“A million Iraqis are dead because you lied, my friends are dead because you lied, you need to apologize!” - Iraq war veteran Mike Prysner confronts George W. Bush at his red carpet event
Yup. As well as vp dick cheneys logistics company Haliburton and kbr, which were the main contractors for logistics during the war. Also the geo political and financial benefits for installing a pro western Iraqi leadership. A returning investment. It’s all a game to them. So many lives wasted
It's not about where the oil ends up, its who controls it. Control more oil, you have more power over other because its an input good for much of the supply chain.
It wasn't necessarily all about the oil, more about the supply services and the bag. Typically we think of the military as being self sufficient, however the Iraq war turned this idea on its head and opened the function of feeding, housing, fueling the military up to corporations. Haliburton/KBR made billions off of no bid contacts for years at ridiculous prices with tax payers footing the bill.
80% of America couldn't spell "Saudi Arabia" or find it on a map
65% of America couldn't tell you that Sheik Muhammed Bin Salman is the leader of the country, and less than half of us would even dare to pronounce it, hence "MBS-this" and "MBS-that"
21% of Americans voted for diaper don and will do/like whatever he fuckin tells them
So when you ask, "Dont Americans like Saudi" - the only thing you can definitely say with 90% accuracy is that Americans like: their things; being lied to.
It was mostly Saudi Arabia, they financed it, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened without them. If the war was really about 9/11 (it never was), we would’ve went straight into Saudi Arabia.
This always makes me roll my eyes when clown maga hats try to tell me how dangerous Iran is and is a threat to the west. Like if the US actually operated on threats to the west they would have invaded Saudi Arabia 25 years ago. But no the real reason we went to war with Iran is apparently we are just a puppet to Israel and fight any war they want for them
i kinda disagree. i think it was inevitable that the military industrial complex was going to attack iran. i could certainly be wrong. i just think there is a lot of institutional power that wanted this war. USA loves controlling oil, and Iran was always the biggest thorn in our side.
once again I could be wrong. but the whole bibi blackmailed trump with epstien photos is a sensationalist cover story for the fact that corporations make a ton off war, higher oil prices, but mostly importantly its just about power and control.
we are headed in a world where russia, china, Iran, north korea are getting very dangerous. these hegemonic bastards that are part of this system just cannot help but always pushing for more war.
Dude, it was critical that we get the Taliban out of Afghanistan because now we have the Taliban, which is much much better also, Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, heard of them?? Or I mean, we gotta have the women vote that’s what I mean.
Al Qaeda? Where they bad guys? Oh, yeah, the rebranding. I almost forgot. When we were funding, training, and equipping them, they were called Mujahidin and were good guys.
There's an awesome return on investment by radicalizing and arming people to conduct asymmetrical warfare against a larger, better equipped, technologically advanced superpower. There was no way that would come back against the U.S. and harm it!
9/11 was an excuse to expand American influence in the Middle East and gain political leverage over our adversaries. I’ll get into Afghanistan, but Iraq and the gulf war is a whole other can of worms. The Al Qaeda leadership fled Afghanistan between late 2001 and March 2002. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 (in Pakistan). But we stayed for another decade, and arguably made the insurgency issue even worse than it was to begin with. Why did we stay? Because the mission wasn’t just destroying Al Qaeda, it was installing a pro western gov. The same in Iraq, because a pro western economy grants great investment returns, and leverage in the geo political space. It being so close to russias border. Guess why the ussr wanted Afghanistan so badly in the 80s? If Afghanistan became friendly with the u.s, we could use it to stage troops, use airfields, point missles, etc. Remember the Cuban missile crisis? Everyone freaked out and thought nuclear war could happen any minute. It only ended when we signed a treaty that we wouldn’t contest Cuba, remove our nukes from Turkey, and other agreements. Just goes to show how much leverage something like that can have. The deal with Iraq is far worse and more complicated but it’s late and I’m sure you don’t wanna read all of that lol.
Point is the official narrative doesn’t make sense and we can only speculate why we were really there. Did hundreds of thousands, probably millions, die for some political leverage and financial opportunities? Some of the best people I’ve known are now dead from this. I don’t think it’s wrong to question it
Worth it. He was treated well by the guards, had a statue build in his memory, and every pretty woman throughout the Levant were sending marriage proposals.
Source: am Iraqi
But everyone on here says they wish bush was back right? The dude who lied us into a 25 year long war in the Middle East and crashed the economy. Yeah let’s get that piece of shit back.
