Down the Spider Hole
I’ve been strangely quiet on political topics for about a week or so now. It’s not that I have nothing to say. It’s just that I’ve recently become a bit quagmired in other stuff. Once I get going on some of these things, I’m not sure where I’ll stop. So, let’s just get to the obvious: Saddam Hussein.
I was pretty surprised when I found out yesterday. Then, I was… mixed. On one hand, I’m happy for every American stationed over there. Congrats, guys. It hasn’t been a complete waste of time. That, unfortunately, is about as good as it gets. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a bad person. He should be caught, put on trial, and grilled for his crimes. However, no one is going to remember that we did not capture the terrorific Osama Bin Laden. Did we invade Cuba and capture Castro? How’s tricks in Liberia? I think North Korea could use some democracy these days. What about those guys? No. But, we got a two-bit thug who bullied a two-bit country. He’s not even a Milosevic, for chrissakes. He’s not even a madman. He’s a somewhat loopy, half-wit coward. We found a guy who apparently had nothing really to do with any of the alleged reasons we invaded Iraq. We thought he lied about having WMA; turns out, we were lied to about those lies. Was that on the front page of anyone’s paper today?
No. Instead, it’s a somewhat shiny hood ornament on a car at the bottom of an interstate pile-up. For the short term, at least, no one is going to notice all of the twisted fucked up cars on the top of it all. I don’t know if it’s going to make a real difference in Iraq or not. No one does. What I do know is that nothing on that side of the Gulf has really changed. It’s just a symbol, and symbols are only important during things like election years.
This is where it gets scary. Sort of. Truth is, Hussein’s capture doesn’t mean a hill of shit, when you still have a giant pile of sand with a bunch of people willing to kill any and all for it. But, those opposed to W. can’t call him a complete failure anymore. In Bush’s camp, 99% failure equals 1% success, and that means victory. Just do a compare contrast on Dubya’s college record vs. his driving record, and you’ll see what I mean. This is a faint light at the end of the tunnel, and now the Democrats have to do something that they’re not usually very good at: playing it smart.
The silver lining is that the only people worse than the Dems at playing it smart is the Bush League. This goes back to the old man, who – thanks to a shining moment in Iraq – had a cavernous lead at the start of his campaign, but blew it anyway. Trust me, Dubya caught a lucky fucking break. It was bound to happen sooner than later, if not this, then something else. The good news is that it happened sooner, before the campaign year really started in full earnest. A couple years ago, the Republicans thought they had their money in the bank when they slotted the Convention in NYC, coinciding the anniversary of 9/11. Now, they’re praying that it won’t be a rerun of the Chicago riots. I assure you six months from now that Dubya could walk down Broadway with Hussein’s head on a pike, and it wouldn’t make a difference. People will get over it. He’s going to ride this one to death. He has to. It’s the only thing he’s got. Then, people will realize that we got our man, but we’re still over there, troops are still dying, and we’re still pouring money into a sandy hole. For what?
Not exactly a good reason to hire someone for a job, is it?
The man had people thrown into wood-chippers, murdered his own family members for daring to want to leave the country, deprived his own people of basic human needs, stole billions from his own people in money, food, and natural resources, and committed genocide against his own people with chemical weapons and you say he’s not a madman and that he wasn’t as bad as Milosevic? As for Cuba, Liberia, North Korean, etc, I will make one point and ask one question:
1. Not even the US has the rsources to maintain that many simultaneous fronts.
2. You mention these other countries as places where whe should go also but then wouldn’t you just turn around and bitch once we got there?
And, for the record, I hate Dubya’s dad. He sold weapons to our enemies. For that I view him as a traitor.
I’m not mentioning that we should go anywhere. What I’m saying is that there are and have been national leaders who have done far worse than Hussein for much longer. Why didn’t we invade those nations and hunt those people down? They need good ol’ American democracy too, right? Or could it be that Hussein was an easy punk. Then again, ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor is an easy punk, too, and I don’t see Dubya yanking him out of exile in Nigeria, but maybe that’s because he isn’t between us and a whole bunch of oil. If we didn’t have our resources on any front, we wouldn’t put them on any of the aforementioned fronts either. What I’m saying is that the entire White House policy is hypocritical, inconsistent horseshit.
