jab jab
how many of us in this country can there be that don't understand the significance and majesty of what happened in iraq during their elections? well, obviously, john kerry doesn't. if you listened to the sunday talking heads, kerry was out there badmouthing the election and the entire u.s. policy. same with that pinhead peloski (sorry america, california once again showed why it should have it's borders sealed by electing her), and that caricature of a human ted kennedy. kennedy was blathering all over the place today about how the coalition troops were to blame for all the violence in iraq, and we needed to get out. hell, the thought that something president bush initiated worked so well was so hard for hillary to take she fainted. they said it was stomach problems. i know what it was: a gut feeling her bid for 2008 was just shitcanned.
and have you seen all of the pictures of those iraqis that voted? a big bright purple inkstain on their index finger. several pundits have captioned the pictures as "giving the insurgents the finger." i think they are giving our own idiots the finger as well. however, i think someone really missed the boat on the advisory team. they talked the iraqis into staining the wrong finger.
anyway. there are many folks on the blogosphere doing analysis and commentary about the elections, so i'm not going to add much more to the volume. instead, i'd like you to visit WillyShakes and see what he has to say. very well done, and better than i could have. only comment here is about willyshakes' nick. of course, being a lower than whaleshit enlisted puke, my mind is almost always in the gutter somewhere, but when i think willyshakes, i think the three (any more and you are playing with yourself) shakes willy gets after a visit to the head. ok, i'm gone.
edit: back again, with a recommendation to go visit today's lileks bleat. again, i wish i could write half as well as this dude. i have several folks to utilize as blog models. he's at the top of the writer's list.
and have you seen all of the pictures of those iraqis that voted? a big bright purple inkstain on their index finger. several pundits have captioned the pictures as "giving the insurgents the finger." i think they are giving our own idiots the finger as well. however, i think someone really missed the boat on the advisory team. they talked the iraqis into staining the wrong finger.
anyway. there are many folks on the blogosphere doing analysis and commentary about the elections, so i'm not going to add much more to the volume. instead, i'd like you to visit WillyShakes and see what he has to say. very well done, and better than i could have. only comment here is about willyshakes' nick. of course, being a lower than whaleshit enlisted puke, my mind is almost always in the gutter somewhere, but when i think willyshakes, i think the three (any more and you are playing with yourself) shakes willy gets after a visit to the head. ok, i'm gone.
edit: back again, with a recommendation to go visit today's lileks bleat. again, i wish i could write half as well as this dude. i have several folks to utilize as blog models. he's at the top of the writer's list.
posted by bothenook at 17:36
9 Comments:
I'm glad Iraq had an election, and that turnout was so high.
I don't praise our foreign policy, however.
Iraqis turned out to the polls in droves, but if you look at the reasons behind it you'll see that there is an overwhelming desire amongst Iraqis of all major groups for the US to go home.
Our foreign policy stinks to high heaven. And as to our invasion of Iraq; I still maintain that the invasion and reasons for it were both deeply flawed. We should have learned a few lessons by now...one, (this from Vietnam) being that politicians have no business running wars. Another (this from the Founding Fathers) is that we aren't, shouldn't be, a colonizing/imperialistic nation. And a third...war should be the absolute last resort. It simply was not a necessity in the case of Iraq; an administration should commit troops only when all other measures have failed, and that very clearly was not the case in Iraq. The very absence of WMD's and substantiative links to al Qaeda bear that out.
Elections alone do not a democracy make, though I think (hope) good will come of the Iraq elections. But it in no way alters the erroneous nature of our initial involvement in Iraq.
As to opposition and dissenting views; Thomas Jefferson once said "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." And James Baldwin said "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Disagreement and dissenting views do not make one un-American or un-Patriotic...quite the opposite.
In closing, I have high hopes for Iraq and her people, and wish them the very best. That the end result of a flawed invasion and occupation may well be a good end result and in the long term help the people of Iraq will be a tribute to the people of Iraq and the people in our Armed Forces who toughed it out and made it happen. But I still feel Bush made a serious error of policy in taking the action he did in Iraq; the war on terror wasn't in Iraq, but his administration brought it there. That good will rise from the flames is my most fervent hope.
hey rob, dissent is what makes our system work. but there is a line which the above named pols have crossed, all in the name of political expediency. i don't think that history will be kind to kerry/kennedy/pelosi et.al. as i don't think our president will escape unscathed either. but for what he had as intel, along with the hard cold data provided by hussien himself, you are simply buying in to the whole "there were no WMD" arguement. i can't prove that there were, and i won't try. but based on the best info at the time, coupled with an increasingly bellicose mein presented by iraq, i don't see how we really had any choice, other than to become completely isolationist. and i don't see that happening, nor do i wish it.
had we not dithered and dallied about for months on end, trying to appease the nay sayers, we probably would have found a lot more than we did. see my archived post regarding weapons, syria, and the jordanian near disaster.
