Color me confused ... can someone clear this up for me?

[sunnystarr]

Who are we at war with? Iraq? With a new government (that we backed) in place in Iraq then who are we fighting? Administration leaders remind us consistently that we're at war ... but what war? Even in Vietnam there was the North and the South and we knew which side we were fighting.

How can we have prisons in Iraq? Wouldn't that be the prisons of the Iraqi government? Yet we're expanding our occupation of Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca prison facilities with OUR tax dollars. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=650029

"The Iraqi government and US authorities maintain separate holding facilities at Abu Ghraib, which gained its infamous reputation under Saddam Hussein's regime before the scandal of the US abuse."

Who decides what prisoners go where? Are we only housing foreign prisoners and the Iraqi part housing Iraqi's? Do the Iraqi prisoners get a trial and the US held ones don't? Why don't we read anything about it?

Rumsfeld said yesterday that insurgents were foreign ... maybe he's telling the truth since they're not Americans or is he admitting that they're Iraqi's who he can later say are foreign to us.

RUMSFELD:... I think the way to think of it is that the insurgents are foreigners in some significant number. They are attacking Iraqis and killing them.

RUMSFELD:...And over time -- I mean, foreign troops are not going to beat the insurgency. It's going be the Iraqi people that are going to beat the insurgency and Iraqi security forces. That's just the nature of an insurgency and it may take time, but our task is to get the Iraqi security forces sufficiently capable that that process of defeating the insurgency by the Iraqi people can take place.

So he leads us to believe that our role is not one of war but one of peace. We are there helping the Iraqi's fight foreign insurgents until they can help themselves and only THEY can beat these foreign insurgents. (That way WE can't lose only THEY can)

So why aren't the prisons Iraqi prisons instead of American prisons? The insurgents are foreign and we're foreign.

So that would mean we're only fighting foreigners in Iraq ... those who are not Iraqi's. So why are we imprisoning so many Iraqi's?

Just who is the enemy?

Who are we at war with? Are we at war? Or are we peacekeeping to help a fledgling government get strong enough to handle their own affairs?

How can they get strong enough when our bombs and soldiers are still leveling cities in Iraq? Cities which WE will pay to build back up.

It seems that administration just won't level with the American people and distinctly clarify our real purpose there. If I hear one my time that "we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" I'll take a trip to the WH to barf at the gate!

I think that most Americans are waking up to the fact that you don't create a fight to justify the reason that you're fighting. Especially when you stop going after the real enemy.

So are we peacekeeping? If we are why are we building permanent bases? Are we at war? If so who is the enemy? And if according to Rumsfeld we can't lose this war only the Iraqi's can how can it be classified a war?

I'm confused writing this ... and I believe my confusion is felt across the country and the reason why so few want to sign up to fight in this quagmire.

[patrice]

1. It all reduces to one fact: Bush Kills. Any other candidate for President

had they succeeded in obtaining that office, and then all other factors being the same as they were for Bush, any other President would have focused on Afghanistan, and maybe even have captured Osama bin Laden by now.

For Bush's incompetence and addictive personality, we/US+Iraq get 10 years of death and destruction and several FORTIFIED OIL-BASES.

While China buys our national debt and Unical.

We had very little choice in any of this. Our lives are Oil Futures to Dick Cheney and his friends.

We ARE War Slaves.

[sam sarrha]

4. slaves... the truth on that is here..link>

http://www.alternet.org/story/15935

some cabinet members were actual diciples of leo strauss.. that is what the NEOCON thing is all about, a slave underclass.

[patrice]

5. Yeah, that's in the Rep Noise Machine and a couple of other places.

I should read about him and blog this elsewhere.

[patrice]

9. It's funny that Strauss et al reject Nietzsche for being secular,

becaus their notion of "the good" is very Nietzschian, i.e. "Whatever 'the Noble' does."

Where Nietzsche might have been right in this conception, Neocons speculate with other people's lives on their own definition of "the Noble", and miss the mark because they are dishonest and do not admit that they are VENAL people, not Our real nobles. They are blaspheming servants of Mammon, "Give us your FLESH!"

[sam sarrha]

2. it is very simple..we are fighting the Saudis, and blaming- others for oil

the insurgents are mainly Saudis, the royal family has opened up the boarders to let them out... to get rid of them.

some of the royal family started the Whabbie movement as a weapon against the west and it has come back to bite their balls off.

They are taking advantage of the civil war in Iraq to send them packing to another cause other than overthrowing the Monarchy

we bend over and cowtow to the royal family to maintain cheap oil, we are in Iraq because we know they will soon have a civil war and we will lose their oil... so we went invaded Iraq.

we do all the other crap to confuse the issue and hide the truth.

there is also the chance we dont know what the F we are doing.. and in that case we are screwed.. but the saudi stuff is still true.

[patrice]

10. We are mercenaries for the Saudis paid in oil which we use in

an economic struggle/competition with China.

It's not about Terrorism and an Iraqi Democracy still has to deal with increasing radicalization of the rest of the region plus some of the -stans, like Uzbekistan.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

3. War is . . .

. . . between sovereign nations, at least in its most traditional sense. By that definition, we have not been at war in Iraq for two years.

We are an occupying force, contending with a guerilla force. Depending on your point of view, that force is composed of "freedom fighters" or "terrorists." Which term you come across will depend on whose history we end up reading.

For some historical parallels, and please forgive the unintended allusions, but does anyone know how present-day German history schoolbooks treat the French partisans from 1940-1945? Or what British schoolbooks have to say of the Sons of Liberty prior to 1776? In each case, there were no formal hostilities between the German and French governments, or the British and their colonies, but there were plenty of what today we would refer to as guerilla attacks.

[patrice]

6. If sovereignty = autonomy, then I think many may miss that mark.

Autonomy requires self-discipline, not something you see everywhere (here or over there).

[BeyondThePale]

7. These kind of questions will earn you...

a one-way ticket to GITMO! Karl doesn't like a lot of questions...

[sunnystarr]

8. ummm ... is this Karl??

only half kidding ...

[BeyondThePale]

11. Don't worry, we have room for you, too!

Nice reply, btw...

[sunnystarr]

12. You're right ... isn't Halliburton adding on a wing at Guantanimo

for people like us?

[BeyondThePale]

13. At least will all be in good company! eom

[mmonk]

14. We are at war with our integrity