thinkprogress.org — The NSN explained, the ?benchmarks claimed as ?satisfactory? ? demonstrate minimal progress, not achievement? and ?others have been achieved on the surface, but fail to accomplish the overall purpose of the specific measurement.?
Jul 12, 2007 View in Crawl 4
gerz1219Jul 13, 2007
Awww, that's cute. You actually think the Baker Commission was a completely independent entity that accurately represented the spectrum of American public opinion about the war.
clayandersonJul 13, 2007
Oh, c'mon! With perhaps a few exceptions like Abu Ghraib, our soldiers are not "beating, raping, torturing, leaving for dead". Have we killed people? Yes -- mostly aggressors who are trying to destabilize the situation for their own political gain. However, the killing of innocents (apart from some unfortunate 'collateral damage' of war) has not happened by our hands. It has been Iraqis killing Iraqis. I will grant you that it is our doing that has created the unstable circumstances for such killings to occur, but that is a degree different from having the actual blood on our hands.We cut off the head of the snake, a brutal dictator. But in the place of that snake, other smaller ones have arisen and are fighting each other for power. In the middle of this mess are a lot of innocents. They were not in a good situation under Saddam, and you're rigiht: they're still not in a good situation.And whether or not we should have gone into Iraq in the first place is a legitimate question. But to compare what we've done with the actions of Saddam is stupid, naive, reactionary, and immature.
gryffyddJul 13, 2007
Do you realize what Saddam and his progeny would have done to the people if they "asked to be liberated?"
bdog2g2Jul 13, 2007
The horse is beaten from both sides numb nuts. I blame bush for everything he's done. I hold him accountable for the actions he has taken. I don't have to look hard to blame him for much, he does half the work for us. What's worse than blaming bush for everything, is everyone who praises for everything.
mconnorsJul 14, 2007
"We're giving them a life free from tyranny. It is up to them to establish a democratic society"Wether they wanted it or not- There are 655,00 dead Iraqi and their families that are not cheering<a class="user" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html</a>there are 1.7 million Iraqis now refugees who are not cheering<a class="user" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601478.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601478.html</a>71% of Iraqis want us out<a class="user" href="http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf">http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf</a>We are now frighting 60,000 insurgents rather than the few thousand when the invasion started so we are doing the wrong thing to stop terrorism. Going into afghanistan was correct, Iraq was completely wrong. You are absolutely and utterly wrong.
jimvspekJul 15, 2007
Here is the real reason we went into Iraq and eliminated Saddam Hussein and why we are not being told about it.After 9/11 our greatest enemy was recognized as being radical Sunni Islam. Most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia and were adherents to the violent and intolerant Wahhabiism teachings. Saudi Arabia has been actively involved in exporting this ideology around the world using oil money generated within that state.This created a serious problem. We could not turn on our Saudi “friends” and there was not an easy way to attack the widely disbursed Sunni radicals. A creative response was needed. Much of foreign policy is built on the time-tested principles of “divide and conquer” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” To turn these principles into strategies, it was necessary to find a group, which was a natural enemy of the Sunni radicals. The obvious choice for this is the moderate Shiites who have their spiritual center in Iraq. An added reason for supporting these moderates is that they are not in line with the radical Shiites who now control the government of Iran. The installation of a moderate Shiite regime in Iraq would have the double benefit of becoming a thorn in the sides of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, Of course, the best way to help the moderate Shiites was to take out their nemesis, Saddam Hussein, who had for many years stood as the bulwark against the hated forces of Shia. He had ruthlessly persecuted the Shiites in Iraq and mounted a lengthy and bloody war against Iran. The Sunni Muslims could ignore the Shiites, many of whom lived in their midst, because Saddam was holding them at bay.Saddam had at one time been a close ally of the US, which was instrumental in bringing him to power and supplied him with armaments. Why did he turn against us? Remember “Iran-Contra?” Saddam was incensed when he found out that we were secretly funding and arming Iran in their fight with us. It became clear to him that all along, it has been our policy to contain his power. Research this strange episode and you will find commentators mystified as to the reasons behind it. No one states the obvious. We wanted to help Iran but needed to keep it a secret. VP Bush was the mastermind and even then we were playing the Sunni/Shia division. I am convinced that the real reason we invaded Iraq, eliminated the Baath regime and abandoned our bases in Saudi Arabia is that we wanted to strengthen the power of the moderate Shiites in the region. At this time both sides hate us but also need us as they fight each other. The Bush administration constantly boasts that the proof for the success of our policies is that there have not been any attacks on our soil. Al Quaeda and the radical Sunnis are now concentrating their fury on the newly invigorated Shiite regime taking shape in Iraq. If it all turns out as we hope, the Shiites will be a major counterforce against radical Sunnis and the radical Shiites in Iran.The nice thing about this theory is that it challenges the accepted wisdom that Bush and his cohorts were naïve in trying to set up a democracy in Iraq. This could never have been our goal. We are leaving the country a mess, but the radical Sunnis now have their traditional enemies to occupy them instead of us.Even if the civil war in Iraq drags on with more violence or we are asked to leave, we will still have accomplished our primary goal of striking a blow against our most bitter enemy, radical Sunni Islam, and turned their attention to those whom they hate more than us. Having Saudi Sunnis in a dominant position as they coddle and export the virulent versions of their faith has not been healthy for the world or the Mideast region.Time will tell if this has been a wise policy. Involving ourselves in the Mideast can have unforeseen consequences. Consider the bitter harvest we have reaped as a result of our support for the Mujadeen in Afghanistan. The ones we built up for that struggle are the same ones who turned on us later. On the other hand, if we accept this theory as the true rationale for our involvement in Iraq, it provides a much more reasonable explanation as to why we went in. It is certainly more credible than the official line that we embarked on this mission with the quixotic rationale of installing democracy in Iraq. That idea never did make sense and in my view was a mere pretense for the true, Machiavellian purposes laid out above. Unfortunately, if this is what we did, our government can never openly express it. Instead, we are left to merely observe and appreciate or dread the outcomes.