DrLizardo, the imposing of sanctions was the US’s “way.” The sanctions were just fine with us for ten years, and no one gave a fuck about suffering Iraqis until Junior needed a convenient bin Laden effigy to give the illusion of a victory in his failed “war on terror,” as well as to try to give a shot in the arm to an economy which was dying under his watch.
The US never once objected to the sanctions. The US “way” was to starve 1.5 million civilians simply as a prelude to a contrived and illegal invasion staged by an incompetent, dubiously elected president (who also just happens to be a wartime deserter) for self-serving political reasons.
Sadly, judging from Ali’s burns and his condition, as well as the state of the Baghdad hospitals, I suspect Ali will not be with us for much longer. I blame the Iraqi regime tactics for this, their concern for citizen safety was non-existant. I beleive that if we would have waited for the full U.N. and everyone to come around, the eventual invasion would have involved the same tactics.
did you see the statues of Hussein all over Iraq? Hihs many ornate luxurious palaces? It amazes me that you can seriously cliam that it was the U.S. starving the Iraqi people and not their kleptocratic dictator.
You hold the US to an impossibly high standard that you use for no other country. The US has done its best to target specific sites and to minimize civilian casualties, but to hear you tell it, we’re just one step from opening up gas chambers and crematoria in downtown Baghdad. Your opinions are grossly biased, being based on mere knee-jerk anti-Bush sentiment and not on reasoning based on the evidence.
I’m sure particlewill can answer for himself, but I’ll chime in too…
It’s #1. EXCEPT I think “lacked foresight” is a pretty spinnerific term for an ongoing 12-year effort where there were clearly no positive results and clearly some very negative results. Even if they did “lack foresight” there were years and years of oppotunity to realize the error and do something effective. So “unbelievably obtuse” is the polite version. “Willfully stupid and obstructionist” is actually more like it.
DtC:
Geeez… So the UN is a pliable US tool when it suits your purposes, and yet we couldn’t get a resolution to invade Iraq… Hmmm. Quick! Zip Up! Your hypocrisy is showing!
I saw this photo myself.
just shows the pointlessness of this war.
Perhaps when this war is over and all the ‘Axis of evil’ countries have been subdued into mini Americas A new nation will develop of ‘The United States Of People Who Have Been Screwed Over By The US.’
I know this is the Pit and all… but you have GOT to get at least vaguely connected to some facts. Or overtly admit you’re completely ranting without any supposition of validity.
Gee, you just told us a few posts back it was the UN’s way?
cite? (note: you’re wrong)
cite? (note: you’re wrong)
cite? (note: you’re wrong)
cite? (note: cite showing that this was his motivation, not that economy was poor) (note II: economy was in a shambles for latter portion of Bubba’s watch too… Lest we forget)
cite? (note: you’re wrong)
This directly contradicts your earlier agreement that the UN is culpable.
cite?
cite?
“dubious” is fair here (i.e. you are dubious of it), so will not request cite.
cite? (from legitimate media, please)
Yeah. Self-serving. Unlike Bill Clinton launching cruise missiles the day before his impeachment hearings…
You’re taking Saddam’s word of how many deaths the sanctions caused?
Look, we haven’t found any bio/chem stockpiles in Iraq yet. But we have found huge stockpiles of food that seemingly weren’t on their way to being shared with the Iraqi people when we invaded. And we know that Saddam has had the money to build lots more palaces since 1991, while he says Iraqi citizens couldn’t get drugs to treat this and that.
You don’t think Saddam had an axe to grind here - that he might’ve opposed the sanctions, and was trying to make them look as bad as possible? That he felt free to attribute deaths to the sanctions that are more easily laid at his feet?
I’m not saying the economic sanctions were a good idea; I think there’s both good arguments and evidence that they’re counterproductive against autocrats like Saddam, Castro, or Kim Jong Il, but that’s a debate for another thread. If you’ve got a more dispassionate cite, I’ll be a good deal less skeptical. But this cite is about as good as the Weekly World News.
Although this cite deals strictly with child deaths during the sanctions I think it’s a pretty clear illustration of what was happening. Nearly 6000 children dieing per month is pretty brutal. http://www.globalpolicy.org/securit...aq1/irakids.htm
Yes and yes, but what difference does it make? I thought the “liberation” of Iraq justified itself. If that’s not the real motivation then are we talking about it?
My point was to purposely use a source biased in the opposite direction of my own viewpoint. However, here are some cites that may well satisfy you. They’re from a variety of viewpoints.
The first one is from an Iraqi opposition group with clearly opposite goals of the Iraq regime.
The second from a guy who’s overtly trying to debunk the Iraqi numbers. He focuses on children, not the total, and despite his position he still ends up concluding that reports from UNICEF and an independent UK-based researcher, Richard Garfield, are credible. They show 500,000 excess child deaths (same # as the Iraqis give for that).
As stated before, suggest you Google for it if you want more cites – there’s plenty of 'em.
This is the point. We all know this kind of thing happens in war. Which is why some of us are so incredulous that war isn’t seen as so fucking awful and horrible that any decent country would go to extreme lengths to avoid it. That we would try every last avenue imaginable before dropping a single bomb.
Who cares about saving face, or letting Saddam get away with foot-dragging, or whatever the hell motivated the hawks to go in before all the avenues were exhausted. Wouldn’t it be better to lose a little face than to have one little boy lose his entire family and both arms? Not to mention the other deaths and injuries? That’s our point.
The war is going to cost, what, $75 billion? Why not offer Saddam $37.5 billion to go buy himself an island in the Pacific? Everyone wins, we save 50%. Sure, it’s “rewarding” an evil dictator with money, but measured against war? Measured against the deaths of our soliders, of iraqi civilians? I’d put up with that “injustice” any day.
Interesting quote here It’s from a father in Basra, interviewed at the hospital wher his two year old daughter is lying with a piece of metal in her brain that can’t be removed. He’s been sitting for a week, knowing that nothing can be done medically, hoping against hope that she will recover on her own. He says:
Interesting that this man, whom nobody could blame for hating coalition forces, still says that the war was the Fedayeen’s responsibility.
And a very foolish one it is. You sem not to understand that if the US had done nothing and allowed Saddam to drag his feet, that kid and many like him would be tortured and killed by the secret police.
Obviously my offer was tongue in cheek, but what? You think that someone is going to hatch a plot to become an evil dictator just because there is a chance the U.S. will offer him a bunch of money? And he will successfully wend his way through the ranks of evildom to take over an entire country, just to get the moolah? That’s a stretch for me.
The alternative is what? Having children maimed, just because there is an off chance that we might in the future have to do something peacefully expensive to get rid of a shithead?
My point is that almost anything OUGHT to be better than this kind of death. We’ll spend money on war, why not spend it on peace? Why not bust our asses to bend over backwards to avoid war? So what if Saddam is a buttreaming asshole who deserves the worst? Why don’t we try every possible means to get rid of the guy in ways that don’t involve hurting innocents.
Along those same lines, I am beginning to think we’d be better off ignoring that international agreement about not supporting assassination. We’d rather kill thousands in a crude way of trying to oust Saddam, instead of a nice clean assassination attempt?