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[Jayzus]

Dam so this was all Germany's fault?

Spoiler

eeek

 

[numble]

Maybe I missed it, but what is this guy's punishment for lying to our government?

The same punishment we hand out for the people that believed him. Unless he took an oath, I guess you can give him perjury.

 

[Windu]

i still think in the long run getting rid of Saddam and his regime was a good thing, it just didn't need america's immediate attention.

 

[An-Det]

They lied about WMD's? I know I'm shocked.

I was also amused by this:

"They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime."
"...he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war"

Guy is full of shit, but I found the contradiction funny.

 

[Technosteve]

i own a copy of Perry's Chemical Engineer's Handbook does this make me an expert WMD maker?

 

[j_k_redtail]

Incredibly underrated movie and seams to really describe the situation behind Iraq.

The nonfiction book on which it is based, Imperial Life in the Emerald City is incredible, but it isn't at all like the film.

I'm still waiting for that movie, but it would have to be a docudrama at least.

 

[Jackson50]

Well, duh.

 

[dschalter]

That's what Afghanistan war was about though, right? The hysteria over Iraq kicked up well after the Taliban had been toppled. And it must have been an intense propaganda effort, given the fact that a school child could have seen that Iraq was destroyed from top to bottom by the harshest sanctions regime in history and posed no threat to anyone beyond its borders.

saddam was just about the only ruler to endorse the attacks. that is a really terrible reason to go to war, but that is what made him stand out to bush&co.

 

[bill0527]

I clearly remember like it was yesterday, the debate me and my mostly liberal friends had about Iraq and war briefly after 9/11. I was the ONLY guy that thought it was stupid and not because I didn't believe what the media was telling me. I did. Why wouldn't I? But to me, you don't start a war just because you got a spitball shot into the back of your head. It was pure emotional overreacting. I got berated hard by a room of 6 very intelligent and usually calm (but clearly disillusioned and angry) peers for that position at that time. I was an idiot. I was a wuss. I was a coward. I couldn't believe my ears...how emotional and mindless my friends became.

Couple months later, everyone was agreeing with me and they still to this day will not acknowledge the debate we had before everyone was in consensus. Not one of them. It never happened in their perception or, at best, they agreed with me.
I'm sure my mind has denied certain positions after the fact. I'm sure I've broken promises simply because I can't recall making them. But never was it so blatant as my post 9/11 debate with some folks that I thought I knew so well.

I understand your viewpoint. Believe me, I clearly understand the liberal viewpoint on opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And you guys won the debate, so serious congratulations. You were right.

But I would just like to say that I had, what I felt were valid reasons for being pro-war.

I'm probably older than a lot of you and I clearly remember all of Saddam's antics dating back to the late 1980s.

This was a guy who had no problems starting wars with his neighbors, invading them, and killing his own people. Also lobbing missiles into Israel, just because he could. I was a senior in high school during Operation Desert Storm when Saddam invaded Kuwait, seized the oil fields, and then burned them to the ground when the U.S. kicked him out. All we ever heard on the nightly news was that - "Saddam is invading his neighbors, Saddam is killing his own people, Saddam was doing this.. Saddam was doing that."

I never looked at it from the angle that this was all about oil or this was a revenge thing from George W. Bush. The reason why is because we had about a decade and a half of broken UN resolutions from Saddam, we had politicians from both sides of the aisle claiming he had WMD, even before Bush/Cheney were in office. Bill Clinton back in 1998 ordered an air strike on Iraq and his exact quote was that it was to attack Iraq's WMD programs and its ability to threaten his neighbors. http://articles.cnn.com/1998-12-16/...-hussein-unscom-iraq-strike?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

Therefore, I never looked it through partisan shades. This was a decade and a half of Saddam doing a lot of bad shit, and about a decade and a half of him getting away with it, and nobody really doing anything about it during both Democrat and Republican administrations. I felt that the Iraq war was a culmination of 15 years worth of events and it was a helluva lot more complex than just boiling it down to "Its all about the oil" or "Bush gettin' revenge for his daddy".

Think about this for a second - in today's 24 hour news cycle because of the fact its so sped up, you grow tired of hearing about the same story after maybe... oh 2 weeks or so. Well, back in the late 80's and throughout the 90s, when we were on a different news cycle and before the internet, all we heard for years was that Saddam was being a bad guy. Because of that, most of the American public was primed for war with him.

