In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

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

It's certainly debatable, yes. But the stated goal and the result are
the same.

No, it's not debatable, it's impossible to show that the war
prevented another attack. That's why nobody has been able to show it
aside from repeating it again and again in the hopes it'll be accepted
as fact by enough people.

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.

What military? Um, news flash: the guys who ran away during the major
combat operations, just might be the same ones bombing trucks giving out
candy to Iraqi children today.

His military didn't run from us in Gulf War 1 until it was hammered
into the sand. His military ran away from us in GW 2 before a shot was
fired in many places. Does that not sound like a decay to you? Not to
mention a glaring absence of heavy equipment during the "battles."
BTW, Saddam isn't building the IEDs that are being used now. Saddam
had control up until we invaded, so whatever has gone on since isn't
relevant to what Saddam was doing.

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.

Same here; I abandoned a 70-something barb and a 60's druid with nice
gear. Ah well. PNF long, long ago I'm sure. Been playing civ3 lately,
oddly enough, waiting for the Harry Potter release tomorrow morning.

Yeah, I got to where I was only logging on to keep my dudes from
expiring, then I didn't even keep up with that. Once my favorite
sorceress (Amee: level 93 or 94) went poof I had pretty much no urge to
bother any more.

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.

Well, she came and went from time to time, didn't she? Seemed like a
pretty level-headed person, good moderating influence for the kiddies in
the group.

Agreed. I used to talk with her pretty regularly on AIM. Good
therapy.

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.

Well, OK, show me a followup on the scale of 9/11/01 anywhere in the
world, then. I think it's getting better.

9/11 is a blip pretty far off the main line. If you want to set your
threshold as high as that, OK, there's been no terrorism in the world,
ever, except 9/11.
But if you're willing to settle for a more reasonable threshold,
Spain and England both come to mind. Plus the daily attacks in Iraq.

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?

Well, it's not like he didn't agree to the terms originally, at the end
of the first little party over there, that he'd get rid of 'em and
record those activities, and let the inspectors and observers in. He
failed on all those points. Maybe if nothing else, the lesson is "If
you've got the nasties, and don't prove that you really destroyed 'em,
be prepared to face a hell of an audit committee". I don't believe for
a second that he didn't hide or export them, though.

OK, so he lied. BFD--dictators lie all the time, it's par for the
course. If we went and invaded every dictatorship that lied at a cost
of $1.25billion per week, we'd be hopelessly swamped with warfare and
debt before making a dent.
Also, North Korea fits that description, but we've done nothing. If
we're trying to send a message, we've hosed it royally.

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.

Then where did they go, exactly? You don't know; I don't know; but they
didn't just evaporate. And the Sarin shell(s) that injured some of our
guys weren't supposed to exist, but I'm thinking there are a few troops
who have direct personal experience indicating that they do.

The shells that we were hit with were old, according to the reports
about them. The most plausible explanation I've heard so far is that
they were duds dug up at a test range and incorporated into IEDs--the
assemblers thinking they were conventional weaponry.
It amazes me that a guy who supposedly was such a terrible leader he
couldn't provide electricity was also skilled enough to completely hide
all evidence of WMD development and go so far as to create a body of
evidence that would fool the inspectors into believing he had just let
his WMD programs rot. There seems to be a strong dichotomy there.

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.

Well, there's enemies, and then there's enemies. Iran and Iraq have
been enemies, but if we threatened them, they'd probably be (uneasy?)
allies. Germany and the US are nominally, allegedly allies but I
wouldn't bet that during my lifetime, or that of my kids, that won't
change. If they saw a common enemy and a way to join resources to
attack more effectively, I don't think their differences would stop
them. AQ's presence in Iraq seems to back this theory up.

AQ was in the US on 9/11. Does that make AQ and the US allies?
Apparenly they're also allies with Spain and Britain.
AQ's presence in Iraq does not seem to back your theory up any more
than it backs the notion that AQ, the US, Spain, and Britain are in
cahoots.

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?