It was way worse at the end of W Bush, but Trump still has a couple years to really get us in a quagmire.
the economy today isn't at all crashed like it did during Bush, and this Iran nonsense is awful but it's not thousands of American troops and a million or more Iranians dead.
Yeah, a lot of kids seem to like Bush because he's nice. But he seemed like a nice guy while he threw our whole country into chaos. They just don't know how bad it was, or that we owe all of the republican party today to his tactics. Fuck Bush.
The fact that the Obamas are so cool with a war criminal like Bush is both gross and informative - there’s 1 big rich people party and people like us ain’t in it.
Vote in Republican -----> they lie, ruin the economy, get people killed -----> vote in Democrat -----> blame them for everything the Republican did -----> vote in republican
None of this matters. You don’t stand on principle. You only act out of hate for Trump. When you act on principle, get back to us. Until then, no one cares what resolution you introduce.
I was sent to Iraq by Bush. Then Afghanistan by Obama and Obama. Then Iraq and Syria by Obama. Where were the democrats trying to get us out of Libya and Syria which were illegal wars like Iran?
Why didn't they find weapons of mass destruction anyway? The U.S. did supply substantial chemical precursors for chemical weapons as well as infrastructure for manufacture of bioweapons. Of course this was to help the dictator that the U.S. propped up because our intelligence agencies assured us that Sadaam Hussein could be trusted to work in our interests and not go off his nut and invade some neighboring country. This would be before said dictator went off his nut and started invading neighboring countries.
But, anyway, he needed chemical and bioweapons to negate the threat of Iran, the rulership of which had fallen into Islamic-fascist factions after the people vehemently rejected hereditary rule under the Shah and the U.S. and U.K. jointly decided that they shouldn't be allowed liberal democracy.
That war possibly killed one million people. That's not what this guy is complaining about, though. That would be a different war. A different one million people.
I'm sure glad the U.S. is involved in that region. Without our intervention, it could have gotten really fucking messy.
You worded that weird but I got you. I don't think the death toll counter has stopped ticking yet. So much of what we see now in the mid east is from Bush's administration. I honestly think he was worse than Trump from a foreign policy perspective (so far).
He’s right…had it not been for Bush Hussein and his children would be continuing to rape and murder their own citizens. Warlords would be continuing to engage the government and the country would be as it was before - under a dictator.
Wild how we hated him so much then and now people speak of him fondly.
He was another corrupt, evil, vile person just like Trump and yet everyone let him get away with it. Obama even defended him.
He's sitting down drinking fancy champagne right now laughing that the stupid population of America voted for another one of him, even worse.
I don't have big feelings either way on Seinfeld. I mean, he invites it by posing with the IDF and saying obnoxious stuff.
But basically, he's just a comedian. It doesn't really matter what he thinks. And he's barely using his platform for politics. Like, you have to hunt around to see his politics, he doesn't make it a big part of his identity.
W is a straight up stone cold mass murderer. He shouldn't be allowed to exist in public in a peaceful way. He should get screamed at anytime he goes anywhere off his compound. If there is a hell, he's going there.
Actually he's 80% wrong. Starting with his first claim that 1 million Iraqis died when the actual number is like 250,000. And only 24,000 of that were killed directly by US forces
OIF/OEF Vet here…….i don’t completely disagree with what my brother is saying here, and I can empathize with some of what he’s feeling….but I disagree with the manner in which he is doing it and I feel it obscures the message.
We all grieve in our own way, I hope today was an easier day for all of us.
Do you believe most 18 year olds make good long-term decisions?
Maybe the voting population should be more informed and stop electing these fucking morons who get us into pointless wars and end up rich as fuck with the money they make off it.
No. If a country is going to send you to war, you should have a say in it.
I'm also not a judgemental prick toward someone who made a choice when they were 18 that sent them to a war based on lies that was fucking awful. I can understand why someone would be mad about that and I hope that moment took some weight off that dude's shoulders. George Bush Jr. should have similar shouted at him everywhere he goes on public.
Also, that guy earned his opinion and OP sounds like an edgelord who hasn't ever left their hometown.
Yes. 4 years is literally 25 percent of their life. Why do we need people with minimal life experience to vote? Why not let their frontal lobe develop more before making a decision?
No, I do not believe 18 year olds make good long-term decisions, but that does not mean they should blame others when they do not like the consequences of their own actions.
World leaders have been leading their nation's military members to their deaths for many centuries.
Y'all need to stop making excuses and acting like any of this is new.
Don't want to be forced to do somethings you don't agree with and don't really want to do?
