THE US, UN AND IRAQ V

I'm well aware of all that Walter. My statement about universal jurisdiction was a deliberate cheap shot. I was surprised that you even noticed it amidst all the many other like and worse cheap shots on these pages.

I think blatham was merely separating war from terrorism.

The US declared war on Iraq, the Iraqi insurgency can be called "terrorism" by some standards (targeting civilians) but at the same time it's a bi-lateral conflict of the US's making, so it's a bit tricky to start a war, invade a nation, and then depict resistance as "terror".

While campaigning for war this was sold as part of the "war on terror". I believe that to be a deliberately false distinction and the association to be contrived.

Those two things make the sale of this as a victory against terror a bit misleading. As many think this is a diversion from said "war".

Saddam's capture is a good thing but it has some negative implications for those who opposed the war.

1) It helps further the notion that started with the US symbolic use of Saddam to start the war. The notion that this was a war about a tyrant.

2) It is a symbolic victory that will detract from other victories and allow them to exist or not with less attention. In other words it gives political capital that can be used to deflect criticism and paint the post-war in a different light.

For example, this will help very much in the effort to justify the failure to find WMDs.

3) It is likely to guarantee Bush's re-election. This is, of course, only bad to those who view this that way. Personally I'd rather Saddam stay in the hole than Bush be re-elected but I don't care much as I have long thought a Bush victory was a given.

Most importantly: It causes enthusiastic east-coast military brothers to wake up their sagely wise and weary west-coast brothers at the ungodly hour of 6 AM.

It's a diversion that helps "Lucky George" win again.

george

That it's a good thing is so obvious as to not need mention. That the whole mess of Iraq is surrounded by so many very ungood things - like your government lying through it's teeth about why it went into Iraq and so many people, like you, sucking up this deceit like sweet lemonade, all that is far far more important.

Iraq had bugger all to do with terrorism, but the lie keeps being forwarded, and it will be again today by Bush.

That the US went in for humanitarian reasons is another one, and it will be ladled out again today.

What would I have Bush say? I'd have him be honest. I'd have him say, "We actually went in to ensure control of oil supplies, and we did it under cover of 9/11 because we figured we could get away with that. We lied. We are even aware that it might make the terrorism problem worse, certainly some of our advisors have warned about that. And we broke off relations with international institutions because we consider them limiting in all sorts of ways to the economic interests which we belief in and represent. But...I've had a change of heart. I really have come to believe that we could be doing far far far more in the world to ease suffering and oppression, but that it is we ourselves who have often facilitated these horrors. "

As far as I know George doesn't "suck up" Bush's deceit. As I recall his treatment of that is an "all have sinned" approach.

Thats interesting really, isnt it, since the US itself does claim the rationale for death penalty? How'that come about?

craven

Well, george, though a nice fellow, has a two-pronged approach to reality...'the president is too noble to lie, but if he is lying, it's for good reasons'

Well, even pro-death penalty types much cede that using it in an unstable time where fair trials are hard to ensure is dangerous.

I think they were hoping to avoid the type of Palestinian kangaroo court/lynching deals.

Mrs. Walter told me that she really likes you.

Oops, got it wrong:
she likes what you said there, Craven!

Blatham,

I must have missed the "too noble to lie" arguments. I've always seen him admit to it (and defend it).

Perhaps you are right. Let's ask george.

george...is your president a liar?

Better watch out Walter, you can be a cuckold yet.
:wink:
Blatham,

That's a fair question.. IF you then cede that you are as well (along with just about every adult on earth).

But then again, I don't much care about Bush's lies, I care about his decisions.

Blatham,

Your description of the U.S. rationale for the Iraq intervention is incomplete and factually wrong in details that are critical to your arguments. I believe you know this.

There is a well developed world market for oil. All it takes to get some is money. OPEC's ability to control the price is quite limited. Alternate sources in the North Sea and Alaska dented their earlier attempts to control the market in the early '80s. Now enormous new sources being developed in West Africa will do the same for the next few decades. (We can also import the shale oil being produced at enormous environmental cost in Alberta). It simply isn't necessary to take such military action to "ensure oil supplies". To suggest otherwise is either disingenuous or remarkably ignorant of the salient facts.

