In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

But I can comfortable say that Bush did pick the fight in Iraq.

Bush's thinking, which he explained with his usual clearness and
elocutification (heh), was pretty well put in his 2002 state of the
union address. Went something like this:

"Well, that was bad (9/11). It'd be even worse if these guys get
together with Saddam Hussein, because we know he has used WMD in the
past, and that could get really ugly. We need to stop that from
happening".

So, if you want to say he "picked the fight", you're partially right.
SH had been violating UN resolution after resolution, stonewalling the
inspectors, and all that stuff he agreed not to do. We know he had WMD,
because, well, we sold it to him, and he didn't properly account for the
alleged destruction of it. Bush's attacks were proactive rather than
reactive, but I'd rather that prevention be done than retribution after
it's too late.

You see, I'd probably be OK with the whole military action thing
based on enforcing UN resolutions if the WH had just come out and said
it in the first place. I would probably not have supported it, but I
heard so many other reasons that all turned into crap: WMD, terrorism
ties, etc. When the WH did finally get around to saying that it was
enforcing the UN resolution, half of the Wh was also saying the UN was
irrelevant. Once the UN itself told us not to attack (or at least key
members did) that really did blow the UN resolution enforcement argument
away for me.
Besides, in the lead-up we were heaping requests on Saddam, like
reopening inspections, destroying the Al-Samud missiles, and allowing
inspectors into the palaces. We got all of that from Saddam without
firing a single shot. Granted, the ****ed up by not keeping around
coherent documentation that the WMD were gone, but from the looks of it
they were doing everything they could to prove a negative. Something
you indicate you understand to be impossible.
The only time Saddam didn't give into a request was when the WH
escalated it to the point of demanding he leave the country. And it's
not that big of a surprise he didn't. It's also the one request we made
that had nothing at all to do with WMD.

Define "work" as you're applying it here. I see a whole lot of dead
people on both sides, and a huge monetary expense to the US. In
exchange for, as you said, not a perfect guarantee the US won't be
attacked again.

And yet, the US hasn't been attacked again, certainly not with AQ and
SH's WMDs, so that which was a real risk has been prevented.

Perhaps. Nobody can really show that the lack of an attack on the US
is the result of this war.

Oh well, at least you got off the hugging thing.

And yet, you're still pretending that if we're just nice to 'em they'll
reciprocate by being nice to us. It's still dangerously naiive.

Some will, some won't. People tend to give as good as they get--be
mean to people, and they'll be mean back. Be nice to people and they'll
be nice back. Not 100%, but pretty high.

Not even close. The time we left SH alone, he used to build back up his
military. Leave 'em alone doesn't work when they keep building up
during the time we're doing it. Percentages aside, specifics are more
important.

What military? Seriously, everyone who's looked at gulf war 1 and
gulf war 2 says the same thing: the Iraq military had decayed. We faced
more opposition from the weather during the invasion. Even their piece
of **** SCUD missiles were a no-show during the invasion.

Do we know each other from a.g.d. by the way?

Yup. (:

Thought so. How's that madhouse these days?

Dunno--I left a while back when I got bored to tears with the game.
No longer even had the attention span to get on line and wait around for
people to chat with. That reminds me, I need to get on Yahoo and annoy
Orchid some more. She left AGD as well.

Where was that followup to 9/11/01 that OBL threatened us with again?
I keep not seeing it.

Ask Tony Blair.

I wasn't aware that he lives in this country.

I'm not restricting the conversation to the US alone. My complaint
is with Bush's war on terror, which is supposedly worldwide.

And yet, it's the US's money. The US is seeing benefits from it, I
feel.

Yeah, I know it's our money. Whoopie. the action is worldwide, so
the results need to take into account the entire world. Looking at the
entire world, it's a failure.

What I'm trying to get at is that you keep falling back on the "we
haven't been attacked again" defense of this war. First, correlation
isn't causation.

Of course not. I've never said it did. It's impossible to prove the
negative - prove to me there are no WMD in Iraq, for instance.

Good point. Part of the justification for the war was that Saddam
could not prove he had no WMD, so we invaded. You understand that we
made an impossible request, right?

Second, what defense will you use if we do get
attacked over here? If your only justification for this war is that we
haven't been attacked yet, then as soon as we do get attacked again your
entire justification is gone.

Um, no, I think the obvious would be "Wow, that sucked, just imagine
what would have happened if we hadn't knocked SH out of power and he'd
given AQ some nasties at that time".

