Cheney Knows His Stuff
If I’ve ever claimed that nobody in the Bush administration recognized how dangerous and destabilizing it would be to invade Iraq, I apologize.
50 Responses to “Cheney Knows His Stuff”
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August 13th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Yeah, I like that clip a lot. One possible take on it is that it reflects the difference between Cheney as the spokesperson for Bush 41’s policies, and Cheney as the principal architect of Bush 43’s policies. Basically, that he’s completely bullshitting in this clip (despite being, despite himself, factually correct). I mean; he must have been lying here, right? If he really believed this, why would he have pushed the Iraq policy he did with the current Bush? Did 9/11 unhinge him that far?
August 13th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Yeah, I actually don’t mean this as a “a-ha, Cheney lied!” sort of gotcha, which would be pointless and silly. I really find this fascinating, because none of the possible explanations really fit:
1) Cheney was just voicing Bush 41 policy. His real opinion — that Iraq would be relatively easy to occupy — drove 43 decisions. But clearly somebody knew what they were talking about if this was the concensus under 41… and that didn’t at all sink into Cheney’s thinking? Or he thought there was something different about the approach to this war that would avoid the crisis he describes?
2) Cheney believed this original assessment (which he would have been close to under 41), and his recent rhetoric has only been to counter criticism of 43’s war. But in that case Cheney really thinks (which admittedly jives with his recent statements) that this war has been worth it, even with the crisis caused. But what exactly has made it so worth it to him?
3) Cheney believed the original assessment, but his opinion has changed since then. This I imagine is what Cheney (if he responds to this at all) would have us believe to keep his credibility intact, but… what could possibly have changed? Yes, there was 9/11 (if you want to believe that’s related), but that is only an argument for taking the risk *despite* the expected problems.
I guess number 2 seems the most plausible to me, but boy is that unsettling. That means that Cheney more or less saw the current situation coming and yet was okay with bullshitting the American public into the war anyway. And if he was that familiar with the situation in Iraq, I’m sure he was plenty aware of how disconnected Iraq was from 9/11. That suggests that he believes the following: There was some goal — disconnected from 9/11 — that was important enough that it justified enormous cost to the US in blood, money, and international reputation but that had to be hidden from the US public to ensure the war was begun.
What exactly is his motivation? I honestly had been willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt that they felt they were doing what was best for the nation, but were woefully misguided about how to go about that. Now, I’m not sure.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:39 am
“What exactly is his motivation?”
easy
oil, $ and remaking the middle east
At $67 to $80 a barrel the price of oil is up a bit since the Clinton years ($10 a barrel at times). You may note that oil companies are making tanker loads of blingbling. And not investing as much as they should in new exploration and refineries (lower supply keeps the price high, if you can keep your cartel together). Plus the Iraqis are somehow misplacing 300,000 barrels a day (call it $60 a barrel x 300k = nearly $20 million a day, $600 million a month). I wonder how much is siphoned off by the insurgents and how much by US war profiteers?
And that ‘remaking the middle east initiative’ sure is showing results! Elections in Lebanon, the Palestinian areas and Iran have all ushered in pro Western democracies (note – sarcasm). Peace is breaking out all over! (more of same – sorry ymatt)
And we sure did learn that Osama bin Forgotten feller a lesson!
Heck of a job bushie! ;-)
Moran.
–
Hey knarly, I noticed something about that bridge collapse in MN. Initially CNN reported eyewitnesses hearing ‘three loud booms’. This was later edited (same article) to say they heard ‘a rumbling’. Could just be the GOoPer greed/incompetence in action (my surmise). Taxes for road maintenance? r u crazy!?!?! then how would I afford my yacht? Think of the millionaires! The billionaires! (sobs)
Or it could be something else… conspiracy theorists start your rhetorical engines!
August 13th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Hm. Yeah, I think you’re right, yse. #2. Interesting stuff, once you dig past the snarky bits.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Every now and then, I think maybe just maybe we are actually going to agree on something and then you guys post a little ditty like this and actually discuss it. This seems so elementary, of course 911 changed everything, you say unhinge, I say it gave them resolve. I remember when we stopped short of Baghdad, I thought why? We are there, finish the job. Going back later almost always costs more of everything. A local talk radio host, Gunny Bob Newman, was there as a marine. He has said any number of times the troops were stunned to find out that they were being stopped by the administration because they had been too good. For some reason they thought their job was to kill people and break things and couldn’t believe that a stunning victory like the “road of death” was going to defeat them. But it did. I would cringe every time Sadam would thumb his nose at those useless UN inspectors and then when I found out that even our own military was scheduling flyovers by spy planes 2 days in advance I knew we were screwed. So yes I was very happy when we went into Iraq, even if we were more than a decade late.
But back to Cheney, so you guys are saying 12 years and the worst attack on our soil ever aren’t enough to make someone change their mind? An attack of 60% severity on a MILITARY target got us into WWII, and Germany had nothing to do with it. If you guys Don’t understand the concept of enemies and allies, I’ll be happy to explain it. Oh and by the way, your side made predictions back then and right before we invaded Iraq this time, they said we would need 10,000 body bags just to take Baghdad (couldn’t even be original enough to come up with a different number 12 years later). Others said deaths would eclipse Vietnam, they were wrong, maybe someone should write a piece about how wrong liberals always seem to be, probably not enough ink.
Come on, you guys are better than this.
August 14th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Oh, I’m sorry, I must have forgotton. Can you explain again what 9/11 has to with Saddam/Iraq? Thanks.
If 9/11 gave “them” resolve, how come OBL and the Al Qadea organization are flourishing in Afghanistan? How come terrorist attacks are way up since 9/11? Useless UN inspectors? They were looking for something that didn’t exist, did the US inspectors find all those nukes? Where did they go? Did Criss Angel make them dissapear?
August 14th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Before you answer, you might want to watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7xyd_IRgGs&NR=1
I can see how some people might still be confused. Enough to make one’s head spin.
August 14th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Well, we’re around 4,000 deaths in, and not in sight of actually controlling Baghdad. So that one may come to pass, unless we have the sense to stop beating our collective head against that particular wall first.
Iraq was precisely the same amount of threat on 9/12/2001 as it was in 1992: absolutely none.
Iraq was, sad as it is, our best ally in the region right up through 2003. Hussein would have been happy at any point to return to US-lapdog status, and was only keeping up enough bluster to hold Iran at arm’s length. At no point did Iraq have either the means or the desire to do harm to the US.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:41 am
Well done guys, that completely settles it.
But sometimes shcb does not appear to recognize when he’s been squished, so let me mix a metaphor and flog this dead horse further:
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says: This seems so elementary, of course 911 changed everything, you say unhinge, I say it gave them resolve.
