Bush did the right thing by going into Iraq.

SAINT said:
Yes.. Bush is right. 8) He's a dynamic president
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Well Saint you certainly get to the point but I would like to get some well informed reasons as well.

Doody, did the US really have to go in so quick? Was it because the US election was coming up and/or the US military build up in Kuwait reached a "tipping point" and action could not be reversed? I just don't know.


Two or three more months may have made a bigger difference to the situation we have now. The US would have more time to do deals with the French, Germans, Russians etc. More time could have been given to peace time planning in Iraq. The weapons inspectors would have finished their work. Bill Clinton would have done all this. He would have waited and done a much better job wheeling and dealing than Bush.

I agree the UN is very flawed but you cannot throw the baby out with the bath water. The pre-emptive strike doctrine (thanks to Bush and his pals) can now be used by any country in the future to pursue their political goals dressed up as reasons of national security. I would hate to be living in Grozny knowing the Russians will probably be looking for revenge as a consequence of the Beslan murders.

Have any of you boys given any serious thought as to how the political situation is going to sort itself out in Iraq? Structure of government? Power sharing between the factions, religious groups and tribes? Are you a little bit worried?
 
aussiejohn said:
Al Zawahiri is the man you really need to get. He is the brains behind Al Queda. You boys seem to have a fixation with Bin Laden. Maybe the US media is getting in your heads just a little too much. :)
I believe he is in Iraq, or at least that is where he has been sighted and attacked multiple times.

aussiejohn said:
While you boys are getting very cosy and agreeing with each other, could one of you Marine boys out there educate us on the real security situation in the US sectors? You would obviously have a better perspective than the journos, observers, govt officials, contract workers (and the ones taken hostage), etc.
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The "journos" and contract workers have no reason being in Iraq, they are over there hoping to make a buck, let the Army Engineers build up the nation, they are damn good at it, (i.e. Phillipines, Puerto Rico, Japan, West Germany, Italy).

aussiejohn said:
It doesn't look good in the media but I just guess we are getting it all wrong. Elections still looking good for January?
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Elections are in November buddy.

aussiejohn said:
Read the other day that the Marines around Tikrit are doing a great job. Things are very quiet relatively. They have been doing deals (money etc) with the local sheiks. The sheiks like to feel important. The Brits are doing similar things in Basra. Seems there will be a lot of deal making between now and January.
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Yeah, about that, alot of the WMD's have been obtained by buying them off the black market, not the best way but you gotta do what you gotta do.

aussiejohn said:
As for Afghanistan, the State Department Web Site list impressive achievements made. BBC web sites document major security problems outside the major centres. Upcoming elections in October need more security and observers/monitors. A real worry. Particularly as resources are going to Iraq.
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We only had 10,000 troops in Afganhistan before Iraq, those troops are not losing any resources. I remember reading how 250 Marines were setting out to intercept a "large" group of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, I was thinking they were giong to get slaughtered, then an Marines Colonel came on and said that they were playing it safe and taking 5 times the firepower they needed, it was then I realised the discrepency between the United States and the Taliban.

aussiejohn said:
My views are: I agree with the stand taken in Afghanistan but not in Iraq. Bill Clinton had the right idea. We should have waited and planned better for the peace.
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Clinton, he should have carpet bombed Iraq into oblivion when the CIA uncovered the plot to kill Bush Sr. and after Saddam repeatedly fired upon US planes, some of those that were fired upon came from the South Dakota Air Guard, which I almost joined but chose the Army instead.
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aussiejohn, once again we find ourselves talking about the Iraq subject. I am honored to chat with you again.

aussiejohn said:
Doody, did the US really have to go in so quick? Was it because the US election was coming up and/or the US military build up in Kuwait reached a "tipping point" and action could not be reversed? I just don't know.

