This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months.
He can't figure out the original statement means
less than a quarter of the totalkilled?
You misread. He meant 25% of the troops killed, were not killed by shiites. Most insurgents are Sunni. Shiites don't need to conduct an insurgency, since they control the government.
As far as your assertion that "we've fallen for.......claims that Iraq supported Al-Queda..." that was the intelligence at the time.
On the contrary. Everyone in the world knew better. Saddam was a secular socialist; Osama was an extreme Islamist. You can argue that some intelligence at the time supported the claim that he had WMDs, but there was
no intelligence at the time supporting the claim that Saddam was connected in any way with Al Qaeda. The
only such piece of "evidence" was the claim that a meeting occurred in Prague with Iraqi intelligence officers, and that claim was debunked before the invasion of Iraq.
The Iraqi driving your cab could've told you that Islamists and Hussein were enemies. My Iraqi veterinarian
did know it, long before the Iraq invasion, though I pooh-poohed him at the time. The fact is that anyone who knew diddly squat about Muslims knew that.
Yawn. Iran is going to invade America, nuke one of our cities, yadda yadda. That there's no evidence of any of this, well... so what? The beauty of paranoia is that nobody needs evidence before going to war.
I have no idea where this comes from; nobody here has said that.
Then leave them alone. You've admitted they're no threat to you.
We created the Ayatollah. Ahmedinejad is a huge improvement.
Uh-huh. A state leader advocating/predicting the complete genocide of another people and the total destruction of their country is a 'huge improvement'
??
Over the Ayatollah? Um, yes. If you want an Iranian president who loves Israel, you're going to have a hard time (1) finding him, and (2) keeping him alive. Iranians don't like Israel. Unless you're willing to rule Iran directly, or maybe exterminate them, they're
going to have leaders who don't like Israel. Acting all shocked about it just makes one seem naive.
However, Ahmedinejad did not advocate genocide. He has stated his opinion that Israel is on the "wrong side of history," and won't last
as a nation in the long run, but he has said nothing whatsoever about exterminating Jews or about actually doing something to end Israel. If Iran attacked Israel, I would support Israel responding decisively: I am a nearly-rabid supporter of Israel--just not rabid enough to start nuking countries that haven't even done anything.
We said the same about the Soviet Union, and they said the same about us. Everyone says he's on the right side of history, and his adversaries will pass from the scene. It's demagoguery, and it's pretty lowbrow stuff, but it isn't grounds for an invasion.
Iran is moving in the right direction.
Threatening the world with nuclear weapons is moving in the 'right direction'
?
Iran has not threatened anyone with nuclear weapons. They have in fact repeatedly denied that they even want nuclear weapons--isn't it bloody hard to "threaten" someone with something you claim you don't have and aren't developing? ("I don't have a gun, but gimme yer dough or I'll shoot you.") They state that they want energy reactors, and under the non-proliferation treaty, they're entitled to that. They've even expressed willingness to accept international oversight of the whole thing.
It's possible that they're lying, of course. But your suggestion that they're preparing to get nukes with which to threaten the world (and, presumably, the US) is not only unsubstantiated, but it's an ironic repetition of the same completely false claims that we believed about Iraq a mere three years ago. Fool me twi--ya can't get fooled ag'in.
--Len.
