I didn’t know the full connection until someone pointed this and this link out to me in a thread a week or so ago:
Those chemical and biological agents were for agricultural and public health use. They were regulated by commerce and the department of Agriculture. The U.S. gave the same stuff to other countries all over the world.
It’s a far cry from that to saying that ‘Reagan gave WMD to Saddam’. Show me the weaponized strains. Show me that the U.S. had any intent at all of providing Saddam with any weapons whatsoever. Saddam’s military came almost exclusively Russia, France, and China. I believe the U.S.'s largest military sale to Iraq was $500 million worth of unarmed helicopters that were supposed to be used for medevac purposes.
Well, okay. I didn’t make the original claim that we sold Saddam WMD and I would agree that a more correct characterization is that we sold him dual-use materials that he used in his WMD programs.
However, the point that I made above still stands (When I said sarcastically that “And, we were so clearly shocked by this choice that we immediately condemned him and withdrew our support completely from him!.”)…He was using chemical weapons in Iran and we did not make much objection to it and even continued to support him (including providing him intelligence on the Iranians that he was using these weapons against). And, we continued to send dual-use materials after we knew what sort of use he was putting to at least some of these materials.
Wow, that’s almost as misleading as Bush’s claim that Saddam posed an “imminent threat” to the United States. Let’s check the facts, shall we?
Not only did the US gave chemical weapons to Saddam, we knew he was using it on an almost daily basis, and not for “agricultural purposes.” And when it came time to do the right thing and pimp-smack Saddam for stepping over the line, the Reagan Republicans nixed the idea because they didn’t want to lose those juicy post-war reconstruction contracts.
That picture’s not as rosy or dew-eyed innocent as Sam’s load of glurge, but at least it’s backed up by facts.
Sam, that’s quite a scenario you paint there: Saddam on a rampage of Arab conquest. But is it realistic? I hardly think so. You are neglecting to consider the interplay (and conflict) of Ba’athist Pan-Arabism with radical Islamism. Bear in mind that Saddam and the other secular Ba’athists were bitter enemies of Islamists like bin Laden. And vice versa.
You are assuming that Saddam’s expansion would have been unchecked if the US had not intervened. Not so. For if Saddam had attempted to expand into the holy land of Saudi Arabia, he would have met with the full fury of bin Laden and Co., who had their own eyes on that prize. (For that matter, a great part of the Muslim world would have reacted with violent outrage to such a move by Saddam.)
Saddam’s Ba’athists and *al Qaeda * (and like-minded Islamist groups) would have battled each other (and made effective counterweights for one another) for years had we not stepped in and made enemies of both. Wouldn’t it have been better to have them focusing their violent fanaticisms on one another instead of us?
You are also assuming that nothing short of an armed invasion by the US could have checked Saddam’s expansionism. You have created a false dichotomy between full-scale armed intervention and hands-off pacifism. You neglect entirely the more subtle means of countering Saddam, from economic measures to covert operations to targeted strikes to arming his enemies.
Please spare me your crocodile tears for Saddam’s presumed Arab victims. (Unless you are also demanding that we intercede in the Sudan. Are you?)
I do not recall you demanding that we step in to stop the violence in Rwanda. And I do not recall you supporting President Clinton’s efforts against expansionist Serbia.
And while we’re at it, it is awfully unseemly for you, a Canadian, to be sounding the trumpet for US soldiers to march off to war. If you feel so strongly about it, by all means enlist in the US military. We could use the help.
What is unrealistic is assuming that Saddam would have been happy with tiny Kuwait and would have settled back and happily tortured his own people.
And in case you didn’t notice, in the months leading up to the last Iraq war Saddam was making increasingly strong overtures to religious extremism. You’re also forgetting that al-Qaida wasn’t nearly as strong in 1991 as it was in 2001.
