Both sides are fucked up. And lets not forget that everyone was behind the wars after 9/11.... Not just Bush. It's easy to look back and say how bad of an idea it is now but at the time all Americans wanted blood.
Both sides are fucked up. And lets not forget that everyone was behind the wars after 9/11.... Not just Bush. It's easy to look back and say how bad of an idea it is now but at the time all Americans wanted blood.
No, they didn't have WMDs. None. 0. I find it incredible that so many people, yourself included apparently, still do not know the truth and continue to believe what was a complete fabrication. You obviously haven't researched about what really went on leading up to that war. Research "Curveball" and watch these 60 minutes episodes:Why did we invade Iraq? WMD's and an asshat in power. You can say the Bush administration lied about WMD's but we knew they had them because in the 80's we played both sides of the Iran Iraq war.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3450752n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7359532n
What the bush administration did was fucking criminal, and him and every appointed member of his cabinet should be rotting in jail right now. He used an uncredible source of intell as an excuse to finish his dad's job. They could have easily cross checked this source, and in fact did find out faults in the information he provided prior to invading. But, they ignored them and did so anyway.
And if you think the middle east as a whole is better off without Saddam in power, you are sorely mistaken. True, he was a vicious dictator and probably deserved his fate, but he was also a balance of power in opposition of Shiite Iran. Now, Shiite Muslims loyal to Iran have taken over power of Iraq, which provides them direct access through both Iraq and Syria to provide weapons, support, etc. Iran is making a power grab now as a direct result of this shift in power balance in the region, and they are the ones we really need to worry about due to their disdain towards both the US and Israel. There will be long lasting and serious negative effects as a result of our direct involvement.
Last edited by Ender; 06-16-2014 at 12:16 PM.
Actually, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was written by three Republican senators, so Clinton and Democrats aren't the only ones to blame, though they are also to blame since they endorsed it and added in the requirement that a bank had to have a high CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) score in order to qualify for merging. This led to banks wanting to give out a bunch of loans to low income borrowers that they knew couldn't pay them back, but those banks were able to manage those losses since they earned more profits from becoming involved in investments and insurance.The housing market bubble that burst lays mostly on democrat policy and lack and deregulation. The result of Clinton era ideology to allow people to but homes without proper valuation, verification of income, etc. It was a case of you can burrow greater than the ~%40 of your income from monthly payment. The mortgage lenders and banks took advantage of the situation; they didn’t break the rules or laws. The offered shitty products, interest only loans, balloons, ARM’s, they played by the rules of capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E...0%93Bliley_Act
"Many believe that the Act directly helped cause the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis. President Barack Obama has stated that GLB led to deregulation that, among other things, allowed for the creation of giant financial supermarkets that could own investment banks, commercial banks and insurance firms, something banned since the Great Depression. Its passage, critics also say, cleared the way for companies that were too big and intertwined to fail.[22] Economists Robert Ekelund and Mark Thornton have also criticized the Act as contributing to the crisis. They state that "in a world regulated by a gold standard, 100% reserve banking, and no FDIC deposit insurance" the Financial Services Modernization Act would have made "perfect sense" as a legitimate act of deregulation, but under the present fiat monetary system it "amounts to corporate welfare for financial institutions and a moral hazard that will make taxpayers pay dearly."[23]
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has also argued that the Act helped to create the crisis.[24] In an article in The Nation, Mark Sumner asserted that the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was responsible for the creation of entities that took on more risk due to their being considered “too big to fail."[25] Other critics also assert that proponents and defenders of the Act espouse a form of "eliteconomics" that has, with the passage of the Act, directly precipitated the current economic recession while at the same time shifting the burden of belt-tightening measures onto the lower- and middle-income classes.[26]"
Blame is on both sides for our current economic problems. Both parties have proved incompetent.
"The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton", granted it’s from a Wikipedia article. But the act was signed into law in 1999 passing the Senate 90-8 (52-1 R, 38-7 D) House 362-57 (207-5 R, 155-51 D). So to assign it to one party is ridiculous, it was to change depression area policy. Why blame the law, which passed with a ~85% in both chambers. I am fairly familiar with GLBA, SOX, Dodd-Frank, and PCI compliance. Working for one of the big evil banks, I dealt with these on a daily basis until I moved out of the controllers group.
Where is personal responsibility? The banks and lenders followed the rules. Society as a whole is failing at accepting their own f ups. You sign the note, just like a car loan, a credit application, and student loans. If you don’t understand, the terms rates, other mechanics then you have no one to blame but yourself. The truth in lending act should cover this, as it one of the things you sign. The fact is groups of people purchased homes they couldn’t afford, or got into a bad product. Heck we bought our house on a NINA(no income no assets), we refinanced after a year. It got us in the house and I knew exactly what we signed, it was an arm, which in retrospect would have been better as we would have a rate around 4% today.
On June 21, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released key points from a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center on the recovery of a small number of degraded chemical munitions in Iraq. The report stated that "Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent." However, all are thought to be pre-Gulf War munitions
Still WMD's
Exactly, degraded. Which means they were not usable as weapons grade at the time they were found post-invasion. Sarin degrades fairly quickly so it has a limited shelf life (after several weeks or a few months), and by the time we found any shells containing that chemical from pre-gulf war they would have been useless. Mustard gas, even prior to degradation, is not significantly lethal, but mainly causes painful burns. And considering that these were found in artillery shells, even if they were not degraded, they are useless to anyone wanting to use them as a terrorist weapon.Originally Posted by Trany
The point is there was no active program in place in Iraq for the production or potential use of WMDs at the time we invaded them for that reason. So at the time, they were not a "smoking gun" to anyone even in the region, much less to our country.
Our government was told a lie, they believed it without investigating whether it was true, and they invaded a country based on it.
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