CIA purge may be underway

[Poop Man Bob]

Newsday article. (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscia1114,0,4055608,print.story?coll=ny-top-headlines)

CIA plans to purge its agency
Sources say White House has ordered new chief to eliminate officers who were disloyal to Bush

BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

November 14, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

One of the first casualties appears to be Stephen R. Kappes, deputy director of clandestine services, the CIA's most powerful division. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Kappes had tendered his resignation after a confrontation with Goss' chief of staff, Patrick Murray, but at the behest of the White House had agreed to delay his decision till tomorrow.

But the former senior CIA official said that the White House "doesn't want Steve Kappes to reconsider his resignation. That might be the spin they put on it, but they want him out." He said the job had already been offered to the former chief of the European Division who retired after a spat with then-CIA Director George Tenet.

Another recently retired top CIA official said he was unsure Kappes had "officially resigned, but I do know he was unhappy."

Without confirming or denying that the job offer had been made, a CIA spokesman asked Newsday to withhold naming the former officer because of his undercover role over the years. He said he had no comment about Goss' personnel plans, but he added that changes at the top are not unusual when new directors come in.

On Friday John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year veteran of the intelligence division who served as acting CIA director before Goss took over, announced that he was retiring. The spokesman said that the retirement had been planned and was unrelated to the Kappes resignation or to other morale problems inside the CIA.

It could not be learned yesterday if the White House had identified Kappes, a respected operations officer, as one of the officials "disloyal" to Bush.

"The president understands and appreciates the sacrifices made by the members of the intelligence community in the war against terrorism," said a White House official of the report that he was purging the CIA of "disloyal" officials. " . . . The suggestion [that he ordered a purge] is inaccurate."

But another former CIA official who retains good contacts within the agency said that Goss and his top aides, who served on his staff when Goss was chairman of the House intelligence committee, believe the agency had relied too much over the years on liaison work with foreign intelligence agencies and had not done enough to develop its own intelligence collection system.

"Goss is not a believer in liaison work," said this retired official. But, he said, the CIA's "best intelligence really comes from liaison work. The CIA is simply not going to develop the assets [agents and case officers] that would meet the intelligence requirements."

Tensions between the White House and the CIA have been the talk of the town for at least a year, especially as leaks about the mishandling of the Iraq war have dominated front pages.

Some of the most damaging leaks came from Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, who wrote a book anonymously called "Imperial Hubris" that criticized what he said was the administration's lack of resolve in tracking down the al-Qaida chieftain and the reallocation of intelligence and military manpower from the war on terrorism to the war in Iraq. Scheuer announced Thursday that he was resigning from the agency.


While the article only speculates that a White House-ordered purge of those disloyal to Bush, if it's true, it's damn disturbing. This lends further credence to the notion that the WH had no desire to hear of/consider intelligence they disagreed with during the lead up to the Iraq war. Publicly disagree with us? You're disloyal and out of a job. Although the article fails to speculate on the long term repercussions of such a purge, it seems to lay down the law in terms of what CIA agents can and cannot do due to the possible political effects of their actions.

[dojafx]

i can hear the secret police taking away people in the night now!

[BROWNer]

brutal. scheuer is gonna be on 60minutes tonight. watch.

[BROWNer]

what's the latest on the plame affair?

[Poop Man Bob]

Nothing. Still being investigated by a US Atty from Chicago - Fitzgerald, I believe. It's still in the grand jury phase. There's been a lot of noise about the judge holding journalists in contempt (and thus imprisoning them) for their refusal to give up their source(s).

This (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/16/35831/5441) is the latest I could find on dKos.

[ODS-1]

If 9/11 never happened I wonder if we would be in this situation.

[villain]

Got Damned Gestapo!
What's next? Put your political affiliation on your job resumes?
This leak is going to turn into a flood, just watch.
FUCK BUSH!

[ledzep]

man this sick, it's seems everyday that passes something more to restrict people happens.

