Saddam Hussein to receive death penalty

The odd thing is about Iraqi law is that the sentence must be carried out 30 days after the appeal is exhausted (and it sounds like that will be in about a month). So all the other trials that were being planned, they just won't matter. He'll be dead before they even get started.

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Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

The ONLY reason why the United States will lose in Iraq is because of people demanding that we essentially give up.

If we stay and fight, we will win, hands down, every time. It's not a matter of ability, it's a matter of will and quite simply, the civillian population of the United States and half of its population doesn't have the will to do what it takes to win in Iraq.

What is your definition of winning in this instance?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

Ask yourself this question then: Is America handing victory to the insurgents, allowing Iraq to completely collapse into what will inevitably become a fundamentalist state allied with Iran the course of least harm?

We're going to have to deal with Iran one way or another, and the religious views of the Iraqi people aren't going to change.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

demanding some sort of 'timetable', which basically amounts to "American troops will leave on ___" which tells the insurgents that all they have to do is chill the fuck out until American troops leave and then just unleash hell during the ensuing power vacuum.

Why wouldn't the insurgency just lay low now? It would have the same effect. If we didn't see an insurgency, we would finish up the job and come home anyway, whether or not there is a timetable.

The job is failing because we can't (or aren't) doing it. We don't put enough into fixing Iraq. All the money we've spent on this war, and we can't even control a force that has no major central figure heading it. We're supposedly the best force in the history of mankind and we can't even control Iraq. We've been at it for 5 years and we can't control an area the size of Arizona. And we probably never will, considering that 30-40% of the Iraqi population (at least) doesn't even want us to.

Perhaps you need to focus less on whether we can win or lose or whether or not what the hell we are doing is winnable at all.

And the corollary to what you are arguing is that the Iraqis, the ones we want as friends, they will never step up unless we force them to. The initial wave of the war has been over how long? And how much progress has been made? Pulling out immediately is wrong. But there isn't anything wrong with saying to Iraq, "Look, fuckers, we came in here and took care of the worst shit for you guys, now learn to fucking deal with your own problems."

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.