Afghanistan and Al Qaeda
The Taliban had given safe haven to Al Qaeda to train and plot logistics attacks based from Afganistan. These actions are well documented.
Afganistan
1. Al Qaeda and radical Islam recruited, trained and developed plans to attack US interests and civilians.
2. Afghanistan was a safe haven for Al Qaeda to carry out training, logistics and development of attacks on US civilians.
1 + 2 justify Afghanistan invasion to protect US civilians.
Iraq
3. Saddam was a renegade leader with a history of WMD possession and usage on his own people.
4. Saddam defied UN resolutions.
5. World leaders thought Saddam had WMD’s in the late 90’s thru 2003.
6. The US Senate and House voted to authorize war on Iraq.
7. UN Resolution 1441 declares IRAQ in material breach or previous resolutions and this was their final opportunity for compliance, Saddam didn’t.
3+4+5+6+7 equals Bush wasn’t on his own and the war is legitimate and legal and was supported by 70 percent of the US Congress.
And if that isn’t enough add these: Saddam took Oil for Food money and fraudulently used it to his own gain and not the UN’s mandate. Saddam was responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen leaving mass graves all over Iraq.
Bottom line:
Pacifism as a response to Radical Islamic Muslims didn’t work leading up to 2001 and it won't work now.
I can accept opinions. We all have them. But so much of the anti war rhetoric today is emotion and has nothing to do with facts.
I don’t like war, nobody does. I don’t like the fact that over 3000 US soldiers have died. An argument can be made that we’ve tried to make war too humane with high accuracy bombs and ridiculously stringent rules of engagement minimizing collateral damage. Maybe we should have used B52’s and kept our military men and women safer.
The simple fact is the news media could care less about truth and fact, and too many people don’t spend the time to find the truth. They just believe their bias.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Nice clear rundown of the facts. Not that anyone cares about facts these days.
Dave
2 - ScooterPowell
"I don’t like war, nobody does."
Not true. I do!
As long as we wreck our real enemies. As long as we accomplish something. As long as we plan it out well and execute it well.
I'm even in favor of nuke war, as long as we do it at the right time for the right reasons. And the consequences are well thought out.
Aren't YOU in favor of war? Suppose the Mighty Iranian Navy landed on the New Jersey shore and started shooting US men and forcing US women to wear veils? Wouldn't you be favor of war?
I think you're just being modest about your willingness to go to war. I'm sure that at the right moment you would react like any loyal and patriotic American and start fighting, even if that meant accidentally defending some damned liberal from the foreigners! Wouldn't you?
3 - ScooterPowell
"I don’t like war, nobody does."
Not true. I do!
As long as we wreck our real enemies. As long as we accomplish something. As long as we plan it out well and execute it well.
I'm even in favor of nuke war, as long as we do it at the right time for the right reasons. And the consequences are well thought out.
Aren't YOU in favor of war? Suppose the Mighty Iranian Navy landed on the New Jersey shore and started shooting US men and forcing US women to wear veils? Wouldn't you be favor of war?
I think you're just being modest about your willingness to go to war. I'm sure that at the right moment you would react like any loyal and patriotic American and start fighting, even if that meant accidentally defending some damned liberal from the foreigners! Wouldn't you?
4 - Deano
So is there a point to this tirade or are you just all a-twitter at having your earlier posts ruthlessly cut up?
5 - J.J. Hunsecker
"too many people don’t spend the time to find the truth. They just believe their bias."
Absolutely hysterical that you end your post with that. Any reason you only went to 1979? Could it be because you don't want to go back to 1953 and the US's involvement in overthrowing Mossadeq and installing the Shah?
6 - RJ
"Any reason you only went to 1979? Could it be because you don't want to go back to 1953 and the US's involvement in overthrowing Mossadeq and installing the Shah?"
What would that have to do with "Islamic Terrorism Against The West" ... which was the actual topic being addressed?
7 - RJ
Matt:
Prepare to be attacked unmercifully by anti-war and anti-American types. Your crime: posting actual facts...
8 - Mark
How DARE you mention Saddam and terrorism in the same sentence? "Everyone" knows the two weren't linked at all...
Just joking. Nice post. My site is is pet project on the subject of Saddam and terrorism if anyone is interested?
9 - MBD
Beware!!
It's a crime to post pre-1979 facts.
10 - J.J. Hunsecker
"What would that have to do with "Islamic Terrorism Against The West" ... which was the actual topic being addressed?"
