SmokingTarpan

Or perhaps, thanks to our aggressive stance, they no longer need to attack our home soil? Instead of having to truck across an ocean to kill Americans, they get to do it in their back yard now. Roughly 3,000 people died on 9/11. According to http://icasualties.org/oif/ the amount of US soldiers killed in Iraq is roughly 4,000. And that's just the soldier deaths, we're not counting the contractors and other non-combat personnel. It may be a slower approach to increasing the body count, but the terrorists sure have it easier now with about 150,000 US troops (give or take a few thousand) in their home region.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ever stop to think that the terrorist have already won? That this might have been their plan from the get-go? On 9/11 we had much of the world's sympathy and support. Now we have a good amount of the scorn, even more tenuous relations in the middle-east, spending billions of dollars a month that we really don't have, etc. I'm sure a lot of people think that those wacky terrorists can barely tie their Nikes before running around with their AK-47's, much less engineer a plan like I've alluded to, and only sheer luck let them take down the twin towers. And if I wanted to destroy a country subtly because I couldn't conquer them openly, that's just what I'd want people to think. World War I started with a simple assassination.

And, for the sake of being on topic: Berkely can go to hell.

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[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

ScratchMonkey

Daily Show video thread (you'd never find it from the thread title):

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/sandbox...ny-longer.html

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Kerostasis

@Tarpan: Killing 3000 civilians on 9/11 cost Al-Qaeda some one or two dozen operatives. Killing 4000 soldiers in Iraq has cost tens of thousands of militants their lives, has lost them the sympathy of most of the Iraqi people, and has brought about the very real possibility of an independant democratic government in Iraq, which is the last thing they want. If that's your idea of a victory for the terrorists, I'd like to know what you think counts as a loss.

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Steeler

Fixed it for the opposing viewpoint. I'd also question that "tens of thousands" number, since many estimates have put actual jihadists in the upper hundreds, and the majority of battles appear to have been against Iraqi nationalists and sectarian partisans.

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machowner

As I usually tell poeple, regardless of 9/11 and terrorist what was happening in Iraq was sad. We should have removed Hussein in the first war. Does anyone remember what Chemical Ali did to gain the respect of Hussein? Does anyone think this kind of abuse should go unpunished?

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ScratchMonkey

Unchecked, no. Unpunished? Maybe. Punishment implies a particular criminology model based on revenge.

There's also the question of who should be doing the punishing. What makes the US most suitable as the agent of punishment?

And then when do we consider the job to be done? The critical failure IMHO is the lack of success criteria that let us leave. But that's true of domestic programs as well (like, say, the Berkeley city government!). By avoiding specification of success criteria, any program can be funded indefinitely. As Mel Brooks says in Blazing Saddles (in the role of a corrupt governor), "Gentlemen, we need to protect our phoney baloney jobs!"

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Xen

Ok, first off, most of the Chemical Weapons Saddam had were given to us, it the off chance Iraq went to war with Iran... The fact that he turned around and used it on the Kurds to suppress an uprising is appauling. Now, if the Iraqi's, or the Middle east in general, actually wanted Saddam removed from power, don't you think they could have? The Sunni's and the Shiite have had a blood fued for over a 1000 years, and you think some Pro Democracy government that comes sweeping in calling for change is going to be able to honestly do anything to change that? The Jew's tried and got kicked out of their country. The British tried and they too got kicked out. Because one thing Sunni and Shiites know how to do, is put their crap on pause when they think a bigger problem comes along. Think of them as brothers, they can beat the crap out of each other all day long but, as soon as someone else comes in to kick the crap out of one of them, the other jumps to their defense. Because at heart they are both Islamic.

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Curiosity is going to kill this Cat.

Guardianx11x

You should have read my post earlier. Once again I am saddened. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, they were enemies of al queda. US soldier are being killed in Iraq because Bush thought it was a really special idea to launch a preemptive strike against iraq because we recieved false reports of WMDs. Unfortunatly for the Iraqis we were on a bloodthirsty rampage at the time, and already had troops near by.

The truth of the matter is that there were no WMDs, we entered of a false pretense. Ok, whatever. The sad part is that Saddam appears to have been doing a pretty bang up job since the 90's. Iraq life was good, their economy was good as well as the standard of living. He wan't doing anything inhumane. Buuuut now the stability he built up has crashed like a house of cards.

oh and...lets not forget Iran. They are already flying in trying to take advantage of the situation.

