OT: I'm gonna miss the lil' fella....

[tmetaler]

give him a papercut every two centimeters on his body, and then immerse him in a tub of lemon juice. soak for two hours, drag his ass out for a half an hour, then repeat the process of re-cutting and re-soaking for a week... then change the lemon juice to animal diarreah for a week, and then from that to mercury untill he dies... then separate the head from the body and preserve it forever so that all the world can see what we do to dictators who get just a little too big for their britches!

[manoeuver]

Originally posted by Old Steve I always thought that the US was playing a little fast and loose with international law on that one. I mean, if Saddam had come to the US, kidnapped our President, tried him, and imprisoned him, I'm sure we'd have wiped them off the map. Meanwhile, we did basically something very similar, and it's no big deal. I smell a double standard here.

 

 

Thucidides sez (paraphrased): 'Justice is for equals. The strong do what they will; the weak endure what they must.'

 

of COURSE there's a double standard. I hope I'm not around when the shoe's on the other foot.

[aqualung211]

Bush has killed far more people than saddam....we should kill him too.

[zarazabas]

Bush and Sadaam, bare knuckle fight to the death. My money's on Sadaam.

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by zarazabas Bush and Sadaam, bare knuckle fight to the death. My money's on Sadaam.

Bush, even if you count every enemy combatant that's been killed in war, every innocent civilian who accidentally lived too close to a bomb going off, and every soldier in the US military hasn't even come close to what Saddam has done. More importantly, Bush never went down the "genocide" road.

As for a bare knuckled fight, if they were both younger, I'd take Saddam in that fight. Unfortunately, Saddam got fat and sloppy living off the sweat of his people, and Bush turned his life around. The guy runs practically every day, and at his last physical his health was reported as "exceptional" for a guy his age. He's wipe the floor with Saddam's fat ass, no matter whether you like his poitics or not.

Of course Cheney would have a heart attack, so he'd probably just shoot him instead.

[Watchdog]

Can you believe the price of cantaloupe these days?

[ulank]

Originally posted by Old Steve Bush, even if you count every enemy combatant that's been killed in war, every innocent civilian who accidentally lived too close to a bomb going off, and every soldier in the US military hasn't even come close to what Saddam has done. More importantly, Bush never went down the "genocide" road.

 

 

Indeed. And there's a big difference when your intent is to oust a cruel dictator and his regime vs. mass killing of innocent civilians. Certainly, civilian casualties are never good in any sense, but when you look at what Sadaam's intent was vs. what our intent is, they are drastically different scenarios.

[aqualung211]

Originally posted by ulank Indeed. And there's a big difference when your intent is to oust a cruel dictator and his regime vs. mass killing of innocent civilians. Certainly, civilian casualties are never good in any sense, but when you look at what Sadaam's intent was vs. what our intent is, they are drastically different scenarios.

 

 

His intent wasn't to "oust a cruel dicator".

 

Nobody will probably ever know what the real intent was......

[Wellhungarian]

Originally posted by Old Steve You have to go further back into history to see what's really going on. Unfortunately, the history of the Middle East has several examples of "Westerners" (primarily Europeans, the British, etc.) coming in and establishing "borders" where none existed previously. Then you've got these different nomadic groups, who may have even been fighting each other, all combined under one flag. At the time, the attitude was largely "who cares, it's all just desert", but now that there's oil in them thar hills, and people have legitimized these borders and governments, it's all screwed up. Same thing happened with the Soviet Union and many of their puppet states. All kinds of rival groups kept in line with an iron fist sitting on top of them. The question is, which is better? A stable government that totally restricts the rights of the people living in it, often by violent force, and that kills off any disagreeing viewpoints, OR democratic chaos? Frankly, I think Iraq is better off now. Yes, there's no stability there, but eventually, the people who live there will get sick of battling factions and the majority of peaceful and tolerant people will overcome the radicals. Unfortunately, however, it's likely to get worse before it gets better. As for Saddam...there'll be a couple extra car bombings, and a few more attempts on our troops' lives. Still, I don't think the Baathists who supported him have the ability, resources, or organization to accomplish much outside of their own backyard.

