Americans answered their President - Page 4

First of all the soldiers are not dying for a justified cause. Leave along the soldiers, what about the hundreds of Iraq civilians dying every month. Who is accountable for that? Yes you are right, India cannot be compared with Iraq. When Indian soldiers go to war, the killing of civilians is not a part of it. Iraq is a total chaos. Galey mein phas gaya, na nighal jayega na ugal jayega.

Originally posted by: lighthouse

 This is how politics are played out . Bush had to give democrats something (read Rumsfield) as he still has 2 years left in the office. Now had he fired Rumsfield before and not after the election , the outcome would have been different maybe.

Bush would have never thought of firing Rumsfeld before, he never acknowledged Iraq invasion was a mistake. Even last week he praised Rumsfeld saying they were doing a great job. Koi hawa nahin tha. Ab jab public ne thenga dhikhaya, now it's time to clean the image. Yeah, I know politicians are how good at flip-flopping.

Originally posted by: abhijit shukla

Now you are overreaching.

I have said it before and I am saying it again, AlQueda nad Irani terrorists are the ones accountable.

As far as I know, Americans or Bush himself have not wanted to kill innocent Iraqi civilians for killing's sake. There might have been colleteral damage (and I am not saying that that makes it OK!) or mistaken identity for some. However overwhelming Iraqi civilian casualties are a result of Al Quaeda - in the name of defending Islam deleberately killing innocent Muslims. If the rest of the world showed 1/10 of outrage towards AlQueda and their supporters, we would not be having this debate.

The problem is that Al Queda cannot be voted out of their devilish ways.

You are not counting the civilians died when USA bombed Baghdad and other parts. By the way, who created way for Al Queda and Iranians in Iraq? Who have helped them to make their base in Iraq?

"Going to war" to be a hero in front of the people at home without any plan, giving no thought about the consequences.  

Here is a useful pointer on the Iraqi Insurgents! Not everyone involved in violence is al qaeda members.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insurgency

The Iraqi insurgency is composed of at least a dozen major guerrilla organizations and perhaps as many as 40 distinct groups. These groups are subdivided into countless smaller cells. Due to its clandestine nature, the exact composition of the Iraqi insurgency is difficult to determine. Because most of these insurgents are civilians fighting against an organized domestic army and a foreign occupying army, many consider them to be guerrillas. :

Ba'athists, the armed supporters of Saddam Hussein's former nomenclature, e.g. army or intelligence officers;
Nationalists, mostly Sunni Muslims, who fight for Iraqi self-determination;
anti-Shi'a Sunni Muslims who fight to regain the prestige they held under the previous regime (these three categories are often indistinguishable in practice);
Sunni Islamists, the indigenous armed followers of the Salafi movement, as well as any remnants of the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam;
Foreign Islamist volunteers, including those often linked to al Qaeda and largely driven by the Sunni Wahabi doctrine (the two preceding categories are often lumped as "Jihadists");
Patriotic Communists (who have split from the official Iraqi Communist Party[citation needed]) and other leftists;
Militant followers of Shi'a Islamist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
Members of the Badr Organization, a militant arm of the prominent shi'a political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Sorry! I accidentally edited your opst instead of quoting it. I will delete it all. You can post again if you wish.

-A.S.

Edited by abhijit shukla - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: Pradarshak

[

You are not counting the civilians died when USA bombed Baghdad and other parts. By the way, who created way for Al Queda and Iranians in Iraq? Who have helped them to make their base in Iraq?

 You seem to villify Bush continuosly when you know he did not wake up one fine morning with an agenda to go to war with Iraq just for the heck of it.

 Let us go back in recent history and terrorist attacks on world trade center in 1993 and EAfrican bombings in 1998. What did Clinton do about it? Zilch..!! He was busy with the intern when he almost could have had Bin Laden. He himself recently said that he regreted not capturing Osama. 9/11 would not happened then.....    Somalia in 1992 was a disaster and a failure.    

Bush has conducted very much a Reaganite national security policy. Reagan had the Iran hostages released when Carter failed.  The first victory in Iraq war had no one complaining with Baghdad falling and Saddam's sons killed. Bush is willing to take risks and unfortunately administration's ambition of planting a democracy in the heart of the Middle East turned out to be a bigger gamble then anyone had imagined.

 The election which btw had only 40% of eligible voters demonstrated the voters desire for a new direction, which would favor Iraq's stability rather then democarcy.

We certainly don't want to end this war in the wrong way by pulling out like Vietnam war.

[quote=abhijit_shukla]Of all these groups, Alqueda and the group supported by Iran are the only two who have the logistical knowhow of causing the massive casualties. Others are bit and pieces players and would have disappeared[/quote]
I'm sure you will have your source to back that up, but here is what the same wikipedia article I cited says:

While it is not known how many of those resisting the U.S. occupation in Iraq are from outside the country, it is generally agreed that foreign fighters make up a very small percentage of the insurgency. Major General Joseph Taluto, head of the 42nd Infantry Division, said that "99.9 per cent" of captured insurgents are Iraqi.

