an alternative to war...

personaly i do not like the war in iraq nor the afghanistan one. many people have died and war is still not over. however, does this mean that it should have never come to a war? if you believe the war was good that's o.k, and if you believe the war was wrong that's also o.k. all i want to know is the people that think the war was wrong, what do you think the right action would have been?

The right action to take was the action that was being taken before the war. UN sanctions on Iraq were working. There were no WMD. The only thing I would have done different is to ease the sanctions on food and medical supplies somewhat. There were a lot of people, including children, that suffered because of the sanctions.

Either that or send in an assasination team to get rid of Saddam, without killing thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians and thousands of soldiers.

I agree with sensfan to an extent, the UN approach was correct in the fact that it was dis-arming the al-samood missles and any other small violation of international law. However I believe that some sanctions should have been lifted, and the "oil for food" program should have been revised and made ALOT more fair on the Iraqi's.

About the assasination team however, it would be quite difficult to send a team in to kill someone who never slept in the same bed twice. He barely knew where he was eating his next meal until it was time to go, i mean come on even his straw hat had kevlar in it.

Final point: This war is illegal and in violation of international protocol, luckily history will record it this way.

Originally posted by shaunybaby
personaly i do not like the war in iraq nor the afghanistan one. many people have died and war is still not over. however, does this mean that it should have never come to a war? if you believe the war was good that's o.k, and if you believe the war was wrong that's also o.k. all i want to know is the people that think the war was wrong, what do you think the right action would have been?

Infiltrate, learn, and then decide what to do. Guessing, or acting on hunches, is getting us nowhere. They have sneaky MF's in the FBI, CIA, etc. that use some dirty tactics to bring down organized crime in America. They train and use people to infiltrate, find out their weaknesses, then attack from within. Isn't this more how the terror problem should have been addressed? We're supposed to be so good at fighting these more invisible wars. How come we made this one so visible? To let them know every move we make, is nothing short of ignorant. We stand to learn nothing, now. This is something that should've been handled by special ops, from the inside. Plant spies, even assissinators, if necessary, but not all out full scale war on enemies we can't even see. Intimidation by example will never work in this situation. Do you mean to tell me that the US gov. can't find any Saudis to employ and use to infiltrate Al Qaeda? That's ridiculous! There has to be a more intelligent way to handle this, and I'm convinced that, where the intelligence is lacking the most, is in our leadership. In fact, I find it so tough to believe that our "leaders" are so inept, that it's almost easier to believe that war must really be their plan.

[edit on 23-12-2004 by Damned]

Consider how much the war costs....

Now take only a tenth fo that amount and build some big casinos and whorehouses in the Gaza strip, changes are the intifadah bleeds dead pretty quickly when teenagers get to drive Mercedes SLK, hey it worked for the American natives....

If Bush would have stayed his course in Afghanistan, this war on terrorism would be over and OBL would be caught. Unfortunatly, Bush rules with his personal intrest in mind. Bush does not want the war on terror to end. Ill leave his reasoning to speculation.

My opinion is that there was NO alternative to the war. Those arabian leaders are extremely ignorant fanatic barbarians, they had to be eliminated from this evolving World. It it an obvious rule. No other option, unless they harm other countries as well... better to prevent that!

Originally posted by Vertu
My opinion is that there was NO alternative to the war. Those arabian leaders are extremely ignorant fanatic barbarians, they had to be eliminated from this evolving World. It it an obvious rule. No other option, unless they harm other countries as well... better to prevent that!

Take a step back and re-read what you just wrote.
Done? Ok, now that sort of useless rhetoric caused the death of 6 million innocents in the last World War. Islam and the Arabs do NOT deserve to be wiped from the Earth, no-one does.

Originally posted by sensfan
The right action to take was the action that was being taken before the war. UN sanctions on Iraq were working. There were no WMD. The only thing I would have done different is to ease the sanctions on food and medical supplies somewhat. There were a lot of people, including children, that suffered because of the sanctions.

