Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ripsnort on October 21, 2003, 01:48:50 PM
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More facts and data (Waves to Oral) for you that choose to ignore facts and data. :) But don't let it get in the way of your rants that we shouldn't be there....
October 21, 2003, 9:34 a.m.
Saddam's Terror Ties
Iraq-war critics ignore ample evidence.
As President Bush more robustly promotes his Iraq policy, he should confront directly those who dismiss Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism and, thus, belittle a key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bush's critics employ a flimsy argument that nonetheless enjoys growing appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Since Hussein did not order the September 11 attacks — the fuzzy logic goes — he has no ties to terrorists, especially al Qaeda. Therefore, the Iraq war was bogus, and Bush should be defeated.
"Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one," said Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) on October 16. "We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al Qaeda. It was not...We should never have gone to war in Iraq when we did, in the way we did, for the false reasons we were given."
West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's alleged al Qaeda ties were "tenuous at best and not compelling." In a September 16 editorial, the Times slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for making "sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism." On August 7, former vice president Al Gore stated reassuringly: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all."
Bush and his national-security team should repeatedly devote entire speeches and publications — complete with documents, names, and visuals, including photographs of terrorists and their innocent victims — to remind Americans and the world that Baathist Iraq was a general store for terrorists, complete with cash, training, lodging, and even medical attention.
The evidence for Hussein's cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant and increasing. Recall, for instance:
- Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, declared at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later. Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." Between Aziz's announcement and the March 20 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans.
- According to the State Department's May 21, 2002 "Patterns of Global Terrorism," the Abu Nidal Organization, the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Worker's party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization and the Palestinian Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Hussein's Iraq. Hussein's hospitality towards these mass murderers placed him in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which prohibited him from giving safe harbor to or otherwise supporting terrorists.
- Coalition forces have found alive and well key terrorists who enjoyed Hussein's hospitality. Among them was Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Baathist Iraq.
-Before fatally shooting himself four times in the head on August 16, 2002, as Baghdad claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal had resided in Iraq since 1999. As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the Abu Nidal Organization said he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 others. Among other atrocities, ANO henchmen bombed a TWA airliner over the Aegean Sea in 1974, killing all 88 people on board.
-Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak. It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils. (The Bush administration should bus a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that ought to open a few eyes.)
As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:
-The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.
-Journalist Stephen F. Hayes reported in July that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, ran what it called a "List of Honor." The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis, including this passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That name, Hayes wrote, matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad.
-Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping Iraq rebuild its legal system. He wrote in the June 25 Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police agents removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands and confiscating copies of it from private homes. The paper was not published for the next ten days. Judge Merritt theorized that the "impulsive and somewhat unbalanced" Uday may have showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime" as war loomed.
- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.
- While Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, fled the U.S. on a Pakistani passport, he arrived here on an Iraqi passport.
- Author Richard Miniter reported September 25 on TechCentralStation: "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared al Qaeda member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.
- Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."
- While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.
cont.
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Despite the White House's inexplicable insistence to the contrary, tantalizing clues suggest Saddam Hussein might not have shared the world's shock when fireballs erupted from the Twin Towers.
Recall that his Salman Pak terror camp taught terrorists air piracy on an actual jet fuselage.
On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir — an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia — welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets over the Pacific at once.
The Czech Republic stands by its claim that 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim an-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. He was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, from which American broadcasts to Iraq emanate.
Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein and his ousted regime to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,790 others. "I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda," Baer ruled. An airtight case? No, but sufficient evidence tied Hussein to 9/11 and secured a May 7 federal judgment against him.
If one has the time or professional duty to connect these dots, a portrait emerges of Saddam Hussein as sugar daddy to global terrorists, including al Qaeda and perhaps the 9/11 conspirators. Why won't Team Bush paint this picture? One administration communications specialist told me the government is bashful on this front because these links are difficult to prove. Yes, but prosecuting the informational battle in the war on terror is not like prosecuting a Mafia don, with wiretaps, hidden cameras and deep-cover "stool pigeons." Evidence of terrorist ties can be even more shadowy than a Costa Nostra whack job. While this makes metaphysical proof elusive, the White House and relevant agencies owe it to America's national security to highlight what they know about Saddam Hussein and terrorism, even if some of the evidence against him is only circumstantial.
