Re: My Impression of Races, Political Parties, and Life in General

On Jul 20, 5:29 am, Rumpelstiltskin
<PleaseDoNotReplyByEm...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:42:51 -0700 (PDT), mg <mgkel...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jul 19, 11:18 pm, Ron Peterson <r...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 18, 9:13 pm, mg <mgkel...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On the one hand, there are people who are ready to declare a
conspiracy to explain every problem that comes along. On the other
hand, there are people who would rather think politicians are
unbelievably stupid rather than admit they are dishonest.
What do you believe Bush's motivation was for invading Iraq?

His advisors talked him into it giving a wide variety of reasons. The
reason it seems stupid is that they tried to simplify the case in
order to sell it to the American people. (In hindsight, even the wide
variety of reasons were poor justification.)

Hitler had a variety of reasons for declaring war on the USA, but it
wasn't a wise decision on his part.

Ron

So, you believe that Bush invaded Iraq for a "wide variety of
reasons", but he didn't do it for oil?

Maybe that should have been "a wide variety of pretexts".
Those of us against the Iraq war from before the invasion
always felt that way. It was even commented generally in
the press and by people on the street, during the early part
of the war, that the reasons given by the government
justifying it shifted and played almost as quickly and
capriciously as the Northern Lights. Meanwhile, there was
Hans Blix, buried under an growing avalanche of
propaganda, quietly trying to communicate the plain truth
about what he had not found, and how every time he got
a tip from American intelligence about where he would find
evidence of WMDs, it proved dead wrong. Every time.

Here's a copy of a post I made in 2005:
http://tinyurl.com/66dfjf

Here's a list of the reasons given for going to war with Iraq: War on
Terror, WMD, No Inspectors, Remove Regime, Saddam Evil, Gaining Favor
With the Middle East, Setting Iraq as an Example, Saddam Hussein Hates
Us, Liberate Iraqis, Broken Promises, Revenge for Iraq's attempt on
Bush's Life, Threat to Region, Because We Can, Unfinished Business,
Oil, Sake of History, Disarm, Safety of the World, Commitment To
Children, Imminent Threat, Preserve Peace, Threat to Freedom, Link to
al Qaeda, Iraq Unique, Relevance of UN, International Law, Stimulate
Economy.

This List can be found on table A4 of a thesis written by Devon M.
Largio for a Political Science major. The thesis can be found at:
http://www.pol.uiuc.edu/news/largio_thesis.pdf

Altogether twenty-seven rationales for the war on Iraq were used at
one
time or another, twenty-three can be attributed to the administration.

Many of the rationales for war didn't catch on well and they sort of
died a natural death. I think it was a lot like throwing a lot of mud
at a wire fence and paying attention to what sticks where.

Only President Bush, for instance, highlighted America's commitment
to its children as a consideration in the war decision. Only Bush and
Rice mentioned history as a reason stating that history had called the
U.S. into play to take action against Iraq. Only Richard Perle cited
gaining favor with the Middle East and setting Iraq as an example as
reasons to go to war. Only Joe Lieberman offered because Saddam
Hussein
hates the U.S. as a basis for a strike against Iraq. And only Colin
Powell mentioned that Iraq was in violation of international law.

Personally, this whole idea of having a lot of reasons for going to
war
always struck me as being absolutely outrageous. How is this supposed
to work anyway? Let's say for example that China has 50 reasons to
invade the U.S. None of the reasons are very good, so they assign a
point value (1 to 10) to each one and then add them up. To make the
math simple, let's assume each reason gets the lowest value of 1, for
a
total of 50 points. So, then what happens? Does someone in the Chinese
Department of Official Abacus Calibrations say, Wow! 50 points! That's
enough, let's invade the Capitalist cockroaches?

Is that how it works?

For some reason this reminds me of the old joke about the business who
is losing money on each sale, but they're making it up in volume.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt ask Congress for a declaration of war
against Japan, he didn't start out by saying, "I have a list here of
23
reasons why we should declare war on Japan--some of them better than
others. Some of you will like some of them and some of you will like
others. There are reasons here for every taste." The way Roosevelt
actually started was:

"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House
of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will
live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and
deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

If you have a list of reasons to go to war and none of them, by
themself, justify war, can you justify war by adding them all
together?

