Hand over

[Jackrat]

Well the yanks hand over Irac today.
Was a stable country with a corrupt leader,now it's an unstable country with no leader and the beginings of a civil war(Due To start tomorrow no doubt).
So america still has it's own WMD,Irac never had them anyway,A couple of hundred American soldiers are dead as well as a couple of thousand Irac citizens that had nothing to do with anything in the first place.
Bin ladin is still on the loose,and that boot licker next door, johnny howard still thinks it was a just war.
So can anybody tell me what this exersize actualy achived??

[riffer]

So can anybody tell me what this exersize actualy achived??

Well for a start it took America's mind of its own problems, like:

- rampant unemployment due to outsourcing jobs (globalisation)
- the fact that George Bush got in due to vote tampering
- the American economy

etc etc

[Deano]

Well the yanks hand over Irac today.
Was a stable country with a corrupt leader,now it's an unstable country with no leader and the beginings of a civil war(Due To start tomorrow no doubt).
So america still has it's own WMD,Irac never had them anyway,A couple of hundred American soldiers are dead as well as a couple of thousand Irac citizens that had nothing to do with anything in the first place.
Bin ladin is still on the loose,and that boot licker next door, johnny howard still thinks it was a just war.
So can anybody tell me what this exersize actualy achived??

Got rid of Saddam Hussein who had perscuted Iraq people for years. Gasings, torture, murder etc.

I don't know enough about it to say much, but it seems some Iraqies are happy Saddam is gone, but will the future be any better ?

[James Deuce]

854 US Military Deaths, 9400 Iraqi civilian deaths (conservative red cross estimate - they fear it could be as high as 11500) since the war started. Iraqi military and insurgent deaths "don't get counted" (US War Dept.).

The US haven't handed over squat until their military leaves. The whole handover doesn't happen untill all foreign troops have left. This is a face saving exercise at best, and gunboat diplomacy at worst.

Iraq will descend into civil war the moment the US withdraws, and the leader that pops out will either be a Baath party dictator or a Shi'ite Muslim cleric. Either way it will be back to Middle Eastern tyranny rather than US-style "democracy".

[Motoracer]

We will just have to see won't we... George W Bush might just have fluked this one by getting it right or if Iraq turns into shit, it'll just give the "terorists" another reason to f*ck everyone else up.

[Motu]

It sucks that the US is too powerful to get into trouble for this whole cock up,the only positive thing is Saddam is out of power - for now....but the Iraqi's have the say about his fate - what's the bet he ''escapes''.....

[Hitcher]

So can anybody tell me what this exersize actualy achived??

Time will be the judge of this whole sorry saga.
Apart from Saddam Hussein being in custody (which may not last long if nobody comes forward to press charges -- it's not beyond the realms of possiblity that he may be released), this episode has seriously tarnished the "moral highground" upon which the "Coalition of the willing" chose to make a stand, cost squillions of dollars, unnecessarily ended thousands of innocent and other lives, created expectations amongst millions of Iraqis that can never be delivered and let the genie of a jihad of sunni versus shiite muslims out of its bottle.
Nobody has clean hands on this matter. It will take several generations to resolve.

[Bandito]

Well the yanks hand over Irac today.
Was a stable country with a corrupt leader,now it's an unstable country with no leader and the beginings of a civil war(Due To start tomorrow no doubt).
So america still has it's own WMD,Irac never had them anyway,A couple of hundred American soldiers are dead as well as a couple of thousand Irac citizens that had nothing to do with anything in the first place.
Bin ladin is still on the loose,and that boot licker next door, johnny howard still thinks it was a just war.
So can anybody tell me what this exersize actualy achived??

I can not add to this in any way Jackrat, good questions and even better comments.

[kerryg]

It's a miserable sad woeful story.....no WMD. No linkage of Saddam to Al Qaeda. An Iraqi people deeply resentful of the US presence.


If I was militant Muslim, George Bush and his cronies' ill-conceived foray into Iraq would have made me very angry. An angry Muslim is sometimes not a nice muslim......

I sort of wonder, in my simple-minded way, why choose Iraq when there are so many other worthy candidates for George Bush to rescue (how about Somalia? Or Chechnya?)


What am I missing??? :spudwhat: ....mmmmmmmmmmmm

[Motoracer]

What am I missing??? :spudwhat: ....mmmmmmmmmmmm

The master finished his job through his puppet... You know what GWB's old man was like back in the Gulf war. This is just sweet revenge for him now.

[FROSTY:Me]

is it me or did the dumb fucks do the same thing a few years ago?
nam? agent orange?
I thought the whole thing was all about USA and oil--nothing to do with people

[Paul in NZ]

Oh I dunno...

