#1: AMERICAN OIL COMPANIES HAVE SEIZED IRAQI ASSETS
Recently, a good friend of mine indignantly recited something they'd heard from someone else: that Exxon Mobil is making some $73,000/minute in profit, and that this has to do with their involvement in Iraq.

I checked neutral business and commerce reports, including those from watchdog groups: Exxon Mobil has no holdings in Iraq. It was only this month, on 3 April 2008, that 35 oil consortiums around the world were even approved for bidding on Iraqi oil contracts. Most of these are non-American companies, and most of them are government-owned, including those belonging to France, Britain, China and the Netherlands.

Up until this point, the only money being made on Iraqi oil has been in terms of reconstruction contracts, repairing damage done in 1991 and later through neglect by the Hussein regime from 1992 - 2003. The Iraqi Oil Ministry currently possesses all access to Iraqi oil and receives all revenues from same. The US, incidentally, has been receiving less oil from Iraq since 2003 than it did during the sanctions, even though Iraq has been producing more...instead, Iraq primarily sells to Japan and Europe, its historical customers.


#2: RUMSFELD SHAKES HANDS WITH SADDAM DURING GASSING OF KURDS
Another good friend posted to my LJ saying Donald Rumsfeld was shaking hands with Saddam Hussein while the Kurds were being gassed, so the US was accepting of that atrocity.

The reality is that Rumsfeld's handshake occured in 1983, the Iraqis did not start using chemical weapons against Iran until 1984, and the Kurds were gassed in 1988. The Reagan Administration protested both cases of chemical use and cut off all American aid to Iraq in September 1988 after confirming the attacks on the Kurds. The New York Times, not known as a right-wing publication in favor of Reagan or anyone attached to him, reported this on September 10 of that year.


#3: CHENEY GETS RICH ON IRAQ WAR
Another LJ, from someone I respect, contained the claim that Vice-President Cheney is making a bundle off his stock in Halliburton.

Cheney does not in fact own any Halliburton stock: he owns stock options from when he was a high muckity-muck in the company before becoming veep. This means he gets to buy a certain amount of Halliburton stock at the price which it was valued at when he left the company. He hasn't yet bought any, and his options are frozen until he completes his term as veep, as per standard procedure for any vice-prez.

Immediately after the invasion, Halliburton stock spent two years plunging to record rock-bottom lows before recovering. At this point, it is now 10% more valuable than it was in 2003 --- a marginal 2% average annual profit. Cheney likely would have made more money without the war.


#4: A MILLION DEAD IRAQIS
Of all the estimates of the death count in Iraq, only one exceeds 100,000, let alone one million: the Lancet Report. Even the most recent of these reports did not break one million; that number requires extrapolating the Lancet figures over the last few years on the assumption that the rate of death was unchanged.

The Report based its assumptions on interviews with 1,000 Iraqi households, multiplying the number of death certificates presented or claimed by those households to cover the entire nation. It is these certificates the Report relies on, through extrapolation, to claim over 600,000 deaths had occurred nationwide.

The problem with this is that those 1,000 households collectively claimed a full 1% of all issued death certificates, of which there were fewer than 60,000 at the time. Through simplistic extrapolation, the Report's numbers effectively inflated the number of assumed certificates to more than ten times the number of those that actually existed.

By the same system, one could also conclude that since 1% of all death certificates had been accounted for, Iraq could not contain more than 100,000 households, which if each averaged ten members would give Iraq a total population of only one million...which, according to various of these post-Report extrapolations, means the entire country has been depopulated completely.


#5: THE DOWNING MEMO SHOWS BUSH LIED ABOUT IRAQI WMDS
The memo actually states that Iraq was indeed believed to retain WMDs. The author then went on to ignore the UN's "100% WMD Destruction" mandate by unilaterally declaring that any such stocks were unimportant because Libya, amongst other nations, had more. Libya, however, was not under a UN cease-fire directive requiring it divest itself of WMDs. Iraq was.


