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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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It makes no sense that they would invade a peaceful neighbor just one random terrorist- who defected from North Korea.

I don't disagree personally but countries do stuff like that all the time.

"all the time?" Like what? Do you think Trump is going to invade Pennsylvania to get revenge for the assassination attempt?

Following a single terrorist attack, the US invaded two countries that had nothing to do with it. You might have also heard of a minor skirmish called World War I.

Not at all similar, for what I think should be obvious reasons.

I don't see any obvious reasons, and anything I can think of seems pretty superficial.

We invaded Afghanistan because they were sheltering Osama Bin Laden. We invaded Iraq as a result of a whole chain of events that didn't even start with 9/11. You can call the reasons bad and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but it's not true that we just arbitrarily decided to attack a country because of one "unrelated" terrorist attack. That's like saying we went to war with Japan because a couple of ships got sunk. (And in fact Pearl Harbor was really only the proximate cause of a war that had been inevitable for a number of years.)

World War I might have been triggered by a single assassination, but it was basically a couple of countries who'd been waiting for an excuse to go to war, and then a bunch of other countries dragged in by a complicated web of treaties.

It really isn't comparable to claiming that North Korea up and decided to invade South Korea because a North Korean expat attempted an assassination.

IIRC, the Taliban wasn't even particularly unreasonable, it's just that the US was in no mood to jump through the hoops of a bunch of mountain-dwelling goatherders.

I'm about 80% sure that 9/11 was one of the stated reasons for invading Iraq. If you want to say that, as in the case of WWI, it might have been the stated reason but it wasn't the real reason, than it is actually no different from NK stating they're invading SK over a terrorist attack. Like I said countries do this stuff all the time.

We had already fought a war with Iraq in the 90s. When we invaded the second time, it was mostly about Iraq invading Kuwait, and claims about chemical weapons. Yeah, there was some talk also that Saddam sponsored terrorism, but the administration never tried to link him directly to 9/11 (though you probably did hear a lot of uninformed people making the connection at the time).

Yeah, there was some talk also that Saddam sponsored terrorism, but the administration never tried to link him directly to 9/11

So I decided to see what I can find on this, and maaan...:

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein, and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.

MR. RUSSERT: But is there a connection?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don’t know. You and I talked about this two years ago. I can remember you asking me this question just a few days after the original attack. At the time I said no, we didn’t have any evidence of that. Subsequent to that, we’ve learned a couple of things. We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ’90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization.

We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of ’93. And we’ve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.

Now, is there a connection between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center bombing in ’93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

...fuck Dick Chaney...

I suppose you're right, and I have to concede, but his "we don't know, but *wink**wink**nudge**nudge**wink**nudge**wink**nudge**wink*... anyway as I was saying we just don't know *wink*", sure makes me feel dirty about it.

Then again the conversation started with OP saying "why the North Koreans felt like they 'needed' to start the Korean War", so maybe the analogy still holds.

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