“Unhinge” or ”resolve” it doesn’t matter. The tactical considerations were much the same and the assessment in 1991 was that the death count was not worth it, but apparently in 2003 a high number of deaths was worth it.
An attack on America, no matter how successful, would not change the cost/benefit analysis for an Iraq occupation (and this is infinitely more valid when you recognise that the 911 attack was blamed on a group that Iraq opposed and actively suppressed within its own borders: al-CIA-duh.)
So what changed over those ten years or so? A radically changing world oil supply/demand fundamental started to become clear to policy makers around 1999 or 2000 (a year or two after the war started it was “confirmed” by the popular press e.g. National Geographic’s “The End of the Age of Oil” (see: http://www.magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/fulltext.html ) , confirmed to the ectent that it is now more or less common knowledge. Back back in 1998, 99 or 2000 it was literally only the top brass in the oil industry (e.g. Cheney) who knew – and intelligent independent people like Michael Rupert and Dale Allen Pfeiffer began putting the dots together in reporting their analysis of this reality to their readers back in December 2001, THREE YEARS before mainstream media caught on (see http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.shtml#oil )
So what is it, were Cheney et al “unhinged” or “resolved”? Neither provides an adequate explanation.
What explains it is that certain people in the Bush administration (including Cheney) were in possession of fairly radically new and more reliable information concerning oil reserves which was not commonly known. This information led them to the conclusion that there was a strategic NECESSITY to act, and act soon, to secure control of Iraq oil reserves (second largest supply of light sweet in the world, second only to that controlled by Bush’s friends in the Arabian kingdom.)
Don’t take my word for it, the “prize” was Iraq right from the start:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/Against_All_Enemies_War_+_Peace.htm or http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_of_Attack
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
“I remember when we stopped short of Baghdad, I thought why? We are there, finish the job. Going back later almost always costs more of everything. A local talk radio host, Gunny Bob Newman, was there as a marine. He has said any number of times the troops were stunned to find out that they were being stopped by the administration because they had been too good. For some reason they thought their job was to kill people and break things and couldn’t believe that a stunning victory like the “road of death” was going to defeat them. But it did.”
Let’s see now: “Local talk radio host,… was there as a marine… HE SAID… “Finish the job” by going to Baghdad to kill people and break things” ???
As NL has pointed to in the video above, George Orwell puts this into its exact proper perspective: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
If a “radio host” bozo was disappointed that he was denied continuing the psychotic soldier’s dream of murder and destruction just when it was getting really good for him (the prospect of pushing the high tech death festival into a city of 7 million people) does that make him qualified to advise on global geo-politics??
Exactly because a bozo used to be a marine, simply a marine, a trained killer to be more precise, that is exactly what strongly suggests that he should NOT be the one to take advice from in regard to whether there are sufficient policy rationales for military action.
One might consider his advice on the tactical considerations of an immediate conflict, but you’d be a fool to confuse that advice with a decision about the political, economic, environmental, or social costs and benefits of engaging in any particular war. Unless you were trying to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.
And suggesting that the Gulf War was ended abruptly because of the Road of Death is utterly simplistic nonsense.
If proceeding was deemed by that administration to be worth the loss of life and tremendous costs to drag the war into an urban guerilla – civil war environment there is no question that Bush 51 would have done so. Regardless, the Road of Death should have been enough to stop the insanity(!) It was AS BAD AS BAD GETS, see:
http://www.archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-593-3127/conflict_war/gulf_war/clip14 and
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23498 some excerpts from this last link (sans pictures) is worth reposting as an excerpt below:
“The Highway of Death – Shooting in a sheep pen
One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as “The Highway of Death.”
No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.
As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait. There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.
“Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.
U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.
More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.
The clear rapid incineration (of people) suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
“In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.” (as per) Joyce Chediac – Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”
On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.
…Oh yea right I am sure shcb will remind us that the Palestinian women and children were out of uniform so it was okay to kill them as they can be considered as illegal combatants…
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
I would cringe every time Sadam would thumb his nose at those useless UN inspectors and then when I found out that even our own military was scheduling flyovers by spy planes 2 days in advance I knew we were screwed. So yes I was very happy when we went into Iraq, even if we were more than a decade late.
More opinion and totally unsubstantiated crap. It would be far closer to the truth if shcb would simply admit that Iraq was bombed continuously over that ten year period.
For example, in 1996 the US launched 27 cruise missile attacks alone against Iraq, in 1998 the US launched Operation Desert Fox and over a four day period, 400 cruise missiles are launched on Iraq, along with 600 air attack sorties and British aircraft also take part in airstrikes (it is possible that hundreds or thousands of people were killed and wounded in the Desert Fox attacks) (see: http://www.libcom.org/history/articles/Iraq-1900-2000/ ) Also:
“… the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did. During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%.
…. However, between May 2002 and the second week in November, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 1441, which Goldsmith said made the war legal, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of 126.1 tons, or 36%.
… By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone. (refer to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article527701.ece )
Do some research involving various sites with different opinions shcb and then try thinking for yourself, parroting talk radio simply does not cut it.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
But back to Cheney, so you guys are saying 12 years and the worst attack on our soil ever aren’t enough to make someone change their mind? An attack of 60% severity on a MILITARY target got us into WWII, and Germany had nothing to do with it.
There are a series of serious non-sequitor logic problem here. Ignoring the WWII red-herring, the key point is that: No one here said that those items were not enough to make Cheney change his mind, so shcb’s initial premise is invalid.
Clearly, Cheney changed his mind on invading Iraq, but what the video shows is that Cheney KNEW THAT A U.S. OCCUPATION WOULD BE A QUAGMIRE and Cheney describes a very similar situation to the 2003 invasion and where the USA and Britain find themselves now. 9/11 did not and does not change the facts on the ground in Iraq that Cheney CORRECTLY AS IT TURNS OUT identified in 1994.
YMATT made the astute observation in his explanation #3 that 9/11 was “only an argument for taking the risk *despite* the expected problems”. The administration DENIED (a.k.a. deceived the American public a.k.a. Lied about) all those EXPECTED PROBLEMS that Cheney is so articulate about in the 1994 interview.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
If you guys Don’t understand the concept of enemies and allies, I’ll be happy to explain it.
Don’t bother, Woodward already has with respect to this administration: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_of_Attack
And Ruppert already has with respect to enemies within:
There are 3 major points made within this book that are crucial to proving Cheney’s guilt. I shall first list them and then go on to prove each point as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon.
