question for trolling freepers

[ima_sinnic]

c'mon, be brave (I know it's nigh impossible, but give it a try), blow your cover and answer this simple question:

WHY THE FUCK DID WE INVADE IRAQ?

--no "imminent threat"

--no WMDs

--no ties to al Qaeda (whoever the fuck THEY are)

--no involvement in 9/11

--not to "liberate" or "establish democracy" (what a crock! some "democracy," where a small-circulation newspaper that opposes the invading hordes of barbarians is shut down--& that's just the tip of the iceberg in this "democracy" LIE) (and for the sake of argument only, assuming it to be true, why do we deny the Iraqis the right to their own destiny??)

--to close down the "rape rooms" and "torture chambers"? (HA! I guess U.S. "rape rooms" and "torture chambers" are more "compassionate" than Iraqi ones?)

you stinking Bush whores can go screw yourselves. your LIES will haunt you for the rest of your pathetic slimeball lives. dumbasses, you think you'll "all be dead" so no need to answer to history?? (typical short-sighted freeper thinking)

but really there's no need even to wait for "history"--the colossal, misguided, ill-advised "MISTAKE" is obvious, you buffoons, and we are DESPISED by the rest of the world (and let me be among the millions who can say "I told you so," ignoramuses)-- because of your dumbass puppet leader and his SS goons the U.S.ofA. is set to become a 5th-rate nobody in the world.

the real reason Bush invaded Iraq, in my opinion: Hussein was about to price the oil in Eurodollars. Can't have that now, CAN WE?

UGH.

phew, I feel better (but only a little) :argh:

[sfwriter]

1. Duh... We went for the oil...

And to make Haliburton rich...

And for W's daddy...

And to get a new base outside of Saudi Arabia...

[ima_sinnic]

2. . . . but will the freepers admit to that? (rhetorical question)

--was just wondering what they would now try to claim are THE reasons.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. Interesting question. I think they may start doing that.

The ill-fitting masks are dropping. They may begin to revel in the cold, hard reality of their war: "Hell yeah, we'll take what we want!"

See DemoTex's thread about a confrontation last week with a neighbour, who said "Seven-hundred twenty-five dead is nothing. It's worth it for the oil alone."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1536897&mesg_id=1536897

[flaminbats]

3. I know why it was done!!!

To save us all from terroristic waves of badly dressed Frenchmen invading from Quebec to make bin Laden our new President, and the new leader of the Quebec bloc movement and the Cajun Joe movement.

[conservative chick]

5. Ok, I'll bite.

Look, for whatever it is worth, I'm not a trolling freeper, I'm a lurking conservative. I'm interested in political debate and although solid in my convictions, I think it is productive to hear other viewpoints.

I'm hopeful that my first post here is taken in the spirit which it is offered and doesn't devolve into a flamefest. Clearly emotions are running hot on both sides of the fence but it is getting to a point where a civilized discussion is hard to find.

Not really certain though that any points I could offer on this subject would be welcome.

Now before you all descend upon me, hear me out here, ok?

I am not here to disrupt or cause fights or be disrespectful in any way. But I've noticed that more and more lately you all seem to have posts addressed to lurking Republicans, conservatives or freepers. If you all truly want that opinion added, well, I guess I'm willing to post every once in a while. If not, well, I'm sure I'll be banned in pretty short order.

[rumguy]

6. how dare you

[robbob]

7. So go on

...don't be shy. Add your opinion.

[not systems]

8. Was that the reason we invaded?

It was a little short on substance.

[Crunchy Frog]

9. Please go ahead and state you're reasoning.

Most of the opinions that we hear in defense of the war are very strident and irrational. If you can offer your defense in a rational and respectful way then I am open to hearing it, even though I almost certainly will disagree.

I can't guarantee what the admins will do, but I hope that as long as you remain respectful you will not be banned.

We have found that most of the conservatives who come here are mainly here to disrupt. That will definitely get you banned in short order.

Meanwhile, welcome to DU, and I look foreward to seeing some alternate opinions expressed in a civil fashion.

[conservative chick]

11. Thank you, Crunchy. I'll give it my best shot.

For many of us on the conservative side of things, Operation Desert Storm was unfinished business. We heard all the reasons given for not going into Baghdad but were not terribly satisfied that Saddam remaining in power was a good idea. Heck, even the powers that be at the time had conflicting viewpoints.

As the UN resolutions continued to be largely ignored by the Saddam regime and evidence (good or bad) of WMD's continued to mount, the Administration made the decision that Saddam was not only deadly to his own people, but to us as well.

I know that one of the main arguments from the left is that we went into Iraq for their oil. I'm not trying to be disrespectful for asking this question, I really want to know -- do you have a link that shows that we have accessed/appropriated/utilized the Iraq oil fields for American profits?

At any rate. I believe that Saddam was as evil a monster as many other dictators in history. And yes, I am well aware that he was, in large part, a monster of our own making. But for me, that doesn't mean that we ignore the problem, have him continue to slaughter and starve his own people simply because he once benefitted from American largess.

Thank you for the welcomes -- I hope I'm allowed to stick around for at least a little while. If not, well, I tried.

