Iraq Milestone: Obama's fault, too?Follow

Right, and many isn't one.

I like how when I click "expand" next to varus or thiefx's posts, the post actually disappears entirely, rather than showing itself.

When I was in Norway over Xmas, I met my fiancee's aunt, who was a weapons inspector in Iraq in 2003. She was part of the Hans Blix team. She knew Hans, and David Kelly, and everything. She had some funny stories to tell. Obviously, I asked her what it was like, and her opinion was that Iraq in 2003 was a crumbling country with extremely poor infrastructure. As we know, the inspectirs didn't finish their work, so they couldn't know for sure, but at the time she didn't think Iraq could produce nuclear weapons.

I also tried to press her with regards to Iran, but she wouldn't say anything either way. Damn those boring neutral Norwegian scientists.

She's almost 60...

But yeah, I'm open-minded.

You mean except for the fact that most of the country were (hell, are) under the power of warlords because we didn't have any troops there?


Bwahahahahaha!!!!

Yeah, I'm sure they were terrified that we were going to start a three front war after Iraq and expand operations into Iran. Maybe the US could have formed a coalition with Andorra and Monaco at that point.

Got any support (outside of liberal blogs and op-ed's) for that statement? Sounds like pure speculation to me. My understanding is that we specifically chose to work with local factions and tribal leaders, not due to troop limitations, but out of a realization that this was the only possible way to succeed in Afghanistan. Numbers of troops didn't matter Joph. I have a cousin who served in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006. It was boring and quiet pretty much the whole time. More troops would have been sitting around doing nothing...




And there's still no evidence that by invading Iraq we hastened their nuclear weapons program one single day. Or are you willing to provide some?

Edited, Jan 5th 2010 6:46pm by gbaji

It makes perfect sense. There is zero doubt that the number of troops and the amount of resources involved in a war have a profound effect on its outcome. Are you really trygin to argue otherwise?

We all know that in Afghanistan, neither NATO nor Karzai controlled anything except Kabul. We had to resort to drone attacks and air power, which were completely ineffective, and sometimes positively contributed to turning whole areas against us. Remember bombing that wedding party? Then we had to ally ourselves with all sorts of unpleasant warlords who then turned back to the Talibans when it suited them. We invested nothing in terms of development, there has been 0 human rights progress, the Afghan army is a shambles, Bin Laden is still out there, and we've been there for what, 8 years now? And you're telling me we didn't need to invest more time, energy, money and troops in that place? Those delusional tendencies need to be medically examined, seriously.

Iraq was a war of choice. We didn't have to go there. It had very little strategic value. It was a nationalist and secular regime who fought against Islamists, stood against Iran, and posed zero threat to the West. These are not opinions, they are facts. It was a gigantic drain of resources for 6 years, and it achieved almost nothing except death on a mass scale.

I keep reading the thread title as "Iraq Millstone".

The main reason the death toll has decreased in Iraq is because the focus has shifted back to Afghanistan. The only reason we had terrorists(local patriots don't count)in Iraq in the first place was because we invaded them so it was a target for the Taliban. The "surge" was totally pointless just like the new "surge" will be in Afghanistan. The reason for this is very simple.

Troops under siege are known to blend in as civilians or go underground. Military funding will waiver and then the troop threat will decrease. Saddam's elite guards did the same thing back when we took Bagdad.

My opinion of Obama isn't too bad. I'd give him a B+ right now for a grade. Much better than the F grade I gave Bush. I don't think Obama is right on the new "surge" or sanctions against Iran. If Obama really wants to detour terrorist attacks in foreign regions and our home soil, he'll leave those people alone. All of the threats and attacks we suffer as a country is all due to the idiot politicians who refuse to leave those people alone. Leave them alone and they'll leave us alone. Who would want the US military and CIA on their back, I know I wouldn't.