1. Means – Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11. (Click here for a summary of these points)
2. Motive – Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, “will not end in our lifetime.” (Click here for a summary of these points)
3. Opportunity – 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental United States that included (at least) one “live-fly” exercise as well as simulations that placed “false blips” on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks – who had trained their entire lives for this moment – would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney’s management. (Click here for a summary of these points)
Here is the supporting documentation as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon, making a legal case against Dick Cheney for the crimes of 9/11… (Full details can be found in Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Rupert, however this Reader’s Digest condensed version is for those whose attention span has been damaged by over-exposure to rwnj talk radio):
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml )
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
Oh and by the way, your side made predictions back then and right before we invaded Iraq this time, they said we would need 10,000 body bags just to take Baghdad (couldn’t even be original enough to come up with a different number 12 years later). Others said deaths would eclipse Vietnam, they were wrong, maybe someone should write a piece about how wrong liberals always seem to be, probably not enough ink.
Come on, you guys are better than this.
“your side” – at the heart of it, shcb does not consider LIES discussions as an exploration to get at a greater or a mutual understanding or a “win-win” type of consensus, for him this is near alwaays pure and simply partisan politics and pro-war vs. anti-war arguments where any twisting of logic is fair game.
“body bags” – The death toll could have eclipsed Vietnam, had they done things the same as they did in Vietnam. But no non-imbedded US press was allowed and foreign press were not protected (to be generous to the American treatment of foreign press.) That allowed the potential for greater collateral damage to go undocumented thus enabling a broader brush approach to wiping out insurgent positions amoungst civilians. Also significant is that American weapons and medical technology have advanced enormously, and perhaps most importantly the death toll is not being reported the same way.
In Vietnam, it took a long time to get a wounded soldier out, and if they died at or enroute to hospital it was counted as a combat death. In Iraq, badly injured soldiers are air lifted out immediately (eg to German base hospital) and (true to this administrations manipulation of statistics) if they die at any point after becoming airborne from Iraq then they are not counted as a combat death.
NL, so true the Orwell quote at the beginning of the video you posted: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
Some people (yes this means you shcb) might benefit from watching the NL video a whole bunch of times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7xyd_IRgGs&NR=1
August 15th, 2007 at 3:41 am
Well done guys, that completely settles it.
But sometimes shcb does not appear to recognize when he’s been squished, so let me mix a metaphor and flog this dead horse further:
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says: This seems so elementary, of course 911 changed everything, you say unhinge, I say it gave them resolve.
“Unhinge” or ”resolve” it doesn’t matter. The tactical considerations were much the same and the assessment in 1991 was that the death count was not worth it, but apparently in 2003 a high number of deaths was worth it.
An attack on America, no matter how successful, would not change the cost/benefit analysis for an Iraq occupation (and this is infinitely more valid when you recognise that the 911 attack was blamed on a group that Iraq opposed and actively suppressed within its own borders: al-CIA-duh.)
So what changed over those ten years or so? A radically changing world oil supply/demand fundamental started to become clear to policy makers around 1999 or 2000 (a year or two after the war started it was “confirmed” by the popular press e.g. National Geographic’s “The End of the Age of Oil” (see: http://www.magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/fulltext.html ) , confirmed to the ectent that it is now more or less common knowledge. Back back in 1998, 99 or 2000 it was literally only the top brass in the oil industry (e.g. Cheney) who knew – and intelligent independent people like Michael Rupert and Dale Allen Pfeiffer began putting the dots together in reporting their analysis of this reality to their readers back in December 2001, THREE YEARS before mainstream media caught on (see http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.shtml#oil )
So what is it, were Cheney et al “unhinged” or “resolved”? Neither provides an adequate explanation.
What explains it is that certain people in the Bush administration (including Cheney) were in possession of fairly radically new and more reliable information concerning oil reserves which was not commonly known. This information led them to the conclusion that there was a strategic NECESSITY to act, and act soon, to secure control of Iraq oil reserves (second largest supply of light sweet in the world, second only to that controlled by Bush’s friends in the Arabian kingdom.)
Don’t take my word for it, the “prize” was Iraq right from the start:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/Against_All_Enemies_War_+_Peace.htm or http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_of_Attack
August 15th, 2007 at 3:42 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
“I remember when we stopped short of Baghdad, I thought why? We are there, finish the job. Going back later almost always costs more of everything. A local talk radio host, Gunny Bob Newman, was there as a marine. He has said any number of times the troops were stunned to find out that they were being stopped by the administration because they had been too good. For some reason they thought their job was to kill people and break things and couldn’t believe that a stunning victory like the “road of death” was going to defeat them. But it did.”
Let’s see now: “Local talk radio host,… was there as a marine… HE SAID… “Finish the job” by going to Baghdad to kill people and break things” ???
As NL has pointed to in the video above, George Orwell puts this into its exact proper perspective: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
If a “radio host” bozo was disappointed that he was denied continuing the psychotic soldier’s dream of murder and destruction just when it was getting really good for him (the prospect of pushing the high tech death festival into a city of 7 million people) does that make him qualified to advise on global geo-politics??
Exactly because a bozo used to be a marine, simply a marine, a trained killer to be more precise, that is exactly what strongly suggests that he should NOT be the one to take advice from in regard to whether there are sufficient policy rationales for military action.
One might consider his advice on the tactical considerations of an immediate conflict, but you’d be a fool to confuse that advice with a decision about the political, economic, environmental, or social costs and benefits of engaging in any particular war. Unless you were trying to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.
And suggesting that the Gulf War was ended abruptly because of the Road of Death is utterly simplistic nonsense.
If proceeding was deemed by that administration to be worth the loss of life and tremendous costs to drag the war into an urban guerilla – civil war environment there is no question that Bush 51 would have done so. Regardless, the Road of Death should have been enough to stop the insanity(!) It was AS BAD AS BAD GETS, see:
http://www.archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-593-3127/conflict_war/gulf_war/clip14 and
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23498 some excerpts from this last link (sans pictures) is worth reposting as an excerpt below:
“The Highway of Death – Shooting in a sheep pen
One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as “The Highway of Death.”
No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.
As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait. There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.
“Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.
U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.
More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.
The clear rapid incineration (of people) suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
“In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.” (as per) Joyce Chediac – Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”
On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.
…Oh yea right I am sure shcb will remind us that the Palestinian women and children were out of uniform so it was okay to kill them as they can be considered as illegal combatants…
August 15th, 2007 at 3:43 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
“I remember when we stopped short of Baghdad, I thought why? We are there, finish the job. Going back later almost always costs more of everything. A local talk radio host, Gunny Bob Newman, was there as a marine. He has said any number of times the troops were stunned to find out that they were being stopped by the administration because they had been too good. For some reason they thought their job was to kill people and break things and couldn’t believe that a stunning victory like the “road of death” was going to defeat them. But it did.”