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Kerostasis

I don't know what news services you've been listening to, but you're badly misinformed on the pre-war state of Iraq. You must have missed all the news specials on Saddam's real torture chambers while you were distracted with rumors about Americans torturing people at Guantanamo bay. You didn't pay any attention to the state of Iraq's infrastructure, which hadn't been maintained or updated in decades and succeeded in maintaining consistent power to Baghdad only by basically ignoring service to the rest of the country. Water treatment plants were in the process of failing due to poor maintanence by the time we arrived. And while the the dictator could afford whatever luxuries he wanted with his oil-for-food money, the economy was choked and weak from the point of view of the average citizen.

This doesn't necessarily mean it was a good idea to invade Iraq. But it doesn't help your case to retroactively rewrite history to better fit your preconceived notions of the US being Oppressors.

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Guardianx11x

I'm not misinformed. You're right-ish. They did have all those problem...but now they have bigger ones (thanks to us). Please keep in mind that everywhere in the region has the problems you described. I never claimed that their standard of living was even close to ours. Life in Iraq pre-war was a lot better than it is now AND it was improving. They showed every sign of stability and positive growth despite the problems you mentioned.

Also, every country has poor people and a rich leader. Moot point.

We are retroactivly rewriting history so we dont seem like incompetent *******s for invading in the first place. Watch the BBC or news that isnt on fox

I also find it funny you failed to address the main point of my post. You clearly thought Iraq = terrorists from your previous post...wonder who is really uninformed

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Kerostasis

Nowhere did I say that Iraq = Terrorists. You completely missed the point of my previous point in that case. Pre-Gulf-War-2, Al-Qaeda had only very limited connections in Iraq, and no one is trying to suggest otherwise, although Iraq was involved in some other international terrorism. But after the invasion, Iraq became a central battleground for anti-US terror groups -- whether or not they were there before, they are definitely there now. And Tarpan was attempting to convince me that those terrorists were winning. I disagreed. We haven't won yet, the battle is still ongoing, but our enemy is far less effective now than they were on 9/11.

The "thanks to us" part is only correct if you consider all of our enemies under the umbrella of "us". Which "bigger problems" do the Iraqi people have now exactly? Well, their biggest problem is that Al-Qaeda has moved on from attacking American citizens to attacking Iraqi citizens, out of fear that Iraq might actually become free. I suppose thats "thanks to us" though? I'm not ready to take responsibility for the evil terroristic actions of others against their own people just yet, thanks.

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USN_Squid

This newly released report disproves this myth yet again:

Report Details Saddam's Terrorist Ties

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon review of about 600,000 documents captured in the Iraq war attests to Saddam Hussein's willingness to use terrorism to target Americans and work closely with jihadist organizations throughout the Middle East.

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Guardianx11x

The bigger problems I was refering to are well...no stable government, rampent voilence, and helplessness towards neighboring nations eager to take advantage of them.

Just a shot in the dark, but Al-Qaeda isn't full of a bunch of people who want to do bad things to everyone. Their goal isn't to keep iraqis opressed...They are not attacking Iraqi people to keep them from being freed. That is a fairly ridiculous claim. Now, they do kill Iraqis who help americans, but the notion that the reasoning behind it is fear of others freedom is laughable.

Yes, terroriest organizations are less effective now than they were...but not because we attacked iraq. And there are anti-american terror groups now because...(wait for it)...we attacked them. Those groups in Iraq that had no plans of attacking us are now turned against us because we got into a situation and killed thousands with little justification or accountability for our actions. If I were over there, I'd hate us.

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Guardianx11x

Right. I wonder what sort of thing we'd find if we overtook our government and raided the top secret files...I mean honestly, does nobody remember what we did to Iran...or the bay of pigs for christ sakes. Most of the things mentioned in that article are small potatos anyways, and plans to attack our troops in countries where they felt we had no business being involved. Also, the report says:

Oh wow, that is damning evidence there. I'm so happy he completely did nothing like that in the next 12 years. I feel sooooo much safer he is gone.

Basically, when we are standing alone against everyone else on the planet trying to justify our actions...it might benifit us to reevaluate what we have been doing for the past few years and chage our core policies (which will probably happen as soon as bush is out of office).

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SmokingTarpan

Again, that depends on who you are and what you qualify as effective. Certainly, US soil hasn't been directly attacked successfully since 9/11. Then again, it wasn't directly attacked successfully much before 9/11, either.

However, terrorist attacks on the US military are certainly more effective than they were pre-Iraq invasion; I don't recall us having daily body counts before we set foot over there for a falsified reason. We've put 100k+ troops in the terrorists' back yard; far shorter reach and easier accessibility than some skyscrapers across an ocean. And we spend billions of taxpayer dollars on the war every month instead of on home civil projects. I think that's a far more effective way to take down an enemy; make them erode themselves away instead of spending all of your resources in a futile frontal attack.

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[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo