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ASPB · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 7:40 pm Post subject:

and this from Sam a Hammorabi:

sillyrabbit · Seaman Recruit Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 36

ASPB - Thank you for that log. However, I can't see how that establishes what Iraqis think about the mission. That's one man's opinion, and I think that photographs of Iraqis dancing on top of burnt Humvees offer a different perspective. Even if they're evenly split, it doesn't take a majority of the population to support an effective insurgency. All it takes is an apathetic majority and an energized and dedicated minority. Do I know if that exists? No, I won't claim to. But my gut tells me it does, re: Fallujah.

And most reports (including official DoD) indicate that there are more FREs in Fallujah than foreign terrorists.

NoDonkey-
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,122794,00.html
Fox News published this poll as well. It was comissioned by the CPA, and they use it as if it were fact.
This is another telling quote from the poll.
"The coalition's confidence rating in May stood at 11 percent, down from 47 percent in November, while coalition forces had just 10 percent support. Nearly half of Iraqis said they felt unsafe in their neighborhoods."

Anyhow, our mission was twofold
1. To eradicate Iraqi WMD
2. To establish a functional democracy that would develop the transparent institutions that theoretically would work as a natural opposition to the terrorist mindstate and ideology.

On the first point...well, who needs to get into that one. We still don't know the whole story.

On the second point, I believe we are losing. I don't want to lose. I know how damaging it would be for us to lose, and I'm not one of the mindless idiots that wants to see us lose so we can somehow 'get whats coming to us'. If Iraq doesn't develop a liberal democracy it's bad for everyone, not least the Iraqi people. But....

In situations of political vacuum, the most extreme and violent elements of society almost always inevitably come to power (except when there are pre-existing democratic institutions). Right now, the most exteme element has a very persuasive message to the average Iraqi, "any U.S.-installed government will be a puppet regime that will demasculate you as an Arab man and work for the Jews in Israel." Is that rational? No, but it's persuasive enough to a. recruit new fighters and b. maintain some level of civilian support.

The big question is this: do people in Iraq see the insurgents as Saddamists or anti-Americanists? That's not to say the two are mutually exclusive, but there is an important distinction. A population that sees the insurgency as Saddamists will not support them by virtue of that association, but if they see the insurgency as purely reactionary to the occupation then its likely that they will enjoy sustained support.

This is a cyclical phenomenon and here's why:
The majority of Iraqis have an unfavorable opinion of U.S. troops already. However, they also want democracy. But the ONLY thing keeping that possibility alive IS american firepower. Can't you see how this situation favors the insurgents? An insurgency base that has popular support has all the power in these conditions, because every time they mount an attack on Iraqi police that can't defend themselves they look stronger and stronger. So who is the force to combat this? Well, obviously, U.S. troops. BUT, every time U.S. troops go into the population to fight those terrorists their image is damaged by necessarily heavy handed tactics. This cycle is untenable. Iraqi insurgents attack Iraqi police -> U.S. troops respond, killing insurgents -> but that operation further damages their image in an already hostile civilian population that then supports -> Iraqi insurgents attacking Iraqi police

This chain is unsupportable because it relies on too much popular opinion. Eventually, either American or Iraqi public opinion is going to head way south. The danger is that it will be the latter opinion, which could fuel an unlikely yet possible general rebellion.

For those reasons, I don't think we're winning on the 2nd count, and you know what? I don't think that the smart guys in the administration do either. I think that Bush gets reelected and pulls troops out in the first year in office. Then Iraq is Iran all over again. For ten years it'll have a shoddy democracy, after which point a "real" Islamic revolution will throw that government out the door before the U.S. can respond. Do you think the public has the stomach for ANOTHER Iraq war in 2010? No. In the strategic picture of American history, I am convinced this was a disaster.

ASPB...Edit: The fact that we're bombing Fallujah right now proves MY point, not yours. We have to bomb there now because the "Fallujah Brigade" that was supposed to act as a buffer between us and the civilian population is a failed endeavor. Because we were unable to find Iraqis willing to fight for their own democracy in Fallujah, we are now forced to resort to the kind of tactics that will alienate more and more of the civilian population in favor of the insurgents. Every time a U.S. bomb goes off in Fallujah, another few families feel justified aiding the insurgents. They don't know politics, all they know is the house down the block got destroyed by a U.S. missile. If your belief was, in fact, correct, we wouldn't need to bomb Fallujah because the civilian population would have already expelled the terrorists you suggest they are 'sick of'. These are the facts on the ground.

