RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events "It's not about oil or Iraq..."

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Chant said:
There should be no nuclear weapons in this world.

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Rob Kamphausen said:

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Chant said:
There should be no nuclear weapons in this world.

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superman IV: quest for peace

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Chant said:
I concede the point!

But you didn't really answer my question.

Did the U.S. really do the world a favour in using nuclear weapons, showing everyone what kind of power a nuke had?

I should, perhaps try to explain my earlier comments a little better.

I think no one should have Nuclear Weapons, or WMD in general. But of course there are nations which I most certainly wouldn't like to see having nukes!

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Well geez, in an ideal world...


Of course.

But the problem is, if the U.S. disarms, the rest of the world will not. Without a deterrant, Russia might nuke us.
There is talk in the U.S. that Russia, despite being impoverished, is updating its nukes, and we again have to catch up, with a whole new class of specialized nukes.

The U.S. didn't do the world a favor in 1945.
The rest of the world wanted nukes, independent of what the U.S. did.
Tthe reality was that the Germans were working on a nuclear program, and already had V-2 missiles to carry them. As you're probably aware, most of the German scientists began working on the U.S. nuclear missile program after the war.

But my point is, within a few short years, Britain developed nukes, and France, and Russia (the last largely stolen from us), and China. And then out of the blue in the early 70's, India, Pakistan and Israel. Most of these nations are friendly with the U.S., and didn't pursue them in reaction to the U.S., they just wanted them.

It concerns me that the U.S. is seen as the cause of nukes !

It's often been argued in the U.S. that we might as well not have nukes, because we'd never use them.

At the peak of the cold war, both the U.S. and Russia had upwards of 30,000 reported missiles each. As I recall with the most recent reductions, it's supposed to be down around 1,000 on each side.
That's a considerable reduction.

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Rob, I wish I could help you with the anti-Bush perspective of Bush's hidden motive for invasion.
We've all heard "blood for oil" and "war profiteering" and so forth. But as you say, none of those make sense.

Yeah, sure, we'll spend a trillion on an Iraq war, just so Bush and Cheney can make a few million in contract kickbacks from Halliburton. Makes sense.

And if it was "blood for oil" Iraq would have to give us every drop of oil for the next 30 years, and we might then break EVEN !
But whatever, we know it makes no sense, but let the Bush-bashers vent away and have their fun.

As for the real reasons, see Bush's 1/28/2003 speech, and his 3/17/2003 speech.

And maybe in 20 years, the Bush-bashers will finally accept that Bush's stated reasons are the reason we went. I actually think the prevailing reason is because (whether others choose to believe it or not) Bush and his administration want to plant seeds of democracy in the Middle East, because they truly believe that's in our long term interest, far more than any other economic/oil/financial considerations.

And the urgency for invasion in March 2003 was to complete the war while we had the level of resolve and support we did, before sanctions began to crumble, and some further question about WMD's caused a loss of political will, and then Iraq would win, the U. N. inspectors would be removed, the U.S. invasion somehow diplomatically diverted from occurring, and then Saddam would have the 5 or 7 years he'd need to have his WMD's and threaten his neighbors, the U.S., or both.

That's why, though a September 2003 invasion would have ostensibly made more sense, that I believe it occurred when it did.

Eliminate strife and opression in the Middle East, and then they won't want to kill us ! And Iraq's as good a place as any to start.

The U.S. brought democracy to Western Europe through Wilson's Fourteen point plan at the end of World War I.

We brought democracy to the empires of Germany and Japan at the end of World War II.

And hopefully, it can now be seeded in the region that has been neglected for decades, and most sorely needs it. It's a volatile world, and it needed to be done, regardless of what the naysayers will continue to nay-say. And Bush had the political will to get it done.

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Dave the Wonder Boy said:


Yeah, sure, we'll spend a trillion on an Iraq war, just so Bush and Cheney can make a few million in contract kickbacks from Halliburton. Makes sense.

And if it was "blood for oil" Iraq would have to give us every drop of oil for the next 30 years, and we might then break EVEN !
But whatever, we know it makes no sense, but let the Bush-bashers vent away and have their fun.

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Steve T said:
There were also plenty of soundbites on the news where politicians (from either side of the pond) aluded to links between Saddam and Bin Laden. Which almost certainly were baseless. Saddams government was, although vile in many ways, quite multicultural, which never would have gone down well with religious extremists.

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Knee-jerk Republican / Bushite defence is concerned with retrospective changes to the rationale for invasion.

Suddenly the Republicans are deeply concerned with human rights in Iraq. Oh-ho, that's why we invaded!

