Why We Are Losing The War On Terror/Terrosim/Whatever It Is Today

[LoneStarLiberal]

We're fighting the wrong kind of war to effectively fight a war on terrorism.

Terrorism is a social/economic/political issue with security consequences. Invading countries like Afghanistan and Iraq may address those security consequences, but unless you build an EFFECTIVE democratic system it does not "fight" terrorism.

On an even deeper level, we are losing the war on terrorism because our policy makers and leaders refuse to fight the most fundamental level of this war: Ideology. We are losing the ideological war by default because our opponents have a populist message; look no further than Sayyid Qutb's "In the Shade of the Koran."

Our administration flirted with matching this ideology in the only way they knew how: Corporate advertising. Enter Victoria Clark. Proceed to fail. Exit Victoria Clark. Why did Clark's mission to market the U.S. to the Middle East fail? Well we can come up with many reasons, some valid others invalid. But that she failed is beyond dispute.

This begs asking two final questions: First, do we really need to "sell" the United States to anyone and second, if the narrow Republican mind can only conceive of a corporatist branding of America and that which makes us great (the Constitution), how do we expose this most fundamental of failures? I ask this question because I don't think it is as simple as exposing this failure and offering an alternative (I have what I think is a pretty good alternative policy); I don't think most Americans believe this is even important, or at worst they see fighting a war of ideology as somehow lowering ourselves to our enemy's level. Any ideas?

[aquart]

1. Because making an enemy of a concept means fighting shadows.

Shadows are indestructible.

However, it does keep the nation permanently afraid and permanently at war, so George wins.

We lose.

[ewagner]

3. Agree and add

I would also add that this administration does not understand that it is not just our words that the world watches, but also our deeds.

The Bush Administration's arrogance and "go-it-alone-I don't-give-a-damn-what-you think" policy is a root cause of terrorism. The Bushies are just too dumb to notice.

[sink]

34. Wait a minute!

"The Bush Administration's arrogance and "go-it-alone-I don't-give-a-damn-what-you think" policy is a root cause of terrorism."

Time out... terrorism has been around far longer than Dubya. Depending on how you define terrorism, there has been a great many terrorist problems on the books for decades. Before Dubya, before GB, Sr., even before Regan.

[chesley]

2. We will win the war on terrorists

although I have my differences with GWB and his admisnitration, he is doing the right thing. Wars are won solely by killing the enemey untilhe has had enough. The Islamists will do it to us if we let them; we should do it to them first. It doesn't really matter why they hate us, the fact that they do is sufficient.

[StandWatie]

4. if you hate us we kill you

Most of the world hates us, people cheered all over central and South America, Asia, all over the globe, you got a big job going there and apparently it will just be you and a bunch of US rednecks breathing when it's over.

[chesley]

5. OK

n/t

[bemildred]

9. Heh heh heh.

I wonder whatever happened to Tip O'Neal?

We seem to have the "War is hell and we have to be
the most hellish to win" dufuses back again. I'm sure
Sun-Tzu and Mr. Clausewitz would be laughing their asses
off if they could read this crap.

Perhaps if they were personally to go over to Iraq and provide
instruction to the troops it would help us win. :puke:

[LoneStarLiberal]

6. A Better Solution

In response I would say that the fact that we have a security problem on our hands is a part of our contemporary reality. Terrorism, regardless of the causes, always has a security problem as a result.

Certainly we have to deal with our security problems in a straightforward manner. But there is a solution that is well short of the whole apocalyptic "we wipe them out or they wipe us out" view.

We arrive at that solution by addressing the causes as well as the consequences. Right now we're only addressing the consequences which is why these attacks against American targets and Western targets across the world.

[Barry Lyndon]

33. The Cause is the Nature of Islamism

Before I get flamed for this, it's necessary to distinguish between Muslims and Islamists. Muslims want to basically live quiet lives and tend to hang out in libraries, while Islamists are hell bent on establishing a 7th century superstition ridden, thought policed totalitarian hell hole and call it heaven on Earth.

