Sensible Erection | It's now officially Hilliary's war

Wednesday, 1 September 2010

quote [ Obama: U.S. combat in Iraq over; time to 'turn the page' ]

One step closer to ending what should have never happened.
I for one, would still like someone, anyone to tell me the reason, the real reason we invaded Iraq in the 1st place. Weapons of mass destruction, connection to 9/11, or the other lies are still being told.

There are about a million things that can go wrong Mrs. Clinton has just inherited a lousy job.

The State Department and other civilian agencies have been working for the last year and a half getting ready for August 31st. That's the day the U.S. will have 50,000 troops in Iraq and the combat mission officially ends.

http://federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=15&sid=2035768

There is one thing that should be said. Another campaign promise by Obama kept.

The part of all of this that gets me most is that after lies, torture, trillions of dollars, American lives lost , total stress on the American military, all spent in a total and utter failure on every leave measured on any yardstick you chose (objectives met + things better or worse + long term consequences +on & on) the Democrats are still on the defensive and the GOP is calling on "Bush to get the credit due"
(I'm sure there should have been a period in there someplace)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#38945080

The state of affairs in Iraq now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#38944964

[politics] [by bbqkink@6:35amGMT] [+9 Underrated]

Comments

bbqkink said @ 6:43am GMT on 1st Sep
Giving Bush the credit that is due.

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bbqkink said @ 6:43am GMT on 1st Sep
State of Iraq now

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metternich said @ 10:00am GMT on 1st Sep
I'm not sure what to think of her. I agree on the most part, but I feel like some of her points are a bit of a stretch or have some spin to them. The clips where she shows the Oil for Food program, for example. Did they give that as a reason to start the war, or was it just one other thing they were piling on a list of what was wrong over there?

Nihil said @ 12:00pm GMT on 1st Sep
I didn't watch the clip, but if memory serves, the OfF scandal mostly became a rebuttal to people who wanted to "just let the UN deal with it".

bbqkink said @ 10:23pm GMT on 1st Sep
Here is what Fox was saying Monday, September 20, 2004

It began as a U.N. humanitarian aid program called "Oil-for-Food," but it ended up with Saddam Hussein (search) pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating machine ever and enriching some of America's most forceful opponents at the United Nations
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132832,00.html

Raw Data: Delve Deeper Into Oil-for-Food
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132649,00.html

Todomanna said @ 6:43am GMT on 1st Sep
Fear. Fear was the reason the US invaded Iraq. Whether it was manufactured fear of weapons of mass destruction, imagined fear of familial obligations, or potentially accurate (if entirely greedy) fear of foreign domination of the fuel market, I would say fear is what drove it's inception.

Now, I'm just a simple hyperchicken from a backwoods asteroid, so I can't accurately gauge whether any of these reasons were worthwhile, but my gut tells me that they weren't. Nor would any other likely justification (beyond human rights considerations) do the trick.

bbqkink said @ 6:49am GMT on 1st Sep
Thats how they sold the war , what I am talking about is why..really.
I have heard all kinds of speculation. there was every thing from Bush on a christian crusade, to establish a democracy in the heart of the middle east, oil, on and on, but what I want is somebody who was in on this from the beginning "and it started long before 9/11" to let the cat out of the bag.
It would more than likely have to be a CIA type I can't see anybody from the neo-con tribe breaking ranks.
Probably never happen.

damnit said @ 7:03am GMT on 1st Sep

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:14am GMT on 1st Sep
That's a justification, perhaps his personal justification, as to why they carried out the neocon platform of nation building.

Neocons... the only people to take the worst aspects of Liberal idealism and Conservative militarism and roll it into one big ball of shit.

Todomanna said @ 8:31am GMT on 1st Sep
And what I'm talking about is what it is, really. Whatever personal reasons caused it, and I'm sure they're far far too numerous to name individually, fear was at the crux of it. Fear of losing power, fear of safety, fear that eats at them until they must act on it.

Krutz said @ 6:50am GMT on 1st Sep
I think fear is why congress voted for it (if a given member wasn't thrilled with the idea) and why nobody questioned it for so long.

Bush's speeches were laced with references to Iraq/Saddam and 9/11 in close proximity, so that they technically could say he never made a direct connection between them. But the impetus to invade Iraq had been around in neocon circles for quite some time before. Bush just agreed to do it. He told the Pakistanis once that he was doing what God wanted him to do, there was speculation that he'd had a boner for Saddam because there had been a foiled assassination attempt on Bush Sr., etc.