What nasties? There ain't any. But what there is a lot of is
evidence that Saddam and OBL were enemies and even if Saddam did have
the nasties they were unlikely to get to OBL in a condition that could
be redeployed.

At that point I suppose you could
redefine it as "It isn't as bad this time" or "it took X years for it to
happen again,"

There ya go.

Whoopie. Hey, Clinton got us through a few years without any attacks
on US soil, but you don't call that a success. Why is it not success
for Clinton, but it would be success for Bush? I would juts love to
decipher this double standard.

but those are ****-poor results for $1.25billion a week,
plus thousands of casualties. So I would like to know if you've got any
other justification for this activity in Iraq?

It seems to be working so far, and the press isn't reporting the good
parts; just the newsworthy parts. Nobody gets ratings from showing the
new water processing plants, or power distribution network; the press
wants to show blood.

Complaining about the press is your other justification for this war?

Well, yeah, the reason they hate us does matter. They didn't just
jump off a spaceship one day--something here on Earth turned some people
into terrorists. Until we fix that something it's highly unlikely we'll
be able to kill enough terrorists to eliminate terrorism. A dripping
faucet can fill the biggest bucket, as one fortune cookie told me.

So, we should let the fire spread while we remove the fuel from around
it? That'd be OK if it was a contained fire. Gotta contain the fire
first before you start doing cleanup. And, I contend that rebuilding
the infrastructure in Iraq, similar to what we helped with in Japan,
might be able to turn an enemy into a trading partner and ally given
time.

Saddam was contained, along with whatever weapons he had. Now those
weapons are out and being used against the US military pretty
successfully.
Now the rebuilding of infrastructure thing is exactly what I was
trying to get at in the first place--be nice to the Middle East. No
hugging bull****--just straightforward diplomacy. The whole notion that
we'll charge in, kick ass, and tell 'em how it is is enormously
counterproductive and I honestly think this war is just that.

Cool, glad to hear it. But it seems the attacks and bombings in Iraq
are increasing instead of decreasing, which is not a positive trend.

Could be seen as a sign of "last-ditch" effort. Hard to know based on
what we're told.

This "last ditch" has been going on for two years now. I think at
some point it's safe to assume it's a

But now they have all-new intel that tells them that the old intel
was utter horse ****, but they don't change their plans one bit. How is
that acceptable?

Even Kerry admitted that now that we're in it, we're in it until we're
done and it's going to take many years.

Kerry is an idiot and I have never supported him. How is it
acceptable to "stay the course" when you know your map's backwards?

Ah, so here's a link:
http://www.thiefsden.net/archives/000073.html

Oh yeah, I've seen pretty much the same thing many times. The
version I've seen is just a little shorter.

Anyway, the vote itself does not predate the W administration. That
vote would be the point at which "my people" consented.

Well, check the names and dates. Claiming that this was strictly a
republican claim is disingenuous and cheapens your argument.

Oh, I don't think this is strictly a republican claim. I think only
that the republicans have the authority to fix things or keep them
broken. I'll quite happily bash away at the democrats in congress for
paying lip service to this bull****, but regardless of how much I
influence them they are powerless to change policy. So it's a whole lot
more productive to bash the republicans.

So, yeah,
I'll keep on blaming "your people" until they either fix what they broke
or lose power--whichever comes first.

Both sides voted for it, but you blame the other side. Got it.

Yeah, because one side gives orders to the military. Orders that I
think are completely counterproductive and stupid. The other side only
gets to bitch about it.

Read the quotes.

The quotes put them in charge of the military? Explain to me how
this amazing process works.

OK, evasion noted. What about those quotes, specifically?

Ya know, I'll bet that Gunner's list you referred to is almost a
carbon copy of the lists I've been accosted with at work.

Dunno, this one looks pretty well researched.

It's quite thorough and quite accurate (as far as I can tell) and
quite unrelated to me or what I'm saying.

And what is this evasion you speak of.

That your people said he had 'em, my people said he had 'em, both sides
voted to go to war, and you're only blaming my people.

You have the executive who made the decision to start shooting. He's
one of yours. My people caved, sure enough, and I'm extremely
displeased with that, but attacking democrats gets nothing done.
Attacking the republicans might.
However, I do believe that some of the democrats in congress are
being honest when they say that they only voted for the war after being
shown the cooked arguments from the WH. But with the rest I know they
just voted for it so they wouldn't have to fight over that issue next
election cycle.
Both sides are full of sellouts, but one side has sellouts in charge,
which are far more dangerous.

