why would anyone believe the nytimes? 
[quote=“Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-NE)”][color=red]
Bereuter: War in Iraq not justified
[/color]
In a dramatic departure from the Bush administration, Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter says he now believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified.
[b]“I’ve reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action,” Bereuter wrote in a letter to constituents in the final days of his congressional career.
That’s especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated “without a broad and engaged international coalition,” the 1st District congressman said.
“Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified.” [/b]
When it comes to Bush administration policy matters, you just can’t polish a turd… good to see some Republicans are starting to speak their minds.
And your goal is to defend ‘W’ to the nth degree, not think rationally. Fair?[/quote]
There’s a function in this forum where you can go back and read some of my posts from the past. There have been things that Bush has done that I have been critical of. I even went to one of the “Democrats Abroad” meetings here in Taipei. 
(I have eye-witnesses.) However, the meeting was so was so full of bitterness and hatred and conspiracies, that I was completely turned off. I thought I was going there to get some perspective on alternative ideas. Whooops! I was wrong. No ideas about the future, just bitterness.
However, when it comes down to THE BIG PICTURE of who is going to do a better job as pesident over the next four years in light of the national security issues at stake, my choice is for Bush, as he is post-911, whereas Kerry is still living as if it is Sept. 10th.
That’s really what all my posts are about.
Pinesay – tell me if there are any Democrats Abroad meetings coming up. I bet they’re filled with optimism now…
[color=blue]At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. “The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Bush said. “It wouldn’t have been free if the United States had not acted.”[/color]
“Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign,” Sadir told SI through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. “He can find another way to advertise himself.”
Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush’s TV advertisement. “How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?” Manajid told me. “He has committed so many crimes.”. . .
To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power.
But they also find it offensive that Bush is using Iraq for his own gain when they do not support his administration’s actions. “My problems are not with the American people,” says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. “They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?”
Sadir, Wednesday’s goal-scorer, used to be the star player for the professional soccer team in Najaf. In the city in which 20,000 fans used to fill the stadium and chant Sadir’s name, U.S. and Iraqi forces have battled loyalists to rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr for the past two weeks. Najaf lies in ruins.
“I want the violence and the war to go away from the city,” says Sadir, 21. “We don’t wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away.”
Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed Manajid’s cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would “for sure” be fighting as part of the resistance.
“I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?” Manajid says. “Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq.”
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/writers/08/19/iraq/index.html
No problem. Let’s leave Iraq.
Let’s leave Afganistan
Let’s turn our back on Israel.
Le’t s leave Saudi Arabia.
Let’s leave South Korea … completely.
Le’ts not send two aircraft carrier divisions to the Taiwan Strait when the PRC plays war games off the coast.
Let’s not send money to the UN anymore.
Let’s not spend the most on AIDS research than ALL OTHER COUNTRIES COMBINED.
Let’s leave Euopre … completely. Let them deal with their own hemisphere.
Let’s leave Japan.
Let’s just pack up and go home. The world would be so much more peaceful and clean and beautiful if America didn’t get involved.
The French and Germans have it all under control.
How will this idiot meet his god??? He obviously didn’t have the balls to stand up the genocide of Saddam and his mudering sons? Otherwise, he’d have a bullet in his head. He shoud talk.
It’s easy to be critical when you are free to be critical because someone handed you the freedom to be critical on silver plate. If this guy said a year ago, “I wonder how Saddam will meet his god … He has committed so many crimes” … He’d have a scud missle launched up his ass.
Nice to see what a little bit of freedom produces in people.
How will this idiot meet his god??? He obviously didn’t have the balls to stand up the genocide of Saddam and his mudering sons? Otherwise, he’d have a bullet in his head. He shoud talk.
It’s easy to be critical when you are free to be critical because someone handed you the freedom to be critical on silver plate. If this guy said a year ago, “I wonder how Saddam will meet his god … He has committed so many crimes” … He’d have a scud missle launched up his ass.
Nice to see what a little bit of freedom produces in people.[/quote]
That only happens when they didn’t fight for it themselves.
well, the coach of the iraqi soccer team is a saddam apologist who claims that no torture occured under uday. shrug
Looks like you guys are finally catching on. Freedom is something that a people have to earn for themselves. Nobody appreciates it as a gift. Seems like it was only the Bush administration and their dupes who thought this was going to be some big cakewalk with rose petals on our path.
Stupid is as stupid does.
America. land of the free and home of the brave, doesn’t occupy other peoples’ countries except in self-defense, particularly in defiance of the will of the majority of the inhabitants.
The only exception is when we’re going through one of our periodic flirtations with McCarthy-style extremisms of one form or another.
Today, the majority of Iraqis want us to leave their country and let them run their own affairs, free of outside influence.
Until we’re ready as a nation to pay more than lip service to the proposition that the Iraqi people have the same right to choose their leaders and run their own affairs that we so fiercely claim for ourselves, we’re not justified in calling ourselves heirs of the heritage that Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln believed in and fought for. We’re, instead, traitors to that unique heritage and have failed in our most important generational responsibility – the responsibility to preserve the core American democratic values of our forefathers and pass them on intact to the next generation of citizens.
on what do you base this assumption? while the majority of iraqis resent the us presence, many of those also do not want the us to leave a vacum easily filled by thugs and dictators-in-training. if the us left and someone like sadr grabbed power, would that mean the iraqis were running their own afairs, free of outside influence?
