Debating with a righty...(Al Qeada growing)

[HydroAddict]

I would appreciate any help you guys could give me. I'm debating with this guy on a message board related to my work (stock trading). This is the only political thread and it has been the most popular for the past few months, and it's flooded with wing-nuts.

He knows counters to all the left-wing "sound-byte" arguments pretty well. Now he's trying to get me with the righty sound-byte talking points. This is my reply. His comments are in italics...

Clinton, Gore, Dashle, Kerry have all made strongly worded statements supporting the belief that WMD's existed and were a significant threat based on the same intelligence. If you call any one of them a liar, then they all are.

Ugh, this argument is so tired. I don’t feel like writing an essay on this, so I’m just going to bullet points…
- 1990-92 Everyone agrees Iraq had WMD after first Gulf War.
- 1996-98, Saddam is not cooperating with UNSCOM inspection because we deceptively placed CIA agents on the inspection team. Bi-partisan agreement passed Iraq Liberation Act, however, like Bush Sr., Clinton, Gore and most Dems, did not support full scale invasion.
- 2001 Dashle, Kerry, the entire legislative branch, were all fed the same false intelligence that Cheney’s OSP was pushing. This intelligence conflicted with UNSCOM’s and our own CIA. The testimony from Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski sums it up pretty well.

Isn’t it obvious that our executive branch created the lies, only to be repeated by others? By NO means was this a war of last resort. In hindsight, I can see for Bush it was. It was the last chance to invade before public support waned.

All but 600 (which is too many) of the 10K were Iraqi armed forces and some unfortunate civilians.

Well this is a new RW talking point I haven’t heard. But it doesn’t surprise me one bit, because it is absolutely false. (DU'ers, I need a good link here)

But 25M Iraqis are now free from a despot, including thousands of imprisoned children held hostage in jails.

Rabble, rabble, rabble…I not going to throw the “but so many other evil despots” argument at you, because I’m sure you’ve heard it before and you have a canned religious/high-moral argument to return. But how about this: Here in the US we got 10 million people held hostage in jail for non-violent drug offenses, some children, because of a War on Drugs conducted by evil despots since the 70’s. I probably won’t see you fighting for their liberation anytime soon.


(In reply to me telling him, "The WoT is supposed to be making Al Qeada smaller, yet they only seem to be growing in their ranks and resolve. This is what I'd call being "weak on terrorism".")
I don't know where your info on Al Quida growing comes from, but I have seen that 2/3 are dead or captured.

Well I know where you get your information. From the same folks that told us stories of huge stockpiles of WMD scattered about Iraq, ready to be handed to their close ally, bin Laden. The Bush admin has lost all credibility with me, so I'll no longer accept their public statements without verification. Here’s some links.

Rumsfeld's war-on-terror memo - USAToday
Iraq War Swells Al Qaeda's Ranks, Report Says - Reuters
Al Qaeda's capabilities may be growing - CS Monitor
Al-Qaeda serpent growing new heads – Sydney Morning Herald
Ridge: Al-Qaeda network is growing - USAToday
Al Qaeda uses Web sites to draw recruits, spread propaganda - Washington Times
(Purchase Required)Anger on Iraq Seen as New Qaeda Recruiting Tool - NY Times

(I heard a report about a Marine Col., when asked about Al Quida coming into Iraq to fight the infidels respond "Good, then we can kill them here instead of dealing with them in our country".)
This comment beautifully illustrates the non-thinking "weed mowing" mentality to fighting terrorism...Chop one down, two more will spring up. Bush is only fighting the symptoms of Islamist terrorism, in a rather extreme way.

The cure involves energy independence and a Palestinian state. While Bush has paid lip-service to these progressive ideas, as usual, he has not followed through (i.e NCLB, Clean-Air, State's Rights, etc.)