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ORIGINAL: rlj

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I have said from day one and continue to say and believe that the reason we are in war with Iraq is becaue someone Or many people in Iraq were seeking to know the One True God and he chose to answer their prayers. God chose to open up that country so that those who chose to know him could hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

Those 28 million people now have a chance to hear about Christ and have eternal life. They inturn will tell their children and grandchildren about him. Meaning millions more will know how they can have "peace with God".

Sadly the chances for Iraqi christians to live their faith under Saddam were much better then they are now. Saddams removal was the worst thing that could have happened to them:

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Under Saddam Hussein, in overwhelmingly Muslim Iraq, some Christians rose to the top, notably Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, and the Baathist regime kept a lid on anti-Christian violence.

But this started to change after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the US-led occupation of Iraq.

A spate of attacks on Christian targets in Mosul, Baghdad and elsewhere in 2004 and 2005 accompanied a more general breakdown in security in Iraq. It is thought that proportionally more Christians left.

Clerics and members of their congregations who have stayed have continued to face the threat of kidnapping by some extremist Muslim groups as well as targeted attacks.

They are sometimes accused by extremists of collaborating with the "crusading" US forces.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3526386.stm

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They wanted all their Iraqi Christian brothers to come home to Iraq.

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The Christian refugees said that in Iraq they had experienced that belonging to a religious minority is dangerous. "Christians and other minorities are paying the price for the Iraq war," said Laham, the ecumenical officer of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. "They are suspected of being traitors and of helping the allied forces, as if they were not an original part of the social fabric and had not shared the bread with their Muslim brothers for centuries."

Aram, who belonged to the Armenian Orthodox Church in Baghdad, said: "My wife and I knew some Christians who were killed. As our numbers were on their mobile phones, their murderers used them to call and threaten us."

Aram also told about the mistrust that is poisoning communities in Iraq: "We had some friends, who turned out to work for the Mahdi Army [the militia of Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr]. We thought they were friends, but they took our pictures in order to have us killed."

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German conservative interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has come out with a bold initiative to provide asylum for thousands of Iraqi Christians forced to leave their homeland in recent years because of religious persecution at the hands of Muslim extremist groups. According to the Schaeuble plan, which is backed by the interior ministers of the 16 German states, Iraqi Christians would be allowed to stay in Germany until conditions on the ground in Iraq have improved to the point where they can return home. While the Interior Ministry has not officially come out with any concrete refugees quotas, Berlin insiders believe that Germany could end up accepting anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 Iraqi Christians per year.

For far too long, European governments have ignored the terrible fate suffered by Iraq’s most vulnerable minority; Christians, after all, are viewed by both Sunni and Shia terrorists as supporters of the American-led "Crusader Coalition." Scandinavian countries like Sweden have already granted asylum to tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees, many of them Christians. In Germany, in contrast, the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees scattered around neighboring countries like Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, has only recently garnered attention. Catholic and Protestant church organizations in Germany have been particularly vocal. At the moment, Iraq is already the number one country of origin of asylum seekers in Germany. In 2007, 4,327 Iraqis applied for asylum, more than twice the number compared to the year before.

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Lebanon has a growing Iraqi refugee population, currently numbering between 20,000 and 40,000, according to the U.N. — a small fraction of the estimated 2 million Iraqis who have fled the spiraling violence in their country. But what makes Lebanon's Iraqi refugee intake unusual is that about 30% of them are Christian, although Christians constitute just about 3% of Iraq's population.

Many Christian refugees arrive from Syria on mountain paths used by smugglers, bringing with them little more than a suitcase or two and harrowing stories of rape, kidnapping and murder. Upon arriving, the first place many of them go is the Assyrian and Chaldean churches. "Every day five or six more families come here," says Bishop Michael Kisargi from the headquarters of the Chaldean Church in Lebanon. "Everyone can tell me a story about persecution by Muslims." One of the worst, he said, was from a family whose daughter had been raped 15 times by militia members.

