Question about Iraq: What the hell is 'The Mission'

[TayTay]

I see that the press is now engaged in another round of 'blame the Democrats' over the Iraq War. This is completely nuts. This war was a Rethug produced drama, starring George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Bush LIED to Congress and to the American people to get this war. His Rethug team of idiots planned, executed and screwed up this war. This is a Rethug production from top to bottom and they, not the Democrats, are responsible for it.

I am not interested in blaming Democrats for the war. (It isn't their war.) I am interested in getting Dems to go on the offensive about how the Rethugs plan on fixing Iraq. They can start by asking what is 'The Mission' that we are supposed to be completing. What the hell are we completing. What is the friggin end game?

The Rethuglican Brain Trust brought us a war that took the lives of 1800+ Americans and unknown thousands of Iraqis. There are thousands and thousands of wounded from this Rethug mis-adventure. For what? So Iraq can become a client state of Iran. An Islamic state that won't guarantee the rights of women or minorities? What the hell is 'The Mission?' Stay the course, ahm, what the hell is the course?

[yojon]

1. Ah it's clear!

The mission is to extract as much money as possible into Dick Cheney's and Rumsfeld's personal bank accounts.

The mission is going just as planned!

[Usrename]

2. It's also about power, stealing elections, fear. n/t

[DefenseLawyer]

3. Q&A from March 2003 - a few versions of 'The Mission' ago

Q Thank you, sir. Mr. President, millions of Americans can recall a time when leaders from both parties set this country on a mission of regime change in Vietnam. Fifty thousand Americans died. The regime is still there in Hanoi, and it hasn't harmed or threatened a single American in the 30 years since the war ended. What can you say tonight, sir, to the sons and the daughters of the Americans who served in Vietnam to assure them that you will not lead this country down a similar path in Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: That's a great question. Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change. I'm confident we'll be able to achieve that objective, in a way that minimizes the loss of life. No doubt there's risks in any military operation; I know that. But it's very clear what we intend to do. And our mission won't change. Our mission is precisely what I just stated. We have got a plan that will achieve that mission, should we need to send forces in.

[TayTay]

4. So why are we still there?

We caught Saddam. We have regime change (to a client state of Iran.)

What the hell is 'The Mission' that * says we should complete? What is it? What does it mean to 'stay the course.' What is 'the course?'

[DefenseLawyer]

7. Hey, don't ask me. i didn't post it because it was true

I posted it because he said it. It was a lie then and it's a lie now.

[TayTay]

8. I agree. And I liked your post

I read it, thought about it and couldn't figure out what 'the Mission' is now.

Hoenstly, I have kids and we talk and they ask me why we are in Iraq? I don't know. When are we getting out? I don't know? What comes next? Damned if I know. Sigh!

So, what the hell are we doing over there?

[DefenseLawyer]

9. You might find this interesting

From the Wikipedia listing for Paul Wolfowitz:

From 1989-93 under U.S. President George H.W. Bush Wolfowitz served as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy reporting to the then U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Wolfowitz was charged with realigning U.S. military strategy in the post-cold war environment. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War Wolfowitz’s team were charged with the co-ordination and review of military strategy as well as the raising of $50 billion in allied financial support for the operation. Wolfowitz was reportedly distraught by the administrations decision to stop short of removing Saddam Hussein and the betrayal of the Kurdish and Shiite revolutionaries encouraged to rise up against their dictator that this policy entailed. In the aftermath of the war Wolfowitz wrote the "Defense Planning Guidance" to "set the nation’s direction for the next century" that many saw as a "blueprint for U.S. hegemony". At the time the official administration line was one of containment and the contents of Wolfowitz’s highly controversial plan that included calls for preemption and unilateralism proved unpalatable to the more moderate members of the administration including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell and the President himself, so Cheney was charged with producing the watered-down version that was finally released in 1992.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz#U.S._Arms_Control_and_Disarmament_Agency

[uppityperson]

5. It is a Noble Cause

whatever the hell that means

[mikelewis]

6. Well first it was WMD and then it was Al Qeada and then it was...

liberating the people of Iraq from a tyrant and going after the man that "tried to kill my daddy" and then it was to stop violent extremism by fighting them in an innocent country instead of ours and now it seems that we are there just so we can prove "we don't lose". DUH! What the hell are you complaining about? Why do you hate America?

[wli]

10. the mission is multifaceted

1. destabilize the region to Enronize the oil market
2. establish military domination over Iraq
3. erect permanent military bases to flank Iran from the West (Afghanistan has such flanking Iran from the East)
4. establish a heavily federally funded cash-based environment in which embezzlement may proceed with no accountability
5. seize Iraq's natural resources (oil, water, agricultural) and bestow them upon US companies favored by US politicians (Halliburton, Monsanto, etc.) so the profits extracted from Iraqis go to the US
6. prop up another IMF debt slave

There are probably others.

[Lexingtonian]

11. Nobody knows; nobody ever has

but the Bush people will settle for Glorious Victory.

It's like the Republican Party itself- nobody really knows the point of it, there is no actual concept or plan, it's just a good vehicle for getting a lot of people some stuff they really, really covet. Some of them just want to screw other people. Others want a power trip and admiration. Yet others just want to steal shit. A lot of them want to stand in front of a flag and feel selfimportant and desirable.

It's purely bad id and bad ego and bad superego stuff.

I doubt there's a need for a Democratic 'end game'. One Republican selling point after another is vanishing as the cost continues to spiral.

[leesa]

12. No one knows, but it's awesome and holy.

[Morning Dew]

13. Shrub's mission

is to spend our soldiers like nickels in a slot machine.