I beleive that alQueda has suffered some loss but their leadership has escaped and is currently using U.S. military prescence in the mid-east as a rallying cry for guerilla war against the U.S. client government of Hamid Karzai. The rash of recent bombings of oil pipelines in Iraq and other terrorist style bombings in India, Morrocco,etc. bares this out. Will we be next?
Also, the nuclear programs of other “rogue” nations are now being accelerated for fear of a U.S. invasion.
The Bush Administartion lied to the public about WMD’s and took political advantage of the attacks on 9/11 to imply - w/o evidence - that Saddam had some complicity in them and proceeded - in contravention of the U.N. charter - to invade a sovereign nation without a convincing self-defense rationale. This administration has been changing reasons for why we are there since this “war” began. The latest is that the Iraqi’s are better off w/o out him. Is this a justification for war?
According to Ivan Eland(Independent Institute) in his worst-case scenario(based on some State Dept. and Human Watch data) suggest that the amount of people killed by the U.S. embargo was more than those who were murdered by Saddam. Not to mention some of those murdered by Hussein were the Kurds and Shiites whom the elder Bush abandoned after he encouraged them to revolt against Saddam.
So when two planes collide into the WTC killings civilans it is called terrorism; when a U.S.-led embargo does the same it is justifed as needed to make a despotic leader meet Western demands.
I don’t beleive there is any rational evidence to suggest we are safer because of the war on terrorism. I beleive America will now be more at risk because of the actions taken by this administration.
Could people please post more idiotic half truths and plain out conspiracy BS about the Iraq war in this forum? I don’t think there’s been debated enough yet.
I can`t believe this topic is still the talk of the town. Like any short term measures (or errors of) are gonna offset the do-good bottom line: A society who is free of its choices (and includes competition and free markets) will always be better off than a dictatorial/police state long term. Why bother with the noise when you know the trend is on the good path?
(Not saying that efforts deployed are useless. Just saying dont focus too much on the day to day. Theres been more progress for the civilians there (on a humans right basis) in the last months there than there was in the last 10 years.)
doogie:
To you the embargo killed no one because it doesn’t fit into precepts of American mythology. However, in the real world the facts do matter. Embargos always strengthen the political elite and decimate the population as a whole. The leadres in this country knew that this would happen but did it anyway.
SeanW: What conspiracy are you talking about? And please point out the half-truths.
The amount of Iraqi civilians who have died over the last ~10yrs because of the US-backed UN sanctions is 500,000. Think of that as a 9/11 disaster every month. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright acknowledged the truth of that. She even said that it was worth the price or something like that. Yeah, the USA is willing to pay that price. That’s nice to hear. LOL Check out this page by William Blum (who used to work for the State Dept until he quit in disgust after finding out what/why the USA was in Vietnam): http://members.aol.com/bblum6/albright.htm
& old (1998) unrelated Iraq article RE weapons inspectors, fyi: http://members.aol.com/bblum6/usvsiraq.htm
MON Q: Boo-fucking-hoo! 500 000? Now let`s see the Iraqi side…
Wasnt 500 000 the official body count of ONE of Chemical Alis operations?
And, MON Q, you forgot, perhaps willingly, to answer THE question: Find me a body count for Saddam`s actions and regime.
My guess is you cant (or mostly you wont want to). Translation: Somewhere, secretly, you worship that dictator. Finding the facts, and keeping them into perspective, would break your illusion. Since its tied to you world view, I am sure you will never try to find anything that could upset you or force you to reconsider. There is safety in mental status quo. Thats why I am confident you will never dig any contrary facts.
Holy shit we are still discussing things we can’t change. There is right and wrong on both sides. Some people act like we went into Afg. for the same reason the Russians did. Who cares anymore this things dead enough.
No Kuri, even you can’t bait me into this one. Never had much interest in the whole Iraq argument business, probably never will. We’ll AAAAAAALLL see how good or bad a move it was in, say, 5 years. Everything said in the interim is just petty whining and sniping. It all remains to be seen.
What you’re saying then, is that by invading Iraq, the Bush Administration is responsible for saving all the lives that would have been lost due to the continutation of the sanctions imposed by the UN?
BTW, the claim was always that Saddam had ties to terrorists, which was true. This is why you must characterize the Bush Administration as “implying” that there was a connection to 9/11. It’s well established that Baghdad had ties to a multitude of terrorist organizations, most notably Hezzbollah (sp?). Saddam was one of those responsible for giving $25,000 bounties to the families of suicide bombers (a very large sum for someone from a poor country) – of course, they haven’t played that specific fact up as much due to the fact that the Saudis do the same…
Boo-fuckin-hoo? What if the UN imposed sanctions against the USA which were backed all the way by Iraq & were responsible for killing 500000 ordinary Americans, while simultaneously strengthening the Bush regime. What would the American people think?
BB said: “What you’re saying then, is that by invading Iraq, the Bush Administration is responsible for saving all the lives that would have been lost due to the continutation of the sanctions imposed by the UN?”
I’ve said before that the Iraqi people would have wanted Hussein out of power, but they probably don’t wants their homes, schools, hospitals, etc destroyed. They probably wanted someone new in office, but not another Saddam Hussein with a different name which is what they’ve got now.
“To you the embargo killed no one because it doesn’t fit into precepts of American mythology. However, in the real world the facts do matter.”
Death squads kill people. Cyanide gas kills people. Using money on palaces instead of food kills people. Those are facts that matter.
“Embargos always strengthen the political elite and decimate the population as a whole. The leadres in this country knew that this would happen but did it anyway.”
Can you not admit that Saddam made the ultimate decision as to what money in Iraq was spent on? Do you really believe that he couldn’t have chosen to feed his people?
Canada would not be able to purches Bio Test supp. any more if that were to happen. No more cars from Canada allowed to be sent to the U.S… Who cares we can handle it bring it on Crap if that were the case Then The Terrorist would take over. Let them blow something up in Canada lets see what happens… This is retarded. As far as Canada goes I still love you guys lets agree to have diff. opp. Ok please lets forget about the past and learn to grow together Governments in every countie fuck things up time to time right
“I’ve said before that the Iraqi people would have wanted Hussein out of power, but they probably don’t wants their homes, schools, hospitals, etc destroyed.”
Show me the evidence of all these homes, schools and hospitals destroyed. If they were destroyed, then how were the feyadeen storing all those weapons in them?
Infact this time around we specifically did not target any of the infrastructure. Power outages and the like were caused by poor maintenance or sabotage.