[villain]

More divisions.

[Nekro]

Woohoo, it's the gestapo-ola!

[mkonji]

Your country is getting fucked up man. We dont have this sort of bullshit in the UK.

[Nekro]

James Wolcott knows what's up:

"To have all the executive, congressional, and judicial branches run by one party, a party determined to bring the intelligence agencies into ideological line--that's fascism in the making, my friends."

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2004/11/t...e_tidbits_1.php (http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2004/11/teevee_tidbits_1.php)

[!@#$%]

CIA Director Resume

Name: Yes

Goal: To say Yes.

Education: Yes

Experience: Assistant Yes, 1970-1976

Associate Yes, 1976-1990

Senior Yes, 1990-2004

References: Yes

[Poop Man Bob]

Raw footage from the Fallujah assault. (http://members.cox.net/macallan_the/falluja.asf)

I'm posting the link in the Iraq thread, too.

[<KEY3>]

http://www.allposters.com/IMAGES/MMPH/249465.jpg

^ I hope she gets fired and has to go to work in the private sector.






MY 'private sector' !!!

[KaBar2]

Like every single government organization in the world, the CIA is filled with lifeless, self-serving, bureacratic deadwood. They could not find their own asshole with both hands and a flashlight. They exist to feather their own nests, and get a paycheck. The actual work of intelligence gathering is the last thing on their minds.

I suppose there are a few that actually care about the work, but for the most part, no. They want their little sphere of power and influence to remain undisturbed. Along comes Bush. He says "We're going to attack Iraq. Get me the dope on it." The CIA isn't ready, they don't have the information. What they do have doesn't look promising. They say "Mr. President, it's a bad situation, don't do it." Bush says "Fuck that! Bombs away!" The war goes poorly, partially because the CIA is a bunch of incompetent nincompoops and can't find ANYTHING out that the President wants to know. They look like idiots. They say, "We told you so! We told you so!" Bush says, "Which one of you fuckwads leaked that shit to the newspapers?" The CIA guys all point at each other. "Not me! Not me! Not me!" Bush says, "These guys are idiots. Get rid of them. Keep the ones who know how to keep their goddamned mouths shut---they're the CIA, for pete's sake! And I'm the President, they're supposed to do whatever I tell them to do!"

So, because Bush wants to boot out a bunch of careerist dickwads, he's holding a purge? Bullshit. He's the boss, and they fucked him over. Adios, unfortunate spies. "See you down at Burger King, geniuses. Next time, better do whastever the boss tells you to do. And be quiet about it. You're a SPY, remember? Jesus."

[!@#$%]

the cia fucked bush over?

hahaaaaa!!!!

will this fucking asshole ever be held accountable for anything??

the war went poorly because of the cia?
even after the cia tells bush it is a bad idea, he does it anyway.
now it's going to hell and it's the cia's fault.

hmmm, and i guess it's the troops fault for not finding those wmd's

this fucking illogic makes me want to vomit.
if you know how to read, pick up a book.


"...So then you have to ask, why were they so ill-informed about Iraq? Part of it is ideology. Part of it is a desire to exclude from decision-making the people who really know about Iraq in the United States -- mostly State Department and CIA officials who have been studying the country for decades. Third, they've relied to a large extent on information from Iraqi exiles. In particular, they've relied on the Iraqi National Congress, which has been pushing for a decade for the United States to move against Iraq. Their original theory -- the Iraqi National Congress' theory -- was that the United States could support a military force, a ragtag force of Iraqi National Congress rebels, arm them and send them into Iraq with air cover and they could topple the regime because it was so weak. Now we know if that had happened, they would have been basically been blown off the face of the earth.... "


http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2003/04/we_352_01.html

[!@#$%]

MJ: How much of the information that Rumsfeld and Powell and other administration officials have cited actually came from the INC, do you think? The al-Qaeda link? The weapons of mass destruction claims?