Look, the UN sanctions were NOT working. That's pretty well known. Not to mention the Oil for Food scandal. The UN has no backbone. The weapons inspectors weren't being shown anything of interest. Not to mention the UN and the members in it are corrupt. Russia gave Iraq many weapons and a few days before the invasion went into Iraq and burned all the documents connecting Russia to Iraq (Iraq also gave Russian diplomats bribes to not support the war). Russia also took all the weapons out or destroyed them. French diplomats were also being paid off by Saddam. Is this really a just system? How can you say we were going against the will of the world when half of it was being paid off or had ulterior motives (like that bullsh!t you claim of Bush wanting war for oil).It was obvious that it was a facade put on by Saddam. Saddam violated several of the sanctions (ranging from missile size to chemicals etc etc). Do you think he should have been allowed to stay in power? Obviously he shouldn't have . The UN did declare what Saddam was doing wrong, the US just did what the UN was afraid to do, actually carried out their rulings. The alternative to massive war is to stop it before it starts. That includes sabatoge, assasinations, and when worst comes to worst, invasion. Sadly we had to turn to the last option this time because of Saddams relentless defiance of the world. Oh and by the way, where is the proof that there were no WMD"s?? You Bush-haters throw that around like it's a proven fact. They could be in Syria or could have been destroyed before the invasion.

Originally posted by Janus
Take a step back and re-read what you just wrote.
Done? Ok, now that sort of useless rhetoric caused the death of 6 million innocents in the last World War. Islam and the Arabs do NOT deserve to be wiped from the Earth, no-one does.

That's your opinion, you would let criminals and terrorists evolve in your country, if you were a President. I still can accept this opinion, it's always the easiest way to hide from the reality, and taking the least responsibility... fine!

Currently the human community has no other option, but to fight against the evil ones, even if it is rising the death toll.

What do you exactly want in exchange to the War? Argue with those sick minded terrorists for peace? They "learnt" to be fanatics in their entire life, you cannot wash their brain, though that would be ONE option to prevent the war. They simply cannot kill that many americans, because they are not good at it. But they could evolve into a particular stage, possessing high technology, turning that right against YOU and your loved ones. Just imagine that!!!

The fact that the US did not find nukes in Iraq does not mean that they didn't have any!!! Remember that, when US will be nuked...

Originally posted by Damned
Infiltrate, learn, and then decide what to do. Guessing, or acting on hunches, is getting us nowhere. They have sneaky MF's in the FBI, CIA, etc. that use some dirty tactics to bring down organized crime in America. They train and use people to infiltrate, find out their weaknesses, then attack from within.We're supposed to be so good at fighting these more invisible wars. How come we made this one so visible? To let them know every move we make, is nothing short of ignorant. We stand to learn nothing, now. This is something that should've been handled by special ops, from the inside. Plant spies, even assissinators, if necessary, but not all out full scale war on enemies we can't even see. Intimidation by example will never work in this situation. Do you mean to tell me that the US gov. can't find any Saudis to employ and use to infiltrate Al Qaeda?

You are correct that the FBI has had good success in infiltrating crime elements here in the US. That's because the undercover agents look like and talk like the criminals.

The CIA once was very good at infiltration also. But that was before Clinton made it illegal for our intelligence agencies to deal with known felons and criminals. That single act wrecked a whole lot of groundwork that it had taken years to develop. And it's going to take years to build it back up.

Vertu

I'm a firm believer in the ability of the human race to evolve without people like you, who believe we need more holocausts, 'helping' us any. I think I speak for the rest of the sane people in the world when I say "If you want to affect evolution, go marry some random healthy woman and have a whole litter of babies. When those babies grow up, and if you teach them how to survive in their environment, you can die a good human being."

Evolution is a wonderful thing, and it's been working since the begginning of life on this planet -- for everyone's sake, leave it alone!

