Comments Posted By tubino
Displaying 11 To 17 Of 17 Comments
Mark said, "Go to the Brookings Foundations study on deaths per day now vs. under Saddam. It’s far LESS now. I know your emotion won’t allow you to believe so but it is true."
Mark, there are many ways to count deaths: natural deaths, violent deaths, or you can add the two, then compare to only one. Apples, oranges, old age, execution-style shots to the head.
You want numbers? Forget biased thinktanks. Try these:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/08/latest-iraq-resistance-stats.html
If you get your head out of Stephen Hayes' rearend for a while and try some reality-based claims, you'll have to rearrange your ideas.
"I am done replying to you though because you can’t even be honest with yourself. There’s no way that you don’t understand the separation of 9-11 and other al Qaeda activity. NOT EVERYONE IN AL QAEDA EVEN KNEW ABOUT THE PLOT."
You're all about smoke and mirrors. None of that is relevant to justifying the lying, the counterproductive invasion, or the supposed coverup by the Bush admin on all this. Do you understand? IT DOES NOT MATTER if there were some connections. AQ was global, had stronger connections elsewhere, now has a golden opporutnity in Iraq, and openly said their only hope was to lure Bush into an occupation of a Muslim country. This isn't hindsight -- it was the basis for the famous cover of Harper's with Bin Laden as Uncle Sam, saying I WANT YOU ... TO INVADE IRAQ!
And Bush gave bin Laden his wish. Now you're flying around, citing all kinds of bogus stuff the White House is distancing itself from, and wondering why you're not taken seriously.
"The Bush Admin’s not sitting on any evidence. Their PR has always been abyssmal. C’mon, Scott McClellan? Nope. I just pointed out quotes from the 911 Commission. How is that sitting on evidence? I pointed out links to ABC news reports that are confirmed by the Sen Intel Com investigation into Iraq intel…how is that sitting on anything? It’s not."
What you cite is the circle jerk of stories planted by Cheney's WH gang through people like Judy in the NYT, picked up elsewhere, never verified, like all the WMD stories.
You cite stories citing reports citing unnamed witnesses (discredited by the CIA). The WH is not just doing bad PR, it is distancing itself from this BS, while happy to have it out there via Limbaugh etc. Why does it work? Because people like you will believe it.
If it were true, the WH would be citing it chapter and verse, all the time.
Comment Posted By tubino On 23.08.2006 @ 10:41
Just a couple quick points.
First, some of you believe that -- for reasons you apparently can't reveal -- the Bush admin is sitting on all this revealing evidence, and in fact is DENYING the Iraq-AQ connection. That's the clearest evidence that you either believe in some crazy conspiracy theory, or are denying the obvious.
Second, even if you are 100% correct about the connection of Iraq-AQ, then it only STRENGTHENS the idea that bin Laden hoped to lure the US into invading Iraq, where AQ could do to the US what it did to the USSR in Afghanistan. In other words, if you are right, then it means the Bush invasion of Iraq was even STUPIDER and more self-destructive than it initially appeared. Or at least that the evidence that it was stupid and counter-productive was even more convincing.
It does not justify what happened, at all, and it does not support the idea that continuing in a failed direction is a good idea.
Saddam was contained prior to the invasion.
AQ was working with LOTS of people around the globe, and in many countries much more than with Iraq, even accepting ALL your evidence. Using this evidence (denied by the Bush admin, remember)to justify a military invasion in Iraq (while ignoring AQ in Saudi Arabia etc etc) is to wear convenient blinders.
Take off the blinders. AQ was lots of places. Iraq was a minor one at most, and the only one that was really contained. The invasion has opened it up to AQ like it never was before.
Why is that a good thing?
Comment Posted By tubino On 23.08.2006 @ 06:53
Here's what mainlining the Kool-Aid can do to you. TallDave winds up and pitches:
"Read the Iraq Index; we have vastly larger numbers of ISF trained, even leaving aside the fact we now have a constitution and a constitutionally elected government, neither of which existed a year ago. Much more reconstruction has been completed. The institutions of government are better-established."
Complete and utter HORSESHIT. Sure, the numbers say more are trained -- but they neglect to tell you that a portion of those we are training and arming are now death squads, and some are probably aiding insurgents. Sure there is a constitution, but the inherent flaws in it are pushing the country apart as much as holding it together. The funds for reconstruction are pretty much gone, and the situation so much more dangerous in many cases, so it doesn't much matter if projects are at 20% or 35% done -- they aren't likely to get finished.
The reconstruction failure is a textbook case of cronyism, corruption, and lack of accountability and oversight. In other words, it's a typical Republican use of gov't funds, channeled to donors and insiders, all political patronage and damn the results. And it was PLANNED that way, because repubs resisted all efforts by Dems to put accountability into the funding bills. Even the outright fraud by Custer Battles did not result in jailtime, as I recall, because the system doesn't allow prosecution, even of clear obvious THEFT.
