Now What?
Since Sunday much has been made about the capture of Saddam Hussein, including saturation news coverage by ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/CNBC/Fox News. There is much speculation that this victory will weaken the Democrats' anti-war position and boost Bush's popularity to the point that his re-election, the prospect of which seemed grim only last week, will be a sure thing. A friend even wrote me to gloat: "Are you still opposed to the war?"
To be honest, I don't think Saddam's capture makes that much of a difference in our "War on Terror." It most definitely does not change my opposition to this war, unless Saddam can shit out a few of those vaunted biological, chemical, "nuculer" warheads that we have been searching for in vain during the past 9 months.
Saddam will not give us the $87 billion we need to reconstruct Iraq, although the $750,000 he had stashed in his rat hole should buy our troops and the Iraqi people a few more gallons of gas at the rate that Halliburton is bilking us.
He can't heal the rift that has divided us from our allies as a result of the bickering before, during and after our invasion. Am I the only one that is disgusted by the grossly incompetent handling of the reconstruction contract bidding process? Other than being somewhat concerned about how we look like a bunch of petty assholes, I don't think it's all that unreasonable to not grant the French, Germans and Russians contracts after they refused to participate in the war and contribute to the reconstruction costs. But there is such a thing called diplomacy. Since we are not obliged to grant contracts to ANY country, we could have shut out the French/Germans/Russians WITHOUT rubbing their faces in it. I honestly can't think of a worse insult than explicitly banning them from bidding. And then to have the nerves to ask these same countries to forgive the billions of dollars in debts owed by Iraq only days later? Is our foreign policy being formulated by a bunch of lobotomized inbreds? It sure sucks to be James Baker now [although it now looks like he has had some success on the debt relief issue with the French and Germans; it's comforting to see that these countries actually have mature leaders].
I will change my opinion on the war if Saddam can lead us to non-conventional weapons more deadly than two trailers that were suspected of being used to grow biological weapons (a theory that has been widely disputed by those from the intelligence community), and more lethal than a vial of botulinum bacteria that had been sitting in some dude's fridge since 1993.
The $100+ billion of dollars we spent during the war and the tens of thousands of lives lost would have been worth it if we had found Bin Laden and his top lieutenants having a barbecue in a bigger rat hole next to Saddam's, since they are actually responsible for 9/11 and the embassy and hotel bombings. The real terrorist threats to us will be reduced once we bring to justice the terrorist extraordinaire who has provided both financial assistance and spiritual inspiration to Islamic militants around the world.
I would support the war if by toppling Saddam's regime we were able to deter North Korea and Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons programs.
As of now, we still haven't located any actual WMD's in Iraq. Bin Laden and friends are still on the loose somewhere in Afghanistan (the country that we had a reason to bomb) because we have deployed 10 times as many troops in Iraq to crush an enemy that posed little threat to us. North Korea restarted its nuclear weapons program around the time Bush started making noise about the hellacious can of whoop ass we would be dishing out to members of the "Axis of Evil." Ruled by a delusional megalomaniac dictator who has starved to death more than a million people and built massive prisons that cage up to 100,000 people (most of whom are political prisoners), North Korea seems at least as deserving of a regime change even WITHOUT taking the WMD's it potentially possesses into consideration.
So my answer is yes, I am still opposed to this war.
To be honest, I don't think Saddam's capture makes that much of a difference in our "War on Terror." It most definitely does not change my opposition to this war, unless Saddam can shit out a few of those vaunted biological, chemical, "nuculer" warheads that we have been searching for in vain during the past 9 months.
Saddam will not give us the $87 billion we need to reconstruct Iraq, although the $750,000 he had stashed in his rat hole should buy our troops and the Iraqi people a few more gallons of gas at the rate that Halliburton is bilking us.
He can't heal the rift that has divided us from our allies as a result of the bickering before, during and after our invasion. Am I the only one that is disgusted by the grossly incompetent handling of the reconstruction contract bidding process? Other than being somewhat concerned about how we look like a bunch of petty assholes, I don't think it's all that unreasonable to not grant the French, Germans and Russians contracts after they refused to participate in the war and contribute to the reconstruction costs. But there is such a thing called diplomacy. Since we are not obliged to grant contracts to ANY country, we could have shut out the French/Germans/Russians WITHOUT rubbing their faces in it. I honestly can't think of a worse insult than explicitly banning them from bidding. And then to have the nerves to ask these same countries to forgive the billions of dollars in debts owed by Iraq only days later? Is our foreign policy being formulated by a bunch of lobotomized inbreds? It sure sucks to be James Baker now [although it now looks like he has had some success on the debt relief issue with the French and Germans; it's comforting to see that these countries actually have mature leaders].
I will change my opinion on the war if Saddam can lead us to non-conventional weapons more deadly than two trailers that were suspected of being used to grow biological weapons (a theory that has been widely disputed by those from the intelligence community), and more lethal than a vial of botulinum bacteria that had been sitting in some dude's fridge since 1993.
The $100+ billion of dollars we spent during the war and the tens of thousands of lives lost would have been worth it if we had found Bin Laden and his top lieutenants having a barbecue in a bigger rat hole next to Saddam's, since they are actually responsible for 9/11 and the embassy and hotel bombings. The real terrorist threats to us will be reduced once we bring to justice the terrorist extraordinaire who has provided both financial assistance and spiritual inspiration to Islamic militants around the world.
I would support the war if by toppling Saddam's regime we were able to deter North Korea and Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons programs.
As of now, we still haven't located any actual WMD's in Iraq. Bin Laden and friends are still on the loose somewhere in Afghanistan (the country that we had a reason to bomb) because we have deployed 10 times as many troops in Iraq to crush an enemy that posed little threat to us. North Korea restarted its nuclear weapons program around the time Bush started making noise about the hellacious can of whoop ass we would be dishing out to members of the "Axis of Evil." Ruled by a delusional megalomaniac dictator who has starved to death more than a million people and built massive prisons that cage up to 100,000 people (most of whom are political prisoners), North Korea seems at least as deserving of a regime change even WITHOUT taking the WMD's it potentially possesses into consideration.
So my answer is yes, I am still opposed to this war.
posted by Gary at
12:47 AM
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