i don't think a case has really been made for war, and i do think the reasons they have stated for going to war are not the real reasons, or only half the story.

however i'm aware the world (and his own people) will be a better place without sadam and that if terrorists ever do get hold of wmd they will come from someone like him, so i'm swaying towards getting it done quick and hopefully not to many innocents or our troop's getting killed (i'm british), getting the oil flowing, and getting some of iraqs oil money spent on food and medicine for the people their rather than it being spent on his lavish palaces.

the only downside really is the innocents getting killed (and casualties on our side), but sadam is a guy who happily massacres his own anyway so there would be deaths anyway. I'm not so much arguing against war as disputing what the real reasons are. their are benefits what ever the real reasons.

To be a good spin doctor you need to get the message out in 30 seconds. I just don't believe that you believe what you are saying. To be good you need to say it like you believe it. However if you polish your skills I bet you can join the spinmaster pool traveling worldwide
and issuing statements from your thinktank to anxious journalists.

Bush Sr. was so edgy on the oil interest issue during his campaign that 4 of us being a journalist, a pilot and an army cornel converted him to supporting alternative fuels in one evening. A few reminders from our senator and he set the program up.

In October New York Times a plan was outlined that the pretense of a regime change is being disbanded and instead direct rule will ensue with General Tommy Franks playing an Islamic Patton of sorts. The objective will be extracting natural resources as quickly as possible from the colony.

Dick Cheney is head of the National Energy Policy commission and in 2001 he set Gulf oil as the #1 U.S. priority. Iraq has the second largest oil fields in the world.

Since a picture is better than words:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...ply/img007.gif

I won't disagree with you. The case they've made publicly has been pretty weak and governments frequently don't cite all the real reasons for going to war. My support for war has little to do with the case Bush/Blair have made. I've thought Saddam should have been deposed long ago. And I'm ashamed that we encouraged the Kurds to rebel against Saddam insuiting that we'd have their back, and then we didn't do anything.

It's a job that we never finished.

Quote:

however i'm aware the world (and his own people) will be a better place without sadam and that if terrorists ever do get hold of wmd they will come from someone like him, so i'm swaying towards getting it done quick and hopefully not to many innocents or our troop's getting killed (i'm british), getting the oil flowing, and getting some of iraqs oil money spent on food and medicine for the people their rather than it being spent on his lavish palaces. the only downside really is the innocents getting killed (and casualties on our side), but sadam is a guy who happily massacres his own anyway so there would be deaths anyway. I'm not so much arguing against war as disputing what the real reasons are. their are benefits what ever the real reasons.

It's unfortunate that waging peace doesn't always get the job done.

Quote:

I'm not so much arguing against war as disputing what the real reasons are. their are benefits what ever the real reasons.

I don't know all the reasons either, but the blood-for-oil mantra doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's far more complex than simply oil.

Source?

Quote:

Dick Cheney is head of the National Energy Policy commission and in 2001 he set Gulf oil as the #1 U.S. priority. Iraq has the second largest oil fields in the world.

I've never once said that oil plays no role in foreign policy, however, to argue that reason we are going to war is oil is incredibly oversimplified. There are numerous reasons which I've already cited on why Saddam should be deposed.

For the Bush administration this is a very ideological war. This is a war that really fits into their national security strategy that was outlined last year: counterproliferation, national security and national defense.


OIL = BLACK GRAVY

The point isn't whether America will make money... and the point certainly isn't the welfare of the Iraqi citicens (if we were worried about them we would have supported the resistance movement in Iraq like we promised we would back under George Sr)

the point is georgie and his buddies making money... war is always big money.

Dick Cheney's firm Haliburton has already received the contract to go set up Iraq's oil fields in the case of a war.
Do the math man... if you are an oil exec this war could make you a very pretty penny.
Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfield are all balls deep in the oil industry and they are running the country... how can a war in Iraq possibly not look like them protecting there own self interests.


Isn't it funny that we don't need to invade north Korea... where there's barely any oil, but we do need to invade Iraq.

I cant believe there hasnt been a big stink about how Haliburton. The company which Cheney was CEO of got the contract to fight the oil fires. If there are any during the war. Also I agree how N. Korea isnt that big of a deal to them. N. Korea scares the shit out of me, they have weapons that can reach us its not a maybe if.

North Korea....apples and oranges.....