RD: The real issue is that the CIA has been staunchly opposed to the notions that Iraq has working relations with al Qaeda or significant stocks of weapons of mass destruction. And they've basically been opposed to the Iraqi National Congress and its allies because they consider them to be both corrupt and lacking any significant support inside Iraq.

So, at some point in the run-up to this war, Rumsfeld decided he was sick and tired of getting opposing advice from the CIA, which is usually backed up by the State Department. So he set up his own little intelligence shop at the Pentagon, under a guy named Abe Shulsky, who was reporting to Doug Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Policy. That information was really not new intelligence that they were gathering, because they weren't doing any spying. They were simply reworking information that already existed, and blending in information they were getting from Iraqi exiles who were directly plugged into this neoconservative clique.

The information that this Pentagon unit massaged into phony estimates then found its way into the speeches of Colin Powell and the proclamations of president Bush. And as we moved closer and closer to war, we found out that almost everything they said was either wrong or a lie. The poison factory in Kurdistan didn't exist. The Iraqi attempt to get uranium from Niger was based on forged documents. The aluminum tubes that were supposedly going to be used in a nuclear program were really just rocket tubes. Just go down the list.

I mean, there are a dozen of these claims, all of which got knocked down, one by one, by intelligent people. But it was clear that the only way this kind of stuff could get on the President's desk was because the Defense Department was churning it out.

Now, the very biggest lie was that Saddam Hussein had some sort of working relationship with Osama bin Laden's group. That is really far-fetched in terms of what anyone who knows anything about the Arab world would understand to be true. No one really took it seriously, but the President and Powell started pushing this notion, and it fed into the single biggest reason why the American people are supporting the war -- which is polls show that up to 50 or 60 percent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11.

[KaBar2]

This just seems too obvious, but the deal is they didn't give a shit whether it was a bad idea OR NOT. It just did not matter. Bush & Co. had decided to attack Iraq, and that's that. The CIA's job was to find out the information necessary to do it sucessfully.

In a slightly different context, they would have all been sleeping with the fishes for fucking up.

Frankly, I don't believe that Saddam did not have WMD. The motherfucker HAD them all right, but our lame ass intelligence community couldn't CATCH his sorry ass. In the end, it doesn't really matter whether he had them or not. The U.S. took him and his kleptocracy down, and now we are blasting the ever-loving shit out of whatever holdouts are willing to stand and fight. They only thing that's wrong with that is that the government refuses to send enough troops to do the job right. If Bush and Co. had listened to the military, they would have sent two or three times as many troops into Iraq to start with, and we would have overwhelmed them before they could mount any resistance.

Let's see---in Fallujah, we are killing them at a rate of better than ten-to-one. The town is heavily damaged, and will probably require years to rebuild and refurbish. The old Fallujah that the residents knew is gone forever. That's the consequences of tolerating Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in your city. The residents of Fallujah would have been a lot smarter to have arrested or killed the terrorists themselves. I wonder if this object lesson is wasted on the rest of Iraq? I guess next on the list is Mosul. After we flatten the shit out of Mosul, I'm sure there will be another one and another one.

Eventually, we will have killed enough terrorists in enough cities that the government of Iraq can hold the country by themselves. If it were up to me, I would figure out some way to seal the borders against infiltrators. But, of course, I feel the same way about the U.S. The reason we continue to have illegal immigration is because the perceived rewards of illegally infiltrating into the U.S. is greater than the perceived consequences if you get caught. I bet if getting caught infiltrating meant ten years on a chain gang in Arizona or Nevada, we wouldn't have many repeat offenders.

Ditto on drug smugglers. If getting caught meant going to a firing squad, I think the dope smuggling business would dry up. But I guess that would be inhumane, huh? Better that you should be able to buy cocaine in every elementary school in America than we should send narcotics traffickers to the Wall. The reason they won't stop is that they know Americans are pussies and don't really mean it when we pass laws that say "Don't bring dope into our nation." They aren't afraid to do it, because they know the consequences are weak ass.

