strike on iraq

"A second invasion of Iraq for one man . . ."

1. The author is anonymous, the fact of which gives him zero credibility for journalistic integrity;

2. I'm sure there is an overbearing rebuttal to this "news" article or similar items would have appeared in legitimate news sources;

3. It's not for "one man."
 
Originally posted by Josh_B
[BWow we re asking them to serve but we cut funding? So much about patriotism in front of TV and media:

...Most veterans now wait six months to see a VA doctor, and most veterans wait more than six months to receive a decision on a VA disability claim. Many of those waiting in line are Gulf War veterans, many with unusual illnesses. According to VA, of the nearly 700,000 veterans who served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, more than 300,000 have sought VA healthcare, and more than 200,000 have filed VA disability claims. Two weeks ago, President Bush slashed $275 million from the healthcare budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs....

Josh [/B]
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You can't be now questioning cutting funding for the military. Not with the last nine years of shrinking military budgets. I can think of several senators standing up and whining about the large military budgets and the need to trim even more funds than were trimmed. Be upset about the millions of dollars that have been taken away over the term, not the moment.

I hate to see the Gulf Vets and the troubles. I have a relative who falls in that number. But there are many Vietnam vets who are rightfully complaining also. Don't use the hospital/medical argument here. That shortage of funding seems to be the norm here and not the oddity. Sadly! :)
 
....I hate to see the Gulf Vets and the troubles. I have a relative who falls in that number. But there are many Vietnam vets who are rightfully complaining also. Don't use the hospital/medical argument here. That shortage of funding seems to be the norm here and not the oddity. Sadly!...

Yes very true. But it would strike as somewhat ironic that while we are talking war we cut funding. And it was cut before too, the argument there was we were going through peaceful times. But that could be another argument for another thread :)

Either way you are not alone, a close relative of mine falls in there too.
War is ugly.

Thanks

Josh
 
max401


It seems alot of that info on that article was gathered from many sites including:
American Gulf War Veterans Association
Joyce Riley vonKleist, RN, BSN spokesperson
P.O.Box 85, Versailles, Missouri 65084
(573) 378-6049 voice, (573) 378-5998 fax
http://www.gulfwarvets.com gulfwar@dam.net

...Riley, a former Captain in the United States Air Force Reserve and Flight Nurse states: “If it wasn’t bad enough to watch our troops become ill from our own weapons… the Department of Defense labeled our sick men and women as “mental cases.” These proud men and women have been abandoned, are now sick and must fight the battle alone. These needless illnesses and deaths now lie at the feet of the Pentagon and Veterans’ Administration Hospitals.” ...

http://www.gulfwarvets.com/news11.htm

There is also a wealth of documentation at: http://www.gulfwarvets.com/shame.htm

on vaccinations FDA violations, and fight for usage and non usage
http://www.gulfwarvets.com/anthrax.htm

http://www.gulfwarvets.com/document.htm

on depleted uranium: http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm

Lots of reading but also provides for some interesting perspectives, on what is happening and the vast majority of it is not hitting the main news. Too much info, and the decisions of what to cover does not always serves the public interest.

Good luck

Josh
 
it is sad that not enough is done for combat veterans, but all wars have wounded veterans and people also get killed. Nobody is arguing about that here. What matters is whether the war is good for our country or bad for our country.

Every piece of anti-war rhetoric is a rehash of the same old thing. All of it is designed to tug at the emotions and ignore logic. If I ask somebody whether an attack on iraq is just or not and they say "thousands of body bags will come home" or "Osama wants you to attack" they have not answered the question. The reason is that they know the answer is yes, and they don't want to admit it.

As for the logical reasons in favor of an attack, there are many. The liberal partisan's choose to ignore what they don't want to hear. Some people would rather drown themselves with liberal editorial pages and cartoons than look at the truth. That is sad for them, but the average person has more common sense than the extreme left.
 
