No Poll BS, Just Facts

FOR THOSE WHO MAY BE GETTING DISCOURAGED BY ALL THE NEGATIVE NEWS ABOUT IRAQ POSTED BY SOME MORONIC MASTURBATORS OF LIBERALISM ON THIS SITE, READ ON. THIS IS NOT BASED ON SOME LIBERAL FAGS POLL, JUST SIMPLE FACTS.

“Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1…”

… the first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty?
… over 60,000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens.
… nearly all of Iraq’s 400 courts are functioning.
… the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.
… on Monday, October 6 power generation hit 4,518 megawatts–exceeding the pre-war average.
… all 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools.
… by October 1, Coalition forces had rehabbed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than their target.
… teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries.
… all 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.
… doctors’ salaries are at least eight times what they were under Saddam.
… pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons.
… the Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccination doses to Iraq’s children.
… a Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq’s 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals. They now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
… we have restored over three-quarters of pre-war telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production.
… there are 4,900 full-service connections. We expect 50,000 by January first. …the wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns.
… 95 percent of all pre-war bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.
… Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.
… the central bank is fully independent.
… Iraq has one of the world’s most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.
… Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.
… satellite dishes are legal.
… foreign journalists aren’t on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for “minders” and other government spies.
… there is no Ministry of Information.
… there are more than 170 newspapers.
… you can buy satellite dishes on what seems like every street corner.
… foreign journalists and everyone else are free to come and go.
… a nation that had not one single element–legislative, judicial or executive-- of a representative government, does.
… in Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory councils. Baghdad’s first democratic transfer of power in 35 years happened when the city council elected its new chairman.
… today in Iraq chambers of commerce, business, school and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.
… 25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq’s history, run the day-to-day business of government.
… the Iraqi government regularly participates in international events. Since July the Iraqi government has been represented in over two dozen international meetings, including those of the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank and IMF and, today, the Islamic Conference Summit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today announced that it is reopening over 30 Iraqi embassies around the world.
… Shia religious festivals that were all but banned, aren’t.
… for the first time in 35 years, in Karbala thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.
… the Coalition has completed over 13,000 reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of (a) strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.
… Uday and Queasy are dead - and no longer feeding innocent Iraqis to his zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq’s soccer players for losing games…murdering critics.
… children aren’t imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.
… political opponents aren’t imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or are forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.
… millions of longsuffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.
… Saudis will hold municipal elections.
… Qatar is reforming education to give more choices to parents.
… Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms.
… the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first time to an Iranian
Š a Muslim woman who speaks out with courage for human rights, for democracy and for peace. .she has not faltered or failed.
… Saddam is gone, if not dead.
All because…IRAQ IS FREE.
NOT BAD FOR AN ADMINISTRATION:
WITH NO PLAN.
NO DIRECTION.
WAS GOING TO BE SLAUTERRED GOING INTO BAGDAD.
WAS ONLY IN THIS FOR THE OIL.

To be fair, we should give equal time to liberal type fact so here we go.

The Thanksgiving dinner that GW attended was catered by a subsidiary of Haliburton.

Nuff said.

I usually don’t read Lumpy’s bullshit so I didn’t realize that this had already been posted. Me bad conservative! :frowning:

Well lets see, people always make a lot of Halliburton getting no-bid contracts but there are many more that are going to benefit from the Iraq ataq. Hillary Rosen, a lobbyist for the Record Industry of America, is rewriting Iraq’s intellectual-property laws so Sony can chop off the hands of people who bootleg Madonna albums; so instead of fearing Saddam, they fear Sony. Grover Nordquist, a lobbyist for American Express & Microsoft, is rewriting Iraq’s tax laws, of course to benefit the Iraqi people & not foreign (American) corporations. Bob Zillick, US trade rep & lobbyist for Enron, is rewriting Iraq’s trade laws to turn Iraq into a free-trade zone, probably so those foreign (American) corporations can get their profits out of the country ASAP before they can be taxed. That’s from investigative reporter Greg Palast (BBC reporter) who got an internal State dept document leaked to him.

That turkey that Bush posed with over thanksgiving was a prop, ie made out of plastic. (according to uncontroversial mainstream sources like CBS, Wash Post, etc)
http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df12042003.html

The generalissimo Bremer has also allowed 100% foreign ownership (ie American corporations) of the country.

Now some misc stuff from Bill Blum, former employee of the State dept:
Can Iraq expect “liberation” and a markedly improved life after the Empire takes over? Let’s look at the results of the Empire’s recent onslaught and occupation of Afghanistan.

