http://www.kidk.com/news/12995637.html

Many months have passed since this article first published, do you think the surge worked, do you think we are winning or losing the war, do you think we should end it or what objectives do you think we can realistically still meet?

I hope nobody takes that writer’s advice seriously. I’m not happy about the war either, but defacing stop signs around Idaho Falls is not going to do a thing towards stopping the war.

If you want to do SOMETHING to rally protest then organize anti-war demonstrations at the Idaho Falls offices for our senators and congressman. Organize a march down Broadway or 17th street on a Saturday afternoon or during an evening rush hour.

Do something that effectively communicates your disagreement with the three people in our state who have any leverage in the war decisions: Craig, Crapo, and Simpson.

Please do not deface our local public property. That is like protesting America’s oil dependence by burning a local car lot. All you are doing is costing local dollars. If you are going to protest, then make it effective and direct it to the source.

This war was never about WMD’s or terrorism. It was about oil and it was about wagging the dog.

The first part of that equation is obvious. Oil = money.

The second part is less obvious but completely apparent if you look at the timeline. After 9/11 Bush was riding a crest of goodwill and anything he did wrong was ignored. But then the economy continued to crumble. And we continued to fail in catching Bin Laden and overthrowing the Taliban wasn’t enough. Everything was going south for Bush in a hurry and the 2004 elections were coming up. What he needed was an enemy to attack preferably one with a name brand villian. What percentage of Americans can name the bad guy in Bosnia (Slovdan Milosevic – I may have spelled something wrong)? What percentage can name the bad guys in Sudan or Rwanda? Even less I imagine – heck even I can’t. But everyone knows who Saddam is and a win over a name brand villian is better publicity wise than a win over a mostly unknown villian any day.

Thus began the quest to come up with reasons to attack. Because if we are at war no one will think about how much the economy was sucking back in 2002 and early 2003. And people might forget that Bin Laden was still running around giving us the middle finger. All we needed were reasons and the neocons gambled that it would be a quick and easy victory / occupation. Well the victory part was easy but the occupation wasn’t. And now the web of lies that the neocons cast as justifications for war has crumbled to dust. And thankfully much of America is now holding the neocons to task for their deceit and unneccessary war.

Yes there are terrorists out there who want to kill us. Yes we need to stop them. Unfortunately invading and occupying Iraq isn’t doing anything about either problem except emboldening the terrorists and helping their recruiting.

There are no WMD’s. I have no doubt Saddam wanted them and like a good poker player he ran a good bluff but he never was close to having them. But the Bush administration chose to ignore all evidence pointing to the truth and instead used unsubstantiated evidence to make a case. And he used 9/11 to brand anyone who disagreed as traitors so many gutless politicians fell in lockstep with him. Finally some of those politicians have gotten some spine back and admitted they made a mistake in supporting the war initially.

Saddam wasn’t supporting Al Queada. Bush apologists say they were in the country. Well they were in ours too and we don’t support them. Al Queada wanted an alliance with Saddam and did approach him and Saddam told them to get lost. Admittedly there is no doubt Saddam financed other terrorists like ones who attack Israel but he didn’t support Al Quaeda.

Iraq wasn’t involved in 9/11. I saw a poll a year or two ago where it found that majority of Americans thought Iraq was involved in 9/11 and most of the hijackers were Iraqi’s when in reality none of the hijackers were Iraqi and there is no credible evidence Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

The only thing, and I mean the ONLY THING, the war supporters were right about is that Saddam was a bad bad man. Yes he was a tyrranical dictator who killed many of his own people. So if you want to use this as a justification for invading Iraq then why don’t you support invasions of Sudan and Rwanda where the genocide is much much worse? Iraq was Disneyland compared to those places.

We went to war with England many years ago when they were an occupation force on our soil. Why should we view the situation in the Middle East differently? We are there because we need their oil…England was here because they needed our raw materials.

I would have no problem with gas rationing in this country, similar to what was done during WWII. Ration gas for all but essential, vital commerce and emergency and military use. Maybe we could consider more military training on simulators as the armed forces (Air Force in particular) uses vast quantities of the petroleum consumed in this country. This may prove to be the shot in the arm necessary for us to develope alternate fuels/energy sources to free us from our oil addiction and our need to go to war over it.

