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When should the United States of America go to war?

When should the United States of America go to war?


  • Total voters
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Yes, I think I will need to review the Crusades history. I apologize if I were mistaken.
The witch-hunts didn't kill small numbers of people. It killed millions of people, more than what terrorists kill today
The Spanish Inquisition was bloody as most terrorists attacks.

Also, the reason why I bring up ancient Christian history is because Chickie keeps defending Christianity like it never committed a crime, and keeps attacking Islam because only a small number of its believers kill people regularly. Don't get me wrong, the modern church did undeniable good to the current world of chaos. Yet it has a dark history, and I just wants to point out that Islam is going through another dark history period like Christianity did before. Every religion does, maybe except for Buddhism.
 
Anyway, let's please get back on topic, on when the US should go to war. This religious discussion has been held long enough.
 
Those documents have been available since 2003 and were considered by the committee when it prepared its report.

The Phase 2 committee report was a ****ing partisan hatchet job, people want to claim that it had a Republican majority but it was Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter on that committee that gave them the majority, as we now know the chairman of the Committee Arlen Specter was as anti-Bush as they come, the non-partisan Pentagon review of the DOCEX release made abundantly clear that Saddam had a working relationship with Jihadist organizations (including AQ affiliates) and was plotting with them to attack the U.S..

They confirm what we already knew about Saddam. He collaborated with Islamists on occasion, mainly to help prepare for the possibility of an invasion by the US, but had no working relationship with Al Qaeda or its goals.

I said AQ affiliates, and no it was not just in relation to a possible U.S. invasion. He was planning terrorist attacks against the U.S. not just an insurgency. Read the article. Read the actual document I provided the go through the Pentagon Review, there's a lot there.
 
Yes, I think I will need to review the Crusades history. I apologize if I were mistaken.
The witch-hunts didn't kill small numbers of people. It killed millions of people, more than what terrorists kill today

Dude seriously wtf are you talking about?

The Spanish Inquisition was bloody as most terrorists attacks.

No actually the Spanish Inquisition was responsible for only slight more than 1,000 executions during it's entire 400 year span which is less than are killed annually by Islamic radicals. Islamic Imperialists by their own historical records document 100,000 Hindus killed in a single day on the Indian Subcontinent.
 
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Yes, I think I will need to review the Crusades history. I apologize if I were mistaken.
The witch-hunts didn't kill small numbers of people. It killed millions of people, more than what terrorists kill today
The Spanish Inquisition was bloody as most terrorists attacks.

Also, the reason why I bring up ancient Christian history is because Chickie keeps defending Christianity like it never committed a crime, and keeps attacking Islam because only a small number of its believers kill people regularly. Don't get me wrong, the modern church did undeniable good to the current world of chaos. Yet it has a dark history, and I just wants to point out that Islam is going through another dark history period like Christianity did before. Every religion does, maybe except for Buddhism.

Don't remember who brought it up originally.

Your comment about the Spanish Inquisition has already been addressed. English-language history books have long exaggerated the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, there is a long anti-Catholic current in the English language compliments of the king who started his Church for the purpose of getting a divorse...

The Christians are not perfect, no one is, but I would take the history of Christianity over the history of Islam any day of the week..

And as for Buddhists, while I have the utmost respect for the faith, there is a long history of Buddhist atrocities against other religions as well and did you know there are Buddhist terrorists today???
 
And as for Buddhists, while I have the utmost respect for the faith, there is a long history of Buddhist atrocities against other religions as well and did you know there are Buddhist terrorists today???

who are the Buddist terrorists today?
 
The Phase 2 committee report was a ****ing partisan hatchet job, people want to claim that it had a Republican majority but it was Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter on that committee that gave them the majority, as we now know the chairman of the Committee Arlen Specter was as anti-Bush as they come, the non-partisan Pentagon review of the DOCEX release made abundantly clear that Saddam had a working relationship with Jihadist organizations (including AQ affiliates) and was plotting with them to attack the U.S..



I said AQ affiliates, and no it was not just in relation to a possible U.S. invasion. He was planning terrorist attacks against the U.S. not just an insurgency. Read the article. Read the actual document I provided the go through the Pentagon Review, there's a lot there.

It's interesting that you call the work of the bipartisan committee a partisan hatchet job but refer to the Pentagon, which is run by a political appointee of the president, as non-partisan. Especially interesting since we know that Rumsfeld's DOD was responsible for skewing the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

Leaving all that aside, though, and assuming the Iraqi Perspectives Project is accurate, it doesn't support the conclusions you're trying to draw from it. What it shows is that Iraq drew operatives from the same demographic as jihadist organizations and that both were interested in getting American forces out of Muslim lands. Iraq did use or try to use terrorist tactics and assassinations within its sphere of influence, for example in the Kurdish region and against Iraqi dissidents. It also supported terrorist activity against Iran, just as the US is doing today. It deliberately attacked UN workers, much as Israel has done albeit more extensively. It supported various factions in the Israel/Palestine arena, again like Western nations and Iran have done and continue to do. Most of these tactics are despicable, but to an intelligence analyst they're no different from what any ambitious regime would do in order to maximize its influence in the region.

