Iran creating 'nuclear weapons' is a created narrative by the GOP and warhawks in Washington.

When the Iraq war was at its worst, the blame was not laid at the Whitehouse burdening the military with unrealistic political objectives while not providing the necessary manpower.

No the blame was laid at insurgents, Al Qaeda but most of all at the influence of Iran and it's Revolutionary Guard. Everything from providing arms to training.

So much so that a resolution was passed declaring the Revolutionary Guards as 'terrorist' organization, weak links were pulled claiming Iran's president was involved in the American embassy hostage crisis back in the 80s.

This narrative was present on and off for several years, because who better to blame for the quagmire of Iraq then America hating Iran? But the story wasn't solid because there was hardly any proof, the EFPs found bearing Iranian marking are only indicative of lucrative arms trade that is occurring now in Iraq not of a policy of sabotaging America by Iran's government.

But this was not enough so the case for Iran creating Nuclear weapons was pushed forward, "Surely" the Neocons thought "It worked with Iraq 'smoking-gun-mushroom-cloud' it will probably work here".

The reason being such a narrative would facilitate expansion of the war into another sovereign nation that happens to possess oil reserves and more importantly lie in a strategic location that would allow oil and gas pipelines to run from Central Asia (one of the last untapped through Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf).

Not because it would benefit America as a whole but because it would benefit the interests of those who possess power, politically it would justify scaling and prolonging the war as much they wish, it would also allow for long term control of strategic reserves and routes for years to come not because its a good idea but because people who are Neocons are already playing a fantasy military standoff between the US, Russia and China some 50 years ahead.

Not to mention it would be to Israeli wishes.

Remember a few months ago they tried to pull a Gulf of Tonkin scenario in the Persian Gulf. Notice how that story got promptly buried.

Iran is not stupid, its military and army cannot handle an American air assault, they will be destroyed. They know the Bush Administration wants them to make a stupid move to justify and invasion or rather a air strike assault, why else would they just isolate them and not even talk to them in diplomatic terms. The carrier groups are ready stationed in the Persian Gulf to strike at any time.

This policy is disastrous, because the current sanctions and political isolation is only worsening the situation in Iran, justifying the centralization of power under the current president due to the possibility of war. It also solidifies Arab distrust of the US and plays right into the hands of groups like Al Qaeda.

"You liberal pussy quitters make me sick. You are incapable of looking past your own fucked up nose at the goal. Give up!"

Unbeleivable.

Noone is horrified by this quagmire because it's "so tough". We are embarassed and, frankly, pissed-off because it is illegal, immoral, and an enormous lie that has lead to deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, drained our national treasure, lit the middle east on fire, and shredded our constitution in the process.

It will take generations to correct the grotesque path that your elected officials have taken the entire world on, all so meatheads like "davido53" can see dead Iraqi children on their teevee's.

David: If you love killing Iraqi kids so much, why are you on VideoSift instead of in Basra?

There's a difference between stupid and dishonest. He actually comes across as very intelligent, just dishonest, which in my opinion is much worse.
In the run-up to the war I was against it, but felt that if it was started that the US should stay as long as needed once starting it. That was my position still until hearing Hitchen's arguments in the last year. Bush, Cheney and company lied to get into war and inentionally mislead the country into the war. That's horrible, and needs to be condemned. The "you bought it" argument though extends further than staying in long wnough to clean things up now. All the extreme left wingers are well aware of America's role in Saddam's rise to power and use of chemical weapons against Iran. They somehow completely forget that those actions maybe count as "breaking" the country and placing a responsiblity to fix that problem.

For some other talking points:
Feith actually is pretty good to point out that Iraq wasn't really linked to Al-Qaeda, but other terrorist organizations. Some of the most wanted men in the world where operating out of Iraqi government offices. After 9/11 that meant a little more to national security than before hand.
The conditions in Iraq are terrible now. But the better question is were people better off under Saddam's rule? Being forced to not only watch, but applaud, at the execution of loved ones is hard on a population.
Iraq was a sovereign nation and the US had no right to interfere. Iraq had not only invaded, but absorbed another sovereign nation as part of itself. Iraq had used WMD against Iran and it's own people. Iraq provided aid and support to terrorist organizations. Iraq had committed genocide against the Kurdish people. Saddam's claims to legitimate sovereign government evaporated as he committed all these acts.

