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U.S. troops hope Afghanistan sacrifices not in vain

i liked the source of the WH on the sign Mission Accomplished on the ship. of course the WH never lies about something to cover that inept bastard Bush's ass when he makes a complete fool of himself internationally. that is the best joke i have heard in years. Bush was and is a liar. he lead your troops to war for anything but the right reason. how is it possible for anyone to defend that clown. i will never understand that. not if i live to be 10000. the defense of a complete idiot. maybe you just feel sorry for him.
 
i liked the source of the WH on the sign Mission Accomplished on the ship. of course the WH never lies about something to cover that inept bastard Bush's ass when he makes a complete fool of himself internationally. that is the best joke i have heard in years. Bush was and is a liar. he lead your troops to war for anything but the right reason. how is it possible for anyone to defend that clown. i will never understand that. not if i live to be 10000. the defense of a complete idiot. maybe you just feel sorry for him.


Now just replace the word Bush, with "ass clown Obama".....:rofl


j-mac
 
Can we stop with the Kool Aid nonsense now?

I have presented info from the most authoritative source on Iraqi deaths. You have presented no sources more authoritative.

I leave it for the objective lurkers to decide who is imbibing of kool-aid.
 
What would be the moral response to watching 3,000 of our own citizens killed on 9/11?

To enlist the support from the world, who empathized with us after the attack in going after those that attacked us.

Instead we continued with the same reckless killing of innocent civilians that brought about the attack on 9/11.

As a result of our stupid and counter productive efforts for the last 8 years we have increased the numbers of terrorists worldwide increasing the threat to our national security.

We appear to be very slow learners!
 
The majority of all the terrorists that attacked us were Saudis. The majority of the suicide bombers in Iraq were Saudis and the majority of funding for the terrorists come from Saudis.

And don't forget that the majority of the funding for the Taliban in Afghanistan comes from Saudi Arabia.

Still, it is not Saudi Arabian government policy to do this. The other items I mentioned still apply. We had no interest in invading Saudi Arabia. Likewise, we have no interest in invading Iran. But we did in Iraq.

Catawba said:
Yet still we killed more.
reefedjib said:
No we didn't.
I'd like to just take your word for it but the numbers at IraqBodyCount say different.

Do they distinguish between civilians killed by terrorists/insurgents and civilians killed by American/Coalition forces?

They made concession to the citizens to avoid being murdered. You won't know if we made in success in installing a pro-west government in Iraq until our all our occupation forces withdrawn and we stop paying the bad guys to behave.

I agree.

And what happens when we stop handing out stacks of hundred dollar bills to the bad guys?

Hopefully, a) the Iraqi government will pay them and b) they find civilian jobs - grow the economy.

The only successes we can point to are dependent on our heavily armed full occupation forces being there to prop up the government from its own people, and the payola to the bad actors.

It is encouraging that mass violence on a broad scale has not broken out now that we have disengaged from their cities.

Yeah, we have been saying that for 6 years and yet we still keep our full occupation force there to keep the peace. Saddam did that with just a bluff.

I am not sure what you mean here. Saddam enforced security through murder, rtorture and rape. Lovely.

reefedjib said:
We most certainly have the right to enforce our way of government on others at the end of a gun. We have along history of doing so. It is in their interest.
Just because we have done it in the past doesn't make it right. We should have learned that from Vietnam.

In Vietnam, we weren't exactly promoting democracy, now were we? I think it is right to spread democracy - it is in our interest. As I have mentioned this opinion of mine is currently being challenged and I may change my mind. I am going to read "Just and Unjust Wars" by Michael Walzer. I think the crux of the situation is that he claims National Defense is the only justification and I am claiming National Interest is justification. Vietnam is a bad example of National Interest. There are many others like Mexico and the Phillipines.

I blame the Democrats that supported our war with Iraq as much as I do the Republicans. How is that being biased?

I wasn't talking partisan wrt Democrats or Republicans. I was talking about being partisan in your anti-war stance against realists or outright pro-war folks. Maybe partisan is the wrong word for it.

There are still tremendous challenges and it could all fail when we leave and stop paying, as you point out. There is disagreement on the motivations and justification of invading in the first place. However, there are successes and we are there, involved, right now. So what is our best move? In this area, you could be more objective/realistic, in my opinion.

Give some credit, the troops are working their ass off to make it a success. They do their best at avoiding civilian deaths. They work with Iraqis to bridge sectarian divides. They work 18-hour days, 7 days a week for months in theater. It is no wonder they come home with PTSD. They are real heroes.
 
