Press

The media should stop crying about dead in Iraq i dont think they know that it is a WAR and people do unfortunatly die but 2,000 in some 3 years isnt something to cry about they werent drafted and they knew what the were doing so the media dosnt need to crap it up so to speak i talked to my ww2 vet and he said the should just stop crying about it.

well thats what i think

 

Indeed it is a war, and therefore people will inevitably die; and indeed 2000 dead on one side in three years isn't much compared to most wars fought in human history, especially at the scale of the Iraq conflict. However, these deaths are caused by war, they are a consequence of war; thus they are an argument against Bush's War on Terror policy. That is why the press keep "crying" about them, and well they should.

 

I just wish we would get to see the enemy casualty rate. Kinda one sided right now. Makes it look like the allies can't get the job done.

Then there is all the good things that the press just will not print. Talk with troops over there and then look at the reports here and it's like they are in two different wars. :angry:

 

Indeed. However, as noted elsewhere on here, "body count rises" is more sensational news than "we're actually doing ok". :angry:

Frankly, I argee with TD. The guys joined the army. Even the TA / National Guard guys who have been sent knew that there was a chance of active service. You rarely (if ever) hear them complain - they are often heard in support.

I'm not sure that it is all 'the press is 100% critical of Bush/Blair/etc and wants to criticise them' - more 'this will sell papers/gain viewers.

Apparently, after one bombing in Iraq, the BBC were very anxious to find out how many British soldiers had died. Why? Because if it was 3 or more then the British Army death toll would break 100, which would be big news. :roll:

 

That phenomena surely is not only Iraq related.
A death toll in front page is always the best guarantee to sell one's story.

I mean if there's let's say a train accident, the main story will be "Train accident----44 dead" and not "Train accident----489 survivors sucessfully rescued"....

Generally, watching TV is get the impression that such "body counts" are especially important in private channels rather than public one's....

 

Roel, what would you suggest that we do? Roll over and give the terrorists what they want? You might be comfortable with the idea of living under a radical Muslim world government, but I'm not. And the media has more than once demonstrated strong bias against both the war and Mr. Bush in its coverage of events in Iraq, rather than the impartiatiality it's members so often claim to have.

 

Did the terrorists present any demands to the United States?

Is there any evidence whatsoever that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had anything at all to do with the organization responsible for the attacks on the United States in 2001?

Does the Muslim world acknowledge Al Quaeda as its representative?

As far as I know the answers are: No, No, and No. Thus suggesting that the Americans should not have started a war against Iraq is not nearly the same as saying I would not mind living under a Muslim fundamentalist world government, if anything that far-fetched is even remotely concievable at all.

 

It must however be said that these "terrorists" and islamists or Al Qaida were not in Iraq before the war.

I certainly would not be comfortable with living under a radical muslim governement, but I fail to see how that is related with the decision for invading Iraq.

Well didn't the Bush administration tell the people and the world that there were unrefutable proofs that Iraq had WMD.
Something like "There is absolutely no doubt that Saddam has biological and chemical weapons, and that he is developping atomic weapons and buying uranium from Africa....
Didn't Donald Rumsfeld say that the US Troops would largely withdraw after 6 months....



I mean mostly everything the US administration said or predicted about the war prooved wrong, and thus it is the duty of a democratic press to show that to the people.
If it is true that the US press is so critic towards the war now, then they turned around 180 degrees because in the period before the war, the press was very cautious, and everyone who demanded proofs for Iraq's WMD or warned from possible negative consequences of the war was easily called a weasel or a friend of Saddam....
Stuff like this was usual at the time:





That being said, I agree that the body count style in which some media report about the iraq war is disgusting to say the least....[/url]

 

Well Iraq needed to get ride of Sadaam anyways.Might as well fight them over there then here.

 

But they weren't fighting you "here".

I agree that deposing Saddam was a good thing, but that was not the reason given for this war, and it is not the reason Corp just gave for going to war either.

 

The free press is a bit of a cross to bear but as T Pratchett puts it freedom doesn't just mean the nice bits :-?

 

Deroy Murdock from National Review Online:

Just some excerpts from the article to stimulate debate on this issue.