Let’s see now: “Local talk radio host,… was there as a marine… HE SAID… “Finish the job” by going to Baghdad to kill people and break things” ???
As NL has pointed to in the video above, George Orwell puts this into its exact proper perspective: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
If a “radio host” bozo was disappointed that he was denied continuing the psychotic soldier’s dream of murder and destruction just when it was getting really good for him (the prospect of pushing the high tech death festival into a city of 7 million people) does that make him qualified to advise on global geo-politics??
Exactly because a bozo used to be a marine, simply a marine, a trained killer to be more precise, that is exactly what strongly suggests that he should NOT be the one to take advice from in regard to whether there are sufficient policy rationales for military action.
One might consider his advice on the tactical considerations of an immediate conflict, but you’d be a fool to confuse that advice with a decision about the political, economic, environmental, or social costs and benefits of engaging in any particular war. Unless you were trying to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.
And suggesting that the Gulf War was ended abruptly because of the Road of Death is utterly simplistic nonsense.
If proceeding was deemed by that administration to be worth the loss of life and tremendous costs to drag the war into an urban guerilla – civil war environment there is no question that Bush 51 would have done so. Regardless, the Road of Death should have been enough to stop the insanity(!) It was AS BAD AS BAD GETS, see:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23498 some excerpts from this last link (sans pictures) is worth reposting as an excerpt below:
“The Highway of Death – Shooting in a sheep pen
One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as “The Highway of Death.”
No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.
As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait. There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.
“Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.
U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.
More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.
The clear rapid incineration (of people) suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
“In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.” (as per) Joyce Chediac – Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”
On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.
…Oh yea right I am sure shcb will remind us that the Palestinian women and children were out of uniform so it was okay to kill them as they can be considered as illegal combatants…
August 15th, 2007 at 3:45 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
“I remember when we stopped short of Baghdad, I thought why? We are there, finish the job. Going back later almost always costs more of everything. A local talk radio host, Gunny Bob Newman, was there as a marine. He has said any number of times the troops were stunned to find out that they were being stopped by the administration because they had been too good. For some reason they thought their job was to kill people and break things and couldn’t believe that a stunning victory like the “road of death” was going to defeat them. But it did.”
Let’s see now: “Local talk radio host,… was there as a marine… HE SAID… “Finish the job” by going to Baghdad to kill people and break things” ???
As NL has pointed to in the video above, George Orwell puts this into its exact proper perspective: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
If a “radio host” bozo was disappointed that he was denied continuing the psychotic soldier’s dream of murder and destruction just when it was getting really good for him (the prospect of pushing the high tech death festival into a city of 7 million people) does that make him qualified to advise on global geo-politics??
Exactly because a bozo used to be a marine, simply a marine, a trained killer to be more precise, that is exactly what strongly suggests that he should NOT be the one to take advice from in regard to whether there are sufficient policy rationales for military action.
One might consider his advice on the tactical considerations of an immediate conflict, but you’d be a fool to confuse that advice with a decision about the political, economic, environmental, or social costs and benefits of engaging in any particular war. Unless you were trying to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.
And suggesting that the Gulf War was ended abruptly because of the Road of Death is utterly simplistic nonsense.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:45 am
If proceeding (with Gulf War 1) was deemed by that administration to be worth the loss of life and tremendous costs to drag the war into an urban guerilla – civil war environment, there is no question that Bush 51 would have done so. Regardless, the Road of Death should have been enough to stop the insanity(!) It was AS BAD AS BAD GETS, see:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23498 some excerpts from this last link (sans pictures) is worth reposting as an excerpt below:
“The Highway of Death – Shooting in a sheep pen
One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as “The Highway of Death.”
No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.
As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait. There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.
“Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.
U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.
More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.
The clear rapid incineration (of people) suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
“In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.” (as per) Joyce Chediac – Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”
On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.
…Oh yea right I am sure shcb will remind us that the Palestinians were out of uniform so it was okay to kill them as they can be considered as illegal combatants…
August 15th, 2007 at 3:46 am
If proceeding (with Gulf War 1) was deemed by that administration to be worth the loss of life and tremendous costs to drag the war into an urban guerilla – civil war environment, there is no question that Bush 51 would have done so. Regardless, the Road of Death should have been enough to stop the insanity(!) It was AS BAD AS BAD GETS, see:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23498 some excerpts from this last link (sans pictures) is worth reposting as an excerpt below:
“The Highway of Death – Shooting in a sheep pen
One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as “The Highway of Death.”
No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.
As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait. There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.
“Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.
U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.
More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.
The clear rapid incineration (of people) suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
“In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.” (as per) Joyce Chediac – Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”
On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.
Oh yea right I am sure shcb will remind us that the Palestinians were out of uniform so it was okay to kill them as they can be considered as illegal combatants…
August 15th, 2007 at 3:47 am
If proceeding (with Gulf War 1) was deemed by that administration to be worth the loss of life and tremendous costs to drag the war into an urban guerilla – civil war environment, there is no question that Bush 51 would have done so. Regardless, the Road of Death should have been enough to stop the insanity(!) It was AS BAD AS BAD GETS, see:
some excerpts (sans pictures) are worth reposting as an excerpt below:
“The Highway of Death – Shooting in a sheep pen
One of the most graphic and heinous crimes of the Gulf War occurred on the highway between Mutlaa, Kuwait and Basra, Iraq, also known as “The Highway of Death.”
No attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians on the “highway of death”. The whole intent of international law with regard to war is to prevent just this sort of indiscriminate and excessive use of force.
As the U.S. began its land assault, Iraq announced that it would comply with U.N. resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait. There are, in addition, strong indications that many of those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the impending siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
U.S. planes then began to bomb and strafe the entire line of some 2,000 vehicles for hours, killing tens of thousands of helpless soldiers and civilians while encountering no resistance and receiving no losses to themselves.
“Another 60-mile stretch of road to the east was strewn with the remnants armored cars, trucks, ambulances and thousands of bodies following an attack on convoys on the night of February 25, 1991.
U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours.
More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway.
The clear rapid incineration (of people) suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions.” (as per) Joyce Chediac – Report presented at the New York Commission hearing May 11, 1991
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians were fleeing desperately, many in civilian vehicles. They were obviously no military threat to anyone. And yet American forces gleefully massacred them all, joking that it was as easy as “shooting in a sheep pen.”
On many occasions Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to American forces. It didn’t make any difference. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots were under orders to mass-murder every last human being in cold blood.
