This is a very good point- but, when he invaded Iran we helped him, even gave him chemical and biological weapons as well as intel.

So, Saddam invades Iran (in a war in which hundreds of thousands or more died) and he's a good guy that we help out. Then, he invades Kuwait, and suddenly he's a bad, bad man who's overstepped his bounds and MUST be dealt with right away! See what I'm getting at Nitro- so long as it benefits us, we let it slide no matter how wrong it is.

I never stated that the problem of Afghanistan was exclusively about a pipeline. However, it is indisputable that during a time when Afghanistan was harboring terrorist groups the U.S was very, very nice to them -and- turned a blind eye to just about all of their indiscretions, so long as it looked like the pipeline would go in. As soon as that fell through, THEN they suddenly turned into real bad dudes!

It's not an attempt at criticism, and please don't see it as that... however, if you look at history let's see how other military adventures in Afghanistan turned out-

Alexander the Great failed

The British failed (one attempt resulted in their entire garrison getting wiped out)

The Russians failed

Now we're repeating history again! Remember, we "won" in Afghanistan back in 2001 didn't we? So why are we still there?  And I do mean we- Canada has had troops in country since 2001 too!

I go an accuse you of being stark raving mad, and you go and ALMOST make a completely coherent and sensible statement to prove me wrong eh?

There are a few issues with it:

1. It is unrelated to the discussion here, so how can it be your point?

2. You admit that saddam is evil and had to be removed, but bemoan the united states only doing so for selfish reasons and not removing other evil dictators (because there is no monetary reward for doing so). So from that one must draw that the united states SHOULD have: hit iraq sooner, hit iraq harder, and go into other nations as well. All true btw, but you somehow draw the exact opposite conclusion.

Your argument, if I may be so bold as to remind you, was that the united states was in iraq killing innocent women and children, while the terrorists were just trying to push out an invading evil empire (by... suicide bombing OTHER iraqies? because that IS what they do!).

The truism that if saddam played ball he would still be in power suggests that he should have been ousted sooner, and that americans are only willing to risk their lives to save someone else when it benefits them economically, it in no way shape or form shows that those same people are EVIL though. Doing good for a cash reward is completely different then doing evil, or being tempted by money into doing evil. I suggest you play any RPG ever made to see there difference between the two.

Umm, no. If you go and read through the posts, it is where the discussion has evolved to.

Now, my good fellow, you are missing the point.... what you're failing to see is that whether or not a foreign leader is a "good guy" or a "bad guy" has absolutely no relevance on the geo-political stage ( and personally speaking I disagree with this)

Again, we paint the picture to our benefit- Suharto was an absolute monster. He killed millions of his own people, and we applauded him as a beacon of freedom.

Salvador Allende was a democratically elected leader very popular with his people- but unfortunately he was a leftist who didn't want to play ball economically with the west. So we had him killed, and replaced with a military dictator who terrorized the nation of Chile for years but we were ok with that because it was to our benefit.

See where I'm going with this?

The only reason why we went after Saddam, was because he no longer complied with the wishes of the resident super-power. It had nothing to do with whether or not he was evil.

 Look at Saudi Arabia. That country is one of the world's biggest open air prisons. 15 of the 19 highjackers who flew planes into the WTC and the Pentagon were from Saudi. Regular funding for multiple terrorist groups comes from Saudi and oil dollars. And after the attacks? While all air traffic was grounded, a presidential order allowed for the flights of the entire Bin Laden family out of the U.S, without even a single sit-down questionning from any law enforcement... why?

I'll tell you why. It's no ridiculous conspiracy or anything like that. It was simply because the U.S gov. was playing ball with Saudi, because Saudi was and is continuing to carry out economic and regional political policies in accordance with our wishes!

For you it hadn't. Maybe it has to do with the way you think?

For me (and everyone I know who supported Bush on this) his evil was certainly part of it. The fact that he didn't comply with the "wishes of a super power" (i.e. civilised society) was an opportunity to remove him from power, not the reason to do so.

Maybe you shouldn't pretend to speak for your political opponents, Arty?

I agree, My view was "finally this monster has stepped on enough toes to get his due! I wish we would have taken him out sooner but he was playing nice before so we couldn't muster the support needed to take him out"

I would have actually enlisted if I thought there was any chance I'd get to go on active duty BEFORE the war was over...

Just because you (Artysm) have no concept of good or evil doesn't mean everyone else is like you.

You'd have to show proof of that (the transfer of chemical/biological weapons) because I don't believe that for a second. I do know that some dual-use technology was sold to Iraq by a German firm. If you look at the Iran/ Iraq war you'll see the primary chemical weapon use was mustard gas. It's been around since WWI. It's easy to make and quite effective on a large group of unprotected enemies in concentrated areas.

As for the the nerve agents (like the one he reportedly used on the Kurds in 1988). many of these are derived from sarin created during WWII. Again not difficult to make with the right equipment. So why didn't Iraq win the war with these weapons? Because the winds often shifted and they gassed their own troops.

