"Han" wrote in message
...
Peter wrote in :

snipped

Han, I normally agree with your comments. Please recognize that in my
comments I've been referring to "war" in the formal, legal definition
in accordance with the text of the Constitution, and not in the more
colloquial sense in which the word has come to be used. I agree that
our military action in Afghanistan is a de facto war, but it not a de
jure war.

I don't give a rat's ass about this war being not a de jure war. You're
legalistically correct, perhaps, but Congress did authorize lethal force
here to "protect" something, most likely. You also should keep in mind
that people, including Americans, have died in this de jure not-a-war, so
some people would take offense to your wording.

I think what Peter was trying to get at (forgive me, PK, if I am putting
words in your mouth) is the concept of scope. Although Congress and the
people approved the action on Iraq, I don't think they believed they were
authorizing the opening of a multi-trillion dollar, ten year-wide torpedo
hole in our national economy. I believe that most people thought we were
going in PRECISELY to search places that Saddam kept off-limits to Hans Blix
and the UN inspection teams. Even the NY Times, constantly accused of being
a liberal mouthpiece, helped sell the WMD claim:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2957

Of course, the drive to war rested firmly on Bush's repeated and emphatic
claim that Hussein had already developed WMDs, which he possessed and was
prepared to use-a bogus claim that the mainstream media, led by the Times'
own Judith Miller, largely accepted as an article of faith and bolstered
with credulous reports based on faulty information. (See Extra!, 7-8/03.)

For a variety of reasons, the mission grew like kudzu and we found ourselves
building a Muslim democracy, rebuilding power stations and other facilities
we had bombed during the initial attack. We removed a strongman who was
able to hold the Sunnis, the Shias and the Kurds from each other's throats.
One who was able, apparently, to hoodwink the world's best intelligence
agencies and his own generals into believing he actually had WMD's.

Saddam was once the recipient of our friendship and considerable military
and financial aid when Iran was our bigger concern.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/p...ur-friend.html

In December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, a private citizen employed as a special
envoy by the then President Ronald Reagan, flew to Baghdad to pledge US
support for Saddam Hussein.

Qaddaffi was once our friend, too. I helped build jet trainers for the
Libyans in the 70's when we were showering Col. Momar with military aid.
Now we're got the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that he kept a lid on,
running the country in his place. Is that progress? Only time will tell.

We only quieted Iraq by throwing in with one of the murderous militia
factions:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/08/2...in-danger.html

the United States pays each [Sons of Iraq - Sunni] militia member a
stipend of about $300 a month . . American military officials here have
always said that the creation of the Sunni militias was at least as
important to the precipitous drop in violence as the presence of 30,000 more
U.S. troops

Fighting will resume when the payments stop because the ruling Shia party
likely won't continue paying their blood enemies like we did. Ironically we
killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did by an incredibly wide margin. It's
kind of hypocritical to tell the Iraqis "We'll save you from Saddam" and
then end up killing more of them than Saddam could ever dream of.

Although fervent supporters of the war insist we've bettered their lives,
the Iraqis and common metrics of quality of life say quite the opposite.

One year into the war, Iraqis were very optimistic that things were good and
getting better:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world...ll_040314.html

The optimism has understandably faded after nearly 10 years of occupation by
US forces. This site reports on some of the "quality of life" metrics that
show we really made a mess out of Iraq. I say part of the blame rests with
leaders who appear to have had a very time admitting they were wrong about
anything. We see that personality defect here often in AHR. g Even Bush
didn't blame himself for *following* bad intel, he blamed the CIA and FBI
for *providing* it even though it was clear that many career intel officers
believed it was bad information.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/263625

Candy Crowley, a CNN reporter, asked him what went wrong in Iraq. Bush
replied with the following: I think it was just bad analysis. But, it wasn't
just our CIA. It was intelligence services all over the world that believed
the same thing

Electric power is spotty, the country's covered in garbage, there are no
jobs, clean water supplies have yet to recover to their pre-war levels and
of course, 100,000 to 1 million of them are dead. The infrastructure of Iraq
is still so badly damaged no one can say for sure. It's the ultimate proof
of the statement: "We're from the US government and we're here to help
you!" NOT!!!!!

http://mit.edu/humancostiraq/

================================================== ============
Population of Iraq: 30 million.
Number of Iraqis killed in attacks in November 2011: 187
Percentage of Iraqis who lived in slum conditions in 2000: 17
Percentage of Iraqis who live in slum conditions in 2011: 50
Number of the 30 million Iraqis living below the poverty line: 7 million.
Number of Iraqis who died of violence 2003-2011: 150,000 to 400,000.
Orphans in Iraq: 4.5 million.
Orphans living in the streets: 600,000.
Number of women, mainly widows, who are primary breadwinners in family: 2
million.
Iraqi refugees displaced by the American war to Syria: 1 million
Internally displaced [pdf] persons in Iraq: 1.3 million
Proportion of displaced persons who have returned home since 2008: 1/8
Rank of Iraq on Corruption Index among 182 countries: 175
================================================== =========

Iraqi wasn't "bettered" it was "battered." Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
died simply because they had an insane leader - one they did not choose in
any meaningful sense of the word. To defy him was to die. It will be a
black mark on the US and the men who led us to it for decades to come.

Even worse, as we sought revenge for the people lost on 9/11, it's
reasonable to assume that many Iraqis will seek revenge for loved ones lost
in the ten year fiasco. How many of them will join with the terrorists?
That's impossible to know. Looking at current events, I think we've made
the militant Islam problem much worse as evidenced by the new Pakistani
problems. They don't like us killing their countrymen and they REALLY don't
like us killing their soldiers. Neither would we if the tables were turned.

Bush or his staffers have never really explained why Iraq, a country we
merely *thought* had the bomb, deserved invasion while North Korea with
proven nukes AND missiles remains untouched. Could it have been that Bush
was willing to take on a has-been power, like Iraq, beaten down by war and
sanctions but he was afraid to tangle with a country that had China
"watching its six?"

Or did Israeli lobbyists con us into fighting a proxy war for them? One
things's sadly obvious. No WMDs were found and no substantial Iraqi
connection to 9/11 has ever surfaced except through torture by people
*looking* for a connection. The 9/11 murderers were mostly Saudi nationals,
not Iraqis.

--
Bobby G.