@August - I look up to you as a long standing member of this board, and I respect that you have many years of experience over me. You have worked harder than I have, but I demand some accountability. To deny that our country had anything to do with *Saddam's chemical weapons program (and subsequent chemical attacks) is to hide behind a lie while hoping to not get caught well after the fact of being caught. We done been caught with blood on our hands, sir. Time to own up to the facts.


* Yes, I know it's Wiki. Sue me.

In that entire page the United States is mentioned only once as contributing some "dual use technology" including computers which apparently were useful in their nuclear program (as opposed to chem and bio weapons).

Now maybe i'm missing something here but I don't see how that equals the US providing ALL of Saddams WMD.

Im sure they dont - its an example, we either practise what we preach or we dont.

An easy Websearch will show you how wrong you are there. There is not only torture still in Iraq, at least two years ago there was even more torture than there ever was under Saddam. So again, at least until 2010, torture became worse than it was before. Torture and secret torture rooms maintained by the government are still reported until today. So are death squads and secret police executions.

Crime also is high. Abductions, blackmailing, ethnic cleansing, and the kicking out of non-Muslims anyway.

And just today they reported that the killing in Iraq currently has hit the highest peak again since two years.

And while somewhere someboy mentioned Uday and his special taste for woman treatment, that creature was a sick piece of s###, yes. But by numbers his victim record did not compete with what they have today, it seems.

To say that the Iraq war helped to install a government with less torture, is like saying that the Afghanistan war has led to a democratic non-corrupt government where bribery is no issue anymore. Like in Iraq, it seems that bribery and corruption became worse under Karzai. And like in Iraq, there are many open bills that still wait to be payed out.

These are the kinds of wars Western soldiers get thrown away for like empty PET bottles, by criminal politicians without morals and without scruples. Not only were these wars absurd - they were a betrayal of said soldiers and treachery towards own nations and its people that until today gets fed lies and polit burea propaganda.

This makes me sick today - and from another perspective feeling lucky that 27 years ago I decided against a military career. This Western politics is not what I considered and was willing to serve for - this it was not.

All those things are issues that usually don't disappear just by the fact that the country had an election.
No one claimed this i think.
The country is a mess but there are signs of actual co - operation between Sunni and Shi'tes.
The government also tries to distance it self from extremism,it has complied constitution and there are no signs of pushing sharia laws from the top....
How it eventually works out it is hard to say but surly doom gloom is what people like to hear:haha:
Also question is how SA and Iranian affairs will influence the future of Iraq.

Ohh wait... some American companies cant wait to start pumping the oil at last.


...............

Still trying to peddle out the same old rubbish because even after all these years you just can't accept your being very publicly suckered.:yep:

The ayatollahs send you thier gratitude from the theocracy in Iran and its clients in Iraq, keep believing in the rubbish that has been thoroughly trashed repeatedly for the entirety of this century:yeah:

It wasn't pointless for some of the nuts in the middle east, for them it was the perfect war.
But for anyone else it was pointless, or even worse, it was thoroughly counter productive, harmful and wasteful.
Some could even say it was treasonous as after all the WMD rubbish some people swallowed was being fed from Tehran so the people who swallowed that crap were providing aid and comfort to the enemy.:hmmm:

We know Saddam used WMDs on the Kurds and we know he used them on Iran. With a record like that you'd have to assume he still had them and would use them.

As for who (supposedly) lied,you can add Clinton,Gore and most of the Democratic leadership as well. Since they also claimed that Saddam still had WMDs.

Blaming it all on Bush and his Administration is nothing more than political theater.

So, an adminitration that has an acknowledged "unofficial" policy of "Anything/Anyone But Clinton (the so-called "ABC" policy of the Bush White House), that publically went out of it's way to disavow and discredit anything associated with the Clinton years, is to be excused because they somehow arbitrarily decided the one thing they would believe from the Clinton administration was that Sadaam had WMDs? Rather a jejune defense, n'est pas? The way the Bush apologists disingeously try to disavow any of the failings of the Bush administration seems to give the impression that Bush did nothing in his eight years in offfice...