NoDonkey · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 8:19 pm Post subject:

sillyrabbit · Seaman Recruit Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 36

NoDonkey · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 8:49 pm Post subject:

[quote="sillyrabbit"]

sillyrabbit · Seaman Recruit Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 36

Eh, I'm not arguing against the war. 1 1/2 years in and I'm still on the fence (hey, maybe I really am a Kerry voter).

But.

Apparently the sanctions regime worked. IF they don't find any WMD caches, then that argument doesn't work. The strategy we took toward Iraq was different than toward international terrorism. The former we contained, the latter we ignored. Obviously ignoring terror was a dumb plan, Republican OR Democrat, but that strategy was different than the Iraq strategy, which you can make a case for having worked. I mean, if you knew then that there were no WMDs, would you have wanted to put our troops in harms way to build a democracy for an ungrateful, hostile population? We contain dictators very well. Look at Castro. In ten years Cuba won't be communist anymore. Is that because we went to war with them? No, eventually the Reds will outlive their welcome there. The point is that we never tried to "contain" terror, we just ignored it.

I'll never be able to buy the Saddam = terrorism argument. Why not attack Saudi Arabia!? That's where most of that religious crap comes from! That's where the hijackers came from! If attacking States is the way to fight terror, why aren't the B-52s rolling toward Cairo or Damascus right now? Take WMD out of the equation, and all of a sudden Saddam looks like the least threat in the region. I don't blame Bush for this...his intel was awful. But you can't suggest that the equation was the same with WMD as it is without WMD.

nakona · Lieutenant Joined: 04 Jun 2004 Posts: 242

ASPB · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 1:34 am Post subject:

Theresa Alwood · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 2:49 am Post subject:

. At least in the good ole US of A....we can turn to a different news channel and choose who we want to get our news source from. Most Arab countries only hear one side...and that is Al Jazeera which WE ALL KNOW is a front of al Queda. I know that I do not like Dan Rather....so I do not listen to him, nor do I have to. I know he is a hypocrite and I do not believe anything that comes out of his pro-kerry's mouth. I do not like NBC today's show. It irritates me to no end to listen to Katie Couric and her pro-liberal stance that I just can not even abide to even turn on the Today Show. I do not have to listen to CNN's and their pro-arab stance. Nor do I have to listen to any other news source except the one I choose.

People forget that the only "main" new source most of these arab countries get are very anti-american, very anti-western, and very violent. Yet this same station will show the pictures of the Iraqi prison scandal but will did not show the beheading of Nick Berg, nor even report the beheading. It is all one sided...and is slanted against America. At least with our liberal media we can turn it off and most of us do or turn the station to another new source. Al Jazeera has never shown any positive action that we have done for the Iraqi people. They have not shown the rebuilding of the schools, nor do they show that some of the country's infrastructure exceeds pre-Saddam. They do now show the troops actually helping the Iraqi people.

I sometimes think that our liberal media is almost copying Al Jazeera in their new sources. I would never, ever believe anything Al Jazeera put on TV or in print. I do not think most Americans would...but as for the Arab country...what is written in Al Jazeera is considered a reliable source. I find it strange that Al Jazeera always seems to right at the same point in time that something actually happens, or how it is they always seem to get these tapes right after the event has happened. The link between terrorist and Al Jazeera and we all see it.

Why is it that when a swastik is painted on a Mosque we hear all about that...and oh how could that have happened. Yet I did not see any of the so-called AMERICAN ARAB LEADERS step up and say anything about the beheading of Mr. Berg, Mr. Johnson, and now Mr. Kim. NOTHING!!!! Yet we heard all about the prison scandal from Congress, from the Muslin world, from everyone who ever thought to use this and used it they did. Sorry...panties on your head seems a lot different than having your head cut off...at least they had a head and continued to live. I know what happened at the Prison was wrong...but lets put it in context. At least with the US something will be done...with the arab world....all is quiet.