 

 

The question is, how much is America will to spend in Iraq and threaten our own economy? It seems to me the Russians are sitting back laughing at us, as we bankrupt our economy like they did in Afghanistan. And Reagan took all the credit for stopping the cold war. At the time, we could just outspend them. In the future, who knows, we might end up bankrupt?

 

It's probably to late, but I'm sure Merrill Lynch and the rest of Wall Street has a strong BUY recommendation on defense stocks.

[Bronze_Addict]

Originally posted by RockBass Maybe the best way to do this is to give him a 9mm handgun with a full clip, air lift him back to Iraq, and say "Hey, the country's yours if you can take it back".

Now that's good comedy!

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by Wellhungarian The question is, how much is America will to spend in Iraq and threaten our own economy? It seems to me the Russians are sitting back laughing at us, as we bankrupt our economy like they did in Afghanistan. And Reagan took all the credit for stopping the cold war. At the time, we could just outspend them. In the future, who knows, we might end up bankrupt? It's probably to late, but I'm sure Merrill Lynch and the rest of Wall Street has a strong BUY recommendation on defense stocks.

 

 

Actually, quite the opposite is happening. The guys at Merrill Lynch are psyched because the economy is doing great, despite what we're spending on the war. Unemployment is waaay down, the stock market has not only rebounded past pre-9/11 levels, but is back in record territory never even achieved during the rise of the internet bubble.

 

People have no sense of scale when it comes to Iraq vs. other concepts. We've lost about 3000 troops there, and that sucks. But it's taken us 4 years to do so. We lost something like 6,000 in the first day of the Normandy invasion. All told, in WWII it was something like 100,000 troops. Ok that was "the old days"...let's look at Vietnam...what was that 25,000 troops or so? At this rate, Iraq would have to drag on for another 20 years or so before we'd have that level of US deaths.

 

As far as the Soviets in Afghanistan, it's a totally different animal. They were bankrupt going into Afghanistan, and went in there to try and take over the government in a land war. Bad idea. We toppled the sitting governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan in a couple of months.

 

So until we're ACTUALLY hurting our economny (not anywhere close yet), or we're losing significantly more troops than we do in peacetime (you'd be suprised how many servicemen die in training and/or accidents during peacetime) you're going to have trouble convincing me that we need to get out of Iraq before the job is done.

 

The only similarity I'll grant you between Vietnam and Iraq is that if/when we lose it, it'll be the politicians who lost it for us. Right now, unless a US trooper is taking fire, he needs to complete a 7 point checklist before he can fire at a potentail enemy. We have video of Al Queda funerals with 100s of terrorists in attendance, and we can't get permission to smoke the place, and the bad guys are more than happy to hide out in mosques or residential areas knowing that we're "too nice" to go in blazing. What we NEED is a total change in the rules of engagement. Declare all personal weapons illegal in Iraq and then give everyone 3 days to turn in their AK's and grenade launchers. Then, on day 4, start going on sweeps. Every gun we find, we claim. If you're caught not in a coalition uniform holding a gun, we'll assume that you're a threat and deal with you accordingly. Bottom line, if we let our troops do the job that they're trained to do, we can have that place cleaned up pretty quickly.

 

Sorry for the rant. I'm just sooooo sick of people spewing platitudes that they hear from Bill Maher without any critical look at the reality of what's going on.

[aqualung211]

WWII=liberating an entire race of people and overthrowing an overpowering world dominater (who, unlike saddam, acutally posed a threat)


Iraq= shady {censored}

[ulank]

Originally posted by aqualung211 His intent wasn't to "oust a cruel dicator". Nobody will probably ever know what the real intent was......

 

 

Actually, there are multiple reasons for it, but getting Sadaam's fat ass out of there, for our sake, the Iraqi's sake and the region's sake is a big part of it.

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by aqualung211 WWII=liberating an entire race of people and overthrowing an overpowering world dominater (who, unlike saddam, acutally posed a threat) Iraq= shady {censored}

 

 

Go re-read your history books, Aqua. We didn't enter WWII to save the Jews from the ovens. We were attacked by Japan, yet our first real action happened in North Africa and then Europe. A lot of people back then also saw this as "shady".