Iraqi soldiers as well as Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian and other civilians piled into whatever vehicles they could commandeer, including a fire truck, and fled north towards Iraq. U.S. planes disabled vehicles at both ends of the convoy, creating a 7-mile long traffic jam.
Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who “are out of combat”.
Oh yea right I am sure shcb will remind us that the Palestinians were out of uniform so it was okay to kill them as they can be considered as illegal combatants…
August 15th, 2007 at 3:48 am
excerpts in that previous post were from
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=23498
August 15th, 2007 at 3:48 am
Previous post excerpts from
www .uruknet.info/?p=23498
August 15th, 2007 at 3:49 am
Previous post excerpts from a website that appears blocked from being posted, I’ve tried to post it several times, here is one but just replace the spaces with “.”
www uruknet info/?p=23498
August 15th, 2007 at 3:54 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
I would cringe every time Sadam would thumb his nose at those useless UN inspectors and then when I found out that even our own military was scheduling flyovers by spy planes 2 days in advance I knew we were screwed. So yes I was very happy when we went into Iraq, even if we were more than a decade late.
More opinion and totally unsubstantiated crap. It would be far closer to the truth if shcb would simply admit that Iraq was bombed continuously over that ten year period.
For example, in 1996 the US launched 27 cruise missile attacks alone against Iraq, in 1998 the US launched Operation Desert Fox and over a four day period, 400 cruise missiles are launched on Iraq, along with 600 air attack sorties and British aircraft also take part in airstrikes (it is possible that hundreds or thousands of people were killed and wounded in the Desert Fox attacks) (see: http://www.libcom.org/history/articles/Iraq-1900-2000/ ) Also:
“… the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did. During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%.
…. However, between May 2002 and the second week in November, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 1441, which Goldsmith said made the war legal, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of 126.1 tons, or 36%.
… By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone. (refer to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article527701.ece )
Please do some research involving various sites with different opinions shcb and then try thinking for yourself, parroting talk radio simply does not cut it.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:56 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
But back to Cheney, so you guys are saying 12 years and the worst attack on our soil ever aren’t enough to make someone change their mind? An attack of 60% severity on a MILITARY target got us into WWII, and Germany had nothing to do with it.
There are a series of serious non-sequitor logic problem here. Ignoring the WWII red-herring, the key point is that: No one here said that those items were not enough to make Cheney change his mind, so shcb’s initial premise is invalid.
Clearly, Cheney changed his mind on invading Iraq, but what the video shows is that Cheney KNEW THAT A U.S. OCCUPATION WOULD BE A QUAGMIRE and Cheney describes a very similar situation to the 2003 invasion and where the USA and Britain find themselves now. 9/11 did not and does not change the facts on the ground in Iraq that Cheney CORRECTLY identified in 1994.
YMATT made the astute observation in his explanation #3 that 9/11 was “only an argument for taking the risk *despite* the expected problems”. The administration DENIED (a.k.a. deceived the American public a.k.a. Lied about) all those EXPECTED PROBLEMS that Cheney is so articulate about in the 1994 interview.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:57 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
If you guys Don’t understand the concept of enemies and allies, I’ll be happy to explain it.
Don’t bother, Woodward already has with respect to this administration: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_of_Attack
And Rupert already has with respect to enemies within:
There are 3 major points made within this book that are crucial to proving Cheney’s guilt. I shall first list them and then go on to prove each point as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon.
1. Means – Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11. (Click here for a summary of these points)
2. Motive – Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, “will not end in our lifetime.” (Click here for a summary of these points)
3. Opportunity – 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental United States that included (at least) one “live-fly” exercise as well as simulations that placed “false blips” on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks – who had trained their entire lives for this moment – would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney’s management. (Click here for a summary of these points)
Here is the supporting documentation as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon, making a legal case against Dick Cheney for the crimes of 9/11… (Full details can be found in Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Rupert, however this Reader’s Digest condensed version is for those whose attention span has been damaged by over-exposure to rwnj talk radio):
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml )
August 15th, 2007 at 3:58 am
August 14th, 2007 at 4:37 am
shcb Says:
Oh and by the way, your side made predictions back then and right before we invaded Iraq this time, they said we would need 10,000 body bags just to take Baghdad (couldn’t even be original enough to come up with a different number 12 years later). Others said deaths would eclipse Vietnam, they were wrong, maybe someone should write a piece about how wrong liberals always seem to be, probably not enough ink.
Come on, you guys are better than this.
“your side” – at the heart of it, shcb does not consider LIES discussions as an exploration to get at a greater or a mutual understanding or a “win-win” type of consensus, for him this is near alwaays pure and simply partisan politics and pro-war vs. anti-war arguments where any twisting of logic is fair game.
“body bags” – The death toll could have eclipsed Vietnam, had they done things the same as they did in Vietnam. But no non-imbedded US press was allowed and foreign press were not protected (to be generous to the American treatment of foreign press.) That allowed the potential for greater collateral damage to go undocumented thus enabling a broader brush approach to wiping out insurgent positions amoungst civilians. Also significant is that American weapons and medical technology have advanced enormously, and perhaps most importantly the death toll is not being reported the same way.
In Vietnam, it took a long time to get a wounded soldier out, and if they died at or enroute to hospital it was counted as a combat death. In Iraq, badly injured soldiers are air lifted out immediately (eg to German base hospital) and (true to this administrations manipulation of statistics) if they die at any point after becoming airborne from Iraq then they are not counted as a combat death.
NL, so true the Orwell quote at the beginning of the video you posted: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
Some people (yes even shcb) might benefit from watching the NL video a whole bunch of times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7xyd_IRgGs&NR=1
August 15th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Hi Guys,
I’m going to answer Onan’s points first since they are the simplest. The 10,000 number I was referring to was for the initial invasion and capturing of Iraq and Baghdad, the timeframe prior to that absolutely awful carrier landing. (just kidding, that was so cool!) From a historical perspective, 4000 deaths in going on five years is a tiny number of fatalities. If you look at JBC’s periodical comparison of Vietnam to Iraq you will notice that the death rate has not changed much throughout this conflict so for the number to climb to 10,000 would take, what, another 8 years. Even I would say we should consider pulling out if it takes another 8 years. Of course that could all change in a moment if some of those 20,000 poison gas warheads the UN inspectors said existed before our invasion but the American inspectors (Marines) can’t find make their way back into Iraq. Then you might need those body bags and you can be vindicated.
How do you guys do that thing where you indent the quote with the side bar?
