Is US Establishing An Islamic Theocracy In Iraq?

I raised something along this line a while back. This was when it was becoming apparent that Chalabi himself was working more for Iranian interests, along with his own, than Iraqi interests.It was seriously looking like Iran used the US to wipe out the very enemy we created to handle it. The revelation of curveball and his intimate connection with Iran and Chalabi only cements that ironic possibility.About the only thing keeping me from thinking that is a fact is that Iran isn't openly mocking us for having defeated us in that fashion. It it isn't true, it still might as well be.I guess after we establish the new Iraq we'll eventually have to pit it against Iran again.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Heheheh... nothing to say about that except it was a nicely written response. Two people have already responded to this accurately but I want to expand upon their answers.Afghanistan was the only immediately valid target stemming from the 911 attacks. Bush had been given very large latitude to pursue what he saw as the correct targets related to 911 and he DIVERTED resources away from the main fight to engage Iraq.There was huge support to give him latitude, but not as much to actually engage Iraq, especially when and in the manner he did.Yes, it is true that there was supporters from both sides in congress, and I believe a slim majority within the population, for the war. That does not make the decision a correct one, nor does it remove responsibility from GWBs shoulders. That's the point of leadership. He himself states that he alone has to make decisions even if they are unpopular, well that means that he does not get to say his decisions are right simply because they were popular. If it goes kablooey, then it is his error for not checking his facts and making the unpopular decision not to go to war.But this is not to get into what has already been said: No one was pushing this except a small group of neocons before Bush pressed the issue, and most of the people outside the top administrators were being fed bad information by a bad system which he himself presided over and had responsibility for making sure worked properly.I agree that everyone who supported this war ought to be feeling some heat for their support. The evidence is in and it was botched. Even if it might lead to some good down the road (and I still hope it does for Iraqis) this was a terrible mistake for the US and the world. BUT, the person who spearheaded the campaign to divert resources to this new conflict, that oversaw the system that provided the evidence which made the case, and the person who oversaw the system which did NOT run the invasion correctly, was only one man... GWB, and the greatest weight falls on his shoulders.If not for him, this would have gone very very differently.I believe you are correct about Kennedy and others that began other wars. The only one I'd leave out is Roosevelt (WW2). That stands as a great counterpoint to what happened here. We stayed out of a war, which by rights we probably should have been engaging in long before. Once attacked we stayed on target and did not divert resources to other wars. That is just an assertion. What are liberal activist revisionist judges? Who are they? What exactly have they done? And please show how they revised the intent of the Constitution as it has been historically interpreted for over two centuries.The more accurate position is that the Constitution has historically been interpreted in many different ways, especially over time. This is done by any and all parties. Sometimes it is a return to "original" interpretations, sometimes not. Sometimes it is a change which is for the better, and sometimes not.The founders did not seem worried about expansions of freedom, which is what you seem to be fearing. The Bill of Rights was not created to set limits on what freedoms we have, but to give us an avenue for expanding rights by limiting the govt. That is why there is an amendment which specifically states that the ones clearly enumerated are not to suggest that those are the only available. There were expected to be more found.So called constructionists are just as "activist", often hypocritical (look at GWB and the wiretapping issue), and like to overlook that final (at that time) amendment which removes arguments that "if the right isn't listed then it's not there".This message has been edited by holmes, 01-04-2006 10:27 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Just to let you know, I responded to your post earlier and did not insult you. I agreed in part with some of what you said (including the message you state above) and how you said it.But I did have some disagreements and laid them out plainly. I'd be interested in your response to them.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Technically Buz is right. The entire nation was misinformed.The key thing to note (for him) is that the entire nation did not simply swallow the misinformation. Many many people were able to determine that they were being fed faulty information by using other information already out there in the world.On top of that many many people were able to move past the faulty information by reasoning that even if true, the argument for war was still not justified. It could not be conducted in a way that would reasonably be able to remove the threat it proposed to eliminate. This appears to be what Buz is discovering now.Does anyone have an estimate of how many were in favor of the war at the time, broken down by belief in information on WMDs/AQConnection? Clearly there was some section of the population that got it right, and the other section (which were slower on the pickup) is trying to act like they figured out something no one else had before. It might be interesting to know what the percentage was for those who got it right... maybe a job/promotion is in order?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Remind me where in the US constitution there is verbiage regarding God and the Xian religion? I'm not saying there definitely isn't, but I don't know of any and I just browsed through it again and didn't find any. Are you thinking of the Declaration of Independence? Things can be different than what their constitution's suggest. As it is this is able to support a theocracy, which as jar pointed out can still be democratic.Given the demographics of Iraq it will be easy enough to get fundamentalist Islamic candidates in positions of power. Will it make any real difference if you have an executive officer and legislative block that is like the current leader of Iran, just because they got voted in? ??? What is Xian law? Where can I find it? And more importantly can you point me to the document from any of the founding fathers which shows them discussing that as their formulating plan? You have to admit it is more of a possibility now, than it was pre-invasion.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

