sebster wrote:

dienekes96 wrote:And you didn't answer my questions about WWII. So I'll assume you aren't seeing my point.

That everyone is high and mighty and hates war crimes, until the bad guy is targetting them?

Yeah, it happens all the time, and if your side wins you'll probably get away with your crimes. But that doesn't make it acceptable, and it doesn't mean Bush shouldn't be charged with war crimes. He led an administration that lied to congress to gain approval to fight a war that's killed thousands of Americans, and a million over all. He's led an administration that kidnapped people, and flew them to regimes around the world to torture them. He oversaw Guantanamo, and the torture of people there.

He’ll get away with it, but that doesn’t change what he is.

dienekes96 wrote:

sebster wrote: He led an administration that lied to congress to gain approval to fight a war that's killed thousands of Americans, and a million over all. .

I'd love to see the proof that the administration LIED to Congress or misled them. That is a frequent accusation, but it has not held up under legal scrutiny.

I'd love to see the proof that the administration LIED to Congress or misled them

If Obama buys the farm right now Biden gets to be the pres for the rest of the term (and per the amendments perhaps a second term if he can manage it) but what about Obama and Biden buying the farm? Who gets to be the replacement and how long? Do you get new elections before the current term ends?

You're discussing strategy, my comment was about tactics. From the perspective of the Presidency going to war is a strategic choice, and fighting the war a tactical one. Invading Iraq was a poor strategic choice, however the tactical choices made under the aegis of that strategy were not ineffective.

Again defense of tactics does not equal defense of strategy, which makes me think you really have no idea what I've said.

Polonius wrote:It's handled here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act_of_1947#Current_Act

Essentially, it goes:
President
VP
Speaker o' the House
Senate President Pro Tem
And then to a list of cabinet secretaries:
State
Treasury
Defense
Attorney General

And so on by seniority of agency.

It's not, as I believed until I checked, part of the constitution, but rather a federal statute.

Heh. You don't know the whole story. A lot of that aid came with strings attached...Christian right strings. They demanded that those nations preach abstinence first instead of doing mass distributions of condoms, etc. As a result, HIV/AIDS cases skyrocketed in a lot of those countries.

Do a little research on the topic and you'll see what I mean. It's much more of an indictment of the Bush adminstration than a success story. Unless you're a Christian right type. Then you'd probably be happy that we preached your ideology, even if it *cost* a few lives here and there.

ShumaGorath wrote:
But they were. Shock and awe and the first few moments of the campaign were run extremely well. The Iraqi war machine was destroyed with incredible ease. However, and I do believe that this was a tactical mistake the prosecution of post victory rebuilding and stabilising was run incredibly poorly. It was run without accountability, without forethought, and it was run politically and not intellegently. It was run into the ground.

ShumaGorath wrote:
The problem is that neither the strategy nor tactics of the situation were well thought out or executed. Your sentiment is contradictory as Iraq was an ill concieved war that could easily have been a successful experiment in forceful nation building if the military forces and the federal government didn't make many major mistakes.

Of course, this doesn't absolve Bush of responsibility. The President is supposed to be able to mobilize his nation, and that means presenting sound arguments for action, which are based on relevant facts. They didn't do this, obviously, but the inability to generate the support for new military spending/troop deployments does not necessarily speak to a poor understanding of the tactics needed to build a state from the ground up.

Actually, I don't think any unilateral push in Iraq could have been successful. The United States is not a body that is want to tolerate casualties, even ones that are justified. And, honestly, so long as the boomers are around it will remain that way. Compound that with the nominal distrust Iraqis have with respect to the United States as a force for good (something about allowing them to be gunned down by attack helicopters seems to have inflamed their sensibilities), and you have a recipe for failure.

dienekes96 wrote:Bush chose to put the security of the nation before all other interests. He checked the laws and got recommendations by lawyers who are likely sharper than we are before he pushed those limits. I disagree with many of those choices, but I recognize that it is a gray area the administration took advantage of for what President Bush felt was a good reason.

dienekes96 wrote:I'd love to see the proof that the administration LIED to Congress or misled them. That is a frequent accusation, but it has not held up under legal scrutiny. He believed specious intel, and so did numerous other agencies and politicians. He made mistakes, as did Clinton and Bush Sr before him. But, as our good friend, Vice President Biden would say, actual data shows that he was acting in good faith. The current President believes so.