#6: HANS BLIX SAID THERE WERE NO WMDS
Blix's January 2003 report to the UN Security Council stated that Iraq had not accounted for WMD stockpiles which had been confirmed by seized Iraqi documentation. This included 1000 metric tonnes of chemical weapons, tens of thousands of WMD-delivery warheads for artillery and missiles, and over 650kg of anthrax growth agent good for some 5000 liters of weaponized biowarfare agent.

While little of this has been found in the aftermath of the invasion, primarily consisting of degraded stockpiles that Hussein's regime had previously declared were completely destroyed (as required by the UN cease-fire terms), there is no question that at one point they did exist. The question of what has become of those stockpiles is one that is commonly ignored by anti-war protestors in favor of the view that they never existed at all.

My friend in Iraq often points out how much Saddamn hid.
Take this for example.



That is a Mig-25 russian fighter plane. One of the most advanced and deadly fighters on earth with capped engines, ready to be dug up, fueled, and flown away. Squadrons of these were hidden in the Iraqi sands, instead of destroyed like they were supposed to be.

And yes tons of illegal and immoral weapons disappeared. Not to mention that in the first hours of the final invasion Saddamn launched the Al-Samoud missiles that he wasn't supposed to have.



btw this is a picture of an iraqi weapons lab with said missiles that wasn't supposed to exist under Saddamn. He may not have had nukes, but he sure as hell broke the rules and had WMDs.

refute this -
#51:IT WAS A STUPID IDEA TO INVADE IRAQ AND NOW WE ARE FUCKED !

The Iraq was has, however, been very very good for the oil companies.

It has been a major factor in driving oil prices to record highs.

In an earlier day, it would have been called "war profiteering."

Too easy. Just ask the troops on the ground, ask their leaders, ask the troops about the positive things that they show the journalists and then notice aren't reported.

Ask the troops about how the reporting doesn't match what they see around them in Iraq.

Ask the troops. Look at their morale, ask them about how they feel about the job they're doing. Sure they're tired and over-stretched but as far as what they see they're not fucked.

If they do say they're fucked, well every troop in every war will say they're fucked. It goes with the job, but when you really ask them how they feel and what they see another truth comes out.

Blix did indeed say that Iraq didn't have any WMDs. I've heard him in many, many interviews since the U.S. pushed him out and went ahead and invaded despite what he reported... He initially believed they were breaking sanctions, but after looking everywhere he came to the conclusion that they just weren't.
I don't know what you're on. Imshard's pics are a joke. That aeroplane will never fly again, but regardless, it's pretty standard practise to either hide or destroy useless, but formally valued weapons like that. (useless because the US has controlled airspace there for years).

As for that missile, it's no "WMD". don't be foolish. Look at the scale. As far as missiles go that thing is tiny. It's probably an anti aircraft missile. Come on man, knowing about weapons tech isn't hard. That reminds me of when the newspaper here published an image of a Mill Mi Hind D rocket pod with the caption "WMD FOUND IN IRAQ". I laughed my arse off. Yes... WMD in the same way as a machine gun could be considered a "WMD" -_-
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Besides, that thing about gassing Kurds? WTF? More Iranians died from the use of chemical weapons during the Iran Iraq war. The Iranian's protested that in the UN and both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. blocked them. That they only cut off relations after 1988 is a very sad indictment.

They actually did find a stockpile of missiles in Iraq while searching. FOX News reported it, CNN didn't. (at the time I had a very conservative college roomie who watched FOX News) And there was controversy about it any way you look at it. Those in favor of the Iraq invasion saw this as their vindication, but those against the war said they weren't the same weapons that allegedly existed when Bush declared war.

Tests revealed the missiles were past their prime and had declined in destructive power. I think they concluded that they were simply buried a long time ago, and there's no telling if Saddam ever had any plans to use them.

Um... what kind of missiles were they Hawk?

That's the thing here. Iraq never had any "WMD" type missiles simply because they were never able to develop any. It takes years of R&D and very obvious tests to develop rockets that are able to be accurate enough, have enough range and power to carry the stuff you need, let alone deploy it. The best Iraq ever had were slightly modified Scuds that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE knew they had and were trying to fix, and all they had for them to carry was high explosive.

