quote:

Iraq had nothing to do with Sept 11 and Saddam wasn't even a threat. His military was severely weakened because of the nearly 10 year war with Iran. Bush was bent on taking out Saddam before Sept 11 because of Saddam's assasination attempt on his father, and to attain more of a military presence in the Middle-East.

quote:

Manningham-Buller also said Iraq had posed little threat before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and insisted there was no evidence of a link between former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA," she told the inquiry. "It was not a judgment that found favor with some parts of the American machine."

The ex-spy chief said those pushing the case for war in the United States gave undue prominence to scraps of inconclusive intelligence on possible links between Iraq and the 2001 attacks. She singled out the then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "It is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment," said Manningham-Buller, who was a frequent visitor to the U.S. as MI5 chief.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rlj

Former MI5 spy chief: No link between Iraq and 9/11

quote:

Manningham-Buller also said Iraq had posed little threat before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and insisted there was no evidence of a link between former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA," she told the inquiry. "It was not a judgment that found favor with some parts of the American machine."

The ex-spy chief said those pushing the case for war in the United States gave undue prominence to scraps of inconclusive intelligence on possible links between Iraq and the 2001 attacks. She singled out the then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "It is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment," said Manningham-Buller, who was a frequent visitor to the U.S. as MI5 chief.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100720/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_iraq_inquiry

quote:

ORIGINAL: wing2000

...I guess the head of British Intel wasn't buying Rumsfelds propaganda.

I often wonder where we would be today had we had continued to a policy of containment with Sadaam and focused our efforts entirely on Afghanistan.

quote:

ORIGINAL: wing2000

...I guess the head of British Intel wasn't buying Rumsfelds propaganda.

I often wonder where we would be today had we had continued to a policy of containment with Sadaam and focused our efforts entirely on Afghanistan.

quote:

Iraqi commandos showed off skills they learned from U.S. military forces, who Saturday formally handed over control of combat operations to Iraqi security forces.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, was on hand to watch the final American combat team, the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, tender responsibilities to the 6th Iraqi Army Division.

President Barack Obama has ordered the current 64,000-strong U.S. presence to be down to 50,000 by September 1.

quote:

.....Oil now accounts for almost 95% of all government revenues and over 60% of gross domestic product, while employing only 1% of the Iraqi workforce.

...the government is the nation's largest single employer, largest property owner (some 90% of land), and controls the largest segment of its manufacturing sector.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703748904575411231275371108.html

quote:

ORIGINAL: cow451

"Mission Accomplished" plus seven years .

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheosCentric

quote:

ORIGINAL: cow451

"Mission Accomplished" plus seven years .

The latest I've heard was that the Iraqi military wants us to stay until 2020...

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheosCentric

quote:

ORIGINAL: cow451

"Mission Accomplished" plus seven years .

The latest I've heard was that the Iraqi military wants us to stay until 2020...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Phos

The official reason we attacked Iraq is not even one of the answers to the poll (to disarm IRAQ of WMDs). And, only about a quarter of people chose "other".

Here's a new poll:

Given that the government and nearly everyone else now admits that there were no WMDS, what happened:

1) Bush lied, people died.
2) Bush was incredibly mistaken, people died.
3) Who cares, just as long as people died.

Here's a 2020AD poll. Wait until then to take it:

(one war later)
Given that the government and nearly everyone else now admits Iran had no nuclear weapons program, what happened:

1) The president lied, people died.
2) The president was incredibly mistaken, people died.
3) Who cares, just as long as people died.

quote:

ORIGINAL: TrojanHusker

http://costofwar.com/

quote:

ORIGINAL: mapachito13

quote:

ORIGINAL: TrojanHusker

http://costofwar.com/

I always wonder how much this money would have made a difference if spent in the old USA. How many jobs would have been created or how our taxes may have gone to bringing down our deficit as opposed to creating a bigger one.

quote:

Hundreds of porn DVDs are stacked elbow-deep on a wooden table in Jassim Hanoun's ramshackle stall on a downtown sidewalk. His other tables have Hollywood blockbusters, like "King Kong." But not surprisingly, it's the sex that sells best.

"I've got everything," Hanoun says of his sex selection, flashing the kind of impish grin only a 22-year-old in tight jeans and slicked-back hair can pull off with any real conviction. "What do you want? I've got foreign films, Arab, Iraqi, Indian, celebrities — whatever you like."

The porn, in an odd way, has told the story of Iraq's security and political situation since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. It emerged in the anything-goes atmosphere that erupted in the vacuum immediately following the U.S. invasion — then went back into hiding amid the anarchy when armed militias roamed the capital through 2008, targeting those they saw as immoral.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rlj

Well it's good to know that Iraqis can buy pornos on the streets of Baghdad without Saddam's police or extremist muslims arresting them or putting them to death.

quote:

Hundreds of porn DVDs are stacked elbow-deep on a wooden table in Jassim Hanoun's ramshackle stall on a downtown sidewalk. His other tables have Hollywood blockbusters, like "King Kong." But not surprisingly, it's the sex that sells best.

