No, I said your statement prejudiced your thesis.
Oh OK, I understand you now. (Still disagree.)
Your original statement made it sound like you equated the military with Walmart, as if to say it's something people do if they can't do anything else.
For many, it is. Many recruits join because their options are quite limited.
Hehehe, I love it that the poster compared Iraq II and WWII, and then argued with me, because I compared Iraq II and WWII.
Let's look at what you actually wrote.
Uhm, last time I looked, we're still occupying territory in both Japan and Germany.
No, we're not still "occupying" Japan and Germany. It's foolish to compare the peaceful presence of US troops in those two countries to the counterinsurgency war we're fighting in Iraq.
It ain't a Cheneylie that Saddam was paying $25,000--or offering to--to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
So, US troops had to die to solve Israel's problem? Interesting.
It ain't a Cheneylie that he did worse genocide than Milosevic.
Let's see, that would have been during 1980s when Rumsfeld was meeting with him, Reagan's state department was taking Iraq OFF the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, the intelligence agencies were sharing classified intel with Saddam, the West was supplying Baghdad with military hardware and other support to keep his violence rolling EVEN AS he was gassing Kurds and Iranians. Consistent with the pattern throughout the Iran-Iraq war and after, the use of these internationally outlawed weapons was not considered important enough by Rumsfeld and his political superiors to halt Washington's blossoming love affair with Hussein.
Boy oh boy, we in the West really have the moral highground here, don't we, Art. Yeah, we were really concerned about Saddam's terrible human rights record. All that terrible torture and executions that took place at Saddam's notorious prison Abu Ghraib. Glad we went in there and stopped all that violence. Excellent work.
It ain't a Cheneylie that the Washington Establishment--both parties' leadership--kept talking about Saddam's
essentially NONEXISTENT after 1991
WMDs and how they should be taken out.
The US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas published it in the February 23, 1992, Los Angeles Times. Headlined, "Bush secret effort helped Iraq build its war machine", the article reported that "classified documents obtained by the LA Times show ... a long-secret pattern of personal efforts by [George Bush senior]--both as president and vice president--to support and placate the Iraqi dictator."
See Mark Phythian's 1997 book
Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine (Northeastern University Press).
If the Ba'athists all disappeared and Al Qaeda disappeared from the face of the planet, the US would quickly go out in search of new enemies. WHo knows? Might even be some country with which we have currently have friendly relations.
And the neocon amen corner in this coiuntry will close ranks, forget history, pretend that cynical men in D.C. are idealists oh-so-concerned about human rights and democracy
Repeat after me: "Eurasia is the enemy. Eurasia has always been the enemy."
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The broad mass of the nation ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. Adolf Hitler, in his 1925 book Mein Kampf.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Göring during the Nuremberg Trials.