As rabid consumers of oil products for fun only I'd suggest we could be a tiny bit grateful for GW's actions to liberate all that cheap, easily recovered oil...

I will allow us a few more years on our bikes before we all have to swap to mountain bikes or electic scooters (beep beep)

As for the right / wrong of the thing? How the hell would we really know what the average Iraqi thinks? It's always easy for the extremists to get on the telly (hey, saw a few heads off and you are a media star). As always. Joe average will be worried about keeping a roof over his/her head, feeding the kids, education, will the car make it to the next wof sort of stuff. I think it is a huge leap to suggest either side is right or wrong...

Just ask yourself this...

What do most of the countries that never seem to get their shit together and attract the most vicious rebels have in common?? Rights to energy usually. Radical Muslims? Bollocks, evil gangsters wanting power that read the owners manual of their AK47's or 101 uses of semtex a lot more fervently than they do any holy book... (on both sides)

Rather than judge either side. Thank your lucky stars you live here.

Cheers

[Ghost Lemur]

Oh I dunno...

As rabid consumers of oil products for fun only I'd suggest we could be a tiny bit grateful for GW's actions to liberate all that cheap, easily recovered oil...

I will allow us a few more years on our bikes before we all have to swap to mountain bikes or electic scooters (beep beep)

As for the right / wrong of the thing? How the hell would we really know what the average Iraqi thinks? It's always easy for the extremists to get on the telly (hey, saw a few heads off and you are a media star). As always. Joe average will be worried about keeping a roof over his/her head, feeding the kids, education, will the car make it to the next wof sort of stuff. I think it is a huge leap to suggest either side is right or wrong...

Just ask yourself this...

What do most of the countries that never seem to get their shit together and attract the most vicious rebels have in common?? Rights to energy usually. Radical Muslims? Bollocks, evil gangsters wanting power that read the owners manual of their AK47's or 101 uses of semtex a lot more fervently than they do any holy book... (on both sides)

Rather than judge either side. Thank your lucky stars you live here.

Cheers

Just a correction on the point of "liberating all that oil". Have you seen the price of oil lately?? I think if you research into OPEC in the leadup to the war you might find that they were planning on dropping the Dollar for the Euro as their trading currency. You can imagine the effect this would have had on the already weak US economy. America sent France and Russia a message loud and clear, and got to boost their economy the only way they know how... WAR.

I'm not saying this was the only reason for the invasion, just part of the puzzle. As for the ridding of Saddam. Mixed feelings. Yes he had been known to treat his opponents like shit (show me a leader that doesn't - within the limits of what they think they can get away with). He also provided a society that was the most liberal in the entire Middle East. He was more than happy for women to have equal rights, men to drink, etc, etc,. That's one of the reasons I always laughed at the suggestion of there being some sort of link between him and Bin Laden. It's been shown time and again Bin Laden like Saddam about as much as he liked the Saud Royal family.

I could continue, but I need some lunch and want to go for a ride. So I'll leave the food for thought there.

[750Y]

'woe to you' oh earth and sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath, for he knows the time is short. let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, it's number is.....

dunno what that's got to do with anything lol 8-)
or how about...

the evil that men do goes on and on, the evil that men do goes on and on...

[Skyryder]

Ever since the Americans lost the Shah of Iran they have never been able to have a presence in the Middle East. The whole American foreign policy has been a shambles from start to finish. As an example: before Saddam invaded Kuwait he was told by Madalene Albright that America had no intersest 'in this.' (the invasion) It was not until the Saudi's got jittery that America realised their cockup. The excuse of Saddam's nuclear arsenal was just that, an excuse. When Kamel Hussain fled to Jordan with his family he was debreifed by the CIA. Kamel was the son in law of Saddam and was in charge of his nuclear programme. To prevent the UN weapons inspectors of discovering nuclear devices Saddam had orded them to be destroyed. There is plenty of evidence to support this. The American press never pursued this in depth and that is why the American people believed in what Bush was doing. Take the 9 11 incedent and you have a President who at the time of the invasion could do no wrong. The hyprocosy of all this is that Saddam was carrying out all his obnoxious doings while an ally of the US.
The invasion had nothing to do with oil, but a possible threat to both Israel, Jordon and Saudi Arabia. Take that into account and add the fact that Saddam was unable to dislodge the Iraqi problem for the US and Saddam became a liability to American interests.

Was the invasion justafied. I tend to think so on two points. First of all there was no evidence that Saddam would not resume his Nuclear programm after the removal of the UN inspectors (and that was becoming close as no weapons had been found) and secondly after the 9 11 affair America need a Middle East presence for no other reason than to collect intellegence for future terrorist threats etc.

I should add that I am no lover of American politics but I still think they did the right thing but unfortunately with the wrong President.

Skyryder