Assuming he wishes to sway domestic and global opinion, President Bush and his administration should guide Americans and the world through the sometimes-murky data and identify the patterns and conclusions that arise. While Saddam Hussein never may endure a courtroom cross-examination, plenty already exists in the public record (and surely more should be declassified) to confirm that his ouster, the liberation of Iraq and its current rehabilitation were and are necessary phases of the war on terror. The president and his top advisers should present the case, not haphazardly, but systematically and in as comprehensive, well-documented, and well-illustrated a fashion as their vast resources will allow.
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Methinks the Bush apologists doth protest too much.
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And me-thinks the blind can not be made to see.
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Preach on Brotha Ripsnort....
Psst... By the way do you have any more Oxycotin?
I ran out.... and my back is killing me.
Oh and you know the White House... even Dubya has come out openly and said "there is no link", between Iraq and Al-quada.... and there is no evidence to suggest such...
Ok so when do we believe the White House?
We should believe them when they say Iraq has WMD..
And we don't believe them when they say there is no Al-quada link to Iraq....
Or do we do believe them when they say they have military intelligence that irrefutably proves Iraq has STOCK PILES of WMD, READY to US on AMERICANs....
but wait there's more the White house said Iraq had MOBILE chemical Laboratories in the back of Trucks which they drive around Iraq... so our spy sattellites can't tracke them...
Powel even had AUTO CAD schematics of these trucks which he showed to the UN - I assume our Military intelligence stole those directly from the Iraqi's chemical weapons planners...that's why Powel said what he was showing was in fact military intelligence...
yet unfortunately.. it has come to light... that's not the case... Powel got those drawings from the White House which had an aide draw them up "speculating" why UN inspectors were not able to find WMD....
So Military Intelligence based off of White House "Speculation".... hmmm.... that's weird... when I was in the service... intelligence was always traceable to raw data... such as HUMINT, SIGINT, and ELINT.
So when do we believe this white house? When exactly are they telling the truth and when are they not?
Those wiley Iraqis!!! They are so clever!!! They fool us again!
Naughty! Naughty!
And they aren't even Republicans.... how they get so clever!
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Logic:
There never were any WMD, as proven by the fact that we have found none.
were as
There never was any leader named Saddam Hussein, as proven by the fact that we have not found him.
He never existed, (that Baghdad Bob what a fibber).
Now don't try to confuse me with the facts, all my opinions have been given to me uncle Ted Kennedy and my mind is a blank, ahh wait, I mean made up ahh is that what I mean?..... ahh Ted help here what do I mean.
I just hate Bush so I will go along with what ever you want, just tell me what to say, I'm game.
(Life is sooo much easer now that I am a Lib)
:aok
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No ones provided any proof opposite of each of the previous facts highlighted in bold.
Still waiting!
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ok so would you be so kind and put 500 Billoins of US dolars to some Swiss bank in case that you will never ever proof that .... at least iraq will have some money for reconstruction
once they will kick out last occupancy soldier (may be in the blak
may be russian should invade US and ocupy it just to make sure that there is not any single member of former KGB
(sure dont worry they gonna reconstruct your economy)
:aok
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If payments are valid proof, you should have attacked Saudi-Arabia loooong loong ago.
It's too late to try to justify the act after it happened. Weak.
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Originally posted by Gadfly
And me-thinks the blind can not be made to see.
Agreed!
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Originally posted by GScholz
Me thinks some people are too easily blinded by speculation.
Ripsnort, no one needs to provide any proof opposite of each of the previous facts highlighted in bold. The so called "proof" is not in dispute, only the conclusion. Yes, I'm sure that guy had an Iraqi passport. Yes, Iraq intelligence probably had talks with people associated with terrorism. None of this proves Iraqi government aid to the terrorists. It's just speculation.
Excuse me but what the hell are you saying? None of this proves Iraqi aid to terrorists? Maybe not in your weird dream world, to the rest of us, this says something else though... FFS get your head out of your ass.
- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.
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The evidence posted by Rip -- and it is evidence, even if some of it is circumstantial -- supports the premise that Saddam's government not only directly supported terrorism, but likely had ties to Al Q. I guess I'm wondering, what Gscholz and other doubters would consider sufficient evidence to convince them of Iraq's ties to Al Q specifically and global terrorism in general? How much evidence is enough for you? Saddam's noncomplience with UN resolutions is only one reason we liberated Iraq (Kay's interim report clearly supports the contention Iraq had not given up it's WMD ambitions); his ties to terrorism, his general record as a brutal/bloody tyrant, and repeated agressions against Iraq's neighbors are others.
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Yes Hortlund, like I said: Who controlled northern Iraq? (hint: wasn't Saddam)
[/b]
LOL Brilliant!! So this is how you libs will spin that one?
"Yes there were Al Queida camps in Iraq, but Saddam didnt really have control over those parts of Iraq so there are no ties between Saddam and Al Quedia."
...idiot.
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Those who try to whitewash Saddam's record don't dispute this evidence; they just ignore it. So let's review the evidence, all of it on the public record for months or years:
* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.
* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.
* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.
* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.
* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.
* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.
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As recently as 2001, Iraq's embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," London's Independent reports.
* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.'"
* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.
* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.
* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was 'good,'" according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.
* That same year, Saudi Arabian border guards arrested two al Qaeda members entering the kingdom from Iraq.
* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.
*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.
* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda's military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."
* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam's regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.
* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.
* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad,'" Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar's group was funded by "Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."
* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam's strongholds inside northern Iraq
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The mountain/desert areas in the far-east are full of terrorist camps. Why is that? It's because the governments can _not_ control the deserts. They can not control the mountains.
I'm sure that if you wanted to dig things up, you'd find a terrorist camp or two also in saudi-arabia, egypt etc. Are they supported by the government? Not likely. Tolerated, maybe, they share the ideological enemy in the end.
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Originally posted by GScholz
Hortlund, I'm sure there are ties between the British government and the IRA, Northern Ireland is a part of the UK so it must be so.
LMAO!!!
GS:
"There are no links between Iraq and Al Queida"
Hortlund:
"What about the Al Queida terrorist camps in Iraq?"
GS:
"They were not under direct control from Saddam"
Hortlund:
"So does that mean that they were not there or what?"
GS
"The situation is identical to the one between the IRA and the Brits"
Keep it up...
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Originally posted by Sabre
I guess I'm wondering, what Gscholz and other doubters would consider sufficient evidence to convince them of Iraq's ties to Al Q specifically and global terrorism in general? How much evidence is enough for you?
probably none
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Originally posted by GScholz
I wonder why the US president stated that there were no links between Iraq and Al Q. when the "evidence" is so abundant. He must have some really bad advisors.
What he said was.........
G.W Bush Thu, Sep. 18, 2003
"we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th,''
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Originally posted by Siaf__csf
The mountain/desert areas in the far-east are full of terrorist camps. Why is that? It's because the governments can _not_ control the deserts. They can not control the mountains.
You can not back that up with a single fact.
And GS... the MEK is in fact a terrorist organization.
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Rip, post this on BF.C in the terrorism forum, plz. Youll get all the Bay Area natives in an uproar.
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innocent till proven beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty
sure he was a tyrant who deserves to die...but you didnt need to make up phantom WMD's to justify it...all you needed was to give one of those peace loving save the animal types a camera and a ticket to iraq to see what a terrible place they live in (by our standards)...then you would have had support from both camps
then again a countries leader having a wmd isnt really a good reason to invade a country at all...even if the leader is a psychopath...unless your absalutly terrified that they might use it against you...but then again thats as rediculous as a hood with a bowie knife being afraid of another hood with a simple 6" switch blade
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Just wondering...
How does a guy commit suicide by shooting himself in the head FOUR times? How do you explain that?
Poor marksmanship?
Hand trembling at the thought he was about to face divine retribution?
Or was something sinister going on?