Bush chose to put the security of the nation before all other interests. He checked the laws and got recommendations by lawyers who are likely sharper than we are before he pushed those limits. I disagree with many of those choices, but I recognize that it is a gray area the administration took advantage of for what President Bush felt was a good reason.

So that is what he is.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Of course, and innefecient infrustructure rebuilding that left many regions without power or water for years has nothing to do with it.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Nor the loss of moral authority due to events like abu ghraib.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Nor the accepted drafting of a constitution that does little but ensure the eventual control of a hardline/extreme islamist party, complete with all the human rights violations that implies.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Nor even the comments of those in charge of both the government and military inciting a belief that the war in Iraq was a war on islam (Our god can beat up their god).

ShumaGorath wrote:
Nor could it even have been the illegetimate and incredibly poor governmental body we finaly managed to construct in Iraq!

ShumaGorath wrote:
We didn't lose this war because of the democrats complaints, the administration had a blank check for both troops and money for years and wasted it all frivolously on incredible PR blunders that showed our occupation for the confused mess that it is.

ShumaGorath wrote:
The moment the Iraqi populace looked at our presence as something other than helpful we lost the war in Iraq.

ShumaGorath wrote:
And yet when we first entered we were greeted with relative welcome.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Something that lasted for several months until the Iraqi populace noticed nothing was getting done. If we had capitalized on that, continued to incite good will by maintaining moral authority, and effectively rebuilt key infrustructure points (rather then let haliburton pyramid scheme all our money then relocate outside of the US) we could well have entered Iraq by accident but left it triumphant.

Ghetto_Fight wrote:

dienekes96 wrote:Bush chose to put the security of the nation before all other interests. He checked the laws and got recommendations by lawyers who are likely sharper than we are before he pushed those limits. I disagree with many of those choices, but I recognize that it is a gray area the administration took advantage of for what President Bush felt was a good reason.

^lol, no wonder why people hate Yanks!

dienekes96 wrote:I explained why Fmr President Bush did what he did. An opinion shared by our current President as well, based on his comments late last week.

Why do you think he did? I apologize for being able to approach a concept without immediately accepting it or rejecting it.

But then, I find myself attempting to argue with someone who uses "lol". My mistake.

sebster wrote:Any response on my list of events posted above? You asked for evidence and while no smoking gun is ever possible, I'm interested in what you think of the events posted.

dogma wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:
Of course, and innefecient infrustructure rebuilding that left many regions without power or water for years has nothing to do with it.

Who says it was inefficient? Iraq's infrastructure was never particularly well developed. Many regions may have had water and power, but it was not reliable in any way. They leaned heavily on oil because of the various embargoes, and so paid little attention to other matters; including infrastructure that did not directly concern the transfer of people between the oil fields, and the population centers.

You're building your argument on the assumption that 'water and power' means the same thing there as it does here. Faucets and lights were turned off, but they never worked that well to begin with outside places like Baghdad. In most of Iraq the rationing of electricity had been a reality since the 2nd gulf war.

A team from the State University of New York at Stony Brook won a $4 million grant to ‘modernize curricula in archeology’ at four of Iraq’s largest universities — schools where students were sitting on the floor because they lacked desks and chairs. ‘It was like going into a war zone and saying, Oh, let’s cure halitosis’.”

Soldiers, private contractors, and mercenaries also segregated themselves. So did the representatives of the "coalition of the willing"– the Brits, the Aussies, the Poles, the Spaniards, and the Italians. The American civilians who worked for the occupation government had their own cliques: the big-shot political appointees, the twentysomethings fresh out of college, the old hands who had arrived in Baghdad in the first weeks of occupation. In conversation at their tables, they observed an unspoken protocol. It was always appropriate to praise "the mission"–the Bush administration's campaign to transform Iraq into a peaceful, modern, secular democracy where everyone, regardless of sect or ethnicity, would get along. Tirades about how Saddam had ruined the country and descriptions of how you were going to resuscitate it were also fine. But unless you knew someone really, really well, you didn't question American policy over a meal.

If you had a complaint about the cafeteria, Michael Cole was the man to see. He was Halliburton's "customer-service liaison," and he could explain why the salad bar didn't have Iraqi produce or why pork kept appearing on the menu. If you wanted to request a different type of breakfast cereal, he'd listen. Cole didn't have the weathered look of a war-zone concierge. He was a rail-thin twenty-two-year-old whose forehead was dotted with pimples.