The ‘full fury’ of a terrorist organization loses a lot of its strength when confronting a genocidal dictator. What gives terrorists power over the west is our openness, allowing them to attack from within. Saddam had the ansar al-Islam group operating in the north, but they had ZERO effect on the main Iraqi population because A) that population was tightly controlled and hard to penetrate, B) Saddam was willing to kill entire towns to get rid of terror cells, and C) what’s a few truck bombings in a country filled with mass graves? And why would Saddam care if terrorists kill some people? It’s not like his people can revolt or vote him out of office.
I simply don’t believe this. al-Qaida is simply no match for a regime like Saddam’s. Terrorists need openness, and they need a media willing to spread the news of their terror through the population. It’s futile to attack the population, and terrorists lose their asymmetrical advantage when they go toe-to-toe with the military.
In the meantime, Saddam controls much more oil, and is madly working on a nuke. A nuke which he was only a couple of years away from having when Gulf I took place.
I absolutely am.
You’re just guessing, aren’t you? I supported both wholeheartedly. I have been completely consistent in my belief that human rights and dignity do not stop at our borders, and that when we have the ability to take action, we should.
Not this again. Listen, sparky: Canadian peacekeepers have spent the last 20 years carrying the lion’s share of the burden in all sorts of nasty places. WE were the ones willing to carry the weight in Rwanda, and were willing to send thousands of soldiers. Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire of the Canadian forces alerted the U.N. that a genocide was building, and begged for help. We just asked the U.S. for logistical help, because we no longer have heavy airlift capability. Madelaine Albright spearheaded the effort to stop that, to her everlasting shame. At least Bill Clinton had the dignity to admit that it was his biggest failure - 800,000 people hacked to death with machetes. Canada tried to stop it, and the U.N. stepped in the way. One of the reasons I have such a low opinion of that organization.
Canada has had thousands of soldiers in Bosnia, Cyprus, the Golan Heights, East Timor, and other vacation spots around the globe. In fact, until our recent Liberal government decided to gut our military, Canada pulled far more than its own weight in international peacekeeping. Despite the fact that we were not attacked on Sept. 11, we sent a large contingent of soldiers into Afghanistan, where they pulled some of the toughest duty and earned the highest kill ratio of any soldiers in that war, including U.S. soldiers. And since we’re talking about Gulf War I, perhaps you’ve forgotten that Canadians fought and died in that war?
I think we Canadians have earned the right to debate this topic on the SDMB, your arrogant American jingoism notwithstanding.
Exellent! Another case of ‘liberal tolerance for dissenting opinions’. Add your little comment to Guin’s and Diogenes’s anti-foreigner rants, and you guys could start yourselves a right-proper xenophobic nationalist political party!
What an asinine, worthless piece of drivel.
Disregarding rjung’s usual lack of substance, I have to agree with Sam Stone that the idea of “never mind what happens to Israel” shows either a basic disconnect with reality, or actual malice towards Israel.
Saddam would likely have made an attack on Israel a primary goal. This would be both for strategic reasons, to remove a threat, and also to unify his new pan-Arabic empire. Tyrants need an enemy to distract the people from domestic oppression.
So Saddam invades Kuwait. Kerry and his ilk are in charge, so no Gulf War. They do sanctions, which Saddam laughs at (and the Chinese, French, and Russians assist in circumventing - similar to the oil-for-food program). Saddam uses the oil revenues to further build up his military and WMD programs focussing on nukes. The North Koreans would assist him there, in exchange for hard currency. He also strong-arms the Saudis in paying protection money, and getting concessions to weaken the regime and soften them up. He thought the US would do nothing about Kuwait (and, in our scenario, with weaklings like Kerry waffling vaguely on the sidelines, he was right), so an invasion of Saudi Arabia (probably under the guise of “protecting Mecca from the infidels”) follows shortly.
Now Saddam controls a substantial portion of the world’s oil supplies. Again, he uses the revenue to build up his military further. He then supplies nukes and/or other WMD to Palestinian terrorists, who use them in attacks against Israel. Israel then either dies, or cracks down. The crack down is presented as a horrifying attack on human rights (sort of like the Patriot Act times ten), and Arab opinion shifts towards support for a final “push Israel into the sea”. Saddam then invades, forswearing nuclear first use, and warning the world that any Israeli nuclear reactions will be met with Iraqi nuclear strikes against Israeli and Western targets. Israel, faced with the choice of nukes vs. extinction, launches low-yield nuclear strikes against Baghdad. Iraq retaliates. Hundreds of millions die, the world oil supply is compromised for decades to come, large portions of the Middle East become uninhabitable radioactive wasteland.