1) N. Korea already has nukes, which they will use. Shall we wait until Iraq does too?

2) We already fought a war in N. Korea. Risk/reward wasn't very good. And it will likely still not be good (see point 1).

3) When Iraq was defeated in 1991, he agreed to disarm. 12 years later he hasn't. We've tried everything and the only thing Saddam seems to respond to is the threat of invasion.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/081000-102.htm

neat link about our VP

Cheney is a pigfucker as far as I can tell

actually to be quite honest I could give a damn about the war one way or the other

what concerns me is the idea that king George the lesser has about unilateral action... we are becoming our own definition of a rogue nation.

also we have burned more political capital in the last few years than we'll be able to make up in the next 20.

I really can't believe Bush came out and said that the UN doesn't matter. We have been slapping countries around for that exact same attitude for years... Our economy will continue on its downward spiral towards the shitter if we become isolated from the rest of the world.

We've managed to alienate most of europe, all of the middle east, and I would guess large portions of the rest of the world... fuck Sadam the guys got lymphatic cancer he'll die in a few years with or without our help... but long after he's gone we're going to be dealing with the ramifications of an estranged europe and a broken UN... won't that be great

I dont give a fuck why were going to war. But fuck stop talking about it and do it or back down already.
All I konw is that it cost me over fifty bucks to fill my Expedition and that suxs ball.:321GFY fuck bush:321GFY fuck sadaam:BangBang:

Getting caught up on the question of oil only goes so far. My own opinion is that it is a factor, but not the heart of the matter. The U.S. would be fine with Hussein in power (or anybody else who could deliver stability) if it was only about oil.

The heart of the matter is this:

1. The Middle East is fucked up, the Arabs hate us, and they want to kill us. Take a look at our foreign policy for the last 50 years in the region if you don't understand why yet.
2. WMD--the new technologies allow people that hate us to kill us in large numbers is a new situation. And it ain't going to change any time soon. So we really have to reduce our enemies--not just take away bombs from the bad-guy-of-the-month.

So the question I have is if a war in Iraq is going to make us safer by:

A. Reducing our enemies and giving the people in the Middle East a reason to believe we actually are the good guys and actually give a shit about their lives.
B. Reducing the chances of people getting WMD. Invading Iraq might help that--but then again Hussein is probably giving out whatever he has to the highest bidder as we speak because he has nothing left to lose.

I have my doubts that getting rid of Hussein is going to do much good for our long-term security. We really have to stop making enemies and find a way to turn old enemies into friends. And I don't think Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld have the answers here, unfortunately. I mean they are really fucking things up with our allies (and everybody else) as far as I can tell.

BTW-50 mutherfuckers :Graucho

Bush's diplomacy skills (yes, an oxymoron) suck--no doubt about it. The administration has made numerous mistakes from the get-go. However, I and many other people (who gain nothing from oil), have thought Saddam should have been ousted long ago.

Over the past 12 years we've tried pretty much everything with Saddam. Nothing has worked. Why would sanctions/inspections work now? Nothing short of an invasion will work. Remember we attacked Iraq under Clinton too, and did little to sway Sadamm into compliance.

Jeremy, I hate to break it to you but nothing spells a fight like high prices at the pumps. GM, Ford and Chrysler are NOT going to start making small efficient cars that they cant charge dick for instead of 40k SUVs that roll over the curb like Hitlers army marching into France...

Is this specifically about Iraqs oil? No. Nor is the Middle Eastern situation the only thing to blame for high gas prices, since the US is not nearly as dependant as Europe is on that source of fuel.

However the situation in Venezuela and elsewhere doesn't help things either so far as pricing goes.

At the end of the day we're going into Iraq to show the rest of the Middle East that we will come after you if you piss us off and disrupt our lives.

Saddam was a friend of the US until OPEC decided to raise the price of oil from $3 a barrel to $22 a barrel. That's when they decided that he was an enemy and declared him a terrorist leader because he refused to charge more than 9x what he was currently charging for oil. This makes his oil cheaper than the others. For small companies in the US, we call what OPEC does price fixing, and it's illegal.

We also supplied him with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

When they were supposedly about to invade Kuwait, the US got it's right to get into middle east by lying to the Saudis and saying that spy satellites showed that he had a large number of troops near the Kuwait border. Commercial satellites however showed that they simply weren't there. When the press decided to publish the info, the government begged them not to. The press said that if they could see the satellite images that proved that they were there, they wouldn't because they simply didn't exist.

