No, CG, actually it was religious radicals who more or less ruined it. You know, I heard on the internet that the sun is going to burn out in a few billion years. I suppose you think that is Bush's fault too...

It is indeed sad that the Bush administration toppled the secular government of Saddam Hussein and turned Iraq into an Islamic republic governed by Shariah, thereby legalizing honor killings there.

It is also indeed sad that Bush, who becomes nearly orgasmic in his praise of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq which has resulted in over 100,000 Muslim civilian deaths there, wants to exploit the murders of Muslim women to support the invasion and occupation.

Wow, speaking of orgasmic! However, it is good to see just how successful the Surge has been. Last year at this time the lefties were foaming at the mouth about the 600,000 Iraqi deaths that had taken place. NOW, at least, we're down to 100,000. I'd call that progress.

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George Bush's America: Terror attack free since 9/11

No. It wasn't necessarily Bush's fault. But Iraq under Hussein was a very secular nation. If one takes a step back in time, that time when we, the United States, supported him, you'd realize that the Iraqi's were a very educated peoples. Men and women alike. Back then, and I've mentioned it before, people lived the good life in Iraq as long as they weren't suspected of speaking out against their government.

Were people massacred under Hussein? Absolutely. Why should that concern us though? A lot of people have been killed under regimes just as brutal as Hussein's... Regime's that we as the United States have supported.

Big deal, right? It wasn't religious radicals that destroyed Iraq. It was us. Lawmage, you know damn well after the first Iraq war we had the opportunity to overthrow Hussein. Not only did we have the opportunity, we actually gave our word to the Kurds that we would support them, amongst others, in their attempt to overthrow Saddam.

What did we do? Not only did we not support them, not only did we not keep our promise to them, we went so far as to prevent them access to the weapons we confiscated in Hussein.

You can blame the longest war the US has ever been involved in on the religious nut jobs in the country but we really have no one but ourselves to blame for this mess.

And yes, it's still a mess. And this mess falls solely at our president's feet.

That is stunning bullshit. You keep spouting off on how successful this surge has been. Fine. It drove down violence in the country. Well,it more pushed the violence outside the major urban areas to the more rural places but whatever, you're right, the surge sorta worked. Now I want you to admit that had your beloved president followed the Pentagon's advice, the advice that our generals gave him in which they told him that they needed far more troops than what Rumsfeld was willing to give... Had our president originally followed their advice we may have been out of this country by now.

Ray, I want you to admit the president was wrong. That's all. Admit that had he listened to his military planners this whole mess may have been over a few years ago. It absolutely kills me that you sit there and chuckle to yourself about how this increase in a troop presence has decreased violence in the country when had Bush listened to his war planners this whole drawn out war could have been prevented. .

Maybe if we went to war with the amount of troops we really needed we'd have half the body count right now, not that I think you're all that concerned about a body count on either side but whatever. At least these American hating American's make an outright stink out of this war. If it was up to your republican ilk, they'd be sitting in their smokey back rooms talking amongst themselves about how piss poorly this war has been run.

CG says 100,000 Muslim civilian deaths, and you accuse her of saying 100,000 Iraqi deaths.

Do you think we can't read? Well, yes, probably, neo-cons do think the rest of us are pretty damn stupid, and deserving of the cynical treatment we're getting from "George Bush's America--truth free since 2001"

I'm sorry. You obviously missed the point of my sarcasm. I merely wanted to remind people that it was members of the Blame America First crowd, much like youself, who were shrieking about how 600,000 thousand Iraqis had been killed and ALL because the U.S. invaded Iraq. So now the figure, for the moment, comes down to 100,000 and I wouldn't bet the farm on that number being any too accurate. Remember, it's being projected by a liberal and we all know how liberals depend upon facts, as opposed to emotion, to get their points across. (P.S. Stone. That last line was some more of that sarcasm I mentioned earlier)



My, my, my. That's quite impressive. So you think maybe Chocolate didn't mean "Iraqis" but was including, oh say Muslims in Indonesia, too, huh? Well let's just look at what she said:


Do you supposed it might be possible to infer from Chocolategeniis combination of the words "Iraq" and "there" to mean she was talking about deaths IN Iraq? And furthermore, would it be too far fetched to conclude that the vast majority of those deaths (of civilians, mind you, that's what she said, "civilians") might be comprised of Iraqis, even though she used the term "Muslims?" Hmmm?


