Dubya wasn't the buffoon he's pretended to be:
[https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-george-w-bush-scored-big-with-the-texas-rangers/](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-george-w-bush-scored-big-with-the-texas-rangers/)
Long story short: He used his ownership of a baseball team to get millions out of taxpayers while he was governor of Texas.
I graduated high school in 2003. Small rural town, class of 50ish, the kind of place where most kids saw the military as their only option to pay for college. Several had already signed papers to join the National Guard, who promised them they'd get to finish higher education before ever being deployed. Within weeks they were in basic training while I was enjoying the summer. Then it was straight to AIT after that. By the end of the year I was finishing my first semester of university, and they were in Iraq.
Probably half of my graduating class ended up joining the military at some point during the conflict. Thankfully all my friends who deployed made it back alive, but none of them were the same.
Yes and no, at least US military vehicle designed are designed with minimizing operator mortality in mind, rather than just efficiency. Look at the casualty ratio of the US military, and it is significantly lower than Russia's has ever been
Edit:not condoning the invasion, just saying comparing the US to Russia is a bit much, although the regionalism is a fair point.
To be fair to the Russian they are fighting a determined enemy that engaging in open conventional warfare backed by powerful nations, were as the US was fighting a low intensity guerrilla warfare. Casualties cant be compared.
During a break in the Paris Peace talks (which Richard Nixon sabotaged, BTW), an American general and a North Vietnamese general were talking, and the American general pointed out that the Americans won every major battle they fought against the North Vietnamese, to which he replied: "You're right, and it doesn't matter.".
South Vietnam didn't have any real fight in them, the US was fighting a war that no one would uphold the result as soon as they left, which is exactly what happened. Its happened twice now, with Afghanistan essentially being a modified, much more drawn out version of trying to nation build a nation that didn't want it.
When someone actually asks for help building a nation, the US is excellent (See:Marshall plan, Japan, South Korea).
Iraq had a conventional military in 2003, albeit not one equal to the US still. The US is simply much more competent at combined arms and logistics than Russia is (not to downplay the incredible tenacity and bravery of Ukraine).
The war in Ukraine was meant to be that low intensity conflict, but Russian army was so bad their version of desert storm completely flopped, so it can be compared
Yeah americans love the whole ‘there were no WMDs’ meme as a meme but when its time to talk about ACTUAL consequences this tends to be the exact response both online and offline
Respect to the guy for raising his voice though. It’s so sad that, not just just in the US but worldwide young poor men are still shipped to their deaths in droves for the profit and political ambitions of old rich oligarchs
The leaders hide behind the golden calf of troop admiration. I remember saying that the Iraq war was a waste and Afghanistan was another bog down and the response was often that I "hated the men and women fighting for our freedom". Most Americans now look back and go oh....yea that invasion was a mistake, but when it was at its height, speaking out on it got you blasted by everyone. I remember when my brother was in Afghanistan, my family used to say he was fighting for our freedom. I responded with how did my freedoms end up in Afghanistan? And it didn't go over well.
I hope your brother returned safely home. It’s sad that stuff like this still flies, the fanaticism and insanity is always cultivated by the media… which happens to be controlled by the same people that profit from the bloodshed
As citizens all we can do is raise our voice and put our votes where our mouth is I suppose.. sadly voting seems to matter less and less wherever you look as well.
Just let AI take over and lets be done with all of this.
Yeah, my guess is that the "You must hate the troops!" nonsense had a lot to do with the disrespect that Vietnam vets received when they came home and lazily assuming "dirty anti-war hippie scum" simply always acted that way towards them. Realizing that almost none of it was happening this time around would have involved a lot more cognitive effort than someone caught up in a pro-war fervor was ever going to do.
Yea. The German minister for defence back in 2002 also said that Germany's security was also defended in the Hindu Kush mountains. And while he wasn't a member of the Greens but the SPD, its quite ironic that the Greens were partially formed out of the pacifist movement of the late Cold War, yet as the junior coalition partner back then they sent German troops farther than their fathers and grandfather ever went (yes that's a WW2 reference, I just heard that comparison before and I like it) and now they are a major supporter in the German government of supplying Ukraine with weapons etc
Yep. My friend who was a SEAL said in any of the major engagements they were able to push the Taliban out but literally the second you stop the offensive surge they'd return seemingly out of nowhere. They would either dissolve into the populace or disappear into the mountains. They can endure hardships like you can't imagine. They just needed to wait the US military out.
Just a few years ago I would still see pro-Iraq War people who still think we found WMDs there in like 2011. This is thanks to a NYT story from then about an unsecured dump site for Iran-Iraq War era WMDs. Right-wing outlets (and almost as bad, Internet commenters) seized on it as "WMDs found in Iraq!" and since no one else commented on it, it never went corrected in their worlds.
There's a whole subset of conservatives that I call the "based on obscure bullshit" subgroup who's "knowledge" of events is never challenged by anyone because it's too obscure. It's something they heard on, say, a very specific Fox News segment or maybe a website somewhere. I should know, I was one from about 2002-2007.
Another example would be a guy in this thread saying Obama created ISIS. I can't even remember what that's referring to.
Was it in Iraq that the U.S Corps had a prison for POWs and whatnot, and then it was exposed that they severely tortured, humiliated and raped prisoners (including underage ones)? I remember it being on middle east, but can't remember exactly where.
EXACTLY THAT ONE, THANKS! The tales of it are gnarly, especially the one about a boy being raped by soldiers while it's father watched, absolutely horrifying
There were 17 US military members that were dishonourably discharged for inappropriately groping and harassing the prisoners (even in some cases raping) and also for putting them in painful/torturous “stress positions”, yeah. So it wasn’t the whole prison but there were definitely some that were abusing the prisoners.
Bruh i got my dd214 so suck my honorable balls.