Well, during Clinton things kept getting worse, and he went from
objecting, to objecting strongly, to objecting very strongly, to blowing
up a tent and two camels. This weak response is, I feel, what made the
escalation happen.

IIRC, there was one terrorist attack on US soil in Clinton's time,
(WTC, 2/26/1993) and there has been one during Bush's time. Unless you
want to count McVeigh's attack. Would you prefer to include him or omit
him? IN that case Clinton had two over an eight year span, while Bush
has had one in a four year span. It seems to me that the two are
comparable, but Clinton's response didn't require so many dead and
wounded. Much cheaper to boot.

I would juts love to
decipher this double standard.

Well, it's based on my feeling that things are getting better now, while
they continued to get worse during Clinton's years. Perception-driven,
perhaps, on both of our parts. Hey, this is actually a pretty good
argument we're having.

Yeah, we're being civil. (mostly, heh) That's why I kill filed
Gunner. He was only interested in being rude.

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

No, I'm saying that the press doesn't show us the good stuff that's
going on there, because it's not attention-getting enough to warrant
their time. Nothing impressive about a new power station, and it
doesn't fit their adgenda to show real progress.

Well, I'll grant you that they're about making headlines, and blood
is way better than electricity for that, but at the same time how many
power plants do you think it will take to compensate for daily civilian
casualties over a two year occupation? their families will be ****ed,
and "Hey! You're lights are on 20 hours a day instead of 12!" is
unlikely to comfort them much.
Apparently a large number of Iraqis expected this to go more smoothly
than it has. THAT disappointment can be appeased with power plants and
such. I just don't know how much of the population is ****ed about
electricity vs. how much is ****ed about dead friends and relatives.

Saddam was contained, along with whatever weapons he had. Now those
weapons are out and being used against the US military pretty
successfully.

And the WMD that we could have contained have probably been mothballed
or exported, because we didn't go in soon enough.

Or because we went in. Or they were actually destroyed years ago.
WMD are high maintenance and extremely expensive to keep up. OTOH,
trashing them all in secret while maintaining the bluff that you still
have them is cheap and pretty effective. And that explanation is
completely consistent with all of the evidence found so far.

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.

I think it's valid to say "now behave or we'll be back to do it again."
We're dealing with a relatively immature civilization, organizationally.
The tribal mentality still exists, I think.

I think threats are completely counterproductive no matter who you're
dealing with. Instead of pounding Iraq, leaving it like that, and
threatening to do it all over again is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pretty much any country that has been pounded, threatened, and left
flared up into a problem all over again. Like Germany after WWI and
into WWII. After WWII we decided to be more charitable and reward the
chunk of the population that would listen to us. They, on their own,
squeezed out the chunk of the population that wouldn't listen.

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

I'm sure it's the military which "ran away". And I'm not sure either of
us know if it's getting better, or worse, really.

I know there are more casualties per week this week than a few weeks
ago. I know we are having lots of difficulty holding ground once we've
caught it. Falluja's (sp?) churning up again after all of our effort to
get it back under control last time. The financial costs are enormous
and still rising. All of that I'll take as pretty good indicators that
the war is getting worse at the moment.

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?

Like I said, I'd rather say "There ya go, don't **** up again." But,
given the choices we had last election, both of 'em acknowledged that
now that we're in the soup, we've got to get to a certain point before
bailing.

But is that acceptable? I know they both said it, but I think both
of them are goddamned fools. I believe Kerry was just saying it because
he thought he could win by doing so, and Bush said it because that's
what he plans to do. But I don't think it's acceptable.

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.

Well, this one is very well sourced and referenced, so think they're
all legit. It certainly shoots holes in some of the frequent whines
(not saying you use them all) about "This was all W's idea" or wahtever.

As long as Bush is in charge I'll hold him responsible for the
actions he takes--regardless of who his inspiration was. Bush ordered
this war, bush started this war, and Bush is keeping it going.

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.

Is it?

