Kerry; “You don’t invade another country on phony pretexts”

It looks like Russia's ultimate goal might be to reinstate the ousted pro-Russian government in Ukraine.... much like the US-led conflicts which aimed to install pro-US governments in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.

Libya was a NATO affair, not a U.S. led conflict. If you are going to continue to spew all of your anti-U.S. rhetoric at least get the shit right.

The US is part of NATO, last I checked... But sure thing, let's call it NATO-led if that makes you happy. Still doesn't change the fact that the US, along with the UK and France, attacked Libya for the purpose of regime change, under the phony pretext of "protecting" civilians... which sounds an awful lot like what Russia's doing now.

I wonder what that notorious anti-American, Ron Paul, has to say on the topic?

Ron Paul: US has no right to lecture on Ukraine because of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya

#1 Ron Paul is a kook who was against going after Bin Laden, so his credibility on these things is suspect to begin with. He is an extreme libertarian full of controversial views. Poor example for you to make.

Saying that, he still served as a U.S. Congressman and has 100000% the credibility of you anti-American tools on this forum. And I don't believe he ever called al Qaeda freedom fighters.

Now I want someone to explain to me how US/Afghanistan is the same thing as Russia/Ukraine. If you can't then STFU and stop coming with all of this other bullshit. Amazing how Jag disappears when facts come into play.

You know, libel should be a reportable offense. I'm gonna ask moderators about that one as I've never referred to al Qaeda as freedom fighters yet you continue to insist that I have.

As far as Ron Paul's cred, well...he certainly has more more credibility than you...but then, who doesn't?

LOL. Waaaaah.

You're such a pitiful throwback. I've pwned you in ever 'debate' we've had (no large feat, everyone pwns you) and you can't handle me so you have to lie and tell folks I embrace terrorists. Go do something else morally depraved. Go stop and frisk some minorities or shoot some cans in your backyard.

Hardly. Whatever you've "given" I've given just as much back. I, however, don't need to sugarcoat facts, or leave things out in order to make my points.

You're just another libtard. Nothing more. I can be open-minded about things but you have to have an anti-american angle for EVERYTHING. That's not even that big of a deal considering what you say is meaningless and devoid of any thought. Which liberal pundit will you regurgitate from next?

Talking about the asking the mods about libel thing

Not anything else

Because asking the mods about that is funny

vfibsux, go ahead and explain how NATO's pretext for attacking Libya ("protecting civilians") is any less phony than Russia's pretext for invading Ukraine ("protecting civilians")... And no, that joke of a UN Resolution is not a valid excuse.

First of all I agree the Iraq War was a mistake, though I do believe 50 years down the road we may see it differently, depending.

As an anonymous intelligence professional I can tell you people outside of our realm have little insight at all about how things are done. I am not even talking about classified processes here, just in general it is ignorance. There is always a probability of error, it just all depends what you are planning on doing and what the risks are of either not acting at all vs. acting and being wrong. I was, of course, not in the room when President Bush said "GO", but I guarantee the thought process was one of "if we are right and do not act the risks far outweigh the penalty of being wrong and acting."

A few points I would like you and others who think this was all fabricated to consider:

1. Debriefs with generals in Iraq revealed they believed Saddam had a nuclear program. Saddam Hussein himself revealed he lied about having WMD's in order to intimidate neighbors.

2. This next one is all about common sense and critical thinking. If the Bush administration knew there were no WMD's in Iraq why use that as the excuse to go to war? And if they insisted on using that excuse anyway why not just plant the evidence? Why would a 1st term president commit political suicide with a lie that would get thousands of American troops killed? If he truly knew there was no evidence of WMD's (there were WMD's, just not the yellow cake powder variety) would he not know he would be eventually busted in that lie when we did not find them? Do you really think the backup plan was "we'll just say bad intel"? Iraq had already violated over a dozen of the UNSC resolutions, surely we could have used that alone to go back into Iraq, why all the drama?

What is funny is a lot of the same crowd who believes this conspiracy also believe 9/11 was an inside job. So we could pull off 9/11 but we could not plant some evidence of yellow cake powder or anything else related to nuclear ambitions?

3. Numerous countries around the world were also convinced Iraq had WMD's and shared intel with us revealing as much.

4. The intelligence world is not like in the movies, I assure you. It is not sexy, it is rarely exciting, basically it is just a bunch of geeks who play WoW sitting in front of computers. People just like you on this forum believe it or not. It can actually be quite boring most of the time. I have yet to see anything that would constitute any bit of a conspiracy. But of course being part of the machine the nuts out there will just say I am waging information warfare on you right now with my jedi mind tricks.

