Why do you hate al-Qaeda?

[Arta]

Howso? They were being oppressed, and now, in their eyes, they're being opressed by the US instead of by Hussein/Taliban. Once again -- from their perspective -- what's the difference?

[quasi-modo]

Howso? They were being oppressed, and now, in their eyes, they're being opressed by the US instead of by Hussein/Taliban. Once again -- from their perspective -- what's the difference?

There is a huge difference. You see if we were free and were suddenly oppressed we would be all pissed off because our freedom was just taken. But if they still see themselves as being oppressed, no freedom has been taken from them. I am not going to believe because someone says so that the majority of people in Iraq feel oppressed when you have stuff like this:

This is a letter from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq:





As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two week leave back home. And just so you can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would pass this on to you. This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently: (Please share it with your friends and compare it to the version that your paper is producing.)


* Over 400,000 kids have up-to-date immunizations.


* School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.


* Over 1,500 schools have been renovated and rid of the weapons stored there so education can occur.


* The port of Uhm Qasar was renovated so grain can be off-loaded from ships faster.


* The country had its first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.


* Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.


* The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the war.


* 100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed, compared to 35% before the war.


* Elections are taking place in every major city, and city councils are in place.


* Sewer and water lines are installed in every major city.


* Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.


* Over 100,000 Iraqi civil defense police are securing the country.


* Over 80,000 Iraqi soldiers are patrolling the streets side by side with US soldiers.


* Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever.


* Students are taught field sanitation and hand washing techniques to prevent the spread of germs.


* An interim constitution has been signed.


* Girls are allowed to attend school.


* Textbooks that don't mention Saddam are in the schools for the first time in 30 years.


Don't believe for one second that these people do not want us there. I have met many, many people from Iraq that want us there, and in a bad way. They say they will never see the freedoms we talk about but they hope their children will. We are doing a good job in Iraq and I challenge anyone, anywhere to dispute me on these facts. If you are like me and very disgusted with how this period of rebuilding has been portrayed, email this to a friend and let them know there are good things happening.


Ray Reynolds, SFC Iowa Army National Guard

PS: I first read this letter a long time ago, since this was written it has only gotten better.

[Arta]

I don't think the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr would agree with you, and therein lies the point. What is fact is not what is important in this case. What is important is what the other guys think. Regardless of what progress the coalition has made in Iraq, and I don't deny there has been progress, there are still people (probably a minority, I agree) who consider the coalition to be occupiers. By fighting these people, one only strengthens that argument. Thus, the more we fight them, the more of them we create, and the worse the problem becomes.

I don't claim to be aware of any good solution to this problem, other than to not let it arise in the first place: and that is the very reason I have opposed the war in Iraq since before it even started.

[Hazard]

al-Sadr and his regieme would not agree because they believe in a skewed perversion of the Koran.

[quasi-modo]

I don't think the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr would agree with you, and therein lies the point. What is fact is not what is important in this case. What is important is what the other guys think. Regardless of what progress the coalition has made in Iraq, and I don't deny there has been progress, there are still people (probably a minority, I agree) who consider the coalition to be occupiers. By fighting these people, one only strengthens that argument. Thus, the more we fight them, the more of them we create, and the worse the problem becomes.

I don't claim to be aware of any good solution to this problem, other than to not let it arise in the first place: and that is the very reason I have opposed the war in Iraq since before it even started.

reread my post...notice I said majority. Plus the only way to deal with them is fight them, because they are ex military from Iraq that wants their rank back they are not just going to be happy if we are nice to them. We cant just give them a hug and expect for the problems to go away. You saying that we should not fight them makes you wrong. It may give them a little propoganda but it is the only way to deal with them and it does work. The affect of their propoganda is most likely negligible.

[Arta]

I did read your post (note: (probably a minority, I agree)) but I'm not sure if you're reading mine. How effective is fighting ever going to be if fighting just makes more enemies to fight? I'm not only talking about the insurgents in Iraq. Our actions in iraq now could make enemies out of people who won't have the wherewithall to do anything to us for years, or decades. In most cases, perhaps never - but the more people there are that have anti-western feelings, the higher the percentage will be that resort to terrorism.

Even if a war solves a part of problem in the short term, it won't solve any of it in the long term.

[quasi-modo]

I am not saying that we are not pissing some people off when we make them leave a town so we can go house to house to get rid of weapons. But what I am saying is it is the only way. Being benevolent is not going to make these people stop attacking us. T he Iraqi insurgents want power, unless they get control of the country they will not stop. So beating them with a stick is the only method. I think we will piss some people off, but I do not think that is going to be that huge of a problem, I feel we are going to make more people unhappy but they will just be unhappy for a little while until their quality of life increases a bunch because we have removed most of the insurgents who are destroying the infrastructure of the country.