Two or three more months may have made a bigger difference to the situation we have now. The US would have more time to do deals with the French, Germans, Russians etc. More time could have been given to peace time planning in Iraq. The weapons inspectors would have finished their work. Bill Clinton would have done all this. He would have waited and done a much better job wheeling and dealing than Bush.
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I do agree that waiting a few more months would have done more good. I told my mom that I would have preferred to have been sitting on the Iraq border forcing Sadam to comply with the UN inspections. It is one thing to threaten someone with military action. It's a bit different when there are troops massed on your border.

On the subject of wars in the name of political goals and national security. We have a history of doing such a thing. The savage Wars of Peace by Max Boot describes these wars in great detail. One thing I have learned is that in our past, we did not mess around. If someone attacked or threatened the US, the US swiftly brought down the dogs of war. Between 1820 and 1930, the USMC landed on foreign soil over 180 times. Strangely, the Philippine campaign from 1899-1904 resembles the Iraq war we are fighting today.

I also agree with you on the fact that there wasn't enough post war planning. I believe that there were people in the military who saw these problems but were ignored. Remember how General Shinseki said it would take over 200,000 troops to take Iraq. Rumsfeld publically humiliated Shinseki citing that the US would only need about 60,000 troops to do the job. The higher ups settled on about 140,000 troops. Once the war was over and the attacks began, everyone realized that Shinseki was right and more troops were sent to Iraq.

Once again, it's good to chat with you :cheers:

more on The savage Wars of Peace
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Bryant20030829.shtml
 
Thanks Doody. It is good to read well informed comments.

Good to hear from you again. Hope things are going well.

Damien old boy, the Iraqi elections are scheduled for January if things go well.

Carpet bombing.....???????
 
aussiejohn said:
Thanks Doody. It is good to read well informed comments.

Good to hear from you again. Hope things are going well.

Damien old boy, the Iraqi elections are scheduled for January if things go well.

Carpet bombing.....???????
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lol, I assumed you meant the upcoming elections here in America, my bad.

Carpet bombing, well, remember in WWII when we had to use 1000 bombers to destroy a single factory? Or when thousands of planes would drop bombs on Berlin everynight, destroying almost everyting? That is basically carpet bombing, except you truly destroy everything, essentially planes fly in massive formations, most likely B-52's, and drop bombs on anything and everything, a ten story building would be reduced to a 5 foot high pile of rubble. We did this against Iraqi ground forces, hours before a B-52 would fly over and drop leaflets saying that when and where we would be bombing, one B-52 could cut a quarter mile wide and 1 mile long line through anything in the way, the bombardment could be heard from miles away.
 
aussiejohn said:
Damien, you did say the following

"Clinton, he should have carpet bombed Iraq into oblivion.........." :roll:
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Well, Saddam was plotting to kill an American President and attacking our planes enforcing the No Fly zones, wonder what would have happened if we would have gotten evidence days after 9/11 saying that Iraq was directly involved with the attacks, wouldn't that make life so much easier for us, if we invaded Iraq becuase of 9/11 rather than telling of the WMD's they had (I have talked to some Marine veterans from different units who all tell the same stories of finding WMD's in Iraq) or because Saddam needed to be removed from power.
 
Damien,

Carpet bombing Iraq into oblivion is a bit different than just invading the place.

I'll leave the WMD stuff alone. We could go on about that one for ages.

I have had a pretty good go on this topic so I think I will stop here. Catch you boys on another.
 
I will discuss anything you like. Afghanistan Iraq or the virtues of rocky road ice cream as compared to vanilla.
Not well planned? I contend that the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army 3rd ID did an outstanding job of taking Bagdad as did the Brits in their taking of Basra.The offensive phase was well executed. Despite the fact that alot of intel was flawed.
The Iraq situation now has become a low intensity conflict instead of a conventional force conflict two different worlds two different kinds of tactics.
Which brings us to the 'stan. That conflict is nearly exclusivly SPECOP'S oriented at the present stage. Small teams findin em and poppin em.
 
