I must have missed the speech where Colin Powell got up before the UN and spoke for two solid hours on why we needed to invade Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.
ooops,
Would that best available intelligence include the niw admitted forged documents of attempted purchase of nuclear materials, which turned out to be total fabrication.
Or maybe that best available intelligence is the same as that held up by Tony Blair and turned out to be over ten years old and part of a student thesis ?
Or perhaps that ‘best intelligence’ would be the stuff that the US passed on to Hans Blix who said only today that it led to no findings of WMD whatsoever and that nearly all the sites supplied to him by the US led to totally nothing at all.
The calculation seems to have been based solely upon the price of oil.
Blix himself made public statements on having recieved this ‘best intelligence’ along the lines of ‘if this is the best intelligence of the US, and it it rubbish’…he left the rest unsaid, but he really didn’t need to add to it.
Those being regional control in an oil rich area whose commodity is a strategic resource.
[quote]
Who was it that slaughtered the Marsh Arabs? The Kurds? Shi’ites?
[quote]
To answer this question with another, who supplied Hussain with his weapons, who ensured that his takeover was succesful, which nation gave tacit approval when Hussain started an agressive war against Iran - which just happened to be the US greatest enemy at the time.
I really do not think you should get about preaching on the morality of the US removing a clearly evil regime from power when you really should look at the despots that the US has installed around the world.
It might be instructive for you to know that Suharta of Indonesia was installed by the US as a counter to communist insurgency( a very real threat).
Suharta is thought to be responsible for around 500k deaths in his opression in Eat Timor.There has not yet been a call to have him brought before an international tribunal for his crimes, perhaps the US should be the proposer of this.
The US supported the Shah of Iran whose opression led directly to the overthrow of that regime and it’s replacement by the Mullahs.
The US supported and enabled Gen Pinochet’s overthrow of the previous regime(Allende), I don’t have figures available right now but at least 20k people have ‘dissappeared’
The US supported Marcos in the Phillipines, what an arsehole he was.
If the US were genuinely concerned about human rights, perhaps it might have dome something about Cambodias killing fields, which is a nation that the US did it’s effective level best to destabilise and which took it’s arch enemy, Vietnam to sort out and bring something only slightly resembling human rights to existance.Vietnam, another nation the US tried to destroy.
As for Bin Laden, remember him ? You know, the guy who organised the defence of Afghanistan from those nasty Russians, backed by US ‘advisors’ and weaponry,wonder what happened to him.
Ogre
I think that given the US record on supporting human rights abusers across the world, you have a lot of gall to start maintaining that the US had ‘other reasons’ to remove the Iraqi regime.
US (and yes Russian too) interferance has cost the lives of millions of people around the world, all in the maintenance of US power.
If the US is so concerned about human rights then perhaps it should take a look at maybe Zimbabwe, or Burma, or Chechnya(or maybe not as the Russians are looking out for those folk) or Tibet, and the list goes on.
Why is the US more concerned about human right abuses in Iraq than anywhere else? well I believe the word is oil.
If Serbia had been trying to invade a major oil producing nation such as Bosnia, do you really think the US would have stood by and waited as long as it did ?
Whilst the ultimate responsibility must belong to Saddam Hussain, it must surely be very closely followed by those who sponsored his state with weapons and expertise, and in that lies France, Russia, UK and the US, so yes, the West bears huge responsibility for this, we made him, we supported him, and there can have been few illusions as to what sort of leader he would become.
Dream on Ogre it must be nice to be safe and secure in a nation that preaches human rughts within its own boundaries, but so singularly and spectacularly fails to address such issues in its client nations whose disgraceful reocrd across decades of human misery is a terrible indictment of US foreign policy, a policy designed not to enhance democracy or freedom, but to maintain the US as the worlds sole superpower.
No, but I am accusing you of being wildly histrionic and willfully demonizing anything I say because I am and was pro-war. You provided an example of what may very well be US neglect of the Tuwaitha facility to show that we had not done a “good job” in Iraq. I provided a counter-example to show that we had put a stop to Hussein’s mass-killings and therefore, had indeed done the aforementioned “good job.”
