UN Inspectors Told To Leave Iraq Immediately
POSTED BY: Haken
UPDATED: Monday, May 10, 2004 04:48
VIEWED: 25999
PAGE 7 of 11
Crazy, crazy alternative to war: How about letting the combination of sanctions and inspections work? Give them time. I know GW wants to coordinate wartime high approval ratings with the approaching election year (hence the rush he seems to be in), but why not slow down and let the UN sanctioned process work?
But Bush has ruled out that idea, so here's a new one:
Instead of going to war and spending $200 billion of US tax dollars to kill/maim Iraqi people and destroy the Iraqi social infrastructure (which is the conservative estimate of what the US is about to spend/do)...
Bush and Co. should offer Sadaam Hussein half of that amount to go into exile (and once he's in exile, promptly freeze his accounts, arrest him with the aid of whatever country allowed him in and ship Hussein off to The Hague to stand trial for attempted genocide of the Kurds).
Bush could then spend the other $100 billion on fixing the broken US economy.
Less blood and destruction... plus it's crazy enough to work.
Or we could just call Superman.
mattro
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Oh hell, I lied. That wasn't the last post.
I just wanted to point out sumthin that was so obvious, so unignorable, I thought it didn't need sayin here.
Well. I can see I was wrong.
If Saddam's only crimes were ethnic genocide, racketeering, and the seeking of nuclear capability, we, the US, wouldn't be there.
Anybody not with me so far? Good.
Saddam Hussein decided to jump into the deep end of the superpower pool, and build him an empire ... a nuclear capable, poison gas weilding, oil sheik kinda empire. He wanted Iran and Kuwait, and tried to take them. He didn't ask the UN. He didn't make reparations. And when his own people rose up against him and his thugs and his rape and his torture and his murder and his wars, he GASSED them. Whole cities of them. I guess the rest of his subjects, his slaves, got the message.
Who here thinks that's ok? Hold up your hands.
So he fails to get Iran, he fails to get Kuwait, and the world, the WHOLE DAMN WORLD, tells him to quit, lose your insane dreams of empire, get rid of the weapons you intend to use to make your empire. For over a decade now, he has ignored that mandate. He has steadily, and at great cost to his subject/slaves, rebuilt his army. Anthrax, Nerve Gas, Ricine, Sarin, Radiological materials, and Smallpox are stockpiled around his nation, and he built missiles capable of delivering them to neighboring nations.
Who here thinks ole Saddam intends to use them only for self defense?
Next time little Saddam's in a murdering mood, it may be you. You ok with that?
tanstaafl
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The only thing I would point out is that Sadaam Hussein HAS been contained since Gulf War I. UN imposed sanctions with the help of a constant US military presence have been working at keeping Sadaam in check. No reported aggressions toward his neighbors in over 12 years (only a great deal of colorful bravado and bluster... all talk).
The current strategy, though not as satisfying as ousting this fevered ego from power, has been successful at neutering Hussein.
Also keep in mind that during Gulf War I, we KNOW that Iraq had WOMD, but he did not use them on the UN forces that were attacking him! Today we only SUSPECT he has WOMD. However, just like the "communist hoardes" infiltrating America in the 50s... we cannot find them anywhere. Whatever "proof" the Bush Admin has shown the world was only enough to convince TWO nations (out of 160-ish) that Iraq's threat to the world is real.
American paranoia is NO REASON to spill blood anywhere.
mattro
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I'm distressed and discouraged even more than when FF was cancelled, if that's possible.
I don't have much time so I'm not going to go into deep explanations. I'll try to make this as strightforward and factual as possible.
The USA government has nothing against dictators. Hell, they're our favorite buddies! We set them up in Iran (Shah), Iraq (Hussein), Congo (Mugabe), Phillipines (Marcos), Indonesia (Suharto), Chile (Pinochet), Panama (Noriega), Guatemala (forgot the name), etc etc etc. If you think we didn't know what these guys were up to, I'll give you an example of our complicity:
When Kissinger was in Indonesia, Suharto asked for the go-ahead to invade East Timor. Kissinger basically said "wait till I leave". The invasion began the next day (after Kissinger got his *ss on a plane) and over 200,00 people were killed... with USA military supplies and intelligence. I'm not going to supply you with references to declassified documents and all that... just do a google search on any of the above countries + CIA and take a look around. Info is only a click away.
