I know I shouldn't bother. We've already discussed most of this, and it's going to take a long time to determine the truth (if we ever can), but I watched some of the VP debates, and then I listened to the FAKE Talking Heads (not the REAL band), and they (you can guess who they represent) started trying to discuss how Iraq is so much better than it was because it is now free, and that should be good enough to prove that Cheyney won the debate.

I am so sick and tired of hearing people who allegedly have a brain spouting the company line to support their party or candidate. I cannot believe that anyone with a brain can tell me that at this exact time that Iraq IS free. You may argue that steps are being taken or that it may be better off, but I cannot see how anybody who is open-minded can tell anybody else that Iraq IS free. If you can, go ahead and explain how they are free, and remember to include all the people who live there and explain how their daily deaths now are somehow better than they were before they became free.

I think your best unbiased analysis would be to say this: It's as free as Compton. Technically it's free, but you're likely to get shot if you walk through the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time of day.

Given the CIA estimates on how long it will take for Iraq to be less than chaotic and given the casualty numbers, I doubt that Iraq is that much better off now than it was under Hussein. Yeah, there are no more incidents of HUssein gassing his own people, but now we've got children being blown up by candy bearing strangers. Great.

I'm not sure who really "won" the debate, but there were a few moments that made me chuckle. When Cheney denied that there was ever a connection between Iraq and Al Queda when he said the exact opposite at several other recent occasions (including, as Chris Matthews on Hard Ball pointed out with the footage to prove it, on "Meet the Press"), I had to suppress a laugh. But the Keery-Edwards campaign are the wafflers...

And then there was the out and out howler...Cheney telling Edwards that his political record was "undistinguished." If he wants to throw ad hominems out there, Edwards should have countered with Cheney's record: failures in the Nixon, Ford, and first Bush administration. Failures in business, including taking a highly profitable company (Halliburton) and running it straight into bankruptcy and criminal investigation. That Cheney...he's one clever fellow.

Cheney might have won (I'm pretty sure that's what the pollsters will say) but he succeeded in doing something that I didn't think he could: he made me dislike him more than I already did.

Hey guys, how is everyone? My feelings on Iraq are torn. I do think the world is better off without Saddam. I don't think we had a viable exit strategy before we went in. As I mentioned in another post, there are children there who have freedoms that they never had before as is evident with www.operationiraqichildren.com but we need to do something different because I am SICK of seeing children blown up while waiting in line to get candy! Maybe we need to shut the parts of the city down where Iraqi's are waiting in line to sign up for the Iraqi Guard...I don't know. What do you guys think?

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Originally posted by RayRay:
I think your best unbiased analysis would be to say this: It's as free as Compton.

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Well, RayRay, I grew up in Compton, and until recently, I used to cruise by the old homestead to see what it looked like. It actually looked better the last time I went, but I'll admit that I don't go there with my wife and daughter in the car.

Also, I don't ever remember a suicide bomber killing 40 souls outside a Compton police station during my lifetime.

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Originally posted by mark f:

Also, I don't ever remember a suicide bomber killing 40 souls outside a Compton police station during my lifetime.

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That's because the media doesn't give a crap about murders in this country. They freak out about a bombing in Iraq, killing one american and 20 Iraqis, yet when a gang member in Compton guns down a couple of drug dealers, it's NEVER reported. It's the cone of silence. Certain lives matter, others dont.

night and day, methinks, morally speaking. the regime deposed was a long, hideous nightmare of a police state with a penchant for aggresive wars, sponsoring and harboring terrorists, and butchering its own citizens.

another mass grave was exhumed today(cnn story - 10.12.04). this one is believed to contain thousands of victims, loads of women and children included. there have been around 150 such graves discovered so far.

the u.s. led coalition, on the other hand, booted this demon regime out, eliminated saddam's flirtations with wmd glory, helped established a modern western-style constitution, and set the kind of elections that will not produce 99.9% returns for saddam hussein. a pity the u.s. administration did not plan the security dimension better, but these rogue elements are former ba'athists, fedayeen, and special security people who can't shake their evil addictions. tthese are the same people who created the mass graves were are now unearthing and will assuredly fill their own very soon. they have zero legitimacy as being representative of the iraqi people and to even suggest otherwise is depraved.

two years after this first post in this thread and I still say the answer is NO. NO!

Of course Iraq is free!

Free to collapse into the ancient tribal chaos and murder that a brutal dictator had managed to scare them out of and that a nearby ancient enemy is trying so hard to scare them back into.

Free from any effective regulation of such bloodied chaos by the ineffectual and culturally ignorant foreign invaders who themselves are free to run a war by a bunch of sheltered punchy old men and then free to panic when the half-baked invasion plan isn't working.

When Dostoyevsky said 'we are condemned to be free' he was a frigging prophet and if we had taken heed of his warning about the complexity of freedom then we (coalition of the killing etc) wouldn't be throwing the word around to justify our actions and reducing this vital word to a bombed out husk.

Stupid, stupid, stupid - what a terrible shame.

I would love to be able to say that people are intelligent enough to make benificial decisions for themselves and others, but with every day I age, the less I agree with that.

Bring on an intelligent government... please! (and I mean a gov. that doesn't intellgently manipulate it's people... and it doesn't even do that so well sometimes!)

quote:

Originally posted by b0arder753:
I would love to be able to say that people are intelligent enough to make benificial decisions for themselves and others, but with every day I age, the less I agree with that.

Bring on an intelligent government... please! (and I mean a gov. that doesn't intellgently manipulate it's people... and it doesn't even do that so well sometimes!)

Nicely put - good to see a more sophisticated take on freedom.

Your point re intelligence is right on the money - I was actually all for the removal of Saddam and the instituting of a prosperous and proud nation in the heart of the middle east - a sort of enforced modern marshall plan (post WWII rebuilding of Europe).

I was just very worried that the US warmakers hadn't done their homework, either strategically (in the sense of a large enough initial force and an adequately trained post invasion rebuilding force) or in the sense of researching the people of Iraq, their particular needs etc.

When the looting began and I read about the CIA contacting all the wrong figures in Iraq - I hung my head and readied myself for the bloody quagmire to come. I mean, how can you hope to shape a country into a cohesive success on the basis of building trust and understanding when less than 1% of your forces speak or understand arabic at all!