Was Saddam really a threat to our National Security
- Thread starter ARogueTrader
- Start date
What, you want me to call you a dolt, too?
The reason as I see it that we went to war is because the President felt Iraq was indeed a threat to our security due to the UN resolutions being violated and Saddam's unwillingness to properly disclose the necessary information. He refused to give the benefit of the doubt to a hostile rogue nation smack dab in the most economically important region on earth led by a maniac with grand ambitions. IMHO Bush felt somewhere down the line Saddam could help terrorists unleash a far worse attack on us than 9/11, and he decided to cut the head off the snake.
Remember, what Saddam's capabilities actually were has yet to be decided.
And BTW, the way Bush 1 abandoned the southern Shi'a was DISGRACEFUL!
Es bastante? Que mas quieres que digo?
Ciao,
H
Quote from hapaboy:
What, you want me to call you a dolt, too?
The reason as I see it that we went to war is because the President felt Iraq was indeed a threat to our security due to the UN resolutions being violated and Saddam's unwillingness to properly disclose the necessary information. He refused to give the benefit of the doubt to a hostile rogue nation smack dab in the most economically important region on earth led by a maniac with grand ambitions. IMHO Bush felt somewhere down the line Saddam could help terrorists unleash a far worse attack on us than 9/11, and he decided to cut the head off the snake.
Remember, what Saddam's capabilities actually were has yet to be decided.
And BTW, the way Bush 1 abandoned the southern Shi'a was DISGRACEFUL!
Es bastante? Que mas quieres que digo?
Ciao,
H
thank you.....we now get to the only reason we should have gone to WAR in the first place. Anything else is just not good enough for the costs of war...and please dont compare to WWII or any other war..times have changed....from here we can discuss wether or not it was our best option...This I believe is at the core of Rouge's poll questions....questions that we may want to look at....1)Have we really stopped that threat by going to WAR ???
2) have we stopped the the most important thing to terrorism, money flow????( Money laundering )....
Gracias.......
Quote from bobcathy1:
Saddam was a threat to all nations.
He invaded Kuwait.
He slaughtered thousands of his own people.
Someone had to stop Hitler too.
Stop whining!
he invaded kuwait because they were slant drilling for oil and we gave him the green light(april glaspie).
even our own govt placed the blame on the iranians for "gassing" the kurds, who for all intents and purposes aren't his people.
not supporting saddam but everyone knows now the incubator stories were propaganda.
the first casualty of war is the truth.
ahahahaha,
hapaboy, better change your handle to dumbfu%k.YOUR OWN FUC%ING quotes
"As is plainly obvious, Saddam was as much a threat to the US as Mother Theresa.So what if his ambition was to take over the region's vast oil reserves, unite the arab world under his rule, and destroy Israel?"
"I imagined that Saddam Hussein is a narcissistic megalomaniac. I imagined his repeated statements of vitriol against my country. For me to imagine that SH would ever use nukes against my country, Israel"
"I think all the evidence we need is Saddam's past actions. They speak for themselves. 9/11 not only was a day that scarred our nation, but it also marked the day we stopped giving Saddam the benefit of the doubt. WE CAN'T AFFORD TO!"
"Unwarranted aggression"?[invading Iraq] You have got to be kidding me. What was 9/11?"
I can see the word game know
hapaboy: what I really mean to say... blah blah blah..
Yeah yeah yeah... I know you never explicitly said ISRAEL WAS THE ONLY REASON WE WENT TO WAR
yeah yeah yeah, hapaboy never said 9/11 was the reason for attacking iraq blahh blahhh blahhh.:eek: :eek:
Surely you'll try to clarify your bullshit with more bullshit.:yer it
Take yer blinders off.. Your allegiance should be with America! not some military outpost in Middle east. 
Where is tripack?
This is very different from alleging that I said we invaded Iraq "FOR ISRAEL." Do you deny that Saddam wanted to destroy Israel?
You have shown yourself to be not only an idiot but a dishonest one for leaving out the rest of the sentence. The complete quote is the following:
"For me to imagine that SH would ever use nukes against my country, Israel, or as blackmail to hold the global economy hostage - how could I ever come to that conclusion?"
