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I know, I know, another imperialist lying about the peace loving Arabs... Not only those who dare to disagree with you have their head in the sand it appears. These seeds were sown long ago and they were planted in fertile soil with little if any contribution from America. America is the scape goat but this plant reproduces itself with no outside force necessary.

No, you misunderstand us here (Samir and I) completely, but since we haven't articulated our views in any one place then it's not necessarily a failing on your part.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am no fan whatsoever of Churchill, I don't at all disagree that the Saudis are contemptible troglodytes.  The problem is and has been U.S. and British support for the Sauds.  We signed a pact with the devil long ago.  Why did we do this?  To secure oil rights so that, at least until the Bush junta took over, you could drive your SUV around for $1.50 a gallon.  So you've benefitted all these years from those contemptible trogolodytes, and in return your tax dollars contributed to the protection of their kingdom and dictatorship.  And as long as they didn't go crashing jet aeroplanes into our skyscrapers you couldn't care less what they were doing.  And as long as we played our foreign policy right they kept their tribespeople in line.  But you're purposely ignoring a lot of history that happened between the time of Churchill and the time of Bush.  We weaved a lot of tangled webs during the Cold War, and now we are dealing with the aftermath.

The "nits" will keep coming Abraham regardless of what we do or don't do. It looks good to rail against "American Policy" when the true answer is quite simple.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this.  Let's call it a difference of philosophy and move on.

Force is all these extremists respect

That's an Orientalist cannard.  It could be argued that the opposite is true.  We prey on weak countries and don't raise a stink when we conquer them, like Grenada and Panama.  But when a conflict proves intractible, like Vietnam and Somalia, especially where our national security interests are not at stake, we exit.  The resistance by the Bush administration to withdrawal is based on the fact that they  know they opened a can of worms and our withdrawal would result in an unmitigated disaster.  Of course, remaining is untenable, and so their strategy is to punt to the next administration.  Despicable.

We (The People) on the whole are pretty fed up with this disastrous war. It is finally starting to dawn on most citizens that the invasion was a huge mistake. Sure, <a href="http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm">the most recent polling numbers show attitudes about the situation in Iraq are improving</a> but this is only because the violence has fallen since the Surge began, perhaps because of the surge itself, perhaps because of other factors, but for the sake of argument we'll just accept at it at face value and assume the Surge strategy is working. But it's only temporary.

...thus the success of the surge in Iraq which I am sure you will deny has occurred.

Of course it hasn't, for two reasons.  First, the so called "success" is debatable, especially since the definition of "success" in this case becomes less ostentatious as time goes on.  Now, we are simply happy that car bombs aren't going off every day, ignoring the fact that millions are still displaced inside and out of Iraq and the country is in a shambles.  Public services (water, power, sewage, etc.) are still well below pre-war levels and public works projects are stalled or have been abandoned.  The Iraqi government has been in a political stalemate for months with no prospect of reconciliation between the factions in sight.  Second, as I assert above, this period of quiet is only temporary.  As soon as the U.S. begins drawing down its forces as planned the violence will peak again.  At that point, Americans will have really had it and that will be that.  The pressure will be too much for our idiot politicians to bear and the troops will start coming home.  The military is effectively out of troops, and the continuing decline of the dollar will make it increasingly expensive to continue pouring money into this money pit.  We have arrived at the breaking point.  When time demonstrates that I'm correct I expect you to come back here and acknowledge this prediction.

Do you honestly believe there were no WMDs in Iraq?

Did I ever say that?  I certainly don't recall making that assertion.  Can you point to where I did?  There were certainly WMD in Iraq before the UNSCOM team headed by Scott Ritter dismantled them.  We knew they were there because Donald Rumsfeld delivered them with a handshake with Saddam.  I'm sure you've seen the video.  But after UNSCOM did their job, there were no WMD in Iraq, and certainly none when we invaded.

War heads were found with trace elements.

Trace elements do not constitute WMDs.  By that definition, every kitchen in America would have trace elements of WMDs.  Warheads loaded with chemical agents are WMDs.  Warheads with "trace elements" are disarmed (by UNSCOM).

Ask the Kurds if there were no WMDs in Iraq. If there weren't, so be it but don't blame the American intelligence. Every intelligence agency in the world worth it's salt had the same intelligence.

I'm not sure how we arrvied at discussing WMDs in Iraq, but so be it. But anyway, yes, the same intelligence. Exactly the same, from the same sources. And if you bothered to read the footnotes, you would've understood long ago that the sources were unreliable and proven liars, like <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1121/dailyUpdate.html">Curveball</a>. And the Niger Yellowcake intelligence was debunked before Joseph Wilson even embarked on his infamous journey to Africa. So this excuse that "every intelligence agency in the world" believed there were WMD in Iraq is another cannard. No they did not. There was no uniform consensus, the intelligence that was out there was considered unreliable, and the only people making such claims now are revisionists of the worst sort.

Were there dissenters in ranks regarding that intelligence. Of course there were but everyone hears what they want to hear... EVERYONE. It's human nature. What did the Russians have to gain by substantiating the same intelligence? The French who were oh so in bed with Saddam?

Are you trying to excuse our culpability for going to war on a lie just because other countries were in on the lie? If so, that's really silly. The case for going to war with Iraq was contrived, and obviously so for those who weren't scared out of their wits that Iraq was going to attack us imminently. The claim was as patently false then as it is now in hindsight, and many Americans, myself included, were not fooled. Read the articles in the archives of <a href="http://antiwar.com/">AntiWar.Com</a> from September 12, 2001, through March of 2003 to see that the case for war being made was not only being doubted but actively debunked every step of the way. Of particular note would be the dispatches from <a href="http://antiwar.com/justin/">Justin Raimondo</a>.

of course this was the French intelligence it's where they got so much of the technology along with the Soviets/Russians to begin with.

And the United States.

No Iraqi connection to AQ? Hide behind the "Saddam was a secularist" argument all you want to. Convenience makes great bedfellows. That's why the "hardline" mullahs are benefitting from the opium trade. What would sharia law say about that?

You have this predilection for putting words into my mouth.    But I'll respond to this anyway.

This is just nonsense.  Yes, Saddam was a secularist.  That is a known and undisputed fact.  Iraq along with Syria was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East until we transformed it into a sectarian meat grinder.  For that, we are to blame.

As far as the mullahs, yeah, they're fucking hypocrites, but it's not like they have a monopoly on hypocrisy.  What does that have to do with anything anyway?

Yes I'm combining examples from Iraq and Afghanistan. It's all the same conflict.

Same conflict?  Again, only because we made it that way.  This is all head-in-the-sand thinking.

But as you said, the battle was brought to us so now we take right back the them and we are the bad guys. Interesting.

No, I said what we sow is what we reap.  I shudder to wonder what the harvest will be next decade.

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