Anyway, yes the premise the Iraq war was based on ended up being wrong and we along with the Iraqi people ended up eating a shit sandwich, one they are still chomping on. It sucks. But in no way, shape, or form was going into Iraq based on lies or deliberately false information.

I need not be a conspiracy theorist in order to question something, especially if that something proved itself to be utter BS at the end of the day. I'm willing to believe that intelligence agencies mess up and occasionally act upon some bad intel, nobody and nothing is perfect sure. But again, I find it extremely hard to believe that a country with the size of that of the U.S and with an astronomical volume of military and security budget and resources made the mistake of invading an entire, continents-away country, spending billions of dollars and getting thousands and thousands of people killed just to find absolutely nothing. That's not just a mistake on behalf of the American intelligence system, this is a complete breakdown of the system. Let me try and correspond to your points:

1-I don't care what Saddam said or did not say, its not the job of intelligence agencies to acquire its intel out of the mouths of dictators. If that was the case then what's the point of intelligence agencies? What's the point of pouring all these resources onto them?

2-Bush's administration needed to sell allies on the decision to go to war with Iraq so it needed a strong and unequivocal incentive which exactly what the WMD pretense was supposed to serve. It still didn't manage to get major powers to approve of it. Bush tried to get the Security Council to approve of the war and Russia vetoed it. Then he turned to NATO where many states, more notably France, stated a decisive no regarding it. He ended up making his own alliance to legitimize the invasion. Apparently, many states were skeptical of the existence of those WMD, states whose intelligence agencies are second to that of the U.S. None of the violations you're talking about would have sufficed as justifications to go to war with Iraq which is why the WMD pretext was needed.

3-Let's assume that the U.S was truly under the impression that Iraq had WMD. So? The U.S does, many more countries do. What threat did Saddam Hussien pose on the U.S? Why did the U.S feel the need to police Iraq and "confiscate" its WMD?

MOST IMPORTANTLY, let's assume that everything I already mentioned is complete nonsense, and that the Bush's administration was unquestionably justified in its decision to go to war with Iraq. No one seems to disagree that the U.S made a mistake in Iraq since its original incentives turned out to be wrong and in the process the U.S destroyed a country, wreaked havoc in there, got thousands of people killed and inflicted unspeakable suffering on an entire population to put it mildly. So the question that begs to be asked, why hasn't the U.S been held accountable for its actions? Its really simple: you make a mistake or a blunder and you answer for it. Could you give me the names of the people that made those mistakes in Iraq? Could you tell me the contents of the U.S' apology to the Iraqi people (not that its worth shit)? What about the reparations the U.S owes the Iraqi people?

The whole thing is quite simple. The U.S has stated so many times that the Middle East is of a special interest to the USA. They wanted to invade Iraq for God knows why and so they did. The world ended up saying the U.S was wrong in its decision to go to war with Iraq and it ended there. So let the entire world repeat this process all over again where we all end up calling Russia wrong and move on.

You know, libel should be a reportable offense. I'm gonna ask moderators about that one as I've never referred to al Qaeda as freedom fighters yet you continue to insist that I have.

As far as Ron Paul's cred, well...he certainly has more more credibility than you...but then, who doesn't?

Destroyed a country? Reparations to the people of Iraq? ROFLMFAO. Seriously dude? Go look at Iraq infrastructure pre-war/post-war, the place was lifted out of the 7th century. TRILLIONS went in and continue to go into that country, all the while they were banking their oil profits (you know....the ones we invaded to steal?). Al Qaeda killed more Iraqis than the U.S. did, I know you will never believe that but I don't give a shit. They are STILL killing Iraqis today and the U.S. is not even there anymore. But yea, blame the U.S., not Al Qaeda for them too because it is all our fault they are there right? But we left and they did not, wonder why?

So much wrong with this post; to describe pre-invasion Iraq as a 7th century country is a ludicrous exaggeration. And Al Qaeda only became a problem in Iraq after the invasion. It's very obvious that the US demonstrated extreme incompetence in preventing sectarian violence from boiling over after the fall of Saddam.

On a related note I have to say that I find your extreme jingoism awfully disturbing - reminds me of something straight out 1984.

Well be disturbed then, it is perception vs reality I assure you. My personal view of how we should be conducting our foreign policy is not a polar opposite from what many think here, I want to be more of an isolationist. Personally I would rather we did not go into Iraq at all, all I am doing now is refuting these ridiculous claims. Seriously...reparations? I think we have more than paid for what we did monetarily. I was against the Iraq war and Libya, but people here take it a step further and say we had no right to go into Afghanistan as well which is complete bullshit.