I bet the 1,800 dead terrorists in Fallujah don't think that.

[bodice_ripper]

What do the dead civillians think?

[imported_El Mamerro]

Originally posted by KaBar2@Nov 17 2004, 12:48 PM
The residents of Fallujah would have been a lot smarter to have arrested or killed the terrorists themselves.Quoted post



Sooooooo easy to say this when the terrorists in question aren't members of your immediate family. I wonder if you'd turn in your brother if he was breaking the law, even if he was fighting against people you don't really want in your neighborhood.

[KaBar2]

I think that if my brother was doing something that would bring down death and destruction on me and my family, I would pressure him to stop it before he got us all killed, or got Mom's house all shot up by some very annoyed American teenagers in a Light Armored Vehicle.

90% of the locals just want peace and quiet so they can go back to earning a living. If born-again Christian fundamentalists suddenly started big firefights with the police in your neighborhood, don't you think you'd take your Methodist/ Lutheran/ Presbyterian ass on over there and tell them to fucking STOP IT? I would. And if my brother was part of it, I'd ream his ass out good for being so thoughtless and stupid as to provoke the cops.

The terrorists are the bad guys. If the Ku Klux Klan was operating in your neighborhood, shooting it out with the cops, wouldn't you go tell the police where their Klavern was located? And if you didn't, wouldn't that mean that you shared partially in the blame for them continuing to shoot at the police?

The terrorists are either going to stop shooting at Americans, or we are going to go kill them. It's that simple.

[!@#$%]

if you still believe saddam had wmds than i won't keep arguing with you because you are clearly living in an alternate reality.

actually, the "terrorists" are only bad because they aren't with us.
the rest of the world thinks dubya is a terrorist (and so do i)

we are not going to kill all the terrorists
unless our foreign policy changes they are not going to stop killing americans.
after all the changes since 9/11, as far as i'm concerned, the "terrorists" are winning.

it's nice to think that killing enough people will end the conflict.
that's all dandy unless you consider that THE CONFLICT ITSELF IS CREATING MORE INSURGENCY.

and as far as all this:
Ditto on drug smugglers. If getting caught meant going to a firing squad, I think the dope smuggling business would dry up. But I guess that would be inhumane, huh? Better that you should be able to buy cocaine in every elementary school in America than we should send narcotics traffickers to the Wall. The reason they won't stop is that they know Americans are pussies and don't really mean it when we pass laws that say "Don't bring dope into our nation." They aren't afraid to do it, because they know the consequences are weak ass.

you're a terrorist too, if you think using terror tactics is a smart way to deter crime.
the death penalty didn't stop murder, did it.

[ledzep]

Originally posted by KaBar2@Nov 17 2004, 01:48 PM

Frankly, I don't believe that Saddam did not have WMD. The motherfucker HAD them all right, but our lame ass intelligence community couldn't CATCH his sorry ass. Quoted post


I dunno man, If I were Saddam and The USA invaded my ass and I hade WMDs, I would have launched that shit in one second.

And If I was Saddam I wouldn't have had WMDs to begin with, no way no how, why the hell would I want to give someone a reason to invade me?

I learned from the first gulf war man, I dont stand a chace against the USA, WMDs or no WMDs.

Might as well be a good dog and not have WMDs so I can stay in power (which is what I want).

I mean shit isn't that what all power hungry dictators want? to stay in power?