Isn't war supposed to be a last resort? How many good "last resort"
reasons can a nation have for going to war anyway? How many good
reasons can there be for killing people? Is for the sake of history a
good reason, for example?

Here's the list again (from a different source) for your convenience.
Everytime you hear about more people dying in Iraq, with this handy
list you could go through the reasons and decide which ones justify
those deaths:

"Posted by: ozone at September 27, 2004 08:21 PM
http://www.newshounds.us/2004/09/27/the_election_iraq.php

1. War on Terror
2. Prevention of the proliferation of WMD
3. Lack of Inspections
4. Remove Saddam Hussein regime
5. Saddam Hussein is evil
6. Invading Iraq would allow us to gain favor in the Middle East
7. Example to other terror states
8. Liberate the Iraqi people
9. Broken Promises - Iraq had made commitments to the UN and the world
10. Revenge for Iraq's attempt on the life of President H.W. Bush
11. Threat Saddam posed to the region
12. Because We Can - There would be little conflict or struggle,
little
price to pay for entering the country, the war would be easy.
13. Cleaning up unfinished business in Iraq from the first Gulf War
14. War for Oil - The US' oil interests in the Middle East and Iraq
serve as a reason for wanting to invade the state and topple its
leader.
15. Sake of History - Pres. Bush claimed history had called on the US
to take action against Iraq
16. Disarmament - total elimination of ALL weapons in Iraq
17. Safety of the World - Iraq as a terrorist nation could sell
weapons
to other terrorists and thus posed a threat to the entire world
18. Commitment to the Children - America should give its children and
the world's children a better future.
19. Imminent Threat - The uncertainty of Iraq's weapon power and
future
plans.
20. Preserve Peace - Iraq posted a threat to the peace of the world by
its continued terrorist involvement and its increased tension in the
Middle East
21. Threat to Freedom - By oppressing its people and threatening the
world with possible terror acts, freedom was prevention from spreading
through the Middle East and was lessened in those nations that feared
terror in their backyards.
22. Link to al Qaeda
23. Iraq Unique - Rumsfeld declared that Saddam Hussein in combination
with the weapons potential in Iraq made Iraq different than the other
"axis of evil" countries, and therefore a great immediate threat.
24. Relevance of UN - The UN was put on notice that it would face
illegitimacy if it did not support the cause of the United States.
25. Iraq had broken international law - Colin Powell said that
violations of UN resolutions broke international laws established in
the UN Charter.

I would also add 2 more that Bush announced in the past few days:

26. Saddam "hopes" to "some day" get WMD (as compared to he "has"
WMD).
27. Saddam had an "ability to work with terrorist organizations" (as
compared to actually "working" with terrorist orgs)."
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: My Impression of Races, Political Parties, and Life in General
    ... What do you believe Bush's motivation was for invading Iraq? ... variety of reasons were poor justification.) ... Those of us against the Iraq war from before the invasion ... Example to other terror states ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Navy
    ... reasons. ... An illegal and rather stupidly thought out war in Iraq. ... Or some secret CIA insttallation in some "friendly" country? ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: OT: Where were you 5 years ago?
    ... War II because the Nazis had absolutely NOTHING to do with the attack ... No. Saddam was a major threat to his political opponents WITHIN Iraq, ... comes to Human Rights, and we haven't invaded those, and Iran and North ...
    (rec.roller-coaster)
  • Re: Melting the Skin Off of Children
    ... If the civilians chose to do so, I think there was a way out in advance. ... I'm starting to believe the press that the reasons for going to war were boosted by some overstated claims of WMD. ... Maybe I'll be persuaded in time we never should have gone in the 1st place, but even then I'd say the US owes Iraq a stable environment before leaving. ...
    (alt.sports.baseball.bos-redsox)
  • OT - What really pisses off the Liberal Defeatists
    ... Some, like the American Revolution, grow with time; ... Osama bin Laden had declared war on us years earlier, ... focus on the terrorist threat and made America less safe. ... The war in Iraq is alternately criticized as a major strategic blunder, ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)