"I've got everything," Hanoun says of his sex selection, flashing the kind of impish grin only a 22-year-old in tight jeans and slicked-back hair can pull off with any real conviction. "What do you want? I've got foreign films, Arab, Iraqi, Indian, celebrities — whatever you like."

The porn, in an odd way, has told the story of Iraq's security and political situation since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. It emerged in the anything-goes atmosphere that erupted in the vacuum immediately following the U.S. invasion — then went back into hiding amid the anarchy when armed militias roamed the capital through 2008, targeting those they saw as immoral.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100823/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq_porn_and_politics

quote:

Early in the morning of July 21, police stormed the offices of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union in Basra, the poverty-stricken capital of Iraq's oil-rich south. A shamefaced officer told Hashmeya Muhsin, the first woman to head a national union in Iraq, that they'd come to carry out the orders of Electricity Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to shut the union down. As more police arrived, they took the membership records, the files documenting often-atrocious working conditions, the leaflets for demonstrations protesting Basra's agonizing power outages, the computers and the phones. Finally, Muhsin and her coworkers were pushed out and the doors locked.

Shahristani's order prohibits all trade union activity in the plants operated by the ministry, closes union offices, and seizes control of union assets from bank accounts to furniture. The order says the ministry will determine what rights have been given to union officers, and take them all away. Anyone who protests, it says, will be arrested under Iraq's Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005.

So ended seven years in which workers in the region's power plants have fought for the right to organize a legal union, to bargain with the electrical ministry, and to stop the contracting-out and privatization schemes that have threatened their jobs.

At the U.S. Embassy, the largest in the world, an official says mildly, "We're looking into it. We hope that everybody resolves their differences in an amicable way." Meanwhile, however, while the U.S. command withdraws combat troops from many areas, it is beefing up the military and private-security apparatus it maintains to protect the wave of foreign oil companies coming into Basra to exploit the wealth of Iraq's oil fields.

quote:

U.S. troops moved into Basra from Kuwait on the morning of April 9, 2003, and American tanks pulled up to the gate of its huge, dilapidated oil refinery. After thirty years of Saddam Hussein, most workers there had had their fill of war and repression. They were prepared to welcome almost any change, even foreign troops. "We were ready to say hello," recalls Faraj Arbat, one of the plant's firemen.

The soldiers trained guns on them, and when the head of the fire department protested, he was ordered to lie facedown on the ground. "Abdulritha was absolutely shocked," Arbat recalls. "But he did as he was ordered. Then an American put his foot on his back. So we started fighting with the soldiers with our fists, because we didn't understand. The tank turret started to turn toward us, and at that point we all sat down." Someone easily could have died that day. As it was, the memory of the foot on Abdulritha's back left a bitter taste.

quote:

The oil workers union, still technically illegal, emerged as one of the strongest voices of Iraqi nationalism. Other demands reflected workers' desperate situation. They wanted the oil ministry to give permanent jobs to thousands of temporary employees. In a country where housing has been destroyed on a massive scale, the union wanted land for building homes. It demanded jobs and a future for young people graduating from the Oil Institute. Fighting for these demands made unions popular - the only force in Iraq trying to maintain a survival living standard for the millions of Iraqis who have to get up and go to work every day in the middle of a war. The U.S. authorities, on the other hand, seem to Iraqis like an enemy bent on enforcing poverty.

The rationale for privatizing Iraqi industries like electricity and oil in the U.S. press is that the state-owned industries are old and inefficient. U.S. engineering know-how was needed, occupation authorities said, to bring it up to modern standards. Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam bitterly observed, "War makes privatization easy: first you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it."

U.S. contractors became notorious for supplying parts and generators to Iraqi power stations that were incompatible with existing equipment, and for showing up with an entourage of gun-toting private security. Meanwhile, Iraqi workers, who were often targeted by insurgents seeking to sabotage the system, did the actual work of keeping the plants running.

Last month, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill invited oil executives and diplomats to the base, known formally as Contingency Operating Base, Basra, for a fancy lunch. They talked about ways to facilitate visas for employees they intend to bring in. Ambassador Hill offered help in easing the way for the billions of dollars the companies will be transferring. The Iraqi oil union, meanwhile, can't even open a bank account.

quote:

Mr Rumsfeld was sent a careful, conscientious 900-page report by the state department containing detailed plans for the post-invasion period. He reportedly dumped it, unopened, straight into his waste-paper basket.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, when asked by the Saudi foreign minister why the US insisted on going ahead with the invasion, answered: "Because it's do-able."

A respected Iraqi dissident, who later became vice-president, has described how shocked he was to find, a few weeks before the invasion, that President Bush seemed wholly unaware that Muslims in Iraq were divided between Shia and Sunni Islam.