  1. warlords are active again
  2. opium cultivation is once again booming
  3. a man hand-picked by Washington is president; both the president and several of his ministers are actually Afghan-Americans
  4. countless homes and other buildings have been destroyed by US bombing
  5. thousands of innocent civilians have been killed as well as thousands of others engaged in combat who were only defending the country they lived in from a foreign invasion; not one of the many dead has been shown to have had any connection to the September 11 attack; most of the so-called “terrorists” at the training camps had come to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban in their civil war, a religious mission, none of Washington’s concern
  6. crime and violence are once again a danger in the cities’ neighborhoods, which had been made safer by the Taliban
  7. the country is occupied by foreign troops who often treat the population badly; US forces seize Afghans and take them away without explanation and keep them incommunicado indefinitely; some are sent to the 21st century’s Devils Island in Guantanamo Base, Cuba
    8 ) in Kabul, the number of children suffering from malnutrition is almost double what it was before the American invasion
  8. the quality of women’s lives has very slightly improved, but is still far below what women enjoyed under the government the United States overthrew in the 1980-1990s

What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?
by William Blum

Which is the more remarkable – that the United States can openly announce to the world its determination to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government in the absence of any attack or threat of attack from the intended target? Or that for an entire year the world has been striving to figure out what the superpower’s real intentions are?
There are of course those who accept at face value Washington’s stated motivations of “liberating” the people of Iraq from a dictatorship and bestowing upon them a full measure of democracy, freedom and other eternal joys fit for American schoolbooks. In light of a century of well-documented US foreign policy which reveals a virtually complete absence of such motivations, along with repeated opposite consequences, we can dispense with this attempt by Washington to win hearts and mindless; similarly with their attempt at humor by warning us that Iraq is an imminent military threat.
Presented here are some reflections about several of the causes that make the hearts of the imperial mafia beat faster in regard to Iraq, which may be helpful in arguing the anti-war point of view:

Expansion of the American Empire: adding more military bases and communications listening stations to the Pentagon’s portfolio, setting up a command post from which to better monitor, control and intimidate the rest of the Middle East.

Idealism: the imperial mafia fundamentalists remaking the world in America’s image, with free enterprise, belief in a political system straight out of an American high-school textbook, and Judeo-Christianity as core elements. They assume that US moral authority is as absolute and unchallengeable as its military power. Here is Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq): “If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Oil: to be in full control of Iraq’s vast reserves, with Saudi oil and Iranian oil waiting defenselessly next door; OPEC will be stripped of its independence from Washington and will no longer think about replacing the dollar with the Euro as its official currency, as Iraq has already done; oil-dependent Europe may think twice next time about challenging Washington’s policies; the emergence of the European Union as a competing superpower may be slowed down.

Globalization: Once relative security over the land, people and institutions has been established, the transnational corporations will march into Iraq ready to privatize everything at fire-sale prices, followed closely by the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization and the rest of the international financial extortionists.

Arms industry: As with each of America’s endless wars, military manufacturers will rake in their exorbitant profits, then deliver their generous political contributions, inspiring Washington leaders to yet further warfare, each war also being the opportunity to test new weapons and hand out contracts for the rebuilding of the country just demolished. As an added bonus, Pentagon officers have jobs waiting for them with the same companies when they retire

Israel: The men driving Bush to war include long-time militant supporters of Israel, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith, who, along with the rest of the powerful American-Israeli lobby, have advocated striking Iraq for years. Israel has been playing a key role in the American military buildup to the war. Besides getting rid of its arch enemy, Israel may have the opportunity after the war to carry out its final solution to the Palestinian question – transferring them to Jordan, (“liberated”) Iraq, and anywhere else that expanded US hegemony in the Middle East will allow. At the same time, Iraq’s abundant water could be diverted to relieve a parched Israel and an old Iraqi-to-Israel oil pipeline could be rejuvenated.

Written by William Blum, author of “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” and “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” – www.killinghope.org

Yeah, I was kinda thinkin’ “Deja Vu all over again”, A.R.!

You get an “A” for effort, though!

:slight_smile:

Wow MQ, there is just too much shit there to even know where to start except to say that the airheads that have that message get largely ignored for a reason I suppose.

I mean when you criticize the prez. for using a prop turkey at the front of things the rest of it really must be very serious…NOT!

“A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush’s stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.”

Not plastic, dumbass. Did you really think 600 soldiers are fed by having them stand in line and wait for someone to carve them individual slices of turkey?

Glad to hear the Bush Co. liberated Iraq so that teachers could earn more and schools would be built, children educated.

If only that could get done in the U.S.

Next - wage war on the 120 or so other countries that need help.

Deja Vu indeed

M.Q., I agree. You’ve won me over. The plastic turkey thing really convinced me to rethink my political affiliation. Could you recomend some books to read. Also, which country or countries have the best, at least in your opinion, approach to foreign policy. That is, the country or countries in a position to actually interact on the world stage.