No!
He didn't went to Iraq. The military did. 8)
No!
It was not the right thing. He didn't had any real prove that Iraq is related to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 2001. Weapons of mass destruction,... come on! Is that as lame as I think? Or is just me.
No!
The USA people are not more safe now. I think now the danger encreased. Because of their military actions in Iraq more people will join the terrorist. Well, if some country would come and bomb Romania and kill hundred of women and children I would be very pissed off and try to take my revenge. :rambo: No matter the reason they came for.
 
Azur said:
The USA people are not more safe now. I think now the danger encreased. Because of their military actions in Iraq more people will join the terrorist. Well, if some country would come and bomb Romania and kill hundred of women and children I would be very pissed off and try to take my revenge. :rambo: No matter the reason they came for.
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Even if your ruler was killing hundreds more?
 
Here is a tidbit you might not have known. The Bush administration was planning on going to Iraq before he was in office. Also after 911 one of the administartors(o forget which one so i dont wanna point fingers in the wrong place) thought of a plan to bomb random countrys"to keep the terrorists guessing" Wow.
 
Stafford911 said:
Here is a tidbit you might not have known. The Bush administration was planning on going to Iraq before he was in office. Also after 911 one of the administartors(o forget which one so i dont wanna point fingers in the wrong place) thought of a plan to bomb random countrys"to keep the terrorists guessing" Wow.
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Of course Bush had plans to go into Iraq before he was elected, I bet he had those plans since 1993, wouldn't you?

And yes, we would bomb these nations, and they would all have ties to Al Qaeda, Iraq did, I don't care what anyone says, these "experts" in the media are still on the payroll of the company's they represent, have you not noticed that all the info in the news is about Iraq is negative? That is because the media are a bunch of greedy backstabbing bastards who do not acknowledge the good our boys in Iraq are doing and instead focus on all the negatives.

"If it bleeds it leads."

That is the policy of the media towards their news and air time of stories, they don't want to tell of all the happy stories of everyday life, but rather to give an inordanant(sp?) of attention to the numbers of dead. And not by honoring their death, but by using the dead as pawns in a game of political chess.
 
I hope most of you people realize that it took the Allies 2 years, after they won the war and defeated Hitler, to completely stop Nazi guerilla fighters called Werewovles.

The Werevolves would target Allies, buildings and German citizens cooperating with the Allies.

Even back then people were complaning how much of a failure our effort in Germany was. I ask you, should we have stopped and abandoned Germany back then because the Werewolves were attacking our efforts?

Some of you people are listening too much to the press. You need to listen to the guys who are actually over there on the ground in Iraq right now. We have a few on the message board right now.
 
Can you provide any links to this Bush plan prior to office? Or at least give us a source name?

Anyways, invading was inevitable. The sanctions didn't help topple Saddam like we had hoped, and they were coming to a close, he would have really went crazy with items to make WMD once they fell. The idea of already possessing WMD with links/funding to Al Queda and other terrorist groups. Then throw in the brutality of his regime and the mass amounts of death by it. Not to mention his constant hostility towards neighboring nations and the US.

WMD turned out to be a bust so far, and probably will remain so forever. But he would have eventually invested in them once the sanctions fell.

The links to Al Queda have been low, and were brief chats with them.

As for funding, well, besides funding anti-Israel terrorist groups, they indirectly funded other groups, like Al Queda, by switching hands with various "questionable" companys.

It's beyond me why people hate the US because of removing a vicious, dangerous, and corrupt regime from power, let alone the anti-occupation crowd that seems to hate the idea of rebuilding and providing security...?
 
History will either prove or disprove your statement. Myself I agree he did the right thing.
Sometimes doing the right thing isn't about the safe choice, it isn't about the popular choice, it is more often than not exactly the opposite.
 
He did the right thing. If everyone would quit concentrating onWMD and look at the whole picture then they would realize that this was something that needed to be done.
 
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