That's just not in the WMD league anymore, not since WW2. As far as the mysterious, elusive, non-existent "WMD" go, there was some old disposed off artillery shells (small things, that'd go in a field gun), that were dug up. Those were proved to actually have been disposed off because they were useless.

I'm sure Fox news would use that as a beat up, but frankly, I can't see why even your conservative friend would watch it when it even undermined itself with false exaggerations like that so obviously designed to support the old fabricated reason for war... Something even the Bush administration discarded.

Tell me, what is your definition for WMD scale? How many people have to die in one shot for you to classify it as a WMD? How many acres of land need to be affected? Its not the size of the missile that counts its the payload. Any missile can carry an array of payloads within its weight class. A single Al-Samoud missile armed with a sarin or mustard gas aerial-dispersing warhead could kill or cripple hundreds. Saddam did have the capability to arm chemical weapons, and the inspector controversy was based on the fact that there were known operational weapons facilities that Blix and his teams were not allowed to look at. Additionally the Al-Hussein and Ababbil missiles systems could hit targets as far away as egypt and greece. Not only did he have these ballistic systems built and ready for use but did have the capability to build larger farther reaching missiles. In fact those missiles (the Alabbas and an unnamed 1600km range missile) were in development at the time of the first gulf war. The fact that he actually used chemical weapons proves that he could have built more and had the facilities and expertise. UN sanctions hampered but did not reverse Ba'athist Iraq's position as the holders of WMDs.

Btw, it was the buried gas warheads that were degraded and rusty. A few missiles were destroyed for show, but many of the missiles were well maintained.

EDIT: also the planes were mothballed not decommissioned. i.e. they could fly.

Was that what it was? I couldn't remember the exact classification of the weapons. I think FOX News was calling them WMDs at the time.

The news story really opened my eyes to media bias. FOX News was blowing it out of proportion as if the Bush administration was right all along, and CNN was pretending it didn't happen, as if the latest roadside bombing was bigger news and this wasn't worth even mentioning.

Just so we're clear about this, a buried chemical warhead will still work after 90 years and still be just as useful and deadly.

Just ask the people in Western Europe who die yearly from gas rounds left over from World War One.

Often you'd just have to refresh the primer and you could put throw it in the breech of a gun and fire it.

Ask any EOD guy, no matter how old ordnance is when found, it must be treated as new and active because it can and will go off and most is all too usable after long periods.

Not to minimize the danger of old weapons, hell look at all those poor kids missing limbs because of old land mines, but the "Mass" in WMD implies deaths in the Tens of Thousands and opposed to Hundreds for each indidvidual ordinance. WMD implies things like Nuclear weapons which incinerate cities full of people on impact, then kill as many more with lingering radiation and finally maim and sicken the unlucky survivors.

Even the planes of 911 weren't really WMD's, if those planes had been carrying WMD's then there would be a fetid hole where NYC used to be and hundresds of thousands of people would now be a gruesome footnote to history.

Those were the justifications of the Iraq war. We couldn't risk the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud. There is no piddling with that imagery, Condi wasn't talking about some buried jets or a few stockpiles of conventional missiles, she was invoking WW3 and she was doing it to a frightened populace who just witness the fall of the twin towers. That was, and still is, a lie plain and simple no matter how vigorously you attempt to back pedal.

Just so we get things straight here.

It's not MY definition man. That's how things are. any one of thousands of U.S. little F-16's is more a WMD than anything the Irqi's could ever have launched.

Get a brain man they had no WMD's. Stupid initialisim that is too. It's a fact that Blix noted many a time. This utter rubbish about these missiles hitting Greece? Ugh. You're a guy who likes facts ostensibly, those aren't facts, that's wishful thinking to support Bush mythology. All genuine stories about your silly warhead thing discount that chemical weapon idea. And that should be logical to you since they NEVER HAD any warheads for their missiles because they never got that far with their shitty missile program. Jebus, guys!

