Many critics of the war in Iraq are fond of saying that it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Their answers to questions about what the war is really about, if not terrorism, are varied. They range from “for oil” to “for profit for Halliburton, etc.”, but one thing these people are always consistent on is the idea that Americans aren’t any safer from terrorism because of the war in Iraq.
Yet recently the New York Times printed a story about a leaked government report (illegally leaked, naturally, you wouldn’t expect anything less from the Times) which indicated that terrorists in Iraq are tens of millions of dollars a year, possibly as much as $200 million a year, to run their terror operations in Iraq.
This was spun by the Times and other media outlets as a negative (the terrorists have money, let’s give up!) but I’m not so sure it is.
For obvious reasons estimating the funding and expenditures of international Islamic terrorists is a difficult thing, but I think we can all agree that $200 million (or even just tens of millions as the case may be) has to represent a big chunk of the total global Islamic terrorism budget. And if that’s true, isn’t it a good thing that the terrorists are spending all that money in Iraq where they’re being absolutely slaughtered by our troops rather than spending it on planning attacks against targets here in America? Or targets in Europe?
It is, obviously, and it also means that the war in Iraq is and always has been a part of the war on terror. You cannot point out that international terrorists are raising and expending huge amounts of money on fighting us in Iraq and then turn around and deny that Iraq is part of the war on terror.
Iraq is part of the war on terror, we are fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here, and the war has made Americans safer from terrorism in general. The people denying these things are either morons or unable to see beyond the end of their partisan noses.
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Comments: 9
They had made attacks/plans in America like one is create a terrorist camp in Ohio, which failed..
the terrorist want to make this the holy war in which the prophets spoke about, so they are trying to make this war bigger.
And no, this does not make us safer in general. All it does is grow and grow the anti-American, anti-imperialist sentiment, thus generating more and more troops on the other side. Eventually, the US will be forced to withdraw from a broken Iraq, thus drawing even more terrorists to the US. An example, shortly after we went into Iraq, Muqtada aS-Sadr had less than 1,000 fighters. Now, he has approximately 100,000 willing to fight, representing the second or third largest army in the nation.
And $200 million dollars a year is absolutely nothing compared to their bank roll. I believe Hizbullah alone has financing of about at least a few hundreds of millions a month.
The cat got out of the bag, and the WMD were removed from many of the UN sites before the US got there, weeks after the UN personnel evacuated. This might not have happened if the UN, Turkey, and other nations had worked with the US, instead of against us.
The fact is that many of the world's nations support the terrorists openly in the UN, if you just look at the votes. China and Russia won't vote for action in Sudan, North Korea, or Iran. Those two are the only ones with veto power in the UN Security Council, but there are many others that vote against legitimate efforts at combatting international terrorism.
This is a long and historic turning point in world relations with the Middle East. I can't predict the future, but it's starting in Iraq right now. As Iraq goes, so goes the entire reigon, many of whom have interests (and actors representing those interests) in Iraq. We have to finish what we are trying to do, even if it costs 10 times as much "blood and treasure," as the libs are so fond of calling the cost of war.
We have terrorists hiding in our country, but we don't bomb ourselves.
Also - I don't think that it's right in saying a 'global islamic terroristic budget'. There's no terrorist council. These organizations are funded by a variety of countries, but they don't meet and set a budget. It's more of a donation.
And Iraq is not one who is funding that. How? There's no government in Iraq. The countries that are funding terrorist organizations are around Afghanistan.
A seperate issue altogether is trying to create a democracy there. It took American colonies quite a while before they would even break away from their government to create a democracy. It took time until they were ready. No foreign government came over and made them. That's absurd.
Do you remember why we went to Iraq? It was for WMD's. It wasn't a war on terrorists. We went because we thought there were WMD's, which in countless interviews Colin Powell said was faulty information.
So do we go in for a particular reason (wmds), and then now, just because we're 'conservative' and we're over there try to justify the reason (terrorism)?
Chris - are you in the CIA? Or do you work for the Iraqi government? I'd love to know how you know about that.
Iraq was contained. Even if they did have WMDs (which they didn't), they didn't have the means to use them. And even if they did, where's the logical answer that the US had to go in and deal with them unilaterally?
We know that the planning for Iraq started BEFORE 9/11. And we know that Iraqi oil revenues were supposed to pay for the billions in dollars in contracts the Bush administration was going to hand out for the reconstruction. Instead we got stuck with the bill.
Where do they get you people? Did it hurt when you got your brain sucked out through your ears?