The moment of truth on Iraq is here

[Yerdaddy]

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html" target="_blank">Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat </a><div class="byline">By <a title="More Articles by Mark Mazzetti" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><font color="#000066">MARK MAZZETTI</font></a></div><div><p>WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 &mdash; A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of <a title="More news and information about Iraq." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo"><font color="#000066">Iraq</font></a> has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.</p><p>The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.</p><p>The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled &ldquo;Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,&rsquo;&rsquo; it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.</p><p>I can't think of any possibly stronger evidence that this war was a complete failure. This is the collective opinion of the entire US intelligence community. Many of us, who spent more time before the war being attacked personally as anti-American, pro-Saddam, or just Bush-bashers, expressed the opinion (shared by many in the military and intelligence community), that this would probably be the outcome of the Bush administration invading Iraq. On so many levels that I've repeated a thousand times here, this war was a huge mistake and has hurt America and the world in ways that can't possibly be undone for generations.</p><p>Question is: WILL ANYONE EVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS? Will the doctrine of neoconservatism live on as a valid American foreign policy doctrine? Will the republicans who forced this upon us be thrown out of office until they can learn to not support crazy, immoral&nbsp;and destructive wars just because a republican thought it up? Will the American public reject the profitably biased extremist news networks that pushed this shit on us? Will anything change? What the fuck has America learned?</p><p>I say we've learned nothing. I'll explain later. </p></div>

[A.J.]

<p>While I agree that this war has been a failure, simply because we&nbsp;went in with only a &quot;war plan&quot; and no &quot;peace plan&quot;, I think that what we're seeing in Iraq today is what would have happened there eventually anyway.&nbsp; I truly believe that with no strong man like Saddam Hussein to keep the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia in place, sectarian violence would have erupted much the same way it in Yugoslavia after the death of Marshal Tito.&nbsp; Simply put: our invasion has brought about the inevitable sooner rather than later.&nbsp; </p><p>So what do we do now?&nbsp; Either we stay and fix the mess that we and the Brits&nbsp;made (they deserve the blame too for lumping these groups together into one country when they pulled out of there), or Iraq as we know it may simply disappear from the map and be replaced by Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan.</p><p>And as far as Iraq being a motivator for terrorist recruitment, that is true to a point.&nbsp; However, Al-Qa'ida recruited people before Iraq just by railing against the U.S. for its support of Israel.&nbsp; So should we give up on Israel to make the terrorists stop hating us?&nbsp; And I'm sure the Pope's latest remarks inspired a jihadist or two.&nbsp; Bottom line is these bastards can never be appeased and will always hate us no matter what we do or say.</p>

[Jujubees2]

<font size="2"><p>Not only did we screw up Iraq, but the Taliban&nbsp;is back in business in Afghanistan since we pulled all the troops from there to go to Iraq.&nbsp; And while the civil war would have erupted in Iraq sooner or later, what makes it worse now is that the U.S. is perceived as the reason for it.</p></font><p><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14975282/site/newsweek/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14975282/site/newsweek/</a></p>

[A.J.]

<strong>Jujubees2</strong> wrote:<br /><font size="2"><p>And while the civil war would have erupted in Iraq sooner or later, what makes it worse now is that the U.S. is perceived as the reason for it. </p></font> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Point taken.&nbsp; So much for our troops being &quot;showered with rose petals as liberators&quot;.</p>

[CaptClown]

<strong>A.J.</strong> wrote:<br /><p>While I agree that this war has been a failure, simply because we&nbsp;went in with only a &quot;war plan&quot; and no &quot;peace plan&quot;, I think that what we're seeing in Iraq today is what would have happened there eventually anyway.&nbsp; I truly believe that with no strong man like Saddam Hussein to keep the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia in place, sectarian violence would have erupted much the same way it in Yugoslavia after the death of Marshal Tito.&nbsp; Simply put: our invasion has brought about the inevitable sooner rather than later.&nbsp; </p><p>So what do we do now?&nbsp; Either we stay and fix the mess that we and the Brits&nbsp;made (they deserve the blame too for lumping these groups together into one country when they pulled out of there), or Iraq as we know it may simply disappear from the map and be replaced by Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan.</p><p>And as far as Iraq being a motivator for terrorist recruitment, that is true to a point.&nbsp; However, Al-Qa'ida recruited people before Iraq just by railing against the U.S. for its support of Israel.&nbsp; So should we give up on Israel to make the terrorists stop hating us?&nbsp; And I'm sure the Pope's latest remarks inspired a jihadist or two.&nbsp; Bottom line is these bastards can never be appeased and will always hate us no matter what we do or say.</p><p>Let's not forget about the other European colonizers either. </p>

[FUNKMAN]

<p>I think one of the &quot;root&quot; problems is this mentality of our leader that he is going to win the &quot;War On Terror&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; The reality is we will never win the war by force, sure we will win 'in a sense' battles here and there.</p><p>There will eventually have to be 'negotiations' and deals made. It will aslo take the full cooperation/support of superpowers such as China and&nbsp;Russia. </p><p>Plus the wealth in this world has got to be shared to where it turns around this growing divide between rich and poor. When you leave million upon&nbsp;billions of people with nothing then they have nothing to live for and are more willing to sacrafice their lives.</p>

[CaptClown]

By all means, let's have more Framework Agreements that are worthless before the ink is dry.

[furie]

in my eyes, i knew this invasion would fail because the Iraqi people didn't want freedom. it's not something to be handed or even forced down the throat. they didn't rise up. They don't appreciate the republic form of government because they didn't work towards it.

I don't mean to say that the Iraqi people or arabs in the larger picture are incapable of understanding our form of government; but there are needed step to be taken in order to reach it. Germany didn't go straight from National Socialist/ Fascist state to a Democratic Republic in a year or so. it took 15 years to get the government full autonomous from the US.

We can expect worse in this occupation. Mainly because the Germans had at least once been a republic.