My next door neighbor is an Arab family. Have I treated them any differntly from my other neighbors. NO. I say hello to them. When they moved in we went over and introduced our selves. They are very nice people. Just like my neighbors on my left. I would never dream of treating either neighbor any different. But I have raised my children to treat everyone the same regardless of color, religion or any other differences we might have. I think I have done a good job of it. When the Arab family moved in nothing was even said about them being different...because to us it was just a different family moving it. That is how I like to live my live.

ASPB · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 1:00 pm Post subject:

Hattip to Little Green Footballs:

LA Times Whitewashes Islamic Beheading

These days when I read whitewash pieces like this one at the LA Times, they strike me as the work of people so lost in denial that they are indistinguishable from schizophrenics: Beheading for Sake of Fear, Not Islam. (Hat tip: denbike.)

NoDonkey · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 1:18 pm Post subject:

Here's a CNN article from 1999 that reported:

http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan.binladen/
"Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers."

Yet even today, Democrat Party nitwits (like John Kerry) still deny that there were any ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam and our worthless media refuses to call them on it.
_________________
"Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face." - Thomas Sowell

sillyrabbit · Seaman Recruit Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 36

First off, I'm not naive. I'm very well informed and have read most of the pertinent information in Stephen Hayes book. For you to jump in and just call me 'naive' without displaying any critical thinking of your own is insulting. Hayes has done incredible research, but lets remember that he's a partisan working at a partisan think tank. He's got vested interests here. You don't have to disagree with his conclusions to recognize that.

Teresa - calling al-Jazeera the mouthpiece of al-Qaeda is xenophobic and wrong. It's the mouthpiece of arab nationalism, which is a different thing. edited by Moderaor Anyway, what's with all the hatred of that network. On the one hand we're all screaming for the MidEast to liberalize and come "into the 21st century" but al-Jazeera is the only non-state-controlled media outlet in the whole region! It might not be perfect, but if we really want to see a democratic society in the mideast it is an absolutely necessary institution. What do you expect, for every international news organization to support American policy? Come on... That's not realistic, nor is it in the spirit of democracy. It blows my mind how people think that "real" democratic institutions will inevitably be pro-American. Don't you realize they all hate us? Even a democratic Iraq promises to be anti-American. It's like asking a US media outlet to be pro-Arab at the expense of American national pride...who the hell would watch it?

And nodonkey, I would imagine that you could agree not to believe everything you see on cable news.

The problem is that having "contacts" with al-Qaeda doesn't necessarily connotate a working relationship, and I think it's one of the big oversimplifications of the war debate to suggest that. States are big entities with a lot of employees, and interactions between Saddam's intelligence service and al-Qaeda don't, to me, prove that the nation was willing to offer all-out support to the network.

Let's really critically look at this theory:
Hayes' belief basically boils down to this: Saddam's intelligence officials held meetings with al-Qaeda. Bang, that's it. Beyond that even HE agrees that the rest is speculative. But what exactly does that prove, guys? U.S. intelligence officials hold meetings with everyone under the sun. Because U.S. intelligence has probably held meetings with Tibetan refugees to gain intelligence about the world (which is what an intelligence service is for, folks), does that mean that the U.S. is working to destabilize China? Would China have the right to attack us based on those meetings? No, because a good intelligence service will talk to anyone it can.

I mean, what makes you so sure that those meetings weren't Iraqi attempts to recruit al-Qaeda operatives as intelligence sources? I promise you that the CIA is doing the same damn thing in Pakistan right now. If a CIA official meets with the IRA, does that necessarily mean that the CIA wants to destabilize the UK? Look, I believe that those meetings took place but we don't know what was discussed and any attempt to guess is speculation for political purposes.

I'll play devil's advocate and look at it like this: let's say that Iraq did offer al-Qaeda some rudimentary level of material support. That was a nightmare scenario only if you assume and believe that Iraq had WMD before the war, which is the place that the Administration came from while planning the war. Again, faulty intel. But lets look at two scenarios and you can tell me what you think is more likely, given what we now know.

A. Iraq is decimated from the inside out by international sanctions and has been unable to reconstitute its military or chemical weapons program since 1991. The reason why they have been uncooperative with the U.N. inspections regime is because full cooperation would be a sign of Saddam's weakness, which he megalomanically couldn't tolerate. While they still hate America, the international sanctions regime has made it completely unable to strike at America so it plans silly schemes to attack in America (as reported by V. Putin) that will never work out, as with the ridiculous, failed plot to kill George H.W. Bush. In this context, Iraqi intel officials (maybe acting on their own, remember that the biggest revelation we got from this war was how unsophisticated and chaotic Saddam's government really was) meet with al-Qaeda operatives, who request material support. Saddam's intelligence service vaguely agrees, but the fact that Iraq has no WMD makes this irrelevant as a threat.

