Should we bomb/strike Iraq

[Bill Gold]

…I'm terrified of the actions and motivations of our government, I doubt the intelligence, morality, and virtue our the President…
-Michael Krass

I’m with you 100% Michael.

In the late 1960’s, President LBJ went on television and told the American people that the Vietnamese had attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. He knew it was a lie when he said it, and it didn’t stop him. I’ve got tremendous respect for quite a few great things that LBJ accomplished for this country while he was in office, but this just proves that good, well intentioned people lie. And sometimes these lies cost ~50,000 American lives, like the ones which were lost later in the Vietnam War. Sorry for the history, I’ll try to keep it down from now on.

Why are we talking about attacking Iraq? I guess it’s because of his chemical weapons, and because we think that he might be working on or may already have nuclear weapons. Ok. So does Pakistan, and China, not to mention all of the nukes that the old Soviet Union had stashed in the nooks and crannies of their enormous country. Oh. Because our government told you that Saddam has been plotting to kill Americans with his weapons. Or maybe it was because our government has told you that Iraq and Al Queda have had close contact over the past couple years. Well, I don’t trust my government and I’d like to see this “undeniable proof.” But when people ask for the proof, the government tells them that disclosing the evidence would be a security risk to the country. Well, looking back at the 60’s, I won’t accept hearsay from my government. I can decide for myself whether or not this proof is as undeniable as they claim.

Bush 1 should have eliminated Hussein in the first place, but unfortunately he didn't. Clinton most definitely should not have allowed the weapons inspectors to be kicked out, but he didn't. He should have stood up to him then and put a quick stop to it. However he didn't, we now have a dictator whose had over four years to do whatever he's wanted in the way of weapons program. He's used them before I know that , you know that then what makes you think he won't use them again. The fact is we need to enforce the rules of the war we've already won. We can not allow or afford to let Iraq get any weapons. I think and I think that you do to that the past two administrations have seriously dropped the ball on the entire Iraq issue.
-Jim Giacchi

Bush 1, as you referred to him, had no authority to eliminate Saddam. The UN resolution which allowed our coalition to take action against Iraq just authorized us to remove Saddam’s forces from Kuwait. Should Bush have gone against such an explicit order? No, and I commend him for not overstepping his UN mandate. Although, the US doesn’t have a strong record concerning obeying UN resolutions… but that’s a different story (for now).

And you know if one goes down we all do down as well
The balance is precarious as anyone can tell
This world's going to hell
-“Kyoto Now” by Bad Religion

If the United States takes unilateral action against Iraq, we will practically be opening the gate for Russia to invade Georgia (no, not the state north of Florida), and China to invade Taiwan.
-FotoPlasma

Great point Foto. With all of this talk of invading Iraq, no one has yet to mention what will happen after our hypothetical removal of the leader of a sovereign country. Russia and China oppose a revision on the old UN resolutions requiring inspectors to tell Saddam when they are going to inspect his “royal palaces.” This heads up is what allows the Iraqis to hide some of their weapons from inspectors. But why does Russia take this stance on this issue? Because they want the US to take action against Iraq without a UN mandate. If the US attacks Iraq without the consent of the UN, then Russia can make a valid claim to support action against Georgia. Russia desperately wants to kill off the Chechen rebels. They just need to find a “legal” way of doing it. Same goes for China wanting to take action against Taiwan. If we take unilateral action against Iraq, we’ll be doing our part to make sure our world goes to hell (faster than it already is).

It's not that hard to find it with sattelites and I'm not talking about pictures of buildings but of pictures of communities being burned down.
-wysiswyg

On a side note… After Operation: Desert Storm was finished, Gen. Schwartskoff (yeah. I can’t spell his name.) said that the satellite information wasn’t as useful as most people had thought. He said that he wished there were manned spy planes in the air during that campaign. Since the SR-71 had been retired…

I say that attacking Iraq is a neciessity. If some one is going to harbor terrorists, they deserve to die. Plus... the idea of a campagin to attack sounds good, i.e. attack Iraq. Bomb Saddam and so on.
-Dan Levin

There’s no proof that Saddam is harboring terrorists. Old men and women don’t go to war. Old men send young men young women to war. Be careful what you wish for.

Not to mention "paying" his own people to blow themselfs up in Isreal
-tjrage_25

What are you talking about? I feel like I shouldn’t have to respond to this. Give me some proof. /me shakes his head in pain

Again, and again, and again, and again he lets us have and "unconditional" inspection. But when inspectors arive he restrits them to only where he wants them to go.
-tjrage_25

First of all, they were never unconditional inspections. The inspectors have always had to notify Saddam when they were going to look through his palaces. Please stop with this nonsense.

It's time to let him know we mean buisness, let us see what's really in your country, or we knock down the door and look for ourselfs.
-tjrage_25

The US has always been serious about inspectors. But why do you think that the US has the right to use its military (without the blessing of the UN) to force another country to show us what weapons they may or may not have? Do you think we would be willing to show other countries where, and in what quantities we store our weapons? You’ve got to be kidding.

Weapons are like a drug to this man. He needs them, he craves them. And as his arsenal grows, his ego does too. One day that ego is going to get so big, we will use this arsenal.
-tjrage_25

Really? How did you happen to come across this information? Have you sat down and had dinner with the man.. talked about his feeling regarding weapons? Don’t put words in other peoples’ mouths. You may come off as intelligent to most people, but you sound like an idiot to the rest of us. Grow up kid.

After all, why does a third world country with a dictator want with a nuclear arsenal, other than to use it? Deterence? From who?
-tjrage_25

Yes, a deterrence. Look at this from Iraq’s point of view. You’re stuck in the middle of the desert, people don’t like you, and not too far away there’s a place called Israel which is armed to the teeth with weapons, some of them being nuclear weapons. That seems like a bad situation, does it not? A deterrence sounds like a decent alibi to me.

OK. I’ll get back to my commentary now.

So why now, are we talking about attacking Iraq? The Republicans are in the minority in the Senate by one representative, and they are in control of the House of Representatives by a slim margin. For the past 2 years this country has gone down the crapper quite rapidly. The economy is in disrepair, our rights as American citizens have been taken away from us under the guise of “Homeland Security” (gee… homeland sounds kinda like something the Nazis or Soviets would say…), and Osama Bin Ladin is still unaccounted for among other things. This sounds like unstable ground for the Republicans to try to gain seats in either house. So what do we do? Start getting the American people to look over at another country; one that isn’t ours. We’ve got to get them to focus on our hatred for other people instead of the horrible job that the Bush administration has been doing.

With all of this talk about action against Iraq, no one has talked about what will happen after we’ve hypothetically removed Saddam from power. Are we expected to believe that everyone in Iraq will love democracy, and we’ll just sit down and drink some tea with these people? Give me a break. These people, like the people of Afghanistan, have only lived in turmoil. Democracy is not instinctual for these people. What’s more likely is that the US will back another dictator who is more friendly with us, and would sell us oil at a very low price. Our government is more concerned with Iraq’s oil than with Iraq’s weapons and dictator. Anything that would make our country less dependent upon OPEC is a plus for our government, as long as it doesn’t lower the consumption of oil by Americans. Like Dick Cheney said a while ago, conservation is not the answer… Yeah, to him and his buddies. Tell that to the millions of Californians who had to conserve electricity a couple summers ago during our “Electricity Shortage”, which was really just Enron, et al manipulating the markets, and raping us of our hard earned money. It’s the same reason why Dick Cheney and Bush 2 want to make Alaska and the Pacific Coastline look like Swiss cheese without any regard for the environment.

Ok. I’m done for now.