Curious, Shuckins
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Originally posted by GScholz
I wonder why the US president stated that there were no links between Iraq and Al Q. when the "evidence" is so abundant. He must have some really bad advisors.
You're not even an American so why should you care?
Just wondering how any of this affects you in you're country.
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Originally posted by Gadfly
And me-thinks the blind can not be made to see.
I am far from blind. I don't doubt that there were ties to terrorists etc etc etc. As already mentioned, however, there is a long list of countries with such ties and horrible track record visa vis terrorism - such as Saudi Arabia.
Fact is I supported the invasion of Iraq because I was assured by Mr. Bush that there were copius amounts of WMDs ready to be used.
Please provide this evidence. Backtracking and finding "other excuses" for the invasion suggests that the Bush apologists are simply scrambling to find justification.
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Originally posted by GScholz
Oh I care when the largest superpower in the world defies the UN and goes to war on what seems like shaky justification and unknown motives. I care because I'm not American.
Don't worry, we still love you and will protect you from the boogieman. Oh and we will work on our justification and motives department while trying to make the world a better place.
You see in over two hundred years that is really our motivation, we really want freedom for oppressed people, we just can't do it all. How would the world be if we stopped sending money and aid, both in the form of men and materials. What would the UN say if we said we would “take a pass” the next time they needed our help with a hotspot somewhere. Do you really think the US is this big evil empire with no humanity and no willingness to help others? Is your country ready to take up the slack with men and money if we take ten years off? What has been the level of your commitment over say the last 25 years to making the world a better place?
You get all fired up about us, but like a small dog you bark to feel better about yourself, I find your obsession with us quite amusing, albeit a bit unhealthy.
Guden Tag,
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"The Israeli-Palestinian peace effort -- one of Norway's greatest triumphs -- is now in tatters, undermined by years of trying to negotiate details of a final treaty and by more than 18 months of violence. But Jan Egeland, a key player in that effort, said Norway recognizes that there are risks of failure when taking on peacemaking challenges others often resist."
Yep always a risk but we all keep trying.
"If there was a remote chance, we took the chance when other countries wouldn't," said Egeland, a former deputy foreign minister. "It's the sides that have to make peace. We can only help."
What, you guys want ALL the credit??
"Norway does not take up every peace challenge -- one key condition is that both sides must be sufficiently committed to reaching agreement. "
What the easy ones,
;)
Really just kidding,
I hope you understand we also want peace and stability in the world. Often the good is overlooked as it is not real newsworthy (if it bleeds it leads) our country seems to lap up bad news as if it were milk.
The record of both our countries show lives lost and billions spent on aid and support the world over, I am sure you could do a google search on aid the US has provided so I won't take up the space. We also have many private agencies that offer help the world over.
I don't think we really differ that much.
We gave the UN 12 years to go about a change in Iraqi nothing changed. The UN passed resolution after resolution to no avail.
If you have children, what would happen if you gave threats of punishment with never any action. How long before they laughed at you and did what ever they wanted?
S.H. had WMD used them and had in place forbidden programs for further development. I don't think they have been destroyed as it would not be logical to do so then not show proof of their destruction. Just as S Africa showed the world the destruction of there programs S.H. should have done so and then the sanctions would have been lifted and all would be the same in Iraqi.
It would have been so easy, full UN cooperation, full disclosure and destruction verification, not to do so made no sense, unless you were lying about the no weapon thing.
So you say the President of this country lied about WMD that must mean you believe S.H. at his word as you have no proof of the destruction of the weapons (or the UN inspectors would have been done) that no one disputes he had and used.
The UN wanted proof and said they never got it, remember they needed more time to search, If S.H. really broke down the programs and destroyed them there would have been no searching needed. He could have shown the remains of the weapons and the dismantled sites and been done with it years ago.
Please show the logic of loosing everything when you were in compliance all along.
Please show the logic for all the games and cat and mouse with the UN inspectors.
Who do you believe acted in the interest of humanity Bush or Saddom?
Who do you think cares about peace and stability Bush or Saddom?
Who do you believe about WMD Bush or Saddom?