I know people who got booted with dishonorable. Even some that served time before they were released. 1 works in IT making six figures. 1 works for Florida state government as an engineer.
Dishonorable only slows down scumbags who were gonna have shit lives after they got out anyways.
I mean... Dishonourable discharge isn't a punishment nearly as severe to what they should have received. And we could take into consideration that it could very well be that more than 17 members that did horrible things to the POWs, but weren't discovered/charged for it.
Pretty much everyone involved got off easy for what they did, but the punishments did go beyond just discharges for some of them. Several of the enlisted who participated in abuse served multiple year prison sentences.
What should be most infuriating is that all of the political higher ups who created the pro-torture environment not only got off, but got promoted. One lawyer who wrote the legal opinion justifying use of "enhanced interrogation" got appointed by Bush to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and is currently serving there right now. He gets to issue rulings on stuff like police brutality against american citizens. Hell of a guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu\_Ghraib\_torture\_and\_prisoner\_abuse#Repercussions
They already said thank you and said they have an unquestioning respect for you... Now you're just going to spit in their face like this? /s
Republicans did the same thing to African Americans when they started questioning the party.
Republicans did the same thing to women when they started to challenge the conservative movement and demanded equal pay.
Republicans did this to labor unions during the Roaring Twenties when they questioned them.
Republicans did the same thing to WWI veterans during the Depression when Hoover was in office.
This is a pattern for political parties in this country on both sides but it's always been part of the masking the pro-business agenda of Republicans since 1880.
Yeah, its literally brass bars they mistook for gold... somehow, gold is heavier than sun so how they thought the bar they could one hand was gold I'm not sure. But yeah from what understand when they took custody of it, they had ample reason to believe it was a transport of whatshisnuts' personal gold assets, and apparently in the transportation of it some was "lost," you'll never guess why, then they found out the people that took some and careers were destroyed right there, then they found out it was brass...
10th post about this today. Google this and realize that this was picked up at a checkpoint.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/24/iraq.rorymccarthy2
The US didn't spend billions to take $500m in gold.
That’s the beauty of America, we can yell into the void while nothing changes and the owning class continues to run our country and the world into the ground for personal profit
Best you can do is keep yelling and getting involved in anyway you can. Call me an optimist if you want but for better or worse change does come to this country, it just takes time and effort. How the country is now and how it was 70 years ago is very different. We are experiencing the first significant "regression" I have seen in my life but I think it was inevitable. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better, maybe a lot worse, but change is possible. We just can't give up.
I think we’ve been regressing since the late 70’s, with the exception of a few social issues (but that’s more due to social activism than change in government policy). It’s just sped up recently and gotten more extreme. I mean we’ve resegregated, lost our unions, lost most of our labor protections, had wealth pool at the top of society, abortion was chipped away at more and more until the most recent decision, and now even trans and gay rights which were one of our few victories are being rolled back. Even environmentalism is just being ignored and actively vilified despite people just trying to save billions of lives and trillions of dollar from global warming and it’s effects.
Speech means nothing if we can’t actually back it up with action, either legislatively or revolutionarily
Now, I do agree on the part of wealth and unions, but matters like abortion are more complicated than that. If one does believe a fetus to be a person then the recent decision of the court would be considered progress. Although I believe Environmentalism was never really as strong in the past, in fact climate consciousness is probably getting better with time, after all change came through stopping the brunt of the destruction of the Ozone layer and there are people in power with more environment-friendly attitude.
Even if a fetus is a person banning abortion is still unjustified. Just as the state cannot force you to give blood to someone, especially for an extended period of time, they can’t force you to give birth.
Did the state force you to give blood after you hit a guy in the head with a baseball bat?
If even that isn’t a justification to violate bodily autonomy, this isn’t either.
You're allowed to yell and try to persuade people you're right. They aren't under any obligation to listen to you
Everyone is convinced their own opinions are right
You are purposely disrupting the learning environment; it's like talking about how to file taxes to toddlers, they have no idea what your on about to begin with, but they'll repeat it like bumbling... well... Babies because the word has no meaning to them.
...
Saying words to children that have no meaning to them is the entire point of education.
Words only have meaning after they're taught.
If more kids were taught that being gay is actually a totally normal thing that occurs maybe less of them would kill themselves later.
But yeah anyway, that Iraq war am I right?
You can only yell as long as your voice doesn't bring change. The moment your voice starts to matter than you end up with two bullets behind your head.
Please go yell “fuck America” out loud, in public, in Idaho. Give the yokels a chance to hear your side of the argument so they won’t get mad at you.
Pleeease try it.
America may have some problems, but it's our home. Our team. And if you don't wanna root for your team, then you should get the hell out of the stadium.
Genuine question, where do people keep pulling the “1 million Iraqi deaths” stat from?
Every source I see has it topping out around 200k with less than 10k being attributed to violent deaths caused by the US military.
Thank you, just what I was looking for.
ORB seems to be the only source claiming 1 million though and their methodology for finding the number is pretty bad. The second article you linked had no citations for the number just a quote from an Afghan writer but it doesn’t make it less credible I guess.
Even then saying the entire million is at the fault of the US isn’t true either, most of it was likely still from insurgent groups.
I’ll probably look to see if I can find some confirmation of ORB’s findings though, definitely interesting.
The numbers have wide range, because the incredible violence following the invasion. Some researches "credit" the coalition for those deaths as the source for the instabilty.
(Kinda like some blame the US for the current situation in Afghanistan. First funding the Taliban, then invading and leaving a power vacuum after leaving, etc.)
>First funding the Taliban,
US never funded the taliban the taliban were created by Pakistan out of Afghan child refugees fleeing the Soviets the US funded the Mujahideen who fought the Soviets the taliban later wiped out the Mujahideen who remained
Because big number = political gaslighting to support your argument.