[ima_sinnic]

12. well, now Saddam is gone--but we are still murdering Iraqis

--and why HIM, out of all the "tyrannical dictators" in the world?? It was okay with everybody when Hussein was abusing and murdering his own people as long as he also complied with U.S. interests/profits. Like Manuel Noriega, however, he started resisting U.S. directives--the impending pricing of oil in Eurodollars is prime example--and then he had to be gotten rid of, to be replaced with someone more compliant with U.S. interests (forget about Iraqi interests, they don't count).

He may have been a "brutal dictator" but he was IRAQ'S brutal dictator and they had the right to their own history. At some point they would have risen up against him, or not, whatever--just as we had the right to throw off England and did not have some other country butting in to write our history for us, design our flag, write our constitutiuon, etc.

Sorry, but the U.S. cannot afford to go around the world in its phony compassion replacing dictators that we once loved with new puppets, nor does it have the will to do so. (Starting wars to displace "dictators" is crap, by the way--an oxymoron.) A great example of the falsity of the "evil dictator" argument is the evil dictator of Uzbekistan, right up there now as one of Bush's best friends (since he committed some troops to our own atrocities in Iraq). The war apologists say it was to remove Saddam, a "brutal tyrant," yet remain mysteriously silent regarding the gazillion other brutes around the globe. So that argument doesn't fly and just shows the Bushistas to be total HYPOCRITES. EVERYTHING this administration does is for its own benefit, and NONE of it is for the benefit of the people of the world. That is a GIVEN.

And since when is our own flawed system so wonderful that we can shove it down the throats of the rest of the world? I mean, we have a "president" who did not even receive a majority of the popular vote. We have decaying schools, no health insurance or medical care for a vast proportion of the population, pregnant unmarried teenagers in huge numbers, mentally ill people with no safety net, etc. etc.

In the wake of 9-11 we should have been going after terrorist cells, which fall under the jurisdiction of no "country"--they are like our own Earth First! movement, which has no central HQ and no real leader. All this inexpressibly tragic, fraudulent and satanic war has done is create generation upon generation of virulently anti-American Middle Easterners, and a rabid dislike of Americans and the USA by most of the rest of the world. Do you really think, if Hussein were the Evil One and we so gallant, the rest of the world would despise us so? Are we that "misunderstood"?

As far as the oil-grab goes, I feel there is ample evidence to support the fact that control of ME oil is a prime motivator in this business. For starters I refer you to The Thirty Year Itch, by Robert Dreyfuss, in the March/April 2003 issue of Mother Jones:

"Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance. . ."

--substantiated with documentation and maps--

(edited to fix link)

[laura888]

17. beautifully written! This is a great rebuttal. <eom>

[Crunchy Frog]

13. My big question is, why didn't Bush

use those arguments as the basis for justifying the war, rather than the fairly blatantly bogus ones that he did use? My suspicion is that those are more your own justifications than they are his. At any rate, if those were his real reasons he could have used them as the initial justification to the American people and the international community, allowing them to decide if war was the right thing to do on that basis. He chose not to go that route, preferring instead to cook up fake evidence of WMDs, and terrify people with visions of mushroom clouds over American cities. Add to that his strong insinuations that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks and you get a very strong impression of a President who lied us into war.

I still probably wouldn't have agreed with the invasion, but I would have felt better about it if he had given the reasons you gave, rather than using the arguments that he did.

As far as the oil goes, no I don't have any links, and frankly that is not my greatest area of interest. There are probably other people here who can point to specific links. I think that was only one part of Bush's real agenda anyway. At this point they are not pumping remotely enough even to subsidize the war and occupation, let alone make a profit. However, ultimately, having control over the worlds second largest oil reserves must in my opinion have been part of the calculation.

Have you noticed that our leaders seem to be much more concerned about human rights abuses in countries with lots of oil? Is that just a coincidence?

I hope that I haven't come off as offensive in my answers. There are many people on here far more knowledgable and articulate than I am that can probably do a much better job of addressing your issues than I can.

Oh, and I do not consider myself to be on the left. I think of myself as a liberal, which in my opinion is a very different thing. Anyway, if you're going to classify people as being on the left on the basis of opposing the war, you will have to count Pat Buchanan as a leftist as well.

[Q]

14. Wow...

...Conservatives are from Venus...Liberals are from Mars.

- I don't understand the 'logic' of trying to remove an 'evil monster' by indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of innocents in the process. There's just no way this can be justified and it looks more and more like the mindset of Vietnam: destroy a village in order to 'save it' from 'evil'.

- The Right seems to have bought into the idea that collateral damage is okay in a 'just' war. But the thousands of INNOCENT men, women and CHILDREN killed by Bush's* bombs had nothing to do with 9-11 OR Saddam.

- So Bush's* 'final solution' to 'help' the Iraqi people was to bomb their cities into rubble and occupy them in the name of 'freedom'. I'm sorry...but this doesn't sound much different than the rationale used by the Nazis to wage aggressive war and build an empire.

