I'm not dumb enough to say they weren't directing some attacks. :D
I just doubt we'll immediately see the resistance collapse.
I can appreciate the great need and everyone's desire to find those two, but The Hussein boys orchestrated the death of and played direct roles in the torture and killing of thousands. They were like version 2.0 and 2.0a of Saddam. I think there can be the tiniest bit of cheering that they are getting pimp slapped by Allah right now.Originally Posted by graller
Tyjenks,
There are many tyrants and killers in this world, Idi Amin comes to mind. But none of them killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil on 9/11. Let's not lose track of the ball.
I never said they killed any Americans on our soil. I do not think the two are connected directly to 9/11 in any way. I was referring to the thousands of their own people they killed which are sprinkled liberally through the countryside.
Irrespective of why we went or why we are still in Iraq, I still say, while we are over there, 2 dead Hussein boys makes the world a slightly better place than it was when they were alive sewing their boyish oats.
I think we should all be able to agree on that. I think it would have been a hell of a lot better if we'd captured them, but either way, I'm certainly glad that they're out of the picture.
I can imagine that in the hostile environment that exists over there, there is not much room for "come out with your hands up" negotiating. Maybe a couple of months ago a capture may have been attempted. One retired army General tonight said that those type of Special Forces strikes are pretty much go in and take 'em out kill missions. Not much wiggle room for taking prisoners.I think we should all be able to agree on that. I think it would have been a hell of a lot better if we'd captured them, but either way, I'm certainly glad that they're out of the picture.
Agreed, and while I don't think their death alone will have that much impact on what our troops are facing, if we can now find and take out Sadaam himself, with all three gone armed resistance will drop very significantly. Sadaam is the most important, but while any of the three were alive, that would have given someone for the Baathists to rally around. So this was an important step in the right direction.
I'm just surprised that it took graller commenting on my 2 posts before anyone paid attention to the fact that after nearly 2 years we still haven't gotten Osama bin Laden. We seem to be more worried about Saddam and his sons. My point is, let's not forget why we began this war in the first place. Many will say that Saddam is part of that, part of the terrorists trying to hurt Americans. Osama is still out there, why not concentrate on getting him first?
I think it's silly to assume that they didn't even try to capture them. They went with 200 men, I imagine surrounded the building and attempted to gain entry. I think it's retarded to think we just lined up and shot apart the house without warning. We know the value of the intel they may have provided, but sometimes your options are limited. Our armed forces haven't, you know, mastered magic or transporter technology, and when people shoot at us we tend to go ahead and shoot back.
And we did take three men alive, this wasn't a scortched earth thing, we could have dropped a daisy cutter on the neighborhood, after all. That we went in with infantry is pretty convincing evidense we wanted them alive.
Hey Dirt. Actually from my point of view, Osama has nothing to do with why we went into this war. We went into this war because Bush and company wanted to have a war. We went in because Saddam tried to kill George W's dad. The supposed Iraq - 9/11 connection is a lot of bull, which Bush pulled out and did a great job of convincing the American people in spite of the fact that Iraq has absolutely no connection with 9/11.
Osama is far, far more important than Saddam for the security of the United States. However, having said that, we are now in Iraq for better or for worse. We do have troops getting killed on almost a daily basis. So for their safety, killing Saddam's sons is an important step. Does this reduce the chances of a terrorist attack in the US? No, at least not below the level it was at before we managed to piss off large number of Arabs by invading Iraq. Does this somewhat reduce the chances that some poor 18 year old US army enlistee is going to get killed in Iraq next week? Probably somewhat.
Also I assume we're going to bag Saddam sooner or later. He's in a fairly limited geographic area. His resources are shrinking. While he's got a lot of supporters, he's also got lots of people who hate his guts. Osama is going to be a lot harder to catch. He could be practically anywhere. And while I'm sure he has people who don't like him, by and large the people in the areas he's in probably love and revere him, there are probably only a small number of Arabs who don't like Osama. There are many, many Iraqis who hate Saddam and would be very happy to turn him in with or without the $25 million on his head.
I do agree with you we completely dropped the ball and got distracted by the whole Iraq thing when we should have been concentrating on Al Qaeda.
And the CBC and BBC reports that I saw showed mixed reaction from Iraqis. In one scene, American troops had to fire into the air to disperse a pissed-off mob, either in Baghdad or Mosul. It's not all celebrating. Though I think this is a great thing, it's not going to curtail the attacks, and in the short term might even increase them (even Bremer admitted that to Larry King). I do hope that they release the photos of the bodies today. Hell, put Uday and Qusay's heads on poles. The people who were tortured by these monsters deserve a little satisfaction from seeing them dead.