You seem to regard that as necessarily a bad thing. Remember that my argument is formulated on the premise that WMD’s were not the only valid reason to go to war. Oil was there, yes, as well as certain (perhaps convenient, but present nevertheless) humanitarian concerns, plus the long-delayed retaliations for firning on our patrol fighters, plus the now-useless UN’s resolutions. Black and white? Not hardly.
Of course.
Actually, France and Russia armed Iraq to the greatest extent, and for those military dictators the US put into place, I am genuinely regretful. They were horrible bastards. You may, if it makes you feel any better, consider the elimination of the Hussein regime as cleaning up after ourselves. And why do I think it probably won’t happen again? Because we’re taking great pains to ensure that a representative government is set up in Baghdad, and also, because of the aforementioned oil interests. We’d better make sure it stays stable, or we’ll have gone through all this for nothing.
Agreed. We may yet get around to them. Your point?
I find it highly instructive that you place the blame for inaction on the US, when the mess was literally at Europe’s back door, and they did very little to resolve it until the US intervened.
Again, true. And we’re trying to clean at least the Iraqi mess up.
Aside: It may surprise you to find out that I am not a Republican. I’m a Democrat, in fact. And I will be standing in line to cast my vote against Bush’s 2nd term…but because of his theocratic, oppressive domestic policy, and his general unstatesmanlike demeanor, but it certainly won’t be because he managed to knock off a couple of genocidal despots.
This seems to have become the official Republican spin. A few days ago on Scarborough Country Joe Scarborough played a tape of Colin Powell saying (crude paraphrasing follows), “It is an indisputable, undeniable fact the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Absolutely no one would claim otherwise. They used them against Iran and they used them against the Kurds. These are facts.”
Scarborough then turned to his guest representing the liberal side and asked him, “Are you calling Colin Powell a liar?” Instead of calling Scarborough on his chicken-shit straw-man tactic, the guest (I’m sorry I can’t remember who he was), went off on some high-brow response and completely lost the “debate”. I was left yelling at the TV like some drunken, disappointed sports fan.
Today on NPR I heard a Senator (I think) saying pretty much the same thing, something like, “Anyone who doesn’t think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction should just ask the Kurds.”
Indeed, ** gatopescado**, Iraq had WMDs, but that doesn’t mean they still had them before Gulf War II. Big, BIG difference.
The “Ask the Kurds” is just more bullshit from Bush. This is what Bush said:
http://www.dod.gov/news/Mar2003/n03152003_200303151.html
What did the Defense Intelligence Agency think at the time?
Sheesh! How many nails to close the coffin, dear Lord! How many?
Ogre, are you just not getting the pattern? The decision to go to war, and in Iraq specifically, was made long beforehand. The discussion Bush, and you, are involved in is how to fit enough facts behind it to make it acceptable. The action was not a consequence of the facts, or of a consistent application of principle to them. However, it can look like it if you are already confining your examination to Iraq specifically, but then you’re already willingly following the worldview the Bush administration wants you to.
Ogre
The administration certainly led the public to believe that they were acting with bedrock-solid certainty. We had satellite photo’s, intercepted phone conversations, eyewitness testimony from so called reliable sources (who’ve been very quiet of late, dontcha think?) and a veritable mountain of other evidence which we weren’t allowed to see because it was too “secret”. If they weren’t certain, they could’ve fooled me. In fact, they did fool me which is partly why I’m so pissed off about all of this.
But I get distracted. Let’s for a moment entertain your assertion that the Government was relying solely on probabilities and educated guesses instead of out and out lying and pretending their lies were gospel, I still don’t see how Hussein’s elusive behaviour, his history of ignoring resolutions and his past use of WMD’s would persuade anyone (well, who hadn’t already made the decision) that Saddam was probably in posession of WMD’s in the run up to war.
Let’s take them individually.
- Hussein’s elusive and defiant behaviour:
Surely Hussein would have been a very model of co-operation unless he had something to hide, right? Well, not necessarily. Saddam Hussein has, for many years, been in rather a precarious position in the Middle East. His position would not have been strengthened if he had consistently rolled over to the UN inspectors. It would have shown weakness he wouldn’t have felt he could afford to show. Similarly his habit of taking potshots at our unmanned spy planes. Bluster. He was putting up a front. Showing he had some teeth. Sure you can say that this is all just conjecture but right now, at this precise moment, there’s much evidence for my assertion as there is for yours and frankly mine sounds rather more credible in light of the Administrations ever more obvious deception.