DO NOT JOIN THE U.S. MILITARY AND BLAME OTHERS FOR YOUR MISERY
Terrible take. There are plenty of countries around the world that maintain an active armed service which is not used to invade and kill innocent civilians. He also never said apologize to me, he said apologize for my friends who died and the million Iraqis who died due to completely and utterly pointless invasion.
Consent requires information. There's a reason military recruiting targets high schoolers. Get them signed before they learn any real history and keep throwing money at Hollywood so they see the shine, not the grime.
Soldiering never offended me because it was physically dirty, but because the cause was more often than not morally reprehensible.
Does enlisting mean you're told to do things you disagree with? Yes (true)
Is he acting like he was forced to do something against his will? Yes (true) - remember, he enlisted, signed a contract relinquishing control over his decisions.
He's pointing and screaming "You sent me to Iraq!!!", as if that is a consequence he did not anticipate when he enlisted.
"I signed up for the military and GOT SENT TO A WAR ZONE! HOW DARE YOU!?!?!?!"
Did he think he would get sent out to the back 40 to play patty cake with his military buddies?
WTF do you people think our military is for? It's for doing military stuff, which is never pretty.
Sure, he's now allowed to voice his opinion and dissatisfaction with his government, but blaming someone else for his seemingly unpleasant experience in a warzone when he volunteered for it is weak.
How old was he when he enlisted ? It's kinda the military's playbook to target naive young kids. Imagine doing something great and serving only to retroactively realize that you participated in a mass murder you didn't fully understand. Also we were ALL lied to about that war. He is not a singular case MANY Americans who never served don't know the first fucking thing about the wars in Iraq.
Cheney was also the ceo of Haliburton, and KBR a subsidiary, before becoming vp. It was the main logistics contractor for the war. Needless to say that company made alotttt of money off the war.
He’s right but also worth pointing out that the vast majority of those deaths were not directly caused by coalition forces but by Islamic militants fighting the coalition
Iraq really was posturing like they still had wmd. Iraq really was a threat. Saddam really was a piece of shit.
Overall the war was a gigantic waste. Because as it turns out you can't just buy your way into a democracy. A lot of stuff has to happen for it to manifest and there wasn't enough time or resources for that to happen.
I dont know why idiot protesters like this pretend like Iraq and the rest of the world would somehow be better off if saddam was still around. He would have likely got way more people killed. Especially if he ever got his hands on a nuke. He was stupid and brazen enough to use it.
Please, please stop using the acronym WMD in this argument. The term is too broad and depending on the definition can become false. Sadam did have chem weapons, he used them against the Kurds and had stock piles. I destroyed some of it personally. He had way less than other countries in that region and they were never a danger to the USA.
What he didn't have was a functional nuke program. He had stockpiles of yellow cake but that is far from enriched for power generation, let alone weapons-grade.
I'm an Iraq war vet myself. The war FUBARed me in so many respects. I truly believe in it till I got there and realized for the first time in my life (19 my first deployment) how our government was blatantly lying about the war.
I agree Sadam was a horrible person that had to go. There would have been a much easier way about it then giving 5000 American lives and a million Iraqi. The least GHB can do is apologize to both the Iraqis as well as the service members and their families.
As in feeding us and the rest of the middle east intel that he still had wmd. He did so for a very specific reason. The wmd was his insurance against his enemies.
And the U.S., with all its might and "intelligence" capability, had no other recourse but to take a look see, and in the process kill a million people, maim untold others, and spend a couple trillion dollars...?
The million figure is based on all the years of unrest. Most of which was internal conflicts not actual US bombs. Theres no reason to believe leaving Saddam in power would have been less bloody.
Yes to some degree if you want to know for sure there is no other way beyond going in there and looking yourself. Too many places they can hide otherwise. Iraq is a very big place. You cant send 100,000 spies in there to look over every nook and crannie.
You can play Monday morning quarterback on OIF all day. I understand your points but think about what would not have most likely happened if Saddam was never removed from power. For starters, ISIS and the general rise in Sunni Muslim extremism in the region. Iran also probably would’ve been kept more in check without us having to play police against them in the region. Saddam was not a fan of the Shia led Iran in case you forgot about 1979-80.
My husband never took issue with Bush. He went to war after 9/11 when Bush was still in charge. He became disillusioned with Obama because the rules of engagement changed. He was and is still not angry about why he went.
Your husband is lucky he didnt die to make someone else rich. He could learn a lot from some of these other veterans who understood the reality of their deployment.
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u/Disastrous-Task-6122 9h ago
Alqeda, a terrorist group based out of Pakistan, attacked the twin towers, so we waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years