When the first Bush started attacking Iraq, they vowed and still claim that they only targeted military stations. Within 24 hours, they had taken out the power plants, resevoir dams, hospitals, and the like. Iraq was then without power or water. The damage has not been fixed for the most part.

Not only that, but they used depleated uranium in their ammunition(that's where gulf war syndrome comes from). This has caused massive cancer outbreaks in Iraqi civilians. The radioactive material will still be contaminating the land for 4.6 billion years, no culture that lives on that land will ever be without the problems caused by it.

They've had embargos the whole time. It is insane that we still get Iraqi oil, but we are not allowed to export medicine to those dying from the effects of our strikes. Not allowing them to get medicine is clearly genocide.

They could have gotten Saddam in the gulf war, but Bush stopped attacking when a movement against him within Iraq. This gave Saddam time to stop them from overthrowing him.

Funny how they've been letting Saddam and his aristocratic friends live comfortably, while they've been killing the civilians the whole time. Makes you think maybe they want him to stay because then they have an excuse to be over there. The only reason we were there the first time is that we tricked Saudi Arabia into inviting us in. Also funny how the bases that were supposed to be temporary became permanent after the gulf war was said and done.

Think about all that.

Another thing about the depleated uranium. Just before the gulf war studies were done and the use of it was going to be banned because of it's effects. The folks over at the pentagon forced these studies to stop. The shells are even used today. The majority of them are used at bases in Okinawa, Japan. My cousin was stationed there. Hearing that makes me very upset. When my cousin gets cancer and dies, I'll know who did it to him. It was the country he was supposedly fighting for.

Hmmm.....let's see. I agree with you 100%.

"Is this specifically about Iraqs oil? No."

Yep...

"Nor is the Middle Eastern situation the only thing to blame for high gas prices, since the US is not nearly as dependant as Europe is on that source of fuel. "

Yep....

"At the end of the day we're going into Iraq to show the rest of the Middle East that we will come after you if you piss us off and disrupt our lives."

In a nutshell, yep.

We supplied Saddam with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons until the refused to raise oil prices. Get some education before you decide to attack other countries for doing exactly what we did :321GFY

I read that Qatar is so wealthy that all the citizens get free healthcare, free utilities and water, free/subsidized rent and
its tax free, and their GDP is estimated to reach $50,000 :eek2 in 2006 That's pretty incredible for a middle eastern country, I always thought they were more backwards...

That sounds close to a socialist society. I'm sure they didn't learn all that from the good ol' capitalist US of A. :)

Like ALL of the west we (or American companies) played a significant role in arming Saddam. However, we were hardly the worst culprits. Longtime Iraqi allie, Russia was the #1 supplier of weapons to Iraq. France was #2 .

The U.S. did NOT supply Iraq with nuclear technology. That would have been France. Chirac and Saddam were cozy bedfellows back in the 70s. Saddam was even Chirac's guest touring the south of france together. Chirac and France helped Saddam get nuclear technology which Israel later blew up Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.



:thumbsup

What I don't understand?

Let me tell you, I don't understand the urgent rush to attack Iraq. So far weapon inspectors are making progress and most people (except Bush, and Blair) believe they should be allowed to continue their job and attack only as a last resort.
attack as a last resort
Iraq isn't an immediate threat, the problem is Bush being impatient.
I find that fucking pathetic.

The majority of the world would support war if the UN voted for war, but so far they have not. They are against war without UN concent.
Hope this clears things up.

Yep....and rightfully we have supported their reforms by protecting them militarily and increasing American investment in the country from 300 million ten years ago to 50 billion last year. Cornell and another university are also establishing state of the art medical schools/facilities in the country.

Thanks to their democratic reforms, Qatar will be a major force in the middle east in the near future. They'll leave Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the dust.

You're point is valid, and that may be the route we have to take. But, let's look at history. It's not like we just started inspections a year ago. We've been trying to do inspections for 12 years and they haven't worked.

1) I think the urgency aside from growing impatient is that if we don't act in the next month, we will be pushing into Spring and very hot desert weather which makes it harder to fight a war.

2) This would mean we have to wait until things cool down again, at least 6 months of further Saddam defiance.

3) The military has been deployed. They are at their peak readiness TODAY. They won't be if we keep waiting.