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"Politically the president really needs to explain this to the American people," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee who supported the Iraq war. "It undermines his ability to continue to talk to the American people about the war on terrorism."

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President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday sidestepped demands for outside review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites), but said it was important to know all the facts surrounding White House assertions Iraq's illicit weapons justified the U.S. decision to invade.

"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.


Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) has broken party ranks to join Democratic demands for an independent probe into how U.S. intelligence got it wrong given the failure by searchers to find weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted were in Iraq.


"McCain is the guiding light on this," said a Republican insider who predicted that the Bush administration may shift its view and accept an investigation.

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Rob Kamphausen said:
lemme ask a question to the antibushites:

say there are no wmds. say there never were any wmds. say the white house knew that, and there was never any justification for an iraq invasion and/or war.

say you're right about bush being a criminal.

the question: why?

why do it? where's the motive? shouldn't that be a factor you're naming? did i miss it?

where's the reward? the benefit? the evil sub plotline that skeletor reveals to he-man just before he pulls the "death lever" (but then, of course, he-man breaks free and saves the day).

because republicans really just hate france that much? a mass ploy to one-up the UN? to get a shoppers high by needlessly spending billions on a military effort? to enrage democratic sponsors? to secure iraq's oil ...which we haven't secured? to lend creative storylines to jla arcs? to elevate the popularity ranking of internet message boards?

every super villain, even the lamest adam west batman tv show villains, have some sort of driving force -- namely because you can't make a villain without one.

if america/republicans/coalition of the willing/bush (etc) are as evil as you say or as evil as you want them to be... what is the reasoning for their misdirection?

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The Chinese People's Liberation Army cannot successfully wage an extended war for the same reaosn the Japanese lost WW2. Neither of them had a strategic oil reserve.

And now the US has one, a big one, just to the east of Saudi Arabia.

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the G-man said:
With all due respect to Europe's "lack of patience" for Israel, we probably wouldn't have "needed" an Israel if the European leaderss hadn't caused, been complicit in, or tried to ignore, the wholesale slaughter of several million Jews approximately 60 years ago.

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[qb]

And even when you factor alleged European anti-Semitism out of the equation there's still plenty of issues to take with this blind faith in Europe as a moral arbitrator of whether war with Iraq was justified.

Now comes reports out of Iraq that Saddam had bribed "about 270 Iraqi and foreign politicians, businessmen and journalists," including "senior French officials, the ruling parties of India and Bulgaria and even the Russian Orthodox Church....Among those accused were former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, former French U.N. Ambassador Bernard Merimee and Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir "Mad Vlad" Zhirinovsky."

Again, I note this not to argue an inherent U.S. superiority, but to argue against an inherent European superiority, a blind acceptance among many on the left that a European viewpoint is automatically the correct one.

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Rob, I wish I could help you with the anti-Bush perspective of Bush's hidden motive for invasion.
We've all heard "blood for oil" and "war profiteering" and so forth. But as you say, none of those make sense.

Yeah, sure, we'll spend a trillion on an Iraq war, just so Bush and Cheney can make a few million in contract kickbacks from Halliburton. Makes sense.

And if it was "blood for oil" Iraq would have to give us every drop of oil for the next 30 years, and we might then break EVEN !

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MisterJLA said:

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The Chinese People's Liberation Army cannot successfully wage an extended war for the same reaosn the Japanese lost WW2. Neither of them had a strategic oil reserve.

And now the US has one, a big one, just to the east of Saudi Arabia.

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Sounds good to me!

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:

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Knee-jerk Republican / Bushite defence is concerned with retrospective changes to the rationale for invasion.

Suddenly the Republicans are deeply concerned with human rights in Iraq. Oh-ho, that's why we invaded!

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I find this to be complete bunk, there were 2 main reasons given the immediacy of the threat of WMD's and enforcing the UN Security Council thingy's. No one has even suggested that the main reason wasnt the WMD's Ive never heard a statement from the goverment stating otherwise. I do here people saying well, if they arent found we still got rid of a brutal dictator who tortured thousands and killied many more. I wont now or ever lose sleep over his removal. If you dont believe the world is safer without him, then I have a bridge to sell you in Manhatten if your interested......

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Dave said:
The difference between Europe and the US is that Europe has only participated in one war since WW2. I'd run out of fingers if I counted the number of wars the US has been in since then.

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the G-man said:

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Dave said:
Furthermore, if we want to keep moving further and further back into history in some sort of moral tit for tat, we can discuss Europe's role in the crusades, the Roman Empire, etc., etc.

