Letter to the Editor
Waste of lives
Published Saturday, September 20, 2008
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To the editor:
This summer, my wife, Chris, me and our two Greenland huskies, Nuna and Avu, moved from our long-time home in Barrow to the small town of Medford, Wis.
It included a five-week road trip from Fairbanks to Medford. We miss Barrow and Alaska a lot but have enjoyed summer in the heartland.
A host of folks here, and around the Lower 48, keep asking us about Gov. Sarah Palin now that she is a candidate for vice president.
I try to be helpful, based on what we experienced from Barrow, but no matter who the candidates are, I’m looking for some hard answers on the war in Iraq.
This ill-conceived invasion and occupation has been going on for more than five years now at a total cost of more than half a trillion dollars, 4,000 U.S. military deaths and 30,000 wounded.
Iraqi deaths are estimated to be up to 100,000 or more, and over 1 million residents have been displaced.
We invaded to find weapons of mass destruction, but none were found. Such a waste of lives and resources. I’d like to hear the presidential and vice-presidential candidates say who is going to be held responsible for all these costs back to 2003, and how soon this waste will stop.
Community Discussion
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This is what I been talking about. At this point as Americans we could change this at the next election for the President. We are tired of the Republican governement who has been ignoring our interests and weakening the US dollar.
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voiceforthepeople: You're spamming the comments. Please stop.
dirt : After Looking at " voiceforthepeople Link" I find More Useful information on that one page, then I did in 2 weeks worth of the Newsminer. Maybe they should Fire one of the Editors of this paper and put “voiceforthepeople” in charge
I agree a huge waste Mr. Finkler. While you are right someone should be held responsible, no one is and I'm willing to bet no one will. And to answer your question "when will it end" I don't think it will be any time soon, no matter which party is in office. Our country is so deep in "it" that if we pull out now that fragile country will be invaded and taken over by other stronger ones. So basically you are right we went there on a wild goose chase and found nothing it was a dumb move, so in order to not seem like such a huge jerk we stick around and keep pumping money into "it"::: "see everyone we are here to help not hurt anyone". My guess is we will be in that "not a war" war for a while.
No papers in Wisconsin to write your 'Letter to the Editor' to?
Brilliant. To suggest the one and ONLY reason we are still engaged in the Iraqi conflict was to find weapons of mass destruction is brilliant. Sure, if it were only that reason, I, too, would be against the conflict. You misstate our purpose.
Thank goodness you left Alaska. The war will be lost to the wall street mess, which can be tracked back to Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. There still is more to happen in this financial mess. How many Americans have just lost any value in their homes or in their pension funds.
Barrow to Medford. Talk about someone who is well educated on the Iraq war. Have you been there? Do you know someone who has been there? Quit watching CNN, MSNBC and NBC and do some research. Talk to someone who has been there. We are there to establish democracy in a critical region of the world and it is working.
BigDan, you are so gullible. We are not in Iraq to "establish democracy" and we were not on a wild goose chase. We are there to allow the oil conglomerates and their subsidiaries, like Haliburton, to gain control of the second largest oil field in the world. The government knew full well that there were no weapons of mass destruction. So, Bush succeeded in what he set out to do. The fact that it has cost 4,000+ American lives, 100,000+ Iraqi lives, the destruction of the American economy, an environmental catastrophe in Iraq - so what? He and his administration never gave a damn about any of those things. Bush, Cheney, and their buddies will be even richer than before, and that was the intent all along.
still trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Haliburton isn't a subsidiary of anyone, it is a company all on its own. If this was really about oil, we wouldn't have hit $147/bbl.
Hate the war all you want (I do!) but don't cling to the "war for oil" arguement to do it. There are so many better, and true, reasons to dislike it.
FYI, Saddam gassed more Kurds in a week then have died during this entire invasion/occupation/rebuilding.
I thought you were going to quit posting, polarmark. What happened??
Liberal Thinking - Feed the poor of the world and worry about their civil rights but let some ruthless lowlife kill them by the thousands if they have oil. OK I know get it?