IMO, this war should have never started when it did. It may have been inevitable that war would have come, but we can not have the answer to that now. I think Iraq is worse off now than it has been at any time between the Gulf War and this one. Certain UN sanctions were working and some were not. I would have given more time to the World as a whole to come down on them, and use war as a total last resort. If this was the case, we probably would have had more people involved in this operation, and it would probably be over by now. But again, we will never know. Insurgents know that we really are short on troops in Iraq, and are using it to there advantage. There is no way that the amount of troops over there now will be able to secure even 65% of Iraq, and there is no way the US would wipe out an entire city just to kill them all.

I would worry more on how to get the job done and get our troops out safe, than why we are there. Were already there.

Originally posted by Vertu
My opinion is that there was NO alternative to the war. Those arabian leaders are extremely ignorant fanatic barbarians, they had to be eliminated from this evolving World. It it an obvious rule. No other option, unless they harm other countries as well... better to prevent that!

Sounds like something from a Nazi or KKK group.

Originally posted by TrickmastertricK
Certain UN sanctions were working and some were not. I would have given more time to the World as a whole to come down on them, and use war as a total last resort. If this was the case, we probably would have had more people involved in this operation, and it would probably be over by now. But again, we will never know.
I would worry more on how to get the job done and get our troops out safe, than why we are there. Were already there.

The problem was that the sanctions were hurting the average Iraqi, not Saddam's regime. Food and medicine that was dropped for the Iraqi people was confiscated and diverted to Saddam's military.

As for the world as a whole coming down on him, he would still be in power today if we kept on that tack. We were being undermined and subverted by France, Germany, and Russia, and even the UN. Saddam had them all in his pocket. He could have kept the scam going until he died of old age, then his sons would have taken over.

None of which really matters that much except that Saddam was sponsoring terrorists. That was his real danger to us.

Originally posted by jsobecky
You are correct that the FBI has had good success in infiltrating crime elements here in the US. That's because the undercover agents look like and talk like the criminals.

The CIA once was very good at infiltration also. But that was before Clinton made it illegal for our intelligence agencies to deal with known felons and criminals. That single act wrecked a whole lot of groundwork that it had taken years to develop. And it's going to take years to build it back up.

I don't know if I'd call it "good success", but it's definitely a more feasible way of handling something like this...the only way, IMO. I have no doubt that the gov has Saudis in their employment, or could get some and train them relatively quickly, if not. We've had international spies for ages. Why not have some Saudi looking spies? I wouldn't doubt that we already had/have some. We also have super secret agencies that people don't even know about, do we not? It's tough to believe that we wouldn't have already had some operatives in place, long ago.
If that's true about the CIA, it still isn't very relevant to this situation. Those rules would only apply to the US and it's citizens, would they not?

[edit on 28-12-2004 by Damned]

From Damned,

I have no doubt that the gov has Saudis in their employment

You got that right

Sanc'.

The war in Iraq was over when the US took Baghdad and capture Saddam. If we look back at the footage you'll see Iraqi's dancing in the streets, huging and kissing US soldiers while slapping their slippers on Saddams broken statue head. It took only a few short days afterwards for the Iraqi people to realized the true goal of America, it was to control/protect Saddams Oil fields while turning a blind eye to looting, street crime and upholding citizen law.

We should have rightfully returned their country after we captured Baghdad and found Saddam, then immediately held elections, trained army/security/police and got the heck out of there ASAP. Instead our Carlyle administration continued special interest no-contest contracts while believing that since hand puppet regimes worked in Afganistan the results would be the same in Iraq.

Wrong!

That's exactly right, syntaxer. I believe you've summed it up pretty accurately. We never should have been there in the first place, but if we had to, we should've left them alone as soon as Saddam was captured. It's not that Iraq is over-run by insurgents. It's more that they want us to leave, and they're becoming insurgents because our military won't leave. Well, you know how it is...they hate freedom.

[edit on 30-12-2004 by Damned]