The US, UN & Iraq III

You other guys have seen em move too??

LOL

Remember that war we won?

Back, what, it must have been weeks ago?

Looting and anarchy continue unabated; no weapons of mass destruction (or Saddam or his sons, for that matter) have been found; Saddam's police force is being reinstated; the provisional U.S. government is already being replaced; and as it turns out, democracy is unlikely to flourish in the Middle East after all.

Oh, and we're not any safer from the threat of terrorism than we were before, but most of our former allies hate us now.

Apart from all that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

If we are going to accept the logic that there were and are no weapons of mass destructio because they haven't been, should we then decide that there are not, and never have been a Saddam and Sons?

Illogical...

Hubba, hubba.

So, to recap the evenings highlights...

Osama's boys (maybe) do the blowey-uppey thing in SA and the administration says we ought to redouble the anti-terrorist effort. So that would mean... attack another irrelevant country?

And surprise, surprise...Ariel Sharon says, "By the way, we ain't stopping settlement, nobody is thinking of giving anything back, and I didn't agree to what Colin Powell said I agree to"

A lovely evening.

Essentially, the Electoral College was instituted to prevent the denser populations of cities from disenfranchising the inhabitants of the less densely populated hinterlands. It pretty much serves the same function today.

I know what you mean, blatham ... things have gotten back to normal fairly quickly, haven't they?

Timber! Where have you been?

It's certainly not a given, the reference I made was in the war in Afghanistan in which I realized the bulk of the group offensive would be fought by proxy and the Air would be our biggest job. I'd hoped for both and wished for the transition from air to land to occur much before it eventually did.

I'm not advocating land over air but just for more will to use land when the it might expedite things.

timber

very nice to see you again...you were missed

timber

Welcome back!

This bears repeating. georgeob1 hit the nail on the head. It's not so much the critique of a singular person, but shows the absolute closed-mindedness that defies rational conversation. Reality just cannot be stacked up on one side so neatly.

My objection to ***'s views is that he assumes the necessities that; the intent of the U.S. government is objectively wrong; the motives of its leaders are equally wrong on a human level; the public utterances of its spokesmen are uniformly deceitful; its execution of the recent war was carelessly wasteful of Iraqi lives; its motives in allowing reporters unprecedented continuous access to combat units were to hide and deceive; etc.

On the other hand he also assumes the necessities that; his views are objectively correct; his subjective motives and those of the leaders of other governments which opposed the war are free of human foibles and frailties; newsmen freed from the shackles of the U.S. government would deliver complete, accurate, and objective reports of the conflict; other available means of carrying out the war could predictably lower the cost in human lives; and so on.

The profound bias here should be self-evident. It goes beyond the facts and beyond reason. Of course there are elements of truth in nearly all of his accusations. However the critical reader should recognize that his conclusions flow directly from his basic beliefs, and not from either the facts or a balanced view of history.

Sofia, what good can be said about a child torn in half by a 'dud' bomblet from a cluster bomb? Children whose only error was to be born near Georges's oil.

#1 .... what's left to loot?
#2 ,,. is this a lesson in democracy, guilty until proven ... etc..
#3 .... and if the looters return fire?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The new U.S. administrator for Iraq (news - web sites), L. Paul Bremer, is preparing a series of security-related measures that include permitting soldiers to shoot looters on sight, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.


click me

suit
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 by Agence France Presse
Victims of Iraq War File Lawsuit Against US Commander


Relatives of victims of the Iraq war were expected to file a lawsuit alleging war crimes against US General Tommy Franks, the commander of coalition forces during the conflict, a lawyer said.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0513-10.htm

Georgeob1

Not all of us are attempting a dispassionate historical analysis. We are writing about the great events of our time, now as it happens. It is pointless to accuse someone of bias.

Opinions are interesting, but facts are sacred. Correct "facts" or demolish untruths by all means but don't attack someone just for being biased in your opinion.

The interesting thing about the terrorist attacks in SA is that both sides will pick up on it to prove their point. Those who made the case for war against Iraq because they considered it an acute need in the war on terrorism will say this new attack underlines the need for such pre-emptive, agressive strategies.

Those who made the case against war will point out that apparently, the hotbed of terrorism is still where it always was, in SA, not Iraq, and the war on Iraq was in that respect an irrelevant waste of lives. They might use the example of one of timber's old posts, where he wrote that "there are any number of posts on this thread [..] which have predicted the most dire of calamities, none of which have transpired [..] No worldwide explosion of terrorist activity has occurred", and suggest their warnings were perhaps not that far off, after all.

To just pick up on the latter argument, though, it's both right and wrong. Wrong, to my view, because I don't believe this terrorist attack is a direct reaction on the war in Iraq. Al-Qaeda has struck before 'Iraq', and it would again - its motivation is much too consistent to be influenced much by whether that war took place or not and by whom. They would have done this anyway. It can't be used as evidence that the war has made it significantly easier for them to find new supporters, I think. It's right, however, in as far as it further undermines the case for war in Iraq. Aside from the WMD issue, the war was presented as a decisive blow against terrorism after all. The US have trouble enough finding any evidence of such terror links (Salman Pak came up again in another thread this week), and now these attacks just underline that the war dealt no such blow.

Aside: Timber's postwhich I quoted from here remains a pretty good set of criteria to judge the success of this war by, I think, btw. His "There are no thousands of civilian casualties" by now can be ticked off (the estimate has risen to some 4,000), but many other indicators of success (or at least limited damage) still stand. (And one could argue 4,000 still is remarkably little for a war involving the occupation of a country). We should use it to go back to every once in a while, adding our own concrete indicators perhaps, and re-evaluate.

Returning to a dispassionate historical analysis for a moment, perhaps one written in say 2070, I can imagine a school history essay question:

Discuss America's interests and involvement in Iraq from the end of the Iran Iraq war to the eventual invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

How many marks for the following points?

1. It was necessary to bring democracy to Iraq
2. Saddam's removal ensured the US was not attacked with WMD
3. The invasion was necessary to project US power in the region.
4. George Bush jnr had a personal dislike of Saddam.
5. The US saw an opportunity to consolidate its control of oil.
6. It was revenge for 911
7. It was part of the War on Terror.
8. The destruction of Iraq as a military power safeguarded Israel.
9. The invasion meant sanctions could be lifted and aid supplied
10. It provided a much needed boost to a flagging US economy.


There are no right and wrong answers. Am I biased if I put more weight on some aspects than on others?