Islamism posits that everything not permitted is forbidden, with every detail of human life under strict government control. It has one goal, world conquest, and requires its adherents to be willing to kill themselves in efforts to kill us.

That means that even legitimate complaints against US foreign policy are irrelevant, and will not assuage them, for the only resolution to these problems is world conversion to Islam or death.

When Islamists are politically weak, they read from every other page of the Koran and preach peace and brotherhood. When Islamists are politically powerful, the penalty for the slightest doctrinal deviation from their form of Islam is death. In no nation where the Sharia is the law of the land, is life worth living.

As such, Islamism is a self-referencing, self-generating psychopathic system of thought, with which there can be no accomodation.

It is quite literally a fight to the death with an enemy who limits itself only by the abilitity of its victims to resist annihilation.

Having said that, there are a lot of Muslims over here who wish to escape such insanity and live their lives unmolested and send their kids to college to better their lives. Without their discipline and diligence, we'd be almost bereft of doctors and engineers.

While it is true that there are many sleeper agents for al-Quaeda and the like, it is necessary to prove the malicious intent of Muslim immigrants to the USA before proceeding to arrest and question them.

[rini]

7. The idea of war

is to kill more of them then they of you. War is not nice and to fight a "nice" war is in itself an oxymoron. That being said, we as Americans need to realize that not all people want or are comfortable with democracy. Nor is capitalism a panecea for everything. Then there are the idiots like Anne Coulter who think we should force everyone to become Christian.

After WWII, Truman had cultural anthropologists advice him on how to use Japanese culture to further our goals. It worked. Today, we have no idea about the life, culture, or innate practices and customs that have meaning to Arabs and Afghans (btw, are not Arabs). Dubbya probably agrees with Coulter.

When Americans were being kidnapped and tortured in Lebanon, in the 1970s, the Russians were left alone. Know why? One Russian was kidnapped, the KGB found out the village of the terrorists and one night paid them visit. They castrated every male animal in the village and left a note warning the next time a Russian was kidnapped all human males in the village would follow the same fate as the animals. No more kidnapping of Russians. We need to be as ruthless as the Russians. Forget all this feel good stuff!

[bemildred]

8. Shit.

They should have tried that in Afghanistan.
Maybe they could have won that one too.

[tedzbear]

14. Very funny but very true!

That little Repug fable about Russia and Lebannon sounds a bit like wishful thinking to me. I doubt if it even happened.

[LoneStarLiberal]

10. Winning the Battles and Losing the War

I'd tend to agree with rini that if you are going to fight you need to fight to win.

My bone of contention is that we're fighting military campaigns to try and cease a social, economic, and political problem. There was only going to be a security answer to the security problem posed by the Taliban running Afghanistan and providing sanctuary to so many militant Islamist groups. But what about the other dimensions of the terrorist problem?

It makes as little sense to fight a military campaign against authoritarian political systems in the Arab world as it would to try and buy off the Taliban with foreign direct aid. These solutions are unrealistic and do not fit the problems at hand. Terrorism is a multi-faceted problem that requires more than a military solution, more than the Acme Nation Building Kit approach that we've taken to Afghanistan and Iraq.

We're winning the battles and losing the war.

To aggregate rini and bemildered's posts I'd simply say this: It doesn't matter how many animals you castrate or how many men you castrate in Afghanistan; history gives you all the lessons you need about extended military campaigns in Afghanistan. Anyone who invades and stays loses. It was true for Alexander the Great in antiquity and for Ivan the Bear more recently and for the British in between.

[bemildred]

13. I think we agree.

The notion that resorting to extreme violence in order to
intimidate opposition works has been disproven in practice
many times, even though it seems "intuitive", and it is an
indicator of ignorance and stupidity about these matters whenever
it pops up. It represents, at botton, a confusion of the success
one may achieve by this means in matters between indiviudals - at
times - with disputes among peoples in which case it always fails
to have the desired effect.