[ElectricitySucks]

AMERICA IS AWESOME

[villain]

At least Kabar used to avoid subjects where he knew he didn't have a leg to stand on. Now he is spreading lies. I guess this is phase 2 of operation Bushworld.
Iraq never had wmd, or connections to alqueda. The fucking 9-11 commission report states that very clearly as well as the senate intelligence commitee report on prewar intelligence on iraq.
Tony Blair is going to an impeachment trial for intelligence lies on iraq. Bush damn well should too.
And yeah we were relying on lies from that international criminal turned traitor Chalabi. Bush was cherry picking intelligence from the CIA and wasn't happy with what they were giving them. Not that they couldn't find WMDs but there ARE no WMDs. Hello? He wanted an excuse to invade iraq. You can't say the CIA wasn't doing their job cause they fucking told Bush, hey man Bin ladens finna hijack some planes and attack us. Bush didn't give a fuck. He's a fucking rancher, not a president.
Ah this shit is sick. I could go on and on of course. I could post links to verify all of this shit. But I really expected you to be more proactive than this. And at least not lie to us. This is a bunch of shit.

[BROWNer]

kabar's reply doesn't surprise me.
as we've all seen before, he has a
tough time with elementary morality.

[!@#$%]

"Republican officials acknowledged that the public is likely to learn even less about the inner workings of the war cabinet. They said the selection of Rice will also mean that fewer competing views will be available to a White House that brooks little dissent."
-- The Washington Post ponders one likely effect of Condoleezza Rice's promotion to Secretary of State.

....
Out: Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose political epitaph should now read, "You break it, you own it" for his prescient but unwanted warning to the President on the danger of imperial overreach in Iraq.

Out: Top CIA officials who dared challenge, behind the scenes, the White House's unprecedented exploitation of raw intelligence data in order to sell a war to a Congress and a public hungry for revenge after 9/11.

Out: Veteran CIA counterterrorism expert and Osama bin Laden hunter Michael Scheuer, better known as the best-selling author "Anonymous," whose balanced and devastating critiques of the Iraq war, the CIA and the way President Bush is handling the war on terror have been a welcome counterpoint to the "it's true if we say it's true" idiocy of the White House PR machine.

Meanwhile, incompetence begat by ideological blindness has been rewarded. The neoconservatives who created the ongoing Iraq mess have more than survived the failure of their impossibly rosy scenarios for a peaceful and democratic Iraq under US rule. In fact, despite calls for their resignations--from the former head of the US Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, among others -- the neocon gang is thriving. They have not been held responsible for the "sixteen words" about yellowcake, the rise and fall of Ahmad Chalabi, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the post-invasion looting of Iraq's munitions stores and the disastrous elimination of the Iraqi armed forces. ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041129&s=scheer1116

[KaBar2]

I don't see it as a violation of elementary morality when my government decides to attack a murderous, tyrannical, torture-master dictator whose Mafia happens to be occupying a very valuable strategic resource. Saddam was a monster. Maybe he was more tolerable as long as he could be manipulated to do as the U.S. government wanted, but once he became a problem, it's "adios."

I'm kind of surprised at you guys. On the one hand, you say things like "Bush is a rich, greedy, corrupt asshole---I HATE him!" and then you say "Oh, I'm shocked! He gave big contracts to Cheney's buddies in KBR! Oh, what a surprise! He reduced Fallujah to rubble!"

What the heck did you expect? All things considered (since he's a nazi, etc., etc.) I'd say he's being pretty restrained.

Politics is hardball. Naivete is a luxury.

Back when I was an anarchist, in the 1970's, a famous Italian anarchist named Pinero (if I remember correctly) was arrested by the Italian cops and thrown out of a fourth-story window during interrogation. Since it was like a fourth-story window, he was killed. The cops said he jumped, of course. I was outraged, I started ranting and raving when I read it in Black Flag "Those fascist bastards! Murderers! I can't believe it!" An old guy I knew, about 65, who was in the IWW just shook his head.
"What did you expect when you joined the Revolution, kid? Flowers? It's a fucking war, and people get killed. Get used to it, or get out of the fight."

It's tit for tat. I heard later that the Italian anarchists evened the score, for what that's worth. Just more fatherless children, probably.

[!@#$%]

Originally posted by KaBar2@Nov 19 2004, 02:47 AM
a murderous, tyrannical, torture-master dictator whose Mafia happens to be occupying a very valuable strategic resource.
Quoted post



seriously, are you talking about george w. bush?