By omitting the rest of the sentence from your post you tried to imply that "my country" is Israel, when in fact of course I am referring to the USA, of which I'm a proud citizen. Even a simpleton like you knows this based on the amount of quote searching you have obviously done. And I used the term "my country" to emphasize my point as I was posting to Alfonso, who is foreign.
Very dishonest, NVS. Shame on you.
You either purposely took this out of context or are simply as intelligent as your horrific spelling indicates. I stand by the quote. Saddam's past actions (invading Kuwait, etc.) DID speak for themselves, and 9/11 DID serve as a wake-up call to our President that we could no longer give Saddam the benefit of the doubt, but nowhere in the sentence did I say that he was responsible for 9/11.
Interesting how you slipped in the [invading Iraq] in there. Again, completely taken out of context. Anyone who reads the entire series of posts in that thread you culled this from will see that I was not stating Iraq was responsible for 9/11. I even say so in my very next post on that thread, but you conveniently omitted that.
You obviously spent a lot of time researching my quotes so you could twist them around. This is not only hilarious, but creepy. You're pathetic.
It is with America. Despite your lying and crude tactics, you probably believe that you are "with" America.
I respect your right to disagree, NVS, but not your very dishonest tactics.
No the first casualty is loss of all common sense by the left.
The words were "no opinion". Is that an automatic 'green light'? NO. Obviously the Iraqis took it that way. But maybe, at the time, the US had damn good reason to keep its cards close to its chest. I mean, how the hell are any of us ever going to know what the whole story was, sitting at our PCs, reading whatever carp the guardian manages to scrape together?
So, like I said, in twisted world of the left, somehow the US becomes responsible for Saddam invading Kuwait. Typical liberal crap. Do whatever you can, just somehow, someway, make certain that you manage to blame the US for whatever bad happens in the world and make certain you never give the US credit for any good. No better way to get a standing ovation from a liberal audience.
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Telling It Right
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 19, 2003
This is a very, very important part of history, and we've got to tell it right." So says Thomas Kean, chairman of the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Kean promises major revelations in testimony next month: "This was not something that had to happen." We'll see: maybe those of us who expected the 9/11 commission to produce yet another whitewash were wrong. Meanwhile, one can only echo his sentiment: it's important to tell our history right, not just about the events that led up to 9/11, but about the events that followed.
The capture of Saddam Hussein has produced a great outpouring of relief among both Iraqis and Americans. He's no longer taunting us from hiding; he was a monster and deserves whatever fate awaits him. But we shouldn't let war supporters use the occasion of Saddam's capture to rewrite the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, to draw a veil over the way the nation was misled into war.
Even the Iraq war's critics usually focus on the practical failures of the Bush administration's policy, rather than its morality. After all, the war came at a heavy cost, even before the fighting began: to prepare for the Iraq campaign, the administration diverted resources away from Afghanistan before the job was done, giving Al Qaeda a chance to get away and the Taliban a chance to regroup.
And while the initial invasion went smoothly, since then almost everything in Iraq has gone badly. (Saddam's capture would have been a smaller story if it had happened in the first flush of victory; instead, it was the first real piece of good news from Iraq in months.) The security situation remains terrible; the economy remains moribund; gasoline shortages and power outages continue.
To top it all off, the ongoing disorder in Iraq is a clear and present danger to our own national security. A large part of the U.S. military's combat strength is tied down in occupation duties, leaving us ill prepared for crises elsewhere. Meanwhile, overstretch is undermining the readiness of the military as a whole.
Now maybe, just maybe, Saddam's capture will start a virtuous circle in Iraq. Maybe the insurgency will evaporate; maybe the cost to America, in blood, dollars and national security, will start to decline.
But even if all that happens, we should be deeply disturbed by the history of this war. For its message seems to be that as long as you wave the flag convincingly enough, it doesn't matter whether you tell the truth.