[Arta]

That, or you'll end up fighting a guerilla war for years on end, getting bogged down in the internal conflict of a country that we needn't have invaded in the first place. I don't know of a good solution now that we are in it. All the solutions are bad. I don't claim to have the answers.

Like I said before, the only good solution was not to invade Iraq in the first place.

[quasi-modo]

Like I said before, the only good solution was not to invade Iraq in the first place.

Even that is not a good solution. If we did not do something saddam was going to keep holding his own people hostage until the snactions were lifted, he was going to keep rewarding palestinian terrorism, he was going to keep letting terrorists from afganistan operate within his borders (many operatives fled from afganistan after we invaded and wen tot Iraq, we found camps south of baghdad loosly affiliated with alquida and the talaban). Doing nothing does not make the terrorists leave us alone... keep in mind it was not a military strike that prompted the cole, 9/11, or any of the embasssay bombings. Unless you are one of the people who says that the us support of Israel and the first golf war are the cause.

[Arta]

None of the reasons you cited were ever mentioned Bush or Blair in the lead up to the war, as far as I remember.

Either way, I don't believe that there were no diplomatic solutions to the problems you mention.

[quasi-modo]

None of the reasons you cited were ever mentioned Bush or Blair in the lead up to the war, as far as I remember.

Either way, I don't believe that there were no diplomatic solutions to the problems you mention.

Diplomatic solutions? Like what? The corrupt un magically fixing things? Diplomacy has never worked with Saddam. He was always evacive. Look at the first golf war, after the war we had weapons inspecters. Note how long it took them to find weapons because saddam was hiding them and moving them. They guy was not going to cooperate.

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

Yeah...if anyone says the UN could have solved it I think I'm going to have to shoot you invade your country and set up oil refineries.

[Arta]

Interesting... the UN is corrupt, eh? It did a pretty good job in the first gulf war. Perhaps it's corrupt because it disagreed with the US...

[Stealth]

Interesting... the UN is corrupt, eh? It did a pretty good job in the first gulf war. Perhaps it's corrupt because it disagreed with the US...

It looks like the Oil for Food program may have been a bit on the corrupt side. But the investigation is still underway.

The UN has passed a whopping 17 resolutions condemning Iraq, the most strongly-worded of which very clearly condemns Iraq for noncompliance with the other resolutions and authorizes member states to use "all necessary means" to enforce the prior resolutions and "to restore international peace and security in the area". It was clear from the start that Saddam has been systematically deceiving, toying as a cat would with a ball of yarn, with the United Nations. More "strongly-worded memos", as MadTV put it, were not going to force this man to comply and become a normal part of the world community.

Empathize for a second. You are George W. Bush in early 2003. You are now facing intelligence data from the CIA, as well as several foreign services including our good friends the Israelis and England that says in no uncertain terms that Saddam Hussein is attempting to create chemical and biological weapons. You know for a fact that Saddam doesn't like you -- that's common knowledge. As a result of this dislike, it's almost certain that Saddam would turn a blind eye to terrorist groups operating within Iraq -- probable, even, that he may supply them with the tools they would need to strike back at America. Saddam would have liked nothing better, and I'm sure would still like nothing better, than to see the great Satan humiliated in front of the world community.

In my eyes, Bush's decision was quite simple. Take preemptive action to shut down any possibility of chemical or biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups through Iraq, or continue living with the (at the time) intelligence-confirmed threat of that happening.

I see nothing wrong with that decision, he is simply doing what he believes is right for America, and at the time, it was clearly the choice to make. It upsets me when he's called a liar or a cheat. We disagree vehemently on how to get it done, but everybody, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, is determined to make America a better place.

For those of you not from America, consider for a moment what an established, democratic Iraq could mean for peace and stability in the region. Before you go bastardizing our actions, think of the positive benefits of having a self-governed, Western-friendly nation in the heart of the middle east. When we succeed (as it can't be a matter of IF anymore) Iraq will gradually work its way back into the global community of which it has been an exile since Hussein took control. When we pull it off, consider the possibillity of democracy spreading to other countries nearby. It's an amazing prospect.

[Hazard]

Interesting... the UN is corrupt, eh? It did a pretty good job in the first gulf war. Perhaps it's corrupt because it disagreed with the US...

The estimated $21.5 billion in the Oil-For-Food scam disagrees with that statment.