Of course, all of which would be silly, if not futile.

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The problem with that arguement is that the USA is a relatively young nation compared most European nations. That being said, the older nations are bound to have seen more strife, tyranny, torture and violence.
Hell, If we are too look at it that way, my own nation would be susceptible to serious consideration, what with the vikings having pillaged, raped and murdered throughout hundreds of years.

That is why it's futile to argue such a case

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No Evidence CIA Slanted Iraq Data
Probers Say Analysts Remained Consistent
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A01


Congressional and CIA investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism have found no evidence that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials, according to intelligence officials and congressional officials from both parties.



Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who is leading the CIA's review of its prewar Iraq assessment, said an examination of the secret analytical work done by CIA analysts showed that it remained consistent over many years.

"There was pressure and a lot of debate, and people should have a lot of debate, that's quite legitimate," Kerr said. "But the bottom line is, over a period of several years," the analysts' assessments "were very consistent. They didn't change their views."

Kerr's findings mirror those of two probes being conducted separately by the House and Senate intelligence committees, which have interviewed, under oath, every analyst involved in assessing Iraq's weapons programs and terrorist ties.

The panel chairmen, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), and other congressional officials said in recent interviews that they found no evidence that analysts shaded their findings to more closely fit the White House's known desire to create the strongest, most urgent case for war with Iraq.

The conclusion that analysts did not buckle under political pressure does not answer the question of why the intelligence reports were so flawed. Nor does it address allegations -- made by Democrats in Congress and Democratic presidential candidates -- that top Bush administration officials misused intelligence and exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq.

On Wednesday, former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told a Senate committee that he no longer believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war. And he called for an independent inquiry into why U.S. intelligence agencies believed the opposite.

The White House, which has said it opposes such an outside inquiry, has said final conclusions about Iraq's weapons programs and U.S. intelligence cannot be made until the Iraq Survey Group, the inspection agency Kay used to lead, completes its work.

"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters yesterday. "I want to be able to compare what the Iraq Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq." Bush added that Hussein was a danger and "we dealt with the danger. And, as a result, the world is a better place and a more peaceful place, and the Iraqi people are free."

There were instances before the war in which intelligence analysts said they sensed pressure to reach certain conclusions, but the House and Senate investigators said there was no indication they bowed to such wishes.

Last year, for example, some analysts at the CIA complained to senior officials when Vice President Cheney made multiple trips to CIA headquarters to question their studies of Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda.

And analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency told investigators they sensed pressure when civilian Defense Department leaders constantly questioned why their analysis had found only tentative links between al Qaeda and Iraq.

But "their constant message" to congressional investigators was "they didn't buckle to pressure," another congressional official said.

Neither the CIA inspector general nor the agency's ombudsmen received any complaints about outside meddling, a senior intelligence official said. Added one congressional official: "There were no anonymous calls, no letters, nothing."

The CIA, congressional intelligence committees, Kerr's team and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are investigating how the CIA analysis missed the mark so widely.



That is a more difficult question to answer and a much more complex problem to fix than situations in which analysts are improperly influenced by elected officials, intelligence experts said. The congressional committees have found that CIA analysts relied too heavily on outdated, circumstantial intelligence and on information from unreliable informants.

Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week that he had talked to CIA analysts and had found no evidence of "inappropriate command influence."

"And, you know, almost in a perverse way," Kay added, "I wish it had been undue influence, because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who in fact were exercising that. The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong. And we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis."

Kerr said the "analysts believed that the evidence supported their judgment. Whether it did or not is another question."

The CIA maintains that it is still too early to say that its assessment was wrong because the search for weapons is not over. There are still millions of pages of documents to be read, hundreds of sites to visit and thousands of Iraqis to be interviewed, the agency says.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said Kerr's and the committees' findings mirror the CIA's view of its analysts' work: "We have long said and still say that our analysts didn't change their assessment of Iraq because of any outside pressure."

In fact, some analysts have told Kerr and congressional investigators that they welcomed the attention of Cheney on his visits.

"Analysts are very independent people," Kerr said. "When they get pressure, they tend to react the other way. They find it quite easy to stand up" to superiors. "It's kind of the culture."

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Chant said:
it really could be that Europe views America like a child. Like a teenager that has reached puberty.

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"President Jacques Chirac was fighting last night to regain control of a fast unravelling scandal encircling his political power base...M Chirac seized charge of an inquiry into alleged telephone taps, break-ins and violent threats against judges investigating Alain Juppé, the former prime minister and [Chirac's] heir apparent, convicted on Friday of organising illegal party funding.