In no way am I excusing the actions, but if you think US involvement in the Middle East has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism today and of the past, you should stop now before embarrassing yourself any further because you are one of the "many people [who] don’t spend the time to find the truth."
Speaking of the truth, Saddam gassed the Kurds. They are not "his own people" as he is a Sunni, so let's get all the facts straight, shall we?
11 - Dave Nalle
JJ. Let's get the facts even straighter. Kurds are not a religious group, but an ethnic group. The majority of them are Sunnis. They were Saddam's own people in the sense that they were Iraqi by nationality, even if they weren't Arabs like Saddam.
Dave
12 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Actually, Matt, you could have gone back a lot further with terror actions of the Arabs and with the ultimate cause of the shitty dictatorship the Iranians live under now, the overthrow of the Mossadeq government back in 1953(?) and even further to the funding of ibn Saud by the Union Bank (Prescott Bush) to help him take over Arabia in the 1920's. Doing that would cause you to see the nastiest fact of all - the snake (the United States) biting its own tail. Plus you didn't list the biggest terror act of all - OPEC tripling the oil prices in 1973 - which drained the American economy of whatever oomph it may still have had then and set the stage for the stagflation of the 1970's. Capital still would have fled the States and rusted out the industrial interior, but not having tight money then would have made the transition a bit easier.
The issue is not "radical Islamic Moslems" committing terror, but the influence of the Wahhabi in the Moslem world. The Wahhabi have stolen Islam and made into a nightmare for all of us instead of just a bad dream for its adherents.
Without money from America the Arabian tribes following Wahhabism would still be smelling camel shit in the middle of the Arabian peninsula, and there would have been no terror - from the Moslem Brotherhood (infiltrated by the Wahhabi in the 1920's after they conquered Arabia) to the Taliban (inspired by Moslems in Deoband, India).
We're talking about a lot here. No fascist Nazi-admiring Arabs in the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt and Iraq, no attempts to overthrow the king of Iraq in World War II, no Hamas (a local version of the Moslem Brotherhood), no damned Gaza mufti (Amin Husseini, later "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem") inspired by the Moslem Brotherhood, and therefore no miltant Arab resistance to Jewish settlement of Eretz Yisrael, no madrassas spreading hate in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Phillipines, etc., etc.
You can't create fact from fiction, but the fact that Saudi money is all over America like a bad smell means that the mainstream media (read whores) follow the money - not to uncover the miscreants, but to get some for themselves. The price we all pay is that the mainstream media spins the news to cover up the stink of the criminals who have made much of the nightmares that plague us.
13 - Doug Hunter
The west found and needed the oil in the middle east. Unforunately, some sadistic backwards camel herders happened to live on top of it. Instead of doing the right thing by killing them off and taking the oil we decided to do the humanitarian thing and respect their rights and pay them. Now they're billionaires because of us.
They say that you can take a person out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of a person. I think this is an excellent analogy for the arabs. Most of their societies haven't evolved as fast as their bank accounts (especially those of the leaders/kings). Now we're dealing with the effects of middle age style societies armed with modern weapons and hordes of deperately poor fanatics.
14 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Doug,
Not all Arabs are alike - not all strands of Islam are alike. The money paid to ibn Saud was used to conquer Mecca and Medina. The bankers who paid ibn Saud were not ignorant fools. They did their research and knew that ibn Saud would try to conquer the entire Arabian peninsula. Whether they understood what the Wahhabis stand for - unlike other Moslems, their attitude is that if you are not a Wahhabi type Moslem, you are dead meat - is open to question.
If these bankers did understand, then they were fools for their arrogance and short-sightedness, the same kind of attitude that infests so many on this site. If they didn't understand, then they were fools for not realizing that giving a man money can give him power, and eventually power struggles against power. Again arrogance and short-sightedness, but of a different and more understandable kind.
But the bottom line is that the Wahhabi who have pirated Islam and turned it into a monster will not negotiate with you. Either you convert or you die. This is a very bottom line stance that is taught all over the world in madrassas funded by the Wahhabi and the oil money they liberally distribute. Unless you are one of them, you are the enemy and they will not rest until you are dead - or until they are.
There are no deals to be made. Either you kill them - or they will kill you. It is all that simple. The argument can be made that your government did not know that five years ago. But now they do. If they persist in working with these savages, they are doing exactly what Lenin warned that capitalists would do. Sell their own enemies the rope to hang them with.