Take it up with your congresscritters then.

They're not the ones replying to me--you are. It seems odd that you
would butt into a conversation and then suggest that I leave.

Butt into? Bite me. What have your congresscritters responded to you
with? You _have_ contacted them, right? Mine are pretty damn
responsive, even though I disagree with 1.5 of the 3 of them.

Amazing. It must be the bane of being a liberal in Texas. I only
get the standard: "Thank you for your comments. The representative's
views on this issue a bla bla bla. Please send a check."

Yeah, that'd be our Herb Kohl. Useless even as compost. Feingold, even
though I disagree with his reasons, votes the way I would about half the
time. Sensenbrenner seems like a reasonable person and I almost always
agree with his voting record.

I just moved to Kenny Marchant's district and honestly don't know
much about him yet. But what I do know is that he had a hand in that
redistricting bull****, might have had a little involvement with the
TRMPAC investigation that's following DeLay around, and he waves George
Bush's name around like gospel. I find none of that appealing. OTOH,
he does seem to be quite good about cutting government expenses and
streamlining government paperwork. At this point he's a wash.

This is
the same state, after all, that gave us the chicken **** president who
screens his audiences because he fears hecklers.

Oh, come on. You think Clinton and every other president didn't do the
same thing?

I went to one Clinton Speech in Ft Worth (or near there anyway--it
was a long time ago and I didn't drive) where he was heckled and
protested. He poked fun at the hecklers and want and talked to the
protesters after he finished with his speech and obligatory handshaking.
But maybe that was a one-time thing.

You're being intentionally dense. If someone threatens you, the best
way to deal with that threat is to provide an effective defense, not as
you'd suggest, to try to reason with them.

So who would you say is being the bully in Iraq?

SH. He's out now, so once we get things stabilized there, we'll get
out. Personally, I'd prefer we get out sooner, give 'em notice to keep
the new guy in line or we'll come back again.

If he's out then he is no longer being the bully. So who would you
say is being the bully in Iraq now?

By showing weakness. Do pay attention.

So what would be the next level of "bold" after throwing grenades at
an oncoming tank?

Attacking our country.

Bull****.

Yeah, they're being less bold by attacking hardened military targets
in the middle of a ****ing war zone. 'Cause if I had the option: fight
with trained, armed, and ****ed-off marines vs. evade mall security,
it's the marines every time!

They're busy over there. Better that than them being busy over here.

Not too busy for a quick little jaunt to Britain. Weren't too busy
for Spain either.

Far as I'm concerned, we should tell 'em "Look. We helped SH, he got
out of hand, and we came in and took him out. We gave you a reasonably
good guy this time. Keep his ass in line, or we'll wander through
_again_ with our forces, take _him_ out, and repeat as needed. Get your
**** together and we won't have to keep doing this, but if the next guy
makes noises like this last guy, we're taking him out. Now behave."

Hopefully that makes my point of view clear. Given that it's not
going to happen any time soon, the next best thing is to whack the
troublemakers hard and repeatedly until they either change (ha!) or die.
The alternative is to not take them out, and they'll take us out.

Umm, I'm really not at all convinced Saddam was any danger to us in
any realistic way. Maybe a pain in the ass, but certainly no danger.

Well, we knew he didn't like us. We knew he _had_ WMD. We also knew
that AQ didn't like us, and _wanted_ WMD. Keeping the two from getting
together is, in my opinion, a valid goal.

We also knew that they didn't like each other. Like going to war to
keep two north pole magnets apart.

OTOH, the guys who have been successfully killing our soldiers are
extremely dangerous, and they weren't around before this war. As far as
I'm concerned none of this should have happened at all.

They weren't around?

They were alive, but they weren't figuring out how to kill our
military.

Now that it has happened, maybe your idea would be best, but what
Bush is doing right now is a mistake. And we all get to pay for it.

I'm not saying I agree with all (or even much) of what has happened, but
now that we're in the soup, we have to finish it out right or it'll be
even worse.

I'm saying it shouldn't have happened, the guys to caused it are
****ups, and I have no faith that they'll turn this from a ****up into
anything measurably better than a complete failure.

--
B.B. --I am not a goat! thegoat4 at airmail dot net
http://web2.airmail.net/thegoat4/