Maybe, just maybe, this could be the incentive needed to get us out of our Hummers and similar land yachts and into fuel efficient hybrids or similar gas stingy conveyances. Wow, the noblest act of patriotism might be driving a hybrid, or better yet an all electric vehicle! We were using electric vehicles in our urban centers 100 years ago until GM conspired with Standard Oil, Firestone and Mack Truck to take over these efficient modes of urban transit and replace them with their diesel/gas buses.

We import more than 63% of our oil with much of that coming from unfriendly countries that are enriching their treasuries and wishing us all sorts of evil.

I agree with Joe…use our military to attack, not to occupy.

We have lost too many good men and women in Iraq…it’s time to get the hell out. Their oil has become too expensive. The Australian defense minister at least admitted that Aussie troops were in Iraq to secure access to the region’s oil, maybe it’s time for us to admit the same thing.

I think our military is best used as an attack force, not an occupation force.

Let’s go after the terrorists, not sit like a magnet for them.

And another thing Mike…..I don’t see YOU over their fighting them on their land. So who are you to decide where and when this thing ends? Obviously you didn’t read Joes posting either. The president had made promise after promise that he has yet to follow through on. What about all that?

If people think Iraq is a quagmire right now, think about what it would be like if the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other fundamentalists were in control of the middle east. No one is talking about what happens if we leave. Bush and his advisors weren’t talking about what Iraq would look like after we won the war. That was a major mistake. In my opinion, it is a fatal mistake to not begin discussing what a pullout would mean to the United States, Europe and namely western civilization both politically, economically, and culturally.

I truly believe that if we show the same weakness British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin showed in 1939, like the weakness Clinton showed after the USS Cole bombing in 1998, that we invite these fascists to come after us. I for one, would prefer to fight and kill them over there rather than have the homeland attacked again. This is a world wide war. I can only imagine if we had CNN and other news outlets during the start of the second world war that there would have been cries to impeach Roosevelt because he was leading us into a costly war and was lying to people about all the death and carnage. Our war effort would have been seriously hampered.
Americans are spoiled and seem to think that things will go on business as usual if we leave the region. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you listen to the fatwa’s and teachings espoused by these radical groups it becomes very clear that they will not stop until they succeed or die trying.

They barely reached half of the milestones, and the ones that were completed are being criticized as being fudged, not really completed.

Here’s some analysis on it, complete with numerous citations: http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/168

Bush of course sees the report as a glass half full while most everyone else sees it as half empty.

I almost laughed when I read Bush saying politicians should let the military commanders run the show in Iraq. Maybe if Bush had let the intelligence experts run their own show in the beginning we would not be in the Iraq Quagmire.

So I guess it is fitting that Bush puts his fudged progress report on the same shelf with his fudged intelligence reports.

These people will not give up until each one of our soldiers has perished. And do you blame them? Why aren’t we hunting down Bin Laden? Whatever happened to him? Wasn’t that one of the main reasons for going over there?
I mean, what would YOU do if OUR country was invaded? Would you sit on your butts while the occupying force slaughtered your family, your children, your parents…..or would you be out there planting explosives and picking them off one by one with your rifles? Yeah…me too.
So how many more soldiers must we lose before GW realizes this?

He made the Iraqi people promises upon promises that he didn’t deliver upon. It’s time we swallowed our pride and got out of there before we don’t have enough military left to defend our own country from an invasion.

GW has waged his own personal war against Saddam and the Iraqi people and we need to get out before we get ourselves in a real mess and get stuck fighting Iran as well. Bush needs to be impeached and “We the People” need to stop sitting around whining about the enviroment and get our priorities straight!
that’s just my opinion
What do YOU think?

While I will leave the addressing of your specific comments to others, I think that comparing Iraq to Panama is definitely an apples to oranges comparison, though I think that if Iraq had a history of democracy before Hussein, perhaps things over there would be going differently and the situation would be more like Panama. Also, thanks for the BillOrally reference about mass suicide, it was very classy.