Hate Bush and doubly so for Cheney, but don't try and whitewash the war as wrong because of their misactions going in. For the wrong they committed before and during the war, there is a lot of evidence to show that removing Saddam was a good thing, even with the unavoidable quagmire.

furrycloud-you would have to be at least 60-
53-63 it was Ike then Kennedy-After the assassination, elections have been engineered, and your vote has meant fuck-all
The delusional above who thinks Clinton was pretty good???....Yet another case of selective memory disorder, lack of overall knowledge of historical facts, and some idyllic,"My perfect world" bullshit thrown in-Clinton is a tool, one of the most ill-equipped to lead a nation-his wife is smarter and scarier-

Some folks only see something or someone as being good or bad if it fits their ideal world scenario, regardless of how they deal with the paradigm.....
jwray, all for opening the floodgates on freedoms here, and the bills cited do not have a lot to do with anything but matters of money and agenda-the shit Clinton allowed to be done, and that he abjectly neglected are his butt-fuck the U.S., legacy, not a few vetos that effect agenda-motivated minorities.

FDR engineered many a fistfuck for the future that guided the country to the sad state it is in today...33'-38'(New Deal) was a time of setting the place up for to fall ripe from the tree, the fruits of stolen (depression) American dreams-

Big war hawk.....conflict is continually in the process of being engineered, NO president within the current paradigm which involves the building of wealth capitol and commerce within a contrived and retrograde system is innocent.....

" I personally think Clinton was OK. At least his hawkish foreign policy worked and didn't get us into any long-term quagmires."-
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/9/29/25139.shtml
(The Sleeping Giant Clinton Fuck-Up.)
http://ssqq.com/ARCHIVE/intern03.htm
Dig a little deeper my friend....Bill and his Hillary are not to be fucked with in the arena of lies, deceit-the are some of the vilest of lackeys on the planet-Very usable.

>> ^furrycloud:
I wish I was old enough to remember a time when the President of the United States was a respected position...


Clinton wasn't so bad. But if you're older than 8, that means you're not into Bush or Clinton. If you don't like Bush you probably don't like his dad or Reagan. Then maybe Jimmy Carter was the last respectable president? If he's not good enough for you, then you probably don't like Ford, Nixon, or LBJ. Kennedy was a big war hawk like Bush, with the bay of pigs fiasco and other attempts to set up puppet governments in foreign countries. And kennedy escalated the vietnam war. Eisenhower raped Iran and replaced its growing democracy with the Shah because of the red scare. Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So.... Maybe you think FDR was the last respectable president?

I personally think Clinton was OK. At least his hawkish foreign policy worked and didn't get us into any long-term quagmires. He made some mistakes:
1. Failure to veto COPA
2. Failure to veto DoMA
3. Falure to veto DMCA
4. The welfare-to-work bill.

wolfDemon: There's an "I'm at the wrong airport" one during the episode when Peter causes Quagmire's plane to crash.

Ron Paul basically wants the US government to stop what it is doing across the board. The sad part is that the US government is in such a quagmire of poor decisions and corporate pandering that this would be really good for the country. However if Ron Paul was elected which obviously will not happen he should only be in office for one term and then out the door for someone who is willing to spend to rebuild.

On the 12th day of Christmas, conservatives gave to me

12 pedophiles

11 quagmires

10x more arsenic in your drinking water

9 Secret gulags

800,000 dead Iraqi civilians

7 trimmed amendments

6 corporations owning 99% our media

$5-trillion+ in debt

$4 gas

3 less world trade center buildings

2+2=5

....and a fucked up economy....

(unless you are among the financial elite, in which case, things are going swimmingly.)

Not to mention loss of respect internationally, rigged elections, corporate infiltration into every aspect of our government, the disastrous NCLB legislation, war profiteering, mercinaries, complete failure in dealing with Katrina, class warfare, racism, etc.....

What's wrong with the Woodstock museum again?

I'm entering this discussion a bit late, but....

If you want to see some ass kicking gay (and bisexual) soldiers, check out 300, and read the history behind it. The old 'I'm afraid someone is going to look at my peepee in the shower' is a modern construct, and seems a flimsy argument when put under any scrutiny.

Frankly, with the recent mismanagement of the military (Rumsfeld) and our quagmire in Iraq, I'd think we need all the help we can get in regards to recruitment.

http://www.hollywoodwiretap.com/?module=news&action=story&id=12583 (this is not much of an article, but didn't feel like hunting endlessly for a better one. If someone has a better link from the history channel, wiki or something else, lemme know and I'll swap it.)