Until Riyadh is destroyed, and the Wahhabi snake's head cut off in its entirety, you will not have a peaceful night's sleep.
15 - Shahab S.
Your are mistaken to include the MEK in your list of hosted terrorist organizations. The MEK is not a terror organization but rather the antithesis to Islamic fundamentalism in the region. 5.2 million Iraqi's (nearly half those allowed to vote) signed a declaration in 2006 condemning the Iranian regime's meddling in Iraq and supporting the MEK.
The MEK was placed on the list of terror organizations in the U.S. and Europe as part of the appeasement policy adopted by the west in dealing with the mullahs in Iran. The EU's Court of First Instance annuled the EU's decision to label the MEK a terror organization this past December.
The MEK has been instrumental in uncovering the Iranian regime's involvement in Iraq and were the ones who uncovered the mullah's nuclear program. If we are serious about democracy in the middle east and fighting terrorism, then we must remove the MEK from the list of terror organizations.
16 - P. Marlowe
Facts... Wonderful things aren't they? Back in the day when I was a paid country risk analyst I was working for a large Fortune 500 company that wanted to put several new offices in the Mid-East. They asked me to assess the best places.
Among some of the information/facts I used were accessible reports from the CIA, and the DOD. They CLEARLY stated that When Saddam finished with Iran he would turn south to Kuwait.
This is a long story - my involvement in it. People DIED because others chose not to listen to my advice - I'm sure there was bribe money involved... But one of the bitter laughs I got was when, in those first ten days of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait the Bush Adm stating categorically that there was NO WARNING that this would happen... This while I sat looking at the CIA/DOD reports in front of me which were only 18 months old...
I will agree with something that really isn't mentioned in your post even though the title alludes to it: no intelligent American can rely on A news outlet of even THREE. Unfortunately they have to sift through dozens and dozens. FOX NEWS sure as hell isn't one of them though...
P. Marlowe
17 - Deano
Matt,
I think Marlowe hits the nail squarely on the head. The problem is not the facts, I have no issue with your recitation of the facts in your post but how you use facts is where the rubber hits the road.
The current administration selectively partook of evidence to support their viewpoints and policy direction, and ignored the facts that did not support their conclusions. The result was the Iraq War.
Invading Iraq did not reduce the threat of terrorism, but rather increased it significantly as doing it "on the cheap" and failing to adequately plan or resource for the post-war occupation phase allowed the region to slid into the morass it currently is - unstable, highly violent and fractured - a breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists and a marvelous ongoing recruitment poster for Al Qaeda.
Further invading Iraq did not reduce the potential spread of WMD. If Saddam did have significant stockpiles of WMD (and it is a very big "if"), the resources the US brought to bear during the invasion in any case were not enough to safeguard all of the potential WMD locatiosn that the US had identified.
Frankly, given the paucity of resources, the US should be damned pleased that the Iraqi WMD's were mostly imaginary as otherwise the munitions would have been scattered to the winds during the invasion because no one would have been able to secure the more than 500 identified sites. You want WMD's in the hands of terrorists and weapons merchants, then running the invasion and occupation on the cheap was a virtual guarantee that it would happen.
Lastly, your statement "too many people don’t spend the time to find the truth" I tend to agree with however:
"The Tao that can be perceived is not the true Tao"
Finding out the "truth" involves not just gathering up a list of facts, it means developing some analytical capabilities and understanding to judge the significance and content of the facts and to understand the meaning behind them. Wrong or diverse conclusions can easily be drawn from the same set of facts.
18 - MCH
Honor the Fallen
"Army Staff Sgt. Darrell R. Griffin Jr., 36, of Alhambra, Calif.; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.; died March 21 in Balad, Iraq, from wounds sustained when his unit came in contact with small-arms fire during combat operations."
------------------------------
U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq... 3,245
U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq... 24,314
and counting...
19 - Victor Plenty
Leaving aside any arguments for or against this whole war-in-Iraq "thing" -- the repeated insistence that Saddam was not murdering his own people when he gassed the Kurds is one of the most morally repugnant statements ever propagated by the left.
And I say this as a person who often sympathizes with left on many issues.
So, dear friends over there on the left, do yourselves a favor and shut the fuck up about it being "merely" the Kurds who fell victim to Saddam's chemical weapons. Never again stoop to implying this trivia quiz show factoid somehow reduces the sheer blood soaked savagery of that crime, as comment #10 clearly attempts to do yet again.