Originally posted by Josh_B
....Yes very true. But it would strike as somewhat ironic that while we are talking war we cut funding. And it was cut before too, the argument there was we were going through peaceful times. But that could be another argument for another thread :)

Either way you are not alone, a close relative of mine falls in there too.
War is ugly.

Thanks

Josh
More...

Just because we were at a so-called peace did not mean that we should have stopped replenishing what was used, and developing the next level of technology and tools in that arena. Somehow the politicians didn't see the need to do much in either area. And now when we need to use our capacity, many are saying it has to be measured because of allocations and budgets.

It's so funny to hear them all wondering where the funds to pay for all this is to come from, yet when an earthquake happens on the other side of the world we are ready to pump a few billion in to help out. Then when some country says we can't repay your loans, do we foreclose?

No we either pump more money down the dark hole and/or rewrite the loan. Yet I never hear them (the politicians) say, "The American people want to know when, where, and how they'll be repaid and what if you default?" So quick they are to send American money to TRY to buy friendship and support. When will they learn that that ain't the way to grow respect, honor and friendship? :)
 
Originally posted by TigerO
Well, I happen to disagree.

Imo we're back at doing what we do best: support dictators like Musharraf, sending out the totally wrong signals to the rest of the world, and then suffering the consequences, just like what we did with Saddam Hussein.

EXCERPTS from the following:


Read what Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, put in the Congressional Record concerning the United States government's export of biological weapons ingredients to Iraq more than a decade ago. When asked by Byrd about this history as recounted in a recent Newsweek article, the current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who met with Saddam Hussein as an envoy for prior administrations, declined to directly answer Byrd's questions:


Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate)
Page S8987-S8998



HOW SADDAM HAPPENED

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, yesterday, at a hearing of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense. I
referred to a Newsweek article that will appear in the September 23,
2002, edition. That article reads as follows. It is not overly lengthy.
I shall read it. Beginning on page 35 of Newsweek, here is what the
article says:

America helped make a monster. What to do with him--and
what happens after he is gone--has haunted us for a quarter
century.

The article is written by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas. It
reads as follows:

The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave
him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago,
Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the
historic moment.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that
Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was
trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already
bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time,
America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan
administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who
had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats
for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and
its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my
enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support
Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting
between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next
five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States
backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic
aid and covert supplies of munitions.
The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of
the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again,
America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as
the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him.

Even so, there are
moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one
cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s,
America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission
to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build
biological weapons.
According to confidential Commerce
Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the
shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's
Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political
opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials;
television cameras for "video surveillance applications";
chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments
of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to
former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to
make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State
Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine
injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons,
but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some
American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison
gas on the Kurds.
The United States almost certainly knew from its own
satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons
against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and
civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun
and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats,
that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only
token official protest at the time.

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html
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And, as ever, we must not forget:

The threat from Iraq is exaggerated. Other despotic countries have or are seeking weapons of mass destruction (Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia), have invaded their neighbors (Syria, Libya, and North Korea), and even used chemical weapons (Libya in Chad during the 1980s). Moreover, Iraq's military has been devastated by the Gulf War and a decade of sanctions. Americans should ask why the United States -- half a world away -- is more concerned about the Iraqi threat than are Iraq's neighbors.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-19-02.html
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The suspicion will not die that the Bush administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its domestic political prospects. The news had been dominated for months by corporate scandals and the fall of the stock market, and the November elections were shaping up as a referendum on the Republican's handling of domestic social and economic issues. Bush is reversing a half-century of strategic doctrine on the grounds that the new enemies America faces are not like the risk-averse Soviet Union.

But at the time George Kennan and others formulated the theory of deterrence, the Soviet ruler had long been Joseph Stalin, not known for being risk-averse. There is no evidence that any of the countries in Bush's axis of evil -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- are not deterrable according to the same logic that worked with the Soviets.