And your solution is to commit MORE, when the same people are in charge?
Absolutely insane.
Comment Posted By tubino On 22.08.2006 @ 21:14
"What I do find insane is the tendency of both Republicans and Democrats to underestimate American power."
What *I* find insane is that so many commenters here have learned NOTHING from Israel's overestimation of its own military power in fighting guerrilla warfare. How many times do you have to make the same mistake???
What *I* find insane is that so many commenters here have learned NOTHING from the US installation of the Shah in Iran in the 70s. Do you STILL not understand that if the US goes in and uses force to install a pro-Western leader over a populist govt in Iran, it will FOMENT exactly the kind of Islamic fundamentalism you do NOT want? DO you still not understand the origins of Ayatollah Khomeini???
The Taliban is regrouping in Afghanistan. If the Bush admin can find a way to turn two bad places into even worse ones (Afghanistan now supplies most of the world's opiates, Iraq has more violent deaths than under Saddam), then what makes you think it can now magically do more in Iraq???
Do you still think the US can accomplish something constructive in Iraq NOW, when the number of daily attacks is up to 90, when it couldn't do it when daily attacks were less than half that??? When the IEDs are more sophisticated now, and when the Iranians have great influence there??? Do you think that after the US burned through a few hundred billion dollars (you have to include the $30B of Iraqi funds mismanaged too), it can now spend 3-4 times that to get something done???
I find it *INSANE* that even when the president of the US, on nat'l TV, says that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, there are still some dead-enders who just can't admit that's true? Why would the Bush admin HIDE that info? It's insane to believe that Iraq had anything of any substance to do with Al Qaeda. The US, with its Afghanistan connections to propel AQ against the USSR, has had WAY more supportive connections with AQ than Iraq. The US funded and helped train bin Laden's people!!! Sure, it was to defeat the USSR, but still, there it is.
And now, the Bush admin falls right into bin Laden's trap. Iraq is to the US what Lebanon was to Israel in the 90s, what Afghanistan was to Soviet Russia.
Occupations are terribly messy bloody affairs, and the occupied nearly always prevail.
Comment Posted By tubino On 22.08.2006 @ 20:49
I can respect that you are honestly struggling to show your change of mind on this, but... c'mon. I'm just a guy reading the better blogs out there, and you know what I learned? The things you're facing now were largely laid out months and months ago. Juan Cole explained the flawed constitution, for example. So please forgive me for pointing out that you're very late in catching up.
And if you read the people who have been largely RIGHT about the situation in Iraq all along, you read some very good reasons for believing the following:
1) Adding more troops now will increase problems, probably more than it could solve. There is no reason to think adding people or weapons would improve the intelligence or targeting there, and more soldiers will inevitably increase resentment, credibility of accusations of occupation.
2) It may look like having US troops in Iraq is a big advantage for military threats to Iran and Syria... but it isn't. The US could easily overextend troops, and Iran would be in a position to cut lines, isolate troops. It's horrible, but the duration of the disaster in Iraq has greatly limited options for the US.
I hate it. I hate what this administration has done to our country.
Comment Posted By tubino On 21.08.2006 @ 22:41
BEYOND SCANDALOUS: MIND BOGGLING CORRUPTION IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF IRAQ
Any conservative worth his salt has already blogged about the problems with reconstruction and the corruption involved.
I can tell you from many months of experience that when I have commented on right-wing sites about this waste and corruption (which has been documented for a long time in Waxman's report), I have been called a Michael Moore loony and much much worse. The denial on the right on this issue has been incredible, with most trying to explain it away with the "fog of war" defense.
Which does not hold up AT ALL when this admin is running away from prosecutions.
It's no accident that it's a UK paper, and the Guardian no less, that follows up on this. You won't be seeing any in-depth reporting on this in the US MSM.
Comment Posted By tubino On 22.03.2006 @ 01:09
THE GHOST OF CHUCK HAGEL CHANNELS THE GHOST OF VIET NAM
The US does not have the troops to maintain current levels in Iraq past one year from now.
That means you can call for a draw-down, and it will happen.
Or you can call for increased troop strength, and there will still be a draw-down.
All the repubs and dems can unite in calling for an increase in troops, and ... there will still be a drawdown.
Hagel is simply stating the unattractive obvious. A lot of dems are being either smart or spineless in NOT calling for pulling out the troops -- why should they? Let Bush lose all by himself, and take the blame. Why provide him with a fake but believable scapegoat?
Comment Posted By tubino On 22.08.2005 @ 16:35
