MOST COMPELLING ARGUMENTS NOT YET MADE FOR WAR WITH IRAQ

THE NEWS HOUR ^ | 01/24/03 | Mark Shields and David Brooks

[hauerf]

You posted this to demonstrate that this "Mark Shields" (or is it "Mark Shill") guy is a loser, right? Okay, I'm convinced.

[areafiftyone]

I was watching MSNBC this morning because the Saturday programs on Fox leave alot to be desired and I can't get breaking news that easily. Believe me I regretted it. ITS ANTI-WAR DAY ON MSNBC!! If they can get anymore anti-war people on they will.

[RJCogburn]

I watched the program.

I think Brooks made a better case than GWB has to this point.

[Ranger]

The president has got to make the case for war with Iraq. He did it in September only to let the matter drift and drift. He needs to tie al-Qaeda to Iraq with evidence or let the matter drop. He needs to tie Iraq to WMD or let the matter drop. The people are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt up to a point, but we've reached that point.

As for the UN, its all foreplay and french tickling but no fighting. We shouldn't go back there and ask for anything. The president should just declare the process at the UN broken and announce that the US is moving on with the business at hand.

Thirdly, what is the mission? If its a democratic and free Iraq, a better world or whatever, then the president should say it. If its to overthrow Saddam with some other military thug in Iraq then that's different.

I saw Bush on tv snapping at a reporter that he decides to go to war not the reporter. To my recollection that perogative rests with the congress. It also better have the public behind it. Since that comment earlier this month, I've watched his popularity erode rapidly and his critics become more shrill.

He may be a patient man, but the American public isn't and the troops in the field who have been called away from their families should not be required to wait at sea or in the desert indefinitely.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the subject.

[ecomcon]

Mark Shields proves once again that alas, he remains an idiot. It is ironic that he should speak of the French contrarian mindset in a somewhat bemused way, because that is exactly his mindset as well. If we go and remove Hussein, we will be damned as pointless warmongers. If we do not, we will be damned as callous and indifferent to the suffering of the Iraqi people, condoning nazi style brutality, and caring not to further the cause of "democracy" because at heart, we like fascist brutality.

The left has no moral compass. They cannot decide to do anything that is difficult, because all sides are equal. They then oppose whatever thing their most hated enemy proposes.

So, damn them for their equivocation. Damn them for their immorality. They (MarkShields, the French, et. al.), are always wrong on these matters.

"War solved Hitler".

[copycat]

: I think that's why. Because people don't have a sense of who Saddam is. They don't know who Michel Aflaq is - the guy who really is the guru for Saddam. No major publications have done reports on what Saddam thinks in the past year, I've looked. And the administration has to break through that. So far they have not.

This is very true, and FReepers could help here. Why aren't the speeches of Saddam being publicized? We could do that. I don't hear very many people making the case that Saddam tortures his political enemies...I have read the power drill is his favorite.

If we want to publish the atrocities of the Saddam Regime, we could sarts right here

"I just want somebody to say to those people and I wanted to go down there and say here's a regime that has professional rape teams in their military where they rape women and send the videotapes to the fathers. Here's a regime that imprisons mothers and babies in the next cell and forces them to watch their babies starve to death. "

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

I heard the show on NPR radio.

"I was even with a military group a couple weeks ago. Trust the president. Don't know what it's about."

Absolutely right. I heard some soldiers saying they had to protect the U.S. from Iraq. Huh? Last time I checked, Iraq hadn't declared war on the U.S. And, none of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq. Saddam may be a menace to his own people, but he's certainly no threat to us. Unless you think we should go after him because he's another Hitler.

[cajungirl]

Brooks was the best thinker and talker on Iraq I have seen. He oughta be helping out the Bush team.