[Poop Man Bob]

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/19/national/19library.4.583.jpg

How much does this picture say?

As Wonkette said, "We never understood what our dog trainer meant about establishing "alpha dog status" until now: that whole thing about going through doors first always confused us. Now we get it. We're looking forward to the photos of the boys marking territory. (We hope nobody pees on Hillary!)"

[!@#$%]

bush's presidiential library is going to be an "Iraq for Dummies" book.

[villain]

Originally posted by symbols@Nov 19 2004, 12:53 PM
bush's presidiential library is going to be an "Iraq for Dummies" book.
Quoted post


Holy shit that's funny.

[BROWNer]

you don't see the problem huh kabar?
your argument is toast right from the first sentence due to the inconvenience
of facts, which are that the current wackos you don't seem to have much of
a problem with were supporting hussein at the height of his depravity.
you see the logic right? secondly, if the real aims were to remove saddam becuz he was a murderous thug and to save the iraqi's from such a terrible monster, which they weren't, then the appropriate course of action would have been to intervene with the receiving populations overwhelming support for such action. well it wasn't there, despite the endless stream of lies the admin tried to strong arm to the world(which incidentally everyone but americans laughed at in disgust). so now the americans are fucked in iraq and the future, and you support it. congratulations.

[BROWNer]

oh, and:

"...we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on the battlefield." -George Orwell, "In Front of Your Nose"

[KaBar2]

BROWNer---

The vast majority of Iraqis are not subjected to the dangers and discomforts of the battle for Iraq. The number of insurgents is relatively small in number. The problem arises when one charges the American military with the responsibility of not only conducting a war against terrorists and guerrillas, but also establishing a constitutional government with some credibility and rebuilding the country.

If our only problem was military victory, we could easily accomplish it, with a result roughly equivalent to the defeat of Nazi Germany after WWII, i.e. "bombed and shelled into absolute rubble." Nobody gave a shit in 1945 how many German civilians we killed. If we killed them all, so much the better. If they starved or died of epidemics, tough shit. They were the enemy. Fuck 'em.

But Iraq is not the equivalent of Nazi Germany, although the Baath Party and Saddam's tortures and secret prisons do roughly equate. He ran a secret security state which resulted in the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of the majority Shi'ites by the torturers of the (minority) Baath Party Sunnis.

The insurgency strikes not only at the American military forces and the American civilian logistical train, but also viciously at every Iraqi person who bravely rises to assist re-establishing order, rebuilding schools, re-establishing the rule of law, police stations, governmental courts of justice, and a prison system for people convicted of crimes. (Of course, illegal "kangaroo courts" run by terrorists and religious fanatics operate without much restraint.) The terrorists want chaos, they want an atmosphere of complete and total unlawfulness, so that the average people will be completely terrified to report them, to take positions in the civil authority or to resist their efforts to re-establish a dictatorship.

The areas of Iraq that are anarchic and filled with daily violence are largely within the "Sunni Triangle." Much of the rest of the country is more-or-less peaceful, most of the time. Rebuilding in these areas is proceeding at full speed. Re-establishment of the Iraqi civil authority is going fairly well. It is mainly in the insurgent-dominated urban areas where things are going less well.

We will see more violence, more car bombings, more guerrilla activity as the elections in Iraq (DEC 30, 2005) grow closer. The insurgents know that once the Iraqis have a taste of democractic government, it is very unlikely that they will be willing to accept a terrorist dictatorship.

The terrorists do not fight according to the Geneva Convention. They do not wear uniforms, nor any identifying signal. By the rules of the Geneva Convention, they are bandits, and can be summarily executed if captured. That we are not doing so officially just proves that our troops are much less inclined to summarily execute adversaries than are the terrorists, but quite frankly, I'm all for it. If they fight against the U.S. or the Iraqi armed forces without a uniform, they should be interrogated and then shot or hanged. This probably would not deter any new insurgents from joining the battle, but it would certainly preclude the one executed from returning to fight some other time.

