is that a misspell, or typo perhaps? did you mean to tell him to "fluff a long fluff, now"? do you need more practice with English cuss words? you could've said "fluff off now". please explain. i need more practice with using my phone's autocomplete.

im guessing that he isnt american, but i could be mistaken, i am really stupid.

dunno. somebody from Saudi Arabia started posting on the LOF forums recently. don't think it has anything to do with your stupidity. though i do question whether or not the poster belongs to these forums.

http://i.imgur.com/Gd7ah9L.jpg

Here are two more facts that certain studies which concluded that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs also concluded:

1. He was actively seeking to undermine the sanctions against his regime and to end those sanctions through nefarious means (read 'Bribes')

2. He was retaining all knowledge of WMDs and the personelle to restart all WMD programs very quickly after the sanctions fell.

Of course, if these facts inconvenience you, you can just ignore them...since Saddam Hussein has already been (rightly) removed from power. The United States removed a terrorist supporting, murderous dictator from power. The US did this while causing relatively few civilian casualties ourselves or through the actions of our allies. The US did this while enforcing, as appropriate, the standards that our country expects from our men and women in uniform and while openly investigating allegations of wrongdoing.

Better blood on America's hands than on its soul. The world's getting enough blood on its soul in places like Darfur.

Ah yes, "relatively few civilian casualties." Hey, only >10% of the civilian population was displaced. No biggie, right? After all, Saddam didn't execute his scientists like he should have. AND HE HARBORED DEM TERRORISTS!

so you post in any mode other than sarcasm?

What on earth do you expect? The guy is like "we removed a murderous dictator with relatively few civilian casualties" when the civilian casualties (yes, ok, partly due to the insurgency as opposed to coalition actions) were many times higher than what the dictator killed in the 20 years preceeding the war. There are some viewpoints that deserve a serious well-thought out response and acknowledgment. Then there are tired conservative talking points and hyperbole which deserves sarcasm or just a short "lol you're an idiot."

The only reasonable point I've seen from you guys in this thread is the one about Iraq possibly having its own "Arab spring" that could have been a more bloody way to topple Saddam. The rest of this stuff just makes me thing "how the hell can people still think this is true?" or "how can people have so little regard for human lives?"

human life is pretty cheap. only takes $2.5 a day per person to feed 1/2 the population. besides we can always make more people, ain't like they going to live forever without spending a fortune on each person. btw, y'all need to start spending a heck of a lot more money on me. and send me some adult female virgins so that my sex life is more meaningful. maybe a gross of the leftover Chinese women that are under the age of 40.

I love how you acknowledge that civilian deaths were "partly due" to insurgents and terrorist; of course, that's not exactly true as the insurgents and terrorists were MOSTLY responsible for civilian deaths.

Oh and he didn't just not execute his scientists, he actively kept them and their knowledge.

I really have no idea how you can have so little regard for human lives. As for the idea of idiots...the feeling is mutual.

So what you're saying is the Iraq war was a good thing because someone else killed the civilians?

That being said, estimates (admittedly, I just did a quick search) for the percentage of deaths attributable to US/coalition/Iraq Security forces is either higher than or just a tad below those attributable to insurgents and well below the "others" or "unattributed" categories. Though it seems that this "attributing process" isn't the most reliable thing to go on. Nevertheless, it's not exactly unfair to say that the coalition pretty easily beat post-1991 Hussein. Then you have those 3.9 million displaced people, people with long term traumas as a result of the war, etc etc etc.. And, like I said in the first paragraph, that's without attributing other casualties of the war to the starter of the war.

But no, damn murderous terrorist support dictators!!!! GRRR!!!

What I'm saying is that we cannot be held responsible for deaths that we did not cause or committ and that Husseins PROVEN history and the documented evidence that he fully intended to resume such historical actions means that removing him from power before he escaped from sanctions makes the Iraq War a good thing.

Iraq now has the chance to actually move forward again, instead of being stalled by a murderuous, terrorist supporting dictator that you seem to prefer was still in power terrorizing his own people today. Yeah, I question your concern and care for your fellow human beings.

youre dumb, we destabilized the country and overthrew its ruling power. how are we NOT at least partially responsible for deaths in the ensuing melee? it was a direct cause and effect, imperialist war followed by an insurgency. iraq now has a chance to move forward? lol we just got through blowing it backward by decades. fluff along now

do you know how to post a rebuttal without insulting your opponent? it is a pretty big indication as to your intelligence and skills imo.

whats wrong with calling stupid stupid? are you some kind of namby pamby liberal?

im apathetic when it comes to politics, so you can call me what you wish regarding that.

i like guns, and government that leaves me alone. take from that what you will.

probably nothing, but it is kind of repetitive. would you like to borrow my copy of Roget's Thesaurus? might help if you used some synonyms.

