We don't have to torture

We let the Iraqi Interior Ministry do it for us.

This is the greatest hubris of the whole 'bringing democracy to the Middle East whether they want it or not' mentality of neocons and the current administration; they don't want democracy!

If democracy means they have power and authority over their enemies, hell, they'll be all for it. If it means giving up power or sharing authority, hell no.

Did anyone, anywhere, ever truly believe we could force democracy onto Iraq from the outside?

The Sunnis didn't want it, they had it fine the way it was. The Shiites don't want it, they want what the Sunnis used to have. And the Kurds don't want it either, they want their own fucking country!!!!

By a number of masures, Saddam's Iraq was one of the more progressive Arab regimes in the ME. That doesn't speak well for Saddam, it speaks worse for all the other peices of shit ruling around him.

If you consider Iran to be a democracy, then in 5 or 10 years Iraq will be a resounding success, because that's exactly what it's going to look like.

For a far too high majority of Iraq's, tribe and religious sect play a much more significant role in their personal identity. Are they Iraq's first, or Shiites? Or even Muslims first?

Iraq was founded in 1920 when Britain carved up three distinct tribal regions and forced them together. And even then it was only about oil. Even the first king England installed was from a different fucking area! He wasn't even an 'Iraqi'!

Did you know at one time the Kurds in Iraq claimed Kuwait as part of their 'country'?

The British shat on Iraq from the day they created it. It was so bad in WW II that there was an attempted coup by pro Nazi officers in the then Irqi army. Pro Nazi Arabs. Nazi's. Arabs. For them. That's pretty bad. 3,000 Iraqi troops killed and 3,000 officers purged by the British over that little snafu.

This is where it gets interesting from our perspective;

In 1961, after Kuwait had gained independence from Britain, the Iraqi leader, General Kassem, claimed it as an integral part of Iraq and concentrated his troops on the frontier, with the intention of taking it by force. Britain was ready, however, and dispatched troops stationed in the Gulf region to dissuade the Iraqis from armed conflict. The crisis was settled temporarily by a coup in Baghdad that overthrew Kassem, and was organised - it would seem - with the help of the United States. Iraq agreed to recognise Kuwait, but continued to make claims for an adjustment of the borders - claims that were to be the cause of further trouble in the future.

The 1979 Islamic revolution in neighbouring Iran offered Saddam, so he believed, the opportunity to invade Iran when the country was in a weakened state. This invasion would stifle the potential threat of revolutionary Islam, assert Iraqi hegemony and readjust the borders between the two countries. In September 1980 Iraqi troops crossed into Iran, but the quick success Saddam had hoped for turned into a bloody conflict that lasted eight years. During this period the west, Germany, Britain, France and the United States all armed Iraq - in an effort to create a bulwark against the spread of the Islamic threat. Help was given to develop all kinds of weapons.

And yet, they hate us for our freedom.

They hate us for our freedom to be the oppressors and not the oppressed, more like it.

You people do realize that the CIA coup'ed the fuck out the democraticaly elected government of Iran in 1953, don't you? You know why? They wanted to privatize the oil industry.

Oil.

And yet they hate us for our freedom.

I won't even get into Saudi Arabia, they're their own special kind of fucked up there. People in the US in general have no idea how fucked up that country is. Yet we have unfailingly supported the royal family for decades. Because they are a freedom loving people? Oh, right, they have a SHITLOAD OF OIL!

Nothing we do, I repeat NOTHING we do will persuade or disuade the insurgents in Iraq to pick up or lay down their arms. They hate us, a generataional hate that they've been pushed down by for close toa century. You don't just wipe that kind of hate away with soft platitudes and a few fucking trinkets.

We sold saddam fucking anthrax! This is fact, people! Anthrax! Fucking gas gangrene! The fucking nerve gas he used on the Kurds we fucking sold him the agents for! OF COURSE HE HAD FUCKING WMD!

That the Kurds still sucked up to us clearly shows they're smarter then we are. They played us like a fiddle on Pappy's back porch while drinkin' mint julips and listening to the negro's singing in the cotton fields. Yes,they played us that bad.

No one has a clue in Iraq, or the Middle East, least of all me, but I'm smart enough to admit it.

Iraq at one time had the greatest university system in the Middle East, before Saddam came along. Even under Saddam Iraq had a sizable Christian minority that was largely left alone. Women went full face in public, they drove for Allah's sake! They even held positions of authority in the government and academia under Saddam. Don't remember if they could vote though, could they?

But the point being, is that while Saddam was bad, and he was, he was faaaar from the worst in the area. What he was, was the easiest to pick on. After knocking his books out of his hands every time he walked by in the hallway for 10 years, he was easy pickin's. And for the chickenshits in washington that have never had the misfortune of doing their patriotic duty and serving their country in a time of war and naitonal sacrifice, he was the perfect 'make my dick look big' adversary.

Well apparently the administrations dick is so big they tripped over it. Oops!

And yet they hate us for our freedom.

Every major claim of an immenant threat by Iraq was wrong.

Countries that actually posed an immenant threat like Iran and Syria and N Korea were largely ignored, to the point of the British having to pull off the Gadhafi disarmament.

Every major military and policy decision made in Iraq by the US in the first year of occupation/invasion was wrong.

How's that deBaathification coming along?

How's that Iraqi army coming along?

How's that Iraqi constitution that grants the Shiites and Kurds power to succede or lock out the Sunnis from any oil money coming along?

How's them flowers and sweets?

How's that missing $1.5 BILLION from vet's health care funding?

How's that kicking the disabled veteran's groups out of the joint session of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees?

How's the fucking Guard and Reserve?

Got mother fucking armor!!!?

Been to a movie lately? Do you get all puffy chested when you do? Or do you have better things to do?

Maybe they hate us for our freedom to ignore the truth.

The war in Iraq was based on wrong intelligence. Purposfully misrepresented or not, it was almost *all* wrong. The initial invasion went so fast the administrations colective dick swelled so much all the blood drained from their heads and they let all the future insurgents fade back into the populace.

Best quote of Iraq war ever, voiced by one US soldier rising on top of a tank to another soldier when an Iraqi civilian male waved to them from the side of the road: "Look, the Iraqi military is waving at us."

While it was probably meant more towards the fact that the Iraqi military did one quick ass fade when we invaded, it takes a slightly different meaning now, to say the least.

All pre war intel wrong, all basis of a threat wrong, occupation wrong, fighting insurgents wrong. What about Iraq has gone right?

For the first time in our countries history that we preemptively attacked a soverign nation with no overt provocation against us, and far too many of us don't really much care. He was a bad man. Doesn't matter, there are far worse.

That Saddam desreved to be taken out is something less then even a paltry rationalization for the larger fuck up of the bogus pre war intelligence.

Doesn't matter that Clinton thought the same. Clinton didn't invade. The GOP Congress wouldn't have let him anyway.

Doesn't matter that Democrats in Congress voted for or against anything. They didn't send the troops. They didn't conduct the invasion. They didn't write the occupation policy. Iraq is Bush's and Bush's alone.

The war in Iraq directly contradicts every major tenet of freedom and democracy our naiton was founded upon.

Maybe they really do hate us for our freedom.