More importantly, as Clausewitz says many times, military force
is used in pursuit of political ends, and if the political ends
are not achieved them the use of force has failed, the number of
nuts cut off means little. That the Russians may have succeeded in
opting out of a conflict to which they were in any case secondary
by this means offers little guidance to what will work in other
situations where one is central to the dispute.

[tedzbear]

15. * thinks Iraq will be the next Japan but he is wrong...

...when we rebuilt Japan we weren't also financially supporting a nearby nation that was an enemy of Japan.

Now we are rebuilding Iraq but we are supporting Israel which is the enemy to most Arabs. As long as we side with Israel we will have NO peace in Iraq.

Also, Iraq is sitting on a trillion dollar treasure and Japan wasn't. This makes it hard for us to prove we don't have ulterior motives in regard to our occupation of Iraq. Japan had nothing left that we could possibly want so the Japanese were much less suspicious of our motives after WW II.

[StandWatie]

24. Japan was scared of China

West Germany was scared of the Soviets.

Without these external bogeymen US occupation is likely to fail.

[sink]

35. Getting the facts straight

Let's make sure you are looking at this issue correctly:

Israel is hated by Arabs for being in existence. Arabs have hated the Jews for many many many years, and have openly and repeatedly vowed to wipe every last Jew off the face of the Earth. This is genocide. You probably weren't a fan of it during WWII, don't discount it now.

We are supporting a nation that has repeatedly volunteer to make peace, at their (territorial and financial) expense. They have offered to help the Palestinians come back into Israeli society. They give (as does the US) millions in palestinians aid every year. (The entire arab world, FYI, gives less than a million a year. They have also declined to take ANY palestinians into their own countries)

In return, they have had their woman, children, and non-combatants blown to bits...over and over and over.

Sometimes you support the good guys, even when it means bad things. The Wild West sheriff might have known he was going to get shot by protecting the innocent, but that was the job. Just because it was dangerous to be a good guy, didn't mean he therefore became a bad guy.

And one last thing... because Iraq sits on a trillion dollars (or whatever) of oil doesn't mean that the only (hidden) reason for liberating Iraq was oil/money. It can be one of the many reasons and still be OK. If Iraq has that much money in oil, and money -like it or not- is what makes the world go round, isn't it important that murdering, torturing, pyschos can't control it?

[rini]

17. yep

you're right. I was trying to make the point that any war is brutaal but we need to look at what it takes to win ans then decide if we want to go that way.

[StandWatie]

11. oh, that explains Chechnya doesn't it..

I love how these little fairy tales get started and take on a life of their own :eyes:

[quilp]

18. An "Islamist" is a "terrorist"?

Have you a clue how many "Islamists" there are? Or how formidable they would be if they had the intentions you think they have? If we are going to go on "killing the enemy" it better be from a great distance. And with atom bombs. We sure "had enough" with the Vietnamese "terrorists".

Bush is a profoundly stupid and greedy man. He has "led" this country into another unwinable war that has nothing to do with "terrorism". He went to Texas with a few thousand that became sixteen million by the time he left office. He will be a billionaire by the time he leaves Washington.

[QuietStorm]

12. Because we are not fighting Terrorism we want to crush OPEC

Terrorism is just a buzz word for the sake of sating barbaric appetites and inciting fear. More accurately in attempting to crush OPEC we get a little crusade going. Once the Jihad gets rolling PNACers can justify anything even another premeptive strike which will by then be blurred by all the superflous "terrorist" strikes we have seen in the past week. No one will care if the strike is justified or not. Its get the Arabs all the way.

Terrorism is a buzz word only. The resistance seems very unified to me and will someone answer the question posed now several times WHO is the financier of this ever strengthening resistance. This is not suicide bombers going off in supermarkets killing one or two innocent civilians. there has been some significant infrastructural damage in the last week.

