Anybody ever stop to think that maybe they don't want Democracy over in Iraq, maybe another system of government? maybe they just didnt like being slaughtered by a tyrant. doesnt mean they want a Democracy instilled.
And what kind of democracy, a representative democracy like the one we try to imitate here? Or a republic with an elected leader.
who says that Iraq needs a revolution. and if so, Isnt it their choice to have one? We tried to instill a democracy for our own reasons. We toppled a dictator for our own reasons. Iraq will never be a free representative democracy. give me a break. There is way too much religion at the basis of the beliefs of power. and when the fundamental root of your existance is not freedoms and peaceful coexistance with other religions, sects, tribes or ethnicities.. but rather your way or the highway..the end result of civil war will inveitably be another dictatorship, with a different shape and a different system of belief. The only thing that makes Iraq different than afghanistan is the Trillions of dollars in oil they are sitting on.
But thats not the argument. We did not accomplish our stated objective (Iraqi "Freedom" and WMD removal and destruction). So the mission, purely on facts, was a failure. from a tactical and political standpoint. There is no arguing about that. We said we were going to do something and we did not. For or Against, it is as simple as that.
but we get a second chance in Iran?
GO BUCKS!!!
Report: U.S. Conducting Secret Missions Inside Iran
Jan 16, 12:33 PM (ET)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.
The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.
Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."
One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."
The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But it disputed the report by Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"We obviously have a concern about Iran. The whole world has a concern about Iran," Dan Bartlett, a top aide to President Bush, told CNN's "Late Edition."
Of The New Yorker report, he said: "I think it's riddled with inaccuracies, and I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact."
Bartlett said the administration "will continue to work through the diplomatic initiatives" to convince Iran -- which Bush once called part of an "axis of evil" -- not to pursue nuclear weapons.
"No president, at any juncture in history, has ever taken military options off the table," Bartlett added. "But what President Bush has shown is that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are underway right now."
COMMANDO TASK FORCE
Bush has warned Iran in recent weeks against meddling in Iraqi elections.
The former intelligence official told Hersh that an American commando task force in South Asia is working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists who had dealt with their Iranian counterparts.
The New Yorker reports that this task force, aided by information from Pakistan, has been penetrating into eastern Iran in a hunt for underground nuclear-weapons installations.
In exchange for this cooperation, the official told Hersh, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has received assurances that his government will not have to turn over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to face questioning about his role in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Hersh reported that Bush has already "signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia."
Defining these as military rather than intelligence operations, Hersh reported, will enable the Bush administration to evade legal restrictions imposed on the CIA's covert activities overseas.
--Looks like it