First Gulf War: Are we dictating to the Saudi’s and the Kuwait’s? Last time I checked the Saudi’s had us remove troops quietly. And not sure how many bases we have in Kuwait??? Bueller…..Bueller….Bueller??????

Perfect example of Bush 1. Panama. Please Jeremy and Davin tell us all what happened in Panama when Noriega was removed. Did we put in a puppet and do we pull the stings of a puppet ruler in Panama? Of course not don’t be dopey. Not only did Panama have free elections and continues to have free elections to this day but we still held to the Carter agreement that gave the canal back to the Panamanians to the the security detriment of the United States as now the Chineese are the big players in Panama. So if we are so empirilistic can you guys explain this???? We invaded took out the government that was killing priests and it’s populace and then what did we do? Why we left, and left lock stock and barrel. The barricks I used to stay in when stationed in Panama now house Panamanians.
Wake up smell the coffee, stop drinking the koolaid and realize the US is the only superpower with any moral authority to accomplish anything. The United Nations is incompetent and impetent in doing anything other then spending money and doing nothing. Darfur anyone???? Ruwanda anyone???

Please do respond to my specifics I would love to know your thoughts.

President Bush will be in Brazil this week–in what can only be seen as a symbolic gesture–to ally this country with the worlds largest ethanol producer. In reality he has no intention of abolishing or even decreasing the 54 cent per gallon tariff this country places on Brazilian ethanol. To do so would be contrary to the desires of corporate giant, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and their corn ethanol lobbyists. Better to avoid alienating this “deep pocket” campaign contributor than to actually have the marketplace decide the efficacy of ethanol from sugar cane over corn. If it takes 1.29 gallons of petroleum fuel to produce 1 gallon of corn ethanol, what is gained? If the Brazilians can replace petroleum in their country with sugar cane ethanol and still have enough left for export, we should be their biggest consumer. Protectionism in this country has a sordid history of the political “ins” rewarding those corporate sponsors who help keep them in power, no matter how damaging it may be to the country.

No, if we are to avoid wars like the one we are enmeshed in in Iraq, we should be exploring every workable alternative to fossil fuels (petroleum) that we can, but we should also look very hard at how the political parties in this country are financed. While corporations like ADM have shown us that we have the best polititions money can buy, they have also, in effect, added to our problem of fossil fuel dependency.

So instead of sending more of our best and brightest young men and women–at great expense–into places like Iraq to protect this country’s strategic oil supply, we should instead use those funds to further their educations at colleges and universities and hopefully educate them in the urgent necessity of freeing us from our oil dependency.

However, the counter to American oppression is not necessarily always violent. As an act of rebellion against American cultural imperialism, modern Islamic reformists have actually returned to Islam’s peaceful roots – for example, Islamic feminists now support the use of Burkas (those hoods that women use to cover their faces) as a rebellion against Western objectification of women. What we view as oppressive, Muslim women are using to liberate themselves.

However, I do believe that the use of war in America is oppressive and indicative of a much wider-spread, malicious narrative at hand. Do we need to be reminded of the first George Bush’s declaration of a desire to establish a “New World Order” – a desire shared by John D. Rockefeller and essentially all major corporate giants? The goal of modern warfare is to subdue a population into accepting the culture, then to conquer through apathy and acceptance, rather than to submit to an army.

I believe that Iraqis are reacting the only way they know how to while maintaining their cultural sovereignty – and we should ask ourselves how we would react if, say, Iran decided to dictate our culture for us, replace our government, and decide our fate for us. I believe you would see terrorism on a biblical scale – and we should not be surprised if we see the same result from radical Islam if we continue the practice of neo-Imperialism and cultural tyranny.

If you really read my previous reply you will see I did indeed take to heart the substance of it.

Your comments regarding the violence here @ home were addressed by ME when I wrote -

If we want a “peaceful stable country” then we might start at home by perhaps spending all that war money on cleaning up “urban cess pools”.

- If that’s not a response that satisfies you then it’s fine, but it WAS a valid and heartfelt response, and I stand by it.

Thanks!