OK. Let me get this straight:

France (bunch of sissy-a$$, no memory ****), Russia (our greatest enemy for the past 50 years), Germany (the biggest bunch of hypocrites on the planet) and a few other mindless twit countries think we are wrong to remove someone from power who:

1. Has ordered the execution of more civilians than Adolph Hitler...

2. Has waged war with both chemical and biological weapons, often on his own countrymen...

3. Has refused to abide by the rules / laws laid down by the UN and the wussy-a$$ed countries listed above...

4. Has provided financial support for suicide bombers and God knows what else over the last 30 years...

And you really think George W. has no reason to do what he is doing?

People like you scare the ***** out of me!! You should ask your significant other if you can take your ***** out of the nightstand drawer and use them sometime.

Thank God for men like George W. He is willing to forgo his entire career because he is doing what he thinks is right, not what is popular. All of the liberal sissy-a$$es that would not vote to re-elect him had better thank whoever the hell they pray to that he is here now.

It's kinda' like what I think happened with the French. They don't teach real WWII history to their kids. That's why they don't appreciate what America is doing (and has done) for them and the rest of the world.

Like 01 XLT Sport has said, you sleep good tonight knowing that your a$$ is covered by good old Americans who aren't afraid to do what is right, regardless of "world opinion".

Cowlady - Thank you for bringing some sense to this whole thing. I raise a glass of 100% Grade A Homogenized Whole Milk to you !!!!!!!!!!!

01 XLT Sport - I'm with you, brother (Again!). I got your back. Bring 'em on and we'll show 'em a REAL a$$ whooping !!

 

Texas Steve - thank you for your most thoughtful & courteous response. I welcome a useful & insightful exchange of ideas which has been sorely lacking lately from most who oppose this war. Yours is the 1st & only meaningful opinion I've heard so far.
I understand your points. I struggled with this a bit as I am Catholic - the Church supports peaceful resoultions when possible & abhors war & viloence. However, the Pope did come out & say he understood the US's need to defend after 9/11/01. I never expected to hear that from him. I guess even the Church has to admit that there are times when diplomacy just doesn't cut it.
As for waiting, I wish we had the luxury of time on our side. I'm sure I don't need to point out that when it comes to terrorissm, their greatest weapon is the element of surprise. Look at 9/11 or even Pearl Harbor & you'll see it's true. Had we expected either event - had as much as an inkling of what was about to happen, our losses would have been minimal or null. We never saw these events coming & as a result, thousands died in both cases. My conscience would haunt me far more if that happenend yet again & I was supporting a "wait & see" attitude. If we could guarantee that while waiting for Saddam to surrender or turn the weapons over we wouldn't be in danger, that his own people wouldn't face tortue or death then I'd agree with giving them more time.
For the record, it was just reported w/in the last hour that a probable Scud missle was fired by Iraq. I'm no expert but that is classified as a long range missle - something Saddam swore they didn't have. He's been found to be a liar in every instance so far - to believe him now would be suicide. If they fired 1 Scud they will fire more - I guarantee that.
Thank you again for your post. I'm with you in praying for a speedy end to this & a safe return of as many of our men as possible. May God protect them all.

 

God Bless You, Cowlady! I will be behind you 100%, too!

 

i will be honest, i will just state what i think and thats all as i am not looking to debate anything. i will just tell you my point of view since you want to hear one.

i dont think we should be there for the following reasons.


i dont think thats where our most current attentions need to be directed.

we know who took down the towers, and as far as i am concerned, they did so unwarranted & unprovoked.

these are the animals we should go after. i think our pursuit of these people should be relentless, and not restricted by worrying about 'world approval' or the grace of the un. i would support anything that was done by this country to do so, and the paramount issue being the removal of these people. if there were civilian casualties in the process, so be it. i think the downing of the towers should be shown on tv still as a reminder to this country of what was done to us, to keep the minds of the us focused on who our enemies are and why they should be destroyed.

with that being said, i dont see the tie between them & iraq.
yea saddam is a nut, so what. there are many others like him. from what i have read, our initial attack on iraq stemmed from oil/border related issues between kuwait & iraq. that was something we probably should have kept our noses out of also. i dont see the threat that he poses to us. also from what i gathered, he does not have control of the northern or southern iraq. he probably has more to fear from his own people than he does from us. i also want to make clear that i am not a sympathizer with any of the so called oppressed iraqi citizens either. this will sound cruel, but if they are sitting there killing each other internally, let em go. maybe they will take care of the job themselves.

the us has looked past many other countries questionable practices. i am not saying that is wrong or right but it just seems to me that we are fixated on saddam for some reason. if that reason was clear maybe i would agree with going in there.

i wonder if the loss of troops, the ramifications on the economy, and opening the door to more future terriost acts warrants what the best possible outcome of this could be. i know that i now worry about my son more (due to terrosim). i know that every time i go to a new york rangers game i get choked up during the national athem as i am sitting in the seat of someone who lost there life in the towers. the people who did this need to pay dearly, and i just dont see where iraq as a whole is that 'person'.

what i think is going to happen here is that this will be interperted by much of the muslem world as an attack on their beliefs and not so much as a country called iraq. that coupled with our relationship with israel (which i question greatly) does not bode well in our quest to eleviate terrorism.