They are different from what Al Qaeda has done in terms of targeting the US directly. Saddam was apparently trying to locate suicide bombers who had been willing to attack American interests in 1991 in response to Desert Storm. He also expressed a potential willingness to use them against the US if we attacked him again, but there's no evidence that he planned to initiate an attack against us. The documents overall tend to show that Iraq was cautious about antagonizing the US.

The more sensational conclusions are drawn not from the IPP but from the work of bloggers and special interest publications who read the documents without any sense of context. Indeed, this appears to be exactly what the Bush administration intended, since the database was seeded with documents on Al Qaeda activity that wasn't even related to Iraq. Talk radio then picked up where the DOD had left off, cherry-picking anything that looked incriminating while ignoring the Senate's more thorough review and even ignoring the statements of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which told the Senate committee:

DIA officials explicitly stated that they did not believe that the initial review process missed any documents of major significance regarding Iraq's links to terrorism. During an interview with Committee staff, the lead DIA analyst who follows the issue of possible connections between the Iraqi government and al-Qa'ida noted that the DIA "continues to maintain that there was no partnership between the two organizations."

Operation Iraqi Freedom documents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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It's interesting that you call the work of the bipartisan committee a partisan hatchet job but refer to the Pentagon, which is run by a political appointee of the president, as non-partisan.

The Phase 2 Report was an anti-war protest put on paper.


Especially interesting since we know that Rumsfeld's DOD was responsible for skewing the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

The report was written in 2007 Rumsfeld was gone in 2006, and the last I heard Rumsfeld didn't write or influence the writing of the 2002 NIE and the Phase 1 Senate Report determined that intelligence analysts were in fact not pressured by the White House.

Leaving all that aside, though, and assuming the Iraqi Perspectives Project is accurate, it doesn't support the conclusions you're trying to draw from it. What it shows is that Iraq drew operatives from the same demographic as jihadist organizations and that both were interested in getting American forces out of Muslim lands. Iraq did use or try to use terrorist tactics and assassinations within its sphere of influence, for example in the Kurdish region and against Iraqi dissidents. It also supported terrorist activity against Iran, just as the US is doing today.

According to who? Iran? :roll:

It deliberately attacked UN workers, much as Israel has done albeit more extensively.

Wow you're FOS, it has since been proven that Hezbollah was intentionally setting up positions around UN facilities as cover.

It supported various factions in the Israel/Palestine arena, again like Western nations and Iran have done and continue to do. Most of these tactics are despicable, but to an intelligence analyst they're no different from what any ambitious regime would do in order to maximize its influence in the region.

They are different from what Al Qaeda has done in terms of targeting the US directly. Saddam was apparently trying to locate suicide bombers who had been willing to attack American interests in 1991 in response to Desert Storm. He also expressed a potential willingness to use them against the US if we attacked him again, but there's no evidence that he planned to initiate an attack against us. The documents overall tend to show that Iraq was cautious about antagonizing the US.

The more sensational conclusions are drawn not from the IPP but from the work of bloggers and special interest publications who read the documents without any sense of context. Indeed, this appears to be exactly what the Bush administration intended, since the database was seeded with documents on Al Qaeda activity that wasn't even related to Iraq. Talk radio then picked up where the DOD had left off, cherry-picking anything that looked incriminating while ignoring the Senate's more thorough review and even ignoring the statements of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which told the Senate committee:

Well that's interesting because I never claimed that Saddam had a working relationship with AQ proper. :roll: I said he was plotting attacks against the U.S. with Jihadist organizations including AQ affiliates.


Here's the entire report:

http://media.npr.org/documents/2008/mar/gjeltenpentagonvol1.pdf

The article I provided supplied direct quotes from the reports conclusions:

The report concludes that Saddam until the final months of his regime was willing to attack America. Its conclusion asks "Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against the United States?" It goes on, "Judging from Saddam's statements before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes." As for after the Gulf War, the report states, "The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam's 'coercion' tool box." It goes on, "Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces." The report does note that it is unclear whether Saddam would have authorized terrorism against American targets in the final months of his regime before Operation Iraqi Freedom five years ago. "The answer to the question of Saddam's will in the final months in power remains elusive," it says.