 

As for Saddam posing a threat, he absolutely did, believe it or not. Clinton (both Hillary and Bill, btw) have a long list of quotes claiming that Saddam's WMD programs were a threat to us. Sure, it turns out that Saddam didn't have much of a program going, but at the time, everyone believed he did, and since he was more than willing to pay off families of suicide bombers, it wasn't a big leap to think that at some point he wouldn't have given some stuff to Al Queda to use.

 

Let's not also forget Saddam's continued violations of UN sanctions, including shooting at OUR planes that were patrolling the no fly zone. Finally, if you go back and read the papers, Saddam ended up destorying a bunch of illegal long range missles literally hours before we went back in (too little too late).

 

Bottom line, Saddam was like the guy walking into a bank with a fake gun and threatening to blow the clerk's head off if he didn't empty the register. The clerk doesn't know if the gun is real or a toy, and if in that case, the clerk (or a cop) puts a bullet in the robber's head, it's a legal and justified kill. Saddam was doing the same thing, except with the threat of nukes and biological weapons. We were totally justified in going in there to take him out.

 

Since earlier in this same thread you've stated that it's a good thing that he's going to swing, I'll assume you agree with me on this.

 

Have fun playing conspiracy theorist on this one. The truth is pretty clear....Saddam jerked the US's chain for 8 years under Clinton, completely making the US look like a toothless tiger. Bush shows up and after 911 realizes that our policy of making threats without backing them up is an utter failure, and decides to go on the offensive against anybody who wants to f--- with us. Bottom line Saddam could still be in power, but he decided to pull our chain one time too many, and 9/11 gave us all the excuse we needed to go get rid of him.

[aqualung211]

Originally posted by ulank Actually, there are multiple reasons for it, but getting Sadaam's fat ass out of there, for our sake, the Iraqi's sake and the region's sake is a big part of it.

 

 

More violence is happening in Iraq now that he's gone. He was the only guy who could control those religious freaks.

And he posed ZERO threat to America....if you didn't notice, he had no weapons of mass destruction.

 

I really don't care about him killing Iraqi's. Yeah....it's all him. He's such a big bad man.

 

Disregard the fact that they are now killing themselves too. Genocide is still going on.

[ulank]

Originally posted by Old Steve The only similarity I'll grant you between Vietnam and Iraq is that if/when we lose it, it'll be the politicians who lost it for us. Right now, unless a US trooper is taking fire, he needs to complete a 7 point checklist before he can fire at a potentail enemy. We have video of Al Queda funerals with 100s of terrorists in attendance, and we can't get permission to smoke the place, and the bad guys are more than happy to hide out in mosques or residential areas knowing that we're "too nice" to go in blazing. What we NEED is a total change in the rules of engagement. Declare all personal weapons illegal in Iraq and then give everyone 3 days to turn in their AK's and grenade launchers. Then, on day 4, start going on sweeps. Every gun we find, we claim. If you're caught not in a coalition uniform holding a gun, we'll assume that you're a threat and deal with you accordingly. Bottom line, if we let our troops do the job that they're trained to do, we can have that place cleaned up pretty quickly.

 

 

And how about all the hoopla about the "torture" that occured? I know some of it was legitimately bad on our part, but things like making prisoners get in a pile naked or having dogs bark at them from a few inches away are the least of any atrocities that have ever occured during wartime. Yet the ubersensitive, hysterical and emotional public hears a few stories and sees a few pictures of this and suddenly our troops are somehow worse than people who are willing to kill dozens of innocent people purely out of hate. Indeed, the U.S. could wreak some serious havoc if we really wanted to, but playing by the rules against guys who don't makes things a touch more difficult.