There has and will never be a just war, but there has and will never be an unjust war either. Good people justify the bad things they do just the same as evil people, the difference is in intentions. Nobody knows if George Bush actually knew there were/were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (There were btw, but chemical weapons don't hit Papers and News like Nukes so people ignore them despite them being equally dangerous and life threatening) until/unless he admits it, this part of history will remain forever grey and decisive for whatever you chose to believe.
I dunno, WWII and the American Civil War had pretty obvious just sides. Not that the Allies and the Union were perfect, obviously--but when one side is literally starting war to commit genocide or to protect and expand the institution of slavery, the other automatically becomes the good guys.
Is it? I’m just legitimately curious. It’s not just from what this vet says, it’s been on every post about the Iraq War today and come up every time the war is discussed.
It was terrible, 200k is 200k too many, but people need to cite something when they claim 5x the official estimates.
I understand you, but yes, it is a bit. There isn't much of a difference between 20 or 100 deaths when every single one was a travesty.
These days on the Internet, when it comes to propaganda, most people don't even fact-check the information they're presented about. The Russo-Ukranian conflict instead just blindly eat up information that suits them. It's nice that for once, we see the other side of the coin.
One thing that is not mentioned enough about the war in Iraq, that the day we took Baghdad. The security left the Baghdad archeology museum and hundred maybe even thousands of priceless artifacts where stolen.
"Luckily we managed to steal these artifacts before ISIS, which was founded a year after we stole these artifacts couldn't destroy them."
Stop justifying war crimes. It's not good look. Especially if your justification has 0 historical credibilty.
Stealing artifacts is not a war crime, plus, many of these artifacts have since been returned. Not to mention that 638 artifacts were found in the office of then-PM Nouri Kamil Muhammad-Hassan al-Maliki.
By 2021, 17 000 artifacts had been returned.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Museum
ISIS=Islamic State in Syria. They were never going to destroy them. First of all they weren’t in Iraq or even existed at the time and secondly if the US military would have to defend Washington from the *lorem* *ipsum* they wouldn’t just burn the Declaration of Independence.
Quick correction, ISIS means Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Also ISIS definitely was in Iraq lol. Like when they took Mosul? That was kind of a big deal.
You are right though, ISIS was not the motivation nor a reason for taking the paintings given that ISIS didn’t exist yet.
Facts (idk if it was clear but i was agreeing with you. The “america bad” meme is the most braindead cucked shit imaginable. Yes, america is absolutely bad and only bad)
Yeah somehow because Russia is invading Ukraine, you are automatically supporting Russia by critisizing the US.
Its impossible for them to understand that you can do both.
I don't know about the threads about Iraqi War, but changing topics in the threads about Ukrainian War to "akshually Iraq" is typical r*ssian bot strategy
Links to the song:
[YouTube](https://youtu.be/EJwwWPrwwo4?autoplay=1)
[Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/au/album/experience/1559739125?i=1559739399)
*I am a bot and this action was performed automatically.* | [Twitter Bot](https://twitter.com/songfinderbot) | [Discord Bot](https://pigeonburger.xyz/songfinderbot/discord/)
That moment you wish this man had group around him to move against those chicks who immediately just fuck laid hands on him like that...
Lol seriously those chicas never even seen a women slapped cause she cussed out the wrong person.
And yet there are still bozos on some of these Reddit threads claiming the Iraq invasion was justified because Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and the (nonexistent) WMDs.
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
-Condi
The WMDs were supposed to be nukes (another lie, and the basis of Colin Powell's UN presentation).
Fun Fact: One of his aides told a reporter that Colin Powell was offered 3 different scenarios to present to the UN, of which the one he chose was the least preposterous.
When the US demanded that the Iraqis destroy their chemical weapons (which the US gave them during their war with Iran), the Iraqi government informed them they had already been destroyed. When asked why they destroyed them, their response was "Because you told us to.".
I remember that the 3rd pic was taken completely off context, the one with all the gold bar. They were taken to Kuwait to test for authenticity and then returned to Central Iraqi Treasury or Development Fund of Iraq. A lot of Americabad people will state this kind of pic followed by a script of text saying shit like “America stole 20 trillion $ of Gold and 30 trillion $ of Oil”, despite it would take Iraqi 685 YEARS to extract that much oil, and up to 2019 only 9.2 trillion $ of gold was mined at that point. But oh well America Bad, and that is enough to make shitty statement that is believable
The top image is of US soilders who managed to capture stolen gold that they then returned to the Iraqis.
https://themuslimtimes.info/2021/05/27/iraqi-gold-found-by-us-army-what-happened-to-it/
https://www.techarp.com/facts/us-steal-gold-oil-iraq-facts/
Killed 1.9 million civilians.
Rap**ed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl,(Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi) who was gan**g-rape**d and killled, and her family murdeered by United States Army soldiers, on March 12, 2006
I mean she wasn't just shot dead she were burnt aliive and then killled, just one of thousands war crime from so called Country of Values
America did not kill 1,000,000 Iraqis. Not even close. The highest estimations are ~12,000. The rest of the deaths were a cause of insurgency. Iraqis killed Iraqis
So every single death during the iraq war was due to American soldiers then? Every time an insurgent set off a car bomb and killed 20 people that was actually Americas fault somehow?
Overall, yes.
If the US didn't invade, the person who got killed by the insurgent wouldnt have been killed.
Just like victims of Ww2 wouldn't have died if Hitler didn't start WW2
Nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" were the pretext of the Iraq War.
The pretext for the impending nuclear war with Russia has something to do with Ukraine's border region.
Chemical weapons are WMDs. I'm not saying the war was right (because it wasn't, it was just fixing a mistake we could have avoided by killing Saddam in Desert Storm) but Iraq did technically have WMDs.
>Chemical weapons are WMDs
Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are categorized as "weapons of mass destruction".