It, also, posted quotes from a prior skeptic of the Saddam-Jihadist ties:

Judith Yaphe yesterday said, "I think the report indicates that Saddam was willing to work with almost any group be it nationalist or Islamic, that was willing to work for his objectives. But in the long term he did not trust many of the Islamist groups, especially those linked to Saudi Arabia or Iran." She added, "He really did want to get anti-American operations going. The fact that they had little success shows in part their incompetence and unwilling surrogates."
 
What about resources necessary to U.S. needs but available only in foreign lands, such as oil in the Middle East?

That's weird.

They're drilling in the Gulf for what, again?

We have two trillion barrels of recoverable what in the Colorado shales?

We're not exploring the contintental shelves for what again? We're not drilling for what in ANWR?

We don't have coal reserves for how many centuries?

So if some terrorists in a miserable middle eastern desert don't want to sell us oil, what do we have to do? Start a war instead of starting to drill?

That make sense to you?
 
The Phase 2 Report was an anti-war protest put on paper.

A protest by Specter and Snowe, who voted in favor of the war? Okay, if that's what you need to believe.

Agent Ferris said:
The report was written in 2007 Rumsfeld was gone in 2006, and the last I heard Rumsfeld didn't write or influence the writing of the 2002 NIE and the Phase 1 Senate Report determined that intelligence analysts were in fact not pressured by the White House.

Rumsfeld was gone to be replaced by another political appointee. That means a person who serves at the pleasure of the president and is charged with carrying out the president's policies. And the Pentagon set up its own intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, to generate estimates that were more incriminating than those of the other agencies.

Agent Ferris said:
According to who? Iran? :roll:

According to the Bush administration, which issued an executive order and budgeted $400 million to support covert operations in Iran. Standard geo-political gamesmanship.

Agent Ferris said:
Wow you're FOS, it has since been proven that Hezbollah was intentionally setting up positions around UN facilities as cover.

That doesn't excuse the stated policy of intentionally attacking UN workers.

Agent Ferris said:
Well that's interesting because I never claimed that Saddam had a working relationship with AQ proper. :roll: I said he was plotting attacks against the U.S. with Jihadist organizations including AQ affiliates.


Here's the entire report:

http://media.npr.org/documents/2008/mar/gjeltenpentagonvol1.pdf

The article I provided supplied direct quotes from the reports conclusions:



It, also, posted quotes from a prior skeptic of the Saddam-Jihadist ties:

I've read the report. As mentioned above, working with terrorist organizations that have a history of attacking US interests isn't necessarily something the US considers unacceptable. We're currently working with such groups in Iran because we think it promotes our larger goal of regime change there. Saddam had his own reasons for working with them, but there's no evidence that he wanted to initiate a direct attack on the US as Al Qaeda did.
 
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A protest by Specter and Snowe, who voted in favor of the war?

So did John Kerry, so did Harry Reid. What's your point?

Rumsfeld was gone to be replaced by another political appointee. That means a person who serves at the pleasure of the president and is charged with carrying out the president's policies. And the Pentagon set up its own intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, to generate estimates that were more incriminating than those of the other agencies.

Ya and the NIE was the compelation of work of all 16 members of the U.S. intelligence community not just the DOD and they all said Saddam had WMD and was continuing WMD production.


According to the Bush administration, which issued an executive order and budgeted $400 million to support covert operations in Iran. Standard geo-political gamesmanship.

What sort of covert operations? Source?


That doesn't excuse the stated policy of intentionally attacking UN workers.

lol that was not their stated policy, their stated policy was that a curfew was in place for anyone except humanitarian workers, are you suggesting that during a war you should allow engineers to start rebuilding strategic infastructure?

I've read the report. As mentioned above, working with terrorist organizations that have a history of attacking US interests isn't necessarily something the US considers unacceptable. We're currently working with such groups in Iran

Which groups? The MEK has never attacked the U.S. and there is no actual record of official U.S. support for them to begin with.

because we think it promotes our larger goal of regime change there. Saddam had his own reasons for working with them, but there's no evidence that he wanted to initiate a direct attack on the US as Al Qaeda did.

Once again he wasn't just plotting with Jihadist organizations who had a history of attacking the U.S. he was working with Jihadist organizations TOO attack the U.S..
 
So did John Kerry, so did Harry Reid. What's your point?

The point is that if the committee wanted to protest the war, they could have done so by not voting for it. What they were protesting, and what they amply documented in the report, was the mishandling of intelligence leading up to the war.

Agent Ferris said:
Ya and the NIE was the compelation of work of all 16 members of the U.S. intelligence community not just the DOD and they all said Saddam had WMD and was continuing WMD production.

No, they were actually more cautious in their assessment. But the Bush administration ignored the caveats and relied on the Penatgon to tell them what they wanted to hear--just like you're doing now.

Agent Ferris said:
What sort of covert operations? Source?

See the link in my post above.