And to top it all off, in the run up to the war he finally seemed to be getting the message and was co-operating enough for Hans Blix to advise the security council to give him more time! Didn’t make a scrap of difference to baby Bush who apparently had no qualms about inventing imaginary weapons to justify the dropping of real ones on innocents.
Let me put it this way, have you ever smoked pot? Well then surely you won’t mind if some DEA agents bend you over and check to see if you’ve got a kilo of cocaine stuffed up your ass. After all, if you’ve truly got nothing to hide…
Pride. It’s important y’know.
- Hussein’s history of avoiding international resolutions:
See above. However, a great many of the pro-war pundits I listened to in the run up to the war were advocating a complete circumnavigation of the UN which they saw as a flimsy and powerless paper tiger. In the end, Bush did go to war without UNSC approval, proving the pundits to be 100% correct in their opinion of the UN.
Given that the UN is such an international joke, and Bush’s actions have quite aptly demonstrated that UNSC resolutions aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, why should Saddam have paid any attention to the resolutions it passed against him? Bcause we were threatening to kick his ass if he didn’t? Surely that’s no rationalisation. We could have made him jump through any wild and fanciful hoop our imaginations could conceive if that were the case. “Hey Saddam, we’ve just passed a resolution declaring stupid ugly 'tashes to be instruments of mass embarrassment. If you don’t shave yours off on national TV we’re gonna fuck you up!”
See the problem? On the one hand Bush was, by insisting that Iraq comply to the letter with the UNSC resolutions, declaring the UN to be a credible arbiter of international law but on the other hand Bush was, by his subsequent actions, proving it to be worth every smidgen of contempt Saddam Hussein had for it. Can you please explain this apparent dichotomy? Why should Hussein have obeyed UN resolutions on the orders of a nation which subsequently demonstrated that the UN wasn’t worth listening to? May I remind you the answer, ‘Because otherwise we would’ve kicked his ass’ doesn’t answer the question.
- Husseins History of using WMD’s:
As several people in this thread have eloquently argued, the fact that Hussein had WMD’s and used them over a decade ago is no reason to think he was still in posession of them in the run up to the war. As I said in my first post, the administration recognised this and provided us with evidence. Now it’s all falling apart as Bush reveals himself to be some sort of modern day anti-Midas who turns everything he touches to shit.
So, Ok. To recap. Your first reason is superficially persuasive but it most certainly does not have one sole explanation, that Saddam was hiding something. Your second contains what I believe to be an inherent contradiction which you must resolve before we can continue debating it and your third is not remotely persuasive.
Even when argued simultaneously they don’t persuade me that Saddam Hussein probably had WMD’s. Possibly? Yes. But nations cannot go to war over possibilities.
The only one you’ve done a halfway convincing job of arguing is for the US to gain control of Iraq’s oil and further its hegemonic aspirations. If you think that is a justifiable reason for a war then I’m sorry but you’re a bloodthirsty fucking lunatic and I sincerely hope you never come in possession of anything combustible.
While the first part of your statement is true I honestly do not think you can state with any certainty that this action has stabilised Iraq. You need to wait a few years before you can make assertions like that. In the meantime it is, like much of what you have posted to this thread, pure conjecture.
Who the heck’s Jello Biafra? For your information I was thinking of the 16th century Junta of John Pym who with a few cronies helped bring about the English civil war through a process of lies, deceit, bullying and manipulation.*
Strawman. I never said we set a precedent for unilateral action. What we did do was set a precedent for enforcing security council resolutions unilaterally. By doing this we set ourselves up as planet Earth’s rent-a-cop and opened the door for any country to justify military action on the basis of half assed interpretations of international law.
How does this insignificant detail make their transgressions any more worthy of attention? Seriously. Explain it to me like I’m a six year old because I just don’t get it. Or more accurately, I can’t conceive of any answer which doesn’t expose the US’s true motivations for this war as naked self interest. I mean it. Like I’m a six year old.
Which does rather invite the question “Why did we get tired of waiting?” If the answer is, as I suspect it to be, “sweet fuck all” then it leads to the obvious conclusion that the US got tired of waiting because it was keen to exploit Iraqi mineral resources. This reflects far more negatively on Bush’s junta than on Saddam Hussein.
