and thats why I said its a weak country in the first place So your main reason is that going to war was to get Saddam right? He had an interview with Tony Benn on CBC and he said that he's willing to Negotiate. So why go to war??!! Those poeple were a group that are like %30 of Iraq called "shiah" (notice the red flags they were carrying) and they don't represend Iraq.
Once again, valid points but since you claim I am sourceless, I will simply reply with what I believe to be existing knowledge that others already know. To really get an idea of who's killing who, all you need to turn to is Fox News. Loyalists of saddam hussein are carrying out their own acts of terrorism via carbombs and killings of civilians who attempt to assist our armed forces. There was ONE reported american civilian casualty that I can remember and that was when a car would not stop heading towards an american base in Iraq after being ordered to stop/turn around SEVERAL times. When you give a big "#### you" to a bunch of soldiers who are nervous of getting attacked, bad things are going to happen. They were under stressful conditions and acted on the only thing that came to their minds. Alright, I was a bit wrong to make it seem like EVERY anti-bush person is full of ####, but I'm glad you can see some places actually bullshit americans into hating George Bush and the government. I will admit that there are quite a couple of intelligent political analysts and some of them do have very valid points, and those are the types I agree with. Others that only seem to look at the ####ups america supposedly does, are the ones that I believe to be the bullsh*tters. While lots of people follow what Michael Moore says, I honestly cannot stand the guy. It's a matter of what you want to believe, hence why I retracted the brainwashed comment. Yes that is in a sense ignorant of us to do so, but you're criticizing america for a mistake we made over 50 years ago. One that we have been known to regret at times during our eventful history. Yes but something had to spark the government's interest for them to want to wage war against Iraq without the UN's support. Keep that thought in mind, while we f*cked up..perhaps the intelligence was so believable that we never thought it could have been false. If Bush really thought the environment could go to hell he wouldn't have agreed on 'emissions testing' to ensure those sh*tty SUVs and other cars dont leak hazardous gases into our ecosystem. While it might seem that we are pulling out of programs, we are making new ones at the same time. Then why is bush planning a very ambitious mission to have men on mars within the next 30 years? This to to find possible resources that we can use to broaden our technology as well as to build the knowledge of the children of tommorow. If you ask me, Bush had the future in mind when he made that decision. No other president has launched such an ambitious plan for space exploration. Keep in mind we used shuttles for over 30 years, only Bush has pushed for a new, safer and more technologically advanced way to get into space. We have gone without UN support many times before this. Everyone focuses on Bush doing this although this wasn't even the first time we made a decision without UN support. And as much as I respect your debates..the last sentence was a bit ignorant, especially since you say I need PROOF when you have no proof we are in it just for oil. You can back it up with claims that your favorite activists have said but you have no solid proof america did the war only for oil. -- I believe I may have covered everything Mark said in a different way but I will address one very important part of his post in which he stated: I'm sure although they have not made any public statement to support this belief, that America is not ignoring North Korea. Bush has already said in the past that the war on terror would not be quick, and could go on for a long time. I strongly believe that rather then go all gung-ho and attack every threat in sight, America is carefully taking care of one threat before they move on to another. Broke as we may be, I can honestly see a decision to take care of North Korea within the near future...the only way to really consider why america hasnt gone after North Korea yet is because perhaps from the intelligence they have, a threat is not that large yet. This is the only thing I cannot answer, as I myself cannot wait until the situation over there is resolved so we can have that threat off our backs. America isn't liable to launch another war on the heels of the war in Iraq. Wars not only require money, they require preparation. It's clear that N. Korea could give a #### about peace talks so yes, I do see another war within the next 3-5 years. We have no choice, unless we can successfully assasinate thier leader through some brilliant espionage. Let's just hope that when that time comes, this doesn't turn out to be the big one. -- Man I'm getting tired, I may have to handle future replies against mine later on.
Just because Iraqi people are fighting back doesn't make them loyal to Saddam. They are fighting against an invasion. Because he's a greedy ###### that wants more land for americans to live in.
You didn't post much so I can do one last post then I'm going to bed. We in no way invaded Iraq, our men are being killed by anti-americans more then we are actually causing harm to civilians, which is little to none. Secondly, if I remember right..Bush encouraged other countries to help in the Mars program. If he was really greedy he would of had america do it by themselves. But I'm too tired to debate, I'll handle the rest tommorrow. Thanks for the smart discussion ya'll.