 

[scorcho]

the march to war had less to do with this defector, and more to do with the cadre of neoconservative advisors and yes-men that Bush/Cheney had within earshot that pushed for transformational change in the Middle East.

the war was never really about WMDs. it was just sold to the public as that.

 

[Joel Was Right]

I understand your viewpoint. Believe me, I clearly understand the liberal viewpoint on opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And you guys won the debate, so serious congratulations. You were right.

But I would just like to say that I had, what I felt were valid reasons for being pro-war.

I'm probably older than a lot of you and I clearly remember all of Saddam's antics dating back to the late 1980s.

This was a guy who had no problems starting wars with his neighbors, invading them, and killing his own people. Also lobbing missiles into Israel, just because he could. I was a senior in high school during Operation Desert Storm when Saddam invaded Kuwait, seized the oil fields, and then burned them to the ground when the U.S. kicked him out. All we ever heard on the nightly news was that - "Saddam is invading his neighbors, Saddam is killing his own people, Saddam was doing this.. Saddam was doing that."

I never looked at it from the angle that this was all about oil or this was a revenge thing from George W. Bush. The reason why is because we had about a decade and a half of broken UN resolutions from Saddam, we had politicians from both sides of the aisle claiming he had WMD, even before Bush/Cheney were in office. Bill Clinton back in 1998 ordered an air strike on Iraq and his exact quote was that it was to attack Iraq's WMD programs and its ability to threaten his neighbors. http://articles.cnn.com/1998-12-16/...-hussein-unscom-iraq-strike?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

Therefore, I never looked it through partisan shades. This was a decade and a half of Saddam doing a lot of bad shit, and about a decade and a half of him getting away with it, and nobody really doing anything about it during both Democrat and Republican administrations. I felt that the Iraq war was a culmination of 15 years worth of events and it was a helluva lot more complex than just boiling it down to "Its all about the oil" or "Bush gettin' revenge for his daddy".

Think about this for a second - in today's 24 hour news cycle because of the fact its so sped up, you grow tired of hearing about the same story after maybe... oh 2 weeks or so. Well, back in the late 80's and throughout the 90s, when we were on a different news cycle and before the internet, all we heard for years was that Saddam was being a bad guy. Because of that, most of the American public was primed for war with him.

Americans, and others, were pumped for war predominantly because they believed they'd win any such war; a feeling that was a consequence of post 9/11. Hypothetically, if the same claims were being made but in regards to another super power, where American cities would be open to bombing raids - or "strategic bombing" as it was known as - then I would presume you would see a significantly different, more cautious attitude. Most commentators on the Iraq topic couldn't present you a one page document articulating the reasons why an invasion would be the best solution. Within a few sentences, Al-Qaeda and 9/11 would pop up.

 

[bill0527]

Americans, and others, were pumped for war because they believed they'd win any such war. Hypothetically, if the same claims were being made but in regards to another super power, where American cities would be open to bombing raids - or "strategic bombing" as it was known as - then I would presume you would see a significantly different, more cautious attitude. Most commentators on the Iraq topic couldn't present you a one page document articulating the reasons why an invasion would be the best solution. Within a few sentences, Al-Qaeda and 9/11 would pop up.

I would agree with that as well. The fact that we routed most of the Iraqi army and got them out of Kuwait in 24 hours, probably didn't help in raising any alarms of caution. Most of us thought the Iraq invasion would over by dinner time the next night. And for the most part, it was pretty much over inside of 2 weeks. The problem was - nobody counted on sectarian violence and an insurgency breaking out in the aftermath of the invasion, but that's a whole other debate.

 

[Chichikov]

Incredibly underrated movie and seams to really describe the situation behind Iraq.

The problem was that it presented itself like a shaky-cam conspiracy movie.
The script is much more factual than people realize, and not because it's prophetic or anything, but because it's based on a very good non-fiction book.

This story needed the All the President Men treatment, not The Bourne Identity one.

 

[Joel Was Right]

I asked on the Q&A if this was suggestive of a conspiracy "to pursue a war". They ignored my question and responded to ones asked several minutes after mine. I doubt they'll answer it though, considering I invoked the term everyone is thinking

 

[coldvein]

i know everybody knows this by now, but i'm still gonna say... what a fucked up unnecessary act of murderous aggression that was. goddamn. we're probably all going to burn in hell for letting that happen. what a crime.

 

[gunther]

I understand your viewpoint. Believe me, I clearly understand the liberal viewpoint on opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And you guys won the debate, so serious congratulations. You were right.