Pavel, we put Saddam Hussein into power and we allowed him to kill a bunch of Shiites when we left after the first Gulf War. We didn't care too much about the people he was killing until he became uncooperative with us and attacked Kuwait. Now, we'll put another Saddam Hussein in power and allow him to be as brutal to his own people as he pleases as long as he cooperates with us. If we cared about hundreds of thousands of innocent people being brutally murdered by a vicious dictator, we would intervene in countries that aren't oil-rich, like Rwanda and Darfur. Get real.
We may NEVER know the true reason "we" invaded Iraq. Was it to oust Saddam? Payback by baby Bush for daddy's loss in Iraq? Maybe for oil? Maybe Bush is the one to sink the US.
When our country is illegally controlled by a worthless, corrupt goverment, we have the right (Declaration of Independence) to rid ourselves of that goverment.
I would fire Bush, impeach him, hold him accountable for the waste of US taxpayers dollars, lies, deceit, who is Osama Bin Laden anyway??? As if he doesn't stand out like a sore thumb??? No-one can find OBL? Hey, give me 1 billion, I'll find him for ya.
The economy is in a tailspin, but the oil companies are having the last laugh on all of us. McCain wants to continue the Iraq war...maybe he can sell 6 of his houses to help finance it.
Good letter. I agree. Personally I thought Bush & Co. should have been held accountable back when it first became obvious that they lied to us to invade Iraq.
Oh, so you must be really upset that we haven't invaded Sudan or Sierra Leone yet, huh Tombo?
Right-wing extremist thinking: Sell the gas to Saddam that was used to kill the Kurds. Profit! Invade Iraq under the guise of saving said poor Kurds. Profit!
It's a Republican win/win!
What a short memory BigDan. The idea that we are there to instill democracy is the 3rd or 4th "reason" that we went into Iraq. The original reason was that Bush took faulty unsubstantiated intel and used it as the basis to accuse Saddam of having WMD's. Then it was because Bush had the CIA falsify a document to tie Saddam to al Qaeda. Then it was because we wanted to instill a democratic government. So I guess it was the 3rd reason.
I would like to hear you say that to our soldier's faces. Thanks for fighting in this waste of lives. Or tell a mother/father/etc. "So son/daughter died in this waste of lives." But do not forget to add "..but I support our troops."
I too have many questions and qualms with exactly how we got in this war, such as the 'intellegence' and how much of it was just lack-there-of and how much was misled by corporate interests. But bare in mind that the UN also agreed there was a problem, but didn't want to reslove it.
I would *NEVER* call war a waste of lives. Our men and women are out there serving our country dutifly, no matter how right or wrong the overall cause. Iraq may not find itself on the top 10 places, or even top 100, to live, but please remember we did accomplish several things. We did overthrow a dictator that didn't lose a moment of sleep for gassing his own family. We have begun establishing a democtratic government, no matter how weak or still corrupt it is, it is a start. We are helping to establish autonous security forces in Iraq.
Sure some of what we have done has been bad, maybe, some would argue most. But to call it a waste of lives in incredible!!! With the exception of a few, I believe in the men and women that are there putting there lives at risk every day; because, other than a paycheck which I'm sure cannot fully express our grattitude for their service and risk, I can assure you that they are certainly not there fore the oil.
So go ahead, call up the mother and father of a recently fallen soldier, and tell them it was a waste of life. But I will continue to be thankful to their service to our country.
Within 72 hours after 9-11 we were 90% certain of the players and thier role in the bombing.
Wingtip to wingtip B-52's... Tomahawks, MOAB's just Conventionally decimate em.
1. Finance providers the Saudis. Goodbye Mecca, Medina, and the King his family and a few hundred princes.
2. Troopie providers, Pakistan and the ISI good bye Islamabad and every govomilitary ministry officials.
3. Training and planning grounds, goodbye Kandahar and Khost.
for every American brutally murdered by coward terrorists acting with the support of foreign governments we should we should have wage a real war of attrition 10000 for 1.
