And it keeps climbing...

[Titan]

Originally posted by Jumpman
[tom petty]

aaaaaand I\'m free

freeeee-looooooooading

[/tom petty]

Originally posted by mm
[ghettomath]we\'re not at war, we\'re just sending dead american troops over in exchange for oil[/ghetttomath]

Alright, enlighten me then. What are we at war for? Please explain - what are America\'s interests in Iraq?

Because, other than upholding America\'s already slagging reputation with the rest of the world, I don\'t see any reason why we should be sending troops to Iraq and costing billions of dollars to the American taxpayer.

[Titan]

I was told that one reason we are at war is to keep as many of the terrorists there, which seems to be working.

[clips]

Originally posted by Titan
I was told that one reason we are at war is to keep as many of the terrorists there, which seems to be working.

heh..so you honestly believe that because we\'re fightin\' over there it\'s keepin\' them busy? :rolleyes:...as if ALL the terrorists of the world are right there in iraq?...sorry....it\'s only a matter of time before something tragic happens again...and trust i\'m not wishing that on anybody, but if those terrorists REALLY wanted to hit america again they would do it...it\'s just that now they want a disaster bigger than 911....

the heat has already been put on bush for the pullout of iraq,...the hurricane season has sidetracked the war for a minute, but as soon as that was done, it was back to iraq,...face it,...as long as bush is prez the troops aren\'t goin anywhere, and whoever the next prez will be, it would be highly unwise to pull the troops out even then, and the insurgents?..well we know that they aren\'t going anywhere...sure they blow themselves up,..but there are thousands...maybe even millions more waitin\' to sacrifice themselves,..compared to these american soldiers, who i won\'t say aren\'t afraid to die, but i\'m sure they value they\'re lives alot more than these insurgents...

so when all is said and done, who do you think will have more lasting power?...my opinion honestly? the insurgents....we saw what happened in vietnam, if the situation stays it\'s course in iraq, the u.s. will surely have to pull out at one point or another....

please don\'t compare iraq to vietnam
it makes you look ignorant
thanks

but there are thousands...maybe even millions more waitin\' to sacrifice themselves

Erm... not quite.

Originally posted by Titan
I was told that one reason we are at war is to keep as many of the terrorists there, which seems to be working.

Tell me - how did you pull such a long sentence out of your ass?

Why America must stay

Nov 24th 2005
From The Economist print edition

America should keep its troops in Iraq until Iraqis ask them to go

WARS waged abroad are often lost at home; and that may be starting to happen with Iraq. Calls for American troops to withdraw are familiar in the Arab world and Europe, but in the United States itself such talk has remained on the fringes of political debate. Now, with surprising suddenness, it has landed at the centre of American politics.

On November 17th John Murtha, a hawkish Democratic congressman, suggested pulling the troops out of Iraq in six months, prompting an unseemly spat between the former marine colonel and the White House. Moves to set a timetable have been voted down, but the Republican-controlled Senate has voted 79-19 for 2006 to be “a period of significant transition to full Iraq sovereignty” and the Pentagon is mumbling about troop reductions. Meanwhile, some hundred Iraqi leaders at a reconciliation conference in Cairo backed by the Arab League talked about setting a timetable for withdrawal.

There is some politicking in this. In Cairo, the Shias and Kurds, who dominate Iraq\'s new order, were offering an olive branch to the sullen Sunnis, who used to run the show under Saddam Hussein. In America, Republicans are looking nervously at the 2006 elections. Democrats sense that George Bush is vulnerable—and that Iraq presents the best way to hurt him now that most Americans regret invading the country. Yet there is plainly principle too: Mr Murtha and millions of others maintain that America is doing more harm than good in Iraq, and that the troops should therefore come home.

This newspaper strongly disagrees. In our opinion it would be disastrous for America to retreat hastily from Iraq. Yet it is also well past time for George Bush to spell out to the American people much more clearly and honestly than he has hitherto done why their sons and daughters fighting in Iraq should remain in harm\'s way.

The cost of failure

Every reasonable person should be able to agree on two things about America\'s presence in Iraq. First, if the Iraqi government formally asks the troops to leave, they should do so. Second, the argument about whether America should quit Iraq is not the same as the one about whether it should have gone there in the first place. It must be about the future.