[aqualung211]

Originally posted by Old Steve Go re-read your history books, Aqua. We didn't enter WWII to save the Jews from the ovens. We were attacked by Japan, yet our first real action happened in North Africa and then Europe. A lot of people back then also saw this as "shady". As for Saddam posing a threat, he absolutely did, believe it or not. Clinton (both Hillary and Bill, btw) have a long list of quotes claiming that Saddam's WMD programs were a threat to us. Sure, it turns out that Saddam didn't have much of a program going, but at the time, everyone believed he did, and since he was more than willing to pay off families of suicide bombers, it wasn't a big leap to think that at some point he wouldn't have given some stuff to Al Queda to use. Let's not also forget Saddam's continued violations of UN sanctions, including shooting at OUR planes that were patrolling the no fly zone. Finally, if you go back and read the papers, Saddam ended up destorying a bunch of illegal long range missles literally hours before we went back in (too little too late). Bottom line, Saddam was like the guy walking into a bank with a fake gun and threatening to blow the clerk's head off if he didn't empty the register. The clerk doesn't know if the gun is real or a toy, and if in that case, the clerk (or a cop) puts a bullet in the robber's head, it's a legal and justified kill. Saddam was doing the same thing, except with the threat of nukes and biological weapons. We were totally justified in going in there to take him out. Since earlier in this same thread you've stated that it's a good thing that he's going to swing, I'll assume you agree with me on this. Have fun playing conspiracy theorist on this one. The truth is pretty clear....Saddam jerked the US's chain for 8 years under Clinton, completely making the US look like a toothless tiger. Bush shows up and after 911 realizes that our policy of making threats without backing them up is an utter failure, and decides to go on the offensive against anybody who wants to f--- with us. Bottom line Saddam could still be in power, but he decided to pull our chain one time too many, and 9/11 gave us all the excuse we needed to go get rid of him.

 

 

I don't give a flying {censored} what the intent was.....we still ended up doing that. Iraq on the other hand.....is a complete {censored}ing mess and was from the beggining.

I don't know who's spweing this radical right wing nonsense into you ear...but you should stop listening.

 

Saddam isn't and never was a serious threat. He never attacked us (Ladin did btw, but for some reason it was all Saddams fault).

 

And you should really be ashamed of yourself...that "excuse" cost thousands of lives. All the while the REAL culprit is off scott-free because people like you focus on whatever CNN tells you to. We were attacked by Afghani terrorists (lead by Bil Ladin) and some how we ended up in Iraq. If a ghost from the WTC heard you say that his death was an excuse to go after someone else as supposed to the person responsible for his death....he'd kick you in the nuts.

 

{censored} this......

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by aqualung211 More violence is happening in Iraq now that he's gone. He was the only guy who could control those religious freaks. And he posed ZERO threat to America....if you didn't notice, he had no weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

No threat to the US? Interesting, tell that to the F-16 pilots who dodged his missles enforcing the UN's no-fly zones. Also, don't re-write history here....everyone on the planet assumed Saddam had WMD's before we went in there.

 

In fact, the New York Times about a month ago published an article critical of the Bush administration's posting of Saddam's files on the web because they feared that it would show terrorists how to build WMDs. Let me ask you...if Saddam didn't have a WMD program, why is the New York Times worried that if you read his files, you can learn how to build WMDs?

 

 

Originally posted by aqualung211 I really don't care about him killing Iraqi's. Yeah....it's all him. He's such a big bad man. Disregard the fact that they are now killing themselves too. Genocide is still going on.

 

 

Go look up Genocide again....you'll easily see that that's not what's happening.

 

Actually what's happening is quite predictable....you get rid of a tyrannical dictator, and a power vacuum is left. Now EVERYBODY wants to be the new leader, and the US and Iraqis did a bad job of getting these other groups under control. Now you have a bunch of factions fighting for control. If/when we decide to REALLY put down these insurgents, we'll do it. Still, for the average Iraqi (not the ones in Sadr City or Bagdad, but elsewhere) life is actually much better....they have a democratically elected government and are beginning to control their own destiny.

 

Of course if we leave, one of the insurgent groups will eventually take power, and Iraq will either be a puppet of Iran or Syria...Yaaaay.

[aqualung211]

You'll make a fine Republican some day.

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by aqualung211 I don't give a flying {censored} what the intent was.....we still ended up doing that. Iraq on the other hand.....is a complete {censored}ing mess and was from the beggining. I don't know who's spweing this radical right wing nonsense into you ear...but you should stop listening. Saddam isn't and never was a serious threat. He never attacked us (Ladin did btw, but for some reason it was all Saddams fault). And you should really be ashamed of yourself...that "excuse" cost thousands of lives. All the while the REAL culprit is off scott-free because people like you focus on whatever CNN tells you to. We were attacked by Afghani terrorists (lead by Bil Ladin) and some how we ended up in Iraq. If a ghost from the WTC heard you say that his death was an excuse to go after someone else as supposed to the person responsible for his death....he'd kick you in the nuts. {censored} this......