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ORIGINAL: rlj

quote:

They wanted all their Iraqi Christian brothers to come home to Iraq.

That is in conflict with this:

quote:

The Christian refugees said that in Iraq they had experienced that belonging to a religious minority is dangerous. "Christians and other minorities are paying the price for the Iraq war," said Laham, the ecumenical officer of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. "They are suspected of being traitors and of helping the allied forces, as if they were not an original part of the social fabric and had not shared the bread with their Muslim brothers for centuries."

Aram, who belonged to the Armenian Orthodox Church in Baghdad, said: "My wife and I knew some Christians who were killed. As our numbers were on their mobile phones, their murderers used them to call and threaten us."

Aram also told about the mistrust that is poisoning communities in Iraq: "We had some friends, who turned out to work for the Mahdi Army [the militia of Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr]. We thought they were friends, but they took our pictures in order to have us killed."

http://www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=1884

And this:

quote:

German conservative interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has come out with a bold initiative to provide asylum for thousands of Iraqi Christians forced to leave their homeland in recent years because of religious persecution at the hands of Muslim extremist groups. According to the Schaeuble plan, which is backed by the interior ministers of the 16 German states, Iraqi Christians would be allowed to stay in Germany until conditions on the ground in Iraq have improved to the point where they can return home. While the Interior Ministry has not officially come out with any concrete refugees quotas, Berlin insiders believe that Germany could end up accepting anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 Iraqi Christians per year.

For far too long, European governments have ignored the terrible fate suffered by Iraq’s most vulnerable minority; Christians, after all, are viewed by both Sunni and Shia terrorists as supporters of the American-led "Crusader Coalition." Scandinavian countries like Sweden have already granted asylum to tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees, many of them Christians. In Germany, in contrast, the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees scattered around neighboring countries like Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, has only recently garnered attention. Catholic and Protestant church organizations in Germany have been particularly vocal. At the moment, Iraq is already the number one country of origin of asylum seekers in Germany. In 2007, 4,327 Iraqis applied for asylum, more than twice the number compared to the year before.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/04/germany_to_help_iraqi_christia.asp

And this one:

quote:

Lebanon has a growing Iraqi refugee population, currently numbering between 20,000 and 40,000, according to the U.N. — a small fraction of the estimated 2 million Iraqis who have fled the spiraling violence in their country. But what makes Lebanon's Iraqi refugee intake unusual is that about 30% of them are Christian, although Christians constitute just about 3% of Iraq's population.

Many Christian refugees arrive from Syria on mountain paths used by smugglers, bringing with them little more than a suitcase or two and harrowing stories of rape, kidnapping and murder. Upon arriving, the first place many of them go is the Assyrian and Chaldean churches. "Every day five or six more families come here," says Bishop Michael Kisargi from the headquarters of the Chaldean Church in Lebanon. "Everyone can tell me a story about persecution by Muslims." One of the worst, he said, was from a family whose daughter had been raped 15 times by militia members.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1606015,00.html

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Not really in conflict.
Muslim leaders are trying to reconcile their differences but if you watched the video Christians want to be on the National Police force so they can protect other Christians from the average Muslim.

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An American soldier has been disciplined and ordered from Iraq after a copy of the Koran was found pocked with bullet holes at a shooting range near Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

Such an act of desecration of the Muslim holy book could inflame anger against the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

The U.S. television news network CNN said that when senior U.S. commanders went to the village where the Koran was found to apologize, they were met by hundreds of protesters.

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The party that invades another sovereign nations is the one who the majority of the responsibilities falls on... Iraq posed NO threat to the United States, we had no just cause to invade...

The real sad part of all this is that the debacle in Iraq as taken from the real issue of fighting terrorism elsewhere in so many ways and on some many levels... I wonder how many more people would be supporting our efforts regarding terrorism if we weren't in Iraq...