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/20...opicview.shtml
I saw your mention of Osama all 12 times. I have not nor do I think anyone in the Intelligence community or Bush has forgotten about Osama. We all want him captured and, preferably, dead. I believe we are still trying to catch him. To say we have forgotten about him simply because we are not getting daily updates by news outlets on the search is a little nutty. So, if we capture Saddam are you going to say, so what, where's Osama? We cannot just put a halt ot all activities in all other countries and funnel all resources to the Osama search.
There are probably American, British and Afghanistani Intelligence people in and around the Afghanistan situation that are following leads or searching buildings even as we speak. Unfortunately, the news crew have all moved to Iraq, Kobe Bryant's house, or West Virginia to watch Jessica Lynch wave. If nothing else, the Bush administration would be insured a 2004 victory if the death of Osama was carried out. I think they want him found more than any of us.
So Rollory, do you want to add anything to that? What do you think? Or does this unknown blogger speak completely for you?http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/20...opicview.shtml
As far as your link goes, the reason why the left's new refrain is "Bush lied about the reason for attacking Iraq. He claimed that Iraq tried to purchase Uranium from Africa, and that wasn't true." is because it's a good argument. Similarly the right's standard refrain seems to be "Saddam was a monster and the people of Iraq are incalculably better off now without him." I don't think it's as strong of an argument because there are indeed many other monsters out there that we could be taking on right now, if that's why we invaded Iraq. Why the hesitation on situation in Liberia if our foreign policy is all about helping people against bad government.
Having you point us to a website which repeats these standard arguments isn't by itself particularly interesting. I don't want to come down to hard on you as you've only got 4 posts and you might actually be a pretty cool guy, so don't take this next comment personally -- it might not fit you at all, I can't tell yet. But I've always thought one of the saddest aspects of Rush Limbaugh was the fact that his groupies called themselves Dittoheads. As if all they could say was "ditto", they couldn't actually think for themselves. That's what your post here looks like -- "I can't think for myself I'm just going to parrot the conservative line, here's a link so you can read about what I'm supposed to think." Personally, I participate in discussions at Qt3 because I'm interested in discourse and seeing what other people actually think. I don't need Qt3 to read what conservative or liberal pundits are saying, I can do that without coming here.
So, do you completely agree with the argument that the invasion was justified because Saddam was a monster? Do you think Bush's exagerations were justified because Saddam was a monster? Do you think it doesn't matter whether or not the president lied to us in order to get us to go to war, because he actually knew what was right for the country, but realized that if he was honest with us, he couldn't have got us to do that?
I'll tell you what I think about the right wing argument. I agree that Saddam was a monster. I would have been supportive of us going in, if we had had UN support. I don't think Bush spent enough time gaining UN support (he couldn't even get NATO to support him) and I am worried that he has caused long term damage to our foreign relations. It has been gut wrenching to watch the world's broad heartfelt post-9/11 support for America dissolve into the current almost worldwide condemnation and abhorrence for America. I'm particularly saddened because I think Bush could have done things much slower and gotten the support he needed.
So was Saddam being a monster a sufficient reason by itself for going in? Perhaps, but only if it had been handled in a way that did not cause a breach in our relations with our long term allies. Taking out a monster of a dictator who was not a direct threat to the US was not worth damaging our relationship with Europe and was not worth damaging the NATO alliance. Bush lying about the amount of WMD and about how little we knew about the WMD is also damaging America's credibility. That's going to hurt us next time when we're telling the truth. We're going to become the boy who cried "Wolf".
I'm hardly a peacenik. This is the first US military action in the past 20 or so years that I can recall that I really have opposed. I thought George Herbert Walker Bush was a great president and was 100% behind him for Gulf War I. But George W's foreign policies in my opinion have been a complete disaster. Plus, as Dirt and Graller have pointed out, what about Osama. He's far more of a threat to us. And what about Afghanistan? Are we just going to blow things out there because we've got a brand new sandbox to play in, so we don't care about the old one?
Okay Rollery, your turn. Do you really think the left wing argument has no merit at all? Does the end justifies the means? Or do you really sense that there are shades of grey and that perhaps Bush shouldn't be too proud of how he got us into this, even if maybe going in was the right thing to do?
I agree with the above and will add two points - Show me Iraq is better off then it was before!! How's the electricity situation? Running water? Police? People shooting and killing each other in the streets....how is this "better" for the average Iraqi then what they had before? Can you explain this to the families of the thousands of Iraqi civilians who were killed for doing nothing????
I am not a peacenik either....I would have had no problem if a real coalition of our allies had decided to end the evil of Saddam....but that's not what happened. The Brits and the US claimed they were ridding the world of a man with WMD and no one believed us - rightfully - and then we pissed off every country that had any sympathy with us after 9/11 and played cowboy in Iraq....
Bring it on
And here we are still making threatening noise with Iran and Syria...
Oh and funny but scarily true - In Touch magazine ran a little truth or fiction rumor section - My wife gets it sometimes....and the rumor was W likes to sit around and watch war movies for his entertainment/relaxation after a tough day in the White House - and its TRUE - was confirmed by a PR flack in the White House...