Former President Carter announces a trip to the area to negotiate a treaty. The UN passes a resolution “regretting violence on both sides”, and calls on the US for aid in rebuilding. The world economy, which is largely based on oil, has collapsed. Famine and disease kill millions more thruout the Third World.
The SDMB blames it all on the Republicans, and call for Congressional inquiries.
Regards,
Shodan
Again with the hysterical nightmare scenarios?
OK, here’s another nightmare scenario:
We take on Saddam Hussein in Gulf War I. We drive him out of Kuwait but leave him in power, and allow him to continue his torture and killing of Kurds and Shiites. We station our troops in Saudi Arabia, which really pisses off Muslims, and Saudis in particular. One of them, a fellow named bin Laden, gets pissed off so much that he is willing to crash planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House, succeeding in two out of three of those attempts. We launch a war against al Qaeda and bin Laden in Afghanistan, but then quit chasing bin Laden to go after Iraq. (Hey, Iraq has oil. Afghanistan doesn’t.)
While we are focused on (and foundering in) Iraq, nuclear development continues apace in North Korea. We decide that we won’t hold bilateral talks with Korea, because that would be, I don’t know, a loss of face or something. Now the North Koreans are getting so desperate for hard currency that they might be willing to trade a nuke or two to get it. Here’s where bin Laden comes in. Remember him? Cash to Korea, nukes to bin Laden. Next thing you know, there’s a nuke in a cargo container headed for Los Angeles. But we’ll catch that, won’t we? Well no, because the money we should have spent on port security is being thrown down the rathole in Iraq. Great for Halliburton shareholders, not so great for the rest of us.
So now Los Angeles is gone in a mushroom cloud, and we are also facing the prospect of a war of vengeance against new nuclear power North Korea. Meanwhile, Iraq has come undone, and Pakistani Islamists are destabilizing the Musharraf regime. So now we have to decide whether to send troops into Pakistan to secure its nukes. But wait, we can’t do that because our troops are tied down in Iraq. So Pakistan falls, and its nukes are Allah-knows-where. And bin Laden is still out there. Or not. Maybe bin Laden is dead. But our actions in Iraq have so angered Arabs that there are a hundred other bin Ladens ready to spring up in his place.
So now some of Pakistan’s nukes are in the possession of terrorists, and they have access to a lot of cargo ships, and the next thing we know we are being told by some Islamist group that they have nukes planted in six unnamed US cities and we will do as they wish or else.
So which nightmare scenario is worse, do you think? Mine or yours?
Oooohhhh. So you’re saying no matter what option we take, the Muslim world pretty much becomes an Ice Skating Rink?
No, I’m saying it’s easy to dream up a nightmare scenario. Doen’t mean it will come true.
Rather than waste time picking apart Shodan and Sam’s nightmare hypothetical scenarios point-by-point, I’ve whipped up one of my own coming from the opposite viewpoint (and having the advantage of being less hypothetical).
But I didn’t need to explain that to you did I, Ryan?
Nope, you certainly didn’t.
I just want to point out that waging ware for domestic political advantage is also KILLING people- both on your side and the other, for domestic political advantages. That is far more than a dangerous precedent.
Can I pick none-of-the-above nightmare scenario?
Sam Stone’s and Shodan’s are hypothetical partisan scaremongering, especially Shodan’s reference to Kerry being in charge; yours is a worst-case-scenario based on several not-very-likely possibilities.
First of all, if North Korea gets that desperate for hard currency, you can damn well bet the US will be in on that particular bidding war, covertly or overtly, and I am pretty confident we can outbid OBL. And if not, I am pretty confident that even China doesn’t want a nuclear weapon getting loose in some fundamentalist’s hands. They are not exactly beloved by the islamists either, in case you forget. Also Russia - I am sure they would have strong things to say about Chechen rebels getting their hands on a nuke.