And I know full well that Iraq did not have an extremist problem prior to us going in, my point was why are they still there? Everyone said the only reason they were in Iraq was to kill Americans. We are gone, why do they remain? I want to see some answers to this one.

Okay, perhaps I was exaggerating with 7th century, but my point still remains.

This is why people don't bother with you. Dude was pretty reasonable and you are basically telling him he is full of shit even though he obviously is in a position to know more than you could possibly imagine rofl. Guess what he says does not fit your agenda.

Destroyed a country? Reparations to the people of Iraq? ROFLMFAO. Seriously dude? Go look at Iraq infrastructure pre-war/post-war, the place was lifted out of the 7th century. TRILLIONS went in and continue to go into that country, all the while they were banking their oil profits (you know....the ones we invaded to steal?). Al Qaeda killed more Iraqis than the U.S. did, I know you will never believe that but I don't give a shit. They are STILL killing Iraqis today and the U.S. is not even there anymore. But yea, blame the U.S., not Al Qaeda for them too because it is all our fault they are there right? But we left and they did not, wonder why?

So you tell us why the United States invaded Iraq. What did we gain? From what I can tell we lost several thousands of our troops lives, tens of thousands more disabled, a holy shit amount of money- in the fracking TRILLIONS. So why then did we do it? What did we get out of it? You make no-fucking-sense. This is where conspiracy theorists fail, they come up with all of these wild accusations but they cannot give a reason why. "9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S. government!" ....ok....why? "So they could invade Iraq!!"......ok....why? "Umm......uhhh.....uhh....because Saddam tried to kill G.W.'s daddy!" .....<hands tinfoil hat and warns to look out for black helos>

And yes we thought Saddam had WMD's, he refused to let inspectors come in to look, we gave him like 6 fucking months to comply or we come in, he chose to not comply. Good enough for me dude. People forget that, it is not like we just invaded unannounced like Russia just did. He had a chance to let UN inspectors in and refused. We saw him as a threat, we took his ass out. Get over it. I am done apologizing for it personally and not one America owes you or the world shit. You are free to round up a posse and come and take it....we'll be waiting for you.

LOL really now? We've more than paid for what we did monetarily? We invaded Iraq with the promise that we were going to leave the Iraqi people with a secular, pluralistic democracy. We instead were kicked out of the country by an autocratic sectarian Shiite government at the cost of more than 100,000 civilian deaths. To act as if the US is justified in having a clean conscience because we've thrown money at corrupt government officials is delusional. As for the "extremist problem" in Iraq - the reason why extremist violence still exists in Iraq is because (aside from the small Al Qaeda presence in the country) these are Iraqi's fighting fellow Iraqi's. Where would they go? And you can leave a considerable amount of blame for this violence on the US, not because this violence was the result of a desire to kill Americans, but because the US left a huge power vacuum in the country that it was laughably incompetent at filling.

I weep for you

still amused.

You see, I try to meet you halfway and you take the douche route and start with a "LOL really now?" completely ignoring all but one point.

Um, no I think I responded to all your relevant points; a courtisy that you failed to reciprocate

Funny you put "extremist problem" in quotes as though that is not what it is.

Again, wrong; I put extremist problem in quotations because I was quoting you - that's what quotation marks are for

Small presence huh? Islamic State of Iraq is just another name for Al Qaeda in Iraq...you did know that right? So you are telling me Al Qaeda in Iraq, now Islamic State of Iraq, is Iraqi's fighting Iraqi's huh?

No, that is precisely what I am not telling you, I made this distinction clear: "the reason why extremist violence still exists in Iraq is because (aside from the small Al Qaeda presence in the country) these are Iraqi's fighting fellow Iraqi's." And yes, Al Qaeda in Iraq only has a small presence in the country relative to the native militant forces (although its presence is infinitely larger than what it was pre-invasion)

Funny that this group, largely responsible for the violence during and after the war, was founded by a Jordanian. What you have here is Iraqi ALONG with foreign Sunni fighters fighting Shiites because even though Sunni's are the minority they ruled with an iron fist over Shiites under Saddam. There are even secular Sunni' fighting these groups as well, even though Shiite's are their main adversary.

I would respond to this but there doesn't appear to be a discernible point being made here

Either way, whatever. I am done apologizing to people like you for our actions. I see you say "we" a lot....do us all a favor and move to a nation more in line with your beliefs.

