Tag Archives: Iraq war

The price of inhumanity 5

Politics, Pro-Life • Tags: , ,

By Tom Quiner

From 1980 to 1988, there were 1 million deaths due to the Iran/Iraq war.

From 1980 to 1988, there were 14 million deaths in the U.S. due to abortion.

Before the U.S./Iraq war began, there were an estimated 270 mass graves in Iraq.

It is estimated that those graves hold the bodies of 400,000 people.

In the U.S., our mass graves are found in the dumpsters behind Planned Parenthood. Millions of bodies have been disposed there.

In 2006, 846 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. Thirty-four thousand Iraqi civilians died. One million, two-hundred fifty thousand babies were aborted in the U.S.

By 2010, the number of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq had dropped to sixty. The number of Iraqi citizen fatalities dropped to twenty-four hundred. The number of abortion fatalities in the U.S. “dropped” to a mere one million, two-hundred thousand.

In the entire 236 year history of the United States of America, we have lost 1.3 million people to war.

We lose that many to abortion in a single year.

Interestingly, the incidence of civilian casualties in Iraq dropped dramatically with our intervention and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, one of the 20th century’s more prolific mass murderers.

In the U.S., Planned Parenthood is the most prolific agent of death. They are supported with taxpayer money with our president’s blessing.

Even more, the president requires taxpayers to fund the killings.

Even more, the president now requires Catholics and other faith-based organizations to provide abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception for free to their employees in their health care plans.

Inhumanity takes a tremendous toll on civilization. Often, the killing is done in the name of hate.

In the U.S., it is a little different. It is far worse. It is done in the name of apathy and greed, for Planned Parenthood makes billions on the little backs of their victims.

What is the price of all of this carnage? Civilization decays, one life at a time.

What is the solution? That is simple: God. We must remember we were made in His image.

Anything else? Yes, we must elect pro-life politicians.

And in the name of humanity, Barack Obama must go.

Is the Iraq War the cause of our deficits? 1

fiscal responsibility, Politics, Republican • Tags: ,

By Tom Quiner

The “Supercommittee” meets. Their vision on why America’s fiscal house is such a mess varies wildly. The USA Today reports that Democrats on the committee blame the two wars this decade as one of the major reasons for our crisis, along with Bush-era tax cuts.

I am re-running a Quiner’s Diner post from last year which addresses the Iraq/Afghanistan War allegations:

***

Voices on the left are clear:  our fiscal problems are the result of an unnecessary war on Iraq forced on the country by former President Bush.

Democratic Party strategist, James Carville, is blunt:

“It was under Mr Bush that the deficit spiralled out of control as we fought an unnecessary and endless $3,000bn war in Iraq…”

Writing in the Washington Post, Linda Bilmes (a member of Harvard’s faculty) and economist Joseph Stiglitz were even blunter:

“The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.”

Writing in The Nation, Christopher Hayes is bluntest:

“First, the facts. Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars…”

The Iraq War certainly makes voices from the political Left emotional.  Fortunately, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has weighed in with a detailed financial analysis of the war’s cost.  It turns out the folks above were just plain misinformed.

It is certainly fair to argue if the fruits of our efforts were worth the tremendous cost to our nation.

Reasonable voices can debate if the removal of a mass-murdering dictator and the establishment of a democratically-elected government were worth it.

Reasonable voices can argue if the piece of mind knowing that the country truly is free of weapons of mass destruction are worth it.

The jury is still out on Iraq, and a healthy debate should continue on whether the price was worth it.

However, when it comes to deficits, the debate is over.  The CBO spells it out.  The war accounted for just 3.2% of federal government spending while it lasted.

Look at defense spending under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 60s when it accounted for 46% of all federal spending.  Contrast that with Bush II when defense spending was less than 20% of federal outlays.

The chart above really lays it on the line.  The last year Republicans were in charge of the budget was 2007.  Deficits exploded after Democrats took over.  The biggest culprit is Obama’s stimulus package which will cost far more than the Iraq War ever did.

And for the record, we went to war with Iraq on the basis of bipartisan Congressional Iraq War Resolution (H.J. Res 114).  In the House, 82 Democrats voted to go to war; in the Senate, 29 Democrats voted to go to war.

The next time you hear an angry voice blaming our deficits on the Iraq War, tell them to talk to the non-partisan CBO.

President Bush vindicated by WikiLeaks revelations Reply

Politics • Tags: , , ,

By Tom Quiner

“Bush lied and people died,” was the mantra from the political Left in this country a few short years ago.

Now that the WikiLeaks scandal has shed light on illegally released government documents, the Left’s assertion above is revealed as the sham we always knew it was.

Saddam Hussein DID have remnants of weapons of mass destruction, as detailed by Wired magazines’s, Noah Shachtman. Mr. Shachtman is also a non-resident fellow for the liberal Brookings Institution think tank. In reviewing the released documents, he reports:

“By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). … Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.”

I have no issue with American’s who believed we should not have gone to war with Iraq. That was an honorable position to take. It was a tough call that history thrust on President Bush. He made the call based on the long term best interests of America.

I have no issue with those who criticize the way the war was waged.