If it was anything above 53-55% I will agree that it was more than a slim majority. Was support for the war itself 63%? And is there a track of approval over time?I'm totally open to evidence on this. I'd be interested in approval ratings for such an idea from before, and up till now. Break downs by state might also be interesting. Okay, I can accept that by your definition no war can be laid on any president's head. That is an opinion and we can agree to disagree on that. What I am saying is that I do place it on the head of the leader who has the call, and am pointing to words by Bush himself which suggest he should be taking responsibility.The Clinton accusation is without merit. That was an accusation made early on, and the evidence is in that it is not true. Whatever problems did occur under his admin, they were not ones which undercut Bush. Bush specifically shifted resources away from terrorism in order to fight porn, as well as fostering a chain of information which isolated good intel. In case you don't know he is doing it again.I might add that Clinton's intel problems have NOTHING to do with Iraq. It is on record that the Bush administration received accurate info regarding the threat of AQ, and it was dismissed by Bush and Ashcroft. They also diverted resources to fight porn. I think this is rather obviously huge steps in the wrong direction.I should also add that CIA is not the only intel agency. If you read the Senate's findings on intel errors, it showed that the big problem was Bush's heads accepting CIA conclusions using faulty logic OVER the conclusions of other US intel agencies.The "surprise" of misinfo is mainly from those at the top (or anyone else) who relied only on cherry picked CIA data. Unfortunately, as I have pointed to above, intel of the govt is different than what Bush was producing for public consumption. And the intel that other agencies had was available in some public forums outside the US. That's why some... like me and schraf... did not make a mistake.The execution was fine, the planning was horrible. The best it has been described as (by its own commander) is "catastrophic success" suggesting that it went so well it ended up producing bad results. The casualties are less, but this was a war against an infinitely inferior enemy than we ever faced before.Unfortunately every innocent dead person is really dead, and did not advance the security it was argued would result. And more to the point, it has resulted in massive costs to the US and a diversion of military power away from the primary fight against the people that attacked us. Ahhhhhhh, and that is not something that I (and maybe not even schraf) would have been against. Saddam was not sabre rattling (not sure where that came from), but actions of some kind would have been called for to get inspectors back in as well as efforts to actively suppress WMD ambitions (which everyone agrees he had).The criticism is only that overt war was the worst solution with predictable outcomes. Many critics predicted the problems that could emerge and in fact they have emerged. The predictions of success made by war supporters have all gone wrong.Except that Hussein is not in power, and Iraqis have a chance at running their nation. I agree that is great, just not great enough and solved none of our security issues. WRONG. We suggested the outcomes from an invasion and they have come true. Our assessment of the available data has been vindicated.And from what we have learned things could not have gotten as bad as was predicted by war proponents. There were no WMDs and there were no connections to AQ. He didn't even have a military capable of threatening neighbors (which I have already shown the Bush administration itself stated before 911).This really did produce no benefits, and indeed has resulted in the problems we suggested. Armchair general criticism starts falling away at that point.Although I guess I am assuming we agree on the state of data at this point. You do agree that there were no WMDs or viable WMD capabilities in Iraq, as well as no military capability, right? If R knew of Pearl harbor I would have held him accountable for that decision. However that would not have changed whether it was "his war". Pearl Harbor was set to coincide with a declaration of war from Japan. Thus we were forced into war by the Japanese regardless of PH. Likewise Germany declared war on us.I do think WW2 was a significantly different war than most within US history.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

1) Where did you get this? Is there some reference to support it?
2) Madison was the only person to propose a separation of powers and in fact there had been no more recent examples in history of such separation (outside of nations)?
3) Do I have to point out that the passage suggests that all power should rest within one man? I don't think anyone was ignorant enough that they did not understand there was a difference between creating, judging, and enforcing laws. The point was who was to do these tasks. Isaiah suggests one man alone.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

1) You didn't answer my questions.
2) You only posted to a link which includes a bare assertion from someone else.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)