Iraq

Cosmo said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Has anyone talking about this ever been there?

I have, and if you haven't then you might not understand the "how" and "why" things go on there. It's completely different in the way they think and do things. That's the best description I can offer in short.

Iraq falling was inevitable and will only open up more rifts. It's going to get worse, a lot worse…

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First off... thanx for serving in our military. And Thank your family for me, too.
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Now... to answer your question... 'No. I have not been to the war zone in Iraq'. But, I work within the machinery the is the Military/Industrial complex and work with several individuals that were called to duty and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
one of the mor coloroful of these acquaintences describe Iraq to me like this:
"You know how when you go to Tijuana and things there are crappy? Well, a Mexican guy from Tijuana would go to Iraq... look around and say, 'Man, this place is crappy'."
I have also heard that many of our military want to go home as soon as they get there because it sucks being over there.
Is that true?

Your acquaintance hit the nail on the head…

To clear something up I didn't serve. I went voluntarily in the private sector.

My point is that it took a dictator to control that area because that's what it needs. Sad but true.

You can PM me if you'd like to hear more.

Last-12-Exit said:

For those of you that think we need to fix the Iraqi problem, how do you propose we do that? It can't be fixed. And for those of you that think we owe anything to Iraq of the middle east, let me just say fuck that. We don't owe them anything. What do we owe them? A military? A stable government? Money? No. I don't want another cent of.my tax money going into Iraq. It's a lost cause.

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Those are great questions.
I think the only thing we owe the Middle East is respect. The respect that they are soverign nations over there and they are the ones that need to figure out what is best for them. And the respect that it is THEIR oil, not our. We need to quit fucking with their shit. I mean, Japan buys a shitload of oil from the Middle East and have you ever heard any 'Death To Japan' chants? NO. Because Japan just buys the fucking oil and say, 'Gracias'. Japan does not fuck around with their governments and monarchies, working slimey deals in darkend rooms or trying to put in people in power that they have bought. They just buy the fucking oil and they don't fuck around.
We are dicks because we DO fuck around... then, we're all surprised when the shit blows up. We need to quit being dicks.
Godfather asked the question, "How many of you believe the muslims/terrorist were well with in their right on 9/11?"
I would answer by saying this... they would never have come over here... if we had never gone over there. They fucked with us over here... because we fuck with them over there. I understand Mr. Godfather does not want to accept any responsibility... but, I strongly believe in personal responsibility and i understand that we NEED to accept the consequences of our poor national decision and actions. When you fuck with people... don't be shocked when they fuck with you. Just buy the fucking oil and quit trying to manipulate everything in our favor.
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And we really did fuck over Iraq. i think that the Bushs and Cheneys and Rumsfelds and everyone one that supported the war... but, never had a skin in the game need to pay them everything they've got and apologise to them for being fucking assholes.

After invading Iraq and bombing/murdering tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children - I can't believe(although I can) believe that certain Americans(Like John mother-effing McCain) have the audacity to suggest they go back there again.

The American government has no shame. And they never learn from their mistakes.

Cosmo said:

Last-12-Exit said:

For those of you that think we need to fix the Iraqi problem, how do you propose we do that? It can't be fixed. And for those of you that think we owe anything to Iraq of the middle east, let me just say fuck that. We don't owe them anything. What do we owe them? A military? A stable government? Money? No. I don't want another cent of.my tax money going into Iraq. It's a lost cause.

...
Those are great questions.
I think the only thing we owe the Middle East is respect. The respect that they are soverign nations over there and they are the ones that need to figure out what is best for them. And the respect that it is THEIR oil, not our. We need to quit fucking with their shit. I mean, Japan buys a shitload of oil from the Middle East and have you ever heard any 'Death To Japan' chants? NO. Because Japan just buys the fucking oil and say, 'Gracias'. Japan does not fuck around with their governments and monarchies, working slimey deals in darkend rooms or trying to put in people in power that they have bought. They just buy the fucking oil and they don't fuck around.
We are dicks because we DO fuck around... then, we're all surprised when the shit blows up. We need to quit being dicks.
Godfather asked the question, "How many of you believe the muslims/terrorist were well with in their right on 9/11?"
I would answer by saying this... they would never have come over here... if we had never gone over there. They fucked with us over here... because we fuck with them over there. I understand Mr. Godfather does not want to accept any responsibility... but, I strongly believe in personal responsibility and i understand that we NEED to accept the consequences of our poor national decision and actions. When you fuck with people... don't be shocked when they fuck with you. Just buy the fucking oil and quit trying to manipulate everything in our favor.
...
And we really did fuck over Iraq. i think that the Bushs and Cheneys and Rumsfelds and everyone one that supported the war... but, never had a skin in the game need to pay them everything they've got and apologise to them for being fucking assholes.

