They weren't bad if you lived in Arabia

I guess I should participate in the topic the thread is about.

Peace

Prize

BULLSHIT

@WCT - Way to not answer the question ;)

You're getting really good at evasion. Its a serious question. Again 82 democrats voted for the Iraq Resolution. There was serious public pressure (from the mass media, military industrial complex, and israeli intelligence service) to declare war. Gore (in my opinion) would have caved, even though he publicly opposed it (he had the luxury of not being in office so he didn't have to deal with constituents who may have thought otherwise). He's closely aligned with Clintonian foreign policy that supports wide-sweeping military intervention to impose regime change. If you can't give a serious answer without cursing you've got bigger problems dude.

Learn more about how the Iraq War started

Maybe you need to learn about war in general and the history of human civilizations. There is ALWAYS war and the 21st century has been marked by a state of permanent warfare pushed by the US government. You need to get realistic about American foreign policy. Presidents don't back away from war.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-al-gore-would-have-invaded-iraq-and-what-it-tells-us-about-syria/article14105322/

^^This give a pretty good explanation for why Gore might have declared war on Iraq if he was in Bush's place. It isn't a 100% guarantee he would of course, but there is a sizable amount of evidence to suggest he might have.

Edited 12/30/2015 23:44:56

You're getting really good at evasion. Its a serious question. Again 82 democrats voted for the Iraq Resolution. There was serious public pressure (from the mass media, military industrial complex, and israeli intelligence service) to declare war.

Why was there 'serious pressure' from mass media and military industrial complex? I'm not saying there wasn't; there was. I'm asking you *why* there was pressure.

Another good question to ask yourself: Why didn't Canada or most of the US's usual war allies also go to the Iraq War? Canadians, for example, went to Afghanistan. Why not Iraq? Most of the rest of the world was against it, though they supported the Afghanistan initiative. Why were Americans so gung ho about Iraq, yet the most of rest of the world wasn't?

Dude why are you answering my question with a question. We can discuss the other questions you pose later. First answer if you seriously think Gore would not have gone to war? If you think that question is directly linked to why America went to war with Iraq then actually spell out your answer...I'm not a mind reader. I completely agree that countries that did not join the coalition to invade Iraq made a better decision because the reasons for the Iraq war were blatant lies to 1) secure oil supplies 2) engage in regime change and 3) project American democratic values onto a people who hadn't asked for it.

Canada under PM Chretien explicitly said he would not support the Iraq war if there was no UN approval for the war. Of course the UN would not sanction a preemptive war and so Canada naturally refused to follow the Coalition of the Willing.

Edited 12/31/2015 00:01:08

Dude, I love it when Jai literally carpet bombs his opponents with facts and passion

Hell.

Horrible.

Dreadful.

Edited 12/31/2015 00:02:14

Jai, your original question doesn't even make sense if you know how the Iraq War started. The involvement of the Bush administration in *devising* justifications to go to the Iraq War is so deeply embedded in the war's origins that your question amounts to this: "If Bush wasn't president (and thus was not involved in *generating* political and public pressure to start the Iraq War in the first place, as well as silencing dissenting voices against it), and some other random Joe, say Al Gore, had been president (and thus was *not* involved in such war mongering in the first place) would he have 'caved' to the 'public pressure' he didn't ever create in the first place?"

It's a naive question. Why was the Iraq War ever started in the first place? WMDs? But there weren't any. So why, then? If you can't answer that, you don't know enough about it.

Edited 12/31/2015 00:04:30

Look, oil definitely had a part but Bush did it with bad intelligence so it wasn't his fault. If anything, we should be yelling at the CIA director who presented this bad info to POTUS. plus, I will always support the Fact that even though Saddam didn't have a bomb at the time, he sure as hell was gonna try to get one

"Look, oil definitely had a part but Bush did it with bad intelligence so it wasn't his fault."

You're buying the scapegoat apologetics, eh? Why did he trust bad intelligence? He's the big man in the big chair, making the big decisions. He's the one with the Responsibility Hat on. Why did he trust bad intelligence?

Why *didn't* other countries trust the same bad intelligence?

Edited 12/31/2015 00:06:42

"Canada under PM Chretien explicitly said he would not support the Iraq war if there was no UN approval for the war."