Now on to NL, thanks for the Utube clip, was that supposed to prove me wrong? I was going to make a lot of those points, thanks. Since you thought that clip was damning, I guess I have to explain this whole thing once more. Before I do that, look at the clip at 1:30 this is a classic Michael Moore tactic. The filmmaker sandwiches a short segment of Cheney saying “he” met with them … the he wasn’t Sadam, it has one his kids or Al Zahari, I don’t remember who exactly, but it wasn’t Sadam, and yet it gives the impression it was Sadam. Deception, not as good as Moore, but close.
Now none of what I am about to say will make any sense unless you can come to grips with the fact we are at war, and we are at war with a large portion of the Muslim population. This is where you guys are all living in a world of denial, but of course you say I am living in a world of denial, another classic example of liberals saying someone is doing something they aren’t so they can cover for themselves doing that very thing. Now you are going to claim I am setting up a false premise, I’m not, there are example after example of the Arabs attacking Westerners with deadly force since the Carter Administration, there are quotes from Arab leaders saying the goal of the Muslim world is the destruction of the state of Israel, and other quotes saying they want all men to convert or die. Now they probably can’t succeed in these endeavors, but they can sure kill a lot of people trying.
As the clip correctly showed, there is no direct link to Sadam and OBL, they never raised a glass to each other, hell, they didn’t even like each other, that doesn’t mean they weren’t or couldn’t become allies. In a situation like this you remove threats where you can. When the police raid a house to apprehend a suspect, they put everyone on the ground and handcuff them, then they sort through who is friend or foe, they don’t wait to see who is going to be aggressive. Sadam said he had WMD, most of the world’s intelligence services thought he did or was on the verge of acquiring them. OBL had a method of delivering those weapons anywhere in the world, only a handful of countries have that capability, now these two men who hated each other would share that distinction. The start of beautiful relationship.
To say Sadam was not a threat is to ignore the almost 2 metric tons of yellow cake, enough to make 1 to 6 Hiroshima size bombs, drawn over a mandrel 7000 series aluminum tubes, centrifuge plans buried in a rose garden, testimony of defector scientists that the nuke program had just been put on hold until the sanctions were lifted. Which they were about to be so France could do the trade legally they had been doing illegally. Sadam wasn’t much of an actual threat but he was a huge potential threat, like a guy in that police bust that stands in the corner of the room with his hand behind his back smiling. He hasn’t shown himself to be an actual threat, but he is certainly a potential threat, and he needs to be removed. Sadam has been removed and is no longer a threat. Good.
A quick question, If Iraq was no threat to us, if OBL hated Sadam so badly and had no intention of becoming an ally, and if there were no real value in our making it a democratic state in that area, why are they fighting us so hard?
August 15th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Because you illegally invaded their country. Imagine, for a moment, that America was invaded by another country – against the world’s wishes. Would you sit in your basement and hide, or would you fight for your country?
August 15th, 2007 at 7:29 am
NL,
I would do what a great number of Iraqis are doing, I would join the Americans in pushing the Iranian and other foreign fighters out of my country. As well as defeating the remnants of Sadam’s regime. Because I would know the Americans will leave when the job is finished, the others won’t.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Knarly,
2,835 words, 279 lines. I barely have time to read all that, I can’t respond to all you wrote or cut and pasted. I do research on this stuff, I don’t just recite what I hear on talk radio or read on some nutty left wing website in your case. Now of course I can’t research everything I hear or read, but I do enough to keep the people I trust honest. So pick one item and I will respond. You have a lot of good stuff in this post, you or the person you’re quoting actually referenced some UN resolutions and such. I would love to refute most of it, but it would just take too long.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:40 am
shcb, I’m a bit confused by your valuation of fatalities. Four thousand deaths is too few to worry much about, but three thousand deaths on 9/11 are enough to justify spending billions of dollars to kill hundreds of thousands of other people?
And I have to admit that I’m also pretty skeptical of how you say you’d react to an invasion. Let’s flesh out the metaphor a bit more: if the US were to be massively invaded by, say, China, with federal government deposed and US citizens being regularly disappeared into facilities heavy on the torture and light on the trials, you’re saying that you wouldn’t fight back tooth and nail? And if a few Canadians snuck across the border to help the American resistance, you’re saying you’d focus on fighting them first, because they’d strike you as the bigger problem?
Oh, and the quoting I was using before is the html “blockquote” tag. <blockquote%gt;some text</blockquote> will get you
August 15th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Aaahh, so shcb would join with the Americans then act as a spy or a traitor to the Americans to push the foreign American fighters out. Makes perfect sense, in as much as many Iraqis are 100 times more in tune with Iranian religious principles traditions and sense of justice than with the crazy (to them) American ways.
re: shcb post of Aug 16 10:13 am, that was simply a point by point rebuttal of your points. I had the courtesy to address them all. Now you raise a whole cesspool of abundantly rebuked old claims – yellow cake, aluminum tubes, etc. – and even manage to bring in further irrelevancies such as Michael Moores supposed “techniques” as viewed from the rwnj perspective. Well, the Cheney quote in the video about Saddam “meeting with” when in fact he had sent an envoy was not at all obscure to me, surely an official envoy is a sufficient proxy for a meeting in person, especially considering the sanctions and difficulty Saddam faced travelling internationally while a prisoner within the borders of Iraq (true?) during the period of sanctions.
shcb, you are doing what you do best but that which all of us are growing exceedingly tired of: ignoring the whole point of the thread to find whatever relevant or irrelevant nit-pic you can that allows you to claim a minor “victory” and then claim that because of that minor point you have thoroughly discredited everything else.
Get real buddy – Cheney KNEW Iraq would be a quagmire. Plain and simple.
By the way, the goal of the Muslim world is not the destruction of the state of Israel, that can be attributed to a few rinj’s and a LOT of western media misquotes and misinformation. Eg. Ahmidajan (sp) of Iran never said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map, the full context of the speach was that (in his view) the militaristic and barbarically oppressive Zionist government of Israel would eventually be wiped off the political landscape. All in all when you read unadulterated versions of his speeches he comes across as far more reasoned and intelligent than the shoot from the hip President you have now. American spin (aka rwnj shills) portray Ahmadijan differently.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
KK, while you’re right that Ahmedinejad’s quote was poorly translated, I don’t think there’s any denying that he’s an extremely militant, reactionary, theocratic firebrand.
Unfortunately, he shares all those traits with Bush, and such leaders tend to reinforce one another. “Look, Iran is threatening violence and clamping down on internal dissent! We’d better elect an aggressively hawkish president to protect America!” “Look, America is threatening violence and clamping down on internal dissent. We’d better elect an aggressively hawkish president to protect Iran!” And so on, and so on.