That's not how they ever delivered their chemical weapons. The only countries in the world with maintained, working chemical weapons stockpiles of any size are the U.S., Russia, U.K., France Israel and a few more. Look in your own backyards.
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You can call those jets "mothballed" but that's just semantics. They're utterly beyond use. Sorry. And again; burying them is hardly even cause for comment if you know anything at all about war and invasion, just an idle curiosity. next you'll be commenting surprisedly why the Iraqi's even shot back when they were invaded.

HOw long has the US been in Iraq? YOu think we would have have something by now. Don't forget the U.N. did a sweep and found nothing. We bomb the hell of it find nothing. We ocupy it find nothing. HEll when we attacked no WMD or bioagents or gases. I mean when you are attacked and losing you we use everything you have to win. IF Iraq had WMDs it would have used them by now. Serouisily(spelling) a few jets and old missiles found buried or in bunkers don't worry me. Its when they are on runways and silos I worry.

When a felon is found to be in possession of a gun, he gets punished whether he used it or not. Saddam would not have buried his weapons and kept his labs open if he didn't hope to use them again. He was just waiting it out, holding out for the day he could go to war with his neighbors again. Just like a felon with a gun, he was in possession of forbidden weapons and needed to be punished.

Debate it all you want, he had the shit, and SOMEBODY had to take it away from him because we had no way of knowing what was going on with him keeping the inspectors out. The UN just wasn't going to do the friggin work.

You know what? nevermind! Its not worth the effort arguing about it! The bad man is getting walked out in a few months, and for whatever reasons we're there now and we have an obligation to stay and see it out.

That's nuts!!! He would have gone to war?!? Let's go around entering every country because they might build nuclear weapons and might go to war!!! Who crafted that policy Uri Geller?

And why do we have to get involved, his neighbors could have handled him just fine. You think if he was likely to click off a couple of nukes Europe, Russia and China wouldn't have taken him out? You know they live over there, I'm sure the fallout would have hit them first.

This Nuclear Iraq thing is a crock anyway, it is so far from the real reason we entered into that morass and the fact that some people still believe this crud is testament to the gullibility of the American people. And I don't believe for a minute this antiwar wave that is enveloping the nation is a sudden revelation about the reasons we entered either.

It's sad to say that the real reason we will leave Iraq isn't all the lies, it's that the American people are tired of it and want the government to focus on the economy.

Lesson: If you're going to lie to the American public and send the world's most powerful army into another country for suspicious reasons, at least kick ass and get the job done in less than 5 years.

What? The UN did it's job fine. They did all their inspections, enforced those stupid sanctions, the U.S.'s idea (which allowed there to be massive profiteering and even more unequal distribution of wealth). Saddam was never a problem in that "WMD" way. You silly fellow... WTH?
Didn't you realise that ALL those motions about them from the very start were all part of a building pretext to take military action against the country? We all knew that from long ago, way back when it started. Right after the first war.

That's how international politics work on the rough side... take things to the security council, make motions and movements against people, have sanctions etc... You plan for the long term. Keep it boiling. The Iraq war may have been shockingly planned and executed, but we all knew it was on the cards since the first one, anyone who had any awareness or interest in international politics that is. People like me, I follow that like some people follow sport. It's a LOT more interesting and meaningful.
HA! Your weapons....

Oh jeeze. There's always someone here who gives me a smile.

As for his buried Migs... Oh man. Forget about it. Really. It made news because it was a big plane pulled out of the sand in some nice photos... Nothing more. Nothing bad, sneaky, or whatever. Not dressed up. It's hard to explain to you how amazingly ordinary and pointless that whole action was. I'm pretty sure that piece of scrap ended up in a museum somewhere.

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Bush leaving office? Ha! The problem's still there though, isn't it? Just like Iraq's troubles were still there, even worse, after the death of Saddam. Bush Jnr leaving changes nothing, does it?

when i said "we are fucked" i wasn't only talking about the troops . it seems like you are looking at this war as if it were an RTS game or something . i don't care how warm and fuzzy the soldiers feel or what direction the news cameras are pointing .
This war is effecting the whole world . that's who is fucked - EVERYBODY !
and that still doesn't answer the question of WHY they are in Iraq to begin with . saying that they are doing a good job of invading and occupying a country that posed no real threat to America doesn't convince me that it was a good idea to invade Iraq to begin with .

