As a liberal, let me say...Follow

lmao, having flashbacks to the Christoper Reeves South Park.



My grandmother said I was incorrigible..but, I was the funniest person shes' ever *******

I don't know... I'd think one could have been "for" the Iraq war and still think that it was managed poorly.

Of course they are -- they voted for the war, remember?

What the democrats think, say, or how they vote should have no impact whatsoever on the assessment of how well Rumsfeld has done his job.



Cool, I'll say that to my boss next I get the "policy" wrong. "Hey man, if it had been 10 heroine-addicts doing my job, they would've done worse!"

None of that is the point. The war on Iraq was poorly planned. Not enough troops. Not enough efforts for reconstruction. No thought on how to deal with the occupation itself. He made mistakes when he sacked the hole of the army and the civil service. The unemployment shot up to 80% because of this.

And yes, then there is Abu Graib. Which was his direct responsibility.

The Iraq war did not have to turn out the way it did. It only did so because of his mistakes, or those of the ones he is accountable for.

It's not about you were for or against the Iraq war. It's about how he handled it. And only the most partisan neo-con could try to argue he did a good job.

First time in months I've had the patience to read a gbaji ramble.

I'd forgotten what a thick cUnt you are gbaji.

Lol. Ok. Tell me exactly what the Dems would have done differently in Iraq that would have certainly been "better".

And not something that they came up with afterwards and said "we should have done X". Find me a single point of concensus among Democrats with regards to the Iraq war that can absolutely be shown to have generated better results then the plan and process that the Bush administration has used and which was presented unilaterially as an alternative *before* action was taken.


It's easy to call someone a cunt when their opinion differs from yours. How about you get past the ad hominum and on to actually arguing the issue?...

In what way was it not planned? Are you suggesting that the multiple stages of progress between a full militarily-led occupation, to an interim coalition authority, to an interim Iraqi congress, to the formation of a constitution by that body, to the voting for adoption of that constitution, to the adoption and election of a full parliment and government all happened accidentally?

Are you serious? You may not have liked the plan. The plan may not have been perfect. It may not have been perfectly executed. But to try to say that there was "no plan" for after the invasion is not just wrong but blatantly silly...

I suppose the funds for rebuilding that Bush requested prior to even beginning an invasion wasn't part of any post-invasion plan. The food bank stuff just happened on their own? The bridges, roads, hospitals, power plants, and schools just magically repaired themselves?

Rhetoric much?

Wait! Are you talking about the invasion of Iraq that resulted, not in the removal of Saddam Hussein, but in a never ending series of UN resolutions and sanctions against Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of some 100,000 Iraqis, never suceeded in forcing Iraq to comply with the tersm of the cease fire (so the "war" was never resolved), and the enforcement of which required the US to maintain its "temporary" force in Saudi Arabia for over 10 years, which in turn pissed off one Osama Bin Laden resulting in several large hijacked passenger jets to be flown into several large buildings killing 3000 someone civilians..

Is that the "better post-invasion plan" that you're talking about? Because that didn't work out so well...


Wow. Freaking brilliant plan! I'll stick with Rumsfeld's process thank you very much.

Yeah, Bush and Rumsfeld are doing great on the war on terror.

Their "funnel all America-hating terrorists through London so the British police can catch them" plan is working great.

That's not what I remember at the time. Most of the reports were saying that generals were complaining about the lack of troops. that they did not like his reforms of the military. That they thought Iraq lacked troops and was severely undermanned.

He made those decision in spite of what many military top officials were saying. Once they have been proved right, and there is no doubt there were not enough tropps in Iraq, that's the first serious mistake. When you see teh looting tha took place while the few troops could only sit and watch, then that alone is almost worthy of resignation. It was a serious tactical blunder. A gross misunderstanding of Iraq, its people, and what was needed to be done.

This lack of troops has meant that the ones there have had stress far bigger than what was necessary, which has caused grave human violations, and possible war crimes. US soliders are not evil, but give them an impossible task and some will crack under the pressure. This, partly, is what caused Abu Graib.




Hmm, let me think. What about restoring the levels of elecriticity and water supplies of the Saddam era? You'd think after 6 months it would be doable. After 3 years, we're still not there yet. What about not sacking 50% of thepopulation, including all those with guns, power, and powerfyul friends, who are suddenly left without anything to do except curse the Americans for how their life was ruined? Sacking the army and the civil service had to be one of the stupidest thing ever done.