[quote=“Flipper”][quote=“spook”]
Today, the majority of Iraqis want us to leave their country and let them run their own affairs, free of outside influence.
[/quote]
on what do you base this assumption?[/quote]
[color=blue]"There is little apparent change, however, in (Iraqi public) opinion about the ongoing presence of coalition troops.
In the latest survey (May/June 2004), 40% supported their presence with 55% . . . wanting them out. . . "[/color]
The survey was carried out by Oxford Research International. It consisted of in-person interviews conducted between 19 May to 14 June, 2004 with a random, nationally representative sample of 3,002 Iraqis in 228 randomly selected sampling points across the country.
point taken. and i suspect that once iraqis democratically elect a government and that government asks us to leave, we will. just as was done in the phillippines.
Of course the Iraqis want US troops out. That really isn’t the appropriate question. The appropriate question is when do they want US troops to leave.
I think the majority of Iraqis want us to stick around a while longer.
President Bush Sets the Record Straight (August 5, 2004):
Remember Abu Nidal? He was the guy that killed the man, an American citizen, because he was Jewish. His network was there inside of Iraq. Zarqawi, who’s still is running around in Iraq, his network was in Iraq. He is a – Saddam was a fellow who paid the families of suicide bombers. That’s one of the – suiciding to kill innocent people as an act of terror. . .
The United Nations – remember I went to the U.N., and said, you have forever condemned him. You’ve told him to get rid of his weapons, yet nothing has happened, so let’s try her one more time. And the United Nations looked at the intelligence, saw a threat, and passed a resolution, 15 to nothing. That was what the Security Council said. They said, disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences.
And so, the world spoke, and again, he defied us. And not only did he defy us, he systematically deceived the inspectors. You remember the period of time, we said, well, let’s give the inspectors the chance to work. We agreed, until we found out he was deceiving them. What he was trying to do was buy time. Why? Because he wanted to reconstitute a weapons program. He wanted to make sure he had the capacity to make weapons. And if he had any, like we thought he did, he didn’t want anybody to find them. That’s why. I had a choice to make then. Forget the lessons of September the 11th, trust a madman, or take action to defend our country. Every time, I will defend America. (Applause.)
We are safer – we are safer and the world is better off because Saddam is sitting in a prison cell. I want to share something with you. Committing troops into harm’s way is – in harm’s way is the most difficult decision a President can make. That decision must always be last resort. That decision must be done when our vital interests are at stake, but after we’ve tried everything else. There must be a compelling national need to put our troops into harm’s way. I felt that. I felt we had a compelling national need. I know we had tried diplomacy. I knew that diplomacy at this point couldn’t possibly work because he had no intention of listening to demands of the free world. And when you put your troops in harm’s way, you better have the best – the best equipment, the best support, and the best possible pay. (Applause.)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040805-12.html
[quote=“spook”]President Bush Sets the Record Straight (August 5, 2004):
…And so, the world spoke, and again, he defied us. And not only did he defy us, he systematically deceived the inspectors. You remember the period of time, we said, well, let’s give the inspectors the chance to work. …[/quote]
Sorry, it gets too funny here. I just couldn’t stop crying, er laughing after this sentence.
There are no longer words in English to describe the total and abject lack of respect I have for this man.
On a lighter note, my father - god bless his hidebound Republican sensibilities - got his letter from GWB the other day. He got it because he subscribes to the Weekly Standard, I think.
Anyway, it came with a bumper sticker - W’04, it says, with a little American flag waving above the digits; big W, of course. 
The bumper sticker is set on a white oval background; flattened world, I thought when I saw it.
The letter says the Bushies want a million of these stickers on bumpers by this week, plus money.
He’s a more mainstream, Dwight Eisenhower/Nancy Kassebaum Baker, traditional-Kansas Republican, as opposed to the wack-o, knee-jerk creatures currently passssing for Republicans today, and he’s been pretty fed up with W (as he calls himself, apparently) for quite some time now.
The Swift boat veterans thing sent him over the edge.
To make an already too-long story shorter: the sticker has found its permanent place not on his car bumper, but rather on my mother’s downstairs toilet. No kidding. 
I mean, now it’s hardly stretching the truth at all to say my mother will let you ‘piss on W’ whenever nature calls while you visit her.
The Iraqis recently had a vote on this?
Well here are the opinions of Iraqis Olympians
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/o … index.html
[quote]“Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign,” Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. “He can find another way to advertise himself.”
“My problems are not with the American people,” says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. “They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?”
“I want the violence and the war to go away from the city,” says Sadir, 21. “We don’t wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away.”
He says coalition forces killed Manajid’s cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would “for sure” be fighting as part of the resistance.
"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid says. “Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq.”
When the Games are over, though, Coach Hamad says, they will have to return home to a place where they fear walking the streets. “The war is not secure,” says Hamad, 43. “Many people hate America now. The Americans have lost many people around the world–and that is what is happening in America also.”[/quote]
Perhaps the Olympians are a minority in Iraq like in every other country.
". . . some administration officials also admitted that Bush was wary of censuring Israel too strongly, for fear of alienating its supporters among the conservative voter base.
“Some American officials acknowledged, in addition, that President Bush was reluctant to criticize Israel during his re-election campaign, which is counting on support from conservative supporters of Israel,” the paper said.