Yeah. Could make you wonder where in the world anyone would get that idea.

It matters because Hussein's leadership of Iraq was deemed a threat to the stability of the region. While the United States doesn't personally recieve a large share of oil from the middle east, Europe on the other hand does. Now if an event were to occur (such as a war or revolution) in the region that would cause a severe number of oil exports to drop off the market this would cause severe world wide recessions as seen in the 70's or even (depending on the volume lost) world wide depression because of the dynamic trading relationship other nations, including our own, share with Europe. In a world economy that is heavily dependant on oil instability in the middle east that affects oil exports hurts everyone.

Wether or not the Bush cabinet really thought that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or, (and this is what I think) they saw an increasingly destabilizing government with Hussein losing control of a country that was merely a gateway between two natural enemies (shia and sunni) who together were responsible for almost 40% of the region's oil exports (if not more) we'll never know. But what I do know is that our presence in the middle east does come with some benefits.

As Iran's nuclear program develops conflict between Israel and Iran seems almost eminent and our presence in Iraq not only puts pressure on Iran, it causes the Israelis to look to us for an ok before they fly over Iraqi air space to bomb Iran. I may be wrong, but I think the Israelis would burn this world before they let another nation or military force try to erase them from both history and the future again and we may very well be the only thing between the two nations at this point.

I think in general that our foreign policy towards the middle east needs to focus around the primary goal of maintaining stability in the region. This is something that can both benefit the local peoples and the world economy at the same time. Should we be maintaining this stability by force, in my opinion no. But at this point there's no do-overs and we're in Iraq and should help the locals redevelop their government and nation before we leave. We should also be promoting stability by stimulating economic growth in the region.

The middle east suffers from one of the worst unemployment rates in the world. Employment was also considerably worse for yong people than older people with unemployment rates being eight to ten times higher for 15-24 year olds compared to 25-34 year olds. The MENA region has the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, at 25.6% compared to the global average of 7.4%. The youth labor participation ratio is somewhere near 29.7% compared to the global average of 47.3%. With jobless youth it's no wonder they're so easily swayed by terrorists and fundamentalists alike.

Basically with such low employment rates, as a region they fail to compete with the rest of the world, which is why they're falling behind economically in a world economy. If we want to see improvement in this region of any kind it's going to have to start with their economy. It's the heart of every great nation and all things flow from it.

At the time of the Iraq invasion, our focus should have been Afghanistan. Once bin Laden was found, the Taliban routed, and stability restored, or at least deals made with warlords, we could have focused on Iraq if we needed to.

There are many reports now from people who were there that the invasion of Iraq was on Bush's agenda even before the 9/11 attacks. This is one of the reasons why many people believe (erroneously in my opinion) that the US in some way caused the WTC attacks to happen.

When you get reports like the current one by Seymour Hirsch that plans were discussed by Dick Cheney and others to dress Navy Seals in Iranian drag, put them on speedboats, and fire at our Naval forces, thus providing an excuse for the invasion of Iran, you can see how people would think this way.

These plans were abandoned not because they were so evil, but because the planners didn't want Americans shooting Americans, which I think is rather sporting of them.

As far as countries whose choice of capital punishment is stoning, I suggest that when the US takes advice from other countries about our own system of execution, we will be in a position to dole out advice to other countries on theirs.

Seymour Hersch is the "Chris Matthews" of the print world, with the exception that Matthews probably hews closer to facts.