Before he places our youth in harms way, the Commander-in-Chief has the responsibility to confirm and double confirm a threat. That was not done. Either that or the intel was doctored, which seems to be the case as indicated by disclosures since then. Either way, it was wrong.

I think a double confirm was done. I do not think the intel was doctored, unless you have evidence you can present to me to change my mind. I do think there was a range of intel, some saying he had it and some not. That is typical for intel. You have to source it and weight it. I am not convinced it was wrong.

But Saddam had kicked out the US oil companies and had threatened to switch the Euro, and they had attacked our oil spigot in Kuwait.

That would not have mattered to our oil industry.

reefedjib said:
I think it was in our interest to spread democracy. This is something that liberals should support.
That is a BS excuse for attacking and occupying a country that was of no threat to us. Democracy does not work when you force it on others at the end of a gun.

I totally disagree, but may change my mind per my other post.
 
And don't forget that the majority of the funding for the Taliban in Afghanistan comes from Saudi Arabia.

Bingo! We have a winner!

Still, it is not Saudi Arabian government policy to do this. The other items I mentioned still apply. We had no interest in invading Saudi Arabia. Likewise, we have no interest in invading Iran. But we did in Iraq.

Not officially anyway! After being asked to move most of our forces out of Saudi Arabia, we needed another place to set up military control of the region. Since we knew Iraq was no threat after we bombed them back a century in Gulf War !, they were chosen.

Do they distinguish between civilians killed by terrorists/insurgents and civilians killed by American/Coalition forces?

Did we?

I agree.

Hopefully, a) the Iraqi government will pay them and b) they find civilian jobs - grow the economy.

So you do not believe the civil war will resume, when we are not there to prevent it? I think you are not being honest with yourself.

It is encouraging that mass violence on a broad scale has not broken out now that we have disengaged from their cities.

We still have 150,000 heavily armed troops there, and paying off the bad actors, what are they going to do?

I am not sure what you mean here. Saddam enforced security through murder, rtorture and rape. Lovely.

Saddam kept al Qaeda and Iran at bay through murder, torture and rape???


In Vietnam, we weren't exactly promoting democracy, now were we?

What the hell were we doing then? All I heard about was the fear that Vietnam would fall to communism if we didn't intervene.

We do business with many communist countries today, including Vietnam!


I think it is right to spread democracy - it is in our interest.

As I have mentioned this opinion of mine is currently being challenged and I may change my mind. I am going to read "Just and Unjust Wars" by Michael Walzer. I think the crux of the situation is that he claims National Defense is the only justification and I am claiming National Interest is justification. Vietnam is a bad example of National Interest. There are many others like Mexico and the Phillipines.

I do not happen to believe in our foreign policy of might makes right.

I wasn't talking partisan wrt Democrats or Republicans. I was talking about being partisan in your anti-war stance against realists or outright pro-war folks. Maybe partisan is the wrong word for it.

You mean my unrealistic stance that I cannot morally condone the trading of human lives to drive a hummer to the store and back?

There are still tremendous challenges and it could all fail when we leave and stop paying, as you point out.

That is the likely outcome from my observations.

There is disagreement on the motivations and justification of invading in the first place. However, there are successes and we are there, involved, right now.

The only successes relate to our occupation.


So what is our best move? In this area, you could be more objective/realistic, in my opinion.

To do what the Iraqi people are demanding, that we leave!

Give some credit, the troops are working their ass off to make it a success. They do their best at avoiding civilian deaths. They work with Iraqis to bridge sectarian divides. They work 18-hour days, 7 days a week for months in theater. It is no wonder they come home with PTSD. They are real heroes.

No doubt about that. They are doing the best they can with an impossible mission that they should never have been subjected to. How do we treat them for their heroic duty. We extend their tours of duty way beyond what they agreed to when they signed up, and we try to short change them on benefits when they return. If we truly honored our youth, we would not place them in harms way so we can maintain our slovenly lifestyles.
 
reefedjib said:
Catawba said:
We overthrew their government and helped select those they would vote on under our military occupation, and we use our full-occupation force to prop them up and protect them from their own people.

You have a funny notion of freedom.
Most untrue!!
Then why do we still have 150,000 troops there?

Are you seriously saying that because we have 150,000 troops there (actually I think it is 128,000 now), that that is evidence that we selected the candidates the Iraqis would vote on??? Get real.
 