He had been out of college for less than a year and was working as a junior aide to a Republican congressman from Virginia when a Halliburton vice president overheard him talking to friends in an Arlington bar about his dealings with irate constituents. She was so impressed that she introduced herself. If she needed someone to work as a valet in Baghdad, he joked, he'd be happy to volunteer. Three weeks later, Halliburton offered him a job. Then they asked for his résumé.

Cole never ate pork products in the mess hall. He knew many of the servers were Pakistani Muslims and he felt terrible that they had to handle food they deemed offensive. He was rewarded for his expression of respect with invitations to the Dickensian trailer park where the kitchen staff lived. They didn't have to abide by American rules governing food procurement. Their kitchens were filled with local produce, and they cooked spicy curries that were better than anything Cole found in the cafeteria. He thought of proposing an Indian- Pakistani food night at the mess hall, but then remembered that the palace didn't do ethnic fare. "The cooking had to make people feel like they were back at home," he said. And home, in this case, was presumed to be somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Cole's mission was to keep the air in the bubble, to ensure that the Americans who had left home to work for the occupation administration felt comfortable. Food was part of it. But so were movies, mattresses, and laundry service. If he was asked for something, Cole tried to get it, whether he thought it important or not. "Yes, sir. We'll look into that," he'd say. Or, "I'm sorry you're so upset. We'll try to fix it as soon as possible."

The palace was the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American occupation administration in Iraq. From April 2003 to June 2004, the CPA ran Iraq's government–it enacted laws, printed currency, collected taxes, deployed police, and spent oil revenue. At its height, the CPA had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad, most of them American. They were a motley bunch: businessmen who were active in the Republican Party, retirees who wanted one last taste of adventure, diplomats who had studied Iraq for years, recent college graduates who had never had a full-time job, government employees who wanted the 25 percent salary bonus paid for working in a war zone. The CPA was headed by America's viceroy in Iraq, Lewis Paul Bremer III, who always wore a blue suit and tan combat boots, even on those summer days when Iraqis drooped in the heat. He was surrounded by burly, machine gun—toting bodyguards everywhere he went, even to the bathroom in the palace.

The palace was Versailles on the Tigris. Constructed of sandstone and marble, it had wide hallways, soaring columns, and spiral staircases. Massive bronze busts of Saddam in an Arab warrior's headdress looked down from the four corners of the roof. The cafeteria was on the south side, next to a chapel with a billboard-size mural of a Scud missile arcing into the sky. In the northern wing was an enormous ballroom with a balcony overlooking the dance floor. The heart of the palace was a giant marble rotunda with a turquoise dome. After the Americans arrived, the entire place took on the slapdash appearance of a start-up company. Dell computers sat atop ornate wooden desks partitioned by fabric-covered cubicle dividers. Data cables snaked along the gilded moldings. Erasable whiteboards hung from the mirrored walls.

A row of portable toilets lined the rear driveway. The palace, designed as a showplace for Saddam to meet visiting dignitaries, lacked enough commodes for hundreds of occupants. Dormitory space was also in short supply. Most new arrivals had to sleep on bunk beds in the chapel, a room that came to resemble a World War II field hospital.

Appearances aside, the same rules applied in the palace as in any government building in Washington. Everyone wore an identification badge. Decorum was enforced in the high-ceilinged halls. I remember hearing a soldier admonish a staffer hustling to a meeting: "Ma'am, you must not run in the corridor."

Whatever could be outsourced was. The job of setting up town and city councils was performed by a North Carolina firm for $236 million. The job of guarding the viceroy was assigned to private guards, each of whom made more than $1,000 a day. For running the palace–cooking the food, changing the lightbulbs, doing the laundry, watering the plants– Halliburton had been handed hundreds of millions of dollars.

Halliburton had been hired to provide "living support" services to the CPA. What that meant kept evolving. When the first Americans arrived in Baghdad in the weeks after Saddam's government was toppled, all anyone wanted was food and water, laundry service, and air-conditioning. By the time Cole arrived, in August 2003, four months into the occupation, the demands had grown. The viceroy's house had to be outfitted with furniture and art suitable for a head of state. The Halliburton-run sports bar at the al-Rasheed Hotel needed a Foosball table. The press conference room required large-screen televisions.

The Green Zone quickly became Baghdad's Little America. Everyone who worked in the palace lived there, either in white metal trailers or in the towering al-Rasheed. Hundreds of private contractors working for firms including Bechtel, General Electric, and Halliburton set up trailer parks there, as did legions of private security guards hired to protect the contractors. The only Iraqis allowed inside the Green Zone were those who worked for the Americans or those who could prove that they had lived there before the war.