Hmmm, sorry but I very much like it here in the States; plus I could never live with myself if I abandoned my country to nationalist drones such as yourself :)

Actually I was told you did and please show me where I said you said it.....I stated "And I don't believe he ever called al Qaeda freedom fighters."

And I straight up asked you if you did say it and you did not answer. So are you denying now that you believe "Al Qaeda=Freedom fighters"?

He has tons of credibility, and yes he has more than me and you put together we because neither of us can prove our credentials here. You don't know me, what I do, what my education and expertise is in. I think it would be hilarious to see your face if you did find out as a fact and put your foot in your mouth, but oh well....will never happen.

loool you really are a silly child. I'm starting to doubt your military occupation.

First of all, you continue to claim "someone said" or "someone told me", as if the statement was given to you in a clandestine manner when in fact, the statement was made in an open forum. So I know exactly what was said and as inflammatory as the statement was, he never referred to that particular group. It was you who took the liberty of 'adding' that group's name into the mix. So don't go referencing someone else for something you said.

Secondly, you never really asked me the question. You said something in the line of "Someone (a very reliable source, lol) told me that you consider them freedom fighters. If it's not true, then good but if it is then you're the enemy, you're evil, you're satan, etc..." Well, technically, that's not even a question; you didn't actually 'ask me' anything. It was really just a long and vacuous rant about nothing. You know, it's like you don't even know what has been written - even when you're the writer lol.

Now, on to Ron Paul. The purpose of the clip was to illustrate another point; you're full of shit. A Ron Paul can have the very same critique of Kerry's comments that I and others have had; that the US is hypocritical for condemning Russia's invasion and occupation when the US have invaded Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan - yes, even he mentions Afghanistan. From his rant - assuming you've watched the video - you've regarded him as a kook, extremely libertarian (whatever that means) and controversial. Yet, you don't regard him as an "anti-American" or "an enemy to the US." Now ordinarily, I'd jump the gun and conclude that you really don't find these comparisons to be "anti-American." You simply use the term as a desperate attempt to shut others up. But, you're in luck. For a limited time only, I'm going to give you the opportunity to explain yourself.

It was posted by a member in another thread for all to see, you were even active in the thread dude; I just am not about throwing people under the bus for my own gain. Find it yourself.

Once again I see you diverted the question.....do you see terrorist groups as freedom fighters? Your refusal to answer implies there was no libel after all. As for my military service I really don't give a shit if you believe it or not, this is why I never bothered bringing it up in the first place because all people like you do is attempt to discredit such things.

So this Ron Paul thing you seem to think "wins" this debate for you somehow. First of all I don't know where you are from because you are too chickenshit to answer the question as it has been asked several times of many of you. Funny how you hide this. The difference between you (who I suspect as not being American) and Ron Paul is he served this country and I do not doubt his patriotism or allegiance to it. It is kind of like I can kick my little brother's ass but if you try it I'm going to kick yours mentality. THAT is where I come from on this. And truth be told I do not completely disagree with Ron Paul, and I have stated in this very forum that I can see why the U.S. looks hypocritical right now, but that kind of "meeting halfway" is never recognized by your type, you rather continue discrediting me and ignore that part.

Furthermore, I understand Iraq and Libya being in this mix, but I will call bullshit on Afghanistan every day of the week and twice on Sunday. But yet again, instead of recognizing I am more than meeting you halfway here by understanding being hypocrites about Libya and Iraq you will continue to discredit me as you and your buddy Gaza always do. I have yet to see ONE point you or Gaza conceded to, it is attack attack attack for you guys. So basically I don't give a shit anymore because you and your buddy have been exposed over and over for these tactics. I rather just call out your bullshit, have a good laugh doing it, and be on my way.

LMFAO! oh man, oh man. How the hell did you get into the military? Politics? Before you asked if I thought a specific terrorist group were freedom fighters. You're proof that reading is fundamental as the very paragraph that you're quoting denies ever making that statement.

I'm gonna ask moderators about that one as I've never referred to al Qaeda as freedom fighters yet you continue to insist that I have.

li·bel: the act of publishing a false statement that causes people to have a bad opinion of someone

Now that you've re-read his original comment you're switching it up and asking if I believe terrorists in general are freedom fighters. So which is it?

Yes the Ron Paul thing absolutely pwns you because it shows how philosophically inconsistent you are on the issue. So now you're creating arbitrary prerequisites for dissension in the US; "for one to critique US foreign policy, one must have served." Is that a new requirement? Was the Constitution of the US amended recently? Was there a Supreme Court ruling I missed out on? I don't think so.

Lame.