epix.net> wrote in message
news:c79ab3d9-d1f2-4c06-8aaa-4f548b1cd138@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
On Jul 21, 2:21 pm, "Titix" spamfree.com> wrote:
>> by Lanny Davis
>> July 21, 2008
>
>> I remember the exact moment I had my first serious doubts about
>> whether I was 100 percent right that the U.S. pre-emptive invasion of
>> Iraq and the take-out of Saddam Hussein was a serious mistake.
>
>> I had been strongly opposed to the U.S. intervention from the start. I
>> felt this way even though I believed (as did most everyone, including
>> the intelligence community) that Saddam had weapons of mass
>> destruction and even though I thought that he was a murderous,
>> genocidal thug and the world would be better off - and the U.S. safer
>> - with him dead.
>
>> However, I reasoned, the WMD inspectors were back in, and we had
>> Saddam surrounded - thanks to George Bush, by the way, for which we
>> Democrats did not give him sufficient credit at the time.
>
>> So why risk the uncertainties of a pre-emptive invasion, loss of life
>> and treasure, and diverting our attention from 9/11 and the war
>> against terrorism, which most U.S. intelligence indicated had nothing
>> to do with Saddam?
>
>> Of course, all these remain good reasons for opposing starting the
>> war, even as I look back now.
>
>> But ... then came my first moment of doubt.
>
>> I saw on TV in early 2005, in their first preliminary democratic
>> elections, long lines of Iraqis waiting to vote under the hot desert
>> sun with bombs and shrapnel exploding around them. Waiting to vote!
>
>> And then there was that indelible image - an older woman shrouded in a
>> carpetlike cape, smiling gleefully and holding her purple finger in
>> the air for the TV cameras, purple with ink showing that she had
>> voted.
>
>> Smiling! In the middle of war! At U.S. troops standing nearby!
>
>> Wow, I thought. Is it possible I was wrong?
>
>> Is it possible, I wondered, that Iraqis truly did want democracy and
>> freedom and the right to vote and government of the people, just as we
>> Americans do? And were willing to fight for it, with our help?
>
>> Wouldn't that be a good thing? Even a great thing?
>
>> Maybe another democracy, however imperfect, other than Israel in the
>> Middle East could lead to more moderation, possibly other democracies?
>> Democracies that could serve as bulwarks against al Qaeda-type of
>> terrorist states?
>
>> Then in 2005-06 came the increased violence from the Sunni insurgents
>> against American kids, then the sectarian civil war between Sunnis and
>> Shi'ites, with young Americans caught in the crossfire. My certainty
>> in opposing the war and supporting a deadline for getting out re-
>> emerged.
>
>> And then in early 2007 came the surge, which so many of us in the
>> antiwar left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure,
>> throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We
>> were wrong.
>
>> The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by
>> media on the ground as well as our military leaders.
>
>> It did allow the Shi'ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
>> in the last several months to show leadership by joining, if not
>> leading, the military effort to clean out of Basra the masked Mahdi
>> Army controlled by the anti-U.S. Shi'ite extremist cleric Muqtada al-
>> Sadr and from the Sadr City section of Baghdad he claimed to control.
>
>> This willingness by the Shi'ite-dominated al-Maliki government to move
>> against the Sadr Shi'ite extremists won crucial credibility for the
>> government among many Sunni leaders and Sunnis on the streets, who
>> joined together with Shi'ites to turn against the al Qaeda in Iraq and
>> other Taliban-like extremists.
>
>> These are facts, not arguments.
>
>> I think there are a lot of antiwar Democrats who, like me, are
>> impressed by these facts and who now see a moral obligation, after all
>> the carnage and destruction wrought by our military intervention, not
>> just to pick up and leave without looking over our shoulders.
>
>> Surely we owe the Iraqis who helped us, whose lives are in danger,
>> immediate immigration rights to the U.S. Yet the shameful fact is that
>> most are still not even close to having such rights.
>
>> Surely we owe the al-Maliki government and the Shi'ite and Sunni
>> soldiers who put their lives on the line against Shi'ite and Sunni
>> extremists and terrorists at our behest some continuing presence and
>> support and patience as they strive to find peace, political
>> reconciliation - and maybe even the beginnings of a stable democracy.
>
>> The only question is, for how long?
>
>> Forever? No. 100 years? No.
>
>> But for how long? I don't know.
>
>> I just know I can't get out of my mind that lady with the purple
>> finger held up, smiling into the camera. If getting in was a mistake,
>> then getting out - how and when - is not so simple as long as there is
>> hope that she can someday live in a democratic Iraq that can help
>> America in the war against terrorism.
>
>> ==============
>> Lanny Davis - Democrat - is a prominent Washington lawyer and a
>> political analyst for Fox News Channel.
>
> This last sentence says it all. He's a Fox man, what would you expect
> him to write? Even if he had written something different you won't post
> it here.
>
> The war was a big, huge mistake, is a mistake and will always be a
> mistake,
> no matter how they twist it. Over 4000 American soldiers dead and
> countless
> others crippled for life and you want to justify this mistake? Not
> mentioning the
> financial ruin that it has put on us.
>
>
>
>> ------
>
>> -C-- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
That didn't take long!
******
Well, ya have to understand 9Titties...he's a true believer. He'd be the
first to throw more wood on the fire if a mob was burning a witch at the
stake.
Dionysus