Kuri, you argument sounds like because there is tyranny and mass slaughter in the world everywhere, it is not proper for the U.S. to pick and choose one area to interfere, keeping in mind:

(1) the military logistics of the operation, its relative feasibility and our effectiveness to minimize loss of life
(2) our national interests (political and economic)
(3) longterm historical effects of our interference
(4) basis of interfering set forth in punitive international law

Am I misunderstanding you?

There are those who would argue that recent history gave us a window of opportunity for change in Iraq and the future of the region that we did not have in the Congo, the mass slaughter in Algeria, or with slavery in the Sudan, or with Christian’s freedom to worship in Saudia Arabia. They may be wrong but it’s ridiculous to think we must intervene either everywhere or nowhere. This is foreign policy, not kindergarten.

Of course, whether invading Iraq was a circumspect decision is its own matter, as is when we did it and how.
But by the logic many on this board put forward, we interfered in Kosovo either too soon (before UN approval) or shouldn’t have taken any action at all. Also, Pres. Clinton’s operation Desert Fox against Iraq was as illegal as George Bush’s (actually more illegal, since Powell obtained an additional resolution), as were the No-Fly Zones we defended to protect the lives of the Kurdish and Shiite resistance to Saddam Hussein.

Everyone here knows Saddam was a monstrous leader, and that the Iraqi people are better off without him. That being said, the war was sold to the American people on the dual premises of Iraq possessing WMDs in violation of U.N. resolutions and of Iraq aiding al-Qaida, not on the evilness of Saddam to his own people.

Needless to say, there were no WMDs. When Hans Blix couldn’t find any the U.S. simply blamed him for the “failure”. When other nations requested that the U.S. search for weapons directly, we did for a couple of weeks, but the administration appeared to have a bloodlust for invasion. We refused to work with the U.N. or with the world community at large.

The administration also claimed that Saddam was aiding al-Qaida. This was an obvious falsehood, as these Islamist fundamentalists hated Saddam’s secular state. They hated his empowerment of women, who were much freer than they are in Saudi Arabia, our supposed ally (hell, Saddam even had one in a high-level position in his administration). They also hated his tolerance for non-Muslims. He permitted Christian churches (again, unlike Saudi Arabia) and even has a Christian deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz.

Bush decided he had to attack a soft target in the Middle East to show the world that we “meant business”. It didn’t matter if the attacked nation supported terrorism or not. It simply had to be weak and Arab, and what weaker target was there than a nation significantly disarmed by the U.N.? So, we launched an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation without the concurrence of the United Nations or the world community at large. Now, we find ourselves in a quagmire that grows worse by the day, at a price tag of greater than $100 billion. While we had the occasional “success”, these “successes” certainly pale in comparison to those predicted at the onset of the war.

So, in this quagmire, the administration decided they’d better have a justification for going to war, so they made the case that the war was justified by Saddam’s cruel leadership. One wonders when we’ll invade the 150 other nations with poor leadership.

mark…even if all that were true - what’s wrong with that?

i suppose if hitler were around today and didn’t invade any countries, you wouldn’t want to stop him? maybe i’m way off base here, but from what i hear, the way sadam killed innocents was worse than how hitler had jews killed.

Too bad the Taliban is making a come-back and the Al-Qaeda intelligence chatter is reaching pre 9-11 levels. We sure struck at the terrorists when we invaded Iraq didn’t we?(sarcasism) I hope and pray we have a safe Christmas and new year.

Shit, Morg, you gotta stop talking out your ass.

Bush decided he had to attack a soft target in the Middle East to show the world that we “meant business”. It didn’t matter if the attacked nation supported terrorism or not. It simply had to be weak and Arab, and what weaker target was there than a nation significantly disarmed by the U.N.?

Give me a fucking break. Soft target? Find a hard Arab target that would pose any sort of real threat to the US military and you get a cookie.

Anyone that thought we were going after terrorists just because we were kicking ass on Arabs is just a bit on the dim side.

It was about WMDs (here’s something on that http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/07/wirq107.xml ) and taking out Saddam. Yes there was a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq but it didn’t turn out to be our favorite kind. We took it out anyway.

Saddam is gone so that part got done. It would be far better if he was dead and hanging from a lamp post in Baghdad but he’s not there yet. WMDs have yet to be found. It’s a big country, WMDs can be pretty small for chemical or biological stuff so they could be buried in any number of places and there’s been a lot of digging and burying going on in the desert over the last few years. They found entire MIG jets under the sand. Why they hid them makes no sense since they prety well incapacitated them when they covered them with sand but there they were.

