Iraq Tearing at the Seams

During different periods the Kurds have been contractors for Iran, Israel and the Soviets.. They have alot of dirty laundry of their own.

 

Yet he won the war just as surely as BoBo has lost the peace...

 

Who are you comparing Bush with? Obama?

Bush trumps Barack in the Arab world: President Obama is proving an embarrassing flop in the Middle East

 

If you knew what you were talking about you would know that Bush was very clear that nothing was certain and that bringing the democratically elected government to Iraq as called for in President Clinton's Iraq Liberation Act was going to be extremely difficult. But the removal of Saddam was the main goal and that was accomplished. Obama has now blown any chance for the government we did get established to survive.

 

Wrong, the original reason was Iraq was an imminent threat. It seems RWers have made it a point to remove that from their memory.
Ref: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/iraqimminent.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b24970.html

Now the Iraqi govt told the US to leave as was identified with the treaty that Pres Bush signed.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_U.S._troops_from_Iraq
All US Forces are mandated to withdraw from Iraqi territory by December 31, 2011 under the terms of a bilateral agreement signed in 2008 by President Bush.

Tell us, is your memory that bad or is it your bigotry.

 

The question is how do you effectively implement partition. The Indian Peninsula underwent religious partition in 1947. Ethnic and religious conflict is still rampant throughout the region. The process requires careful analysis and understanding of religious and ethnic differences and tensions.

 

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

With most estimates of 100,000 to a million people killed during the Iraq war (and not including the current sectarian violence which could lead to civil war) -- looks like Saddam killed less. However, we will never know the real numbers due to the fog of war. While Saddams most egregious event was al-Anfal Campaign which saw only 50k-100k killed -- it is no doubt less than 1 million killed. The best case being that 100k were killed during the war and 100k during the al-anfal campaign which means the number of deaths were equal -- a highly unlikely event.

And the best positive for not invading, not ONE USA marines would have died due to an invasion.. At the end of the day, who cares if an Iraqi or Iranian die? Let them kill each other. Not to mentions, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ saved to the US tax payers...

Saddam would not have stood by while Iran developed a nuclear weapon -- they were sworn enemies.. What was the body count of the Iraq/iran war???? Millions... Remember, it has been speculated that one of the reasons Iraq didn't allow in weapons inspectors was that it didn't want Iran to see how weak/strong it was. At the end of the day, Iran was scared of Iraq and Iraq was scared of Iran...

What else is new in the middle east? That's how dictators keep control... Divide and conquer; divide each threat as they present themselves and then destroy these threats individually. Don't let anyone force gain enough power -- make things unstable. Remember, before the USA got involved how long was Saddam in power?

Pray Iraq doesn't become another wack nut country like Iran.. But its increasing look like it will be.... Perhaps not exactly like Iran, but one which has more death due to sectarian violence and the meddling of Iran itself.. Good times...

We need another strong henchman -- where is Saddam when the west needs him?? The middle east is like a junkyard, in a junkyard, you need a junkyard dog. Saddam was one of these...

Bush wanted to come in and tear down the junkyard and create perhaps a park or a neighborhood of nice condos... If the USA is no longer doing this, then bring back the junkyard dog.

 

Then the one who divided country in such a way should be responsible?

 

We ruined their country, killed them in their thousands and it sucks to be them? Bloody right they want the bastions of western democracy to (*)(*)(*)(*) off-what a wonderful example we set them.

 

There was never a terrorist threat from Iran.

 

Saddam and his generals agree with this...




Saddam is laughing his assse off in his grave... There were a few things that the architects of the invasion/nation building did not account for:

1) Obama would become president and high tail it out of Iraq before the job was done leaving many innocent people in danger.
2) The Iraqi population as a whole are dipsheits that cannot govern themselves without the aid of an iron hand of a dictator...

 

Oh, puhl-lease!

We have been a DECADE BANKRUPTING our country paying for ONE THING after ANOTHER that the "architects" of the Iraq invasion did "not account for"!

Yet, YOU wish we would stay LONGER!

And do WHAT?

Whatever would make Iraq a stable country after our wholesale destruction of every societal structure?

After our placement and support of a government comprised of horridly corrupt murderous torture thugs?

After our artificial creation of ever more power groups?

After our turning the country over to the multi-national oil companies who are manipulating fringe power groups with BILLIONS of dollars in bribes to rip off the Iraqi populace with corrupt and BS oil contracts.

What would the USA do with ANOTHER YEAR?, another DECADE? of TRILLIONS of dollars while OUR OLD FOLKS SUFFER! While we CLOSE SCHOOLS! While we turn teachers into POORLY-PAID AUTOMATONS!

God, the ridiculous garbage claims of the Chicken-hawks NEVER ENDS! Of course, as long as there is defense and oil profits from these wars to sustain them, they couldn't care less what it costs the country and the people involved!

 

Actually the Iraqis have been very shrewd about new oil contracts.. They are all very lean and fee for service.

 

What part of "Mission Accomplished" do the Iraqi's not understand? Jeesh!

 

The Bush administration never claimed he was an imminent threat.

Here are the reasons.

The Congress makes the following findings:

(1) On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, starting an 8 year war in which Iraq employed chemical weapons against Iranian troops and ballistic missiles against Iranian cities.

(2) In February 1988, Iraq forcibly relocated Kurdish civilians from their home villages in the Anfal campaign, killing an estimated 50,000 to 180,000 Kurds.

(3) On March 16, 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurdish civilian opponents in the town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds and causing numerous birth defects that affect the town today.

(4) On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and began a 7 month occupation of Kuwait, killing and committing numerous abuses against Kuwaiti civilians, and setting Kuwait's oil wells ablaze upon retreat.