Real time Shooter game? Thanks for be-littling Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, you know the people in harm's way keeping you safe so you can say they're fucked without knowing what they're doing and what they have to do to give you the right to insult them? You're pretty pissed about this I can see that.

Sorry if I'm a little harsh but I'm a veteran and the unit I served in when I was in just got deployed. Fucked?

Everyone is fucked whenever a nation goes to war. It's the nature of the beast. Every war, every deployment, everyone is fucked and anyone who's ever served knows that and hates it the most. I've spent years studying military history and its nothing like any game ever made (as well as serving) In the end that's graphics as opposed to flesh and blood people and I don't see gamers suffering from PTSD. Really great experience I highly recommend it.

I disagree about the details but agree with you about the results, but every war fucks everyone involved. We're stuck with it, how are we gonna un-fuck up the situation?



Personally, every weapon is a WMD to the guy that its pointed at. A jet airplane is nearly the equivelent of a fuel air explosive, which is considered a WMD by many as is naplam. It kills alot of people especially since you deploy several aircraft at once. The same with gas rounds. You don't fire one or two, you fire several salvoes and that will kill a lot of people. A missile lets you pack a bigger warhead for more damage, and you can put that gas arty round in the missile's warhead. You have two batteries of heavy arty and fire about 50 rounds into an urban area and that's a WMD by your definition. You can put those rounds on a Katyusha rocket and send them off to the Palestinians. NBC is fun.

Look at the intell put out in Jane's etc, it's known in military enthusist and Intell circles that the WMDs were moved out of Iraq in all the time leading up to the US's foolish invasion. The Israelis took some out in Syria. There was more to that Nuclear plant than just the North Korean stuff. I knew about that strike right after it happened. There was also all that wonderful Russian anti-stealth technology that was tried out. Saddam wasn't supposed to have that either.

The MiG-25 can be cleaned up in about a week to make it flyable. Gas rounds are considered WMDs by those who look at such things unlike the typical landmine. Except to the guy its pointed like I said before.

And no Mistaken Intell is not a lie. It's a SNAFU. The USA went to war over an intelligence SNAFU. There was a ton of circumstantial evidence and we tried and convicted Saddam and decided to cross the border to punish him. 4000 battlefield deaths later, we're in a war that wasn't necessary. And like any war it fucks up the people involved. Every war but it's worse wtih one that just wasn't necessary.

So guess what I disagree in the details but agree with you about the results. Now enough about angels on pin heads, what's the solution?

Which is why there better be a damn good reason to go to war. I cringe at the sacrifice of you and your comrades in arms. Ever look at a list of lawmakers who have served in active duty? The worst hawks are always the draft dodgers or those who got cushy non combat assignments.

McCain is like one of a couple who have seen combat who are unrepentant hawks. Him I disagree with, but respect, unlike George(flew a decommissioned combat jet in the National Guard)Bush and Dick(I had more important things to do than serve in the military)Cheney. You and your brave buddies are just pawns on a map to them. That's why they overdeploy you and then don't give a rat's ass about you when you are no longer useful as soldiers.

It's a pity we disagree about details, because I support you and believe in keeping you out of harms way unles ABSOLUTELY NECCESSARY. And the fact remains two likely scenarios will emerge no matter when we leave Iraq:

1) Peace....not likely, those guys have hated each other for generations. Remember when the Soviets fell? You would have thought years of Soviet oppression would have bonded different ethnic groups and encouraged them to kiss and makeup. It turns out the Soviets were the only thing keeping them from shooting at each other. Ethnic hatred doesnt't just disappear because we want it to. The longer we artificially keep these guys apart the longer they will have to wait to settle their differences.