Second, Pakistan is doing pretty farking well to supress radical elements within and extremist elements from without. I think it’s pretty unlikely that the Musharraf government will fall anytime soon. Unless we quit them, but again that ain’t likely as we don’t have a lot of other friends in that area.
Third, should Musharaf fall, I am damn confident that we would have something of a military presense there but quick. It’s not far from where our 20k troops are in afghanistan to where they would need to be to secure the nukes in Pakistan, and I think the importance of that mission would pretty well trump whatever they are doing in Afghanistan short of actually flushing out OBL from a known location. And I kinda think India might help with that as well - I would think the last thing they want is Islamic fundamentalists with nukes on their border. It’s bad enough having Pakistan on their border - at least with Musharraf in control there is a semblance of discourse. If nothing else, a formation of B2 spirits with Bunker busters aboard, or even a flight of B-52s from Diego Garcia, could be over the relevant sites in hours and turn them into big holes and large dust clouds.
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Really? You know exactly what she said? And she said “Well, we really don’t have an opinion in the matter”? And in what Context?
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Kuwait was a Soverign nation, and wasn’t part of Iraq at any point in time. Sure, the old Ottoman Empire was split up in a somewhat odd way, but that doesn’t mean that the Shieks in what was then Kuwait wanted to be ruled by Iraq, or that Iraq had any claim waht-so-ever to Kuwait. They didn’t. Now, if the old Ottoman Emire had been re-surrected, then yes- THEY would have a legit (but too old now) claim to much desert land.
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There was no need to permanently station troops in Saudia Arabia.
The point is- Gulf War one was perfectly moral & legal. Iraq invaded Kuwait, and commited terrible, horrible atrocities. It was an INVASION- not a “liberation” in any-way-shape-or-form. True, perhaps we could have sent a “stronger message”- but that has nothing to do with “was the WAR a mistake”. And perhaps- or perhaps not- stationing Troops in SA was a mistake, but again, that’s a separate issue from the war.
What we did wrong in that war was not taking down Saddam, and trying him for War-crimes. The War wasn’t a mistake. Mistakes might have been made after or before, yes.
Our OP said "ow would Iraqi occupation of Saudi Arabia have made the lives of average Saudis any worse than they are today? Sure, the royal family would have lost out, but so what? " - You apparently forget the terrible tortures and atrocities Saddam had perpetrated on his own people.
Spoke also said “For a decade, we punished the people of Iraq for the sins of Saddam Hussein. Sanctions devastated Iraq economically. This won us no friends in the region, and was another recruiting point for Islamic terrorists.” Umm, no. Saddam punished his own people. The Oil-for-food could have and should have fed, etc the people, but Saddam choose to spend billions on Palaces and Munitions. Sometimes we forget that Saddam did buy thosealuminum tubes he cliamed were for "peaceful purposes’ but turned out to be for illegal munitions. Yes, not “WMD” but still illegal war-toys. Every single death should be laid directly at Saddams doorstep, not ours. Note also the the Sanctions were UN approved, and not an US unilateral action.
rjung- “Not only did the US gave chemical weapons to Saddam, we knew he was using it on an almost daily basis, and not for “agricultural purposes.” And when it came time to do the right thing and pimp-smack Saddam for stepping over the line, the Reagan Republicans nixed the idea because they didn’t want to lose those juicy post-war reconstruction contracts.” You post goes on to show that yes, we knew about the CW’s and perhaps coudl have done something. But no where do you prove that WE were the main or only provider of weapons to Iraq. We were NOT. Yes, we did provide some chemicals that were converted to war use, not quite the same thing.
[QUOTE=GomiBoy]
Can I pick none-of-the-above nightmare scenario?
[QUOTE]
Yes. That’s sort of my point.
Anybody on either side of the debate can come up with a scary worst-case scenario.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
[QUOTE=GomiBoy]
Can I pick none-of-the-above nightmare scenario?
I must confess to a whoosh, then… 