And then, transforming their economy from a state-controlled semi-communist planned economy, to the complete oppoiste, was not smart either. Shock therapy hasn't worked greaqt for Russia in peace, how could it work well in Iraq at war? Was building a Baghdad Stock Exchange within one year really a priority? Doing that before restoring decent levels of eletrivity? Allowing foreign companies to buy Iraqi assets and companies, withoutforcing them to reinvest a single dime back into the IRaqi economy? How do you think the IRaqis feel when they read about the CPA doing those things while 80% of the local population is unemployed?

And that's not even going into the tiny detail of letting Iraq slip into a civil war, with 50 people dying each day in armed attacks. And even that, is on a good day.



As Nobby said, you're a silly person. Really.



Of not rushing into a pointless, irrelvant, costly war that has nothing but increase tensions between the Western and Muslim world, destroyed a country, polarised the world, made America lose important friends, played into the hands of Islamic fundamentalist, created a civil war, and a perfect excuse to recruit more suicice-bomber.

Not all of this is Rumsfeld's fault.

But a lot of what has gone wrong in the Iraq war is his *responsability*. That's what it is about. Not direct fault. When you are in charge, you are *resposible* for the actions of people under your command. They fail, you fail. Thats the way it works, and only the most partisaned people can still say Rumsfeld did a "good job".

Wow another "Gbaji made to look like a ******" thread, who would have thought that.....

Far better then you do apparently.



No. I did not say that US troops in Saudi were the reason for the bombings in London and Madrid. I said that they were the reason that Bin Laden used to motivate the various members of his Al-qaeda "list" to direct attacks on the US, which led to the 9/11 attacks.

Subsequent attacks may have their own reasons. However, it's the mobilization that is key. You have to get these otherwise disparate groups working together in a common direction. US soldiers on Saudi soil gave Bin Laden the tool to do that. Once he had them all moving in the same direction, he could give them additional marching orders at will.

The point is that the US troop thing was the start point. Without that, Bin Laden would not have been able to stir up the Mujahadeen to a common cause. Without that, you'd not be seeing all these other attacks becuase Al-qaeda would still just be a list of contacts that Bin Laden had that all had no particular reason to work together for anything.

Get it? The presence of those troops was the equivalent to the Stamp Tax for the 13 Colonies just prior to the US war for independance. It was a single unifying "cause" that they could all agree on. Once that one thing banded them together, they could (and have) continued to conduct other actions as well. But it's critical to identify that single source point.



Sure. But remember that Al-qaeda is not a single group. It's literally a list of names of people that were trained as Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and Pakistan back in the 80s in camps that Bin Laden funded. Period. Other then some very broad ideas, they have no single guiding goals or agenda. After the Soviets left Afghanistan, these people all dispersed around the globe and proceeded to run their own operations for their own separate reasons. In order to mobilize them into a single force, Bin Laden needed a single unifying cause that all of them would agree to fight for. US troops on Saudi Soil was that triggering cause. Everything since then with regards to Al-qaeda derives from that root.


Unfortunately, just as you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, moving our soldiers out of Saudi Arabia does not end the Al-qaeda threat. That's why we're still seeing plots out there. However, it does remove a significant recruiting tool. Groups that may not have been on board from the start might have joined up if we were still maintaining troops in that country. Because we are no longer doing so, other groups around the world may choose to conduct their own attacks if they want, but they wont have a specific "global cause" by which to do so.

Moving into Iraq is even more significant. Because it replaces that global cause, which will allow recruitment of Muslim terrorists from all over the world into attacking the US globally, with a very regional "cause". They can no longer recruit over the issue of Saudi Arabia, and must recruit over the issue of occupation in Iraq. But that means they have to spend most of their efforts "in Iraq". We effectively bog Al-qaeda down in Iraq even more then ourselves. They can't *not* get involved in the insurgencies there, so they're stuck.

It's just kinda bizaare to me that we still get Liberals insisting that moving into Iraq didn't make us safer. Hmmmm... If that's the case, then what exactly was Al-Zarkowi doing there? Clearly, the number2 Al-qaeda guy was actively involved, not in plotting attacks on US soil, but in running an insurgency in Iraq. It's a really simple question: Where do you think he would have been, and what do you think he would have been doing, if there wasn't a US occupation in Iraq for him to fight against? If we'd left Iraq at the status quo (meaning no US troops in Iraq, but still US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia). Can you honestly say that we'd have suffered fewer attacks globally as a result?


I don't think so.

Gridlock was voted for by The Framers. That was a useful vote wasn't it? Division of Powers and separation of Branches. Republic. Not a Democracy, moron.