But I would just like to say that I had, what I felt were valid reasons for being pro-war.

I'm probably older than a lot of you and I clearly remember all of Saddam's antics dating back to the late 1980s.

This was a guy who had no problems starting wars with his neighbors, invading them, and killing his own people. Also lobbing missiles into Israel, just because he could. I was a senior in high school during Operation Desert Storm when Saddam invaded Kuwait, seized the oil fields, and then burned them to the ground when the U.S. kicked him out. All we ever heard on the nightly news was that - "Saddam is invading his neighbors, Saddam is killing his own people, Saddam was doing this.. Saddam was doing that."

I never looked at it from the angle that this was all about oil or this was a revenge thing from George W. Bush. The reason why is because we had about a decade and a half of broken UN resolutions from Saddam, we had politicians from both sides of the aisle claiming he had WMD, even before Bush/Cheney were in office. Bill Clinton back in 1998 ordered an air strike on Iraq and his exact quote was that it was to attack Iraq's WMD programs and its ability to threaten his neighbors. http://articles.cnn.com/1998-12-16/...-hussein-unscom-iraq-strike?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

Therefore, I never looked it through partisan shades. This was a decade and a half of Saddam doing a lot of bad shit, and about a decade and a half of him getting away with it, and nobody really doing anything about it during both Democrat and Republican administrations. I felt that the Iraq war was a culmination of 15 years worth of events and it was a helluva lot more complex than just boiling it down to "Its all about the oil" or "Bush gettin' revenge for his daddy".

Think about this for a second - in today's 24 hour news cycle because of the fact its so sped up, you grow tired of hearing about the same story after maybe... oh 2 weeks or so. Well, back in the late 80's and throughout the 90s, when we were on a different news cycle and before the internet, all we heard for years was that Saddam was being a bad guy. Because of that, most of the American public was primed for war with him.

Its not that hard to think by your own. There are plenty of bad dictator in the world but somehow the only bad guy that the US ever seem to care about was saddam, meanwhile in other places of the wolrd no one cared. Such a contradiction was an obvious sign.

 

[Chichikov]

i know everybody knows this by now, but i'm still gonna say... what a fucked up unnecessary act of murderous aggression that was. goddamn. we're probably all going to burn in hell for letting that happen. what a crime.

Bush was right about one thing -
History will judge him.

 

[Drewsky]

tryin to get that oill..cough..oooillll

Bitch who said anything about oil?! You cookin?!

 

[numble]

I would agree with that as well. The fact that we routed most of the Iraqi army and got them out of Kuwait in 24 hours, probably didn't help in raising any alarms of caution. Most of us thought the Iraq invasion would over by dinner time the next night. And for the most part, it was pretty much over inside of 2 weeks. The problem was - nobody counted on sectarian violence and an insurgency breaking out in the aftermath of the invasion, but that's a whole other debate.

What?

 

[Tarazet]

The only people who believed him were the people who needed his story to be true. Curveball is the willing patsy in such a huge web of corruption. He didn't start anything, he merely helped justify it.

.

This war was Cheney's and Cheney's alone from day -400.

 

[afternoon delight]

The problem was that it presented itself like a shaky-cam conspiracy movie.
The script is much more factual than people realize, and not because it's prophetic or anything, but because it's based on a very good non-fiction book.

This story needed the All the President Men treatment, not The Bourne Identity one.

That's the reason I couldn't quite put into words about the film. Thank you.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

Hans Blix deserves some kind of 'you were right' award/recognition.

 

[RotBot]

This is from 2003 but still works.

SADDAM THOUGHT HE HAD WMD'S... says Time Magazine, stating that Iraqi scientists knew they actually did not have the weapons, while deceiving their leader by presenting him with "working nuclear and biological weapons" that were actually mock-ups made of old Sony Playstations and vials of oatmeal. A report due later this month on Iraqi weapons summarizes, "Iraqi engineers knew that there was no WMD program, though their superiors and the regime itself believed they did possess such weapons, which explains Saddam's extensive attempts to thwart inspections teams for over a decade, when in reality he could have given the U.N. free reign and held onto this regime. Meanwhile, George Bush and Tony Blair secretly did not believe that Saddam possessed WMD's, when in reality Saddam thought he did, when in reality he did not. American anti-war protestors, who believed that Saddam may very well have had WMD's, but pretended they did not in order to have ammunition with which to attack Bush, were really correct about Iraqi's WMD program but not due to any kind of evidence because Saddam himself didn't know." Meanwhile, U.N. inspectors are investigating allegations that materials sold to the Iraqis as plutonium was actually a fraud perpetrated by a crazed old inventor looking to develop a time machine.