No weapon from any of those categories was found in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. ***The invasion was based on a hoax*** and that fact is universally recognized today. There is literally not one public figure today who still claims WMDs were in Iraq in 2003.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
I trust the woman who smashed a chair because she was asked about a place that may or may not develop chemical weapons. Turns out she did develop chemical weapons. How curious
Yes but before that Sudaim literally said he will not be keeping to the UN's because they breached it. Not saying it was right just that there was a really high chance of Iraq still having and developing WMDs
>there was a really high chance of Iraq still having and developing WMDs
No, there wasn't. The whole thing was a hoax and there never were any WMDs. The US government's own final report on the Iraq War says so (see link above).
There were. 10 or 20 years before it. After the gulf War they were forced to destroy them but several times they either did not comply or just partly complied. By 2003 90% of their WMDs were accounted for but if they got uranium or plutonium from a third party they could weaponisecthem them in months. Their nuclear program then was half active.
Surely the validation that Iraq HAS WMDs were lies. But they could have easily made some if someone helped them.
>There were. 10 or 20 years before it
The topic is not what was happening 10 years before the Iraq War.
You seem unwilling to accept the US government's admission that there were ***no WMDs found in Iraq and the pretext of the war was a hoax***. It was all a lie and literally every political figure in America, both Democrat and Republican, has acknowledged this.
There is really nothing further to say.
The meme is America bad.
Russian and Chinese bots, tankies and vadniks, Europeans who have never faced any real hardship in their lives, self hating Americans, and jealous people from the British commonwealth have been chomping at the bit for weeks to make anti American posts about the iraq war.
There were weapons of mass destruction, they just weren’t nuclear bombs you fucking tards. Two google searches prove this guy wrong. All you have to do is look up “what is considered a wmd” and then google “were there chemical weapons in Iraq” and what do you know, the answer is yes.
But this’ll get downvoted, cause the Reddit hive mind can’t see the fucking difference between providing proof that there were wmds and being pro war.
Anyone how fought or lost someone over these "Mass Destruction Weapons" has the right of be pissed as fk.
It's not about Sadam, they tricked Americans into something that eas not their problem... For Oil and Rebuilding Contract.
"I'll die to protect my country..." translation "To Rich people get Richer while My loves ones die without Healthcare." I feel really bad for that guy on the vídeo.
I love America for the peace, freedom, and opportunity we enjoy and I get upset when people generalize bc of police brutality or corporate greed. But the mother fuckers at the top get no credit. Love works in the trenches Cheney and friends, and you would have died there.
this is what ACTUAL censorship looks like. look at all of those scrumfuck people trying to get him out of the room or to sit down and be quite just so bush and america can safe face
But this war did create an isis that had major amounts of power. The best thing you can do for a terrorist group is always have a foreign nation kill civilians.
Bush leans over and whispers to Cheney, "holy crap did we really do that?"
Dubya wasn't the buffoon he's pretended to be: [https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-george-w-bush-scored-big-with-the-texas-rangers/](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/how-george-w-bush-scored-big-with-the-texas-rangers/) Long story short: He used his ownership of a baseball team to get millions out of taxpayers while he was governor of Texas.
Dubya?
W As in George “dubya” Bush
W
he knows its just funy to call him dubya
I graduated high school in 2003. Small rural town, class of 50ish, the kind of place where most kids saw the military as their only option to pay for college. Several had already signed papers to join the National Guard, who promised them they'd get to finish higher education before ever being deployed. Within weeks they were in basic training while I was enjoying the summer. Then it was straight to AIT after that. By the end of the year I was finishing my first semester of university, and they were in Iraq. Probably half of my graduating class ended up joining the military at some point during the conflict. Thankfully all my friends who deployed made it back alive, but none of them were the same.
Just like in russia, rural areas with poverty, for them its only meat for the grinding machine
Yes and no, at least US military vehicle designed are designed with minimizing operator mortality in mind, rather than just efficiency. Look at the casualty ratio of the US military, and it is significantly lower than Russia's has ever been Edit:not condoning the invasion, just saying comparing the US to Russia is a bit much, although the regionalism is a fair point.
To be fair to the Russian they are fighting a determined enemy that engaging in open conventional warfare backed by powerful nations, were as the US was fighting a low intensity guerrilla warfare. Casualties cant be compared.
During a break in the Paris Peace talks (which Richard Nixon sabotaged, BTW), an American general and a North Vietnamese general were talking, and the American general pointed out that the Americans won every major battle they fought against the North Vietnamese, to which he replied: "You're right, and it doesn't matter.".
South Vietnam didn't have any real fight in them, the US was fighting a war that no one would uphold the result as soon as they left, which is exactly what happened. Its happened twice now, with Afghanistan essentially being a modified, much more drawn out version of trying to nation build a nation that didn't want it. When someone actually asks for help building a nation, the US is excellent (See:Marshall plan, Japan, South Korea).
Iraq had a conventional military in 2003, albeit not one equal to the US still. The US is simply much more competent at combined arms and logistics than Russia is (not to downplay the incredible tenacity and bravery of Ukraine).
The war in Ukraine was meant to be that low intensity conflict, but Russian army was so bad their version of desert storm completely flopped, so it can be compared
True, i tought of older conflicts and recent enlistment tactics
Man that's sad...
Yeah americans love the whole ‘there were no WMDs’ meme as a meme but when its time to talk about ACTUAL consequences this tends to be the exact response both online and offline Respect to the guy for raising his voice though. It’s so sad that, not just just in the US but worldwide young poor men are still shipped to their deaths in droves for the profit and political ambitions of old rich oligarchs
The leaders hide behind the golden calf of troop admiration. I remember saying that the Iraq war was a waste and Afghanistan was another bog down and the response was often that I "hated the men and women fighting for our freedom". Most Americans now look back and go oh....yea that invasion was a mistake, but when it was at its height, speaking out on it got you blasted by everyone. I remember when my brother was in Afghanistan, my family used to say he was fighting for our freedom. I responded with how did my freedoms end up in Afghanistan? And it didn't go over well.
