War in Iraq, is there a point?

Yes, of course. But I am not interested in ad hominem attacks on my character or intelligence, if you get my drift. This is the first time I've posted on this forum. I was asked to drop in here by a friend who frequents this site. She thought I could add to the discussion about why we're in Iraq.It's not very complicated in my estimation. We are under attack by Islamic fundamentalists who have decided to spread their brand of fanatical "religion" to the far corners of the globe. They want to impose their religion on all peoples throughout the world. Any & all of us who oppose them are to be killed. We, the American people, choose to defend ourselves & our way of life.That is what this war is about.

Nation building never works??????? Tell that to modern day Japan & Germany.And any campaign statements made by President Bush regarding nation building pertained to Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, etc. The war against terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 is an entirely different matter and you darn well know it.

Oh please!

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Yes, of course. But I am not interested in ad hominem attacks on my character or intelligence, if you get my drift. This is the first time I've posted on this forum. I was asked to drop in here by a friend who frequents this site. She thought I could add to the discussion about why we're in Iraq.

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Well, your opinions are all well and good, but so what?If you don't have any facts or statistics or anything like that to support your opinion, nobody else is compelled to believe you or agree.I want to understand upon what basis of fact you have come to your conclusion, as they might be facts that I am not currently aware of and might affect my own opinion.

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It's not very complicated in my estimation. We are under attack by Islamic fundamentalists who have decided to spread their brand of fanatical "religion" to the far corners of the globe.

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Yes.But what does that have to do with Iraq?Iraq, while certainly a bad egg of a state, was not responsible for 9/11.Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden was.We should have captured or killed his sorry ass a long time ago, but instead we rushed to attack... Iraq?I distinctly remember thinking, "Wha? Why is the president turning away from the effort to capture that bastard Bin Laden?"

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They want to impose their religion on all peoples throughout the world. Any & all of us who oppose them are to be killed. We, the American people, choose to defend ourselves & our way of life.

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Since Iraq was a secular dictatorship, Hussein supressed radical Islam while he was in power. It is only now that Hussein is gone that radical Islam has been able to gain a foothold in Iraq.The war brought more radical Islam to Iraq than it had had in decades.

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Oh please!

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Unresponsive.Please answer the questions.

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Nation building never works??????? Tell that to modern day Japan & Germany.

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No, nation building of the sort going on in Iraq never has worked, not the first time 100 years ago when the British tried it, not now.Japan and Germany both were modern, first world countries with an educated populace, both of which surrendered to us and welcomed us into their countries to help rebuild them. There was no strong resistance movement, there was no recent, longstanding history of radical religious governments in the region.That is not the case with Iraq. Not even close.

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And any campaign statements made by President Bush regarding nation building pertained to Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, etc.

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Oh really?What makes you say that?Please be specific. A Feb 8 2004 interview on Meet the Press

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The war against terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 is an entirely different matter and you darn well know it.

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Maybe, but you still haven't explained how Iraq was such a huge terrorist threat to the US before we invaded, or that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 08-22-2005 07:04 PM

This was printed in the Wall Street Journal over a year ago. I could post literally dozens of articles like this from numerous websites, sir. Are you willing to accept this as evidence?PRINT WINDOW CLOSE WINDOWREVIEW & OUTLOOKSaddam's Files
New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:01 a.m.One thing we've learned about Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator was a diligent record keeper. Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.
We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix. But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents. But our sources tell us there is no questioning the authenticity of the three Fedayeen rosters. The chain of control is impeccable. The documents were captured by the U.S. military and have been in U.S. hands ever since.
As others have reported, at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded.That's not the only connection between Shakir and al Qaeda. The Iraqi next turned up in Qatar, where he was arrested on September 17, 2001, six days after the attacks in the U.S. A search of his pockets and apartment uncovered such information as the phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers' safe houses and contacts. Also found was information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific.After a brief detention, our friends the Qataris inexplicably released Shakir, and on October 21 he flew to Amman, Jordan. The Jordanians promptly arrested him, but under pressure from the Iraqis (and Amnesty International, which questioned his detention) and with the acquiescence of the CIA, they let him go after three months. He was last seen heading home to Baghdad.One of the mysteries of postwar Iraq is why the Bush Administration and our $40-billion-a-year intelligence services haven't devoted more resources to probing the links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. In his new book, "The Connection," Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard puts together all of the many strands of intriguing evidence that the two did do business together. There's no single "smoking gun," but there sure is a lot of smoke.
The reason to care goes beyond the prewar justification for toppling Saddam and relates directly to our current security. U.S. officials believe that American civilian Nicholas Berg was beheaded in Iraq recently by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, who is closely linked to al Qaeda and was given high-level medical treatment and sanctuary by Saddam's government. The Baathists killing U.S. soldiers are clearly working with al Qaeda now; Saddam's files might show us how they linked up in the first place.Copyright 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PRINT WINDOW CLOSE WINDOW

Because Saddam Hussein hated the USA, possessed the technology for developing WMD, if not the actual weapons themselves (although we've not yet found them), & wanted to bring us down. He wasn't beneath jumping into bed with terrorists to do it, and we've uncovered all kinds of evidence that he did just that. You don't want to accept that or believe that, any no amount of evidence I post here will convince you otherwise, so why should I bother arguing th point further with you? Perhaps we should just disagree on this point & move on to anouther issue.