but that's all moot. the effect on the middle east will take some time to surface completely, but already there have been reports of the governments in the region loosening the bindings.
and don't forget what the pres told us following the attacks of 9/11/01: we will go where we need to go, and do what we need to do, to end this threat to our country. as an active duty submariner, you should be switched on enough to know that there are places we need to to, things we need to break, and people we need to kill. all in their time.
look at the absolutely phenomenal job done in afgahnistan. free elections and a democratic leadership in a country ruled by religious and despotic zealots.
in no way is it possible to believe that all will be perfect when we are finished, but if even one person lifts the yoke of terror and fear, then we have done a good thing. and of the thousands of kurds and shi'a that died during the last 10 years in iraq had a voice, i'm sure they would be saying "what took you so long."
i think you have really thought this out, and presented your views well, but frankly i believe you are wrong in thinking we should not have been there. and if the iraqi people feel we need to hit the road, their newly elected government will tell us so. when i let a tiny tiny fraction of the overall populace drive my views, as al-zuccinni is trying to do, then i'll turn in my blogger card, and go back to reading.
Hey shipmate! Yes, you caught the "double meaning" of my name! LOL. Yeah, it's meant to tell people I can be silly, etc. and not a stuffed-shirt (or pants, if you will), I guess. Perhaps I'll also adopt it as a kind of badge or idiom: whoever I think deserves my opprobrium will be receive a "Willy Shake". I think JFK II deserves the "honor" of the first "Willy Shake" What do you say? Best damn salute I can think of for a Navy LT who stabbed his shipmates and fellow servicemen -women in the back.
Thanks for the encouragement!
--Will
Interesting viewpoints between Bob and BO.I feel we need to be out of there as soon as it is feasable.and safe.Hopefully a workable exit plan will be established
Willieshake intersting site.
lADYlUV
Amazing. If left to the appeasers, we'd still be trying to reason with Saddam. Aside from the known attrocities he and his sons were commiting, he never complied with a single UN resolution. It was time to take him out for the safety of the rest of the world. And it was the last resort. BTW - we have found WMDs. Maybe not in the quantities we thought were there, but they're there. We also now know that Saddam had a nuclear program going and there were ties to Al Quaida - believe it or not. The democracy will take a lot of work and luck. And it may well fail. But, who'd have thought they would be in this position two years ago?
Dash,
The Dulfer Report concluded that while Saddam desired to have WMD's and to restart WMD programs, not only did he not have them, he hand no plans or processes in place to procure/create them. The 9/11 Commission Report (PDF link) concluded that while there were al Qaeda members in Iraq, there were no substantiative
(this is the continuation of my previous comment...sorry, errant key click posted it before I was done)
Dash,
The Dulfer Report concluded that while Saddam desired to have WMD's and to restart WMD programs, not only did he not have them, he hand no plans or processes in place to procure/create them. The 9/11 Commission Report (PDF link) concluded that while there were al Qaeda members in Iraq, there was no substantiative evidence of Saddam's complicity in 9/11 or in actually supporting al Qaeda. The CIA has even gone on record as saying the intel on chemical weapons was wrong.
Don't get me wrong...I'm not defending Hussein. But the war was sold on WMD's/al Qaeda links, and that simply was not the case. That some good will come out of this mistaken war (i.e., free elections and a democratic Iraq) is great...I wish the people of Iraq nothing but good. They deserve better than Saddam, and they deserve better than the wreck we've created right now. But...the United States was wrong to invade and occupy Iraq. Though he bucked the sanctions quite often, they were indeed working (again, there were no WMD's...as much as you may want to believe it, saying it over and over simply doesn't make it true.)
oh rob, i'm sorry to see you've bought into that whole "sanctions are working" story line. seems to me that part of the attempt by hussien and his financially allied friends to get sanctions lifted was that "thousands of iraqi children are dieing a month" if i recall. so what happened to the dieing children so loudly trumpeted in the world's press for so long? if you say "oil for food", i'll have to get on a jet to honolulu and cuff you up side your bubbleheaded head. be a nuke, and nuke out what has just happened. you have certainly proven to me that you are one smart cookie. i just think you need to expand your horizons a little beyond the "demo underground" sources of information.
I didn't buy into a storyline so much as an observation...there were no WMD's there, and as I mentioned/linked, even the CIA has now admitted that the chemical weapons programs were not there or being put in place. The nuclear issue with "yellowcake" from Nigeria turned out to be wrong. Every post invasion report coming out of Iraq says over and over that the WMD's simply weren't there, nor was there any real indication of a rebuilding of WMD programs.
Put that all together, and the object of the sanctions (mainly stopping/eliminating Iraq's WMD's) seems to have been met.
As for oil sales scandals...looks like the UN wasn't the biggest offender after all.
Post a Comment
<< Home