Damn, you dodge points like Keanu Reeves dodges bullets, don’t you? The reason I brought up the fact that it had been about 15 years since Saddam Hussein had used these now mythical weapons of mass delus…umm, I mean destruction, was to punctuate the point that the fact that he had at one time posessed WMD’s didn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that he still had them. I did not in any way intend to soft soap over Saddam’s atrocities.
Besides, do you honestly think it’s the US’s place to bring leaders of Soverign nations to justice for crimes committed against his people (excluding active genocidal campaigns, obviously)? If so you’ve got a mammoth amount of advocating and propagandising to prepare for 'cos we’re in for a hella lotta wars!
[sub]Why can’t I get the image of Slim Pickens riding a nuke to oblivion out of my head?[/sub]
Thanks for that pithy little sentiment. The world needs more of those. I must confess, however, that I would have preferred it just a little if you’d actually deigned to address my point instead. Your contention that “everybody wins” from America’s annexing of Iraq’s oil fields rings slightly hollow in light of the fact that America is winning a barrelful (well, several hundred million barrel’s ful actually) more than anyone else. It must be a daunting task, looking for altruism in the face of such naked self interest but kudos for trying anyway.
Care to supply a refutation? I typed ‘Herolds Methodology’ into Google and drew a blank suggesting that if it has been refuted many times no-one bothered to put a single one of these refutations on the internet. So please, go ahead, break new ground and explain in detail, what is wrong with Herold’s methodology. I’ve spent some time on Iraqibodycount.com and from what I can tell they seem to be at pains to produce a conservative estimate and are well aware that it is impossible to discern an accurate body count. Hence their decision to present both the maximum and the minimum number.
Besides, even if they purposely exaggerated their results to the tune of 300% (to pull a random, yet cautious and warhead friendly figure from my back passage) that’d still mean that (at this time of writing) 1846 innocents perished under the shocking and awful American barrage. This shocking and awful American barrage which was, to a large extent, sold to the world with lies.
Aside from this being a classic tu quoque fallacy, aren’t we supposed to be fighting the good fight for the sake of truth, justice, the American way and all that bullshit? Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?
They were not all accidents. Check this story out.
Click on the above link to read about the American bombing of a residential complex in an attempt to kill the by then the deposed, powerless and completely impotent Saddam Hussein. While I’m sure it would have made an absolutely luscious little PR coup for baby Bush, I doubt that justification (compelling as it is) would make much difference to the innocents who perished in its execution.
I was merely suggesting that, if you really want to save innocent lives, alleviating 3rd world debt is arguably more effective than “liberating” Iraq and wouldn’t have resulted in so many innocent victims. I never said anything at all about displacing dictators.
I doubt this will come as much of a surprise to anyone at this stage but you’re wrong about America not wanting the sanctions. Not only did they want them but they enforced them rigorously, even when countries such as Russia and China advocated that they be dropped, or at least loosened.
Every day I become more and more convinced this entire escapade was motivated by shameless imperialism and a desire for Iraq’s black gold. The administrations half assed attempts to portray their casus belli as some sort of humanitarian endeavour, the worlds first mass mercy killing, ring as hollow as…well, the inside of Bush’s head and do nothing to make me want to reconsider that opinion.
All the lies and the bullshit, makes me feel drained and hopeless 
Yeah, but … WE WON!!
Yee-har!!
Bush kicked ass. He flew a plane and wore a pilot’s jump suit. His dad can beat up Sadam’s dad. U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.
And of course the entire planet thinks this way and flying in the face of the international body has not deterred all those right thinking terrans, including all the radical muslims who now love us because Bush made them.
WMD?? Pshaw! Didn’t you see George pumping his fist? He liberated a country!! Everybody in it … except for the 1000’s he killed, but for the most part, they’re all free … (to protest our occupation of their country, but that’s just because we haven’t educated them yet).
Pick up your flags and join the parade boys! If you’re not with us, you’re agin us. Kneel and pray. God Bless the USA!!
Who’s next? Fucking Iran? You looking at us funny? We’ll put you in your place if you’re not careful! You and fucking Syria. It doesn’t matter if we have to cut every tax and spend every cent we don’t have do it too. Don’t think we won’t!!