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The real sad part of all this is that the debacle in Iraq as taken from the real issue of fighting terrorism elsewhere in so many ways and on some many levels... I wonder how many more people would be supporting our efforts regarding terrorism if we weren't in Iraq...

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ORIGINAL: Leon_Figg3

It may seem weak to you and some others, but doesn't conflict and war , at least in part, involve struggles with "what if"? Doesn't life itself, of which conflict is a part of, involve struggles with what if?

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Some people see Iraq as the key to the war on terror, while others do not. Some believe we need to go after the head (bin Laden) and leave the body (Iraq) alone.

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Some see no connection between Al Quada and Iraq. Others believe that there just may have been on some level that can neither be proven, nor disproven, or totally ruled out.

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Some believe that the Bush administration took the easy route by invading Iraq instead of concentrating on going after bin Laden. Others do not.

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some 10,000 Iraqi police and soldiers, backed by tanks, pushed deep into Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Baghdad bastion on Tuesday, stamping the government's authority on an area until now outside its control.

The army said they met no resistance as they moved into Sadr City in the early hours, securing three quarters of the sprawling slum where hundreds have been killed in weeks of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shi'ite militants loyal to Sadr.

A truce 10 days ago between Shi'ite factions largely ended the fighting in one of Baghdad's poorest districts and paved the way for Tuesday's operation.

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ORIGINAL: rlj

Congratulations to the Iraqi government and I may definately rescind some of my criticisms of it, the people and the army:

quote:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some 10,000 Iraqi police and soldiers, backed by tanks, pushed deep into Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Baghdad bastion on Tuesday, stamping the government's authority on an area until now outside its control.

The army said they met no resistance as they moved into Sadr City in the early hours, securing three quarters of the sprawling slum where hundreds have been killed in weeks of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shi'ite militants loyal to Sadr.

A truce 10 days ago between Shi'ite factions largely ended the fighting in one of Baghdad's poorest districts and paved the way for Tuesday's operation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080520/ts_nm/iraq_dc_7

This is so overdue but it's an operation that had to be done by Iraqis.

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ORIGINAL: tafkam

Oh, good, another "war for oil" post. The DNC talking points are really getting old....

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ORIGINAL: rlj
I support the war on terror which the Iraq war isn't part of.

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ORIGINAL: rcjames

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ORIGINAL: rlj
I support the war on terror which the Iraq war isn't part of.

And which flavor of liberal demokratic Kool-Aid would you prefer to drink today?

Thanks
RC

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ORIGINAL: rcjames

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ORIGINAL: rlj
I support the war on terror which the Iraq war isn't part of.

And which flavor of liberal demokratic Kool-Aid would you prefer to drink today?

Thanks
RC

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And which flavor of liberal demokratic Kool-Aid would you prefer to drink today?

quote:

Oh, good, another "war for oil" post. The DNC talking points are really getting old....

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I believe we should leave Iraq, should have never been there in first place,

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but the REALITY is US is not gonna leave that oil!

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ORIGINAL: tafkam

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I believe we should leave Iraq, should have never been there in first place,

Oh, and I suppose you would have allowed Saddam to continue breaking the Cease Fire Agreement and UN resolutions for another 12 (or 20, or 40) years. How long is long enough?

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ORIGINAL: tafkam

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I believe we should leave Iraq, should have never been there in first place,

Oh, and I suppose you would have allowed Saddam to continue breaking the Cease Fire Agreement and UN resolutions for another 12 (or 20, or 40) years. How long is long enough?

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but the REALITY is US is not gonna leave that oil!

Proof, please. So far the left are the only ones screaming about "It's the oil!"

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Proof, please. So far the left are the only ones screaming about "It's the oil!"

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ORIGINAL: tracydolls

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Proof, please. So far the left are the only ones screaming about "It's the oil!"

Meanwhile the right is stealing it as fast as they can and selling it to us for almost $4 per gallon.