 

Just for the record, I did not say that I thought GW had no reason to do what he is doing.

I also recognize that Mr. Bush is putting his career on the line doing what he thinks is right. Because I deeply respect the man, I actually support Mr. Bush, but I do not agree with him that war is necessary now, or that he did everything possible or proper in avoiding war, or in getting the world to back him.

This is a hard question, and B-Man's flame is a reason why discussions on hard questions are difficult in a forum like this.

Thank you CL for your comments.

Raoul has also had many insightful (and hilarious) comments.

Respect for other's heartfelt opinions goes a long way toward persuading them to your own.

TS

 

Extremely well said TS!

 

CL, Billycouldride also makes some valid points, which also enters into the calculus of why I have felt this war is premature, if not unjustified. Like I said in my original post, when this is over, I will be relieved, not necessarily proud.

I gotta say, however, that if we can win this without the fireworks display that some have called for, by persuading most combatants to surrender and by blowing SH to bits, GW will have done the best of it, really, really good. I think this is worth praying for.

TS

 

Billycouldride:

With respect, what are your sources and how do they disprove the Bush Administrations sources? So far you have only stated opinion and only that YOU think we should be somewhere else. Our intelligence is not going to come out and say "that this is what we know and this is how we know it". They will not reveal the way they found our what they know for many good reasons.

I trust our intelligence because I have worked with it. the previous company I worked for was Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH. they are a government contracting company. I held a top secret security clearance. I worked on programs that only the president and congress knew about. I know what our intellegence is capable of finding out.

Now with that being said, if they say that a certain nation need to be delt with next, I can trust that. so I say now that unless you really have good sources as to why we should be one place and not another, maybe you should speak less and listen more.

And this is the problem with these protesters. They have no goal. Gandhi had a goal...Martin Luther King Jr. had a goal. The protestors have no goal. They just want the us to come home and deal with things by negotiations - not a goal.

runnert

 

B-man - you forget the money that Iraq owes those countries plus the oil

But that is the deal right there. You do not know that Saddam had nothing to do with the Terrorist attacks. We the American public can't prove that he is or is not working with terrorists. But if we rule out the fact that he is and don't take into account for that then we are just setting ourselves up for another attack. Never underestimate your enemies, that is the quickest way to ensure your defeat.

Heres an analogy, compare the war on Terrorism with the war on Drugs:

You can hunt down and remove drug sellers (suicide bombers, highjacker) on the streets all day long. But where does that get you? No where because more will always pop-up.

So you go after the next person up, the major druglords (Bin Laded, ...) who supply drugs to the street sellers. You take a few of these guys down, but it still doesn't solve the problem of new ones popping up and drugs (terrorism) coming into the country.

So, you now decide to go after the big main sources, the Columbian Druglords (Saddam,etc...). Now these top guys are not stupid, thats why they're on the top. Minimal to no communication will go on directly between these guys and the major druglords (Bin Laden), but that doesn't mean it goes on. Someone always finds out, but it's generally not information the US public needs to know or gets the chance to know. Know if you take down one of these Columbian Druglords, thats a major blow, much less drugs (means, weapons, bombs) to supply out to the dealers (terrororists) and bring into the US.

 

For people like Texas Steve and billycouldride,

I really wish we lived in wonderful world where everybody, regardless of race, creed, religion etc lived happily together.
Unfortunately, we dont.
So, what's to be done about it? Well, we can either hide our heads in the sand and hope the nasty men leave us alone or we can do something about it.
Yes, you are entirely correct in that there are a lot of dubious regimes out there and that Saddam is not alone.
For far too long, the international community has ignored these rogue nations hoping that they will just go away by themselves. Well, guess what? They won't.
September 11th woke up the USA and to a certain extent the UK to this fact.
The fact being that you can either deal with a threat now or later but at some point, you WILL have to deal with it.
Both are painful options, there is no easy way.
I am a peaceful man. I do not like to fight but if i have to, it's a fight to the end.
I want a safe world for my family, my friends and even the people I don't know. They all deserve it.
If that means killing a few tyrants like Saddam, Kim Jong IL, Khatami in Iran or anyone else who threatens us, then so be it.
We will have to deal with them at some point and its best to do this from a position of strength.
Appeasement has never and will never work. Read your history books if you don't believe me.

