Clutch

I haven't been around PD for a while. Did I miss a thread in which all the pro-war chickenhawks retracted their insistence that Saddam had WMDs and was so willing to use them that the USA had a right to defend itself pre-emptively?

Probably would have been an apology in there, too, for impugning the motives of anti-war posters -- eg, attributing their scepticism to a mindless insistence on doubting America at every turn.

Could someone give a link to the apology/retraction thread? Thanks.

Jat

Yeah, right. Didn't you know, Saddam hid them in Iran so that is why Iran is next on the "liberation" to do list. There is also the rumor that they were all looted by the Iraqi people. They're just waiting for all of them to drop dead now, though, the only ones dying in Iraq now are American soliders and their "friends". These Iraqis sure are an ungrateful bunch of bastards.

Bill

I've seen film of the liberation of Italy and France in WW II. Nothing from Iraq appears to express the same sort of feeling of "liberation" as those pictures do.

Sooner or later "W" is going to have to face up to the fact that the majority of Iraqis want the USA gone and they want to be ruled by an Islamic state. Until that happens, expect to see several foreigners per week die.

== Bill

meritocrat

I often wonder how these pro-war people must feel since no evidence of WMD's has been discovered. In essence, the reason why Bush and Blair wanted to go to war simply has no foundation.

snoiduspoitus

Well damn Bill, surely you're not implying that Iraq is a quagmire.

We're holding a bag of shit, and it smells worse every day. I desperately need to be wrong, but I don't think I am. Is Tito a bad analogy?

I understand that other issues come into play, but all things considered, the unleasing of religious hatreds to majorityy rule is spooky.

ex-idaho

The right is very comfortable living in a world were the ends justify the means. Thats how Iraq happened, how Camp X-Ray happened, how the Patriot act happened, how the mass round up of Arab American men happened and most importantly how the presidency of W happened.

lunachick

While this thread is not at IIDB, it shows that some of those diehard chickenhawks are still at it. Tinfoil hats are very fashionable among the neocons, you know.

Bill

Well damn, sorry to disappoint you, but yes, I surely am..... I agree, totally. It would be nice if the bag-o-shit were just decomposing roses, but I fear it is not..... Actually, I think that Tito is one of the better analogies going. After Tito's death, nobody else could hold together the cobbled-together mess we called Yugoslavia, so it eventually fell apart into its component nations (six of them!). Its been almost two decades since Tito kicked the bucket, and we still don't have that bag-o-shit sorted out..... Oh, I aggree with that sentiment. But the reality is that Iraq is also a cobbled-together nation with no natural affinity for the people to work together as a nation (i.e., even though the Baathists were "nationalists," there was never a true "nation" for the Iraqi people to be "nationalist" about; instead, it was all about the installation of a bloody power-mad dictator).

Even though the Kurds have agreed to play ball with the USA for the time being, the rubber will meet the road when the USA asks them to surrender their current total autonomy for subservience to a national government that they can't ever hope to control in any meaningful sense. I predict that the Kurdish people will "take out" (vote out; assassinate; whatever) any Kurdish leader who agrees to such a surrender of power.

And the Kurds are the "most likely to succeed" with respect to the USA effort, since they already have a somewhat-functioning democracy in their own little corner of Iraq (thanks to a decade of operating as a USA protectorate, since the First Gulf War; something which ought to teach us just how long of an effort is required to do a decent job of "nation building").

The Shiite majority seems to be both well-organized and totally committed to their two main goals of: 1) ridding Iraq of the US presence; and 2) installing an Islamic state.

The Sunni minority is having a hard time getting used to not being part of the "in crowd" that runs the country. Some of them are working with the USA administrators, but others of them are far more likely to throw in with the Shiites and hope for a better state of affairs with them in control. Any Sunnis that join with the Shiites just make it that much more impossible for Bush to avoid an eventual Islamic state.

So, Iraq will remain a quagmire so long as the USA remains opposed to allowing an Islamic state to take over (and Bush has committed himself to avoiding that outcome, since he knows that he and his cronies won't be able to control an Islamic state in any meaningful sense).

But Iran has an Islamic state, and Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state, and Kuwait is an Islamic state, so why should anybody realisticly believe that there is any other option for Iraq? After all, the only other proven forms of government in that region are a Constitutional Monarchy (Jordan) and Baathist rule (Syria), neither of which has a snowball's chance in a hot place so far as the USA's administration of Iraq goes.

So, again, yes, we are in a quagmire until the US President gets out of the way of "the will of the people of Iraq" and allows an Islamic state to take over. Bush won't do it, but the chances are good that a Democrat will do it in 2005, if one is elected as President next November.....

== Bill

NZAmoeba

Don't forget, at LEAST 15% of americans think WMD's HAVE been found... :banghead:

Koyaanisqatsi

That's nothing! 90% think some kind of magical fairy god-kings exist.