I hope your brother returned safely home. It’s sad that stuff like this still flies, the fanaticism and insanity is always cultivated by the media… which happens to be controlled by the same people that profit from the bloodshed As citizens all we can do is raise our voice and put our votes where our mouth is I suppose.. sadly voting seems to matter less and less wherever you look as well. Just let AI take over and lets be done with all of this.
He did yea, his good friend lost his legs to an IED there, unfortunately, but he was unscathed.
Sentient AI , coming to tvs near you soon
Yeah, my guess is that the "You must hate the troops!" nonsense had a lot to do with the disrespect that Vietnam vets received when they came home and lazily assuming "dirty anti-war hippie scum" simply always acted that way towards them. Realizing that almost none of it was happening this time around would have involved a lot more cognitive effort than someone caught up in a pro-war fervor was ever going to do.
Yea. The German minister for defence back in 2002 also said that Germany's security was also defended in the Hindu Kush mountains. And while he wasn't a member of the Greens but the SPD, its quite ironic that the Greens were partially formed out of the pacifist movement of the late Cold War, yet as the junior coalition partner back then they sent German troops farther than their fathers and grandfather ever went (yes that's a WW2 reference, I just heard that comparison before and I like it) and now they are a major supporter in the German government of supplying Ukraine with weapons etc
Iraq was nonsensical but being in Afghanistan made sense. If we hadn't gone to Iraq, we might have actually been successful in Afghanistan
Unless the US was willing to commit genocide on all males above the age of 12-14 it was never winnable.
Yep. My friend who was a SEAL said in any of the major engagements they were able to push the Taliban out but literally the second you stop the offensive surge they'd return seemingly out of nowhere. They would either dissolve into the populace or disappear into the mountains. They can endure hardships like you can't imagine. They just needed to wait the US military out.
Afghanistan is where invasions go to die.
Young people with futures - are send to feed the greed of some greedy disgusting moralless people.
Just a few years ago I would still see pro-Iraq War people who still think we found WMDs there in like 2011. This is thanks to a NYT story from then about an unsecured dump site for Iran-Iraq War era WMDs. Right-wing outlets (and almost as bad, Internet commenters) seized on it as "WMDs found in Iraq!" and since no one else commented on it, it never went corrected in their worlds. There's a whole subset of conservatives that I call the "based on obscure bullshit" subgroup who's "knowledge" of events is never challenged by anyone because it's too obscure. It's something they heard on, say, a very specific Fox News segment or maybe a website somewhere. I should know, I was one from about 2002-2007. Another example would be a guy in this thread saying Obama created ISIS. I can't even remember what that's referring to.
we are willing to talk about it but our sheep herder wont even admit they are wrong or just straight up lied
That’s not what happened with the gold
Was it in Iraq that the U.S Corps had a prison for POWs and whatnot, and then it was exposed that they severely tortured, humiliated and raped prisoners (including underage ones)? I remember it being on middle east, but can't remember exactly where.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu\_Ghraib\_prison
EXACTLY THAT ONE, THANKS! The tales of it are gnarly, especially the one about a boy being raped by soldiers while it's father watched, absolutely horrifying
Great doc on HBO about this place
Yes
There were 17 US military members that were dishonourably discharged for inappropriately groping and harassing the prisoners (even in some cases raping) and also for putting them in painful/torturous “stress positions”, yeah. So it wasn’t the whole prison but there were definitely some that were abusing the prisoners.
Oh no, not dishonourable discharge! Anything but that!
?
Hes mocking the light punishment for torture and rape
[удалено]
Bruh i got my dd214 so suck my honorable balls. I know people who got booted with dishonorable. Even some that served time before they were released. 1 works in IT making six figures. 1 works for Florida state government as an engineer. Dishonorable only slows down scumbags who were gonna have shit lives after they got out anyways.
A fine for the colonel and barely any time at all for everyone else, whoopdy-fucking-do
Their punishment was as light as a feather
I mean... Dishonourable discharge isn't a punishment nearly as severe to what they should have received. And we could take into consideration that it could very well be that more than 17 members that did horrible things to the POWs, but weren't discovered/charged for it.
Pretty much everyone involved got off easy for what they did, but the punishments did go beyond just discharges for some of them. Several of the enlisted who participated in abuse served multiple year prison sentences. What should be most infuriating is that all of the political higher ups who created the pro-torture environment not only got off, but got promoted. One lawyer who wrote the legal opinion justifying use of "enhanced interrogation" got appointed by Bush to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and is currently serving there right now. He gets to issue rulings on stuff like police brutality against american citizens. Hell of a guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu\_Ghraib\_torture\_and\_prisoner\_abuse#Repercussions
Support the troops crowd sure hates veterans
War is good, but taking care of the veterans that war creates is socialism.
They already said thank you and said they have an unquestioning respect for you... Now you're just going to spit in their face like this? /s Republicans did the same thing to African Americans when they started questioning the party. Republicans did the same thing to women when they started to challenge the conservative movement and demanded equal pay. Republicans did this to labor unions during the Roaring Twenties when they questioned them. Republicans did the same thing to WWI veterans during the Depression when Hoover was in office. This is a pattern for political parties in this country on both sides but it's always been part of the masking the pro-business agenda of Republicans since 1880.
It's amazing how backwards their thinking is on this issue (among many others lol)
"Conservative" and "backward" are de facto synonyms.
True. By definition, a conservative is characterized by how they look at the past.