Yeah. If I successfully bash the democrats, nothing
changes--everyone bashes the democrats and they're out of power anyway.
OTOH, successfully bashing the republicans will get them tossed out of
office and there's a possibility that things will change as a result.
It's not certain, but it's possible. And with a guy like Dean in charge
of the party it's even more likely that any new democrats who get
elected will be anti-war.
When you played king of the hill, who did you push? The guy on top,
or the guy who just fell off?

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

Both sides said he had WMD, and both sides voted to authorize the
military. That's my point. The quotes show this.

OK, both sides voted for this. Do both sides give the military their
orders?

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

Not if you're just blaming the republicans. It was a shared decision.

I blame them both--we've covered that already. But I hold the
republicans responsible.

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.

I doubt it.

I doubt it, too. This whole country showed how ****ing stupid it was
in 2004.

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.

Check the dates. When did this cooked data arrive from the WH, please?

Prior to the war.

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.

Meh. If they all agreed, then they're all equally responsible.

That's not true. How can you be responsible for something you have
no power over? I mean, if you're driving down the road like a nut, kids
in the back seat cheering you on, when you get pulled over, do you
expect the cop to give the kids tickets too? No, that wouldn't make any
sense.
Yeah, the democrats in congress agreed with the war for whatever
moronic reason, but they're not in charge of it. They can't add a few
more troops here and there, they can't set any deadlines, they can't
even force the Pentagon to armor plate their vehicles.

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****,

That was a lovely little party, yes.

The good news is that the courts here in Texas are looking into
overturning that new map since it was strong-armed into law by a bunch
of guys who got elected with illegal corporate money.
Maybe we'll even string up DeLay.

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.

Sometimes that's all you can hope for. About how I feel about Feingold.
He votes the way I would fairly often, but always for reasons that I
feel are wrong.

Yeah, that always has an icky feel to it.

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.

Hard to say, but I do know that non-party-members don't get invited to,
for instance, campaign stops.

This thing wasn't by invitation. It was just announced in the
newspaper where and when he'd stop in and whoever wanted to would show
up. No security screening either--just a lot of cops wandering around.
I'll bet you a lathe or two that Bush will absolutely never do that.

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?

Nobody at the moment. If another one comes up, then we should take that
one out too. Eventually they'll catch on that they have to control
their own leadership.

I'd have to disagree. After all, we were discussing above us
threatening Iraq "We'll come back if you screw up again."

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****.

Well, attacking us there, is one thing. Attacking us here, is the next
higher thing, I think.

Attacking us here is easy. Attacking us there is hard. They just
don't need to attack us over here. Think about it--their goal with the
9/11 attack was split several ways: show us that they could manipulate
us with an attack, hurt us financially, and start a fight. Now that
we're in Iraq and stuck there, they've succeeded in starting a fight,
hurting us financially, and proving they could manipulate us.
Attacking us again would be pretty redundant. And keep in mind that
if they want to make a statement, their target audience is in the Middle
East, not the US. Any attack on us in Iraq gets all over the news in
the Middle East, where their support base is, whereas an attack on the
US would get on US news along with Middle East news. More news
coverage, but not really worth the effort.

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.

Have we actually found out that London was AQ?

That seems to be the consensus. And I didn't know we were even
restricting this to just AQ, I thought it was all global terrorism?
Whoever they were, they obviously weren't stopped by what's going on
in Iraq.

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

Then why is AQ such a presence in Iraq? I contend that a common enemy
(us) united them against us, and that any activity against either would
have had the same result.

All three of us were mutual enemies. Who's to say Saddam wouldn't
have sided with the US against AQ as quickly as he would have sided with
AQ against the US? Besides that, it's a lot easier to take on AQ within
your won country than it is to take on another country half way around
the world.
AQ is a presence in Iraq because it's a war zone. Those assholes
wanted a war with the US for years, and now they've got one.

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.

I'm not so sure of that.

Who in Iraq attacked the US prior to the invasion?

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.

Well, the US hasn't been attacked again, and no further attacks on the
scale of 9/11 have happened, so I think we're making progress.

OK, if your sufficiently selective, yes, the "WAR ON TERROR!" has
been a success. But if you broaden your horizons a bit, it's a failure.
An expensive, deadly failure.

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