Well argued. I really can't let that one slide. Do you realize who fox news is owned by? None other than a relative of Bush. It is one of the most biased, conservative stations on the air. Of course they're going to show those type of things, they want the entire populace to be conservative. By far the most effective, unbiased source of news is NPR. What intelligence? I assume your referring to the intelligence that Bush made up. CIA told Bush way before the war that there was no intelligence newer than 10 years that suggested Iraq had any resembling a WoMD. Or perhaps it's the intelligence that Saudi Arabia (I believe this is correct, I may be remembering wrong) gave weapons to Iraq, which was proven completely false and Bush used it in a speech anyways. (All of this comes from a report PBS did). The emissions testing that Bush has put into effect are well below the standars of the agreements that we have dropped out of. Bottom line, Bush couldn't care less about the environment. He even said in a speech that he doesn't believe in Global Warming... Note the state he was governor in, has some of the worst polution out of any state. I'm unaware of any such instances, I would really like to see some (honestly), I would be interested. Either way though, not only did we go against the U.N. we made a preemptive strike against a country that was willing to negotiate. This has never been done by the U.S. before, and its a sad thing to see that its been done now. That is a good point. However, Bush has done so much to weaken the environment ie. future and lifespan of our country, not to mention wiping out tons of Social Security, cutting education funds for his own 'No Billionare, oops I mean Child left Behind Act', and further weakened our healthcare. The future for America is looking grim, and it affects the whole world. While its good that we're looking at other planets, we also have to consider the planet we live on. Proof that we are in it for oil: WoMD - if we were concerned about them we wouldn't have gone into Iraq. No intelligence suggested they had any, and there are plenty of other countries that do have them. Liberate Iraqi People: not in the slightest. We didn't even help the Jews in WWII, we haven't gotten that much more benevolent since then (quite the opposite in my opinion). There's gotta be something in it for us, hence oil. Get Saddam Out: This is indeed a side goal, but once again, no proof Saddam was a threat. Iraq had no intercontinental missiles that could reach us, that was known last spring, according to NPR, and now no weapons. Plus he was willing to negotiate. While Saddam is a horrible person, a preemptive strike was not the solution to get him out for the costs encountered, and is simply now a reason that many give as an excuse for the war. Really there aren't many more reasons for the war other than oil. Repeated a lot of stuff to state my point, once again comes down to what you believe in. Sorry if I came across a bit harsh in my last post. Easy to get fired up talking about politics . This is a great debate though. This is my last post for the night, I'll check again, and make some replys if there's stuff to reply to tomorrow.
After reading all the posts in here over again, I have come to one (or two) conclusion(s): George Bush has ruined the United States' credibility as a peace-keeping nation and has essentially made the US look like cowards. He has made the US look like nothing more than a money-hungry nation. If he truly wanted to go after his so-called "Axis of Evil," he would've went after North Korea first to take the most powerful of the "Axis" out first. But he didn't. Why? Because the US is afraid. That's about all I'm going to say.
Hell yea, I'm afraid. I dont want to glow, much less be a glowing dead body. [/b][/quote] Glowing would be cool. Except I wouldn't be able to sleep very good.
But then there are news sources out there enticing people to be liberals . It's all a matter of who you'd like to be, and personally I don't want to be a liberal, so I choose to follow Fox News and CNN and etc. If Bush really did ever make up information (which I still don't believe) it was for a reason, to get Saddam Hussein. I doubt he'd purposely make up a whole story just to get oil. If he wanted that oil so bad he could simply talk to Saudi Arabia with a deal to get even more oil from them, which in turn would be a lot cheaper then a war. Which will hurt him in the next election when it comes time for a new president to be decided. People who want to live in a safe world in 20 years will turn their faces away from Bush. However, the favorite "John Kerry" isn't so much of a good guy either, considering he was caught spreading lies about Bush over the internet and is planning to increase our military considerably. (Aka, sending a greater amount of men to be killed in each war). These were more back in my father's time, but since I cannot think of any off the top of my head I will get back to you on this after researching it. You are right about the attacking a country without negotiation though, Bush ruined some of our credibility and I will address that when I quote parts from Will's post. Absolutely. And that's why I hope something is done about this incredible deficit we are in right now. That's probably half the reason Bush has cut many things...we're so far in debt that he's trying to save money. In terms of WMD's it would have essentially been smarter to go after North Korea but perhaps we DID go after the weaker country because we weren't ready to go after N. Korea. So I do agree with Will and everyone on that part. We did help the Iraqi's, although some of them hate our guts its only a mere 20% of the population, and most of them were Saddam Hussein supporters. There is a noticably bigger amount of people who are really excited about the new government and are even wanting to nominate, peaceful and powerful people in their community to rebuild a better Iraq. This was in a special on a channel like PBS, WHYY (lol Why?) or something along the lines of that. The american haters claim to be in a "Army Of God" while the american supporters, are eager to rebuild a stronger and more peaceful Iraq. We screwed up in making attacks before invading, because it made us have major backlash from some of the media across the world. I do agree that we should have ran in first rather then attack by air, but that's all a part of winning against the enemy. Weaken their reinforcements, then charge. As for Will? Yes we are scared. We aren't prepared enough to go into North Korea yet, and we wont go in until we know we can.