[tedzbear]

16. I agree. Could it be SPECTRE?

I see SPECTRE behind this latest batch of blown oil pipelines and water mains, not to mention dead United Nations delegates.
:think:

[QuietStorm]

20. you are pulling my leg right?

quasi on topic in a poetic sense.

I put a search in comes up this so named leftist magazine:

http://www.spectrezine.org/

I tool around hit iraq and comes up this.

http://www.spectrezine.org/war/hamsa.htm

Hamsa Mohammed poses some pertinent questions to her country's "liberators".

In our daily lives, are we seeing and reading the truth? We have to dive beneath surface appearances that are presented to us. When the American and British armies entered Iraq, they called themselves liberators. They said they came to liberate Iraqis from an oppressive, murderous government, and to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Did these “liberators” cross all the continents to arrive in Iraq simply for the safety of the Iraqi people? Who will cover the costs of these noble volunteers?

snip

I want facts. After 12 years of embargo, preventing anything from entering Iraq without United Nations authorization, no one has found any weapons of mass destruction. After 8 years of weapons inspections, with all their modern techniques, from 1991 to 1998, no one has found any weapons of mass destruction. In these last months of renewed international inspections, and renewed Anglo-American war-making, no one has found any weapons of mass destruction. Can we conclude that the fact is there are no weapons of mass destruction? Or maybe Saddam’s storing them in the White House beneath Bush’s bed?

Snip

The American soldiers say their task is to keep us safe, and provide security for civilians. But the looting and crimes continue to this day. And what about the massacres in Mosul and Falluja, and elsewhere? Dozens have been killed. What about Al-Zafarania accident? At least nine innocent people lost their lives because of this accident. What about the “controlled explosions” of weapons the Americans are blowing up all over town, frightening people every day? Are these explosions really controlled? Go to the Adhamia and judge by yourselves. Three houses were destroyed because of such explosions and many persons as well were wounded.
Who is the responsible? Who will take responsibility for these disasters?

What Iraq needs now is a government, representative of Iraqis – not Americans – which will organize, and keep security, and take responsibility for all that Iraq suffers from.
-----
Hamsa Mohammed is a 22 year old Iraqi college student at Baghdad University and captain of the women’s volleyball team. She hopes to be a writer. (This is Ms Mohammed's own self-description. Spectre has not seen her play volleyball, but in our opinion she is already very much a writer.)

You have heard of one hand washing the other? This could be one leg pulling the other!

[sink]

36. Uh...

"What Iraq needs now is a government, representative of Iraqis – not Americans – which will organize, and keep security, and take responsibility for all that Iraq suffers from."

A government like that which has been in power for decades? Let's make sure it is safe and smart to turn over things before they are turned over. In our short sighted, TV culture, we have been willing to give the liberation efforts about the time of a sit-com to take its effect. These things take time. Imagine if there were calls to turn Germany over to the Germans as early as September 1945 (we liberated Germany in May 1945). These things take time, and there is (or should be) and expectation of the Iraqis desiring control. That's good. That's part of the process. If we had gone in, taken control, ousted saddam and then handed the keys to the city over within a few days, or weeks, it's very very likely the country would have returned to the totalitarian dictatorship it was, or that the Iraqis would have no understanding of how important it is to get it together.

Just like you don't hand over the keys to a new Porshe to a 16 year old (or shouldn't anyway), because they will have no idea how hard buying that car was to achieve. They will never get that feeling in their gut that they are DYING to have a real car, and appreciate it so much more when they get it.

[Turbulence]

42. oh

I guess you are under the impression that liberating the Iraqi's was really on the list of things to do, or erecting a Iraqi government for the people. Yes I guess that is why the oil ministry took the most precedent in security and over getting water and electric to the Iraqi people.