There are plenty of other legitimate reasons to oppose the U.S. actions in Iraq since 2003. Leave this one behind forever.
Thank you.
20 - P. Marlowe
VP... You get a big old DITTO from me on that!
P. Marlowe
21 - J.J. Hunsecker
good grief, victor, you forgot to cue the maudlin music. I made no such attempt to diminish what happened, so you are either a liar or an idiot. I didn't say they were merely Kurds, so who cares that they died, nor that it wasn't a crime against humanity. However, Saddam wasn't a Kurd.
Maybe if more people in the government and this country didn't share your limited, and slightly racist, view that all Arabs are alike, the country wouldn't be in the mess it is now. You should follow your own advice and shut your fuckin' mouth because I don't give a shit if your precious sensibilities are hurt.
I was for the invasion, but I had no idea the post planning and execution would be so utterly terrible. I expected better.
22 - Sir Daniel M. J. Tobin
The way to fight terrorism is to deport all the Arabs with expired working visas and forged passports since they are linked to Terrorists like Nation of Islam, Cairo's Brotherhood, Popular Front for The Liberation of Palestine General Command, Al Qaeda, and possibly also Hezbollah and Hamas, and War Criminal Abu Minyar, AKA "colonel" Muammar Gaddaffi who has ordered tens of thousands of deaths over 37 years in tyranny in Libya, and has sources within the United States, and has not yet been forcibly removed from power by a true Muslim hero, a Mossad agent or CIA Agent unfortunately, and hasn't been taken into custody and imprisoned in a labor camp for ordering The Bombing of Pan Am Flight #103, which I helped to prosecute on The Board of Directors of The Victims of Pan AM Flight #103 in the 1990's. I am presently the Nassau County Executive Committee Chairman to The Constitution Party, and you can help me win the war on terrorism with your votes on any available party line in Iowa Caucuses and NH Primaries for The US Presidency 2008 and 2012 as a write in candidate since I do not expect to get the official endorsement of the major parties this time. I would also appreciate help in getting signatures on petitions of NY State registered voters for my campaign for The Office of NY State Governor 2010, and successive terms on The NYState Right To Life, Republican, Conservative and possibly also Independence and Libertarian Party lines. Thanks in advance for your time and cooperation. Yours in Liberty, Sir Daniel M. J. Tobin
23 - Victor Plenty
Saddam wasn't a Kurd, but he was morally and legally responsible for their well-being when he controlled the government of the country in which they were citizens.
Acknowleding this principle is not racist in the least. It has nothing to do with assuming Saddam and the Kurds he murdered were ethnically identical. In fact it is far more racist to accept the limited tribal allegiances of people like Saddam Hussein. What could be more racist than to assume Arabs are inherently incapable of recognizing and honoring any broader loyalties, any higher responsibilities than narrow tribalism, merely because they are Arabs?
When you harp on the fact that Saddam wasn't a Kurd, there is no neutral ground. You are either dismissing the Kurds' deaths as irrelevant, or you are dismissing the Arabs' moral capacity as inherently limited, or both.
Either way, the claim that Saddam didn't murder his own people when he murdered the Kurds is utterly indefensible.
24 - MCH
I agree Vic, and I still can't figure out why Bush, Sr., financed Iraq's military.
25 - J.J. Hunsecker
"legally responsible"
I'll grant you that everyone should act morally responsible, but don't dictators create their own laws? You do know Saddam rose to power through a coup, right? Where exactly did this grandiose fantasy that Saddam was a man of the people arise from?
"What could be more racist than to assume Arabs are inherently incapable of recognizing and honoring any broader loyalties, any higher responsibilities than narrow tribalism, merely because they are Arabs?"
What are you talking about? Saddam doesn't represent all Arabs, so your illogical leap is what is more racist. You may not like "the limited tribal allegiances of people like Saddam Hussein," but what's gained by denying they exist?
There's plenty of people working towards broader loyalties in Iraq right now, but to think everyone is or has been working under that same mindset is awfully naive and factually incorrect.
Plus tribalism isn't an Arab trait. Have you not been paying any attention over the years to Africa, the Bosnian war, the fighting in Ireland, etc?
In the future, why don't you try responding to the actual statements made? Your constant misunderstanding of what is being written makes me wonder if English is your second language because your comprehension is terrible.
Your ignorance is what's truly indefensible.