So long, Dubya

[El Kabong]

The war with Iraq was going to happen 9/11 or no 9/11 that's the 100% truth. Clinton was taking a harder stand against Saddam before he left office....the execution of the war was FUBAR and that was the responsibility of Bush and his Cabinet but once Rumsfeld was out the door things got a lot better....Obama had better close out the show in a good way or else he's going to be branded as "owning defeat" and even though he is the President and he doesn't like the war he doesn't want to have a negative effect on Iraq and Afghanistan as his legacy.

[CGM]

Part of me thinks there is a certain element of US's enemies that is happy to see the US forces in Iraq, and are in no big hurry to see them leave. A group like A.Q. for example is perfectly happy to have a place to engage US in guerilla warfare, keep them busy, and the welfare of the Iraq people is not their primary concern. Ergo A.Q. would have preferred Bush stay in power longer, or that a guy like McCain get elected. Just a hunch, I can't exactly prove it.

[Trainer Monkey]

Part of me thinks there is a certain element of US's enemies that is happy to see the US forces in Iraq, and are in no big hurry to see them leave. A group like A.Q. for example is perfectly happy to have a place to engage US in guerilla warfare, keep them busy, and the welfare of the Iraq people is not their primary concern. Ergo A.Q. would have preferred Bush stay in power longer, or that a guy like McCain get elected. Just a hunch, I can't exactly prove it.

Thats been my feeling,since we've been there we've practically been making their recruiting posters for them every time we screw up,and as much of a cluster f the chain of command is,we screw up alot.

[porkypara]

The war with Iraq was going to happen 9/11 or no 9/11 that's the 100% truth. Clinton was taking a harder stand against Saddam before he left office....the execution of the war was FUBAR and that was the responsibility of Bush and his Cabinet but once Rumsfeld was out the door things got a lot better....Obama had better close out the show in a good way or else he's going to be branded as "owning defeat" and even though he is the President and he doesn't like the war he doesn't want to have a negative effect on Iraq and Afghanistan as his legacy.

The war in Iraq is a discrace to America and Britian.

We had the terroists on the run in Afghanistan and we left them off the hook and created a whole new country for them to wage there war in.

If you beleve in taking the fight to the terroists as I do,by starting the war in Iraq all we have done is made our world a more dangerous place for our children to live in.

[Master]

And I can never forgive Blair for joining in like a poodle.

[El Kabong]

And I can never forgive Blair for joining in like a poodle.

He had to, England started the problem to begin with....not with Saddam or WMDs but just with the Middle East in general

[X]

And I can never forgive Blair for joining in like a poodle.

He had to, England started the problem to begin with....not with Saddam or WMDs but just with the Middle East in general

Yes indeed ..... when the civilisation of Ur was conquered by the Hittites, then came the Babylonians, Assyrians, Scythians and Persians in one blood soaked conquest after another - when the Israelites invaded and conquered the Philistines and others and took their land, when the Arabs under Mohammad conquered the whole thing afterwards in one never-ending cycle of generational hatred etc etc etc etc.

That was All England's fault.

[El Kabong]

X the generational hatred isn't England's fault but the more modern POLITICAL issues are more from England's doing than the US.

[X]

Well, not in the last ten years or so (I wouldn't have thought), but certainly some of the problems before that are due to Britain redrawing maps. But that is only an interim - that region has been fighting since the dawn of man and don't let them blame anyone else for it.

I'd agree that historically, Britain - not just England - has quite a bit to answer for. That is just the way history works. I like to blame the English though

Your grandchildren will be feeling remorse and (unfair) guilt for America's role in their current problems. Like it or not, call it what you like, America is today's world Empire.

I'm sure there was some Babylonian getting shit from an Israelite in about 65BC ...... history repeats itself through endless cycles because we are too stupid to change our base behaviours despite seeing it all before.

[Trainer Monkey]

Iraqi shoe hurler inspires art in Saddam hometown - Yahoo! News

[Kirkland Laing]

The war with Iraq was going to happen 9/11 or no 9/11 that's the 100% truth. Clinton was taking a harder stand against Saddam before he left office....the execution of the war was FUBAR and that was the responsibility of Bush and his Cabinet but once Rumsfeld was out the door things got a lot better....Obama had better close out the show in a good way or else he's going to be branded as "owning defeat" and even though he is the President and he doesn't like the war he doesn't want to have a negative effect on Iraq and Afghanistan as his legacy.

The war in Iraq is a discrace to America and Britian.

We had the terroists on the run in Afghanistan and we left them off the hook and created a whole new country for them to wage there war in.

If you beleve in taking the fight to the terroists as I do,by starting the war in Iraq all we have done is made our world a more dangerous place for our children to live in.

I would say that the terrorists we're fighting in these countries aren't really the terrorists we need to worry about. I think they're more like Afghans/Iraqis who are pissed off that we're occupying their countries so are fighting us. There are a bunch of people from other countries there but these guys are just muslim good ol' boys who want to physically fight the infidel. Basically guys with guns in their hands are no problem at all outside the countries they live in and no problem in the countries they live in provided we're not there too.

The people we need to worry about are guys like mohammed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader. Atta was an engineering graduate who spoke five languages, not one of the head-chopping yahoos you get going to physically fight in Iraq etc. He decided to become a terrorist watching the Sabra/Shatila massacres and the world's indifferent response/complicity to/with them. Somebody somewhere just watched the Israelis having fun in Gaza and decided the same thing, and we'll see the results of that in a decade or so.

Fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is self-defeating in terms of reducing terrorism. Every available American serviceman was in Iraq and couldn't stop it becoming the world centre of terrorism. I come from a part of the world where a lot of people go into the military. A lot of my friends did and one is still in although he transferred to the ASustralian army a couple of years ago. I went to bury my auntie last March and there were four headstones in the row already in the cemetery. One was the son of a guy I grew up with who'd just died in Afghanistan. The ages on the headstones were 82, 63, 67 and 18. And he died for no good reason, just for the vanity of politicians. They already know they've lost in Afghanistan and are privately planning to hand it over to a benevolent dicattor-type in a few years, but until they do young men will keep being killed on both sides for no reason, and the young men killed on the other side will create generations of new terrorists.

So we need to take the fight to them in other ways. Stopping the injustices in that part of the world that are easily in our power would be a good start, but that would take strong leadership. much easier to send in the military, watch your approval ratings soar and leave a bigger problem to the next leader.