[quilp]

19. The problem is in the word "terrorist"

Like the word "communism" it is used to end any thinking. Then we were invading Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Phillipines, and EL Salvadore. Where has the USA ever shown an interest in "democracy". Was the "President" elected? The problem is the rest of the world knows more about the real motives of the USA than Americans do. Heal thyself!

[LoneStarLiberal]

21. Very Good Point

This administration is extraordinarily masterful at using rhetoric as a weapon in its arsenal against those who oppose it. The Bush administration has been more dependent on people just not caring and people being uneducated about the world around them to push their agenda than any I can remember (Carter was the first I can remember).

Their use of rhetoric is the other prong of that dependency. By labeling the insurgents fighting in Iraq as terrorists they evoke images of September 11 and their own deluded brand of patriotism and shut off any avenue of consideration or critical thought.

After all, it's much easier to call someone a terrorist and be done with it than to call them an insurgent and then potentially move that next step into considering why they are fighting us and dealing with those causes.

[QuietStorm]

23. yup

ideological propaganda which plays on fear, revenge and instilled, encouraged, or in cases ingrained bigotry. Than the terror angle has to be irritated every now and again as a reminder. It serves to whet the appetite once more of fear, revenge, and bigotry. The implication being in this case, "get the arabs". And I have encountered people who have asked me more than once in so many words, "what are we gonna do with the AAA-rabs". In essence todays favored and almost politically correct and encouraged racism.

[sink]

37. Almost

By the same token, it's more fun for the media to call murdering palestinians "militants", than murders. Or suicide bombers rather than homicide bombers. They are trying to soften the images of the supposed "underdogs" to get Americans backing their support of those "causes".

[Darranar]

22. EXACTLY!!

I think we need to build a populist plan by ourselves. The way to do this should be rather easy. Look at Saudi Arabia. A number of multimillionares control the country, while thousands of workers get very little money. This is the perfect scenario for a group like Al Qaeda to come in and say: "Look, your troubles are due to Western Imperialism. Help us, and we'll end that."

If we want to liberate someone, let's liberate those thousands in Saudi Arabia by non-violent means. Various regulations against corporations that mistreat their workers trading in Us would help, and then some sort of Marshall plan for the Middle east with the help of other nations would be great.

We need to show the Middle East, and to a lesser extent the world, that there's more to us americans than bombing the heck out of nations for the sake of big corporations. That will strike at the heart of Al Qaeda's argument, and it will help the real war on terrorism - a war of ideology, as you pointed out.

[peacenow]

25. Will Howard Dean Create New Institutions?

Have you seen this Op-Ed from Mc Faul?

washingtonpost.com
Wrong Time to 'Stay the Course'
By Michael McFaul

Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page B07
“The same can be said of institutional innovation at the international level. In the wake of World War II, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NATO, the precursor to the European Union and many other new bodies all got their start. Since Sept. 11, 2001, not one new major international organization has been formed. Instead of citing the real flaws in existing international institutions as an excuse for unilateralism, the Bush administration should take the lead in creating new organizations for promoting democratic regime change.”

We are wondering if Howard Dean is the leader to create
the next generation international institution?

We are proposed that the "Global Peace Organization" be created
to replace the UN, IMF and World Bank.

What do you think?

[bemildred]

26. Mr. Dean seems refreshingly open to ideas.

He also seems intelligent enough to have ideas,
to think them up on his own. Given the long string
of intellectually timid talking heads we have had
to govern us, this in itself offers some promise.

When one's country faces change and crisis, one needs
leaders with a stronger agenda than die-hard protection
of as much of the status quo as possible. There
a couple candidates this time around that offer promise,
and of those Mr. Dean seems to be far in the lead.