It's not as if the U.S. wishes to just execute any Iraqi they pick up on the street. All that they must do to avoid being executed is live a law-abiding life. They will be permitted to vote for the candidate of their choice. It's just that the Sunnis KNOW that their reign of terror and dictatorship is OVER if the elections are held. That is why they try to create chaos.

[!@#$%]

much like our federal government

denial denial denial.

[BROWNer]

you're right, it is a problem..for one the american military shouldn't be
involved in setting up the iraqi's govt.
there was a chance to hold legitimate elections very early on, but that was pushed aside to consolidate the rewriting of iraq's constitution, and to put in place new laws that benefit american based transnationals...now you've got a full blown insurgency that is going to grow in size.
take a look at the iraqi culture..overwhelmingly they
distrust america(with good reason)..in fact so much so that everything under
the sun gets blamed on the CIA. the most ridiculous and tenuous things are more often than not blamed on the CIA. you'd think this would be under some consideration if the US was concerned with legitimacy..so was it smart to install a CIA thug as interim prime minister then? is that in the iraqi's best interest? america's?
maybe i'm making an assumption, but
you think the insurgency is just a bunch of sleeper terrorists? in other words, there were a whole bunch of terrorists in iraq before the invasion, so the invasion is justified based on yet another war aim that was nowhere to be found originally?
i'm not going to argue with you over why the insurgents are doing some of the things they are doing, i don't really know beyond a general atmosphere of resistance to overwhelming fire power. you are probably correct to assume the goal is to create a completely insecure iraq. in strategic terms, it's probably the only move they've got, and unfortunately for the iraqi's and the americans it will work. there should be no beating around the bush that this was an illegal invasion that holds zero legitimacy in the eyes of iraqi's and most of the world, why so many americans can't grasp this is beyond me. time will tell kabar, but i guarantee that there will be no democracy in iraq. whatever takes hold under an american boot will not resemble a real democratic system 'for the iraqi's'. still, consider what will happen IF the iraqi's will be permitted real democratic elections(you might also take into account that the CIA is now also funding and in contact with candidates the US govt approves of)..
you would have a shiite majority election...take a sec to think about that outcome and whether or not the US govt will 'permit' such results. it's almost laughable.
under your argument, it's OK that many more innocent people have been wounded and in fact murdered under the bush admin than the fatalities of 9/11.
you really can't see the elementary moral dilemma of this? more so you can't see it in the history of US interventions and invasions? like panama? or south vietnam? or any of the brutal regimes the US supported at the height of their murderous dictatorships? woopsy! i forgot, politics is 'hardball'. which means it's okay to act wrecklessly and shit on international and domestic law when it's advantageous.

[KaBar2]

Well, we have a fundamental problem from the start, because I do not see that the United Nations has any legitimacy whatsoever. They DO NOT HAVE ANY AUTHORITY OVER THE UNITED STATES. They can meet, and pass their little resolutions and all that, but it doesn't mean a thing. We are a SOVEREIGN NATION and not subject to ANYBODY'S authority but our own. That is, unless somebody wants to try invading here and conquering us.

If I had my way, we would kick them and their building the fuck off our land, and they could go meet in Paris, or Bern, or wherever the heck they want. Then we would withdraw from their little One World Government scheme and let them go their own way.

If you knew half the bullshit the U.N. has planned for the future, you'd be fed up with them just like I am. One of their schemes is mandatory world-wide income taxes, basically just a redistribution-of-the-wealth plan (our wealth, of course, not anybody else's.) Another one is a plan to restrict human habitation to certain heavily populated areas of the globe, connected by a grid of roads and trains. Entry into "wilderness preservation areas" would be forbidden for the average person, but you can be sure that UN officials would have luxury lodges in pristine areas for important meetings and so on. The rest of us get the concrete jungle. They get Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Another little plan is renewable resources and "responsible consumption." Want a car? Too bad. Want gasoline? Sure--$50 a gallon. Want electricity? Wait until it comes back on, World Citizen. Don't forget Limited Population Growth, like China.

