For all the American hating, Saddam loving, fools who have said America has abandoned diplomacy

[LRB]

Fox News is reporting that Pentagon officials are currently in high level diplomatic negoiations with top Iraqi military leaders which may result in the mass surrender of up to 50% of the Iraqi armed forces including upto 20% of the Republican guard. So much for Bush abandoing diplomacy. Very good chance that this can be settled very quickly after dropping just a couple of bombs to show we mean business. Amazing what a pair of balls will do to get the diplomatic talks going isn't it?

[OzMavs]

This is great news. Not just for the current situation, but I would suggest for the future of Iraq.

[Drbio]

Diplomatic success. No other way to interpret it.

It's nice that we have a President with a set.

[Chiwas]

...this can be settled very quickly after dropping just a couple of bombs...

Hum...

[EricaLubarsky]

Usually diplomacy is the talk before violence. We took over a whole country through military force, are dropping bombs on strategic sites and are calling it diplomacy? Hmmm....

I also don't think the war was necessary and I don't like Saddam and I don't hate America. Im not sure Im a fool either.

[dude1394]

We only prosecuted 17 us resolutions, freed a people from rape rooms, tongues torn out, children gassed, two invasions of other countries and was openly supportive of terrorists and homicide bombers.

Sadaam could have stopped this invasion anytime he wanted, however he thought that his buddies in france, germany and russia would somehow stop that cowboy bush. Since they were so chummy with food-for-oil contracts.

Just because liberals would rather sadaam hussein still be in power to brutalize his people and threaten the middle east doesn't alllow them to somehow take the "high" road on this. Liberals would have been just fine with the status quo in iraq, libya, afghanistan. As long as we handled terrorism in the way that clinton so successfully defeated terrorists liberals would still be happy.

Ridiculous and unserious. It would be so much better to not take the impetus of sept 11 and the american attack to go back to not doing anything about it that will make a difference.

[EricaLubarsky]

Oh come on. No liberal wanted Saddam Hussein in power. Get real, dude.

We just listened to the UN when they said a war in Iraq would kill 5,000 to 10,000 Iraqi casualties. As the war goes on the numbers are sure to be higher. 4,895 to 6,370 civilians have been killed so far. 3,457 Americans have been wounded. 601 American GIs have been killed.

Please tell me how Saddam could have stopped the invasion? By showing his "weapons of mass destruction"?

Also tell me how overthrowing Saddam Hussein is connected to Septemeber 11th? I think you are a little hasty there.

[dude1394]

Originally posted by: EricaLubarsky
Oh come on. No liberal wanted Saddam Hussein in power. Get real, dude.

Sure they did. They wanted us to:
- Stop the embargo.
- Stop the no-fly zones.
- Basically leave him alone as long as he didn't do anything else. Of course he would have. Not to mention the embargo was crumbling with no way to continue it with our "allies" the french, germans and russians.

The STATUS QUO WAS SADAAM. You don't get to have it both ways.

We just listened to the UN when they said a war in Iraq would kill 5,000 to 10,000 Iraqi casualties. As the war goes on the numbers are sure to be higher. IT is way more complex than you can think.

Just ask the iraqis themselves what they want. Do they want us to leave, no. Do they think that their lives will be better now, yes. Only the dead-enders who were living on sadaams evils and wealth are the ones who KNOW that their way of "life" i.e. brutality is over.

Please tell me how Saddam could have stopped the invasion? By showing his "weapons of mass destruction"?

Yes quite frankly. He was given one last chance UNANIMOUSLY to pro-actively show where his WMD's were destroyed and how they were destroyed. Even Hans Blix said that he was not complying with the order. He always had the abilty to stay in power if he would have like south africa and now libya opened up his books and "proved", yes proved what had happened to the WMDs he had created.

[EricaLubarsky]

Just ask the iraqis themselves what they want.

Ask the 4,895 to 6,370 Iraqi civilians what they wanted. They may have wanted to get rid of Saddam but they didnt want to be killed. How about we ask these people

[dude1394]

Ask the more than 100,000 people sadaam had murdered. Let's ask the people in mass graves what they think. How about we ask these people. iraqi mass graves

Or how about these people.