The know how to use an abacus I do believe they would get the message real quick. Police up your own or pay the ultimate price.
Too bad we don't have the same stomach we had after the Pearl Harbor attack. Really was too much different, the terrorist aren't a government or a country but they ARE supported by them.
Just another reason Islamabad is in flames tonight. Pakistan has failed to protect or forwarn the terrorist against US incursion into their borders. So now the Paki's will use lethal force against US military personnel who venture into Pakistan.
You people need to stop reading the liberal blogs. That faualty intel that Bush used was exactly the same intell Clinton had (both of them) and all the world leaders had. EVERYONE thought he was building a bomb. Did you forget Saddam told his own generals they were trying to build a nuc bomb? It is like what Iran is doing now. Everyone is saying we need to stop Iran from building a bomb today, just like everyone said we needed to stop Iraq back then.
There is no doubt that Saddam used gas on his own people. That is a WMD. Why do you think the when the troops went in they had on rubber suits?
Iran is doing exactly the same thing today that Iraq did 10 years ago. What do you think we should do?
Well, politics, exchanging ideas and beliefs may be entertaining and make us feel a sense of intellectual status but how could we REALLY make a change in the way business as usual is conducted. Human nature, WOW! I wrote because I thought you all had some KEWL names for your dogs. Tundra and Sugar.
airboat454, there was just as much intel that said that Saddam didn't have the money or resources to build a bomb. But, instead of following up on that intel, Bush paid that person five million dollars to go away and never repeat what he said again. And the source of the faulty intel was a guy that had not been in Iraq since 1999. When the intel was being passed around both CIA and Britain's MI 6 questioned the reliability of it but, Bush ignored them. It is not the fact that the information was faulty or that it was followed that upsets most people that I know. It is that it seems that Bush was so dead set on invading Iraq that he ignored anything that conflicted with what he wanted to the detriment of our country and military.
The UN had inspectors in Iraq looking for any sign of WMDs. If WMDs had been found the world would have supported an invasion to force Iraq to get rid of them.
Bush didn't wait and didn't want to wait when it looked more and more like his invasion would not have the excuse he wanted. That he invaded when we did not need to is why he should be impeached and charged with war crimes.
Instead he dropped the hunt for Bin Laden and let Afghanistan fester while he bungled in Iraq.
I can't believe akguy isn't on 0bama's advisory board. He is just a wealth of information and advice! We sent the wrong Alaskans to Washington.
WOW that boogie man Cheney the puppet master and his minion Halliburton really scare the hell out of you.
Halliburton is an oil service company. They do work for the real oil companies. They are experts on logistics in the Middle East.
airboat454 - Here's an idea - strap on all the guns you own, load'em up and head on over there and kill all those mideast SOBs, eh?
The level of ignorance displayed within this digital world continues to amaze me. Fear sells. Fear of an entire race of people trying to use nuclear energy to power their country. Which cracks me up, what with all the "evil fossil fuels" crap being thrown about.
We are in Iraq and Afghanistan to essentially try to bankrupt the Middle East claiming it will stop all terrorism. No funds, no bombs I guess. At the same time destroying all the military's ancient, out-dated vehicles and weapons so that YOU, the taxpayer, can pay for new and improved versions. And sitting on top of, and controlling the tap for, one of the world's largest oilfields certainly isn't small potatoes either. Or the two major rivers in the area as well, which provide most of the mideast with water. No one thinks about the water control. Turkey has used dams to block the flow of water in Iraq because they(Turkey) need oil and Iraq needs water. What will happen there? I know, airboat454 can call up all his gunslingin' pals and take care of 'em.
I don't even bother to read the blog of someone that uses an airboat.
Oh and why is that akusa? Do they blow you and your kayak off the water? Are you an elitist when it comes to water craft? Or is it the noise that disturbs the silence of the wilderness? Airboat’s point of view is just as valid as yours.
If we went to Iraq for oil, why are the