But one school of thought actually had Bush believing that "freedom" was a natural state if you removed a tyrant, even in a place with no history of democracy (as well as sectarian tensions that were ignored). This is in contrast to what actually happens, which is called a "power vacuum" and the people looking for another strong man. Anyway, the "plan" in this case was to make Iraq a democracy, an ally, and then use it to continue to bring democracy to the middle east via military force. Which, needless to say, was a pretty bad plan, both in concept and in execution.

Todomanna said @ 7:20am GMT on 1st Sep
I'm not speaking of the obvious fear, I'm talking about the underlying fear. The fear that drives powerful men to accumulate even more, just so they don't lose what power they have. Just because they use fear as a tool in their games of greed and deception doesn't mean they don't feel it gnawing at them when they go to sleep at night.

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:19am GMT on 1st Sep
I think that "fear" is also called "greed".

structured_spirits said @ 6:49am GMT on 1st Sep
Feel like celebrating? Job well done? ... Anyone?

BergZ said @ 12:20pm GMT on 1st Sep
"I think we are used to, in thinking about victory and a war, I think we’re used to the pictures of sometime of ceremony on a Battleship at sea. I don’t think you’re likely, based on the wars we’re involved in, I don’t think you are likely to see those scenarios." Robert Gibbs

Heh heh heh, nice allusion to "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"!

sacrelicious said @ 6:52am GMT on 1st Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
seems to me like the hawks had a sort of myopic focus on the Saddam Hussein regime since the first gulf war that seemed to impose itself on any middle-east related calamity. like, if middle east terrorists target us it's simply a forgone conclusion that it must in some way be related to Iraq. it was kind of an article of faith. add to that the fact that Cheney felt there was unfinished business to be done there, and Bush's desire to finish what daddy started, and it easy to see how tempting it would be for many of them to choose to see Iraq as a central player.

ralfmaximus said @ 12:51pm GMT on 1st Sep
Plus, the US needed a new villain.

Wars make money for the military industrial complex, a pillar of the US economy. There hadn't been a decent war since Gulf War I, and THAT one only lasted a short while. They were looking for a 10-year project, or even better, a never-ending War on Terror and Iraq/Afghanistan was just the ticket.

Seriously, I think some hawks looked at the USSR experience there and HOPED we'd become mired in that, to make it last.

ring riot said @ 6:54am GMT on 1st Sep
You have an extra 'i' in the headline, just a heads up.

ring riot said @ 6:54am GMT on 1st Sep
Bit of an odd headline, but +1.

Vampire_X said @ 7:03am GMT on 1st Sep
"would still like someone, anyone to tell me the reason, the real reason we invaded Iraq in the 1st place."

i think it's a complex issue, but certainly war profiteering has been a major motivation.

the US has also managed to paint all muslims as terrorists, at least to many of its own.... every empire needs a specific people to oppress more than its own, it seems.

whatever the point was, america did what osama bin laden wanted: they have entrenched themselves in afghanistan, wowing to stabilize the region, and in the process hemoraging money and damaging diplomatic connections.

maybe i think conspiracies exist because i refuse to belive that leaders can be this stupid while serving special interests so specificly...

things are spelled wrong, deal im danish :P

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:18am GMT on 1st Sep
Bush's policies changed dramatically immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks. According to columnist Gerard Baker,[37]
It took, improbably, the arrival of George Bush in the White House and September 11, 2001, to catapult [neoconservatism] into the public consciousness. When Mr Bush cited its most simplified tenet — that the United States should seek to promote liberal democracy around the world — as a key case for invading Iraq, neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was, to its many critics, a unified ideology that justified military adventurism, sanctioned torture, and promoted aggressive Zionism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

willrogers said @ 9:09pm GMT on 1st Sep
That's bullshit.

His policies didn't change dramatically on 9/11, he brought in more than a dozen PNAC people to his administration months before 9/11, including his Secretary of Defense (Rumsfeld), undersecretary of Defense (Wolfowitz), and Vice President (Cheney).

PNAC had been planning on instituting neo-conservative foreign policy since the late 90's so it was no wonder that they would do so when they were put into office.

9/11 was simply the excuse and propaganda that allowed them to trick Americans into letting them do what they wanted.

ralfmaximus said @ 10:43pm GMT on 1st Sep
Something that's always bothered me is how fast the PATRIOT act was created and enacted.

340+ pages of radical new legislation, voted and signed into law October 26, 2001: less than 6 weeks after September 11.