It was Saddam who first decided to turn Baghdad's prime riverfront real estate into a gated city within a city, with posh villas, bungalows, government buildings, shops, and even a hospital. He didn't want his aides and bodyguards, who were given homes near his palace, to mingle with the masses. And he didn't want outsiders peering in. The homes were bigger, the trees greener, the streets wider than in the rest of Baghdad. There were more palms and fewer people. There were no street vendors and no beggars. No one other than members of Saddam's inner circle or his trusted cadre of guards and housekeepers had any idea what was inside. Those who loitered near the entrances sometimes landed in jail. Iraqis drove as fast as they could on roads near the compound lest they be accused of gawking.

It was the ideal place for the Americans to pitch their tents. Saddam had surrounded the area with a tall brick wall. There were only three points of entry. All the military had to do was park tanks at the gates.

The Americans expanded Saddam's neighborhood by a few blocks to encompass the gargantuan Convention Center and the al-Rasheed, a once- luxurious establishment made famous by CNN's live broadcasts during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. They fortified the walls with seventeen- foot-high blast barriers made of foot-thick concrete topped with coils of razor wire.

Open spaces became trailer parks with grandiose names. CPA staffers unable to snag a room at the al-Rasheed lived in Poolside Estates. Cole and his fellow Halliburton employees were in Camp Hope. The Brits dubbed their accommodations Ocean Cliffs. At first, the Americans felt sorry for the Brits, whose trailers were in a covered parking garage, which seemed dark and miserable. But when the insurgents began firing mortars into the Green Zone, everyone wished they were in Ocean Cliffs. The envy increased when Americans discovered that the Brits didn't have the same leaky trailers with plastic furniture supplied by Halliburton; theirs had been outfitted by Ikea.

Americans drove around in new GMC Suburbans, dutifully obeying the thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit signs posted by the CPA on the flat, wide streets. There were so many identical Suburbans parked in front of the palace that drivers had to use their electronic door openers as homing devices. (One contractor affixed Texas license plates to his vehicle to set it apart.) When they cruised around, they kept the air-conditioning on high and the radio tuned to 107.7 FM, Freedom Radio, an American-run station that played classic rock and rah-rah messages. Every two weeks, the vehicles were cleaned at a Halliburton car wash.

Shuttle buses looped around the Green Zone at twenty-minute intervals, stopping at wooden shelters to transport those who didn't have cars and didn't want to walk. There was daily mail delivery. Generators ensured that the lights were always on. If you didn't like what was being served in the cafeteria–or you were feeling peckish between meals–you could get takeout from one of the Green Zone's Chinese restaurants. Halliburton's dry cleaning service would get the dust and sweat stains out of your khakis in three days. A sign warned patrons to remove ammunition from pockets before submitting clothes.

Iraqi laws and customs didn't apply inside the Green Zone. Women jogged on the sidewalk in shorts and T-shirts. A liquor store sold imported beer, wine, and spirits. One of the Chinese restaurants offered massages as well as noodles. The young boys selling DVDs near the palace parking lot had a secret stash. "Mister, you want porno?" they often whispered to me.

Most Americans sported suede combat boots, expensive sunglasses, and nine-millimeter Berettas attached to the thigh with a Velcro holster. They groused about the heat and the mosquitoes and the slothful habits of the natives. A contingent of Gurkhas stood as sentries in front of the palace.

BloodofOrks wrote:
You're partially right. Yes Iraq's infrastructure was a mess before we invaded, but the death blow came in the form of the looting which happened post-invasion.

BloodofOrks wrote:
I would recommend the book: Imperial Life In the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Chandrasekaran was on the ground throughout the invasion and in Iraq for more then a year afterward. It's the best account (IMHO) of exactly what went wrong.
http://www.rajivc.com/index.htm

dienekes96 wrote:

sebster wrote:Any response on my list of events posted above? You asked for evidence and while no smoking gun is ever possible, I'm interested in what you think of the events posted.

seb, I am working on it. I can give you a knee-jerk reaction, but I'd rather mull over it and adequately frame my response.

I also have to work at some point.

Nurgleboy77 wrote:Abstinence is no more a Christian ideology than sticking it in anything that moves is a Satanic ideology. It makes sense to me to tell people not to have sex when 25% or more of the population has a deadly STD.