That's scenario one. Maybe it's not right, so here's the alternative:

2. Saddam makes personal promises to al-Qaeda to assist their war against America even though he has ZERO strategic interest in doing so, other than the personal satisfaction of seeing attacks in the U.S. Thus, he offers to sell WMD (that it now looks like he never had) to terrorists for so small an amount of money that it is insignificant, even though he knows such an action will result in the lengthening of sanctions that he also knows the West are running out of patience with, not to mention a possible invasion.

I'm sorry. I've been following international relations for 20 years and this is not a realistic scenario. Maybe I underestimate the psychosis of Saddam, that's very possible. But he wanted to be the king fish in the MidEast, not to destroy America. He had initially hoped America would support him in that endeavor. So....what? He had a midlife crisis and changed his ambition from regional hegemony to pointless and self-defeating destruction of America? There is nothing to be gained for him from assisting al-Qaeda, which is why I can't believe in the connection. He was too close to winning. If September 11 never happens, Iraqi sanctions expire and Saddam is better off than ever. Why would he want to support international terrorism when it was the worst thing that ever happend to him pre and post 9/11?

It comes down to this: W M D. W...M...D. If Iraq never had WMD then it was not a threat!! Pakistani madrassas are threats, North Korean nuclear labs are threats, the penetration of Saudi police by al-Qaeda is a threat....NOT a toothless Saddam! The reason we went to war was because our government was convinced that there were WMD in Iraq. I don't fault President Bush, I fault a disorganized and incompetent CIA. But the fact of the matter is that if they didn't legitimately think there were WMD in Iraq we wouldn't have gone to war.

If we find those weapons the war was worth it (depending on how much smallpox and VX there is, cause Sarin and botulinum can be made in a bathtub and anthrax can be cultivated from cows). If we don't...then why the hell did we do it? We spent 200 billion dollars (that your kids will pay) because Saddam's intelligence agents talked to al-Qaeda!? Jesus, if we went around doing that we'd have to invade the whole Asian contintent! No, the fact is that WMD was the pretext for the war.

It'd be nice that, if you still think I'm naive, you'd attack my logic with some of your own. Maybe you change my mind. None of you have actually argued anything with me, all you've done is arrogantly dismiss my legitimate concerns and give me links to other people's beliefs.

NoDonkey · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 3:47 pm Post subject:

sillyrabbit · Seaman Recruit Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 36

No, the fact is that the "contrary" position (continue inspections and practice measured diplomacy) was shouted down by people who claimed that attack by Iraq was so imminent it had to be invaded that instant (re: the "45 minutes" speech). People who suggested that sanctions should continue were shouted down and condemed as Saddam supporters.

I myself wanted to see the U.S. wait a few months, and even though I supported the war I thought we were digging ourselves into a strategic hole by delegitimizing the United Nations (an American created institution).

You see, with hindsight 20/20 it looks like all the timid "let inspections have more time" advocates were right. From what we know right now, sanctions were stunningly successful. Maybe this changes tomorrow. I certainly hope we find all those weapons we were told existed...I could feel much better about supporting the war and it would give our enemies a shot of thorazine in the neck. But the reality is that I don't think we'll find them. If our government really believed they were in Syria, with short-term GOP political fortunes on the line, I believe we would be very loud in demanding them. Very, Very loud. Can you imagine how many satellites we had trained on the Syrian border last March!? They couldn't move a carnival without us knowing in real-time. Nobody in the government takes that seriously, they're still hoping to find them in a cave. (and they might).

Our strategy with Saddam pre-Gulf War 2 was certainly not perfect. But right now we're trying the alternative, and I remain unconvinced that it was the better strategy. Only time will tell.

For the record, I don't want to see America fail. I'd vote for Julius Ceasar if I thought he could rescue us from what I see as a strategically disadvantaged position. I have days that I want to vote for Bush and days that I like Kerry. I don't know enough about Kerry's beliefs to trust him yet, which is partly why I found myself at this site.