Happy Third Birthday, Iraq War!

[Thief Silver]

The rest of the world doesn't have a sense of humor.

[haohmaru]

The rest of the world knows better.

[Grey's Anatomy]

I wonder what NoWar_NoBush1 has to say about this.

[avatar]

The rest of the world has yet to offer a solution. They have continued to sit on their ass like Armchair quaterbacks yelling at us about our multitude of problems while they are having riots in predominantly muslim areas.

[Bojack]

It's a shame that things came to this. There is a perspective of this war that I figure most Americans are either unaware of or don't care if they do know.

We put Saddam into power in the eighties (part of Regan's works) and he started doing bad shit so we went in and "fixed" our mistake if you will. The ensuing problems will take a long time to fix. They're mostly problems that should have been addressed earlier, but will now have to be fixed now.

The problem is not that they live in the desert (as I think it was Sam Kinison pointed out) or that they are Muslim, I've met several Muslims that were better than a good deal of Christians I've met. It's a mixture of their church and state that keeps most of the middle east in horrible dissarray.

I sure hope I'm making sense to people.

[Revoltor]

I'm one of those people who believe American lives are far more valuable than Iraqi lives.

Sorry, I guess.

[StriderKyo]

It's a shame that things came to this. There is a perspective of this war that I figure most Americans are either unaware of or don't care if they do know.

We put Saddam into power in the eighties (part of Regan's works) and he started doing bad shit so we went in and "fixed" our mistake if you will. The ensuing problems will take a long time to fix. They're mostly problems that should have been addressed earlier, but will now have to be fixed now.

I sure hope I'm making sense to people.

Saddam put himself into power, nothing to do with the US. He was a high ranking member of the Baath party, became a general who knew where all the bodies were buried and was in charge of keeping people in line by being a grade A cockmaster; he became president from there.

The US did support him in the 80s, since at the time he was seen as being a bastard, but also an enemy of communism and fundamentalist Islam (which he was) so he was at least one of their bastards.

The rest of the world has yet to offer a solution. They have continued to sit on their ass like Armchair quaterbacks yelling at us about our multitude of problems while they are having riots in predominantly muslim areas.

It's been a while, but I seem to recall something about them suggesting not having the war in the first place.

[g0zen]

We put Saddam into power in the eighties (part of Regan's works) and he started doing bad shit so we went in and "fixed" our mistake if you will.

We never gave a shit about Saddam's atrocities. Even before he invaded Kuwait he went to the US Ambassador for the "OK" and the ambassador told him; "We consider this an internal matter." Then of course as soon as he invaded we saw an opportunity to get in better with the Saudis and traded one client state for another. The US never cared when he gased the Kurds. We even had to invent atrocities (babies tossed out of incubators) so that we could trick the Congress (who granted are either too stupid or too apathetic to do the research for themselves) into going to War with Saddam's Iraq. Sound familiar?

Seriously. My dad's the same way. Says they're all stupid not to be Christian, too.

Ask him if he's interested in doing some missionary work.

Saddam put himself into power, nothing to do with the US. He was a high ranking member of the Baath party, became a general who knew where all the bodies were buried and was in charge of keeping people in line by being a grade A cockmaster; he became president from there.

After his failed assassination attempt on the President (General Qassim), he fled to Egypt where he was funded by the CIA to train and 'have another go at it' which of course he did and became 'our guy in Iraq.'

[MarsKitten]

Well if you look at my posts from the era I was saying specifically this would happen. So was anyone who was antiwar from a "This is a bad idea, we're not equiped to handle this beyond the battle" stance.

Unfortunately now, we broke it, we're gonna buy it unless we want our international reputation to be right up there with Robert Mugabe's.

What needs to be done is shift into rebuilding the country's infastructure and return the country to normalcy. Meaning people have running, clean water (not happening), electricity 24/7 (nope), a more or less workable police that are NOT comprised of partisans and milita men (we're doing exactly the oposite to fill out the numbers.)

Militarily we need to lay the smackdown on the rebel groups and any of their supporters, politicians included. This needs to be done in an even handed way where our expectations are specifically stated, publicly, and our actions are honorable. Most places in the middle east will respect a heavy handed approach if it is done even handedly in a reasoned manner where normal people can expect to be left the fuck alone.

Because honor goes a long way in the middle east. Not just to the letter of the law but the spirit of it.

But it maybe too late to do this under the Bush administration. The man's drawn too much agro for the Israel/Palastine thing, the Iraq thing, the Torture thing, the Gitmo thing, the Fallujah thing and so on.

[g0zen]

What needs to be done is shift into rebuilding the country's infastructure and return the country to normalcy. Meaning people have running, clean water (not happening), electricity 24/7 (nope), a more or less workable police that are NOT comprised of partisans and milita men (we're doing exactly the oposite to fill out the numbers.)

That's all easy to say, but until the country is stabilized all the water plants, powerstations, and schools are just easy targets for the insurgency. Look at the continuous struggle we're having with them to protect the oil pipelines and even our own supply lines.

As for a police / military that isn't infiltrated by militias or insurgents, good luck. Everyone who isn't an insurgent is likely a Shi'ite whose already thrown his support behind al-Sadr and his Brigades because they're like-minded and care about (atleast publically) with protecting the holy sites. Not that they have done a very good job lately, but I guess they made up for that by getting in a lot of vengence killing. This isn't to say these sectarian executions weren't going on before. In fact, many of the army units infiltrated by Shi'ite militia have been rounding up Sunnis and taking powerdrills to their skulls. Inventive, if barbaric.

Militarily we need to lay the smackdown on the rebel groups and any of their supporters, politicians included. This needs to be done in an even handed way where our expectations are specifically stated, publicly, and our actions are honorable. Most places in the middle east will respect a heavy handed approach if it is done even handedly in a reasoned manner where normal people can expect to be left the fuck alone.

What do you mean by a rebel group? If you mean the insurgency, well, they've been trying that and I'm sure they'll continue. If you mean the militias then you're saying we should engage IN the Civil War and pick a side, or risk pissing off both sides and having the greatest irony occur of uniting the new Iraqi government in its unabashed hatred for the US. We're already pretty close.