We don't have anything against WMD either. Where do you think Saddam got all of his fancy toys? So, while Saddam was busy gassing Iranian troops and his own villagers, George Schultz, Baldrige and Bush Sr. were busy shipping Saran and VX precursors and "crop spraying" helicopters (indeed!) to their big buddy and providing "ground truth" "calibrating" information to the Iraqi army on their kill rate of Iranian troops using mustard gas. Again, I don't have time to explain or argue. If you want to know for sure, look it up.
As far as the sanctity of UN resolutions goes, Israel's ignored over 500 UN resolutions. But we don't seem to have a problem with that. We're pretty good at ignoring UN resolutions too.
I really don't expect the average USA citizen to know about our tainted history. It's not something that our government or our official history books like to brag about. But GEORGE W BUSH KNOWS 'cause it was his own daddy who did a lot of this. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Perle know, too.
They follow the same scenario:
Decide that something (say, the Panama Canal) is an objective.
Claim over and over again that the leader of that particular country has an especially nasty trait (Noriega is a major drug runner)
Invade, to applause
Forget to metnion that we have failed to attain our stated objective (drug runnng didn't even slow down)
If you think I'm just being a horrible cynic... do any of you remember that "major buildup of Cuban troops" in Granada that sparked our invasion? In retrospect, it sounds like a sitcom, doesn't it? And a not-very-convincing one at that.
So there's only a couple of things I can conclude about our fearless leaders:
1) They're either liars, as in the Hilterian version of the "big lie"
2) They're delusional.
3) both of the above.
Quite frankly, I think the USA public better get a grip on reality real fast because the world is not going to be a nice place for us.
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Oh, and by the way, the biggest contributor to Islamic fundamentalism in general and bin Laden in particular was Saudi Arabia. The biggest contributor to the Taliban was Pakistan.
Although Saddam is a dictator, he is not a RELIGIOUS dictator. That is why we buddied up to him in the first place. Most of you are too younf to recall, bvut he was presented as a moderate to the USA people, in contrast to the Ayatollah in Iran (who had just overturned the Shah, who was our puppet.)
Gotta keep the players straight here, boys and girls!
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like it or not fellas, Saddam is going down.
say hello to mr. cruise missile...
tanstaafl
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Hey guys. Well, it looks like the war has started. There really isn't much information out there, BBC World Service and CNN are both running the same video feed, (nothing terribly unusual to be seen) although the commentary is quite different.
I do agree with Wulf and Randy that it is not appropriate to believe everything you read and/or see on the news. However, I think that if you are a reasonably discriminating reader/viewer, you can winnow out the hype and hysteria that is so prevalent in papers and TV news today.
And if you really work at it (i.e., try to read news from outside the US), you might even get different facts that the US media has decided is not worth reporting.
Merlindrea has provided us a link to a German article highlighting exactly this point.
Americans do not get unbiased, uncensored news. And before you all jump on me with 'Freedom of the Press', please remember, the first level of news reporting is the reporter - and self censorship is not imaginary. And then there is the editor and then the publisher and then the owner....
Noam Chomsky has often pointed out how American media tends to be uncritical of various actions of the decision-making elite. (I would like to add - not just American Media - we are all products of our culture and this inevitably will affect media reporting). Not because the media is controlled by the government, but because American culture enforces a kind of implicit comformity. A comformity that most people never recognise. Those that leave the US and live abroad for a period of time find a sudden exposure to thoughtful, critical discourse from a different perspective to be disorienting.
I spent three months in Morocco working a few years ago, and I was consistently taken aback by the completely different viewpoint that the Moroccans, British, Canadians, Germans and Dutch held to the Americans on the very same news items. It opened my eyes rather brutally to the knowledge that if you want decent news about foreign affairs you have to get news from more that one source, and some of it has to come from outside the US.
I really wish I spoke Arabic - because I think that Al Jazzera would be a fascinating perspective to balance what I hear from CNN and BBC.
I didn't mean to get involved in a post-modern polemic about the self-corruption of the US media - but I did want to say I am very sensitive to the issue and have done a bit of serious thinking on the issue.
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Why We Must Fight — and Now!
Three weekends ago, millions of demonstrators across the globe protested on behalf of "human rights." Their marches, slogans, placards and speeches did not declaim against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, did not cite the human rights reports detailing his tyranny and torture, did not take account the plaints of Iraqis fortunate enough to live in exile.
Rather, they protested the U.S. and the U.K. and their efforts to topple Saddam and liberate Iraq. Now, we are seeing more television advertisements along these lines, and even a "virtual march on Washington."