Thank you for complimenting my intelligence...as coming from you (being so completely wrong on this issue), being called dumb is a compliment.

How are we not at least partially responsible? Because we made a good faith effort to fill the power vaccum that we created. The only possible responsibility is for negligence...and we weren't negligent. Imperialist war? That's completely laughable...as we didn't get anything out of the war except the elimination of an enemy to the US. Said enemy was also doing a terrific job of holding Iraq back decades...Iraq was always going to face major updates to their infrastructure when Saddam Hussein fell from power. You make it sound like they were technologically and intrastructurally modern...they were not.

Iraq's economic state in the 1990s was largely a consequence of economic sanctions but to say it's much better off today than then is a bit silly. And modern Iraq isn't exactly a well governed democratic state.

bonus.

i usually bonus threads like this to demonstrate my ability to restrain myself from trolling koh.

You're the same dipfluff that was bragging about how the US wrecked their country "while enforcing, as appropriate, the standards that our country expects from our men and women in uniform and while openly investigating allegations of wrongdoing."

First off, you talk like a tool. Were you home-schooled or are you a 40-year-old virgin or something? Secondly, what a bunch of horsefluff, considering what happened at Abu Ghraib, considering how US snipers picked off civilians from up on the rooftops through a baiting program, etc etc. Your propaganda sounds like Baghdad Bob's. "A minimum of civilian casualties." Hah.

If we created the power vacuum, then, you worthless fluff, we're very much to blame for the violence that ensues. If I set your house on fire and then make a "good faith effort" to put the fire out, am I not to blame when it burns down?

According to you it's not imperialist for a foreign hegemony to take it upon itself to overthrow a ruling government. Nothing in it for us? How about a puppet state in a strategic region? How about opening up the oil pipelines? Lookie here, Iraq is set to be the new second largest oil producer!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...largest-oil-producer.html

And that's without the resource nationalism that places like Iraq and Libya (ha!) formerly employed to use oil profits on the state - most oil now is being extracted by foreign companies looting Iraqi resources. Not imperialism though, right?

http://www.aljazeera.com/.../2011122813134071641.html


Meanwhile, harvesting this oil takes a lot of water... while in the midst of historic water shortages.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...1009-iraq-oil-production/

http://www.ens-newswire.com/...un2010/2010-06-10-02.html

And of course, even last summer there were still blackout problems in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/...=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

Iraq war supporters have been proved wrong by every metric possible and the fact that y'all still exist and come in here and pollute discussions with your filth like good mouthpieces for George W. Bush or something is abhorrent... just stop and go away.

nice google work there

yea I used google to provide sources for some facts. how bout that! you can do that when you're right!

you dont seem to realize that no one cares what you say because every other word you say is an insult. now i make fun of people all the time, but not in a serious debate.

look what you've been reduced to, lol, trolling somoene for using facts to support their argument - because all of your arguments completely fell apart and you have nothing left to do but troll. y'all are some worthless fluffs in here

thanks for proving my point. bait successful!

actually people don't care what i say because it disagrees with the opinion they've already made up their minds to hold. 'wah wah the guy ruthlessly owning me is saying mean words.' those mean words are well-deserved for an iraq war supporter in the year 2013, because to still support the iraq war today, knowing that hundreds of thousands were killed, millions displaced, knowing that our justification for going to war ended up falling through, you have to be a degenerate fluff.

Actually, people will resist your opinions on the basis of your attitude. If you can attempt to be civil without the use of ad hominem attacks, you'd be more successful in convincing people. Calling people stupid doesn't work. In fact, it makes you seem like a crackpot.

All you need to do is look up the debate etiquette to see that you've broken that rule.

It's like this. I argue with my brother all the time. I make a point, he gets mad and tries to make a point against me. I make another point refuting his point, he calls me a mother fluffer. Who won?

