Time to bring the troops home

[sfzombie13 324]

what a lot of people don't realize is that saddam was actually doing a pretty good job of running the country. with the cards he was dealt, looking at the factions and political diffences in the people, he had a pretty good control and relative stability. before desert storm, they had the best hospitals in the mid east and they even had running water and electricity as well as telephones.
fast forward to their "liberation": the infrastructure is beyond falling apart, it doesn't exist.
the only people who have done any good from all of this are government contractors(and they were awarded without competition to you know who).
you may call me a conspiracy theorist, i don't care. i really believe that in looking back, the govt didn't cause 9/11, but they damn sure knew about it and didn't stop anything except the one plane that was going to hit the white house.
as far as proof, look at who gained the most since the attacks. bush and his cronies aren't smart enough to orchestrate this. but they had the intel and were waiting for it to happen.
you guys all seem to conveniently forget that saddam and bin laden were once in the pocket of the cia. the world works in darker ways than alot of you will ever know. i for one don't want to know the truth, it's too dangerous. i like my life of bliss(ignorance). it's the best way to watch my son grow old.

_________________________________________
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[dorbie 0]

In posting irrational conspiratorial opinion do you actually expect a reasoned response?

[sundevil777 102]

What a load of bullshit. If you want to lay claim for the position that the world would be better off with SH in power, that territory is all yours.

You ignore reliable reports of their infrastructure not being maintained/repaired properly for decades. For instance, they had electricity, but not nearly all day long.

You are a conspiracy theorist, I don't care that you don't care. It does give one very good reason to not trust anything else you claim to be true.

We were also allies of Stalin. Strange bedfellows and such, you know. Certainly not something new.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[mnealtx 0]

Yeah, here we go again....[rolling eyes smiley]

Halliburton contracts:

FY 2003: 54.2% Full and open competition, 43.4% follow on / not available for competition / not competed, 2.4% full/open, but only 1 bid

FY 2004: 85.3% full and open competition, 14.6% follow on / not available for competition / not competed

FY 2005: 94.8% full and open competition, 4.7% full/open, but only 1 bid, 0.5% follow on / not available for competition / not competed

FY 2006: 92.5% full and open competition, 4.7% full/open, but only 1 bid, 2.8% follow on / not available for competition / not competed

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[billvon 3,132]

>I believe there will likely be war in the middle east . . .

I agree - as there has been for thousands of years.

>and will need to be involved in it, for many, many years to come.

Disagree. We do not need to be involved in this war any more than we need to be involved in the Tamil Tigers war. (They have an air force, and are objectively a much bigger threat than the Iraqi insurgents.)

>Getting our troops out of Iraq will not stop the war against us.

Nor will keeping them there stop the war against us. If we can't stop it either way, might as well save the lives of thousands of US troops.

>In order for war against the western world to stop, there will need to
>be Arab leaders like Anwar Sadat that will have a true change of heart.

I agree. And that's where it MUST come from. Arabs will listen to an Anwar Sadat who tells them the way forward - they will not listen to an american tell them what to do at gunpoint. In that way they are very much like us.

[billvon 3,132]

>You ignore reliable reports of their infrastructure not being
>maintained/repaired properly for decades.

Definitely true. They had done the absolute minimum of maintenance for many years.

>For instance, they had electricity, but not nearly all day long.

When Iraqis were maintaining basic services, they often limped along with frequent blackouts etc. Problem is they're much worse off now. Pre-invasion they had approx. 16 hours of power a day in Baghdad; as of May 2007 they were averaging 6. (from latest Brooking Institute Iraq Index report.)

Wayne White (former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team) - "The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there."

United States Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction - there was widespread "fraud, incompetence and confusion" in the reconstruction.

Inspector-general Stuart Bowen, Jr. - 49 of 136 planned water- and sanitation-related projects will be completed at all.

U. S. federal oversight inspectors - "in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting, and expensive equipment that lay idle. The United States has sometimes admitted ... that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed, or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared as successes—in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections—were no longer working properly."

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

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I'll be happy not because some political party scored a victory, but because thousands more US troops will not have to die.

....will not have to die in Iraq. Afghan is still a busy place and now that we have spent the last few years giving combat ready practice to new terrorists, I'm thinking they will be busy elsewhere as well.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[airkid 0]

ok.... sorry... i lost patience reading all of the replies in this forum.... but i would like to put my two cents in on the war.... first of all... many of you know where i am right now... and i can tell you from the ground that 2005 and 2006's most dangerous city in the world is now the model for reconstruction in iraq.... and there is a tactical withdrawal of u.s. forces from iraq that is hush hush and slow and deliberate beginning with the steady withdrawal of surge forces.... but it is oblivious to most...

[shropshire 0]

> not so much now

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[tbrown 26]

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So you're basically agreeing "Mission Accomplished".

You are so forgetful. That was in May 2003. We just spent 4 additional years pissing away lives and money.

I seem to remember a young woman soldier asking Rumsfeld how long we'd be there, just before the invasion in '03. The Rummy told her, and I quote, "It could take six days, maybe six weeks. I doubt it would take six months." In hindsight the guy was right. It DIDN'T take six months, but it will be almost six years before we're finally rid of the founder of this fiasco.

554 more days to be exact, Godspeed and God willing.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[Zenister 0]

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it will take just as long for the 'average' 3rd world tribal Islamist to come around, and they have active radicals working against it.

Well they've had almost as long as Christianity, Muhammed was born only a few hundred or so years after Christ right? Have the Muslims had a renaissance or an enlightenment?

if you think the rate of development in every part of the world is consistent or self motivated you've missed quite alot of history...

maybe you should start with how all these tribes actually became the "states" they are today....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[joedirt 0]

I never said how long anything would take, I said how long it's been. You said "it will take just as long". Don't put words in my mouth ye master of recent history.