Just after the celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it is appropriate to remember his lament: "The world has never had a good definition of the word ‘liberty.’" With Saddam flouting international law, and President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair attempting to enforce it, portrayals of Bush as Adolf Hitler — as we saw and heard in the "human rights" protests — betray an ignorance of liberty, an ignorance of right and wrong, an ignorance of commonsense. Because Bush and Blair are putting together a coalition of countries to oust Saddam, they are labeled the warmongers and tyrants. We live in a confusing time indeed.
Lincoln described liberty by a useful analogy: "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty." Lincoln made it clear who the sheep was and who the wolf was. It is equally important to recognize who the liberator is.
Those who march against the U.S. and the U.K. today, those who condemn Bush and Blair and remain silent when it comes to Saddam, are in league with the wolf’s view that the shepherds are destroying liberty. The people of Iraq will soon know what Afghanis know. The true wolf was devouring Afghanis, the true shepherd saved them.
It is worth remembering what those in the former Soviet republics know and what the anti-American Western street has forgotten: It was, and is, U.S. and British resolve that truly liberates the oppressed and that defends the lives and liberties of the free against the appetites and ill-will of the world’s dictators.
In 1998 then-President Bill Clinton stated: "What if he [Saddam] fails to comply [with disarmament] and we fail to act? He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then go right on building up his arsenal. Someday, someway, I guarantee you, he'll use that arsenal." Last year, former Vice President Al Gore stated, "[W]e know that he [Saddam] has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country."
It is not President Bush who woke up one day to discover that Saddam was making and harvesting weapons of mass destruction. Yet it is Bush who is blamed for doing something about it. Saddam may be mad, but he is not a scientist. He does not collect chemical and biological weapons for mere pleasure and intrigue. Just ask the survivors of Halabja. So when Saddam acts, it will be Bush and America who are blamed for inaction, for appeasement. We will be liable for such blame because we are the only ones who can do something about it.
We are not at war with Muslims or Arabs around the world; we are at war with some Muslim and Arab leaders who misinterpret their religion and put a primacy on war over peace and slavery over freedom. But among the leadership in the world’s moral democracies there is no misinterpretation, and nowhere is that more true than in the case of the U.S.
This is not a new role for us, but is a unique role we proudly inherit as the world’s liberator. As Wolf Blitzer pointed out: "Over the past two decades, almost every time U.S. military forces have been called into action to risk their lives and limbs, it's been on behalf of Muslims. ... [T]o assist the Afghan mujahadin … during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, to liberate Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion of 1990, to help Somali Muslims suffering at the han
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NICOLA,
You are so right. I always try to read my news from different sources around the world, and it can be very scary when they disagree “facts”. Personally, I hope the news does lie to us about some of the things they report. When they say where our troops are, and when, what types of guns they have, and what they plan to do, I hope they lie. Its not that what they say sounds bad, but I could easily be the enemy listing to the news. Some of the things they report, we don’t even have to know. I don’t need to know every specific location, and what are plans are. I’d leave that information to the military specialists, it’s not like the general public makes any decisions about those types of things anyway.
THEGN,
Quote:
Originally posted by THEGN:
Three weekends ago, millions of demonstrators across the globe protested on behalf of "human rights." Their marches, slogans, placards and speeches did not declaim against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, did not cite the human rights reports detailing his tyranny and torture, did not take account the plaints of Iraqis fortunate enough to live in exile.
Rather, they protested the U.S. and the U.K. and their efforts to topple Saddam and liberate Iraq. Now, we are seeing more television advertisements along these lines, and even a "virtual march on Washington."
People do have a strange way of ignoring things, just picking and choosing what they want, whatever fits with their side don’t they? I think a lot of people--not all--who are protesting the war just don’t want any change in their lives. They don’t want things to be disrupted by a war, they want things to just be left how they are. They are willing to give money to Iraq, something clean and simple. Something they can do from the comfort and safety of their homes. The problem won’t be solved by simply giving money, but it would be doing something, and thus Iraq and other respective countries could be ignored guilt free. I can’t accept that. Nothing worth doing was ever easy. That goes for us going to war, and those protesting it.
-------------------------------------
Jayne: Hey, I didn't fight in no war. Best of luck, though.
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Thegn, your impassioned call to liberty would be stirring and uplifting if it were only based in reality. So as not to confuse you with a long list of facts, which you apparently skipped over, let me put this in terms you might understand:
The USA is the Alliance, not the Rebellion. Sadaam is a Reaver, not the Alliance.
Who is the Rebellion?
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