They HAD to have had that document sitting around before the event.

willrogers said @ 7:09am GMT on 1st Sep [Score:4 Insightful]
It's neo-conservatism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_a_New_American_Century

The Bush Administrations were littered with a who's who of PNAC members, including:

Richard Armitage
John Bolton
Dick Cheney
Scooter Libby
Richard Perle
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz

PNAC is really the reason that we invaded Iraq because it was part of their plan to remake the world in America's image, or, more accurately, remake the world the way they want it.

They had been trying to invade Iraq since 1998, when they sent a letter signed by many of the members of Bush's future Administrations to President Clinton telling him to invade Iraq and remove Clinton from power.

They were trying to get into Iraq the moment they got into power, when Bush and his cronies tried to get government agencies to focus away from guys like Bin Laden and towards Iraq. They then used 9/11 like Pearl Harbor as an excuse to go into Iraq by associating Afghanistan and Al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein in every conceivable way, just like associating Nazi Germany with Imperial Japan.

And Iraq wasn't just supposed to be an isolated case like the Daddy Issue theories suggest. The point of Invading Iraq was that it was a test case for a new American imperialism where the US would invade or threaten to do so to any nation hostile to "American interests" and American hegemony.

It was really just a more forceful version of Reaganite foreign policy, because it involved the US directly attacking and invading sovereign nations rather than Reagan Col Warrior practice of using proxy fighters like the Contras or fascists trained at the School of the Americas.

willrogers said @ 7:10am GMT on 1st Sep
Durr, "remove Saddam from power" not Clinton.

My bad.

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:12am GMT on 1st Sep
Not too far off though, I imagine.

BergZ said @ 12:11pm GMT on 1st Sep
Is it possible to accidentally say what someone else was thinking: A sort of Freudian slip by proxy?

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:12am GMT on 1st Sep
Yes. This.

bbqkink said @ 8:23pm GMT on 1st Sep
I can believe that.

Ronin.ca said @ 8:12am GMT on 1st Sep
" the Democrats are still on the defensive" That is something I don't get.

He said you'd be out. You are largely out (the 50K troops are not nothing, but this idea that you go "poof" and move a whole army out of a country over night is insane).

And it's him and his party that's in trouble? WTF?

Todomanna said @ 8:33am GMT on 1st Sep
Mmm... roast scapegoat...

swiggy said @ 12:36pm GMT on 1st Sep [Score:1 Funny]
if no one else is gonna say it...

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Peco Sancherez said @ 12:58pm GMT on 1st Sep
......until next time.....BWAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!

King of the Hill said @ 1:19pm GMT on 1st Sep
Bush signed SOFA, which "lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq." In a press conference at the signing of the SOFA, President Bush commented: "We're also signing a Security Agreement, sometimes called a Status of Forces Agreement. The agreement provides American troops and Defense Department officials with authorizations and protections to continue supporting Iraq's democracy once the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year. This agreement respects the sovereignty and the authority of Iraq's democracy. The agreement lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq -- a withdrawal that is possible because of the success of the surge." Bush later commented: "There are certain benchmarks that will be met -- such as troops out of the cities by June of '09. And then there's a benchmark at the end of the agreement. As to the pace of meeting those agreements, that will depend of course upon the Iraqi government, the recommendations of the Iraqi military, and the close coordination between General Odierno and our military." [whitehouse.gov, 12/14/08]

maryyugo said @ 3:01pm GMT on 1st Sep
"It's now officially Hilliary's[sic] war"

Hilliarious!

microbio said @ 4:58pm GMT on 1st Sep
Why? Because United States has the arrogance to think they're the police of the whole world, and that their way of living is the best for all.

And, of course, because a lot of powerful people has an interest and profits from wars.

al_ said @ 5:17pm GMT on 1st Sep
Well who else is policing you? Point out just one.

Krutz said @ 5:07pm GMT on 1st Sep

al_ said @ 5:15pm GMT on 1st Sep
BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO

al_ said @ 5:16pm GMT on 1st Sep
Also the PNAC thing is pretty spot on. Read that shit a while back.

Almeister9 said @ 9:21pm GMT on 1st Sep
The 44 million barrels of oil that disappeared off the face of the planet in the first week of the invasion, which are still unaccounted for. For starters.

BlutStein1984 said @ 3:49am GMT on 2nd Sep
Sadly this whole mistake still isn't over if we are going to have 50,000 of our soldiers still over there. Until we fully leave, this is nothing more than relabeling the situation.

Seriously, there is no way all those soldiers are going be stuck behind desks for the next few years. Combat will still continue for quite some time over there.

Whatever. Republicans patted each other on the backs when Bush played fighter pilot and declared "Mission Accomplished"....its only fair that the Democrats should get their day to be lied to and feel good about it.