Are you seriously saying that because we have 150,000 troops there (actually I think it is 128,000 now), that that is evidence that we selected the candidates the Iraqis would vote on??? Get real.

No, I am saying the only reason the government we helped set up is still standing is because of our heavily armed occupation force.

If that were not the case, why would they still be needed there?
 
i liked the source of the WH on the sign Mission Accomplished on the ship. of course the WH never lies about something to cover that inept bastard Bush's ass when he makes a complete fool of himself internationally. that is the best joke i have heard in years. Bush was and is a liar. he lead your troops to war for anything but the right reason. how is it possible for anyone to defend that clown. i will never understand that. not if i live to be 10000. the defense of a complete idiot. maybe you just feel sorry for him.








Its when i see posts like this, i just shake
my head at the lunacy of somes seething partisan hatred.
 
No, I am saying the only reason the government we helped set up is still standing is because of our heavily armed occupation force.

If that were not the case, why would they still be needed there?

Ok, so your statement:
We overthrew their government and helped select those they would vote on

is WRONG.
 
i liked the source of the WH on the sign Mission Accomplished on the ship. of course the WH never lies about something to cover that inept bastard Bush's ass when he makes a complete fool of himself internationally. that is the best joke i have heard in years. Bush was and is a liar. he lead your troops to war for anything but the right reason. how is it possible for anyone to defend that clown. i will never understand that. not if i live to be 10000. the defense of a complete idiot. maybe you just feel sorry for him.

If you lived to be 10,000 then you'll know the hidden agendas and be able to see what good resulted from his decisions and our actions and I'm sure you'll change your mind.
 
Do they distinguish between civilians killed by terrorists/insurgents and civilians killed by American/Coalition forces?

Did we?

Yes. Perhaps you just don't realize the effort made to prevent civilian casualties. In stark contrast was the terrorists intentional targeting of civilians. You need to ackowledge that.

So you do not believe the civil war will resume, when we are not there to prevent it?

It is definitely one possible outcome. We must do what we can to avoid this, especially since "we broke it, we fix it". This means pulling out some of the troops, to allow them to establish their own security, but not all of our troops. I will now invoke Germany and Japan and Korea as cases where we helped establish democracies and we still have significant troops there today. We need to do the same with Iraq.

reefedjib said:
It is encouraging that mass violence on a broad scale has not broken out now that we have disengaged from their cities.
We still have 150,000 heavily armed troops there, and paying off the bad actors, what are they going to do?

I don't understand. Do you mean what are the terrorists/insurgents going to do or do you mean what are our disengaged 128,000 troops going to do?

Saddam kept al Qaeda and Iran at bay through murder, torture and rape???

al Qaeda: Saddam was working with al Qaeda.
Iran: Did you miss the part about the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war?

You mean my unrealistic stance that I cannot morally condone the trading of human lives to drive a hummer to the store and back?

I told you it is about spreading democracy, not getting oil. Now that we are there, we need to be successful.

To do what the Iraqi people are demanding, that we leave!

They are not demanding that. They are demanding that some of our forces leave, and leave the cities, but not all of them.
 
Ok, so your statement:
is WRONG.

Selected was the incorrect term. I should have said supported. After all, Malaki would never have been able to return to Iraq had we not toppled the government there. And we supported him when we put together the Iraqi Interim Government.

"Returning home after Saddam's fall, he became the deputy leader of the Supreme National Debaathification Commission of the Iraqi Interim Government, formed to purge former Baath Party officials from the military and government."
Nouri al-Maliki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Selected was the incorrect term. I should have said supported. After all, Malaki would never have been able to return to Iraq had we not toppled the government there. And we supported him when we put together the Iraqi Interim Government.

"Returning home after Saddam's fall, he became the deputy leader of the Supreme National Debaathification Commission of the Iraqi Interim Government, formed to purge former Baath Party officials from the military and government."
Nouri al-Maliki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fair enough. Nothing bad about that - he is a capable guy. We searched for capability in the interim government. He won the Prime Ministership all on his own.
 
al Qaeda: Saddam was working with al Qaeda.
This has been shown to be nonsense. He would work with ALQ as much as Cleopatra would work with an asp.

I told you it is about spreading democracy, not getting oil. Now that we are there, we need to be successful.
It's not about democracy, it's about a stable govt with a standing army that can do our bidding. We'd be happy with what will happen anyway: a return of the usual ME dictatorship that won't go off the reservation.
 
reefedjib said:
al Qaeda: Saddam was working with al Qaeda.