The only real hope in this particular pairing comes from the fact that the president of Iran is almost entirely a decorative figurehead, whose power is limited to those fiery speeches. The actual leader of the Iranian government is the supreme leader, and Khamenei is several steps more rational than Ahmedinejad.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
onan – You put the invasion/resistence into perfect perspective, thanks.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Onan, i mispoke thanks for setting it straight. guess I was trying to suggest that Iran has been restrained as they sit back and watch America struggle in Iraq and not respond to provocations, Persia has been the west’s ally and nemisis, they add a lot to the health of human existence as allies.
August 15th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Onan,
Thanks for the block quote tip, I will practice it on a thread below no one is reading . The number of deaths in the 911 attack and the number of deaths of American soldiers are of course related, but really have no bearing on each other. The severity of the attack has a lot to do with the appropriate response, but the number of dead in that response is simply a consequence. Once the decision has been made to go to war, the only objective should be to win. Each death of one of our soldiers and theirs for that matter is a terrible personal loss. But as in every war this is a war of attrition. Each side decides how many men it can loose and still justify continuing. I was referring to the fact that in historic terms we have lost very few lives for what we have accomplished and the amount of time we have been in conflict. Now what we are discussing here is what our personal limits on all the variables above are. Some people believe no loss of life validates going to war, others will go to war at the drop of a hat and feel we should win at all costs. Neither of these outlooks are practical, reasonable men debate the area between. I was simply pointing out that the loss of 4000 in 5 years shouldn’t be a reason to stop, fifty thousand, a half million, 20 million, I don’t know, but not 4,000.
If China attacked us of course I would stand with my Canadian friends because China would be the aggressor. I just don’t see us as the aggressor here, we didn’t invade Iraq to take her as a prize, we don’t intend to hold her people as slaves. I see Iraq as a battleground where we are engaged in fighting radical Islam. It was a battleground largely of our choosing because it had many strategic, tactical, and political advantages to say Syria but we would be fighting many of the same people wherever we went. Our objective in this war of attrition is to simply kill enough radical Islamists to make it unrealistic for them to continue. At the same time we want to win the hearts and minds of as many moderate Muslims as possible hoping they can convince the ones in between to stop fighting. I don’t think I answered your hypothetical very well, sorry. Let me try this, if the Canadians were there to help the day of the invasion I would be there to help, if China had been in power as the recognized official government for 20 years and then Canada came to help I would still be there to resurrect our original constitution. It’s more about right and wrong, good and evil than who the official recognized government is. I’m going to regret I made that statement, I’m not sure how or when, but that one will get used against me.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Sounds like propaganda to me. Of course Iraq oil was the first prize, and a huge, expanding military presence in the middle east to protect America’s (sic) oil supplies was another.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:09 am
SHCB, I don’t think that you understand that in the eyes of many in that part of the world, the US is seen as agressors; invading and occupying musilm lands. Add to that things like Abu Gharib (still remember that?); supporting some dictators but opposing others; billions of missing dollars; building permanent bases in muslim lands and on and on.
No matter how noble or heroic you may think this invasion is/was, the majority of the world and indeed the middle east do not see it that way.
You will never stop terrorism by dropping bombs on villages. Period.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:28 am
Yes Knarly, oil was a major consideration, but the free flow of oil, which we are willing to pay market prices, that is not taking it as a prize. By the way, I just take these threads where they lead me, you have free will, if you think I am getting off track, tell me so, or just don’t respond.
So I read the part on the Highway of Death a couple times, ‘cause it just don’t seem right. So I look up Joyce Chediac, she is an anti American, anti Western Palestinian who has written extensively on the plight of the Palestinian people, more power to her, it’s just good to know where someone sits before they tell you where they stand. This New York Commission hearing of 1991, I sort of remembered that so I looked it up as well, it’s called research, not cut and paste. This was a bunch of lefties that got together in New York and held a trial where they CONVICTED everyone from Stormin’ Norman to Bush Sr. Kind of an anti-military tribunal, a real patriotic event headed up by Ramsey Clark, didn’t he offer his legal counsel to Sadam? Another red blooded American there.
So then I looked at the Geneva convention of 1977, it was for the most part a rehash of 1949 with some clarifications and some don’t destroy the environment stuff thrown in. now I didn’t read it word for word, I just slimmed it and did some word searches but I couldn’t find anything that talked about outlawing incendiary devices. In fact according to FAS we still have a few mark 77’s in inventory, although most are being recycled since they are getting so old. We used a few hundred of them in the first gulf war to start oil filled trenches on fire so we could cross them safely.
Here is the passage from the 1949 conventions I think she is referring to: “1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.”
I think these soldiers were retreating, if they had laid down their arms, they would have had their hands over their heads like so many others we saw back then. Remember my 4 phases of battle? The purpose of retreat is regroup to fight another day, this makes them targets. So why were there Jordanian, and Palestinian “civilians” (mercenaries?) in with all these retreating Iraqi soldiers. Q: why were they in civilian vehicles, A: because A-10’s and M-1’s had destroyed the tanks they drove into Kuwait. (like teaching kindergarten) I particularly like the part where she is grousing that we killed tens of thousands (see below) with no losses of our own, isn’t that the object of war? Not to a liberal, they want all war to end in a tie, then war becomes nonsensical.
Here are a couple paragraphs on the number of killed on the highway of death. Chediac is the source of the highest number.
Compared to the Washington Post’s estimate of 200-300 killed in the highway of death incidents, the above analysis suggests that a combined minimum of 800-1000 dead better reconciles the available evidence — notably: the various overlapping reports of hundreds of observed dead at the main attack site and the extent and character of destruction at the second.
As for the higher-end estimates of 10,000 or more killed during the incidents: such estimates are simply not consonant with the observed and reported numbers of dead — even given the fact that reporters’ observations were only partial in their coverage and somewhat late. For there to have been even 8,000 dead in the two incidents, there would have had to be at least 6,000 dead at the main incident, where journalists arrived two days after the engagement ended. But none claimed to see even five percent of this number of bodies or to hear or see indications that anything approaching this many had been found, buried, or moved. At any rate, there were not enough military personnel on the scene to have completed in less than two days the enormous task of extracting, collecting, and burying most of 6,000 bodies — while also securing the area and processing prisoners. Only at the site of the second incident would there have been sufficient time to “police” the dead before journalists arrived.
http://www.comw.org/pda/0310rm8ap2.html#5.%20The%20Highway(s)%20of
August 16th, 2007 at 9:38 am
NL,
You are absolutely right on all you points except your last point about stopping terrorism by bombing villages, you will never stop terrorism period, all you can hope to do is mitigate and control it, we are trying to get to the point that to a large degree Arabs will control their own terrorists like we control ours. I know everyone hates us (until they need us), and I know the way we are handling this threat isn’t the best way to handle it, but we are handling it the best POSSIBLE way. There is a small percentage of radical Muslims that want us dead. If you roll over and play dead you hope they will go away, and they will, after they double tap you in the head. You hope if you reach your hand out in friendship they will reciprocate, they won’t. they don’t want to live in peace, they want to live in control. We are reaching our hand out to some, we are killing others, and they don’t wear uniforms so you very often don’t know which to do. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is the only solution.