2) No peace..that will fall under two general scenarios:
a) Oppressive central government, just like the one we wasted our time deposing, or..

b) Civil War. Let's face it, when you have such a central ethnic and/or religious conflict dividing a nation, hell even America couldn't avoid a civil war. Ask yourself this: Do you think the warring factions in Iraq are more reasonable or less reasonable than their counterparts in the American Civil War? Do you think a joint European and South American peace keeping force would have brought Lincoln and Davis to the bargaining table?

You ask what is the solution? I say get you boys out of the crossfire and let the Iraquis settle this their way. Who knows, maybe their neighbors will step in out of neccessity if we go away and help broker a peace. They certainly have more credibility with their populace than we do.

And then if you still feel guilty for George Bush's unholy mess, you can offer war crime reparations to the emerging victor to atone for screwing their country up, it's gotta be cheaper and less bloody than prolonging a costly war.

Hey if you dont like the USA pull a John Walker Lynn and go join the taliban so mabye some US Sniper blows your worthless brains out, that would be the best thing, you would be joining your cause instead of just being a mouthy pussy typing words on the internet, and dont try to pull the hypocrite thing on me I served for five years of this war and I enjoyed it. And by the way every Iraqi i met loved the fact that we kicked sadaams ass.

I just finished reading a book about Russia. The Russian Empire failed itself over its ethnic diversity and the author said the the Soviet attempt to pull everyone together created nationalism among the groups that drove them apart. Pretty interesting stuff. Then there was the forced migration and imperial conquest of certain areas.

As for negotiating the ACW between Davis and Lincoln, it nearly happened. Napoleon III wanted to, Queen Victoria wanted to, but the leading politicians and the Prince Consort stopped them. The Brits deployed 100,000 troops in Canada "just in case"

The Iraqis are less reasonable, their disagreements are based on clan, ethnicity and religion. Very hard to overcome. We can't go from a Constitutional Convention to the GIlded age in five years.

As for reperations, that would be cheaper than the war. At the rate we're spending money we could just pay every Iraqi several thousand dollars to leave every other Iraqi alone.

It takes one mouthy pussy to know one. Personally I don't see how supporting an abortion of a military endeavor that was doomed before it began, like Iraq, is somehow being patriotic. Even Rumsfeld's own military commanders and Powell in the state department warned against the mess they were entering. Instead of taking sage advice, Bush fired Shinseki and pushed out others who wouldn't play ball.

I support the troops, which in my mind means not sending them off to get shot up for no real reason and then sending the surviving wounded to Walter Reade hospital and allowing the wives of deployed military men to go on food stamps. Our military is supposed to defend our national security, not topple other sovereign nations, no matter how heinous they may be.

And lets not forget the National Guard. WTF are they doing over there...they belong here. I wonder how NG from New Orleans felt when they got news of their families and friends drowning during Katrina? I wonder how much swifter our response might have been had there been local NG available?

Yeah I love America which is why I get so damned pissed off when I see flag waving charlatans like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz pissing on it.

The Army and Air National Guard are reserve components of the Army and Air Force. In time of war they are to be activated and sent where they are needed, like they were in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. They are not some kind of home defence force and only to used in CONUS.

The NG in Louisiana was available but was not alerted by the governor unlike the NG in Alabama who were in place ahead of time because of the actions of that governor. It went back to the actions of the governors in Katrina, it wasn't a question of Republican and Democrat but effective versus ineffective leadership.

I stand corrected, I believed that the NG were primarily for Civil Defense and only were supposed to be called up in dire times when the regular military is decimated, in my mind that was what seperated them from the regular reserve.

I humbly admit when I have goofed.

Too bad your vailiant, and exuberant service wasn't aimed at bagging Bin Laden. Sounds like you would have had the balls to find him and kick his ass for us. Seriously, no sarcasm intended. I have a lot of respect for soldiers, which is why I advocate for deploying them responsibly.

If we had deployed half the troops into Afghanistan that we wasted on Iraq to augment the current force there, we may have succeeded in ferreting out Osama the way we did Saddam.