That’s what it gets down to really
The Iraqis deserve better, the are a proud and now free nation.
Regards,
Me I call S.H. the lier and despot
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Originally posted by Scootter
[BIf you have children, what would happen if you gave threats of punishment with never any action. How long before they laughed at you and did what ever they wanted?[/B]
Good analogy...but can you not see how people from countries other than the US would view this with a degree of skepticism?
Is the US the parent of the world...and is everyone else their children? Many Americans are beginning to believe this is indeed the case....or at the very least this is the perception outside of America.
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IF all of this IS truly evidence and justification for going to war with Iraq...
Why didn't Bush present this to the UN and the American people as justification?
Why did Bush choose to give the UN and the AMerican people the following reasons:
1. Iraq has STOCKPILES of WMD
2. We have irrefutable proof that Iraq has WMD.
3. Iraq is an IMMEDIATE threat to the US.
4. Iraq is READY to USE WMD against at any time
5. We must attack IRAQ IMMEDIATELY before they attack us - we are acting in SELF DEFENSE.
(SELF DEFNSE is the only legal justification we have to pre-emptively attack another nation)
Bush did not go to the UN with the arguement that Al-Quada is operating in Iraq, or that Iraq had any involvement in 9/11 or that Iraq has any link to Al-Quada.
By the arguements you Bush-lovers are proporting... Damn! Our State department is guilty of harboring Terrorists and has irrefutable links to Al-Quada... heck they even gave visa to the 9/11 terrorists.
(REMEMBER... Bush Senior's CIA trained OBL to fight the Russians! But you Republicans forget that fact!)
MOST OF THE 9/11 TERRORISTS WERE TRAINED TO FLY PLANES IN THE US!!
HOLY KARIST!!
The USA is TRAINING TERRORISTS!
Ok so now all you Bush-lovers aren't even on page with what Bush says his reasons were (typical of drug users)... your stories are changing (typical drug users).... you're rationalizing (drug users)... you're trying to justify (drug users)....
When stories change... someone is lying (typical of drug users)
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Originally posted by Curval
Good analogy...but can you not see how people from countries other than the US would view this with a degree of skepticism?
Is the US the parent of the world...and is everyone else their children? Many Americans are beginning to believe this is indeed the case....or at the very least this is the perception outside of America.
Yes, but I was referring to the UN as the parents as they are the ones who issued the resolutions for 12 years, the US is but one part of the UN. If the UN is have any power or purpose it must sometimes act. Like a parent there comes a time when you must mean what you say for it to have any meaning.
I guess it boils down, what is the meaning and purpose of the UN in todays world.
If they are pecieved to have no power then they need to never issue resolutions (requirments not requests). If that is the future of the UN, just to serve coffee and cake, why bother.
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Originally posted by Scootter
Yes, but I was referring to the UN as the parents as they are the ones who issued the resolutions for 12 years, the US is but one part of the UN. If the UN is have any power or purpose it must sometimes act. Like a parent there comes a time when you must mean what you say for it to have any meaning.
I guess it boils down, what is the meaning and purpose of the UN in todays world.
If they are pecieved to have no power then they need to never issue resolutions (requirments not requests). If that is the future of the UN, just to serve coffee and cake, why bother.
I don't disagree that the UN has been a disaster...but what is scary is where the US would then fit in to your analogy. If the UN is the parent...what is the US? God?
I think you are "trying" to be the sheppard...but the truth is that you are the tyranny of evil men. But you are trying.
lol
Sorry couldn't resist the Pulp Fiction reference.
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Originally posted by GScholz
No Google search is necessary, I know very well that the US is a major contributor to both the UN and private aid organizations. I think we differ only in our preferred methods of peacemaking.
agreed
Originally posted by GScholz
"To no avail" is downright false. For 12 years Iraq was contained, and the UN sanctions did limit Hussein's ambitions greatly. Why do you think oil rich Iraq was defeated so easily after 12 years since the last war? Un containment.
The suffering of the people from the UN sanctions was ok with you?
