completely different scenarios, I know you realize that, so I won't expound on it...

But the main point being that Iraq didn't attack us, and was nowhere near any kind of imminent threat to us...

How many commissions need to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to prove that ??

Iraq wasn't a threat to us in a military sense, no. I believe they were a threat in other areas.

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Originally posted by Warham
Same questions could have been asked.

I think what's going on in the Mideast is amazing. No one would have even dreamed of Iraq and Afghanistan being democratic countries twenty years ago. Perhaps Syria and Iran will be next. Most people dismissed the notion that freedom could take hold over there, that Arabs aren't the type of people would like democracy. I say bullshit! The fact that women are voting over there is amazing! Where's the women's lib faction in this country at right now? They should be doing cartwheels over the fact that women over there are voting. Of course they won't, because they have a liberal agenda.

I believe that democracy over there will keep us safer over here. And I'm sticking to that belief.

No one does not want to see those countries go Democratic, but that is not the mission of the Armed Forces...

Their mission is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...

[[ I knew I learned something in 20 years... ]]

The invasion of Iraq, while being admittedly an enemy, was not defending, it was offending....

So I guess in those scenarios, we invade North Korea, Syria, and Iran, and whoever else (Cuba ??), lose a couple thousand more servicemen each invasion, spend a few more hundred billion taxpayer dollars, and everything's cool ???

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Originally posted by Warham
Iraq wasn't a threat to us in a military sense, no. I believe they were a threat in other areas.

Please tell, what other areas ??

And please don't use that 3 letter abbreviation that starts with W....

[Warham]

Originally posted by Va Beach VH Fan
No one does not want to see those countries go Democratic, but that is not the mission of the Armed Forces...

Their mission is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...

[[ I knew I learned something in 20 years... ]]

The invasion of Iraq, while being admittedly an enemy, was not defending, it was offending....

So I guess in those scenarios, we invade North Korea, Syria, and Iran, and whoever else (Cuba ??), lose a couple thousand more servicemen each invasion, spend a few more hundred billion taxpayer dollars, and everything's cool ???

I believe the men are preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution by being in Iraq.

I'm all for taking care of those other threats in due time and in the right circumstances.

I think we just disagree on how to go about affecting our security. I'm proactive, while you take the side of being defensive and taking the United Nations road that's already well-travelled and doesn't work.

[Warham]

Originally posted by Va Beach VH Fan
Please tell, what other areas ??

And please don't use that 3 letter abbreviation that starts with W....

Courtesy of NRO, and because it makes the points better than I would...

The evidence for Hussein's cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant and increasing. Recall, for instance:

* Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, declared at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later. Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." Between Aziz's announcement and the March 20 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans.

* According to the State Department's May 21, 2002 "Patterns of Global Terrorism," the Abu Nidal Organization, the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Worker's party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization and the Palestinian Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Hussein's Iraq. Hussein's hospitality towards these mass murderers placed him in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which prohibited him from giving safe harbor to or otherwise supporting terrorists.

* Coalition forces have found alive and well key terrorists who enjoyed Hussein's hospitality. Among them was Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Baathist Iraq.

Before fatally shooting himself four times in the head on August 16, 2002, as Baghdad claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal had resided in Iraq since 1999. As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the Abu Nidal Organization said he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 others. Among other atrocities, ANO henchmen bombed a TWA airliner over the Aegean Sea in 1974, killing all 88 people on board.

* Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak. It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils. (The Bush administration should bus a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that ought to open a few eyes.)

As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:

* The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.

* Journalist Stephen F. Hayes reported in July that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, ran what it called a "List of Honor." The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis, including this passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That name, Hayes wrote, matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad.

Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping Iraq rebuild its legal system. He wrote in the June 25 Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police agents removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands and confiscating copies of it from private homes. The paper was not published for the next ten days. Judge Merritt theorized that the "impulsive and somewhat unbalanced" Uday may have showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime" as war loomed.

* Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.

* While Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, fled the U.S. on a Pakistani passport, he arrived here on an Iraqi passport.

* Author Richard Miniter reported September 25 on TechCentralStation: "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared al Qaeda member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.

* Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."

* While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.

Despite the White House's inexplicable insistence to the contrary, tantalizing clues suggest Saddam Hussein might not have shared the world's shock when fireballs erupted from the Twin Towers.

* Recall that his Salman Pak terror camp taught terrorists air piracy on an actual jet fuselage.

* On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir — an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia — welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets over the Pacific at once.

* The Czech Republic stands by its claim that 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim an-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. He was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, from which American broadcasts to Iraq emanate.

* Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein and his ousted regime to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,790 others. "I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda," Baer ruled. An airtight case? No, but sufficient evidence tied Hussein to 9/11 and secured a May 7 federal judgment against him.

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Originally posted by Warham
I believe the men are preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution by being in Iraq.

Wow, we'll just have to agree to disagree, I don't see that at all....

[Warham]

I agree with that sentiment.

[FORD]

It's official... the neocons have lost all grasp on reality if they believe that list of bullshit lies Warham just posted.

What was the source on that again? I didn't see a link.

[Dr. Love]

Originally posted by Va Beach VH Fan
I guess the question I keep coming back to is:

If you were asked in March 2003 that you could remove Saddam from power (or should I say "eliminate the killing fields" that Hannity keeps referring to), but it would cost you;

- Nearly 1600 American servicemen dead after only two years
- Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars after only two years
- Hundreds of thousands of servicemen in theater for years to come

Would you have supported that ??

And if your answer is yes, suppose for a second that a family member would be involved, either deployed in theater, or even worse, would be a casualty...

Would it still be yes ??

That is the key point that I believe would make a lot of those who've supported the war do a 180.... If they had loved ones over there as sitting ducks, would they still be a gung ho in support of the war ??

Well, you can't expect to have any wars without casualties... and I think this war has been incredibly low in terms of number of American casualties. I also think it's a good thing to have our forces in the region for a good while. That big of an armed American force in the middle of all those Arab countries just might make them a little more responsive to our "suggestions".

I have friends and relatives in Iraq. They believe they are doing the right thing. I believe in them.