Obama First Day changes

[Saracen]

The thing to keep in the back of your mind, matey boy, which you seem to be forgetting, is the Yanks are on our side - they are our allies. .....

I suppose it's a question of perspective, but I suspect they'd see it as us on on their side. It's about who is the hand and who is the puppet.

Iraq was, and is, a disaster of titanic proportions, a failure of intelligence in the CIA\MI6 sense, and in the sense of the microscopic brain of George Bush, but the war currently being fought by the US and NATO in Afghanistan is entirely justified. Afghanistan could not remain as a giant terrorist training camp, where Al-Qaeda were free to thrive, and plan attacks on the scale of 9/11.

Surely, more of a political cockup than an Intelligence one, at least from what we (subsequently, and after the fact) found out of what Blair was told by the intelligence community, and what he told us they were telling him. What the CIA told Bush ..... who knows?

As for Afghanistan, I agree about justification, and about not leaving it as a training camp. But I wonder .... is the planet safer, terrorism-wise? Or have we just entrenched opinions in large parts of the world, and succeeded in helping to massively destabilise Pakistan in the process?

Afghanistan may have been justified in terms of removing the Taliban from power and making it much harder to Al Qaeda to operate, but have we just moved the problem around and, over time, made it worse? Sometimes, doing nothing is bad, but not as bad as doing something that makes things worse. Only time will tell, I suspect.

[CaseyV9]

I'm not attacking America.
Bush is an aggressive git. Tortureing people in secret prisons? That isn't really any better than the evil Bush wants to stop in places like iraq? That's something that Saddam Hussein would have done. Only Bush is saying it's okay because he does it for the good of his people.

[Cozwin]

haha do you actually think iraq war is purely down to aggressions... try oil, and money gained from munitions etc i.e. companies that make all the stuff needed for war (bush is on the board of one)