As long as ol’ George has a really butch photo op to plaster on his campaign posters … we don’t fucking care. We’re like Dom Irerra’s comedy act … the crazy Irish guy, “you better kill me, because I’m fucking mental!”
We got the bombs, baby!!
Mwuuahahaahahhahahahhahaaa!!!
Yeah, at the moment Bush is reminding me more and more of Nicky ‘Funny How?’ Santoro from Goodfellas. Any excuse.
Good God, Ben. I frankly don’t have time to duel with 5000-word essays at 10 paces. Your arguments, if I may fairly sum them up, amount essentially to:
In which case I will never convince you. Yes, of course there was self-interest involved. There always will be. That’s why we didn’t go to Rwanda. That’s also why Somalia turned out so badly. There was no real American interest there. Oil is not just an American interest. It’s a world interest. It’s the lifeblood of a globalized world. It’s like the spice melange from Dune. It can not be dispensed with. Stabilization of petroleum resources is an excellent reason for war, at least until everyone on the planet doesn’t depend on it for transport, food delivery, medical supplies, defense, and part of the foundation of a global economy. Course, that’s not a terribly popular position to take…that human lives can have an economic price tag attached. But I’m afraid it’s true. Governments, companies, and individuals attach price tags to human lives all the time. It’s what we call “the real world.” And it’s a primary reason we went to war.
But it’s certainly not the only reason we went to war.
Ouch, that last post was a bit long wasn’t it? Still, that’ll teach you to argue with a chronic insomniac at 5:00 in the morning 
Ogre (what an appropriate name indeed) WMD where the legal reason to go to war; although you seem to dispice the UN, the USA agreed on and signed it´s Charter, so now it´s bound to it.
In that Charter war is only admitted on the basis of immediate threat; so no WMD, no threat (let alone immediate), no legal justification for war.
More or less can be said in about the Congressional approval for the war.
Was that the only reason for war?, of course not.
Was it the only legal reason? That´s for sure.
Before you start…
YES, Saddam was an evil man
YES, he killed hundreds of thousands
YES, the world is a better place without him (in power, at least)
But all that doens´t change the veracity of what I said in the first part.
Ah, yes. The UN charter as “international law.” That’s a joke in itself. There is no international law. Not yet. Treaties are forged, cancelled, bent, and broken with great frequency, vigor, and glee by every country on earth (See also Korea, North.) That too is part of the real world. It’s not nearly as cut and dried as you seem to believe, or if it is, it’s in your own head. Iraq took a huge chance on balancing on the knife-edge of the UN Resolutions for so long. They eventually fell, and for a variety of reasons. Course, another facet of the struggle between Europe and the US in this case was who gets to have more influence on future matters of international treaty. Ah, diplomatic give and take. It’s certainly…vigorous at times.
By the way, nice cheap shot on my username.
Bush: Hey, Saddam. Obey the UN!
Saddam: Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.
Bush: If you don’t we’ll kick your ass.
Saddam: We’ll think about it.
Bush: That’s it. You’ve pissed me off now. Hey UN, we’re going in.
UN: Um … no. We don’t want you to. Obey the UN.
Bush: Aw, fuck the UN. Where’s the button?
“The UN charter as “international law.” That’s a joke in itself”
Well, the USA agreed to treat it as international law; so, either the USA goes along with it or resigns from the UN.
But, then again, silly me; I think that laws are rules of civil engagement so to speak, and should be kept by those who in principle agree to them on behalf of justice and order, and all those jokes. You see, form a moral poin of view I don´t obey laws because they are enforced, but because I think that they set the fundamentals for peaceful coexistence.
In this particular case the USA make a lot of noise about Iraq being in violation of UN resolutions, but then it goes to war violating the UN charter… so, the UN is good when it served the USA interests only?
And you should keep in mind that the UN is no abstract thing, it´s the assembly of the overwhelming majority of the planet´s countries, so I guess it has to have some value, no?
And before going to bed… are you suggesting that, since North Korea forges, bents and brakes treaties it´s OK for the USA to do the same? so much for moral highground :rolleyes:
I’m not arguing moral high ground.
Point for newcomers.
Ogre’s argument is and always has been: Go and take the oil, and if people get killed, so what?
Somebody water the plant.