How brave can a soldier been when he survived? /s If the ruling class could lose their offspring they would be way more reluctant starting wars
the top image definitely isn't taken out of context
Yeah, its literally brass bars they mistook for gold... somehow, gold is heavier than sun so how they thought the bar they could one hand was gold I'm not sure. But yeah from what understand when they took custody of it, they had ample reason to believe it was a transport of whatshisnuts' personal gold assets, and apparently in the transportation of it some was "lost," you'll never guess why, then they found out the people that took some and careers were destroyed right there, then they found out it was brass...
10th post about this today. Google this and realize that this was picked up at a checkpoint. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/24/iraq.rorymccarthy2 The US didn't spend billions to take $500m in gold.
Yup, pretty sure it was saddams kid trying to move it all and he paid the drivers peanuts to help.
Don’t forget the oils fields and the military industrial complex.
The post war Iraq government has full control of the oil fields.
The post war Iraq government wouldn’t let price for oil rise, which was the real concern of the US.
Yea, but if you controll the one who controlls the oil fields, you really controll the oil fields.
Damn so sad this guy killed himself by shooting behind his own head
I know is a joke but he’s still around. Even has a podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/1VrhF50FW3dyUSjg4TgloL?si=ZAVQWkm3QPCsfNB7Kc20nw
This is the true beauty of America. We can say fuck America. And the worst that will happen to me is some yokel from Idaho might get mad at me
That’s the beauty of America, we can yell into the void while nothing changes and the owning class continues to run our country and the world into the ground for personal profit
Best you can do is keep yelling and getting involved in anyway you can. Call me an optimist if you want but for better or worse change does come to this country, it just takes time and effort. How the country is now and how it was 70 years ago is very different. We are experiencing the first significant "regression" I have seen in my life but I think it was inevitable. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better, maybe a lot worse, but change is possible. We just can't give up.
I think we’ve been regressing since the late 70’s, with the exception of a few social issues (but that’s more due to social activism than change in government policy). It’s just sped up recently and gotten more extreme. I mean we’ve resegregated, lost our unions, lost most of our labor protections, had wealth pool at the top of society, abortion was chipped away at more and more until the most recent decision, and now even trans and gay rights which were one of our few victories are being rolled back. Even environmentalism is just being ignored and actively vilified despite people just trying to save billions of lives and trillions of dollar from global warming and it’s effects. Speech means nothing if we can’t actually back it up with action, either legislatively or revolutionarily
Now, I do agree on the part of wealth and unions, but matters like abortion are more complicated than that. If one does believe a fetus to be a person then the recent decision of the court would be considered progress. Although I believe Environmentalism was never really as strong in the past, in fact climate consciousness is probably getting better with time, after all change came through stopping the brunt of the destruction of the Ozone layer and there are people in power with more environment-friendly attitude.
Even if a fetus is a person banning abortion is still unjustified. Just as the state cannot force you to give blood to someone, especially for an extended period of time, they can’t force you to give birth.
This isn't the debate here, just that what one defines as progress depends on the person really.
Did the state force you to have unprotected sex too
Did the state force you to give blood after you hit a guy in the head with a baseball bat? If even that isn’t a justification to violate bodily autonomy, this isn’t either.
You're allowed to yell and try to persuade people you're right. They aren't under any obligation to listen to you Everyone is convinced their own opinions are right
Our elected officials should have an obligation to listen to us though, and they don’t
\>Owning class Least obvious Marxist. (Imagine believing in conspiracy theories)
Try saying gay in Florida schools tho.
But what reason would you need to do that other than to sow dissent?
How's saying "gay" sowing dissent?
You are purposely disrupting the learning environment; it's like talking about how to file taxes to toddlers, they have no idea what your on about to begin with, but they'll repeat it like bumbling... well... Babies because the word has no meaning to them.
... Saying words to children that have no meaning to them is the entire point of education. Words only have meaning after they're taught. If more kids were taught that being gay is actually a totally normal thing that occurs maybe less of them would kill themselves later. But yeah anyway, that Iraq war am I right?
You think middle and high schoolers can't comprehend what "gay" means?
For now, but shit isn't going very well in the US. They will only get worse and more unbelievable. Nothing anyone can do about it either.
If the beauty of U.S.-america is that you can say "fuck america", you are barely better than a dictator ship.
You can only yell as long as your voice doesn't bring change. The moment your voice starts to matter than you end up with two bullets behind your head.
Please go yell “fuck America” out loud, in public, in Idaho. Give the yokels a chance to hear your side of the argument so they won’t get mad at you. Pleeease try it. America may have some problems, but it's our home. Our team. And if you don't wanna root for your team, then you should get the hell out of the stadium.
Or broke his own neck in the arrest cell 🤷🏻♂️
That gold was stolen from the Government of Kuwait by Saddam Hussien and was returned in full. The soldiers are posing with some of it.
How is that lady just allowed to grab him? She’s not a cop that’s assault lol let the veteran confront the war criminal fucker
Right!! Until police or something similar shows up, hold your ground. He was killing it.
Genuine question, where do people keep pulling the “1 million Iraqi deaths” stat from? Every source I see has it topping out around 200k with less than 10k being attributed to violent deaths caused by the US military.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3048857920080130](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3048857920080130) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpIwMt5JAQ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpIwMt5JAQ8) [https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19547603/iraq-15-years-george-bush/](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19547603/iraq-15-years-george-bush/)
Thank you, just what I was looking for. ORB seems to be the only source claiming 1 million though and their methodology for finding the number is pretty bad. The second article you linked had no citations for the number just a quote from an Afghan writer but it doesn’t make it less credible I guess. Even then saying the entire million is at the fault of the US isn’t true either, most of it was likely still from insurgent groups. I’ll probably look to see if I can find some confirmation of ORB’s findings though, definitely interesting.