4) If we back down now we send the message to Hussein that he can pretty much do whatever the hell he wants to do because the spineless U.N. and others really don't want to do anything. They'll let Saddam do whatever the hell he wants.

THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR 12 YEARS. EVEN CLINTON TRIED FORCE. NOTHING SHORT OF AN INVASION WILL BE EFFECTIVE.

Quote:

Hope this clears things up.

Yes. All cleared up now. Thank you! :winkwink:

We are at the last resort dude. Iraq has had 12 years to disarm. The only time they fake it is when we bring pressure, and we can only bluff for so long. Ask yourself this, if Saddam was close to having nuclear capability in 98, where do you think he is now. Can you Reaaaaaaaaaaally tell me that you think a couple of dozen UN guys can find something in a country that size if the government does not want them to find it.

I ahve served in uniform,in combat twice, and I can tell you that most vets, like me, like the idea of going in and taking a guy out before he becomes trenched in. Iwo Jima mean anything to you?

Negotiations have NEVER solved a conflict like this. Munich treaty of 36, look it up.

Again, correction, it was Mitterand who ordered the sale of Nuclear technology to Iraq, not Chirac. Although Chirac was the errand boy.

Everyone already thought about all that - weeks ago, and it was discarded as bull shit then too.


Accept it -

I hope it wasn't the gulf war you served in. The government you were helping out didn't seem to think it was important that they knew if you didn't die fighting, you'd die from those uranium shells they gave you.

The whole world is ass-backwards. You really can't defend any country nowadays. They're all fucked up in 100 different ways.

Do you have issues with abandonment and betrayal? Tell us about your childhood.

Can you deny that they lied about the photographs, or the uranium bullets? Everyone's lying, Saddam, Bush, France, everyone. Most people just decide on the lesser evil. I, for one, think there is none.:2 cents:

Everyone in life has either taken advantage of me or fucked me over. Right now I look into situations and try to figure out real motives before I trust people, even the government. A little research has brought up the many times they've lied to us and other countries. Sorry, they lost my trust.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

I didn't mean Chirac ordered the sale of nuclear technology. You're right, it was Mitterand. However, Hussein's initial aspirations in acquiring nuclear technology were first articulated to Chirac in the 70s on a trip to the south of france. Chirac, ever the Gaullist, conceded they had an understanding. Why wouldn't Iraq need nukes to protect their sovereignty?

so you went in to porn, thinking that you would be safe from evil here amongst us pornographers? :glugglug

OK then. I did serve under US command, and I was around Uranium shells all the time. Nothing wrong with me kj;nbpjo;O
AS;L,M;L

C,L;,LS,L'S;. TYPING JUT FINE, WOooohoooo!:BangBang: :glugglug

You're lucky then, and though I disagree with you I'm happy that nothing happened to you.

The thing that REALLY pisses me off is that they still use those, mostly in Okinawa. My cousin was stationed there for a long time and the fact that they don't care or even make him aware of that pisses me off a good deal.:feels-hot

fucking Chirac, I am so ashamed of my French ancestry. Good thing I gave it up to be an American.

Sure "everybody's lying" - and only YOU know the truth?

I cannot deny that most of that is a crock of shit.

You get your news where you get it -
I get mine where I get it.

You believe anything you want -
and so will I.

You live in your world....
Not me.


Have a nice day.

are you really French? my Dad still lives there.

Dave Plays is in the house.

Hey Dave, do you think it's all about oil or not?

If you don't think it's about oil, then you can't use the talk radio favorite "France is only against the war for financial reasons" bullshit.

If you do think that it's all about the oil, then Bush looks fucked.

Which one is it?

born there, raise there, moved to the US in the eighties. Sworn in and proud american now.

The war with Iraq, isn't really about the oil bush is from texas and has degrees from yale and harvard, The man has stock in oil. He really could probably care less about it really, cause can you say cha- ching. I think that it is more about finishing what his father started in his plea to get reelected. If we wanted to put saddam out of power we could have done in the first war it was just polititcs that kept his ass alive this long, by the way I was in the last conflict in 98' called desert fox. So the shit will start on the 18th when there is a new moon. and we will probably win but we are gonna have to deal with the fallout. That is the problem, because we are gonna be looked at as the bad guy. And that is gonna give us more problems that we are overlooking right now. War is never the answer. It is just a shame that it looks as though we are headed right for it.