I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not really. If you extrapolate where their proposed policies will lead. . .

UN officials are not elected by anybody. They intend to govern by fiat.
I'm not too fond of the UN, as you can see. What they want is control.

Once there is a functioning government in Iraq, I predict the U.S. will pack it's shit up and go home. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope not.

[!@#$%]

haha.
can you say 14 permanent military bases?

we don't spend 1,200 american lives on oil and then just leave it for the iraqis.

what a fucking joke.

"When Hoffman arrived in Kuwait in February 2003, his unit’s highest-ranking enlisted man laid out the mission in stark terms. “You’re not going to make Iraq safe for democracy,” the sergeant said. “You are going for one reason alone: oil. But you’re still going to go, because you signed a contract. And you’re going to go to bring your friends home.”

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/11/10_400.html

[BROWNer]

of course the UN has no authority over the US. this is highlighted
over and over by the US's arrogance..it also happens to
be a major member who's behaviour within the organization is less
than stellar on a number of issues, and in fact criminal on major issues like the israeli/palestine problem.

[KaBar2]

An excellent quote, and you are correct, that sergeant just about sums it up. I already said (in another thread, weeks ago) "Oil is as good a reason as any to wage a war." Saddam essentially was an American creation. He got to thinking he could do whatever he wanted. Fuck him, he's out of power. Bin Laden was essentially an American creation. He's a good deal more dangerous to us, because he has thousands of clandestine supporters, but that shit is a two-way street. You can be sure that there are Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern commandos hunting his ass as I write this.

I think that Saddam's Iraq was Israel's primary enemy. One viewpoint might be that the main reason we took down Saddam was not 9/11 or oil, but Saddam's threat to Israel. This viewpoint might tend to say that Israel and it's strategic interests have way too much influence over American foreign policy, but I can see no resolution to it. Israel exists. It exists as a Jewish state. It's not going to disappear, and it's not going to become a secular state that shares power with the Palestinians, any more than Lebanon or Syria is going to become a secular state that tolerates a significant Jewish population. The Palestinians should do the smart thing and accept that they are not ever going to destroy Israel and reclaim Jerusalem, unless what they reclaim is a smoking hole in the ground. They'd be a lot better off to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank, forget about Israel and get on with life.

In the real world, issues like oil, and strategic security relationships, and geopolitics have a lot more traction than nation-building in Third World countries. If Iraq never develops enough to be a democratic republic, that will be a shame. But I bet the oil under Iraq gets pumped, regardless. And the situation there is definately an object lesson to countries like Libya and Syria. And North Korea. Iran is big and tough enough to be a player. Libya is not. Politics is hardball.

[CamAlmighty]

Just a further step towards dictatorship.
Why should your political views have to be aligned with those of the country's leader simply because you work in a government sector?
And I see why there's a fuss about the info leak, but only because they were breaching the rules of their position. However, shouldn't the public have full access to everything that is going on...it's there relatives and friends getting killed over there......

Bush... :hatred: :hatred: :hatred: :hatred: :hatred:

[villain]

Originally posted by KaBar2@Dec 1 2004, 01:24 PM


I think that Saddam's Iraq was Israel's primary enemy. One viewpoint might be that the main reason we took down Saddam was not 9/11 or oil, but Saddam's threat to Israel.
Quoted post


Saddam's Iraq was a threat to NOBODY! The Duelfer report and the 9/11 commision report already confirmed what anyone who has been paying attention knew all along. Saddams WMD's were destroyed in the first gulf war, his capability of rebuilding them were increasingly degraded, and he even made NO ATTEMPT at rebuilding them.
What a bunch of shit. I can't believe people still believe all this crap.