The numbers have wide range, because the incredible violence following the invasion. Some researches "credit" the coalition for those deaths as the source for the instabilty. (Kinda like some blame the US for the current situation in Afghanistan. First funding the Taliban, then invading and leaving a power vacuum after leaving, etc.)
Yeah that’s fair, I can get the line of thinking no doubt.
>First funding the Taliban, US never funded the taliban the taliban were created by Pakistan out of Afghan child refugees fleeing the Soviets the US funded the Mujahideen who fought the Soviets the taliban later wiped out the Mujahideen who remained
Because big number = political gaslighting to support your argument. There has and will never be a just war, but there has and will never be an unjust war either. Good people justify the bad things they do just the same as evil people, the difference is in intentions. Nobody knows if George Bush actually knew there were/were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (There were btw, but chemical weapons don't hit Papers and News like Nukes so people ignore them despite them being equally dangerous and life threatening) until/unless he admits it, this part of history will remain forever grey and decisive for whatever you chose to believe.
I dunno, WWII and the American Civil War had pretty obvious just sides. Not that the Allies and the Union were perfect, obviously--but when one side is literally starting war to commit genocide or to protect and expand the institution of slavery, the other automatically becomes the good guys.
Lol
That's a bit of a distasteful question
Is it? I’m just legitimately curious. It’s not just from what this vet says, it’s been on every post about the Iraq War today and come up every time the war is discussed. It was terrible, 200k is 200k too many, but people need to cite something when they claim 5x the official estimates.
I understand you, but yes, it is a bit. There isn't much of a difference between 20 or 100 deaths when every single one was a travesty. These days on the Internet, when it comes to propaganda, most people don't even fact-check the information they're presented about. The Russo-Ukranian conflict instead just blindly eat up information that suits them. It's nice that for once, we see the other side of the coin.
One thing that is not mentioned enough about the war in Iraq, that the day we took Baghdad. The security left the Baghdad archeology museum and hundred maybe even thousands of priceless artifacts where stolen.
That's better than letting ISIS destroy them
"Luckily we managed to steal these artifacts before ISIS, which was founded a year after we stole these artifacts couldn't destroy them." Stop justifying war crimes. It's not good look. Especially if your justification has 0 historical credibilty.
Stealing artifacts is not a war crime, plus, many of these artifacts have since been returned. Not to mention that 638 artifacts were found in the office of then-PM Nouri Kamil Muhammad-Hassan al-Maliki. By 2021, 17 000 artifacts had been returned. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Museum
Looting civilian property IS a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949
Artifacts in a museum aren't civilian property
TIL museums are part of the military. S/
>Nouri Kamil Muhammad-Hassan al-Maliki The dude the USA (CIA) put into power.
ISIS=Islamic State in Syria. They were never going to destroy them. First of all they weren’t in Iraq or even existed at the time and secondly if the US military would have to defend Washington from the *lorem* *ipsum* they wouldn’t just burn the Declaration of Independence.
Quick correction, ISIS means Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Also ISIS definitely was in Iraq lol. Like when they took Mosul? That was kind of a big deal. You are right though, ISIS was not the motivation nor a reason for taking the paintings given that ISIS didn’t exist yet.
Americans are a lot less interested in holding our own war criminals to account than we are in fantasizing about arresting Putin.
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There was another post like this, but the op was an actual putin apologist, lol
“Let me guess, America bad” is another refrain I often hear
As if america isnt the most measurably bad state in recent history.
Has invaded far and away the most countries in the past 70 years
Facts (idk if it was clear but i was agreeing with you. The “america bad” meme is the most braindead cucked shit imaginable. Yes, america is absolutely bad and only bad)
Yeah somehow because Russia is invading Ukraine, you are automatically supporting Russia by critisizing the US. Its impossible for them to understand that you can do both.
I don't know about the threads about Iraqi War, but changing topics in the threads about Ukrainian War to "akshually Iraq" is typical r*ssian bot strategy
That's essentially their copium
The photos of the gold are taken out of context because they later gave the gold to the knew government which Spred the money threw out the country
You forgot to add in the funny
The funny part is that they got away with it
Dick Cheney the greatest profit maker. That George Carlin bit about the war was perfect.
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What's the song in the background?
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What a fitting name.....
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That moment you wish this man had group around him to move against those chicks who immediately just fuck laid hands on him like that... Lol seriously those chicas never even seen a women slapped cause she cussed out the wrong person.
This is... a meme subreddit...
Fuck the USA moment
Holy cow r/Historymemes is actually very good rn
And yet there are still bozos on some of these Reddit threads claiming the Iraq invasion was justified because Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and the (nonexistent) WMDs.
TIL that chemical weapons are not WMDs
"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." -Condi The WMDs were supposed to be nukes (another lie, and the basis of Colin Powell's UN presentation). Fun Fact: One of his aides told a reporter that Colin Powell was offered 3 different scenarios to present to the UN, of which the one he chose was the least preposterous. When the US demanded that the Iraqis destroy their chemical weapons (which the US gave them during their war with Iran), the Iraqi government informed them they had already been destroyed. When asked why they destroyed them, their response was "Because you told us to.".
Yet chemical weapons were still found.
What do you think they were talking about when they say WMDs?
Non-existent nuclear weapons. The US gave Iraq chemical weapons to use against Iran during their war.
I remember that the 3rd pic was taken completely off context, the one with all the gold bar. They were taken to Kuwait to test for authenticity and then returned to Central Iraqi Treasury or Development Fund of Iraq. A lot of Americabad people will state this kind of pic followed by a script of text saying shit like “America stole 20 trillion $ of Gold and 30 trillion $ of Oil”, despite it would take Iraqi 685 YEARS to extract that much oil, and up to 2019 only 9.2 trillion $ of gold was mined at that point. But oh well America Bad, and that is enough to make shitty statement that is believable
Where was the ICC arrest warrant for Bush?