So if you were king, what would you do to stop terrorism?
August 16th, 2007 at 11:24 am
First off, not everyone hates you (America). I may disagree with your country’s current leadership, but America is still one of the best places in the world.
I would most definitely not roll over and play dead. I also wouldn’t invade a Muslim country that had absolutely nothing to do with terrorists, to start with.
I would fight radicals in the shadows: using Special Forces and CIA techniques. You can send all the fighter planes and troops in the world, they won’t do any good. Small, mobile special ops units are how to hunt down these creeps. We don’t need “shock and awe” and pictures of dead children flashed all over the news. Talk about counter-productive!
I would send delegations to hostile nations and work, over time, to heal our relationships with them. I would ask, “What can we do as human beings to bridge our differences?” Surely no nation wants to live in a perpetual state of war, I believe deep down that all humans desire peace. Unfortunately, some have never experienced peace and violence is all they know. I believe once they see that peace is possible, it will set off a wave of new beginnings.
I would also ensure that in places like Afghanistan where invasion was necessary – and sanctioned – that there was an equal balance between military action and development assistance. Substituting more western forces for that of other Arab nations would also help ease the perception that “the infidels are stealing our lands for oil”.
Scrap the establishment of permanent western army bases in the Middle East. They are not necessary. There are plenty of areas nearby (Eastern Europe, Africa) to locate them.
Probably most importantly, we need to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict. That is at the root of much of this. Obviously its not an easy task however, BALANCED diplomacy would be a good start. Not everything is the fault of the Palestinians, believe it or not, Israel shares some blame. Acknowledging that would be a good first step.
There are no easy answers, but the current situation is only making things worse. That much I know for sure. Thanks for asking.
August 16th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
NL,
You sound like a liberal sissy. Tell us again, why do you hate America so much? With your suggestions, most of the US military will be unemployed. Why do you disrespect the troops?
August 16th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
NL,
Thanks for answering, it is refreshing to have a liberal say what he would do, so much of the time all they say is what they wouldn’t do. You don’t make much progress that way. I actually believe you are correct with much of what you say, especially in the long run. In the short run I think overwhelming force or “shock and awe” has it’s place. As an example, the police have found that overwhelming force to the point of exaggeration is the safest way to enter a house especially in domestic disputes, now I know it’s not the same but there is a correlation. We’ll just have to agree to disagree about Iraq, for now anyway. I’m not so sure about not having permanent bases, if you were king and I were queen…. Gonna have a hard time getting that nasty image out of my mind, but if that were the arrangement I would argue in favor of the bases, but not too hard. If you are right, the advances in good will could be tremendous, if you are wrong, we move back in, seems like it is worth a try. I have always thought that when we get Iraq in order we should put a permanent base, just one shut down all the rest, down by the ports, that is an important location, it is out of sight to most Iraqis and is in the center of that whole region. Could we compromise King North?
You are absolutely correct about Israel and Palestine. The little I understand of the situation, and it is little, I think Palestine is a pawn of the other Arab states, and to a lesser extent Israel a pawn of US, Britain et al. As Knarly pointed out in a recent discussion, the problem isn’t land it’s THAT land, they all want the same sand dune and they don’t want to share. Experts I have heard on talk radio agree with you that Israel hasn’t been entirely saintly. But I remember when Clinton tried to work out an agreement with the two sides, he went to Arafat and asked him what he wanted, he went to the Israelis’ and after a fashion they agreed to most of the requests. Clinton then went back to Yasser and he turned the deal down. Now that is probably way oversimplified but you get the sentiment.
You are welcome for asking.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Knarly,
1441 outlawed war in Iraq? Looks like it was the UN justification for us going to war there, here is an excerpt from Wiki
On December 7, 2002, Iraq filed its 12,000-page weapons declaration with the UN in order to meet requirements for this resolution. The five permanent members of the Security Council received unedited versions of the report, while an edited version was made available for other UN Member States. On December 19, Hans Blix reported before the United Nations and stated in regards to Iraq’s December 7 report (unedited version): “During the period 1991-1998, Iraq submitted many declarations called full, final and complete. Regrettably, much in these declarations proved inaccurate or incomplete or was unsupported or contradicted by evidence. In such cases, no confidence can arise that proscribed programmes or items have been eliminated.” By March, Blix declared that the December 7 report had not brought any new documentary evidence to light.
Iraq continued to fail to account for substantial chemical and biological stockpiles which UNMOVIC inspectors had confirmed as existing as late as 1998. Iraq claimed that it had disposed of its anthrax stockpiles at a specific site, but UNMOVIC found this impossible to confirm since Iraq had not allowed the destruction to be witnessed by inspectors as required by the pertinent Resolutions. Chemical testing done at the site was unable to show that any anthrax had been destroyed there.
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei presented several reports to the UN detailing Iraq’s level of compliance with Resolution 1441.[1] [2]. On January 30, 2003 Blix said that Iraq had not fully accepted its obligation to disarm, and by mid-February the issues of anthrax, the nerve agent VX and long-range missiles remained unresolved. Blix’s March 7 report stated “Iraq, with a highly developed administrative system, should be able to provide more documentary evidence about its proscribed weapons programmes. Only a few new such documents have come to light so far and been handed over since we began inspections.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Security_Council_Resolution_1441
August 17th, 2007 at 10:12 am
KK:
August 17th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Bah, I was trying to use that blockquote feature to quote you calling me a “liberal sissy”. I think I missed a bracket or something.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I had the same problem. I found this site that explains it, but I haven’t really read it closely, I’ll bet the guys that know how to do it are getting a kick out of this
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_blockquote.asp
August 17th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
so now that you turned it on, how do we turn it off?
August 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Blockquote seems like a micro-microcosm of Iraq, you started f******g with it and now it is f****d.
August 17th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
as much as I disagree, I laughed out loud, that was a classic KK
August 17th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
and…
… only somebody who knows what they’re doing can finish it.
August 17th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
thanks Matt, that was a three stooges moment
August 18th, 2007 at 7:40 am
shcb, glad you enjoyed that and took it in the spirit intended: a parady of myself.