The evil of Saddam and the evil of Bush

[RedFury]

@xtisme

Yeah, 'cause it was such a well crafted and insightful post on his part. I’m sure it had a lot of subtle and deep meaning for you Red. Certainly much more insight than you could have brought to the thread. Hats off to DtC! Well, and you for your crafty followup! You’ve brought a lot to the discussion, as always.

A lot more than taking yet another meaningless potshot at me.

Beyond that, read Sampiro’s reply. You might even learn something by doing so.

[XT]

@Sampiro

Yeah, agreed. No idea what possible relevance Dio could see in the history of US involvement with Iraq when we’re talking about the present US involvement with Iraq. And Reagan and all was over 20 years ago, who ever heard of events that far back affecting current policy and world order?

Well, since Red obviously thinks there is some deep meaning to this post maybe you could expand on DtC’s crafty 9 word post on this (“Another way was by getting propped up by Reagan.”) and explain how it’s relevant to the thread and the discussion? Personally I DON’T see how it is, but Red wants badly for me to learn something here and I’m game.

@Sampiro

(It’s exactly because of that kind of trivial stuff that Dio will never get a cabinet appointment; Shi’ite Sunni smee-ite Moonie, all you really got to know is they don’t love Jesus.)

Well…I’m thinking there is a lot more reasons than this as to why DtC will never get that cabinet appointment. YMMV of course.

-XT

[ITR_champion]

@Robot Arm

Not true. By your reasoning, had Saddam Hussein stayed in power, he’d have kept killing people. 4 years @ 17,500 people-per-year, that’s 55,000 deaths you have to take off the top.

If you want to blame Bush with a numbers game, use net, not gross.

Where, exactly, in my reasoning, do I say that Saddam would have continued killing people at a high rate? In fact, I pointed out that Saddam’s last campaign of genocide was shortly after the first Persian Gulf War, and since then he’s been quiet on the mass-murder front. Nor is there any reason to believe that Saddam intended to start up the mass-killing again at any time after 2003. Thus there’s no justification in saying that the American attack on Iraq saved a large number of people from being killed by Saddam.

It’s also worth noting, of course, that even optimistic members of the war party don’t expect the killing in Iraq to end in the near future. Hence Bush’s death toll is certainly going to climb higher as time goes on.

[XT]

@ITR champion

Where, exactly, in my reasoning, do I say that Saddam would have continued killing people at a high rate? In fact, I pointed out that Saddam’s last campaign of genocide was shortly after the first Persian Gulf War, and since then he’s been quiet on the mass-murder front. Nor is there any reason to believe that Saddam intended to start up the mass-killing again at any time after 2003. Thus there’s no justification in saying that the American attack on Iraq saved a large number of people from being killed by Saddam.

There is no reason to believe he wouldn’t have (started killing folks) after 2003 either. Its all speculation. Regardless what are your thoughts on the deaths due to sanctions? Those that resulted in the attempted anexation of Kuait? Those from the Iran/Iraq war? Those resulting in Saddam’s initial grab for power? Its intersting (to me) that you are taking an absolutist stance wrt Bush’s culpability (by attributing every death according to sources like Lancet to him) while you seem to be attempting to handwave when it comes to Saddam. Do you feel this makes the ‘debate’ a fair one?

@ITR champion

It’s also worth noting, of course, that even optimistic members of the war party don’t expect the killing in Iraq to end in the near future. Hence Bush’s death toll is certainly going to climb higher as time goes on.

Undoubtably the death toll will continue to rise…at least it will be some non-zero number. We can only speculate at this time what that non-zero number may be. It COULD be very high indeed if Iraq degenerates into a full blown civil war. Additionally it COULD spread to encompass the entire region…and given that regions proximity to oil that could bring in any number of outside nations. Time will tell there. And if one wishes to attribute every death that occurs in Iraq/ME to Bush I’m fairly sure that eventually Bush’s body count will rival a realistic aproximation of Saddam’s. When Bush crosses that threshold I assume at that point he will become more ‘evil’, ehe? Numerically speaking anyway.

-XT