 

 

I can't believe how misguided you are. Actually I can, but that's ok. Here's some advice: deal with REALITY, now "how I wish the world was". Combine that with paying attention to the news as it happens, and a sprinkle of history, and this stuff is easy to figure out.

 

You're Monday morning quarterbacking the hell out of this, and unfortunately in the "real world" that doesn't cut it.

 

Prior to 2001, Saddam had been jerking the US and the rest of the world's chain for about 8 years or so. "I've got weapons", "I don't have weapons", "Come in and inspect", "Go away inspectors"....blah blah blah. Ever since Iraq 1 was over, Saddam started breaking resolutions that HE AGREED TO. Shooting at US planes, developing illegal weapons, the list goes on and on. Worse yet, many of the US allies were helping him out....France selling him advanced avionics illegally for his air force, Germany sending him hi-tech weapons systems, etc. Bottom line, Saddam eventually HAD to get a beatdown.

 

Then 9/11 happened. No Saddam didn't do it. That's why we went after Osama and Al Queda. While we haven't gotten Osama yet, we have successfully put Al Queda in a tailspin, cut off most of their funding, and given them very few places to hide. Part of that was getting rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan...the "official government" sponsor of Al Queda. Took us a few months, and now Afghanistan is a much nicer place to live.

 

Along the way, US foreign policy changed. Maybe you remember Bush's "axis of evil" speech? (Probably not). Anyway, he called out Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as rouge states that we need to go after. He also said (paraphrasing here) "everyone else in the world can line up with us or against us....pick a side." If you're with us, great, let's go get the bad guys. If you're against us, we're coming for you. Iraq just happened to be #1 on the list of places that we're going next.

 

Now, that is all history...maybe you agreed with it at the time, maybe you didn't. But that's what happened, and you really can't dispute the facts. Rather than make up history ("Bush lied", "Iraq didn't fly the planes on 9/11", etc.) the only USEFUL thing to do is decide what to do next based on the facts that we have.

 

Unfortunately, you have to make a choice...either:

a.) stick it out in Iraq so that we can have a stable and democratic government in a historically unstable part of the world, or

b.) pack up our crap and go home, letting the terrorists and other bad guys know that if it's "too hard", the US will just go home and won't fight.

 

Those are the choices, and you have to make these decisions in real time. Unfortunately, you don't get to go back in time and change your mind. So right now, the folks in charge are debating which of these options to go with, and in a few years we'll know if the right decision was made.

 

Personally, I think in the long run, Bush will be recognized as having done an important and significant thing to make the world better. After 30 or 40 years of trying to be diplomatic with our enemies, and/or treating terrorists as "criminals" rather than an emeny of the state, we're drawing a line in the sand. I can't believe how many people don't get that.

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by aqualung211 You'll make a fine Republican some day.

That's all you've got!?? My 5 year old can make a better argument. Nice comeback....reallly.

I guess when you don't have an intelligent argument to make, you resort to some kind of name calling! Hey, nice job, man.

Seriously, I don't mean to be going off here, but this stuff is probably the most critical issue of our time, and it causes me real physical pain to see how many people can't see past the rhetoric, political crap, and one-sided reporting on this stuff to actually look at it objectively and have an opinion that actually has something to back it up.

Was getting rid of Saddam a good thing? I think so. Is going after the US's enemies, no matter who they are or where they're hiding a good idea? I think so too.

To me, it's just that simple. Nowadays it's just too friggin easy to wipe out lots of innocent people if you're a terrorist. Rather than waiting for people to actually try, I'd rather see my tax dollars being spent on going after the people who stand up and say "Death to the USA" and wipe 'em all out. It's not like they're not clearly stating an opinion on what they'd like to do to us. I just like a policy of beating them to the punch.

[aqualung211]

I wasn't aware that "Republican" was name calling.

I decided (like the better man would) to not argue anymore...that's why i said it.

