?An extremist Sunni group believed to have ties to Al Qaeda took responsibility on Friday for killing an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the aide's son and four guards with a car bomb on Wednesday evening.?

(And don?t forget: the war in Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda, nothing to do with terrorism. If we hadn?t invaded Iraq, these folks would be staying at home, re-finishing their basements and whipping up new recipes ? like for aerosol anthrax.)

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/15/international/middleeast/15iraq.html?oref=login&th[/url]

i dont uderstand what you mean are you talking about extremists?they wont go to vote they just use bombs to make their statements Still invading iraq reases a lot of questions, but not all iraqui people are making recipes for chemical bombs, and lots of civilians died in this invasion dont find excuses for this controversial war, bush has got enough excuses

Re: Maybe it's OK if these Iraqi's don't vote?

Bush just can't come out and say "Look Americans, and the rest of the civilized world, we are going into Iraq because Saudi Arabia isn't cooperating at the moment, so we will need to go in to strong-arm the rest of the bordering countries and pressure them", because it would have jeopardized our goals at that time. We went into Iraq, and Saudi Arabia did a 180 regarding their stance in helping us. They are now handing over operatives and individuals within the royal family who are sympathetic to the cause.

You can't be 100% straight with your citizens and the rest of the world. That's the reason for having strategies.

Re: Maybe it's OK if these Iraqi's don't vote?

[quote=cosmo]You can't be 100% straight with your citizens and the rest of the world. That's the reason for having strategies.[/quote]

I think it is interesting that conservatives, who are generally in favor of less government, at times take this type of "the government knows what it is doing and I don't need to know" approach, while liberals, who are generally thought of as being in favor of bigger government, tend to be more skeptical of the government's authority and intrusion.

It seems backward. It ought to be the folks that trust the government clamoring for bigger government, and the skeptics wanting to decrease its influence and reach. For all the liberal rambling I do, I actually fall into that latter category...

Just an observation, no real point intended...

As long as I'm paying taxes I want to know what's being done in my name.

Re: Maybe it's OK if these Iraqi's don't vote?

[quote=toasty] I think it is interesting that conservatives, who are generally in favor of less government, at times take this type of "the government knows what it is doing and I don't need to know" approach, while liberals, who are generally thought of as being in favor of bigger government, tend to be more skeptical of the government's authority and intrusion.

[/quote]

Agreed. That is why I consider myself right of center though, because I am all about less government. A lot of republican's don't really understand that most modern day politicians that claim to be republican aren't always.

Most people are mixed up, but that doesn't change the fact that to be Right, means before anything else that your for less government and less taxes.

More and More lately I find myself ashamed to call myself republican. All of these Christian's really ruin it for me. But that is another subject altogether.

i love it how so many people cant realize that we gave hussein AMPLE time to ship out/ move out/ destroy the things we accused him of having, do you honestly think he abandoned chemical warfare altogether right after he gassed the people in the north???

it doesnt take long to load a box, put it on a truck and send it outta town.

destroying it would take even less time. maybe we just waited too long.

could go either way, but think about the possibilites. he had, what, 3-4 months to do it? really not hard to fathom, and im sure 27 years down the road when most of it gets de-classified we will be able to go see what the real reasons were.... scary to think.

first of all al-qa'ida affiliates were not rampant in iraq until AFTER the war started. that logic is very circular. saying that saddam was "cavorting" (dr. rice) with known terrorists, and now, lo and behold, the insurgents in iraq are being trained by al-qa'ida.

second of all, cosmo: i take it you read that stratfor book (or at least about it) about invading iraq being a strategic move to coerce saudi to hand over terrorists. it's a compelling speculation, and i haven't read the book, so i don't know how convincing it is, but i for now have to disregard it. for starters, read the principles of the project for a new american century, and you will see that many of the folks in our administration today have had their eyes on iraq for many years, long before september 11. also, that would take a lot of balls to strongarm saudi like that, considering how badly we depend on them for oil.

and i could have come up with better ways of coercing saudi into helping us find terrorists: for instance, the royal saudi and hashemite (jordanian) houses have been enemies for around 100 years now; and even worse, since the islamic revolution, iran has been one of, if not the, greatest enemy of saudi. these two states could have been courted or manipulated strategically to push saudi to help the US.

as for the liberal/conservative issue, it's pretty damn funny. the way we pigeonhole the spectrum of political views into a mere two categories is truly embarassing. and i see why our first president at his farewell address condemned political parties. it's also strange that the term "conservative" has come to mean much more than "strongly opposing change and adhering to traditional values and trends." for example, by our definition of "conservative," ted kennedy (D-Mass) should be called the biggest conservative in the senate because he opposes social security reform. likewise, being "liberal" today doesn't always mean "advocating change and abandoning the old ways."

as yoda would say: "very strange american politics is."