In making war against Iraq, Bush is risking not just American lives but America's good name. His high-handed attitude toward our allies has already earned the United States unnecessary ill will.


Unlike the Gulf War, however, the United States is going into this conflict with little international legitimacy or support.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/19/editors.html
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The way many see it, a U.S. war on Iraq could well pull Israel into the conflict, and as a result, unwillingly force other Arab countries into the battle. This, many fear, would provide fuel to the Islamist fundamentalists' anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Western stance, and place Arab regimes currently friendly toward the United States in a very precarious situation.

"This is exactly what someone like bin Laden wants," said one veteran diplomat. "In the eyes of many people in the region, this would give a certain degree of legitimacy to the likes of (Osama) bin Laden and his al Qaida terrorist organization," said the diplomat. "This is not something we want to see occur."
http://www.emedicine.com/cgi-bin/fo...19-09434300-BC-IRAQ-PANDORA-ANALYSIS-TEXT.TXT

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Said one former American ambassador to the Middle East: "Saddam does not pose a real threat to the U.S. Even if he did posses weapons of mass destruction, he does not have the delivery capability to target American cities."
http://www.emedicine.com/cgi-bin/fo...19-09434300-BC-IRAQ-PANDORA-ANALYSIS-TEXT.TXT
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jumping in bed with monsters, playing their games, supplying them with biological weapons and calmly watching them be deployed, and then having the hypocrisy, after they've fallen out of favour, to claim that they all of a sudden need to be destroyed has got to be one of the most audacious instances of double standards the us has ever had the recklessness to try and sell to it's citizens and the world, and also one of the main causes for the us having the problems it has.

the us is internationally isolated on this position, many senior us diplomats beg to differ with george W, as do many military staff.

the economy is in a shambles, very many us citizens don't even have health or pension insurance, and while no reason for this war has been forthcoming that would alleviate our international isolation, we are proposing a war that would cost us up to 9 bil. usd per month of engagement.

who is brent scowcroft?

former national security adviser to george the senior, and still a close associate of W's father.

what does he have to say?

Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts.

read all he wrote himself on the subject here:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133
 
Originally posted by vvv



Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts.

read all he wrote himself on the subject here:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133
More...

The important quote from Scowcroft:

"If we are truly serious about the war on terrorism, it must remain our top priority. However, should Saddam Hussein be found to be clearly implicated in the events of Sept. 11, that could make him a key counterterrorist target, rather than a competing priority, and significantly shift world opinion toward support for regime change.

In any event, we should be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq--any time, anywhere, no permission required. On this point, senior administration officials have opined that Saddam Hussein would never agree to such an inspection regime. But if he did, inspections would serve to keep him off balance and under close observation, even if all his weapons of mass destruction capabilities were not uncovered. And if he refused, his rejection could provide the persuasive casus belli which many claim we do not now have. Compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear-weapons capability could have a similar effect."
 
obviously he had to say that, and indeed, if that were the case, he'd be right. but nobody in their right mind sees that anywhere, apart from george W. like brent scocroft also said:

But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them.

There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression.

An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive. The most serious cost, however, would be to the war on terrorism. Ignoring that clear sentiment would result in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism. And make no mistake, we simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation, especially on intelligence.
 
Originally posted by vvv
obviously he had to say that, and indeed, if that were the case, he'd be right. but nobody in their right mind sees that anywhere, apart from george W. [/B]
More...

So you claim: "but nobody in their right mind sees that anywhere," for the following even though Scowcroft wrote it and it's right there in print:

"In any event, we should be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq--any time, anywhere, no permission required. On this point, senior administration officials have opined that Saddam Hussein would never agree to such an inspection regime. But if he did, inspections would serve to keep him off balance and under close observation, even if all his weapons of mass destruction capabilities were not uncovered. And if he refused, his rejection could provide the persuasive casus belli which many claim we do not now have. Compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear-weapons capability could have a similar effect.""
 
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