 

[RobertM]

I understand your viewpoint. Believe me, I clearly understand the liberal viewpoint on opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And you guys won the debate, so serious congratulations. You were right.

But I would just like to say that I had, what I felt were valid reasons for being pro-war.

I'm probably older than a lot of you and I clearly remember all of Saddam's antics dating back to the late 1980s.

This was a guy who had no problems starting wars with his neighbors, invading them, and killing his own people. Also lobbing missiles into Israel, just because he could. I was a senior in high school during Operation Desert Storm when Saddam invaded Kuwait, seized the oil fields, and then burned them to the ground when the U.S. kicked him out. All we ever heard on the nightly news was that - "Saddam is invading his neighbors, Saddam is killing his own people, Saddam was doing this.. Saddam was doing that."

I never looked at it from the angle that this was all about oil or this was a revenge thing from George W. Bush. The reason why is because we had about a decade and a half of broken UN resolutions from Saddam, we had politicians from both sides of the aisle claiming he had WMD, even before Bush/Cheney were in office. Bill Clinton back in 1998 ordered an air strike on Iraq and his exact quote was that it was to attack Iraq's WMD programs and its ability to threaten his neighbors. http://articles.cnn.com/1998-12-16/...-hussein-unscom-iraq-strike?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

Therefore, I never looked it through partisan shades. This was a decade and a half of Saddam doing a lot of bad shit, and about a decade and a half of him getting away with it, and nobody really doing anything about it during both Democrat and Republican administrations. I felt that the Iraq war was a culmination of 15 years worth of events and it was a helluva lot more complex than just boiling it down to "Its all about the oil" or "Bush gettin' revenge for his daddy".

Think about this for a second - in today's 24 hour news cycle because of the fact its so sped up, you grow tired of hearing about the same story after maybe... oh 2 weeks or so. Well, back in the late 80's and throughout the 90s, when we were on a different news cycle and before the internet, all we heard for years was that Saddam was being a bad guy. Because of that, most of the American public was primed for war with him.

And who was providing support to Saddam before the Kuwait debacle? Oh yeah that would be the US of A.

 

[DEAD RABBIT]

Had we allowed torture, we would have gotten it out of him sooner.

 

[nyong]

i know everybody knows this by now, but i'm still gonna say... what a fucked up unnecessary act of murderous aggression that was. goddamn. we're probably all going to burn in hell for letting that happen. what a crime.

If we're going to burn in hell it's for the 500k children that died under our sanctions. The death toll for the invasion almost pales in comparison to the number we were killing before that. Oil for Food made Gaza look like a 5-Star resort.

 

[Tamanon]

Curveball wasn't believed by the intelligence agencies, by the time his info even got to the CIA higher-ups he already had a burn notice attached to him. It took an active act of ignorance to proceed with his information as the lynchpin.

 

[Nizz]

This was the exact plot for Matt Damons Green Zone by the way

I thought that was an awesome movie. Also, it doesn't seem to surprise me about WMD being a lie.

 

[Sanjay]

Green Zone featured the best portrayal of Iraqis on television.

Speaking of which this dude was amazing in the film.

 

[crazy monkey]

i still think in the long run getting rid of Saddam and his regime was a good thing, it just didn't need america's immediate attention.

you did not have to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to kill sone sadaam

 

[JGS]

Americans, and others, were pumped for war predominantly because they believed they'd win any such war; a feeling that was a consequence of post 9/11.

Well, they would have won if they followed a traditional method like Papa Bush. In the processs of trying not to hurt as many people as possible, they hurt as many people as possible.

Nothing else worked with Iraq up to that point (Similar to Korea now). The answer should have been to let them suffer from their own pride and arrogance, but you could tell that all of this was getting to Baby Bush.

Like bill0527 said, you could see it happening, Saddam was getting on everyone's nerves (As in the world's nerves which is why most bought it) and after 9/11 he got worse in terms of instigating stuff when he knew he was next in line.

None of this was a cause for starting a war, but all they had to do was wait for Saddam to get arrogant enough to say he would fight the Americans and then they could have blown him up as a proper threat.