That said, the catalogue of failures thus far does raise serious questions about the administration\'s ability to make Iraq work—ever. Mr Bush\'s team mis-sold the war, neglected post-invasion planning, has never committed enough troops to the task and has taken a cavalier attitude to human rights. Abu Ghraib, a place of unspeakable suffering under Mr Hussein, will go into the history books as a symbol of American shame. The awful irony is that the specious link which the administration claimed existed between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to justify going to war now exists.

Two-and-a-half years after Mr Bush stood beneath a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”, the insurgency is as strong as ever. More than 2,000 Americans, some 3,600 Iraqi troops, perhaps 30,000 Iraqi civilians and an unknown number of Iraqi insurgents have lost their lives, and conditions of life for the “liberated” remain woeful. All this makes Mr Bush\'s refusal to sack the people responsible for this mess, especially his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, alarming.

But disappointment, even on this scale, does not justify a precipitate withdrawal. There are strong positive and negative reasons for America to see through what it started.

Flickers of hope

Iraq is not Vietnam. Most Iraqis share America\'s aims: the Shia Arabs and Kurds make up some 80% of the population, while the insurgents operate mainly in four of Iraq\'s 18 provinces. After boycotting the first general election in January, more Sunni Arabs are taking part in peaceful politics. Many voted in last month\'s referendum that endorsed a new constitution; more should be drawn into next month\'s election, enabling a more representative government to emerge. That will not stop the insurgency, but may lessen its intensity. It seems, too, that the Arab world may be turning against the more extreme part of the insurgency—the jihadists led by al-Qaeda\'s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who blow up mosques around Baghdad and Palestinian wedding parties in Jordan (see article). Though few Arabs publicly admit it, Mr Bush\'s efforts to spread democracy in the region are starting to bear fruit.

So America does have something to defend in Iraq. Which, for Mr Bush\'s critics, leads into the most tempting part of Mr Murtha\'s argument: that American troops are now a barrier to further progress; that if they left, Mr Zarqawi would lose the one thing that unites the Sunnis and jihadists; and that, in consequence, Iraqis would have to look after their own security. This has a seductive logic, but flies in the face of the evidence. Most of the insurgents\' victims are Iraqis, not American soldiers. There are still too few American troops, not too many. And the Iraqi forces that America is training are not yet ready to stand on their own feet. By all means, hand over more duties to them, letting American and other coalition troops withdraw from the cities where they are most conspicuous and offensive to patriotic Iraqis. Over time, American numbers should fall. But that should happen because the Iraqis are getting stronger, not because the Americans are feeling weaker. Nor should a fixed timetable be set, for that would embolden the insurgents.

The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace. Mr Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory. Arabs who want to modernise their region would know that they could not count on America to stand by its friends.

If such reasoning sounds negative—America must stay because the consequences of leaving would be too awful—treat that as a sad reflection of how Mr Bush\'s vision for the Middle East has soured. The road ahead looks bloody and costly. But this is not the time to retreat.

While I don\'t agree with some things in that article from the Economist - I do agree that we must stay in Iraq for as long as it takes for them to able to run their own internal security effectively and when they can they should ask us to leave.  

In addition we should keep a small presence there as a deterent to countries like Iran and Syria that want to meddle in Iraq\'s internal affairs.  Just as we have bases in Europe since the end of WW2, we will probably keep a small number of forces in Iraq for the next 20-30 years.

Hyper, Giga, are you aware that last week, for the first time, Iraq\'s political factions, represented by about 100 Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, collectively called for a timetable for withdrawl?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051122/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_conference

Originally posted by (e)

Tell me - how did you pull such a long sentence out of your ass?

You don\'t read much, do you?

Right, Ghetto. The Economist article specifically mentions that Cairo conference:

Meanwhile, some hundred Iraqi leaders at a reconciliation conference in Cairo backed by the Arab League talked about setting a timetable for withdrawal.

There is some politicking in this. In Cairo, the Shias and Kurds, who dominate Iraq\'s new order, were offering an olive branch to the sullen Sunnis, who used to run the show under Saddam Hussein.

...

