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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (109312)	8/1/2003 3:03:09 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<I guess you never caught the tape of Saddam's first Baathist party meeting where he had any potential rivals denounced as traitors and escorted out to be shot... by those party members who had not been denounced..> Was that back in the days when Saddam was our ally against Iran -- back when Rumsfeld visited Saddam to hail him as our friend and ally?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (109312)	8/1/2003 4:39:04 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "NO.. It's about controlling the "tools" that form one's powerbase, and Qusai controlled all of those, including the Special Republican Guard and Iraqi intelligence service." Qusai was nominally in control of that, but only through the orders of Saddam Hussein. If it were that easy to arrange to pass control of a dictatorship off to your son (to simply put him nominally in control of the intelligence service), then all dictatorships would be long-lived. Re: "No other rival controlled those forces, and anyone who had opposed his succession to power, would have been immediately killed by these "tools". ... But I don't believe anyone was under the illusion that either of them were acting without his sanction, permission, and/or approval." What you are talking about are not "forces", they are collections of "human beans". Humans are famous for being difficult to control. Saddam had the knack, his sons did not. If you believe that the US truly was "24 hours away from Saddam", then you have to admit that Saddam was still in the Sunni part of Iraq as recently as a few days ago. That is, he was still taking part in the fight. Compare this to the Kurdish area where his sons were caught. They were out of the fight. They were cowards. Saddam was never that. But why should I have to pick apart your argument about the survivability quotient of Saddam's sons? Every neocon justification for this war has already fallen apart, the speculation that Saddam's sons would take over from their dad in a never-ending dynasty of dictatorship is just another weak fantasy from the neoconservatives who didn't understand a damn thing about Iraq before the war. Where are the WMDs? Where are the flag waving Iraqis celebrating our rule? Where is the 6 million barrels of oil per day? Where are the ex allies who would crawl to us for pieces of the reconstruction contracts? Where are the changes to the Iranian or Syrian governments? Where are the Iraqi elections scheduled for late 2003? Where are the US soldiers who were supposed to be reduced below 30,000 by September? Look, if the neoconservatives can't get a damn thing right about Iraq (except for the simple platitudes like "Saddam was a bad guy"), then why should we trust their judgement on questions that can't be decided? I'm done arguing with you about this point. If you want to continue the argument, then give me as many examples as possible of two modern (i.e. last 100 years) dictators, related by the father/son relationship, both having had long lived dictatorships. Then I will compare this to the number of short lived dictators who didn't pass on their regime to their children. I will win, you will lose, because you have no data to back your case. -- Carl