Should Mitt Romney

  • Run for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002

  • Move back to Utah in 2002


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So, annoyingly I discovered that I cannot remove or replace polls in threads for some bizarre reason.

So here's what I am going to do. I am going to have to basically spam this thread by posting four separate comments with four separate options of the remaining questions I have. If you want something to happen, please upvote it.

Please do not upvote both options (but I can't really stop you).
Ask a mod to remove it.
 
Massacre of Karbala
July 2nd - September 19th 2001

Since Saddam Hussein’s assassination on July 2nd, the situation in Iraq had steadily gone from bad to worse. The leading figures in the Iraqi government, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s former number two and leader of the Ba’athist Party, and Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s son and current President of Iraq, had steadily grown apart politically over only a few months. The only unified action they had taken was a campaign of reprisals against the Kurdish population of northern Iraq, which had received all of the blame for Saddam Hussein’s assassination. Uday Hussein saw the continuation of Saddam Hussein’s growing Islamist leanings to be the right choice for the country while al-Douri wished to pull back on those and wanted the country to operate as a semi-secular Ba’athist state. Neither saw the other as very fit to rule and steadily all other competing voices for power were drowned out by the two. Uday knew that al-Douri had the upper hand, with the military backing him. To counter this, Uday Hussein began to have volunteer militias formed all across the country to “defend Islam of the Sunni distinction from the corrupting influences of the Shia and the West.” He would occasionally accuse al-Douri of being a closeted Shiite or a secular atheist and began to ally himself with international organizations such as Hamas, in the midst of the Second Intifada and the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that they are banned in Iraq.

Throughout August of that year, Uday Hussein had a number of radical Islamists snuck into Iraq to begin organizing a military opposition to al-Douri and the Ba’athists. On August 10th of 2001, Uday Hussein had Abu Ayyub al-Masri smuggled into the country from Jordan without public knowledge. Immediately al-Masri set to work recruiting members for his cause and a month later he would commit the act he is best known for.

On September 11th, al-Douri publicly stated that his heart went out to the American people and called for an end to radical Islamic politics globally. Uday Hussein remained quiet on the matter, but many of his supporters would celebrate what had taken place over the following days.

Partially inspired by these attacks, and without order from Uday Hussein or anybody else, al-Masri marched into Karbala. At the time, al-Masri knew little about this city except for it being where Shia militants had risen up and killed innocent Sunnis in 1991. He decided that whatever the Ba’athist government had done in revenge had not been enough and from September 13th to September 19th he ordered his men to massacre any and all Shiites and “atheist Ba’athists” they could find. An estimated 16,000 civilians were killed over the course of these few days. al-Douri had immediately reacted, sending an army down to fight back against this Uday-aligned militia and publicly denouncing this as Uday Hussein taking up arms against the government and calling for his arrest.

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A number of al-Masri’s men in the outskirts of Karbala, Iraq

Uday Hussein publicly denied any involvement and went into hiding within Iraq. His militias, angered that this was an attempt by al-Douri to seize power, began to rise up all over the country. al-Douri’s men entered Karbala on September 17th and pushed al-Masri and his men out by September 19th, but the damage was done and the Iraq Civil War had begun.
 
The Two UN Invasions
September 22nd - October 13th 2001

In response to the September 11th attacks, President Al Gore had called upon the United Nations to take a more direct role in keeping the peace in nations that were internationally considered to be failed states. The two most prominent examples in the world, which were hotbeds of crime and terrorism, were Somalia and Afghanistan. Gore had even mentioned these nations by name and, soon afterwards, the United Nations began working towards achieving the goals he outlined. The fifteen members of the UN Security Council were China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States, Bangladesh, Colombia, Ireland, Jamaica, Mali, Mauritius, Norway, Singapore, Tunisia, and Ukraine. When the resolution came to a vote, China and Russia abstained while every other member voted in favor of the resolution.

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UN Peacekeepers in Somalia

The invasion of Somalia began on October 4th and the invasion of Afghanistan, through Pakistan, began on October 11th. It was at this point that Al Qaeda released an official statement taking responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and promising “There are thousands of the Islamic nations' youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager to live.” The Gore Administration responded to this statement: “We find the murder of innocents intolerable and plan to hunt those responsible to the ends of the Earth to extract our lawful and just vengeance.”

While the American public was full of fear and anger targeted at Al Qaeda, the CIA and the Gore Administration were coming up with disturbing findings involve Saudi officials operating in the United States. Omar al-Bayoumi had been arrested in the United Kingdom and reportedly had housed two 9/11 attackers at his home in Los Angeles, California in 2000. With encouragement from the Gore Administration, the CIA dug deeper into their investigation and discovered his ties with both the Saudi government and terrorist organizations. When this news was broke to Al Gore, a creeping feeling came over him. This was a rather weak connection, but it offered up some doubt to the worried president. Doubt as to whether the United States has been barking up the right tree by going after failed states when it could be well established and functioning nations.

Gore ordered the investigation to expand its search, with the specific purpose as to see where the government of Saudi Arabia had anything to do with the attacks. He also held several meetings with his cabinet, namely Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, and Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke. They began to devise a plan as to what the US response should be if the investigation finds that Saudi Arabia had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.
 
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