And don't preach to me about one-sided news reports....your rhetoric screams O'Reily.

Goodbye.

[aqualung211]

Originally posted by Old Steve Nowadays it's just too friggin easy to wipe out lots of innocent people if you're a terrorist. Rather than waiting for people to actually try, I'd rather see my tax dollars being spent on going after the people who stand up and say "Death to the USA" and wipe 'em all out. It's not like they're not clearly stating an opinion on what they'd like to do to us. I just like a policy of beating them to the punch.

 

 

This is why i'm not going to argue......you know not what you want.

 

You're saying you want to do a middle-easter concentration camp (newsflash, they all hate us....so to "beath them to the punch" you have to kill all of them.) yet you blindly defend the current war that ignores the person factually responsible for the attacks...and that goes after a man who had no connection (and spare me whatever right wing paper that said otherwise) to the attacks.

 

Christ, i'm over this......

[Old Steve]

Originally posted by aqualung211 I wasn't aware that "Republican" was name calling.

 

 

I'm a "realist" politically, not an "idealist". In other words, I try to deal with the world as it actually is, not how I wish it would be. Unfortunately things like selfishness, greed, laziness, and good old fashioned "evil" are part of this "real" world, so they need to be dealt with.

 

In terms of US politics, it seems that most repubulicans are "realists" when it comes to tax policy and foreign policy, yet are "idealists" when it comes to things like gay rights and abortion policy. Democrats seem to be more "idealists" with things like taxes and foreign policy, and "realists" in social policies.

 

I don't watch Bill O'Reilly because he's a blowhard, IMHO, and I read the NY Times (leftist) and watch Fox News (right wing) so that I can get some balance in my news.

 

BTW, I never said anything about a concentration camp, nor did I advocate letting up on the seach for Bin Laden. The fact of the matter is that Bin Laden has become somewhat irrelevant. I'm sure we'll get him at some point, just as we've done a pretty good job of rolling up the heads of his organization. The bottom line is that Al Queda is on the run, and has become pretty ineffectual at this point...more "bark" than bite.

 

On the other hand, there are plenty of radical islamic and other anti-american groups out there who are openly advocating a "death to the USA" policy. If somebody were standing in my front yard continually threatening to kill me, and the cops weren't doing anything to stop it, I'd probably eventually walk out in the yard with a baseball bat and put a stop to it. It's the same thing with US foreign policy, IMHO. If you or your group want to wreck MY country by utilizing terrorism, I have no problem with our country's military going out to nip things in the bud.

 

Don't get me wrong, this is a MAJOR change to how we've done things for several decades. For a long time, we were willing to let our marine barracks get bombed, our embassies invaded, our ships attacked, and all kinds of other terrorism against us exist, and we'd turn the other cheek or try to "negotiate". 9/11 changed that for me. I didn't need a TV to watch it. The fact that these guys are willing to do literally anything to advance their causes AGAINST us, tells me that our best shot at avoiding this stuff in the future is to play OFFENSE instead of defense.

[ulank]

Originally posted by Old Steve As for Saddam posing a threat, he absolutely did, believe it or not. Clinton (both Hillary and Bill, btw) have a long list of quotes claiming that Saddam's WMD programs were a threat to us.

 

 

Absolutely. Clinton's whole justification for lobbing some bombs into Iraq in 1998 was that Sadaam had WMD's and was a viable threat to the region and to us. Sound familiar? So either he was lying his pants off, or we're supposed to believe that tossing a few bombs decimated Sadaam's weapons programs and he never sought to rebuild it after that. More likely though, is that Clinton was aware of the same things Bush became aware of, but being at the latter portion of his second term, following years of economic prosperity built upon nothing (dotcom bubble) he couldn't do anything drastic to tarnish his "legacy." So he goes for the band-aid solution, tosses some bombs into Iraq just to buy some time while never actually proving one way or the other that the WMD's were there or that the bombings destroyed anything of significance. Indeed, Bush gave Sadaam plenty of warnings to come clean and Sadaam thought he could keep playing the game as he was allowed to do during the Clinton years. Too bad for him. At least now we know for sure...providing they didn't get moved into Syria or something.