By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction â the principal public rationale for the war â hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture. The administration's long campaign of guilt by innuendo, it seems, is still working.
The war's more idealistic supporters do, I think, feel queasy about all this. That's why they lay so much stress on their hopes for democracy in Iraq. They're not just looking for a happy ending; they're looking for moral redemption for a war fought on false pretenses.
As a practical matter, I suspect that they'll be disappointed: the only leaders in Iraq with genuine popular followings seem to be Shiite clerics. I also wonder how much real commitment to democracy lies behind the administration's stirring rhetoric. Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison? As recently as 2000 he defended that vote, saying that the African National Congress "was then perceived as a terrorist organization."
Which brings me to this week's other famous prisoner. While the world celebrated the capture of Saddam, a federal appeals court ruled that Jose Padilla must be released from military custody. Mr. Padilla is a U.S. citizen, arrested on American soil, who has been held for 18 months without charges as an "enemy combatant." The ruling was a stark reminder that the Bush administration, which talks so much about promoting democracy abroad, doesn't seem very concerned about following democratic rules at home.
Telling It Right
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 19, 2003
This is a very, very important part of history, and we've got to tell it right." So says Thomas Kean, chairman of the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Kean promises major revelations in testimony next month: "This was not something that had to happen." We'll see: maybe those of us who expected the 9/11 commission to produce yet another whitewash were wrong. Meanwhile, one can only echo his sentiment: it's important to tell our history right, not just about the events that led up to 9/11, but about the events that followed.
The capture of Saddam Hussein has produced a great outpouring of relief among both Iraqis and Americans. He's no longer taunting us from hiding; he was a monster and deserves whatever fate awaits him. But we shouldn't let war supporters use the occasion of Saddam's capture to rewrite the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, to draw a veil over the way the nation was misled into war.
Even the Iraq war's critics usually focus on the practical failures of the Bush administration's policy, rather than its morality. After all, the war came at a heavy cost, even before the fighting began: to prepare for the Iraq campaign, the administration diverted resources away from Afghanistan before the job was done, giving Al Qaeda a chance to get away and the Taliban a chance to regroup.
And while the initial invasion went smoothly, since then almost everything in Iraq has gone badly. (Saddam's capture would have been a smaller story if it had happened in the first flush of victory; instead, it was the first real piece of good news from Iraq in months.) The security situation remains terrible; the economy remains moribund; gasoline shortages and power outages continue.
To top it all off, the ongoing disorder in Iraq is a clear and present danger to our own national security. A large part of the U.S. military's combat strength is tied down in occupation duties, leaving us ill prepared for crises elsewhere. Meanwhile, overstretch is undermining the readiness of the military as a whole.
Now maybe, just maybe, Saddam's capture will start a virtuous circle in Iraq. Maybe the insurgency will evaporate; maybe the cost to America, in blood, dollars and national security, will start to decline.
But even if all that happens, we should be deeply disturbed by the history of this war. For its message seems to be that as long as you wave the flag convincingly enough, it doesn't matter whether you tell the truth.
By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction â the principal public rationale for the war â hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture. The administration's long campaign of guilt by innuendo, it seems, is still working.
The war's more idealistic supporters do, I think, feel queasy about all this. That's why they lay so much stress on their hopes for democracy in Iraq. They're not just looking for a happy ending; they're looking for moral redemption for a war fought on false pretenses.
As a practical matter, I suspect that they'll be disappointed: the only leaders in Iraq with genuine popular followings seem to be Shiite clerics. I also wonder how much real commitment to democracy lies behind the administration's stirring rhetoric. Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison? As recently as 2000 he defended that vote, saying that the African National Congress "was then perceived as a terrorist organization."
Which brings me to this week's other famous prisoner. While the world celebrated the capture of Saddam, a federal appeals court ruled that Jose Padilla must be released from military custody. Mr. Padilla is a U.S. citizen, arrested on American soil, who has been held for 18 months without charges as an "enemy combatant." The ruling was a stark reminder that the Bush administration, which talks so much about promoting democracy abroad, doesn't seem very concerned about following democratic rules at home.