 

Again, it is not that we are doing it, it is that we are doing it without (much) in the way of world support.

Thank you, Great Britain, for your support. I just wish we had more. My objections are not about the war, which we will win, and maybe quickly, or about who the evil one is in this picture, but my objection is that we did not manage to get the world opinion on our side first. It is not that militarily we need that support, it is just that the evidence that SH is a threat to us is not as strong as it could be.

I did not support our adventures in Serbia, either. But that was a Democratic President, and we were fighting a wuss kind of fight. We were protecting innocent (Muslim) people though, we won, and we didn't lose any (many?) US lives doing it. (Probably did not protect the Serbs as well as we could have, though, due to our wuss fighting style in that effort) So, I am not so impressed with the Democrats that criticize us for liberating Iraq. Similarly, I cannot get too excited about the Republicans who are stressing that we need to do this on behalf of the Iraqis, unless they also supported the Serbia operation.

Ah, hopefully it will be over soon. I see that our buddies in France are refusing to go along with a UN resolution to have the US and GB administer Iraq after we dump SH. What a bunch of pompous a$$e$.

 

I have a problem with the war in Iraq CL,
We waited to long to start!!!!!!!!

We should've gone in back in ~98 when the inspectors were kicked out!

 

Steve,
We will never get world opinion on our side for something like this.
Other countries are putting their own perceived national interests above above the needs of others.
For example, Russia recently signed a 40 Billion oil deal with Saddam. Obviously, that's blown now.
Saddam still owes Russia God knows how much for his weaponry. I don't see the Iraqi's cruising round in Abrahams tanks or F-15's. They have Migs and T-72's.
As for France and Germany, since 1997 they have exported goods worth 1.7 Billion British Pounds to Iraq despite there being sanctions in place.
To get a dollar figure on that, multiply by 1.56 and bear in mind that a British Billion is a million x million not a thousand million.
Is there a pattern here?
As for all the other tinpot dictators and gangsters, of course they are not going to come out in support. That's because they know they could be next.
Do we need the support of people like this? Hell, No!!!
Weren't you sickened by the sight of US and UK diplomats running around those other members of the security council trying to get support for an uneeded 2nd resolution?

Bastions of democracy like Angola and Sierra Leone?
The President of Guinnea said he would vote against it because his Witch Doctor didn't think it was a good time, for F*ck sake!!!!

Previously, all 15 members of the security council had voted for resolution 1441 which stated that Iraq MUST dissarm immediately or face serious consequences.
That does not mean that Saddam comes off the Christmas card list.
That means that he gets his *** kicked if he doesn't comply.
The weapons inspection was not supposed to be a game of hide and seek. Iraq went into IMMEDIATE material breach by not declaring all their banned weapons. Weapons he said he didn't have being used right now against our troops.
We could have invaded weeks ago but GWB and TB did all they could to get a consensus of opinion.
Colin Powell worked his nuts off trying to get everyone on board but they have chosen not to for their own selfish reasons.

The U.N. like it's predecessor (The League of Nations) is just a useless talking shop.
In Serbia, U.N. troops (the Dutch actually) stood by while the Serbs massacred the Kosovans because they could not decide what to do and nobody agreed on a course of action.
It took the the US and UK (again) to go in by themselves and sort it out.

Enough of my rant. You have your opinions which I respect and I have mine.
I think it is the duty of the strong to stand up for the weak.
Once again, that duty falls to the US and the UK and our brave armed forces.
God bless them all.

 

We're at war? Huh...guess I gotta quit watchin' so much Cartoon Network.

 

Hi;Cow lady. I see you have very strong conviction. And a healthy attude towards life. As you know the people you mentioned in your post,are strong anti-gun people. Can you imagin what this country would be like if all americans were disarmed. In my state of Pa.we field 600,000 hunters on the first day of Big game(deer and bear) season. I know people dont think of things like this but I would bet my bottom dollar that the Bad guys do.all these armed citizens willing to fight for our right to own and bear arms is more than the local Rag heads are willing to deal with.So I ask you are you a member of the N.R.A???? Help us protect our way of life.and join our ranks to-day.Dont let Hillary and her gang set us up for more attacks, I belive an armed citizen is a safety net for the world,not just the U.S.A Have a nice day OLDGRAY