The Human Cost of War in Iraq

Quackerman "facts" over the past week:

QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 18 2006, 09:50 AM)
"And the deficit is SHRINKING and has been - and again as a % of GDP occupies a near historic low."

QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 18 2006, 09:26 AM)
"The national debt is NOT massive - in fact - it occupies a near historic low in terms of our GDP"

QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 13 2006, 10:53 AM)
"Republicans forced him to step down."
-- in reference to Congressman Bob Ney

QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 13 2006, 09:09 AM)
"remember cheney relinquished his shares and has for a while had no connection at all with the company."

QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 12 2006, 12:40 PM)
"Budget deficit is now 1.9% of GDP - near record low since 1962."

QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 12 2006, 10:19 AM)
"The IBC counts actual bodies from morgue reports"



Truthiness in full force.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 20 2006, 06:27 AM) [snapback]335491[/snapback]</div>

Actually, I believe that all governments are evil. America happens to have the strongest government and military in the world at present, which makes it the biggest evil. Different from the others only in its present size.

Still, it's nice to see that we agree on this one.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 20 2006, 06:27 AM) [snapback]335491[/snapback]</div>

We sold them the weapons components, and Bush the Elder gave them the okay, as Iran was supposed to be the bigger threat at the time. Of course, we had also sold weapons to Iran, under Reagan, in order to finance the illegal terrorist war against Nicaragua, and as part of the deal for letting the hostages go.

 

Daniel, I rarely find anything in what you write to disagree with. Odd that you accept the official explanation for 9/11.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Oct 20 2006, 12:37 PM) [snapback]335760[/snapback]</div>

What specifically do you reject about the "official" explanation? Do you feel that the U.S. government planned the attack? I consider them capable of such brutality, but not capable of pulling it off and covering it up. Or do you merely feel that they knew about it beforehand? Clearly, they knew al Qaeda was up to something. And clearly, the CIA funded the creation of al Qaeda, when bin Laden was America's boy in Afghanistan.

My problem here is I hear a lot of folks saying the government is lying to us (the government always lies to us) but I don't hear any credible specifics.

I hear people claiming no plane ever hit the Pentagon, but I hear no credible theory about what "really" happened to that plane.

As for accepting the "official" explanation:

I believe that bin Laden and al Qaeda, after the Russians left Afghanistan, turned their sights on what they considered to be the other great devil (America) and planned and pulled off the 9/11 attacks, and that the Bush administration cynically used that tragic event to launch a war they wanted to fight and had plans all ready for, in the event an excuse should arise.

But if they were going to construct an incident of their own, to justify the war, it would certainly not be one in which Bush's Saudi pals appeared more to blame than the intended target of invasion, and which required an almost superhuman quantity of spin to turn around against Iraq.

The conspiracy theories just don't ring true, and the ones I have seen are either too vague ("The government isn't telling us everything...") or are entirely lunatic ("Space aliens beamed up the third plane and the government covered it up with a fake crash at the Pentagon...")

I guess the one specific theory I've heard expressed was that the government knew the planes were going to hit the towers (whether or not the government planned it) and that the government planted explosives to assure the towers would fall.

Why I find this not credible: 1. A fully-fuelled 747 seems to me capable of felling a badly-designed skyscraper. 2. As mentioned above, to justify a war against Iraq, this was the wrong incident, since Iraq was not implicated in any way.

How about a concise alternative to the "official" version? Not a long list of inconsistencies, but a concise alternative: Who did what, as opposed to 15 al Qaeda hijackers mostly from Saudi Arabia?