Most certainly there are. However, there are news sources which are less biased, ie. NPR & PBS. Quoting what comes off of fox news is rarely unbiased, and can even be completely untrue. There are biases on both sides, however it is easily proven that there is far more conservative bias in the mainstream than liberal (see Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them). Fox news is basically the leading conservative network, and is therefore not very reliable. I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of Kerry. I much prefer Dean or Clark over Kerry. But in my mind, anybody is better than Bush, more or less. More military spending also doesn't necessarily equate to more soldiers being sent to Iraq. It is probably being done to make up for the massive military spending cuts Bush has put in place such as: no health care for reservists, less pay etc. Understood, and it's almost a moot point to complain about this anymore, since its already done, but my problem isn't with the deficit itself. It's the with where the deficit came from, mostly from the tax cuts and the war. Since I don't support the war, and the tax cuts benefited the wealthy elite, this deficit isn't too pleasing to me. The fact is, Bush took a multi-trillion dollar surplus and turned it into the worst deficit ever, lost 2 million jobs, and sent our economy into a downward spiral. I can't say there's a way out of the deficit without cutting spending to these programs, I'm don't understand national economy well enough to know where to start, but it sure isn't pleasing to see so many valuable programs being cut. I have trouble believing that only 20% of the population is against us. Is there a source for that? Also the belief that they are Saddam Hussein supporters is a little unbelievable also, not too many people liked Saddam Hussein, the people that dislike his way outnumber them. Many of the people doing the suicide bombings and such are likely also those who have lost their entire families due to bombs, or lack of medical/food/power supply due to the bombs. I don't just think we should have invaded instead of bombing. Negotiations were still an option. We closed that option and decided to preemtively go to war instead, turning our backs on most of the the other major (and minor) countries of the world. That's the main problem. At least we're finding some common ground now
Hence why I love PBS. Their reports from beyond enemy lines are the most true and informative out of any news station out there. I vote for Clark too. Besides, he doesn't think Outkast broke up..he thinks they simply went on to do solo projects. (I'm not kidding). Yes the best way to handle this is just to say that we really f*cked up on the whole budget. We spent too much too soon and now we're suffering because of it. I got the 20% thing from WHYY, my dad was watching it and he told me what I missed while I was too busy debating. I do agree that by bombing we made many people bitter, and I can even agree that we are getting common ground because some of the bombers could very well be people who just...never really liked America and hate them even more now.
That, and there's no need to go after Korea. I wouldn't exactly call relations between the US and NK peaceful, but they're not violent either. North Korea seems to be one of those countries that has nukes, likes having them, and won't stop making them, but, as long as no one pisses them off, they won't use the nukes. Much like Iraq would be if they had the WMDs to begin with. So if Bush completley ignores the fact that NK has nukes, we're fine. It's just if Bush starts attacking them, they wont be afraid to use the nukes
I'm not a US citizen either, but I don't support the war in any way. The present government is extremely f##ked up and I doubt things will change unless the next election yields a different president (hopefully, John Kerry). Iraq obviously had no weapons of mass destruction because otherwise, Bush would never have gone to war with them. With WMDs in hand, Saddam could easily have nuked America in one minute flat and I don't think the US would risk that. That's why they're trying to negotiate with North Korea instead of resorting to military action. And I think what Will said is right. The US was scared to take on North Korea because THEY were the ones with the real WMDs. Now reverse the psychology and what do you get? The US weren't afraid to invade Iraq because they knew very well Saddam had no real WMDs. None that's serious enough to do them much harm, anyway. WMDs was always the pretext for war. Weapon inspectors have searched and found nothing and to this day, Bush is still contradicting himself. His story changes day by day - one minute he says "we thought they were capable of developing WMDs" and the next, it changes to "we knew they had WMDs". Obviously, they're lying somewhere. Even if the war is not about oil, it's related to oil. Think about it - the government says oil is not the issue but remember which 5 big companies were given the contracts to rebuild Iraq? One of them was Halliburton, the same company that's responsible for financing Ricard Cheney. In some way, the war would've been necessary to get rid of Saddam and I can't say I entirely regret the outcome - he's gone and that's a good thing. I just think the US could've lessened their aggression. Saddam was pretty much helpless and Iraq isn't exactly a military giant so there was no need to drop so many destructive missiles and bombs on the country. Reducing their military aggression could've prevented more innocent civilians from dying. Now, even though the people are rid of a dictator, the whole of Iraq and its infrastructure is completely shattered and it'll take years to rebuild the country, both socially and politically.
That, and there's no need to go after Korea. I wouldn't exactly call relations between the US and NK peaceful, but they're not violent either. North Korea seems to be one of those countries that has nukes, likes having them, and won't stop making them, but, as long as no one pisses them off, they won't use the nukes. Much like Iraq would be if they had the WMDs to begin with. So if Bush completley ignores the fact that NK has nukes, we're fine. It's just if Bush starts attacking them, they wont be afraid to use the nukes [/b][/quote] Peaceful . Take a look at that Globalsecurity.org is a very credible military source . You'll see it wasn't so far away of war...
I think I've pretty well argued my point, and have been argued well against too. Unless I can think of anything else to add, I'm done posting in this thread. Thanks for the debate all, especially Derek, its been fun.
Yes, and that site proves that America is indeed handling North Korea, unlike what we previously thought. They are just doing it quietly and from the way it seems (by N. Korea allowing us to investigate) peacefully. The debate was extremely fun but now it appears we have no more to debate about so, thank you guys for your intelligent comments and thoughts. It really was one of the best debates I've ever taken a part in.