(5) Hostilities in Operation Desert Storm ended on February 28, 1991, and Iraq subsequently accepted the ceasefire conditions specified in United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) requiring Iraq, among other things, to disclose fully and permit the dismantlement of its weapons of mass destruction programs and submit to long-term monitoring and verification of such dismantlement.

(6) In April 1993, Iraq orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate former President George Bush during his April 14-16, 1993, visit to Kuwait.

(7) In October 1994, Iraq moved 80,000 troops to areas near the border with Kuwait, posing an imminent threat of a renewed invasion of or attack against Kuwait.

( On August 31, 1996, Iraq suppressed many of its opponents by helping one Kurdish faction capture Irbil, the seat of the Kurdish regional government.

(9) Since March 1996, Iraq has systematically sought to deny weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) access to key facilities and documents, has on several occasions endangered the safe operation of UNSCOM helicopters transporting UNSCOM personnel in Iraq, and has persisted in a pattern of deception and concealment regarding the history of its weapons of mass destruction programs.

(10) On August 5, 1998, Iraq ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM, and subsequently threatened to end long-term monitoring activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNSCOM.

(11) On August 14, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-235, which declared that `the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations' and urged the President `to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.'.

(12) On May 1, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-174, which made $5,000,000 available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition for such activities as organization, training, communication and dissemination of information, developing and implementing agreements among opposition groups, compiling information to support the indictment of Iraqi officials for war crimes, and for related purposes.

And the official policy

SEC. 3. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARD IRAQ.

It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

Followed by

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;

Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;

Whereas in Public Law 105-235 (August 14, 199, Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in ``material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations and urged the President ``to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations;

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolution of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;

Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (1991), and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (1994);


cont.

 

cont.

Whereas in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1), Congress has authorized the President ``to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolution 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677;

Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it ``supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1), that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and ``constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region, and that Congress, ``supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688;

Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-33 expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to ``work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge posed by Iraq and to ``work for the necessary resolutions, while also making clear that ``the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable;

Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;

Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region:

 

Like I say, Saddam totally agrees with ever word you say.





Should have kept him in power.. . He's laughing right now in his grave....

 

And your plan to keep him from rebuilding his WMD with newer and better ones and then keep him from supplying them to our enemies so they can attack western countries as they vow to?

 

Well, the first question I ask is do you honestly believe that Hussein had WMD's? By the time of the Iraq War, every viable WMD option was removed or gone.

 

We know he did, the ones we were looking for were the ones UNSCOM had cataloged but had not confirmed their destruction. We found chemical shells he had hidden from inspectors. We found new empty shells stored with the chemical precursor for advanced nerve gases. We found his reference strains of bilogicals and his research into weaponizing them.

But it's a specious argument. He was fully prepared and ready to create new even more deadly WMD. But what is amazing is how some still ignore what we DID find instead of focusing only on what we didn't find. We found a whole lot more of the former than the latter.

"Douglas Hanson was a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I. He was an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.

In an interview with Insight and in an article he wrote for the online magazine AmericanThinker.com, Hanson examines reports from U.S. combat units and public information confirming that many of Iraq's CW stockpiles have indeed been found.

Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.

But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble.

"Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."

The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides, or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.

When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."

Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly."

Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice. At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters -- with unpleasant results.

"More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump -- evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin -- a nerve agent.

Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site.

"Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"

At Taji -- an Iraqi weapons complex as large as the District of Columbia -- U.S. combat units discovered more "pesticides" stockpiled in specially built containers, smaller in diameter but much longer than the standard 55-gallon drum.

Hanson says he still recalls the military sending digital images of the canisters to his office, where his boss at the Ministry of Science and Technology translated the Arabic-language markings. "They were labeled as pesticides," he says. "Gee, you sure have got a lot of pesticides stored in ammo dumps."

Again, this January, Danish forces found 120-millimeter mortar shells filled with a mysterious liquid that initially tested positive for blister agents. But subsequent tests by the United States disputed that finding.

"If it wasn't a chemical agent, what was it?" Hanson asks. "More pesticides? Dish-washing detergent? From this old soldier's perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy."

The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like. A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation.

"The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.

What does 3.9 tons of VX look like? "It could fit in one large garage," the official says. Assuming, of course, that Saddam would assemble every bit of VX gas his scientists had produced at a single site, that still amounts to one large garage in an area the size of the state of California.

Senior administration officials stress that the investigation will continue as inspectors comb through millions of pages of documents in Iraq and attempt to interview Iraqi weapons scientists who have been trained all their professional lives to conceal their activities from the outside world.

"The conditions under which the ISG is working are not very conducive," one official said. "But this president wants the truth to come out. This is not an exercise in spinning or censoring.""
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1125087/posts

 

There was no civil war in Iraq until Bush invaded.

 

Lordie, Lordie, Lordie!

How quickly the spinmeisters try to change history!


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

Oh, look an oldie but a goodie, and we have had to ONLY change ONE letter to makes this THE reason to invade IRAN NOW!

But keep the plausible deniability going! 5 weeks later,

But, as ALWAYS, the USA will easily PREVAIL!

(Source)

 

How pathetic.

A 2004 article purporting that the US Military was busily working to discredit the CURRENT REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION and CIC by HIDING ALL of Hussein's chemical weapons! Barrels of pesticides are "proof" of Iraq's EVIL!

And in 7 years since this article, we have seen NO evidence of its truth, except appearances on Coast to Coast whackjob radio and pathetic Chicken hawks who want to do it ALL again to FURTHER impoverish the USA for THEIR PERSONAL profit!!

 

How true Mike, for another $trillion or two I'm sure we could get the Iraq straightened out. Then once we accomplish that, we can work on our own crumbling economy and infrastructure.

 

Please, stop the nonsense.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gUzD1Ud4Lk"]Smoking Gun - YouTube[/ame]