I think his military for the most part did not want to fight for him (with some exceptions)
Originally posted by GScholz
Nothing is that easy in the real world. Hussein was walking a tight rope, both with the UN and with the Middle East. Iraq is surrounded by hostile nations that do have WMD, for him to openly declare that Iraq was defenseless could have been suicidal. By allowing the UN to inspect his country to such a degree that the UN, although not finding anything, would not be completely sure that he didn't have WMD was the only defense he could muster. Hussein played a game of perceived strength, yet innocence ... and lost both.[/B]
Iraq had nothing to fear from other hostile nations, only in the mind of SH would this be true.
Originally posted by GScholz
I don't think I've said that your President has lied, although I'm sure he does, like any high level politician. The definition of a lie is a tricky one, especially in politics. Did he lie or was he merely misinformed or selective of the truth? I do believe that Iraq destroyed its WMD, and the last UN inspections by Blix before the war supports that conclusion. That Hussein bluffed to ward off real or perceived threats to his regime is another thing.[/B]
I do not believe Iraq destroyed its weapons Blix would not go on the record before the war to state this. Easy to make statements after the play about the play.
Originally posted by GScholz
Let me ask you this; do you believe that any US President, especially a first term one, would be so eager to send US troops to invade a country that has proven its willingness to use WMD in battle ... if he believed that the country still had them?[/B]
YES
Why do you think we put out the warnings not to use them and equipped our troops as we did.
Originally posted by GScholz
I believe I have done that.[/B]
you may believe in anything you want to
Originally posted by GScholz
Ditto.[/B]
Ditto
Originally posted by GScholz
Neighter.[/B]
This says a lot about you and continuing the discussion
Originally posted by GScholz
Neither or both, depending on the situation.[/B]
Ditto see above
Originally posted by GScholz
Neither. (I don't believe the US "evidence" that he had them, and I don't believe Hussein's bluff of having them)[/B]
Originally posted by GScholz
The Iraqis deserve what they make for them selves, and they are not a free nation yet. Time will tell if they ever will be free, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Iraq becomes truly democratic it will only last a very short time. In the end Iraq may become an Islamic theocracy perhaps even more oppressive than the secular Baath regime, and certainly a bigger threat to the Middle East and the world.[/B]
Many Nations came to be with the support and help of another, most nations in fact. Yes time will tell and in the end it may not really matter in the least, I hope to be gone by then.
Originally posted by GScholz
That is beyond dispute. [/B]
Thanks for the interesting point of view, I have enjoyed the talk.
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Originally posted by Curval
I don't disagree that the UN has been a disaster...but what is scary is where the US would then fit in to your analogy. If the UN is the parent...what is the US? God?
I think you are "trying" to be the sheppard...but the truth is that you are the tyranny of evil men. But you are trying.
lol
Sorry couldn't resist the Pulp Fiction reference.
hehe nice reference,
The US is but one of the parents of a large family living together, this parent is the largest and one most often called on when muscle is required by the other parents. This fact makes it the most unpopular parent to the unruly family members. Some of the parents in this group want to everything to every member of the family and want to be best friends to the unruly ones also, this makes them popular to them but does not help with the sometimes necessary discipline.
This is a rather limited example as parents love (or are supposed to) their children. The UN has very little room for love in its halls.
Parents want what’s best for there children the UN really cares only about its vast and many wildly varied interests.
I there is really nothing united about the UN it is a pretty dysfunctional family.
I tried to make a point with the family, I now realize the UN is really doomed by its own special interest and lack of unity.
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Originally posted by GScholz
So have I. Like I said, I think we differ only in our preferred methods of peacemaking. This war is contrary to everything in our book.
If you think I have been short with you, I apologize. It's just that I've been over this so many times that I don't know why I bother, and to have an organization that does so much good in the world and that I have served with ridiculed doesn't make things better.
to your service, I also have a much thicker hide these days and get a bit testy as to the slander aimed at my country. I take no offence and to the contrary enjoyed your point of view. I would welcome sharing an adult beverage with you anytime, I will buy the first round.
Take care,
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Abu Nidal, a recognized terrorist, shot himself in the head SEVERAL times after a long stay in Iraq.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/2002news/08222002/world/20426.htm