Are you wanting me to ask the animals that killed those people who were trying to bring them water and other necessities? Or do you want me to ask the dead contracters who were risking their lives to help the iraqis. I'm confused.

Or maybe you agree with this liberal writer so we should do nothing?

Moral Responsiblity for Iraqi Graves
by Jacob G. Hornberger, May 23, 2003

Given the failure of U.S. forces to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the newest justification for the president’s invasion of Iraq has become the mass graves of Iraqis killed by Saddam Hussein’s forces after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. “If we hadn’t invaded,” the reasoning goes, “Saddam Hussein would still be filling mass graves with innocent people and, therefore, the president’s invasion of Iraq was justified after all.”

Those Iraqi mass graves are actually just one more reminder of the moral bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy and specifically U.S. policy toward Iraq for the past 20 years.

[EricaLubarsky]

Again no one in America wanted Saddam in power and two wrongs dont make a right. They make two wrongs.

It is good that Saddam is gone. It is not good that he killed and it is not good that we killed thousands of inncent people. The issue is more complex than "Bush is the good cowboy" and more complex than "Bush is a pompous ass". Bush defied international and national opinion, sovereignty and international law to invade Iraq. That is the good act that he did but until security is established in Iraq the citizens of Iraq are no safer than they were before.

You have never answered the idea that Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda. He wasn't. The only terrorism he was involved with was Hamas and that hadnt happened for 10 years. Whether Saddam's removal was good or not, Osama Bin Laden and other radical/militant muslim leaders wanted us to invade Iraq because the tens if not hundreds of thousands of injured and killed muslims could look at the invasion as an act of aggression against Islam. How is the war in Iraq related to September 11th and how is the war in Iraq making us safer?

Saying that Democrats were "Saddam Lovers" is just irresponsible and slanderous. Trying to find alternative solutions that dont kill thousands of civilians is not accepting the status quo, it is pro-actively seeking non-violent solutions to world problems. Even you should know that that is a stretch.

the link...probably won't show up
United Press International, July 23, 2003 p1008204w6343
9/11 report: No Iraq link to al-Qaida.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 United Press International

WASHINGTON, Jul 23, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX)

The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.

"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.

Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.

Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Cleland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers."

The revelation is likely to embarrass the Bush administration, which made links between Saddam's support for bin Laden -- and the attendant possibility that Iraq might supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction -- a major plank of its case for war.

So Much For The WMD: America's top weapons sleuth says the intelligence on Iraq's arms was all wrong. TIME reports on how the CIA blew it.
Time, Feb 9, 2004 v163 i6 p42
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 Time, Inc.
Byline: Michael Duffy/Washington Reported by Timothy J. Burger, Massimo Calabresi, Matthew Cooper, Mark Thompson and Adam Zagorin/Washington

CIA Chief George Tenet was certain David Kay was the best bloodhound to set loose in Iraq last summer to sniff for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Tenet reasoned that if anyone could find the stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological arms on which the Bush Administration had predicated its unprecedented, pre-emptive attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, it was Kay. The Texan had spent 20 years as an international weapons inspector, with several tours in Iraq. Hard-nosed and fiercely independent, Kay, 63, had a vast network of friends at the Pentagon and the CIA--and among Iraqis in Baghdad. A political conservative, he sent the Bush campaign a check for $200 not long after Bush began his quest for the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 1999, and he supported a tough line on Saddam. When Tenet tapped Kay as the "ideal person" to lead a 1,400-strong WMD search party last June, Kay sounded neither daunted nor doubtful. "I'm confident," he told NBC, "that we will reach the goal of understanding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, including where weapons are, where weapons may have been moved and the exact status of that program at the time the war commenced."

Ideal is about the last word anyone on Team Bush is using to describe what Kay is saying now. After his Iraq Survey Group spent seven months visiting hundreds of sites, interviewing thousands of Iraqis and sifting through millions of documents, Kay announced last week that it had uncovered no WMD in Iraq and was "highly unlikely" to turn up any in the future.

In two separate turns before Senate committees, Kay politely shredded some of the Administration's most resilient--and repeated--claims of Saddam's vaunted weapons programs, fingered flawed analysis at the CIA and only halfheartedly encouraged his colleagues to keep looking for the mystery arms. "Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong," said Kay. "It is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there."