Yeah, I'm certain that our Special Ops squads couldn't possibly have managed to capture FOUR PEOPLE. Yep. We just don't train them well enough to do that, evidentally.I can imagine that in the hostile environment that exists over there, there is not much room for "come out with your hands up" negotiating. Maybe a couple of months ago a capture may have been attempted. One retired army General tonight said that those type of Special Forces strikes are pretty much go in and take 'em out kill missions. Not much wiggle room for taking prisoners.I think we should all be able to agree on that. I think it would have been a hell of a lot better if we'd captured them, but either way, I'm certainly glad that they're out of the picture.
Awfully easy to sit here and speculate on how easy it is to do this and that. Apparently they attempted to get them to surrender and it was clear they were not going to be able to quickly capture them without the risk of the loss of a number of American lives - as you might imagine, it wasn't simply 4 guys sitting in a room. The other fear was that there could be another set of escape tunnels under that building and while we waited, they dissapeared. I also wonder, just my speculation, if they might have thought that the longer they waited the more chance that whoever was inside mught be destroying documents, maps, letters from Dad, etc.
On the Bin Ladin issue: why the assumption that we're not trying hard to track him down? Because the press isn't focused on that? There's a lot going on in the Afghanistan area that the press isn't covering - for example, Special Ops tracked down and took out a pretty good sized pack of Al Qeda this past week in the mountains of Afghanistan (I believe there were about 25 - 50 of them, which is a pretty big grouping of those guys these days.) I would be very surprised if we don't have special ops all over the world (and certainly in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area) tracking down every lead we can follow on Bin Ladin. Just because the executives at the news and networks are highlighting it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
How about, the reality may have been "we couldn't capture these particular four people who happened to be holed up in a building and putting up a fuckload of resistance without suffering disproportionate casualties"?
Sorry, I just don't understand this wellspring of bitterness I've seen here and many other places over the idea that we didn't somehow capture these guys.
The briefing I heard this morning went like this:
Troops surrounded the compound and issued the surrender command via bullhorn.
Troops entered the house and received AK47 gunfire from the fortified 2nd floor, wounding 4 soldiers.
American commander called up Humvees with 50-cal machine guns and they peppered the place with lead for a while.
Troops attempted to reenter the house and again received gunfire as they attempted to climb the stairs.
American commander called up Humvees with TOW missiles and a few helicopters and rocketed the place for a bit.
Troops entered the house for a third time. They killed the one remaining gunman inside.
Yep, they should have charged right up those stairs and got themselves shot trying to capture them!
From what I here, there were (at least) 7 in the house; 4 were killed, the rest were captured wounded but alive (don't know if there are still alive).
Since I said some of this much more clumsily on both points, I thought I would quote it again because Lackey's common sense reasoning may need a second read through for some.Awfully easy to sit here and speculate on how easy it is to do this and that. Apparently they attempted to get them to surrender and it was clear they were not going to be able to quickly capture them without the risk of the loss of a number of American lives - as you might imagine, it wasn't simply 4 guys sitting in a room. The other fear was that there could be another set of escape tunnels under that building and while we waited, they dissapeared. I also wonder, just my speculation, if they might have thought that the longer they waited the more chance that whoever was inside mught be destroying documents, maps, letters from Dad, etc.
On the Bin Ladin issue: why the assumption that we're not trying hard to track him down? Because the press isn't focused on that? There's a lot going on in the Afghanistan area that the press isn't covering - for example, Special Ops tracked down and took out a pretty good sized pack of Al Qeda this past week in the mountains of Afghanistan (I believe there were about 25 - 50 of them, which is a pretty big grouping of those guys these days.) I would be very surprised if we don't have special ops all over the world (and certainly in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area) tracking down every lead we can follow on Bin Ladin. Just because the executives at the news and networks are highlighting it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
One thing that is better in Iraq. Mass graves are not being filled to their brims with innocent Iraqi citizens by Saddam, his sons, and the former regime. I am pretty sure we have stopped that.
For me it's the lack of success in capturing him. It's been two years now. We still don't have him in custody? I that indicates we're not trying hard enough.
As for the thing about the brothers, I think you are correct. It would have been nice to take those two alive, but I am not ready to second guess why that did not happen. I wonder if there were any reporters with the group that were assigned this task.
Too bad no one's doing Shorter Steven denBeste anymore. The guy usually has a couple decent points buried in his long tirades, but damn if I'm going to sit there and read it all.
I am glad you didn't say that innocent Iraqi citizens have stopped dying violent deaths. Becasue it seems there is still got a lot of that going on in Iraq.
Not by the thousands and at the whim of some irritable 30-somethings, however.I am glad you didn't say that innocent Iraqi citizens have stopped dying violent deaths. Becasue it seems there is still got a lot of that going on in Iraq.