Oh, wait, maybe they have a point...

...

You can assume nothing, they presented the "evidence" and it was laughed at, several of the nations doing the laughing had already examined the evidence and passed it on to America with a note saying it was bollox.
Didn't your secretary of state describe presenting that pile of tripe as the lowest point in his career.

It isn't a party thing, some people at the time lied, some people at the time swallowed rubbish and some people just went along for the ride because the truth of the claims didn't matter to them at all.
However, for people to still try and peddle the rubbish that has long been proven as absolute crap is absolutely ridiculous and simply demonstrates that they cannot learn from their mistakes or accept the reality of them.

An administration that began two wars can hardly be accused of doing nothing.

But maybe your confusion is because the idea of Iraq having WMD's wasn't invented by Bush and co:

Sounds to me like these people thought there were WMD's in Iraq as late as 1999. Maybe they are the ones who need apologists,.... oh wait they have you.

The politicians of both parties have said they got it wrong, completely wrong. a bi partisan commitee looked at how wrong they had got it and how on earth they put forward such rubbish claims.
The only people who need apologists are those who are still trying to claim the lies are true,
Have you got someone who can apologise for you?
I can step in if you want
August is very sorry for still trotting out the bull a decade after the people who fed him it said it was incorrect:salute:
Thank me in your own time:woot:

My response still stands: regardless of what Clinton did or did not say, Bush decided to take his own tack, relying on his rather largely limited understanding of global politics, fed by persons (Cheney, et al), and, in an act of stubborn, petualnt, defiance of all evidence, throw the US into a two-front war with no greater substantiation than the urgings of those who stood to profit more from an incresed US role in the region (Haliburton, Blackwater, et al). Bush had the opportunity to take a step back, carfully assess the priorities of the then current war situation, make a reasoned evaluation and do what a President would have done: weigh the cost of American lives against an unnecessary expansion of the war. But, then again, Bush has never been accused of being thoughtful, considered, and rational; we may never relly know what the entire rationale behind his acts was, but, if he wast rying to show he was tougher than Daddy, that he possessed a set of brass ones, if he was playing out his childhood fanatsies brought on by watching "Combat", or if he was just brainlessly incompetent and quite probably the least qualified person, to that point in history to occupy the Oval Office, the fact remains he, and he alone, is responsible for his actions. If you want to blame Clinton for everything he did in his eight years in ofiice, if you want to blame Obama for what he has done in his time in office, then you Dubbya-lovers are just going to have to face up to the reality that Bush came into office with a nation at relative peace, with a balanced budget, with a budget surplus, with a thriving economy, and a rather solid ecnonmic system and eight years later, with neither Clinton or any other person of either party in the position to call the shots, Dubbya walked out of the Oval Office more like the captain of the Titanic than the captain of the ship of state. Dubbya's entire life prior to entering the White House was a history of skirting responsibility, foisting blame on others, and having others try to bail him out. There is a very good raeson the GOP does not want him at the convention, quite similar to the reason they did not want Nixon at the conventions after he left office. But, you know what? I would almost rather have had Nixon in office between 2000 and 2008; Nixon was reprehensible, but he really managed to do the most damage mainly to himself. Bush has the distinction of taken an entire nation down with him...

You may now proceed to flail away further to prove that you, like your hero, Dubbya, have no defense for the stupidity that got us where we are today...

...

I was still writing my above response when you posted this; I owe you a pint, your choice... :)

...

I will have a pint of Bonaparte after my swim in the morning.:Kaleun_Cheers:
http://www.tighneachtain.com/category/12-our-beers.html

Ok Vienna you and the troll have convinced me. Bush made up the whole thing one weekend out at the Crawford ranch. The poor poor Democrats were just ignorant pawns in the master chess players game to cast the peace loving gentle Saddam as some evil monster the world would be better off without. Apparently that's the Pravda nowadays and far be it from me to go against the koolaid stream. :roll:

Just between us though i'm still glad we took out Saddam, WMD's or not. Same goes for Khadaffi.