American forces losing control in Iraq

[Blackmane]

the 9/11 commission showed there were no direct links between Saddam and Al Qaeda

It's fairly obvious you didn't actually read the 9/11 commision report and only listened to news media's soundbites that were useful to them. It is true that they found no direct link between Saddam and 9/11, but they also said that their were definite links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, including possibly giving money to them. They have also harboured these men in the past. The evening news didn't tell the whole story.

I feel that a point is being missed here. See, most people in here listen to the news saying that the war in Iraq is going horrible, but that is just not true. I think gekko is right on about this. It is all the dumb agenda minded politicians that are undermining efforts to win this war and then the media turns it around into stories about incompetance on Bush. The story of the supposed 380 tons of missing explosives at Al Qaqaa under the US watch, which turned out to be only 3 tons that went missing before we got there.

Why doesn't the media show all the good things happening in the war? Do they want to turn everyone against the effort that is underway in the Middle East? Do they want the respect for the troops fighting and dying over there to dissapear? Why not, instead of talking about 3 tons of explosives that went missing, talk about the 400,000 tons of weapons, ordinance, munitions and explosives that have been captured/destroyed? Why not talk about the thousands of other ammo dumps that have been taken care of instead of one that could possibly have been looted?

I can't understand how a group can try to undermine the war effort so badly. These terrorists over in the Middle East hate us not because we attacked them. They hate us because we are us. We represent everything they don't. I doubt that are actions are changing that fact, although I don't have any proof. They attacked us on 9/11 without us having invaded, they have attacked embassies, cruisers, and such without us having invaded, so why should we believe that not going after them would have satisfied them?

[Neo]

The 9/11 commission wrote that they didn't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and the Al Qaeda operatives with regard to attacks on the United States. The terrorists were not being sheltered in Iraq by Saddam. Whether or not the war going badly is ultimately a subjective opinion. One of my best friends served a year and a half over there and has serious concerns about the lack of planning involved.

It's hard to strike a balance between protesting policy and actually undermining efforts. We certainly can't directly impede the war effort but the idea that we should shut up once the war starts is ludicrous. We can't simply roll over and give an administration a green light to do whatever they want.

On a related note, just how are we going to pay for all this? Bush is spending unprecedented amounts overseas and has limited funds coming in because of his tax cuts. He's turned Clinton's trillion dollar surplus into a 445 billion dollar budget deficit. He even dipped into the social security funds. Credit will only take us so far. Yeah it's nice to have these tax breaks but it's ultimately destroying the economy and we will soon be hurting badly.