[QuietStorm]

27. Interesting I find Dean

the most status quo. And I am not all too taken by any of them to tell you the truth. I have yet to convince myself to vote in the next election. That is how cynical I have become. I don't trust the lot of them. The system is corrupt and no one's rhetoric thus far really leaves me with a sense that much will change. Look at all the investigations against this criminal cabal. Where have any of them lead. Both parties do seem to require sweeping out. But to tell you the truth I really would prefer not to defend what I just said. Mostly it represents my vast disappointment and my almost complete abhorence with politics. A registered democrat I find I just want to tear the card up. I haven't, but I want to.

[bemildred]

29. Hey, I feel your pain.

Seriously, the revolution, when it comes, won't occur
by means of an election. The election process is rigged
to enforce the status quo. You might as well vote.

Mr. Dean is from outside the beltway. In my observation
that is a good thing, e.g. Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton,
although it is far from what I want. The degree of political
force required to go after the corporate oligarchy is much
more than is present now.

[QuietStorm]

30. it is a funny quandary

both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Carter are trilateral commission members and both at one time attended the now infamous bilderburg yearly steering meetings. Did you happen to catch the somewhat monty pythonish article on the bilderberg group which was run in THE GUARDIAN. It was a three part series. I have two of the three parts. I missed the first part and can not seem to find it. I think I still have the other two parts bookmarked.


Anyway it seems to me while perhaps clinton did manage to impact the deficit and cut back on the military, I am not sure he stands too far outside the corporate cronism that is needed. I do not know how much credence one can lend to the power of the mason's which is embodied by the bilderberg group, along with the CFR, however it seems if their is any credence to their powers, all orders come on down from a much higher place than capital hill. It might just be that this regime DID kick off what is called the "new world order". I do realize trodding around in that terrain is tricky. It is why I don't bring it up that much. In that area I am quite the novice and am not sure i have enough under my belt with it to separate out the "conspiracy theory" from the reality.

I really must say I do have the strong sense one way or another is not going to make that much of a difference next election if the corruption is not outted in some significant way before the next election. I have lost some serious faith in the system at this time. I believe little of what is said and now we have the rise of another whole new spin on the niger forgeries.

snip

U.S. Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips
By Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer

(2003-08-28) WASHINGTON--Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're reinterviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

The far-reaching review was started after a political firestorm erupted this summer over revelations that President Bush's claim in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Niger was based on forged documents.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=539221

Isn't that a completely different spin on the uraniumgate in an effort to dupe investigation into those forgeries. Really the deception is very unhealthy... I have last much tolerance and live with a growing level of distrust that is as unhealthy in that it has a tendency to flow over unto my fellow man. Especially those so learned that seem to be lead by what I call the war propaganda. I really don't see the need to vote anymore. If I do it will be begrudgingly unless something quite refreshing occurs to wash away the bad taste I have in my mouth.

[bemildred]

31. I am not very tin-foil-hatty in my thinking.

It's not that I don't believe that groups and plots and
things exist, its just laughable that they have that sort
of control over what happens.

The government and various other organizations do and
always have lied for any number of reasons, probably the
most important of which is to be able govern much as it chooses
while still maintaining the mechanisms of popular government
with some degree of credibility. They view the purpose of
our form of government to be to establish the legitimacy of
their rule, not the rule of the people. It's not even a secret.

The only real remedy is an informed and educated population that
refuses to be bullied. We are far from that.

Edit:
The thing about Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton and presumably about
Mr. Dean is that they were/are not out to overthrow things as the
are, they just want to make it work better. That is not a bad
thing, however much it is short of the sort of social justice
I would like to see.

[LoneStarLiberal]

28. Dean Or No Dean, Institutions Need Change

Nearly all of our international institutions are in dire need of some serious reform...some life-saving reform in many cases. Specifically the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization all need various reforms proposed and pushed by the United States. Why us? Because we have a unique position in each of these organizations to be proponents of change.

Pushing reform in existing international institutions is one of the most direct ways that their effectiveness can be improved making them more viable and at the same time neuter the most persistent parts of our own isolationist critics and neoconservative critics of neo-liberal institutionalism.