Given that you concede that Saddam's capture is "a good thing", obvious to all, how is it that you are so convinced that everything about the process that led to it was bad?

craven

Of course, we all lie, there's lots of sociological work to validate that one. But context is everything.

I actually do very much care about deceit by political representatives. Decisions and policies can only be weighed correctly by citizens where honesty and transparency are given high value. Where they aren't, the citizens' role, his engagement in the process of governance and citizenship is decapitated, and we are no longer in anything that looks much like democracy.

Repost: In 1988, long after the threat of Iran running all over Iraq had subsided - and after Saddam had gassed thousands of Kurds - President George Bush Sr. not only vetoed a resolution that Congress passed to impose sanctions in retaliation, his administration actually extended a follow-up loan of a billion US dollars to Saddam. (source)

A billion US dollars. And thats just that time in 1998.



No - its kinda simply irrelevant to it. (What is it with these rhetorics of: "oh, you claim its not white - so you're saying its black, then, huh?!").

Well, thats not entirely true. The capture of Saddam will have a serious impact on terrorism within Iraq, its true. In the sense that the insurgency will weaken perhaps enough - at least for the time being - for it to be less able to commit the kind of attacks against civilians it has made recently. (But see also the issues Craven raised about dubbing this as part of the "war against terrorism").

What Blatham, of course, was predicting, though, was that Bush would link Saddams capture to his administration's "War on terrorism" - which had nothing to do with the Iraqi insurgency against the Coalition Authority, since neither existed at the time - and come to think of it, both are actually the result of how the Bush government has chosen to fight its "war against terrorism". The guess basically is that Bush will indirectly link Saddams capture to the US winning the fight against the international, Muslim terrorism that yielded 9/11 - which would be a typical mislead, since there's been no proven link between Saddam and that terrorism - not from before the Iraq war, anyway.

Come to think of it, there's an irony there ... cause I'm sure there's been some burgeoning co-operation between the Saddamites and the Al-Qaedaites in post-war Iraq ... so the logic there would be - thanks to our war against Iraq, Saddam came to fight alongside Al-Qaeda - so if we take him out now, that means we're winning the war against Al-Qaeda - except that he wouldnt have been fighting alongside Al-Qaeda in the first place if we hadnt done what we did - so all it really does is take you back to the status ante quo.

Next up: Osama bin Laden! I'm hailing Saddam's capture as a victory against tiranny - I'll hail Osama's capture as a victory against terrorism.

george

One white supremacist from Oregon can, in a fit of anger, shoot another white supremacist from Idaho. A good thing. It doesn't make the Oregon white supremacists a boon to mankind.

Sure, there are other factors involved in why the US went into Iraq, but humanitarian just isn't in there, and the evidence, which you constitutionally will not accept, is the US's behavior in damn near every case imaginable. Ties to Israel fit in this picture, and the goals of the fun boys associated with Wolfowitz are key. But in ten years, and you know it, the US will have put how much more investment into Iraq than into Liberia or into Rwanda or AIDs? Oil IS it.

Nimh,

You can hail it as whatever you wish. It is what it is. The development of a modern, tolerant and at least partly democratic regime in Iraq will be a telling event in the resolution of a profound historical divide now facing the Moslem world - and the rest of us who must deal with them. That there is a conflict of historical proportions going on between radical Islamists and more moderate and secular political forces in the moslem world is beyond doubt. That the favorable resolution of this conflict is of immediate and significant interest to the rest of the world is also beyond doubt. That this conflict, as well as the actions and intent of radical Islamists, is the basic driving force behind much of the international terrorism besetting the world is equally beyond doubt. These are the objective factors that drive these historical events. The insistence on a palpable conspiratorial connection between Saddam's repressive regime and this or that terrorist group, as a necessary prerequisite for constructive action is simpleminded in the extreme. (Notwithstanding that, at some levels, such connections did indeed exist.)

nimh

Even that is a big maybe. Surely the measure of victory in the whole terroism thing is less terroism and fewer folks wanting to engage in it. I'm not at all sure that the capture of Osama, by itself, will bring those things about, even measurably.

What I think might be helpful is probably not appropriate here.

First of all I completely agree with your take on the "oil argument".

But I disagree that Saddam's capture vindicates the war. This is because I do not consider it a goal worth "all costs".