 

I don't think anybody is questioning that Iraq, like most islamic countries harboured terrorists.
The same can be said about Syria, Lybia, Algeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan....

For example a few years ago the saudi minister for islamic affairs said that; Suicide bombings are allowed....the victims are considered to have died in a martyr's death....
In 1998, saudi minister Prince Turki offered Ben Laden 200 million Dpllar under the condition that he did not target the saudi royal family....

Also Saudi arabia is linked to Hamas, Abu Sayaf and other islamic terrorist organisations all over the world.


Iraq was not a greater supporter of terrorism than others.
Most important in the case we were debating is that Iraq did not have links with Al Qaida.
As Donald Rumsfeld said in december 2004: "There's no hard evidence for linking Saddam to Al Qaida"....

One must remember that ideologically, a laicist regime like baathist Iraq was a natural ennemy for an islamist terror organisation like Al qaida.

 

This tells me that you did not read the article excerpt shown above.

 

Well it apears that you are the one who has nor really red the article you provided.

Because for someone who has on it's agenda to link Saddam to Al Qaida, the proofs he presents are really really few....

Just some examples:

The fact that a member of the iraqi embassy talked to a member of Aby Sayaf is brought as a proof that Saddam had ties with Al Qaida.
But Abu Sayaf is not the same as Al Qaida.
What were they talking about?
Is there a proof Bagdad knew of it?

There are several such claims in the article where the simple fact that an iraqi official REPORTEDLY met a member of Al Qaida, and that is interpreted as proof that Iraq worked together with Al Qaida.
For example that meeting in Prague to which is referred.Who tells you that it wasn't the objective of that iraqi agent to find out about possible Al Qaida plans against Iraq.
There are plenty of agents meeting potential terrorists, that's what they are being paid for....
If let's say an italian undercover agant talked to suspected terrorists, would that mean that the italian governement is linked to Al Qaida....

That guy in Malaysia too, was reportedly dispatched from Iraqi embassy(proof ???)

Some parts of the article are a bit more serious, like the fact that Al Sarkawi was harboured in Iraq in 2002.But then the article fails to mention that there he enlisted in an armed group and fought kurdish militia.(not necessarily a "terror group" as referred to in your article)No proof that Saddam knew about his Al Qaida membership,or that he knew about possible Al Qaida activities of Zarkawi....


I could go on like this for hours.

If there really was a collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaida then there would inevitabely be documents which proove it, but there is nothing serious.
The coalition forces are in Iraq for 3 years now, nearly all senior members of Saddam's governement are in custody, but still no prooves for their Al Qaida collaboration.
I mean the US governement admitted that there was no solid proof of Iraq having ties with Al Qaida.Do you think they would have done that(given the fact that they claimed the contrary before the war)if there really was some hard proof Saddam had such contacts?

According to the 9/11 inquiry comission there was no collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaida.They came to the conclusion that Ben Laden repeatedly tried to get in contact with iraqi officials and asked for logistic support+help to aquire weapons.
Bagdad obviously never responded.
Also according to them that meeting in Prague your article mentions never took place....

Trying to proove against all odds, that such ties existed somehow remembers me about all that people that after the war continued(and still continue) to claim thar Saddam had WMD, and that he simply brought them to a neighbouring country.

 

This isn't about "proof". It isn't a court of law.
It is about evidence.

Did you miss this part?
Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City.
Again, this is about evidence not proof.

Incredibly naive. If Italy had a history of supporting terrorist groups and/or providing terrorist training camps etc then yes it would be suspect.

Don't bother it would only be more of the same.

Not exactly. The Bush Administration conceded there was no direct evidence of an Iraqi connection to the 9/11 attacks. Former Sec. Powell stated that there was no "smoking gun, concrete evidence of a link between Al queda and Iraq.

It would be silly to assume that because definitive proof of WMDs weren't found that Saddam never had them. We know for a fact that he did. He used them on his own people. It was reasonable under the circumstances to assume that he still possessed them. In any case he badly miscalculated when he refused to allow the UN inspectors to do their job if he really had nothing to hide.