I did post an article from the WSJ.

What would you call the elections they held in Iraq, a failure? How about the Constitution they're drafting, is that another failure? It is the height of ignorance to call these two FACTS, these two monumental achievements, failures. They are huge successes in NATION BUILDING, & whether it works or not remains to be seen. You are a very negative person to call it a failure before the Iraqi people have even had a chance to make their new found freedom & democracy a chance to work. They deserve that chance & I thank God you do not have the power to take that chance away from them. You need to read some books about the power of positive thinking. "Whether you think you can accomplish something or you think you can't, you're right either way.-Henry Ford"

If this is your standard of evidence, then you must believe that the US government is in cahoots with Al Qaida, as there have been far more contacts between the US and Al Qaida than Iraq and Al Qaida.Why haven't we captured Osama Bin Laden?This is interesting, however.

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It is possible that the Ahmed Hikmat Shakir listed on the Fedayeen rosters is a different man from the Iraqi of the same name with the proven al Qaeda connections. His identity awaits confirmation by al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody or perhaps by other captured documents.

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How did this lead turn out?

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Because Saddam Hussein hated the USA, possessed the technology for developing WMD, if not the actual weapons themselves (although we've not yet found them), & wanted to bring us down.

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That could be said of at least a dozen countries these days, and they have even more brutal dictators than Hussein.Should we invade and kill them all, just for having aspirations?

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He wasn't beneath jumping into bed with terrorists to do it,

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Neither have we been beneath jumping in bed with Hussein when it suited our ends in Iran, or jumping into bed with Bin Laden and the Taliban when it suited our ends in Afghanistan.We even brought them to the US to train them at Terrorist Camp.

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and we've uncovered all kinds of evidence that he did just that.

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Like what.Please be specific.And no more OP-ED pages, please.

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You don't want to accept that or believe that, any no amount of evidence I post here will convince you otherwise, so why should I bother arguing th point further with you? Perhaps we should just disagree on this point & move on to anouther issue.

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So, you are psycic, too? You have a crystal ball which lets you know what I will or wont accept of believe?If you don't provide the evidence, I have no reason to change my opinion. I can only consider the evidence if you provide it, and telling me that I won't accept it even if I had it is a dodge.Try me.

Because he's a crafty diabolical terrorist. Give the devil his ude for heaven's sake, he did pull off the attacks on 9/11, after all. He no longer has the freedom of movement he once had, he cannot go anywhere without being afraid of being captured. It's only a matter of time. I have close friends in the government responsible for thwarting terrorist attacks & believe me when I tell you, they're on the job. The American people would be astonished at the number of terrorist attacks that had been uncovered & stopped since 9/11/2001. Our government is protecting us as well as they can, & there's probably going to be another attack, but they have managed to stop a lot of them so far. Who cares whether we've captured bin Laden or not? He's just one piece of the puzzle, a very large piece, but not the whole piece by a any means.

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What would you call the elections they held in Iraq, a failure?

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We shall see in five or ten years if they don't elect a hardline Islamic dictator for life, similar to what happened in Iran.

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How about the Constitution they're drafting, is that another failure?

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So far, there is bad news for women wanting better rights in the Iraq constitution, and it also seems pretty likely that sharia is going to be written into the contitution.In other words, Iraq is likely going to be another oppressive conservative Islamic state, quite likely sympathetic to Hamas and to anti-Western terrorists.Certainly I hope that everything turns out peachy but I have very low hopes.

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It is the height of ignorance to call these two FACTS, these two monumental achievements, failures.

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They can only be considered successes if they last.Time will tell.

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They are huge successes in NATION BUILDING, & whether it works or not remains to be seen.

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Right.That nation building that Bush said he was against.

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You are a very negative person to call it a failure before the Iraqi people have even had a chance to make their new found freedom & democracy a chance to work.

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It is a doomed process with very little chance of success, with a long history of similar failed efforts and an US administration that seems determined to carry with what they are doing on despite massive evidence that they should change tactics.So far, almost every major prediction I have made regarding this war has come to pass, and while I hope this next one is wrong, I don't think it will be.

Hold on, wasn't Iraq a secular state, not a fundamentalist Islamic state like Saudi Arabia?The radical Islamic element in Iraq was suppressed by Saddam Hussein, which is why we supported, trained, and supplied him with WMD back when he was at war with Iran, which WAS an actual fundamentalist Islamic state.Wasn't it the Taliban, Osama Bin Ladin from Saudi Arabia, all of the Saudi hijackers, and Al Qaida, in Afghanistan, that hurt us?