Here.Too bad no one's doing Shorter Steven denBeste anymore. The guy usually has a couple decent points buried in his long tirades, but damn if I'm going to sit there and read it all.
Alas, he could't keep up. One wonders where Beste gets the free time.Besides, people don't necessarily want a Smarter Stephen den Beste. Part of the joy is watching a man who knows nothing about anything except the innards of mobile phones trying to understand a complicated world around him with no sources of information other than the Internet. What people want is a Shorter Stephen den Beste; one that doesn't take about ten thousand words to get from A to halfway through the downstroke of B. So I'll be posting one-sentence summaries of posts on the USS Clueless, on a reasonably regular basis, until I get bored. Here's today's batch:
By dozens and at the fear of teens and 20-somethings. Progress!
I think he makes some good points. I think it isn't as clear-cut as he suggests. I tossed the link out because I think that article is the best summing-up of that particular viewpoint that I've seen, and I hadn't noticed anyone here arguing that particular position.So Rollory, do you want to add anything to that? What do you think? Or does this unknown blogger speak completely for you?
Den Beste's point though is that none of those other monsters (with the notable exception of Kim Jong Il) have indicated that they would be so bold/foolish as to directly attack the US. With Muslim/Islamic terrorists, though, they loudly proclaim their intention to do just that, and have in fact done so. Priorities are therefore obvious.
The Liberians, while barbaric, aren't about to blow up skyscrapers because they think we're meddling with them.
That was not the intention. It's a well-laid-out (IMO) argument that I haven't seen stated in so many words here (yet).
No offense taken with the Limbaugh thing, btw. You can be a lot nastier than that before I'll get mad.
Den Beste has had a lot to say about this kind of thing too, and I know I'm erring on the dittohead side here again, but essentially his argument is that the Europeans (in particular) don't have the same strategic interests as the US anymore, so getting UN/NATO cooperation (to the extent that the cooperation should have happened for it to be worthwhile) just wasn't really possible if the thing was to be done at all.
Well, answer me this: what exactly is the worth of the relationship with Europe and the NATO alliance? What positive influence was there in the world (based on those things) in, say, 2000, that is no longer present today? What, exactly, has been damaged or destroyed?
The thing that is coming clear here is that all those international institutions, in the end, rested on the willingness of somebody to enforce them, and right now the only force around is the US. Whether that is a good thing or a disastrous thing is another discussion entirely, but it is actual fact
Of course cooperation and assistance from others is always useful. Best example, right now, having extra troops in Iraq to let US soldiers have some slack and maybe come home sooner would be great. But there sure won't be any French or German troops helping that way. Again, though, what exactly is the value of that? When the Dutch were in charge of Srebrenica, they very politely stepped aside to let the Serbs murder thousands. The French oil ties with Iraq are so deep and strong they're unbelievable - they're not going to help put their old Baathist buddies in jail, they're going to get them out and set them up with villas, and take any opportunities they can to tweak the US's nose.
Bosnia is still not any kind of country or grouping of societies. It's a giant subsidized make-work camp and black market. That's how things work out when the UN and Europe are in charge. I'm not sure having just overworked Americans in Iraq can be all that much worse.
I'm not sure that's clear. I think we'll find out, one way or another, before another year goes by, with North Korea. I suspect that what's going to happen is that the US is going to make a lot of noise about Korean nukes, there'll be a lot more talk, and then there's going to be military action (the only way out of that is if NK collapses internally first). That could go either pretty well or disastrously wrong for the entire region and maybe California too, but either way, the NEXT time the US sends a country a WMD cease-and-desist, you may see a substantial attempt to comply, regardless of the validity of the evidence.
It isn't evidence and international legality that really counts anymore. What counts is 1) does the President of the USA think it is necessary, 2) can he survive it politically. What Bush has done here is to indicate pretty strongly that US threats aren't something to be dismissed. As a matter of credibility, I would claim that actually enhances it.
There's the "right" kind of credibility, of course ...
No he's not. It's not even clear he's alive - he's missed tons of great propaganda opportunities. Even if he is, he hasn't DONE anything, and in the end that's what's important - that there be no more terrorist attacks against the US.
I think it's been absolutely clear to anybody with half a brain that Iraq was a problem that was sooner or later going to have to be finished ever since Bush Sr. overruled Schwarzkopf, and now is better than never, for whatever pretext. I think the left in general has been too rabid foaming-at-the-mouth hateful of Bush to even consider whether anything he does is worthwhile. I think Bush himself is too authoritarian (Ashcroft has got to go) and perhaps a bit of a demagogue, but I can't argue too much with his foreign policy. (I've tried. Mainly arguing with Den Beste. I keep losing the arguments)
I don't think "NATO was useless anyway" is a really good starting point.
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