This has been shown to be nonsense. He would work with ALQ as much as Cleopatra would work with an asp.

Not true. There was collaboration and meetings. One held in Hungary I think. Nothing to do with 9-11, though.

Saddam had relationships with several terrorist groups. Remember Ansar al-Islam?
 
Yes. Perhaps you just don't realize the effort made to prevent civilian casualties. In stark contrast was the terrorists intentional targeting of civilians. You need to ackowledge that.

You mean excepting when we strike water treatment plants and electricity plants that result in the deaths of a hundred thousand innocent civilians?

It is definitely one possible outcome. We must do what we can to avoid this, especially since "we broke it, we fix it". This means pulling out some of the troops, to allow them to establish their own security, but not all of our troops. I will now invoke Germany and Japan and Korea as cases where we helped establish democracies and we still have significant troops there today. We need to do the same with Iraq.

Apples and oranges. The difference being that Germany and Japan were attacking other countries. Iraq was not, in fact did not the capacity to be a threat after Gulf War 1 and 10 years of sanctions. Iraq was already defeated.

I don't understand. Do you mean what are the terrorists/insurgents going to do or do you mean what are our disengaged 128,000 troops going to do?

Sorry, it appears I did not complete my sentence. What I was trying to say is that the pro-west government we helped set up there will not stand against its own people once our heavily armed occupation force is withdrawn.



al Qaeda: Saddam was working with al Qaeda.
Iran: Did you miss the part about the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war?

Saddam and al-Qaeda did not get along. There were almost none in Iraq before we ousted Saddam according to the Pentagon report. They determined there was no Iraqi-al Qaeda connection.


I told you it is about spreading democracy, not getting oil. Now that we are there, we need to be successful.

Than you have changed your opinion, because earlier you were indicating that it was partly about the oil. We need to be successful in what? It is up to the Iraqis to determine their fate and how they handle their own oil resources.


They are not demanding that. They are demanding that some of our forces leave, and leave the cities, but not all of them.

You are representing what the pro-west government we helped helped set up is saying.

I am speaking of the Iraqi people that will topple the pro-west government when we remove our heavily armed occupation forces.

"Paul Jay speaks to Mike Tharp, Executive Editor of the Merced Sun-Star who's currently based at the McClatchy Newspapers' Baghdad Bureau. Tharp says that most Iraqis "want the "US out totally as soon as possible." They've seen the last six years as an occupation, not as bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, but instead the loss of tens of thousands of Iraqi lives as well as over 4300 American troop losses, a Trillion dollars spent by the US. I don't know what estimates are being put on the damage done to the Iraqi society and economy, but it's incalculable."

The Real News Network - Most Iraqis want US troops out now
 
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Not true. There was collaboration and meetings. One held in Hungary I think. Nothing to do with 9-11, though.

Saddam had relationships with several terrorist groups. Remember Ansar al-Islam?

Ansar al-Islam is a Kurdish terrorist group not linked to Al Qaeda.

Saddam certainly did not harbor them; nor had relations with them.
 
Not true. There was collaboration and meetings. One held in Hungary I think. Nothing to do with 9-11, though.

Saddam had relationships with several terrorist groups. Remember Ansar al-Islam?

Well let's see, I can go with your opinion on this or the Pentagon's investigation that determined there was no al Qaeda connection?

Think I have to go with the Pentagon. Sorry!
 
Ansar al-Islam is a Kurdish terrorist group not linked to Al Qaeda.

Saddam certainly did not harbor them; nor had relations with them.

I knew that they weren't linked to al Qaeda. Sorry if I made it sound that way. I was just pointing out they were an organization supported by Saddam.

According to this site: Saddam Hussein's Philanthropy of Terror - by Deroy Murdock Saddam helped with cash, diplomatic aid, safe haven, training, and even medical attention. Here is a list of some of the organizations he helped:

- Abu Nidal Organization
- Ansar al-Islam
- Arab Liberation Front
- Hamas
- Kurdistan Workers Party
- Mujahedin-e-Khalq
- Palestine Liberation Front
 
Well let's see, I can go with your opinion on this or the Pentagon's investigation that determined there was no al Qaeda connection?

Think I have to go with the Pentagon. Sorry!

I recall there being mettings. Maybe no support. I could be wrong. If that's what the Pentagon says, let's go with that.
 
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