Are the normies noticing rising gas prices yet? Gas is at a multi-year high price.

[Xist]

People refused to accept that W. was ever right. Without checking, everyone say whether they think W. or President Obama golfed more while in office.

I was not happy to go to Afghanistan, but I feel that was not my decision, although many people seem to feel the war in Afghanistan was more justified than the one in Iraq.

I don't know.

People insist that Hussein controlled the terrorists. Well, kind of.

Iraq was a State Sponsor of Terror before we invaded. We went in because of weapons of mass destruction?

1. Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
2. Iraq "continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability" posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
3. Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
4. Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
5. Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
6. Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
7. Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
8. Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
9. The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.
10. The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
11. The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
12. Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution

There were eleven other reasons. Were they adequate? I cannot say. Is the world a better place because we went in? I do not have any idea.

[freebeard]

People refused to accept that W. was ever right.

It's happening again with #45.

[Xist]

You know what they say about monkeys and typewriters?

It applies to Twitter, too.

[redpoint5]

1. Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.

That alone justifies military action. No need to conjure a WMD boogeyman. I've not heard any concrete evidence of WMD.

I'd have given Sadam the choice of accepting weapons inspectors, or a non-ending barrage of cruise missiles.

The world is undoubtedly a better place without the guy, but why mislead people in the process?

Originally Posted by acparker

As I wrote in my previous post, oil Demand is (effectively) inelastic. This has been known for decades. The variable then becomes Supply, and the oil companies control that in various ways. Demand shifts do occur and those are driven by extreme Price shifts, as we are experiencing now. These Price shifts are very disruptive to economies and are, by and large, avoidable.

In this case, politics and money are following the same path. Raising prices neutralizes a threat and makes money, lots of money.



The problem is not with OPEC, it is with the oil companies. In 2004, Royal Dutch Shell caused a significant spike in oil prices simply by adjusting down their stated reserves. Shell went on to experience their greatest earnings in history and the greatest earnings of any European company in history.

Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, generally do not interfere with oil companies because they profit by them, either directly or indirectly. The dictum is, "don't bite the hand that feeds you." Saying things and doing things are not the same. Oil companies care nothing for rhetoric, only action. They let politicians complain, often quite loudly, but complaining rarely leads to action.



They did find weapons and facilities, though the bulk of the weapons were moved to Syria (who is using them now) before the invasion. The information was simply ignored by the press. It didn't support the narrative. Fake news is not new.

I don't know what happened to Dubbya. He seemed to lose all enthusiasm. He stopped fighting, even knowing he was in the right. It was extremely frustrating watching his non-confrontational second-term.

[freebeard]

The world is undoubtedly a better place without the guy, but why mislead people in the process?

Because their politicians.....with their mouths open?

Like Guffaddi, he was a cork in a bottle of extreme nastiness.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Because their politicians.....with their mouths open?

As I recall, some other intelligence agency from someplace like France had concluded Iraq had WMD. Not sure if we told them to say that, or if they actually believed it, or if they wanted Saddam gone as much as we did and gave us the nudge we needed?

I'm not an "ends justify the means" type of person. That mentality usually has long term consequences that are worse than original problem. Just look how we created the Saddam mess in the first place by aiding their fight with Iran. It's the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" mentality that placed us on a slippery slope.

In my view, if a cause is worth risking lives, it's worth risking our own lives. In other words, if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself. Otherwise, leave it be.

[Xist]

Back in 2003, Tony Blair's government released the Downing St. Dossier, which turned out to plagiarized from US researcher. It was Microsoft Word's revision log that revealed how the dossier moved through the British government to Colin Powell.

Powell used this as one of his sources when he testified before the U.N. Security Council. https://www.zdnet.com/article/downin...ision-history/

Powell later said he only gave evidenced that had been triple-checked by the CIA, but it still fell apart. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/a...gence-failure/

It seemed like the interviewer focused on Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, who Powell mentioned twenty-one times in the speech, but was not of interest of Powell, who indicated he had not heard of him before, and did not hear of him for a while thereafter. Powell said he only mentioned Z because his sources said he was the connection between Al-Qaeda and Saddam, but that was not true until he was mentioned twenty-one times to the U.N.

He also said that the official plan had been to remove the leaders of the Iraqi Army and the Baath party, but make use of the good parts; however the Pentagon announced they were getting rid of the Army and Baath, seemingly independently of Powell, Rumsfield, Condoleezza Rice, the Vice Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA.

We were going to reconstitute the Iraqi army so that they could secure their country, and instead we dismissed them, and we turned loose all of these trained military people who might have weapons with them and knew where weapons were.

[We] created a massive vacuum with respect to security and stability and bureaucracy. And that vacuum was filled by the insurgency. I think it was a major, massive strategic error.

So by the early fall of 2003, we were in an insurgency, a serious insurgency that was growing, and I don’t think we reacted to it adequately. You have to remember that once Baghdad fell, the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld, cut off the flow of additional troops, and then we started ordering those that were there to go home. The two corps commanders were sent back home with their corps staffs, and a very junior two-star was put in charge of the theater, the most important theater we were in. He didn’t have a staff for it; he wasn’t given a staff for it, and there weren’t good relations between he and Mr. Bremer. We simply were not responding to the facts on the ground.

United States Central Command Commander in Chief General Tom Franks only had the mission of taking Baghdad, not occupying it. Powell had a study listing the infrastructure that needed to be established when you overthrew a régime, but everyone else told W. that everything was fine, but it fell apart.

Twice.

Someone please remind me how this is related to the cost of gas.

[redpoint5]

Iraq has oil.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

That alone justifies military action. No need to conjure a WMD boogeyman. I've not heard any concrete evidence of WMD.

There's a difference between a legal justification and an actual justification, just as there's a difference between legal and right. The fact that finding and securing WMD, or in fact even weapons of smaller bits of destruction, was not a real part of the invasion plan makes it seem that all the "justification" was actually "pretext."

But even better than the mom running her engine for 20 minutes on a beautiful afternoon waiting to pick up her kid was a dad at baseball practice last night. One kid on the team, two kids on the playground and one dad in the SUV with the engine running. Sure, it was getting chilly. I went back to the car to get a jacket. But I didn't get in and run the heat.

[redpoint5]

Wanting heat in a car isn't a crime (even if it isn't wise), but invading a country with false pretext should be.

There is both legal and moral justification of bombing Iraq if they fail to live up to their agreement to allow weapons inspectors. When we parol criminals, we require them to check in to help ensure they are not a danger to society and are not continuing to harm themselves. Similar thing when we parolled Iraq.