Radcliffe Emerson

I'm not sure if Hussein had troops on the SA border. But even if he did, he had not actually attacked SA.
And, can't SA take care of themselves? Why do we have to protect everyone?
And whose foreign policies and unfair influence have put some of those countries into positions where they cannot defend themselves? The US perhaps?
I fear that all these types of attitudes our government has are only going to produce more and more hatred for us, until it eventually will be the entire world against us, standing alone.
Sounds kinda like the Roman Empire to me in some respects.

conkermaniac

I have always believed this simple quote from Pearl Buck's The Good Earth: "When the poor are too poor, there are ways." In other words, if the Iraqi people despised Saddam Hussein enough, there would be a revolution, and Saddam would be overthrown. Yet even despite the Shi'ite majority in Iraq, there was no revolt against Hussein's Sunni government.

Now, you might argue that Hussein was so oppressive that there was no possible way for the people to revolt. Chiang Kai-Shek of China was a pathetic leader. So was Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Both were military dictators, who were not afraid to use military force against their own people. They were oppressive and had a tight grip on the military, like Hussein, and they even had Western support (something that not even Saddam had)! Yet despite all these staggering obstacles, Lenin and Mao managed to lead a successful revolution against these leaders because the poor really were too poor and the oppression went too far. I believe that a leader has gone too far when his people revolt. Even recently, Milosevic of Yugoslavia was overthrown.

Now I'm not saying that the Iraqi people love Saddam Hussein. No doubt, they hate his guts. However, they didn't hate him enough to lead a successful uprising. Now, about those gas chambers and all those other horrible things...I really wonder what they were used for. I suspect that we are being misled by the Shi'ites (who hate Saddam) into believing that these were used to torture innocent people (or people committing trivial crimes). I have the impression that this was Saddam's way of punishing criminals. Maybe these people were selling secrets to the Western world. Maybe they were rampant serial killers. Maybe they weren't. Who knows?

It's just like if the armies of the liberal European countries, who have outlawed the death penalty, decided to march into our country one day. They will probably be introduced to the electric chair and all the other horrible death machines by someone on death row. Obviously, this biased source will probably tell them that cookie-snatchers are being punished on some devices. Now imagine that they really believed this fictitious story, and promptly decided to overthrow our democratic government because of this misguided conclusion. I think that that may be what our government is doing.

auto-da-fe

im sorry conkermaniac, but that seems like a poor arguement. first you said that they hated SH but not enough to lead a succesful uprising. Hate has nothing to do with wether or not an uprising is succesfull or not, and they did attempt to overthrow him. That is why the Kurds were gassed in the first place. Just because they didn't overthrow him, doesn't mean you can assume they were fine with having him as a leader.

Second, Slobadon Milosevich was overthrown with the help of the US and the UN peacekeepers, not by the citizens he ruled.

Third, for you to say "we don't know what those torture chambers were used for, the Iraqis could be lyning" is not only asinine, but very callous. If you have a human shredding machine, in which the victims were shredded alive, it doesn't really matter what it was used for, the very fact that it exists says something about the people who use it. Not only that, but the atrocities commited by SH et al are not at dispute. They are well documented (mostly by the people doing the torturing, a la Nazi Germany), and well reported on. Everyone from Olympians who didn't perform as well as they were expected to, to political dissidents tortured and maimed, and killed.

There is absoulutly no comparison with capital punishment in the US, which is a relatively uncommon thing, to the torture chambers of Iraq. Regardless of how you feel about the war itself, for you to trivialize the horrors that were the SH regime by saying we don't have any proof that what they are saying is true seems very callaous indeed.

conkermaniac

If they had the determination to overthrow Hussein, they would. How many times do you the Russians tried before they succeeded?

You're focusing on a trivial issue here. Capital punishment in America is not any worse than the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein. Sure, you may argue that the methods are worse...more painful. But death is death. It doesn't matter whether you die from lethal injection, hanging, the guillotine, etc. And I repeat...death is death.

In any case, I do not believe that Saddam Hussein would merely kill people for not performing well at the Olympics. That's just a pathetic story that I suppose the US media has suckered people into believing. Do you have any proof? As for killing political dissidents, so what? Every country has done that at one point or another. In fact, didn't America go around the world assassinating other leaders of the world at one point, including democratically elected leaders just because these leaders were suspected of being a socialist? America killed its own people too...protesters in Washington D.C. in 1930 and Kent State. No government in this world is honest. Every single one is corrupt and morally perverted.

RLV

I'm afraid we disagree about the amount of diplomacy applied. Most of what you call diplomacy was the US and its core allies telling the other people in the UN that they should support the US invasion of another country, without any hard reason to do so. No evidence of WMD was presented (no true evidence, at least, only some fake one). No proof of Saddam's involvement in any terrorist plot, much less 11-S.
I also disagree about your view of the inspections. They were working (slowly) and Saddam was collaborating (grudgingly, partially). Some dubious sites were examined. Some missiles that violated the UN mandate were being destroyed, even if you could reasonably argue that the violation was a technical mistake.