[srpantalonas]

32. Bush took a non-terrorist country and turned it into a terrorist haven

"Whether or not you supported the war, I suspect the current situation in Iraq displeases you. It bothers me tremendously (one thing you can count on from me is I'll speak my mind whether or not what I say is popular). This administration lacks a cohesive plan for Iraq, while our overworked and stressed service people get picked off by lingering Iraqi resistance and newly minted terrorists. Bush has taken a non-terrorist country (a terrible dictatorship, certainly, but not a terrorist state) without any proven ties to terrorism and turned it into a terrorist state. In the meantime, where is bin Laden?"

http://www.charliecrystle.com

[sink]

38. What??

Not a terrorist state? Just because they didn't take terror across their border, I think Iraq was the very example of a terrorist state. Iraqis were not safe in their own country. Just because it was because of their own government doesn't make it any less "terror" based.

And no connections to terrorism? Well, besides those pesky funds being transferred to terrorist groups. Besides that, no connections at all. Maybe it's how you define a "terrorist" organization. If you are the US media, there's not that many. They are militants, insurgents.

[LoneStarLiberal]

39. A Terrorist State and Connected, But...

Iraq was also a terrorist state back in the 1980s when they were our Guys in the Gulf playing balance to Khomeni's Iran. By the same standard, Zaire was a terrorist state back in the 1980s when the Reagan administration awarded one of the worst despots since Stalin (Mobutu) the Medal of Freedom.

We have always been comfortable with terrorists; we just usually call them freedom fighters or pro-democracy forces.

I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend that Saddam Hussein wasn't bad, but I have yet to meet the argument or see the evidence that he was any worse than Kim Jong Il in North Korea who is and will be terrorizing, starving, raping, and murdering his citizens for a long time to come. Da Il One has killed more of his own citizens, brainwased yet another generation, and done all the things we accused Saddam of doing in triplicate yet North Korea doesn't show up on our John Wayne radar. Why? Because real problems demand real solutions, and getting thousands of American soldiers killed in a grinding war on the Korean Peninsula is too politically distasteful for our administration. Beating up a sanctions-weary Iraqi army full of Shia conscripts not only looks good on paper but is sexy on T.V., too.

Increased coercive diplomacy and the application of smart sanctions were the way to address Iraq, not a hasty invasion hatched by a bunch of chickenhawks.

There are several countries that merited more U.S. attention than Iraq in terms of the direct threat of terror (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen) and who merited the application of immediate U.S. pressure moreso than Iraq (Zimbabwe, Congo, Liberia, and Colombia). The case was never made that Iraq somehow posed a unique, clear and present danger to the United States to where we had to act in haste and fumble around afterwards like we are currently doing in Iraq.

The case was never made partly due to embellished and outright false intelligence and partly because our foreign policy makers are blighted by their Straussian backgrounds.

I am not up to speed on information regarding the transmission of funds via Iraq or from Iraq to terrorist groups. Could you provide links? If this is a factually correct charge, it still doesn't make the Iraqis who participated any more or less complicit in terrorist networks than many Pakistani and Saudi Arabian participants in the same. And these countries and governments, repressive though they may be, are our allies in the war on terror. Classic moral blindness in the form of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"; even when your friends directly finance, arm, train, and provide manpower to your enemy? Really? This is the botched reasoning that got us to this point in history in the first place.

In short this was a war of choice not a war of necessity. The post-war situation and the revelations regarding the pre-war intelligence simply do not justify choosing war.

[srpantalonas]

40. not factually correct

there has been no evidence presented that Iraq financed any terrorist group.

[LoneStarLiberal]

41. That's Why I Was Asking For Links

In my previous post I was interested in some links to information regarding Iraq's alleged role in aiding and abetting terrorists through financing operations.

I am familiar with the charge but I am not familiar with any documentation for the charge.