You'd have to tell me what biological agents they used, as I have not heard of any. There use in such close quarter combat does not seem practical.

As far as intel, we couldn't even provide intel on the Iranian revolution that happened a year earlier. But you weren't specific on the type, and I have heard that perhaps some satellite photos of the Iranian defenses were provided. But your post seems to suggest we backed Iraq. You left out a big part though. Iran threatened to capture or destroy oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf. The US re-flagged the tankers (to US flags) so that any attack on them would be an attack on the US. This kept commerce safe. Since this benefited the Iraqis you could say we helped them, I say we helped ourselves and others not directly involved.

As for anything else, the US didn't face any Iraqi owned US weapons in 91 or 03, because there were none.

You don't understand how this works.

They just SAY it.

And then it's an argument against you. The rest of the discussion is then just days and days of conservatives disproving all and every possibility liberals can make up.

Sometimes you have to go as far as proving the physical impossibility of an event and even that won't stop liberals from using the "argument" again the next time the subject comes up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

Speaking of... remember the "no WMD found, only some old degraded bio weapons"

Old and degraded my butt, the iraqies had impure sarin, which only lasts a few weeks, it took us longer to find the caches. And we cought scientists and equipment whose task was to make more on demand.

Speaking of.. I learned in school, in the USA, that the US gave chemical weapons to saddam to use against the kurds... But I learned to not beleive everything I am told at school, ESPECIALLY any atrocity committed by the united states.

Taltamir I give others flak if they use wikipedia as a reference because the information can be subjective. Improve your research cred by referencing the original source. That said imagine my surprise when I saw that MSNBC ran that story!

Yeah you'd think I'd learn my leason, but no. It;s all over on the current Diplomacy and Iran, receipe for disaster thread too LINK. There must be a liberal Canadian tag team.

Funny, since the few liberals on this forum are far more likely to provide evidence backing up their arguments compared to the conservatives who will demand ridiculous levels of evidence from anyone who disagrees with them without offering up any of their own.

Being one of the conservatives in this forum and being someone who actually takes the time to translate old texts when required, or visit places and talk to people and look at things when needed, and post long essays with links to articles and videos backing up my word, I feel tempted to call the bluff.

Please post examples of at least two liberals who have in the past provided more evidence than I did. Links to their postings will be enough.

Should you feel the need to challenge my statement I will gladly link to my postings about Iraq (with pictures of Saddam's torture chambers I took with my own camera), my postings about Israel (with pictures of the university where I was under fire taken again with my own camera), my postings about religion (with word-for-word translations and analysis of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin texts), and my postings about Islam (with quotes of and links to scholars).

I really really want to meet the "few liberals on this forum" who are "far more likely to provide evidence backing up their arguments". That would be tremendous fun.

In this thread alone I backed up my arguments about living under military occupation with a description of my own life growing up in such a situation, a link to a Web site with pictures and descriptions of the military base in my neighbourhood, pictures of pro-coalition souvenirs I bought in Iraq, and a link to a festival in Germany that celebrates the occupation.

And when a liberal gave us a list of questions, I answered and backed up my answers with a link to an article with pictures of the Al-Qaeda camp I was talking about, as well as lots of information I had only because I went to Iraq and looked at things myself. I then continued to back up what I said about Islam with links to two Islamic scholars I am fond of.

Can you please be more precise and tell me exactly which "liberal" on this forum is "far more likely" than I to provide evidence for their claims? Perhaps you can find anything at all of the kind here in this very thread? Or perhaps you will only run into source after source after source given by me (rather than liberals) supporting my claims (rather than liberals').

The only ones I have ever seen demanding "ridiculous levels of evidence" are the local liberals, who will happily make up stuff about something and then demand that they be proven wrong (and then continue not to care when they are shown evidence). I remember how some liberals here claimed that the Shah of Iran had killed 300,000 people during the Iranian revolution (with no evidence at all), despite the fact that it would have been physically impossible to get rid of that many bodies in the time. Even showing them that the Shah's enemies, the mullahs themselves claimed "only" 100,000 victims wouldn't convince the liberals.

So where is this "evidence"? I want pictures and eye witness reports, not propaganda articles and lies. And preferably the evidence should make sense and not "prove" an event that is physically impossible.

I see your "funny" and raise you one "pathetic".

You find it "funny" that liberals here provide "more evidence", I find it pathetic that they usually provide nothing at all and pretend to know a lot about countries they have never seen and people they have never met.

leuki, you are a rational thinker, you don't try to "conserve" the traditions of the past, your thinking just leads you to see that conservatives happen to be right much more oftne than liberals.

Very accurate review of your work. I really don't know how anyone could slander you in such a manner by suggesting that you are incapable of providing evidence.

Humm, that is funny. You know what else is funny? That the few liberals on JU won't accept the word of the conservatives that were there in person! We usually don't get that luxury with the liberals here, most do what they can to stay away and source their usual taking points.