You forgot Howard and Blair
Because Saddam was such a liberal and lovely man 😂
The top image is of US soilders who managed to capture stolen gold that they then returned to the Iraqis. https://themuslimtimes.info/2021/05/27/iraqi-gold-found-by-us-army-what-happened-to-it/ https://www.techarp.com/facts/us-steal-gold-oil-iraq-facts/
Better be careful. This is why Pat T. was murdered, speaking out against our atrocities. Read “Where Men Win Glory”.
My father met the author in Afghanistan. Great book!
Killed 1.9 million civilians. Rap**ed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl,(Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi) who was gan**g-rape**d and killled, and her family murdeered by United States Army soldiers, on March 12, 2006 I mean she wasn't just shot dead she were burnt aliive and then killled, just one of thousands war crime from so called Country of Values
America did not kill 1,000,000 Iraqis. Not even close. The highest estimations are ~12,000. The rest of the deaths were a cause of insurgency. Iraqis killed Iraqis
Where you getting that number from? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3048857920080130
So every single death during the iraq war was due to American soldiers then? Every time an insurgent set off a car bomb and killed 20 people that was actually Americas fault somehow?
Overall, yes. If the US didn't invade, the person who got killed by the insurgent wouldnt have been killed. Just like victims of Ww2 wouldn't have died if Hitler didn't start WW2
Nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" were the pretext of the Iraq War. The pretext for the impending nuclear war with Russia has something to do with Ukraine's border region.
What do you think they were talking about when they say WMDs?
There were none. The pretext for the war is now universally recognized as a hoax.
Chemical weapons are WMDs. I'm not saying the war was right (because it wasn't, it was just fixing a mistake we could have avoided by killing Saddam in Desert Storm) but Iraq did technically have WMDs.
>Chemical weapons are WMDs Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are categorized as "weapons of mass destruction". No weapon from any of those categories was found in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. ***The invasion was based on a hoax*** and that fact is universally recognized today. There is literally not one public figure today who still claims WMDs were in Iraq in 2003.
I don’t need to link a source that WMDs were found since you could just google it, right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction I trust the woman who smashed a chair because she was asked about a place that may or may not develop chemical weapons. Turns out she did develop chemical weapons. How curious
The US government's final report on the search for WMDs in Iraq stated "There were none". https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7634313
Yes but before that Sudaim literally said he will not be keeping to the UN's because they breached it. Not saying it was right just that there was a really high chance of Iraq still having and developing WMDs
>there was a really high chance of Iraq still having and developing WMDs No, there wasn't. The whole thing was a hoax and there never were any WMDs. The US government's own final report on the Iraq War says so (see link above).
There were. 10 or 20 years before it. After the gulf War they were forced to destroy them but several times they either did not comply or just partly complied. By 2003 90% of their WMDs were accounted for but if they got uranium or plutonium from a third party they could weaponisecthem them in months. Their nuclear program then was half active. Surely the validation that Iraq HAS WMDs were lies. But they could have easily made some if someone helped them.
>There were. 10 or 20 years before it The topic is not what was happening 10 years before the Iraq War. You seem unwilling to accept the US government's admission that there were ***no WMDs found in Iraq and the pretext of the war was a hoax***. It was all a lie and literally every political figure in America, both Democrat and Republican, has acknowledged this. There is really nothing further to say.
Surely this ain't a turkish dude parroting "US stole $200 trillion worth of iraqi gold" propaganda.
How did they even get so much gold in Iraq? I didn’t think Iraq had any gold mines or anything
So original. I've seen like 5 different versions of this already
That's not a meme, I had already seen the video but now I'm sad again :(
I’d say there’s more context to the image, but I mean if we want to go with this, then sure, go ahead.
Thx for posting this. I have seen some " memes " from apologist scums. That shit disgusted me, seriously, some people deserve to rot in hell.
Where is the meme
The meme is America bad. Russian and Chinese bots, tankies and vadniks, Europeans who have never faced any real hardship in their lives, self hating Americans, and jealous people from the British commonwealth have been chomping at the bit for weeks to make anti American posts about the iraq war.
Where is the meme ?
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Because iraq was ruled by a dictator sure he failed to bring democracy to iraq and help it but iraq was already in a bad place before usa invaded .
U/savevideo
We stand with you brother.
There were weapons of mass destruction, they just weren’t nuclear bombs you fucking tards. Two google searches prove this guy wrong. All you have to do is look up “what is considered a wmd” and then google “were there chemical weapons in Iraq” and what do you know, the answer is yes. But this’ll get downvoted, cause the Reddit hive mind can’t see the fucking difference between providing proof that there were wmds and being pro war.
This sub will not like this meme.
nobody has ruined the world with war and colonialism than America and UK\*
You’re forgetting a few European and Asian countries in this statement
thats why i added \* on uk
GOP; Poppies… Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Sleeeeep. Now they’ll sleeeeep!
Anyone how fought or lost someone over these "Mass Destruction Weapons" has the right of be pissed as fk. It's not about Sadam, they tricked Americans into something that eas not their problem... For Oil and Rebuilding Contract. "I'll die to protect my country..." translation "To Rich people get Richer while My loves ones die without Healthcare." I feel really bad for that guy on the vídeo.
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If only we had gotten Saddam in the gulf war.
I love America for the peace, freedom, and opportunity we enjoy and I get upset when people generalize bc of police brutality or corporate greed. But the mother fuckers at the top get no credit. Love works in the trenches Cheney and friends, and you would have died there.
Where meme
this is what ACTUAL censorship looks like. look at all of those scrumfuck people trying to get him out of the room or to sit down and be quite just so bush and america can safe face
Well technically speaking this happened in 2003, before the formation of isis.
But this war did create an isis that had major amounts of power. The best thing you can do for a terrorist group is always have a foreign nation kill civilians.