Hawk,
Re: Since when can we steal something from a thief??
As you might recall, there was an "oil for food" regime in place until the war. This was being administered for the sake of the Iraqi people by the UN. We've replaced that regime with chaos. To an extent that I'm beginning to see a deliberate attempt by Rumsfeld, Franks and Bremer et al to do as much as possible to perpetuate the chaos and create an opportunity for malnutrition and water-borne diseases to rake over the hapless Iraqi civilian population.
The theft that Saddam Hussein was able to perpetrate during the sanctions regime was black market oil that was transported outside of the official sanctions regime.
******* Re: But 10,000 remains are only a far percentage of the estimated 200,000 people who are suspected to have been eliminated by Saddam's regime.
Which is again, only a small percentage of the 1,000,000+ Iraqis who've died due to the sanctions regime that the U.S. was primarily responsible for administering. In 1996, then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright even admitted that the U.S. policy was to kill as many as 100,000 innocents per year. She called this an "acceptable cost" of our policy. I call it genocide. Stalin took the long view. Eventually, it will be only a statistic. Just like the statistics on how the U.S. government, and its predecessor regimes willfully depopulated North America of native populations from days of the first colonies through the early 20th Century.
********* Re: It's just a very wierd and stupid world full of half-measures and incremental misguided policies which both Bush and Clinton were guilty of.
I cannot agree. Willfully evil would be a more apt description of the policies of the U.S. government.
******** Re: That makes me wonder about YOUR definition of patriotism...
No concern whatsoever for a stitched up piece of cloth. Total disdain for phony, imposed and illegitimate regime in the White House and complete and utter respect for the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and those who are defending the Constitution against the depredations of the neo-fascists like Ashcroft, Scalia and Bush.
********* Re: All you have to do is look at the incredible poverty being shown in the daily news from Iraq to see that they haven't anywhere to go but up economically speaking.
You do have a Pollyanna streak, now don't you? <g> Hawk, the real policy of the Bushistas, which they are loathe to make public is that they want to do to the 24 million Iraqis what prior American administration did to the Pequot, Iroquois, Illini, Mandans, Sioux, Nez Perce, Modocs, Paiutes, Wascos and Captain Jack. The Bushies want to exterminate the Iraqis. And then name the streets in the new roughneck towns that Bechtel will be building for oil contractors after the inconvenient and displaced natives.
Hawk, your basic problem is that in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you still think the U.S. government is a force for good. Get over it. |