Agent Ferris said:
lol that was not their stated policy, their stated policy was that a curfew was in place for anyone except humanitarian workers, are you suggesting that during a war you should allow engineers to start rebuilding strategic infastructure?

See the link in my post above.

Agent Ferris said:
Which groups? The MEK has never attacked the U.S. and there is no actual record of official U.S. support for them to begin with.

See the link in my post above.

Agent Ferris said:
Once again he wasn't just plotting with Jihadist organizations who had a history of attacking the U.S. he was working with Jihadist organizations TOO attack the U.S..

If we attacked them first. And even your report says the information on that is less than clear:

However, the evidence is less clear in terms of Saddam's declared will at the time of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM in 2003. Even with access to significant parts of the regime's most secretive archive, the answer to the question of Saddam's will in the final months in power remains elusive. Potentially, more significant documents and media files are awaiting analysis or are even yet to be discovered.
 
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As in, when an "opportunity" presents itself (however slight and flimsy, or great and imperative), what reasons/incidents do you consider necessary to justify the USA going to war, or even a "conflict/whatever".

Please choose your generalized poll option and post with your reasons for doing so.

Never. We have the technology now to not get into any war. Just tell people that if ya try and kill any of us then we will use one nuke on their country of origin in an unpopulated area...second time capitol city..third time whole country. And then when the time comes that someone decides to "test" our resolve actually DO IT....mind you after a suitable investigation with evidence has been done. The kind that would stand up in a high court of law.
 
Never. We have the technology now to not get into any war. Just tell people that if ya try and kill any of us then we will use one nuke on their country of origin in an unpopulated area...second time capitol city..third time whole country. And then when the time comes that someone decides to "test" our resolve actually DO IT....mind you after a suitable investigation with evidence has been done. The kind that would stand up in a high court of law.

We don't need nukes. I maintain that we should have launched cruise missles on Saudi Arabia based on the fact that nearly all the 9/11 terrorists were from that country. First give them the opportunity to pay in cash or oil for the damage they inflicted on us. Then demand that they arrest and deliver to us all their religious and political leaders that have, in the past, encouraged an attack on the USA. If they hesitate in the least, send missles to each of their major military sites that might be a threat to us. Give them a week to think about it. If they are still reluctant to meet our demands, send missles to the palaces of the Saudi royalty.
 
The poll options kind of suck, so I'll just say what I think. The U.S. should go to war in response to an attack or preemptively in order to protect the American people.
 
We don't need nukes. I maintain that we should have launched cruise missles on Saudi Arabia based on the fact that nearly all the 9/11 terrorists were from that country. First give them the opportunity to pay in cash or oil for the damage they inflicted on us. Then demand that they arrest and deliver to us all their religious and political leaders that have, in the past, encouraged an attack on the USA. If they hesitate in the least, send missles to each of their major military sites that might be a threat to us. Give them a week to think about it. If they are still reluctant to meet our demands, send missles to the palaces of the Saudi royalty.

So, because people come from a country, that makes the country responsible for the attacks? So, if a bunch of rogue Canadians blew up the Space Needle in Seattle, the U.S. should bomb Canada because they were Canadians? Silly reasoning...
 
So, because people come from a country, that makes the country responsible for the attacks? So, if a bunch of rogue Canadians blew up the Space Needle in Seattle, the U.S. should bomb Canada because they were Canadians? Silly reasoning...

If Canada knows they have a segment of their society that openly foments terrorism to the USA, and does nothing about it, and in fact allows other citizens to collect funds for that segment, then they are culpable....
 
The reason the terrorists attack is because we've been over there for decades. We have bases in Saudi which is Muslim holy land, problems with Iran go back to the 50's when we supported the Shah, we attacked Iraq for no reason.

Since WWII we've been meadling in the affairs of other nations.

This all comes back as blow back. We overdue our agressiveness and it comes back to haunt us.

If other countries did half the **** we do we'd be more than pissed.
 
Whenever it furthers our national interest. And to clarify, that means that the whatever we're seeking to gain or protect by going to war has to be worth more than the cost and long term ramifications of going to war. So nation building and playing world cop don't further our national interests sufficiently to justify the cost of war. But conquering the American west and completing manifest destiny in the Mexican-American War, that was worth it.

Generally, I favor non-intervention. I think our self interest is usually served by butting out of the affairs of other nations. But if our interests do compell us to act, then we should act swiftly and harshly, ruthlessly pursuing our self interest.
 
Pretty much whenever the opportunity presents itself. At least every couple decades or so, whether we have an excuse or not. War is necessary for the economy and for maintaining the martial spirit of the nation, and is generally good for the species.

War can be destructive to the economy too, I still don't see how the Iraq and Afghanistan wars help the American's economy, except may be help fasting the rise of China.
 
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