 

Have you read my previous post??
Is Aby Sayaf the same as Al Qaida?
What did those persons talk about?
Is there evidence Bagdad knew of it?

Unless you answer these questions the point seems irrelevant to me.

.

Calling me naive won't help you to make a point and is not helpfull to a constructive debate.
There is no evidence what those persons were talking about.
According to the 9/11 enquiry comission this meeting in Prague did not even take place....
I may agree that such a contact could make Iraq suspect, but that still is no evidence.
And my example with Italy was perfectly valid.Intelligence services are in contact with potential terrorists, wether you like it or not....
And Ben Laden openly advocated to overthrow Saddam, so somehow the iraqi intelligence service had to care about Al Qaida.


Btw, there's another mistake in the article you provided.Al Zarkawi was not a member of Al Qaida when he came to Iraq, and he was not leading an Al Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.
He had refused Ben Ladens proposal to join him ,and take part in the jihad against the US, preferring to concentrate his efforts on removing "unislamic" regimes in the arab world.(In his view these "unislamic regimes" of course included Saddam's Iraq....)
He only joined Al Qaida in october 2004.(Just check his biography on any good/neutral source)
And as I suspected, the "training camp" he created in northern Iraq was located in an area controlled by an islamic kurdish armed organisation.As in most of Kurdistan the iraqi army had most probably no control of that area....
Besides, the name of that Group was Ansar Al Islam and it's stated goal was to SECEDE FROM BAATHIST IRAQ.Obviously that's an objective Saddam would agree with.... :roll:


As we all know, hundreds of Al Qaida members fled to Pakistan after 2001.
Ben Laden and Zawahiri are believed to be in that country.
Do you interpret that as evidence that Pakistan's President Musharaf cooperates with Al Qaida??

The US administration repeatedly said that there is no strong hard evidence linking Saddam to Al Qaida.So do other governements, so does the 9/11 enquiry comission.
The CIA says that there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida....and so do the secret services of other countries.
Maybe one day such evidence will be found, I cannot surely know, but before I have seen it, I'd stay with the hard facts rather than with conspiracy theories....

I never said he never had them.He obviously had them in the 80's.But the UN inspectors were rather successfull at destroying them, since he did not have them anymore 10 years later.

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No, it would have been reasonable to led the inspectors do their job, and get evidence before rushing to war.Before the war started all the inspectors asked for was more time, several months after which they would have been able to tell with certainty wether Saddam had those weapons or not.
Already a lot of secret services had come to doubt Saddam had WMD.
Why not giving the inspectors those few months they asked for??
Should they have found WMD, it would still have been time to go to war....

Well according to those inspectors, the iraqi collaboration was improving, and they were being granted access to wherever they wanted.
Besides, according to the relevant UN resolution(to which US + UK had agreed), it was up to the arms inspectors together with the UN security council to decide when there was a "material breach" justifying the use of force....

 

I have no intention of searching for and posting all the links to reports of Saddam barring UN inspectors and impeding and resisting the inspections.
There were many infractions, too numerous to list.


All this debate proves IMO is that there is no proof of Iraqi links to Al Queda.

That is a clear, definitive negative statement. It isn't possible to prove such a negative so I don't think proof is the standard to be used.
There is evidence that suggests it. You may choose to discount that evidence. I do not.

 

Well, the balance seems to be that there is a large dearth of concrete evidence, and a fair-to-small amount of rather tenuous evidence.

still, a good debate to follow, thanks guys.

 

That's true.
But according to the arms inspectors Iraq's collaboration was improving and actually had become rather satisfactory.
There were some minor infractions, to which however war seemed a more than disproportionate response.

It must of course be said that the return of the inspectors into Iraq only had become possible by massive US military threat towards Iraq.
The very fact that those inspectors were in Iraq was a great sucess for the Bush administration,(As neither the Clinton administration, nor the european powers had showed much resolve when Saddam sent the inspectors home in 1998).

Problem is, if you give too much credit to such kind of evidence, than you can accuse every country in the middle east to have links with Al Qaida....
Anyhow, using such shaky evidence to justify a war seem more than irresponsible to me.
That's at least my humble opinion....