Homophobia is the fear of homosexuality, which means not only the fear of gays, but the fear of being gay yourself. It stands to reason that homophobia can be a negative reaction to ones own gayness. Though many use this as a cheap shot or an insult, there is truth behind it. I don't imagine that most people who hate racists or terrorists are latent racists or terrorists, so I don't think your analogy holds up.

Instead of the gunshot at the end, I thought we were going to hear Maggie's pacifier again and Quagmire exclaiming, 'Giggity-Giggity'. What a sick mind I must have.

When the questions are this stupid is it any wonder the answers are nothing more than "a$$-coverage"?

How can anyone make a commitment for 2013, especially when discussing one of the world's most volatile areas!? Answering this question with an affirmative can only lead to the clip being dragged out 5-6 years from now with the press saying "You lied to us!". I disagreed with the war President Bush began in Iraq from day one, but I think it's foolish to make commitments blindly and I think Barack, Clinton, and friends did the right thing by refusing to make empty promises. Any number of things could change between now and 2013 which may require the just use of force in Iraq, and these hypothetical questions which demand candidates to be fortune tellers are pointless.

Mr. Bush has created quite the pickle and bringing it to a close while simultaneously avoiding the collapse of the area's stability is, unfortunately, not going to be simple. Perhaps Bush/Cheney of 2003 should have listened to Bush/Cheney of 1994 ( Link )

You do realize that you basically answered your own question?

The war in Iraq wasn't about freeing a country from tyranny but assuring a steady oil price for OPEC, by taking out Saddam who used to either dry the pump or maximize the output. The other set of reasons are simply morale posturing infront of world leaders who know better. Not to mention the case for WMD was cherry picked information from unreliable sources to justify an incursion in into Iraq in the first place.

Is this worth the price in American lives? More importantly look at the high price of oil currently. Clearly this hasn't benefited the US at all, but rather meant we are stuck in a quagmire.

The war in Iraq to me is nothing but the establishment of a American hegemony through military force.

They're soldiers for f**k sake didnt they know what they were getting into when they took the job?

Why should they have known that they were getting into this? Name another American military excursion similar to what we're doing in Iraq. Vietnam? No, there was a draft for that. Korea? Draft. WWI, WWII, draft draft. The military entanglements we've entered without the draft have been either smaller in scale or far more brief than the present quagmire.

Given that this is a volunteer army, many (most?) of the soldiers in Iraq right now are people who either A) needed the money (due to a lack of other jobs, or for future schooling) or B) truly believe in the value of service to country (nothing wrong with that IMHO). Members of the military disproportionately come from lower-income areas / families and rarely from the richest or most politically powerful. The people who encouraged, and continue to support, this useless war have little at stake personally, little or no "flesh in the game."

Our soldiers had no reason to expect a protracted occupation in an unstable country without adequate resources. Those in the Reserves and National Guard certainly had no reason to anticipate extended, recurring deployments outside of the US. The financial, emotional, and health strains placed on our most loyal citizens are immense in any war. When the war is of dubious merit and may end up being a near-complete waste of resources (money and lives) the stress frequently comes coupled with anger and/or indignation for those most closely affected.

I for one agree with the caller in this clip. If our continued occupation of Iraq is so terribly important that stressing our military and our economy in this way is justified, then service shouldn't be entirely voluntary. If our country truly needs to do this, then we should all be expected to do our fair share to assist. Either re-institute the draft or end the mission. I'd prefer to see the latter given that I'm of selective service age and in relatively good health. Really though, I can't imagine the war would last much longer once those in power actually had to risk seeing a loved one endanger their life fighting it.

Conservatives love to forget all kinds of history.

Let's forget the Bush Administration cutting troop pay and benefits, not giving them proper gear or properly armored vehicles. (We can't afford it they say while they give the top 1% rich massive tax cuts).

Let's forget Cheney explaining, on several occasions, why invading Iraq would create a quagmire. (Let's just tell ourselves that 9/11 changed everything and made all centuries old middle-eastern sectarian hatred disappear magically.)

Let's forget Bush bankrupting every company he was ever put in charge of.

Let's forget what Bush Administration members and other conservatives say week to week on TV. They change their excuse every week. The most hated "liberals" out there are the people who record a neo-con on TV twice and play both clips back-to-back.

What a fucking moron.

For the past four years he's been telling us that Iraq was nothing like Vietnam (a war that his rich daddy helped him dodge and go AWOL from just the same).

Suddenly, Iraq is like Vietnam.

Ergo, Bush got America into another Vietnam.

Q ...Mr. President...some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation's interest.

Source

Arrest that fool.