Speaking of the old man, don’t forget that the Bush dynasty sits comfortably on the history (and finances) of money Grandpa Bush banked for the nazis. Sweet dreams.
“Speaking of the old man, don’t forget that the Bush dynasty sits comfortably on the history (and finances) of money Grandpa Bush banked for the nazis.”
Cite credible proof for research, please.
I’m still disappointed that Saddam didn’t take his own life.
Citation 1
Citation 2
Care to pull a evidence that Saddam Hussein was harboring WMA, was a threat to our homeland security, and/or was related to Al Qaida and 9/11? That is why we invaded Iraq, isn’t it? Take your time.
Not bad citations, thanx! They give me a start.
As for Iraq, there are tons of reasons we invaded. He has had WMD in the past and has used them on his own people. He has violated multiple UN resolutions which we are obligated to enforce, and the list goes on. Does he have WMD now? Is he linked to terrorism? I don’t know. He stopped calling me AGES ago to ask for my advice. Time will tell. Regardless, by removing him we have made the lives of millions better and we have upheld the law.
Don’t get me wrong. I was all for removing him, and I supported action that was firmer than what was being done. What I haven’t supported, however, is how the White House has engaged in the entire thing from the start. No, the U.N. was not enforcing the terms between them and Iraq, and they should have been. Yes, there were justifiable reasons for going into Iraq. However, and this is the big but, there was no reason specifically between the U.S. and Iraq to warrant what the White House did. Those weren’t U.S. laws that needed enforcing; it was a deal between the U.N. and Iraq, and a better president would have convinced the U.N. to enforce that deal. Instead, we had a half-assed invasion, led by an administration with LOADS of connections – all of which point to alterior motives which the White House refuses to comment on. Bush has a bad habit of siding with international law when it suits him, and ignoring it when it doesn’t suit him.
So, yes, I’m glad Hussein’s officially out of the picture. He was a fuckwit who should have been taken out a long time ago, and the fact that Bush Sr. didn’t do it reflects on his record. Like I said, at least the guys and girls fighting for us haven’t totally wasted their time. However, I can’t say that the resulting quagmire, and the thousands of dead and wounded U.S. soldiers, plus the $160-odd billion is a good price to be paid for a bum who was hiding in a whole by a farm.
I disagree that it is a quagmire because progress is being made.
Let’s look at the UN. We gave them every chance to join us in enforcing the laws our nations agreed on. Our proposal was shot down mainly by France and Germany. Why? Oil. Those two countries have had a backdoor deal with Saddam for years now to buy oil from him at prices far cheaper than the rest of Europe does. My source? A close friend of mine is an executive in the oil business. She’s got the inside skinny. So, of COURSE France and Germany, two of the vetoing members of the UN, would oppose attacking Iraq. If they supported the US against the government of Iraq, they would lose their honey deal with Saddam. So, they opposed us. This way they, like so many other countries are scrambling to do now, could grub for a piece of the action once we had done the hard part. They call our attack immoral and unethical yet race to benefit off of that same immorality. Our intentions may not be altruistic but at least we are willing to put our money where our mouths are and not hide in the shadows waiting to pick at the bones of the fallen. That is what so many nations in the UN have become: VULTURES. Nothing more.
I’m not. I want to see him treated humanely and get the fair trial that all human beings deserve. To do otherwise would only prove his ideals about the US right.
wow – that’s funny – and I thought it was the US / UK who were after the oil… guess i was just mis-informed…
Actually, I have to agree with fro0tlo0p. (Omigod, I can’t believe I just wrote that.)
Remember the uncertainty and rumors that came with Uday and Qusay. For that matter, remember Hitler. Truth be told, Hussein doesn’t have the balls to pull the trigger on himself. If he did, I think he would have picked that instead of hiding in a hole. Besides, he can tell a lot more information alive, than dead. Who knows? Maybe he can tell us why we have all those people locked up in Guantanamo. No one else seems to know why.
What do you mean, they’re locked up in Guantanamo? – I thought that was the new cool vacation destination for europeans. We even have holiday shows about it!
Enjoy refreshing ocean breezes, all rooms are balconies. 24 hour full staff, including barber for a refreshing shave. Room service(limited hours.) We provide lovely blindfolds for your eyes. Half baths in each room.