Why didn't the UN support the war?

"Of course the UN would not sanction a preemptive war"

Why not? If there had been good evidence of WMDs, I think they would have.*

[*ETA: This sounds like a blanket claim when I first wrote it, but I don't mean it in a blanket way. What I mean is that if there had been compelling evidence that there were WMDs and the situation was really as serious as Bush's administration told the US public it was, then I think there's a good chance the UN would have followed that evidence and taken some direct preemptive action. Whether that was a 'war' or not is not something I care about.***

** Oops! Missing crucial word added. <-- Forget this. Stupid grammar mix up.

*** OOOOPS! Extraneous non-crucial word re-removed.]

Edited 12/31/2015 00:25:03

Wct you claim you know every single fact about the Iraq war and it's prior history so please tell me this

How many Kurds and Iraqis did Saddam gas?

How many school children did he murder who forgot the words to the Quran while in his presence?

How many Iranians did he murder with his troops?


How many times had he threatened America and Israel?

How many times did he kick out UN inspectors?


How many times did the UN find proof of his quest for a bomb? ( not a bomb itself )


Answer these questions without feeling shame for making the man who took down one of the world's ugliest dictators in the world look like an idiot. George Bush definitely wasn't perfect and his motivation wasn't probably all for freedom but he delt with more new threats and ways of warfare plus a hitching congress better then Obama and his golf club and al gore with his supposed creation of the internet ( jackass ) ever could have done

Edited 12/31/2015 00:12:02

If Bush wasn't president (and thus was not involved in *generating* political and public pressure to start the Iraq War in the first place, as well as silencing dissenting voices against it)

Now hold on this assumes that Bush was the only neocon pushing for a war with Iraq, which is an entirely false position. Bush didn't create the Hawks that fed onto the Anti-Iraq hysteria. Bush didn't create the military industrial complex that wanted a 10 year quagmire to increase sales. Bush didn't create the media that pushed the terrorism/WMD hysteria. These are all byproducts of the American political system that existed largely before Bush and Gore ran in 2000. Bush wasn't the only source of political and public pressure. His cabinet and advisers would have gone on Sunday news shows to pressure Congress to act preemptively. Israel lobbyists and weapon manufacturers would have done the same...regardless of who was in the white house. There are external and internal actors and factors that create the political scenario. Removing one factor (Bush) may have shifted the political climate enough to avoid Iraq war, although I think that is idealistic at best when you consider Al Gore's political alliances and history of intervention.

Put yourself in bushes shoes. He delt with an entirely different form of warfare and threats with absolutely no experts or advisors but shaken up military advisors he had never seen this type of thing either. Bush did his best considering the circumstances

Edited 12/31/2015 00:15:05

Wct you claim you know every single fact about the Iraq war and it's prior history

You're already off to a bad start, Conservative. I've never made any such claim. If you think I did, I dare you to try to quote me on it. Good luck.

I won't bother responding to your disingenuous comments until you resolve this issue. You're presenting a straw man. If you want me to respond, either quote me proving I said that, or take back your claim that I did.

If Bush wasn't president (and thus was not involved in *generating* political and public pressure to start the Iraq War in the first place, as well as silencing dissenting voices against it)

Now hold on this assumes that Bush was the only neocon pushing for a war with Iraq

No, it does not assume that. Re-read it.

better
than
expected.

Again you assume that Bush was the only one "generating" political and public pressure. That is the logical conclusion of your argument. This is not true. Was he [Bush] the most powerful politician exerting pressure? Absolutely. Was he the only one? Hell no. Thus the simple explanation that Bush was the ultimate cause for the invasion of Iraq cannot be sustained.

Edited 12/31/2015 00:28:43

Bush wasn't the only source of political and public pressure.

But was he *a* source? Was he not, in fact, one of the most *important* sources, being the president and all?

Edited 12/31/2015 00:27:50

Let me put my argument this way: Bush wasn't the manufacturer of the justifications for the Iraq war. He was just the puppet spokesmen who revealed and explained them to the world. The external people, the people behind the scenes who actually came up with the false narratives and justifications, would have still been around in any other presidency in 2003. Thus it would be likely the Iraq War would have been perpetrated by any other President had Bush not been in office.