Nor should a fixed timetable be set, for that would embolden the insurgents.

The idea of a timetable was tossed around to pacify the Sunnis. I highly doubt the Kurds and Shias want the US pulling out completely any time soon.

Crucially, your article mentions that

Sunni leaders have been pressing the Shiite-majority government to agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. The statement recognized that goal, but did not lay down a specific time — reflecting instead the government\'s stance that Iraqi security forces must be built up first.

So yes, the Iraqis will call for a withdrawl, but only when they are ready. Also, it should be noted that Saddam\'s Sunnis are the ones most fervent about a timetable.  

I am with you, Ghetto, in that this war is hard for all of us. However, if we pull out now, everything that we have sacrificed so far will be for naught.

Edit - My mistake. I misquoted Ghetto\'s article.

Ghettomath: Why two posts to reply to my one?

Anyway,

Yeah, with weapons of mass destruction he didn\'t have?

A. It\'s not 100% true that he didn\'t have them. It\'s possible that they were shipped out of the country before the UN inspections were ready to proceed.

B. It\'s been said that weapons and weapon components classified as WMD\'s have been found in Iraq. Nothing on the scale of "world dominating superbombs" but they found weapons.

C. You don\'t need WMD\'s to kill tens of thousands of people over 25+ years.

Iraq has a population of over 25 million, last I checked. You have to break some eggs if you want to make a freedom omelette, just like countless British and American soldiers had to die from 1776-1783 to make your freedoms possible here in America.

The jury\'s still out on my being an asshole.. but I\'m not an automaton. I\'m sympathetic to all human life. What I don\'t like is idealistic nonsense.. rubbing "LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE DEAD" lists in my face when I know that they\'re dead because of ignorance.

The same ignorance that social liberals are so adamant about dispelling.

You and I do not know which reason (of many possible) that this country decided to bring down Saddam\'s regime. What I know is that when the dust has settled.. and it won\'t happen in 3 years when starting a war in a country of 25+ million people.. this world and certainly Iraq will be a better place.

The Vietnam War was an atrocity and a mistake, greater in nearly every way to the Iraq War (certainly casualties) but the positive benefits? Half of my fucking town is Vietnamese people living the American dream.

Cut to 30 years from now, zoom out from same scene but in Iraq. Narrator: Thanks, America.

Fade to black.

Sexcellent post from a ravaging liberal residing in a blue state

Adam Ant is also the name of a musician.

[clips]

Originally posted by Blade [/]

A. It\'s not 100% true that he didn\'t have them. It\'s possible that they were shipped out of the country before the UN inspections were ready to proceed.

B. It\'s been said that weapons and weapon components classified as WMD\'s have been found in Iraq. Nothing on the scale of "world dominating superbombs" but they found weapons.

C. You don\'t need WMD\'s to kill tens of thousands of people over 25+ years.

 this world and certainly Iraq will be a better place [/B]

blade you made some real logical statements,..but i gotta respond to a, b & c...

A...almost 2 1/2 yrs dowm the line and still no wmd\'s? y\'know the reason we went to war in tha first place?...and bush rushed the u.n. inspectors out before they could finish the job...yea bush truly wanted to resolve the matter "diplomatically" :rolleyes:...


B. bush to this day have been on record sayin\' "we\'ve haven\'t found the weapons yet, but EVEN if we don\'t the removal of saddam was in america\'s best interest and the world\'s"...all they\'ve found from what i remember were old missles from the 80\'s that\'s been buried somewhere...if weapons of any signifigance have been found, trust..we would\'ve heard about it...

C. so tru..you do not need wmd\'s to kill thousands of people, but guess what? the u.s. gave him those chemical weapons,...and yea he might\'ve done those things to his people, but again if the u.s. is so big on liberating the iraqi people they need to liberate about 100 african nations from the atrocities that are goin\' on over there,...oops!...i guess those people over there don\'t need to be "liberated" :rolleyes:...i say liberated because the theme of the war went from wmd\'s, to the liberation of the irai people.....keep in mind that even tho saddam was a bad person, and maybe he ruled with an iron hand..(but so does saudi arabia...our friend)..that country was kept in check...and saddam wasn\'t a threat to nobody....hell even him and osama hated each other....