He sure deserves it more than Hussein ever did, after all as a former New Yorker I lost a lot of pals on 9/11 and still more are sick from breathing the toxic dust. I will always harbor more hatred for that motherfucker than I could ever muster for Hussein.

i'm not trying to diss soldiers , but the US has too many in too many places around the world . and they are not protecting Americans as much as they are protecting the assets of the rich .
Everyone serving should be angry ! they are being used , used like a tool by assholes like cheney who see them as expendable pawns to advance the interests of their corporate friends! this has been going on at least as far back as WWI . War is Money to them . the USA government and military are just tools for them .

Now you're being silly. We all know what is meant when we use this term in the context of this discussion Don't even bother to cite those fizzlers. They kill one Israeli for every 40 or so fired and then the Israelis kill 7 Palestinians in a helicopter missile attack in retaliation, whether any Israelis were killed or not. I love it: 3 "militants" in a car and 4 civilian bystanders. Never fails.Those people spend their time arguing about how well an Abrams would do against a "Black Eagle" and how quickly a modern aircraft carrier could have won WW2. I have limited time for "military enthusiasts". Most of them are a short step to "defending our planet from aliens". ...Maybe not quite THAT far, but you know the sort of thing I'm sure No it couldn't. I heard the reports on it. It's garbage. Maybe if you tied a blimp to it and added some propellers...That's not the situation. The situation was that they had excellent Intel from good sources and they had shit intell from bad sources. They knew it was shit but they went that way anyway because it supported the conclusion they wanted. It's a very old trick, it covers your arse if you get caught, but not very well. -which doesn't matter so much since by the time you are, you've done the thing anyway and that can't be changed. And so we come too...Solution in Iraq? there is no easy one. What would be perfect would be for Iran and Syria to get involved. For the so called "coalition" forces to actually talk peace with them and cease the hostilities. Unfortunately the U.S.A and buddies are very much a part of the problem there, every bit as much as every little warring faction and Al Quiada terrorist cell. Worse in many ways since they're totally from outside. ...and of course the whole invasion thing...

Eh. There's no changing it now. The best thing is to get this idiot administration out as soon as possible, hopefully get Obama or McCain in and maybe, just MAYBE they will be a bit more diplomatic in that sensitive region. Hillary already said something horrifically stupid about Iran. She would make the perfect partner for Ahmadinejad.

Right on!!!

You know it really bugs me when we constantly have to take an apologetic tone and explain ourselves the way you have in this post.

Some people on the right have become adept at twisting every criticism of a failed mission as an attack on our boys, or complaints about a ham handed strategy as being unpatriotic.

Well pointing out that we are sending our boys into a meat grinder with no clear objectives or exit stategy is not a comment on their vailant service or their combat effectiveness.

My dad always used to tell me the parable about the fence post digger, He worked all day and all the posts were exactly 90 degrees level, but ooops the landscper marked the holes in the wrong spot. Work=brilliant, planning=dumb

I find it so tiring having to defend my patriotism simply because I am dissenting. Thomas Jefferson thought dissent was about as patriotic and American as you could get.

I'm surprised at you! :D You're confusing precision versus area munitions. You fire one Katyusha with Blister agent in it and it won't have to be a precision weapon. It won't have to hit anyone to be nasty.



I know who you're talking about. I steer away from them. I hang out with the veterans, ex-military advisors and intell experts who build model kits like Steve Zaloga. Now he has connections. Being a veteran I cut right through the BS because most ex-military can shut up armchair generals with a stare.



I asked some ex-Air force mechanics and they said they could get it flying in a week. You know what the Sea-Bees say; We do the difficult every day, the imposible just takes a little longer.



It was not a failure of intelligence collection but of interpretation as you said. They saw what they wanted to see and twisted what was there to fit what they believed in already. But everyone does it and all the time. (MacArthur in 1950, MacCellan in the Penninusla etc.) See Michael Shermer Why People Believe Weird Things It's a quite common failing. People in their position aren't supposed to make those sorts of mistakes, but they selectively used the evidence to prove what they wanted to prove.

Leaders do that all the time, but 20/20 hindsight doesn't change the fact that mistakes were made. Just because I can see all the arrows pointing a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 doesn't mean they could.
How selective are we being about the evidence saying that they didn't analyize the Intell properly?