[Direckshun]

15. Let me welcome you, chick!

:)

I invite you to continue posting here! One of my chief complaints about DU in my short stay here is that some of the people here have a hard time respectfully responding to arguments they really disagree with. (I think that's a problem of all BBs, though, and that DU is no exception.)

I encourage you to keep posting around here. I myself try to keep an open mind and if I see something you say that I agree with I'll stick up for you. But that means I also reserve the right to take your arguments out from time to time. ;) Just playing with you.

Glad you gave us a shot! I think you'll find us a little rough at first, but we gradually smooth over with time, like a fine Merlot or a decent Chablis.

[sfwriter]

16. OK, I'll rebut...

Point by point:
1
"not terribly satisfied that Saddam remaining in power was a good idea."

No, Neither was I, though I agreed with George the first's reasoning. If we stayed, we'd end up tied down there for YEARS. It was an apt warning. Yet, after pulling out, George abandoned the Shia and Kurds to Saddam's forces. We even lifted the ban on his flying helicopters so he could go "kill his own people." An Iraqi revolution, by Iraqis, was our best chance at putting Saddam out of business.

Why did we help keep Saddam in power?

2
"UN resolutions continued to be largely ignored by the Saddam regime and evidence (good or bad) of WMD's continued to mount"

We now know that most of the "evidence" of WMDs came from exile groups like Chalabi's who wanted us to invade for their own reasons. The UN inspections, far from being ineffective, seem to have done the trick. (Backed up by a healthy fear of our military mind you.) This was what the inspectors were reporting all along. When they returned in 2002 they were given unprecedented access and gathered amazing data on Saddam's WMDs. Turns out that intelligence was correct.

Why did GW Bush suffer such a catastrophic failure in intelligence, the second of his presidency? (And don't go blaming it on Clinton. Bill had the good sense to keep his fist out of this hornet's nest.)

3
"do you have a link that shows that we have accessed/appropriated/utilized the Iraq oil fields for American profits?"

Here is a general article. I go into far more detail below.
http://www.targetoil.com/article.php?id=6">http://www.targetoil.com/article.php?id=6

The first thing we did was to declare the Iraqi contracts with Elf Aquitaine and Russia to be null and void, opening these fields up for American oil men and friends of the Bushes.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/20/eveningnews/main541379.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/20/eveningnews/main541379.shtml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A18841-2002Sep14¬Found=true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A18841-2002Sep14¬Found=true

When we were so desperate for allies in the run-up to war, why did we make enemies out of France and Russia? Was that the best thing for our troops?

This was all planned ahead of time in Dick Cheney's secret energy meetings, long before 9/11. That is the reason he won't release any info on them. Still, a few leaked memos exist.

The Judicial Watch website copies:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml">http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml

If Cheney was offering up slices of Iraq in early 2001, would that be treasonous? Don't we have a right to know what he is doing in our name, paid for with our blood and tax dollars?

We declared the oil companies exempt from any liability and seized the Iraqi oil for ourselves due to "National Emergency." You can read executive order 13303 for yourself.

13303 itself:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030522-15.html">http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030522-15.html

A very critical 13303 article:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/weekly_2003/oil_corporations_iraq_immunity.html">http://reclaimdemocracy.org/weekly_2003/oil_corporations_iraq_immunity.html

Another one:
http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4397">http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4397

Analysis of the far reaching implications of 13303:
http://www.earthrights.org/news/institutingimmunity.shtml">http://www.earthrights.org/news/institutingimmunity.shtml

See 13303's effects for yourself. This is a website dedicated to tracking Iraqi reconstruction with an especially telling first memo posted: "Journalists obtained this memo written by a US official detailed to the CPA, which says that Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA."
http://www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/documents/index.shtml">http://www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/documents/index.shtml

Will our actions help or hinder our pacification of Iraq? If we are building a democracy, shouldn't the Iraqis decide who gets to profit from their oil?


4
"have him continue to slaughter and starve his own people simply because he once benefited from American largess"

I never heard a single anti-war person say they wanted Saddam in power. Revolutions start from within, not without. A revolution imposed on a country is an occupation, no matter how well intended. I, and everyone I've spoken with at the protests I've attended wanted to see more of a plan, some allies, international legitimacy, and proof of the WMD claims.

If our safety isn't the reason for war, but rather some latter-day revivalist vision of a world without slaughter and starvation, then who do we put on the list next? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? China? North Korea? Rwanda?

****

This man we call president has cost hundreds of American lives, and tens of thousand Iraqi lives. We have inflicted more than THREE 9/11's worth of innocent civilian deaths on the Iraqis.

What if Lafayette and the French had remained in our country after the revolutionary war, designing our flag, controlling our resources, and telling us it was for our own good every time the killed a few more of us. Would we still see them as liberators today?

There are plenty of people who saw this coming and raised holy hell about it. Bush invaded in spite of us, and it will cost him the presidency, because if nothing else, we simply can't afford a THIRD catastrophic failure in intelligence or a third war right now.

Please don't vote for Bush come November.

[laura888]

18. bravo! one for my files!

thanks!

[MI Cherie]

10. Welcome!

Civilized debate can be a good thing!