These are all honorable disagreements that friends, families, and political allies and adversaries can debate.

However, the assertion that Mr. Bush lied and and Mr. Hussein was telling the truth was borderline treasonous. There was no evidence that Mr. Bush lied. There was evidence that he made a mistake on the presence of WMDs, a rather large distinction.

Now we learn he wasn’t even mistaken.

Do you hear the media falling over themselves to apologize?

Don’t hold your breath. Listen to the bias inherit in Katie Couric’s questions above with former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice.

Does Ms. Couric seem like she’s in an apologetic mood? No, she’s sticking to the anti-Bush mantra embraced by her soulmates on the politically-Left fringes of America.

Is the Iraq War responsible for our deficits? Reply

Politics, Republican • Tags: , ,

By Tom Quiner

The Iraq War is plainly not the cause of our soaring deficits. Graph prepared by Randall Hoven for The American Thinker.

Voices on the left are clear:  our fiscal problems are the result of an unnecessary war on Iraq forced on the country by former President Bush.

Democratic Party strategist, James Carville, is blunt:

“It was under Mr Bush that the deficit spiralled out of control as we fought an unnecessary and endless $3,000bn war in Iraq…”

Writing in the Washington Post, Linda Bilmes (a member of Harvard’s faculty) and economist Joseph Stiglitz were even blunter:

“The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.”

Writing in The Nation, Christopher Hayes is bluntest:

“First, the facts. Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars…”

The Iraq War certainly makes voices from the political Left emotional.  Fortunately, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has weighed in with a detailed financial analysis of he war’s cost.  It turns out the folks above were just plain misinformed.

It is certainly fair to argue if the fruits of our efforts were worth the tremendous cost to our nation.

Reasonable voices can debate if the removal of a mass-murdering dictator and the establishment of a democratically-elected government were worth it.

Reasonable voices can argue if the piece of mind knowing that the country truly is free of weapons of mass destruction are worth it.

The jury is still out on Iraq, and a healthy debate should continue on whether the price was worth it.

However, when it comes to deficits, the debate is over.  The CBO spells it out.  The war accounted for just 3.2% of federal government spending while it lasted.

Look at defense spending under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 60s when it accounted for 46% of all federal spending.  Contrast that with Bush II when defense spending was less than 20% of federal outlays.

The chart above really lays it on the line.  The last year Republicans were in charge of the budget was 2007.  Deficits exploded after Democrats took over.  The biggest culprit is Obama’s stimulus package which will cost far more than the Iraq War ever did.

We went to war with Iraq on the basis of a bipartisan Congressional resolution.

And for the record, we went to war with Iraq on the basis of bipartisan Congressional Iraq War Resolution (H.J. Res 114).  In the House, 82 Democrats voted to go to war; in the Senate, 29 Democrats voted to go to war.

The next time you hear an angry voice blaming our deficits on the Iraq War, tell them to talk to the non-partisan CBO.

If Bush lied, Clinton lied 2

Politics • Tags: , , , , ,

By Tom Quiner

Believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs

“Bush lied” was once again invoked in the letters to the editor in the Des Moines Register this morning.

For the record, here is specifically what the President said:  ”Saddam Hussein has huge stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons.  And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.”  Only it wasn’t President Bush who spoke it. Thus spoke then President Clinton.

Believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs

President Clinton’s thoughts on Mr. Hussein are worth revisiting in light of countless assertions that “Bush lied”.  Before the U.S. invaded Iraq, most of the world, including Kofi Annan (then the Secretary-General of the United Nations) and John Kerry, believed Iraq housed weapons of mass destruction.  To think otherwise, one had to assume Mr. Hussein destroyed the weapons, but didn’t report it to U.N. inspectors even though it would’ve gotten sanctions against Iraq lifted.  That doesn’t make sense.

Hussein encouraged the belief that he possesses such weapons with statements like this, made in 20o0:

“Iraq will not disarm until others in the region do. A rifle for a rifle, a stick for a stick, a stone for a stone.”

Believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs

Finally, in 2004 after his capture, Hussein acknowledged the truth about WMDs to FBI interrogator, George Piro.  He said most of the weapons had been destroyed by United Nations weapons inspectors in the 90s.  Iraq destroyed the rest themselves.  But Hussein pretended he still had them. In his mind, that perception was critical to deter Iran from attacking Iraq:

“It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq,” said Agent Piro.

Why, then, didn’t Hussein ‘fess up when he saw U.S. forces preparing to attack Iraq because of this very perception he had so carefully inculcated?

“… he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So he expected that initially,” Piro says.

Bush-haters are uninterested in such evidence.  Their mind is made up.  But think about the logic they must employ.

In their mind, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair launched a war based on a lie (no weapons of mass destruction) that would soon reveal the lie when no such weapons were found.  Doesn’t make sense.

If weapons HAD been found, the same people would probably have said that Bush planted the weapons to justify going to war against Iraq.

There are certainly honorable differences of opinion on whether the U.S. should have gone to war with Iraq.  Let’s debate the merits of the war honestly and can the phony argument that President Bush lied.  If he did, so did President Clinton.