If I didn't win... he at least lost.

what did he "lose"? does he change his mind? if he was right he's not any less right for calling you a motherfluffer, if he was wrong he obviously didn't change his mind. so where does he "lose"?

don't be too idealistic. the fact is, people don't want to change their opinions, and people don't want to think they're wrong. that's just human nature. being nice to them isn't going to suddenly change their minds.

there was a study about how conservative people have fluffty brains, where basically, if they think saddam had wmds, and you tell them, "no, there was no evidence of that according to this article," they become *more* convinced he had wmds. they dig in their heels. because they're fluff-ups and don't want to change their minds.

so there's nothing wrong with just being honest and telling them they suck, and there's nothing to gain by being polite. maybe they'll say "oh, THIS guy is polite, i can deal with him!" while they continue to fluff out the same diarrhea. great. i say if someone is supporting disgusting things like imperialist wars waged on false evidence, even though that's all known and in the record, you SHOULD call them what they are (scum, garbage, stupid, etc). if enough people join in maybe they can be shamed into becoming better people, who knows. even if not, at least their bullfluff wasn't tolerated, and that's a GOOD thing. even if they don't change their minds at least maybe they'll be shamed enough to shut the fluff up.

you are an angry person

and you are a broken person lol

http://www.boston.com/...07/11/how_facts_backfire/

The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire.

in other words, these people are fluff ups who wont change their minds. so feel free to ridicule them

why does your entire life revolve around political labels? take all that time you spend being angry and yelling at people for their political beliefs, and bake a cake or something

bring back cannibalism!

Bake an ANGRY CAKE. With a STRONG HEART.



grrrrrr...

themselves

Just thought I'd throw this in here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Also: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912593/

ford, angel and a few others could stand to watch this documentary before continuing down the road of 'We did a great thing by removing a power-hungry dictator!' Whether it was the right move or not is one question, but nobody in their right mind could say we did a good job in Iraq. The majority of the destabilization that occurred was as a direct result of our utter incompetence in the planning and execution stages of the war. We went in, quickly dismantled Saddam's government, and then went 'Erm...now what?' There was NO PLAN in place for any nation-building.

Hell, one inept US official DISBANDED the Iraqi army after ignoring the advice from people who had been working in Iraq and studying the culture/etc for decades. What the hell do you think would happen if you take hundreds of thousands of soldiers, most of whom just want to serve their country and provide for their families, and tell them they have no more jobs, and they should just go home?

Incompetence is what caused the insurgency, which in turn caused many unnecessary civilian AND coalition deaths...

Well, that particular "inept US official" only declared official that which had been done by the members of the Iraqi army already. He didn't disband the Iraqi Army, he just made it official and recognized the fait accompli.

I don't have time to respond further to you or to look at that documentary right now, so I'll have to hold that for another time. I have every intention of at least looking at the IMDB page, since you responded in a way that continues this discussion.

Blid, on the other hand, I'm putting on auto-ignore in my mind. We had a plan for the occupation of Iraq and filling that void. It may not have been the best plan, but it was there. We control only our own action and being human are just as capable of making mistakes, and underestimating the situation. However, we donnot control the actions of other people (insurgents, terrorists, etc.) and I, for one, refuse to hold my country responsible for murder done by others. We made a good faith effort and that is the bottom line. You can argue the specifics of what we should have done after the invasion, but in no way shape or form were we negligent and therefore responsible for the isurgent and terrorist murders.

i'd rather read a book. documentaries are only good for spreading propaganda.

I'm sure the Iraqis love you for making a "good faith effort" despite failing completely.

Also you've managed to do a pretty good job of skirting the point that the insurgency wasn't responsible for a much larger share of deaths than the coalition...

We didn't go in with a solid plan. That's the problem. This documentary interviewed people who were actually there and involved in many of the processes. A colonel who was responsible for liaising with local forces(ie military and police) said that a former general in the army approached them after the declaration and said 'hey, i've got 100k troops under my command and we want to help. if you turn these men away, they will have to provide for themselves somehow, and that will likely mean turning against you'. He was given nothing and his men melted away to join the growing insurgency.

Or how about the mass looting that took place after the invasion, where US troops were guarding a few 'strategic' buildings, but were given no orders or leeway to attempt anything like policing action at all. There were eyewitness accounts from our actual boots on the ground saying that they could easily have stopped a lot of the looting/rioting/violence immediately following the occupation of Baghdad, but they were given strict orders to do nothing more than protect themselves and those few key areas they were assigned.

The plan was 1) Topple Saddam, 2) Declare Victory. That's it.