The extraordinary intervention came the day after the justice ministry announced it would investigate the allegations.

His gazumping of his own ministry indicates the seriousness with which he is taking the insinuation that he or his allies tried to pressure the judges in the Juppé case. . . . M Chirac has also been implicated in the case which brought down Juppé, involving the use of Paris town hall money to pay salaries to party employees.

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whomod said:
it is becoming clearer and clearer that the "imminent threat" case was false.

In this case, weapons of mass destruction and the immiment threat Hussein supposedly posed to us were the chief arguments. Absent proof of this immiment threat, those arguments were just a false pretext for military action. In addition, they make this government appear negligent of the horrors Saddam had been inflicting on his people during his time in power. The rhetoric, of course, was that Saddam was about to attack us. And that he was linked to al Qaeda.

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JQ said:
Many politicians in Germany think the US treats them [like] an angry teenager yelling at their parents.

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Must be that tactic works with Germans.

According to this story, Germany is starting to come around:

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America...

They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

"We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation," said one authoritative source.

Another official explained: "We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

So much for the claim of America losing "credibility" with its "allies" over the decision to liberate Iraq.

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The point of all this is that no nation is all good, nor is one all bad. Rather than base our foreign policy decisions on the imagined superiority of other--also flawed--nations we should base it on what is strategically and otherwise justified as being in the best interests of our citizenry.

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the G-man said:
I had a thought today about Europe's attitude towards the US and, while I make no claim as to its veracity, it's worth pondering.

The United States started as European colony. The vast majority of Americans are at least partially descended from Europeans. Our culture is largely a melting pot of European ideas, language and culture. Until recently, our nation was populated primarily through European immigration, first the British, Dutch and Germans and, later waves of Irish, Italians, Russians, etc., etc. Even Hispanics/Latinos have a connection to Europe through Spain and other colonization of this hemisphere.

Is some of our ongoing tension with Europe essentially caused by what is viewed by Europeans, perhaps subconsciously, as a parent-child relationship? Does Europe view us as the child that they can't let go of, the way that some parents never can really admit their kid is now an adult?

Just a thought. I'm not sure how I stand on it one way or another.

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the G-man said:

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America...

They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

"We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation," said one authoritative source.

Another official explained: "We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

So much for the claim of America losing "credibility" with its "allies" over the decision to liberate Iraq.

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Dependent on the French.

That's enough to make me lose my appetite.

DEPENDENT ON THE FRENCH!!!

For some reason, the words national suicide come to mind.

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Dave said:

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Rob Kamphausen said:
lemme ask a question to the antibushites:

say there are no wmds. say there never were any wmds. say the white house knew that, and there was never any justification for an iraq invasion and/or war.

say you're right about bush being a criminal.

the question: why?

why do it? where's the motive? shouldn't that be a factor you're naming? did i miss it?

where's the reward? the benefit? the evil sub plotline that skeletor reveals to he-man just before he pulls the "death lever" (but then, of course, he-man breaks free and saves the day).

because republicans really just hate france that much? a mass ploy to one-up the UN? to get a shoppers high by needlessly spending billions on a military effort? to enrage democratic sponsors? to secure iraq's oil ...which we haven't secured? to lend creative storylines to jla arcs? to elevate the popularity ranking of internet message boards?

every super villain, even the lamest adam west batman tv show villains, have some sort of driving force -- namely because you can't make a villain without one.

if america/republicans/coalition of the willing/bush (etc) are as evil as you say or as evil as you want them to be... what is the reasoning for their misdirection?

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A friend of mine in the oil industry says that there is 30 years of oil left in the world. He is the CEO of an oil services company (he puts things called "chritmas trees" on the sea floor, which pump up fuel).

Even if he is wrong, there is a finite amount of oil left in the world.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army cannot successfully wage an extended war for the same reaosn the Japanese lost WW2. Neither of them had a strategic oil reserve.

And now the US has one, a big one, just to the east of Saudi Arabia.

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the G-man said:
According to this story, Germany is starting to come around:

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America...

They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

"We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation," said one authoritative source.

Another official explained: "We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

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PenWing said:
Rob, please tell me that you don't actually believe Saudi Arabia is a friendly nation. Please tell me that you meant that in jest.

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Rob Kamphausen said:

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PenWing said:
Rob, please tell me that you don't actually believe Saudi Arabia is a friendly nation. Please tell me that you meant that in jest.

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its really no different than our relationship with iraq. "friendly."

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