 

[Sirpopopop]

I would agree with that as well. The fact that we routed most of the Iraqi army and got them out of Kuwait in 24 hours, probably didn't help in raising any alarms of caution. Most of us thought the Iraq invasion would over by dinner time the next night. And for the most part, it was pretty much over inside of 2 weeks. The problem was - nobody counted on sectarian violence and an insurgency breaking out in the aftermath of the invasion, but that's a whole other debate.

Actually most of the Arab/Persian/Pakistani population on GAF at the time accurately predicted that sectarian violence was going to break out.

 

[ToxicAdam]

I think it just shows that smart people can leave their critical thinking skills aside if the end result is seen as " a good cause". Which leaves the door open for people with less than honorable intentions to commit bad acts under the banner of this "good cause".


Before this guy, there was another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_Kamel_al-Majid

 

[slider]

Making the intelligence fit the policy. This is why people always caveat single source reporting as such.

 

[bigtroyjon]

Green Zone has been on the HBO channels 10 times a day this month, sounds like people are recommending that I watch it.

 

[Tarazet]

http://www.examiner.com/public-safe...wmd-program-existed-iraq-prior-to-us-invasion

Wonder if he lied about lying.

 

[wenis]

I bet someone has egg on their face now....hooo-boy.

 

[teacupcopter]

To be fair when 9/11 happened. USA was going to war even if they didn't have a reason. People where pissed as hell and they wanted and needed revenge to cope with the situation(even if it was misguided).

that's not being fair

 

[TheHeretic]

Making the intelligence fit the policy. This is why people always caveat single source reporting as such.

Multiple intelligence agencies reported that Saddam had WMDs, not just the CIA. In his interrogation he claimed he believed the staying power of his regime was based on such weapons, real or not, which explains why he was so coy with weapons inspectors when the UN was hammering him.

 

[GillianSeed79]

Weren't there a bunch of UN weapons inspectors who pretty much said there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction repeatedly during the run up to the war? The thing that pisses me off is that there was a Frontline episode after the first gulf war that in part took on the question of why we didn't just roll tanks into Baghdad after liberating Kuwait. Guys like Powell laid out pretty much exactly what would and did happen. I love how we also forgot how we encouraged the Shiite uprising against Sadam after the first gulf war and then did nothing when Sadam cracked down without impunity. Did we think they would forget we basically let them get slaughtered?

 

[mclaren777]

the march to war had less to do with this defector, and more to do with the cadre of neoconservative advisors and yes-men that Bush/Cheney had within earshot that pushed for transformational change in the Middle East.

the war was never really about WMDs. it was just sold to the public as that.

Apparently it worked.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=421628

 

[Wazzim]

Right, next time, listen to the UN inspectors you nuts.

 

[Dude Abides]

Apparently it worked.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=421628

What do the Egypt/Tunisian revolutions have to do with the Iraq war?

 

[Joel Was Right]

What do the Egypt/Tunisian revolutions have to do with the Iraq war?

Bush and Blair invented democracy in 2003. Now whenever a country in that region talks about it, we can thank President Bush and the invasion of Iraq. Now, some have pointed out that the US supported dictatorships like in Egypt..so how could they then be credited with overthrowing that government for a democratic one? It's a good question. But the answer is obvious. We were testing the Egyptian people

 

[Mael]

Actually most of the Arab/Persian/Pakistani population on GAF at the time accurately predicted that sectarian violence was going to break out.

Huh...some of us actually remember how Powell got laughed at for his 'evidence' presented at the UN you know...

 

[TheOrangeKid007]

you did not have to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to kill sone sadaam

Who was it that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people? I am trying to figure it out. I am not necesarrily disagreeing that a large number of innocoent people died as a result of the invasion but was it American soldiers opening up fire and laying waste to hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis? Or was it a because once the Armed Forces invaded Iraq that Iraqis also killed each other? Could you please elucidate?

 

[Jin]

you did not have to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to kill sone sadaam

The US didn't kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to get to Saddam.

Nice try.

 

[MWS Natural]

I bet someone has egg on their face now....hooo-boy.

Who cares? So many got rich as fuck from the invasion of Iraq it's ridiculous.

 

[nyong]

Who cares? So many got rich as fuck from the invasion of Iraq it's ridiculous.

Mostly China.

 

[scorcho]

Apparently it worked.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=421628

sarcasm? what we're seeing now is an organic process that, thankfully, has little US grandstanding and overt interference. it shares little with the Iraq war, or how neoconservatives wanted to force democracy through the barrel of a gun.