[cajungirl]

You know I do believe Brooks' argument is why we are going after Iraq. I do not think it is because of the connection to al quaeda. I think Bush et al have decided to clean up the sewer of the middle east and this is step one. And that may be why this whole thing may end up hurting him. Everyone is focused on a concrete smoking gun moment and that was never what was motivating this. Sure it is there, the wmd, but I think even without it we were going after Iraq and then onto the next mess over there. Bush is truly starting a war but it is not as narrow as some think. That is just my opinion, I may be wrong. But if I am right, I support what he is doing. Every once in a while you just have to prune a bit to improve the world.

[WOSG]

wrong. iraq has declared war on America. read saddam's speeches.

[Sam's Army]

"I heard the show on NPR radio"

Mistake number one....

[visualops]

bttt

[observer5]

Saddam is today the greatest threat to world peace. He is working to develop nuclear bombs to wipe out Israel and plunge the world into world war III. That is his dream...

Those who cannot see this are blind...

[RaceBannon]

MARK SHIELDS: The tide of democracy which spread through Latin America did not spread with an M-1 rifle. I mean, it spread because of the value of democracy.

The crowds and I was down there on the mall - the crowds were wonderful people. They were nurses and teachers and clergy people and blue-collar workers and middle American families who were very much against the war. This is the biggest antiwar movement I've ever seen before a war. Don't forget, it took us three years in Vietnam before the anti-war movement even crystallized in this country. It isn't a question that they're in favor of Saddam Hussein. They're the spear that George Bush has not made the case.

Not with an M-1? Was it a Springfield? Cuz it was sure fought against with AK-47's!

What crowds on the mall? The anti-war losers? Notice how they look at faces and ignore the messages these faces preach??

[Jerez2]

I don't think it's worthwhile to try to educate the US as to what Saddam has said. Go with something visceral -- as Brooks points out, the rape commandos, the torture videos sent to keep the fathers of the child-victims quiet, the dead Kurd mothers trying to protect their babies. Emotion works with Americans. That's what the Left knows that the Right better learn how to use -- and there is a lot of it to use in this instance.

[Dan Day]

Saddam may be a menace to his own people, but he's certainly no threat to us.

I guess you didn't bother to read the article:

If you go back and read three decades of Saddam's speeches, what you find is someone who inherited a Nazi ideology through Michel Aflaq, the founder of the Ba'ath Party who believes in genocide as a racial tool, who believes that it is his mission to have an apocalyptic confrontation with the U.S., and who believes, as he says over and over again, that he wants to be remembered 500 years from now as someone who brought the U.S. low, someone who created an Arab regime or an Arab civilization which dominated the U.S. civilization.

[Southack]

"The president has got to make the case for war with Iraq."

Yes, and he will if that's his decision (to go fight Iraq).

But it's not set in stone that we are going into Iraq. One could make a pretty good case that we are controlling all Iraqi airspace, have Iraq's port blockaded, and that we have troops in a position to enforce a land embargo, too.

So it's not 100% out of the realm of distant possibility for Bush to announce in his State of The Union on Tuesday that American forces in the Middle East are pounding Iran's 3 nuclear reactors, missile facilities, and armed forces, and that we plan to send in our troops in the region to aid the students take back their own country from the Mullahs and Ayatollahs. I mean, we'd move our troops and aircraft to the exact same bases whether we were about to hit Iran or Iraq, and it is Iran, not Iraq, that has the long range missiles and nuclear reactors.

OK, so that's not going to happen, I admit (but it ought to keep the Mullahs up late at night wondering).

Anyway, my point is that this war is not cast in stone. We probably NEED to go replace Hussein, and we probably will, but it isn't the sole option on the table based upon diplomatic and troop movements to date.

[Cvengr]

I'm afraid the myopic Democratic Socialist equivocation in the US has produced a populace that doesn't have the attention span, endurance of substantial hardship, insight of how to synthesize a material defense, and too scarred a soul towards righteousness and holiness to even comprehend what would transpire during our downfall other than a titillation of our emotions.

[Southack]

Perhaps you're simply confusing the combined Left-wing groups of academia, the media, and various Democrats with that of the American public at large...