But if we didn't throw our tax dollars toward war how will our oil companies (Halliburton) get their spoils. Cheney regime wanted to sell Iraq's oil to the Japanese. He did have skin in the game.

So what to do now? Step away? Limited air support? Troops out of the question. Is there any hope to salvage the current government? Those are the questions.

Just imagine if Palin and Cheney were at the helm.

interesting article I read just now that made me think of this thread.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/imagine-if-iraq-had-not-been-invaded-263398751.html

Imagine If Iraq Had Not Been Invaded
Whatever else you may say about the "young war criminal" (as British journalist Alan Watkins used to call former prime minister Tony Blair), he certainly fights his corner with great determination. He is condemned to spend his life defending his part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and last weekend he was at it again.

In a 3,000-word essay on his website, Tony Blair wrote about last week's conquest of almost half Iraq's territory by the fanatical fighters of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria): "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't." What he really meant by "we," of course, was "I."

But at least give Blair credit for producing an interesting argument. "As for how these (recent) events reflect on the original decision to remove Saddam," he wrote, "...(the argument) is that but for the invasion of 2003, Iraq would be a stable country today....

"Consider the post-2011 Arab uprisings. Put into the equation the counterfactual -- that Saddam and his two sons would be running Iraq in 2011 when the uprisings began. Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria... but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?

"So it is a bizarre reading of the cauldron that is the Middle East today, to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis."

Blair is employing one of his favourite techniques: winning an argument with a straw man. Nobody is actually saying that if the United States, Britain and some hangers-on had not illegally invaded Iraq in 2003, the country would be an "oasis of calm" today. Of course the Arab Spring would have come to Iraq, too, and of course there would be huge turmoil in the country today.

If Saddam Hussein had managed to hang on to power in the face of a democratic uprising in 2011 that was initially non-violent, Iraq today might be in a civil war somewhat like that in Syria. And if his dictatorship had been overthrown in 2011, whatever new government emerged in Iraq would certainly be contending with acute ethnic and sectarian rivalries today.

But the living standards, infrastructure, and health and educational services of a quite developed country would not have been massively degraded by a decade of invasion, foreign occupation and popular resistance. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were killed in these events would still be alive (although Saddam's secret police would have murdered the usual thousand or so each year). And above all there would be no ISIS, nor anything like it.

There were no terrorists in Iraq in 2003. There were people with radical Islamist ideas, but they kept quiet for fear of Saddam's torturers and there weren't very many of them. And there were no "weapons of mass destruction" either. It was an exceptionally dumb war, to borrow Barack Obama's famous phrase, and it began the destruction of Iraq.

It is the deep sectarian divisions in Iraq's Arabic-speaking population (the Kurds are a separate issue) that are now completing that process of destruction. However, as with the distinctions between Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims in old Yugoslavia before the breakup and the Balkan wars of the 1990s, most Sunnis and Shias in Iraq before 2003 lived side by side with a fairly low degree of friction.

It was the fight against foreign occupation after 2003 that radicalized people in Iraq and drove so many of them back into narrow sectarian identities. "Al-Qaida in Iraq," the original name for what now calls itself ISIS, was born in that struggle, and Tony Blair and George W. Bush were its midwives.

It's striking that al-Qaida in Iraq's main target during the occupation was to kill large numbers of Shias rather than lots of Americans. Its strategy was to provoke a sectarian war in which Iraqi Sunnis would be losing at first -- but then their plight would trigger intervention by Sunni states in the region and lead to a general Sunni-Shia war. It was a convoluted, nasty and deeply unrealistic strategy, but it made sense in terms of their radical Islamist ideology.

If there had been no invasion, and Saddam Hussein had been overthrown by a popular revolution only three years ago, there would certainly be great tension in a newly democratic Iraq now.

Sunni Arabs would be having trouble coming to terms with their minority status (which most were unaware of under Saddam). Shias would be tempted to exploit their majority status unfairly. Kurds would be pushing for more autonomy.

But they would be doing so in an atmosphere that had not been contaminated by a decade of sectarian hatred and savagery. There would be no organizations like ISIS dedicated to waging a sectarian war. And even if Saddam Hussein had not been overthrown and Iraq was caught up in a civil war like Syria's, it would have a far less sectarian character. As would Syria's, for that matter.

I have to say it was disheartening to hear left their posts. No pride enough to even defend home?(in the bigger sense of the word)