Patience, Grasshopper, we aren’t done yet.

what? does my breath stink or something?

The whole “war on terrorism” issue is misleading.

Several ranking military officer in Iraq have admitted that most attacks have come from ex-Baathists, not Al-Quaeda.

So Bush’s statements about fighting em there so we don’t have to hear ring damn hollow.

This administration has a dismal record of actually doing what it takes to prevent terrorism on these shores.

If the Bush Co. really is intent on stopping terrorists than why issue an executive order that removes protection from whistleblowers as it recently did?

A long time employee of the Dept. of Energy was fired after announcing that anti-terrorism tests he ran showed how unprepared and under funded they were in preventing a disaster.

Republican Senator Charles Grassley:
“Government agencies too often want to cover up their mistakes,” “and the temptation is even greater when bureaucracies can use a potential security issue as an excuse. At the same time, the information whistleblowers provide is all the more important when public safety and security is at stake.”

Budgets for those who actually could protect us have been stripped while provisions are put in place that protects those in the energy industry who benefit from unaccountability and from criticism that safety standards and preparedness are FAR below what they need to be.

Why is this?

Nevada Senator Richard Bryan said, “Bush is so close to the nuclear industry that when you turn off the lights he glows in the dark.”

The energy industry, huge contributors to Bush’s campaign (and to Dems. as well!) directs policy in DC, and several of it’s stars are administration members.

Avoids Roids
You’re so right, they are really accomplishing a lot in Iraq with our tax dollars. Not bad results for 200 billion!

Lets kick in another 100 billion next year, okay?

Same three liberal losers post to every iraq thread. I can’t think of anything more pathetic than arguing politics constantly on a weight lifting off topic forum.

Get a life.

HAVE YOU NO COMMON SENSE???

Seriously. Are you that dense. I am not being facetious. I honestly want to know. Perhaps these protections were removed for whistleblowers who report shit that they shouldnt be saying to the media …i.e. Our protection at XYZ sucks, lets report it to the media so they can broadcast is on Al Jezeera and give some camel jockeys the next blueprint for destruction. No one is saying that these things shouldnt be brought up internally and handled there. But it pisses me off when people go giving ideas to people who would grab at any chance they get to kill your parents and fuck your sister. I am all for protecting ourselves as much as humanly possible but that doesnt mean its always possible. In the meantime people shouldnt be broadcasting our weakest link 60 Minutes. And that quote from that senator was brilliant, I imagine he has no political motives for saying that, none at all.

Oh silly me, yes he does, he is a senator from Nevada and Bush OK a decades long government plan to store nuclear waste in the middle of Nowhere, NV. I am sure he doesnt have any political motives for taking potshots about Bush.

No go back to stroking off to pictures of Howard Dean or Ralph Nader or go have fun at your IMF protest but stop posting things that take the intellect of a 2 year old.

Kuri, your criticism of the lack of budget transparency in the energy industry is just. In fact, if you saw this week’s NOW with Bill Moyers (available online on Monday), you’ll see an even worse state of affairs with Pentagon spending. It’s incredible. There is every reason to focus on reform in these areas in a time when terrorism can be wheeled out as a military threat to justify government spending in any number of directions.

But this obscures Bush’s case for Iraq, and how it relates to terrorism. Bush said not to wait until the threat was imminent. He told the congress to act now to prevent a rogue state–one of the three in his “axis of evil”–from exchanging weapons with a terrorist organization in the future.

As of now we have not found the WMDs Saddam Hussein’s records DECLARED UNACCOUNTED FOR. Was the intelligence faulty? It seems so, yes. Was there wishful thinking in relying on Chalabi and his associated informers? Probably yes. Was the nuclear claim inflated? There should be an investigation and if so, wrongdoing or incompetence must be answered.

But amazingly, congress knew about the quality of the intelligence the administration presented and voted Bush authority to invade anyway. Presumbably, the position of most of the Democrats was, WE AGREE THAT WE SHOULD KNOCK OUT A STATE WHICH MAY ASSIST A TERRORIST THREAT IN THE FUTURE, but don’t push to do so without international consensus.

Of course, Bush’s crap diplomacy and focus on suspected WMDs instead of material breach, set us off on the wrong course initially so Powell couldn’t get that that international consensus. But to not back down from the moral position we laid out about being on the side of Iraqi people (after having previously betrayed their resistance efforts), and to undo having elevated a megalomaniacal murderer into a pan-Arabic hero, we invaded without going for another resolution.

And I applaud him for this decision, while excoriating the administration’s blunders which led to him having to make the decision. If we had backed down on liberating Iraq because of the world consensus, our national character would have had to assume responsibility for the continuing rule of Saddam Hussein.