Originally posted by: lighthouse

 You seem to villify Bush continuosly when you know he did not wake up one fine morning with an agenda to go to war with Iraq just for the heck of it.

 Let us go back in recent history and terrorist attacks on world trade center in 1993 and EAfrican bombings in 1998. What did Clinton do about it? Zilch..!! He was busy with the intern when he almost could have had Bin Laden. He himself recently said that he regreted not capturing Osama. 9/11 would not happened then.....    Somalia in 1992 was a disaster and a failure.    

Bush has conducted very much a Reaganite national security policy. Reagan had the Iran hostages released when Carter failed.  The first victory in Iraq war had no one complaining with Baghdad falling and Saddam's sons killed. Bush is willing to take risks and unfortunately administration's ambition of planting a democracy in the heart of the Middle East turned out to be a bigger gamble then anyone had imagined.

 The election which btw had only 40% of eligible voters demonstrated the voters desire for a new direction, which would favor Iraq's stability rather then democarcy.

We certainly don't want to end this war in the wrong way by pulling out like Vietnam war.

You seem to approve continuously of what Bush did  to Iraq even after it proved to be a disaster.

Quoting someone else's mistake does not make one less. From the point of America's involvement , after Vietnam nothing looks bigger than Iraq.

Edited by Pradarshak - 17 years ago

Originally posted by: Pradarshak

Sorry! I accidentally edited your opst instead of quoting it. I will delete it all. You can post again if you wish.

-A.S.

That's okay.

Originally posted by: lighthouse

 You seem to villify Bush continuosly when you know he did not wake up one fine morning with an agenda to go to war with Iraq just for the heck of it.

 Let us go back in recent history and terrorist attacks on world trade center in 1993 and EAfrican bombings in 1998. What did Clinton do about it? Zilch..!! He was busy with the intern when he almost could have had Bin Laden. He himself recently said that he regreted not capturing Osama. 9/11 would not happened then.....    Somalia in 1992 was a disaster and a failure.    

Bush has conducted very much a Reaganite national security policy. Reagan had the Iran hostages released when Carter failed.  The first victory in Iraq war had no one complaining with Baghdad falling and Saddam's sons killed. Bush is willing to take risks and unfortunately administration's ambition of planting a democracy in the heart of the Middle East turned out to be a bigger gamble then anyone had imagined.

 The election which btw had only 40% of eligible voters demonstrated the voters desire for a new direction, which would favor Iraq's stability rather then democarcy.

We certainly don't want to end this war in the wrong way by pulling out like Vietnam war.

haha, sorry to be nit-picking but Reagan got the hostages released? pray what exactly did he do to get them released? have posted below the tidbit from wikipedia. do look at the dates carefully 😛

now coming to other points, of course Bush did not wake up any fine morning with the thought to invade Iraq. from the looks of it, his mind was made up many moons ago; he just had to find an excuse.😛

3rd point. do u find much more than 40% voting in most elections, or is that a statistic best presented only when republicans lose?😉

as for the vietnam reference, what are you advocating? stay the course like the bushies wanted? and that will accomplish...? with the manner he jumped headlong into war, he created conditions for a vietnam, and now public is to be blamed for it. passing the buck?

BOTTOM-LINE, was bringing democracy to Iraq the avowed goal of the iraq war? then how come the bill of goods that was sold was the probable existence of WMDs, how saddam's agents were going around secretly in european capitals trying to get the bomb etc? btw, wasn't the second "factoid" discredited as a lie at the outset itself? any case, if this was about bringing democracy, perhaps that shld have been forthrightly stated upfront to the public, no? was there any need to be shifty about the objectives, putting out one trial balloon after another in an attempt to find something that the public wld buy? incidentally, i wonder how many Americans wld have voted to go to war to "bring democracy" to iraq. that's never been a very popular cause, is it? unless of course there's some oil involved😛

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From wikipedia:

The Iran hostage crisis was a 444-day period (approximately 14 months), during which student proxies of the new Iranian regime, Muslim student followers of the Imam's line, held hostage 63 diplomats and 3 citizens of the United States inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The standoff lasted from November 4, 1979 until January 20, 1981.Within three weeks, the hostage-takers released several women and African-Americans, leaving 53. ^[1] The United States launched a rescue operation, Operation Eagle Claw, which failed and caused the deaths of eight servicemen. Historians consider the crisis to have been a primary reason for United States President Jimmy Carter's loss in his re-election bid for the presidency in 1980.^[2]. The crisis also punctuated the first Islamic revolution of modern times. The crisis was ended by the Algiers Accords, but Iran alleges the U.S. hasn't fulfilled the commitments by now.^[3]

Edited by chatbuster - 17 years ago