When you have such callow suspicions it says a lot about you, not your subject. How exactly are we to measure and quantify his emotions towards one particular brutal dictator from the past? Why should we expect some balancing act of emotions thoughout his life?
ps- regarding your second last sentence I quoted: does your crystal ball get lottery numbers too?
The RAF =/= The USAF.
Gotta do better than that.
So, um, in other words the figures don’t account for the people Sadaam killed, eh? If you want to prove how many Sadaam killed you’re gonna have to find a cite that proves it.
Damnit!
“A study published by the Lancet says the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the US-led invasion.”
Well, obviously the Lancet is one o’ dem Commie-nist Yuropeein papers and a bunch of SADdam supporters.
Are you kidding? Do you think Saddam would only fire at British aircraft?
Anyways heres a cite for US planes being fired on
I don’t accept that as proof. That study 95% confidence interval is between 8,000 and 194,000 hardly proof of 100,000 deaths. We had a thread about this study but I can’t seem to find it.
Right so it shows that on average at least 170000 Iraqi’s died each year between 1990 and 1997. This number is only deaths associated from Sadaam failing to live up to the treaty he signed. The actual number including direct deaths from things like gassing, torturing and murdering his people is higher.
No, I think the cite you showed me previously did not prove your claim.
But Sadaam failing to live up to a treaty =/= Sadaam killing his people.
Now, you could make a case that he diverted money from food to pay for weapons projects, and that would be valid. But simply showing how many died from starvation, IMO, doesn’t hold water.
I was 14, so you have the advantage of more active memories from the 60’s. Still, even if nukes weren’t a viable option, I remember fearing that they would be used. I doubt that kids today grow up fearing a nuclear winter, but I did. Myt mom told me that she was scared shitless during the Cuban missile crisis, as she was about to give birth to me, and people actually thought that their might not be a tomorrow.
I don’t think the US ever seriously cnsidered nuking Vietnam, but had they done so, they would’ve “won” the war.
No, draft dodging and protests marches didn’t lose the war, but it sure made a big contribution. The anti-war movement was strong and big. When it got as violent as it did at Kent state, the people in power could no longer ignore it. Remember that Nixon partly got elected in '68 on a platform that included “a secret plan for withdrawal from Vietnam and peace”. Yet, the “Christmas” bombings took place four years later.
But it was there. MASH was about the war in Korea, on the surface, but in reality about Vietnam. Take a look at Kelly’s Heroes. Telly Savalas makes a speach to a German which rings distinctly wrong for WWII (paraphrasing): “You and me… we’re just fighting… but we don’t know what we’re fighting for… it’s just the guys in governemnt who’re sending porr guys like you and me to die for nothing…” Aw… c’mon. No American GI would say that to a Kraut in '45. It’s clearly a reflection of its own times, 1970, with Sutherland as “Oddball”, a distinctly hippie-esque character.
OTOH you had the Duke and Green Berets, from '68. The war certainly saturated pop culture and I think the anti-war sentiments were more dominant.
I sure am, and I certainly remember this. Quite a few Americans are still here. They came, found girlfriends, settled down, married and got kids. Diplomatic relations were frosty 'tween Sweden and the US back then, mostly since our prime minister then, Olof Palme, condemned the “christmas” bombings in a speech on 23rd Dec. 1972.
Everything went left for a few years between '65 and '80 - in the US and Europe alike. Sweden, being quite far to the left to begin with, fostered very strong anti American feelings. No wonder we gladly received “political refugees” (I ain’t kidding) from the US.
Bullshit. Those people died as a direct result of Sadaam’s actions. He killed them.
Pshaw.
Where exactly do you plan on stopping the chain of causation?
Bush the First didn’t take him out when he could, so we put sanctions on him, which didn’t work to knock him out of power but did keep him contained.
The whole situation was a clusterfuck.
Good.
Now measure the choices and freedoms they have and it seems consistent. Strange eh?
Zombiesatemybrain, sorry you feel that way. Yep, I’ve been pitted so many times I can’t count the threads–oh, hey, wait a minute, I’ve been pitted–lessee–once. And who did it?
Dagnabit!!
<gets knocked over by giant feather>
Sorry about the servant thing–my grandmother was a maid so it’s not that I don’t value people in service–what bugged me, I guess, was that he couldn’t be bothered to give us her name, she was just “she”, like his fetish for anonymity was so strong it had to extend to everybody in his life and beyond. Even if he had just invented a name for her and put it in quotes all the time I though it would have given her more dignity than just a pronoun. No, of course he doesn’t ‘have’ to do that, but it didn’t strike anybody else as off-putting?
And count me in on the oblivousness to WHY America possibly thought it was a good idea to get rid of Saddam. I’ve never seen any war opponent who didn’t counter pro-war arguments beginning with “Well, of COURSE Saddam was an evil bastid, but still…” Somebody who skips or ignores or disagrees with that first step–are they really in the same moral universe as the rest of us?
As for Vietnam, all I can remember is the bells ringing as the peace treaty was signed ending the war. Before that, I remember things being very, very confusing. Every media outlet seemed to be covering a different war. However, I think it’s way too early to be drawing Vietnam parallels, FWIW.
Gee I dunno but I can’t imagine a stopping point that doesn’t include direct forseeable deaths from a decision in which you have complete control over.
Whoah, yeah! They have the freedom to choose a government acceptable to the Bush Administration…whoopee…
Specifically because there was an apparent threat to the US (and UK) and NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the humanitarian reasons you allude to in your next sentence:
Show me the US invading Zimbabwe on humanitarian grounds and I’ll let you know.
Mehitabel, I used to respect you. However, your bizarre - and slightly creepy - attitude to Aldebaran now makes me think you’re cracked.
Yeah! Whoopee! Ane guess what! A Sh’ite alliance which entails large amounts of Islamism has been endorsed by President Bush 
because thats what Democracy entails dumbass, the freedom to choose whatever government you want, as long as its voted out of office if its policies fail.
And Aldebarans attitude?
Nope, you can’t get out of it that easily.
The UN edict was not handed down by God. It’s not like containment and sanctions can’t be questioned.
The answer, I believe, is a combination of factors, and yes, it was a clusterfuck.
The direct forseeable consequence to leaving Sadaam in power after Gulf War I was that more people would die under his regime.
Then we introduced sanctions which we knew would end up harming the entire country.
Sadaam then diverted money from the oil for food program, but the UN also ran a corrupt program.
Etc…
So, yes, to the extent that Sadaam diverted money earmarked for food, he killed people. But he wasn’t the one who imposed the sanctions.
I don’t agree with a lot of what he says, though I do get his point sometimes, but he doesn’t hound one other doper with weird and obsessive demands for personal detail.
(By the way, that is a possessive statement - the attitude belongs to Aldebaran, thus you should have used an apostrophe.)
Mehitabel: You are acting very, very strangely. I don’t know if this is normal for you or what… but…
I’m surprised you haven’t seen Dopers refering to people in their lives as “Mr (insert screenname)” “Baby (insert screename)”
We’re an anonymous message board, and it’s quite common to find people who enjoy that.