Were the inspections enough? Surely not. But the solution to this is to give the inspectors more means, more time... and better information. As you may know, the inspectors complained that the US had misled them with biased and partial information.

Did you ever have faith in WMDs?
The possibility and consequences of Bush planting WMDs in Iraq is being discussed in another threat. I personally consider this quite likely if Bush thinks he needs it. There are some strong hints, like the fact that Saddam didn't use any WMD, even when he was clearly losing the war, or that the US has refused to allow independent UN inspectors to search for the weapons now. I fail to see the reason for this, save to facilitate the planting of false evidence.

The removal of Saddam's regime is a good thing, of course. (I wouldn't call it a "liberation" since the Iraqi people have just gone from dictatorship to military occupation by a foreign power. Hardly freedom in any case.) I'm not sure it was worth the cost. First, because of the thousands, probably tens of thousands, of deaths that have already occurred, plus the damage to the country and the lives of the survivors. Second, because there is no certainty that it will, in the long run, improve the lot of the Iraqi people. You only need to look at Afghanistan: the removal of an oppressive fanatic regime has brought a return to a warlord-dominated scene, with the addition of the US as another warring power (and not the most benefical for the citizens, mind you) and the clear danger of a return to the civil war any moment. Women's rights are hardly any better than they were under the Taliban (with the exception of Kabul) and there is more insecurity.
It is not hard to envision many comparable scenarios in Iraq, from a bloody division of the country to a chiite teocracy.

We can only hope.

As others have pointed out, oil can be a major motive, directly or indirectly. Iraqi oil gives the US a major leverage over world oil prices. Not now, but in a few years the US will be able to threaten the OPEC with a big increase of production if it doesn't follow the US line. Just as well, the US will be able to threaten the EU with a rise in oil prices, if it suits them.
And besides that, of course, there are the direct benefits to the oil companies, with which Bush & co. have many way too friendly ties.

Well, considering that some of the worst problems of the UN are caused by the US...
Yes, terrorism must be fought against, and the UN has to be reformed to work better. But invading Iraq is likely to go against both of these objectives.

Well, from an European pov, the important thing is what the lie was about. Frankly, here a president lying about having a sexual affair would be met with a shrug or a mild disapproval at most. There wouldn't have been any prove about such a trivial issue. OTOH, lying about the reasons for going to war, causing tens of thousands of deaths, wasting millions of dollars... well, this is a serious matter, and it does outrage me.

Btw, do you still think there is any doubt that Bush & co. lied? They have nearly admitted it themselves, let alone all the lies they have been caught on and the lack of any verifiable evidence.


R.L.V.
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RLV

So what? The purpose of the inspections was to ensure that Saddam's regime didn't have WMD. It was not to justify an invasion.
So, if WMDs are found (which they weren't) and destroyed, why the invasion?

There might have been a non-compliance of an UN-resolution. No big deal, many countries do this, including US allies (like Israel does, routinely) and the US themselves. It has never been the cause for any US invasion, afaik.


R.L.V.
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auto-da-fe

Several people have mentioned the possibility (actually a pretty clear fact) that we don't really know if we have set the people of Iraq on a path to religious and social freedom, or if we have simply gone from bad to worse. While this is obviously true, I would never want that to be a deterent. There have been many times throughout history, that a choice was made that could have led a nation into oblivion, or onto the high socioeconomic plataeu known as Super Power. Fact is, you never know what is going to happen. OTOH, there have been many great empires throughout history. Rome, Acient Greece, Ancient Egypt, modern day USA (even with all the problems, it is still one hell of a Super Power). Most of these, when founded, it was not clear that the concept of their respective govnmt.s would work. Though they would eventually move on to be great (even with all the inherent problems in each of the societies), they did not know so at the time.

I realize that the US does not have the greatest track record for installing a new rigime, but the US may not be the ones to do it. The Iraqis themselves still have the same potential that they always had. If they set up a new govnmt, and are willing to see it through, 10 or 15 years from now, the middle east could be an entirely different place. My personal feeling is that we should just get the hell out of there, and let the Iraqis do their thing. We have commited to helping them rebuild Iraq (somewhere Dick Cheney is laughing maniacally while counting all the money his Haliburton stock options are making him), and we should do that. We should limit our involvement though, to the infrastructure of Iraq, and leave their political scene the fuck alone and let them decide for themselves.

brighid

We all know this isn't going to happen as long as their are billions of dollars in profits to made in the oil fields of Iraq.

B

RED DAVE

Required reading for anyone who entertains the slightest notion that we invaded Iraq to locate weapons of mass destruction, to alleviate a military threat or to remove a dictator:

(GENERAL SMEDLEY BUTLER, COMMANDANT OF THE U.S. MARIONE CORPS, 1935)

RED DAVE

Loren Pechtel

Lots of stuff was found and destroyed earlier. We should have gone in THEN.