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

To: quehubo who wrote (112987)	8/26/2003 10:42:32 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi quehubo; Re: "Who knows with Iran? I think it is hard to imagine the 8 years of war with Iraq did not significantly impact their ability to recover from the revolution. In fact it made recovery impossible." The concept that recovery from war is "impossible" is silly. What do you think that Saddam did, spread radioactive waste on Iran's oil refineries? And most of the damage was to the refineries (which make much better targets than the oil fields themselves). Everything that the oil industry owns has to be replaced or rebuilt over a certain period of time. Ten years is long past long enough to rebuild stuff. I note that you do not repeat your accusation that Kuwait's oil production was permanently damaged by Iraq. Is this because you read the links I gave you? Re: "You are the one blaming Bush for interrupting energy supplies from Iraq. I was trying to open your eyes to what Saddam has done." The whole problem with your analysis is that it has as its underlying logic, some sort of blame game about who was worse for oil production, Saddam in the late 1980s, or Bush in the early 2000s. There are a couple of problems with your logic: (1) In the late 1980s, the US was assisting Saddam and Iraq. Since that assistance ended with the Kuwait invasion, it is not reasonable to compare Iraq's or Saddam's capabilities from the late 1980s with his capabilities in the recent present (or his capabilities now, LOL). The fact is that when Saddam did try to capture Kuwait, the US did throw him out, *even though the US was completely unprepared for major action in the Middle East.* Any future such military action, with the US properly prepared with prepositioned equipment, would have been thwarted much easier. (2) That Saddam would be damaging to oil production does not give Bush an excuse to do the same thing. (3) The hell do you think that I am unaware of what Saddam has done? I've read several books on the Iran / Iraq war, which is actually a rather interesting conflict. -- Carl

To: quehubo who wrote (112987)	8/26/2003 11:11:12 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 281500

<<In addition to the direct damage of the war and looting, we have uncovered a energy infrastructure suffering from decades of neglect. These systems need to be replaced not just band aided together.>> People keep repeating that allegation, but doesn't anyone find it peculiar that all of a sudden we are "discovering" this neglect? It isn't like Iraq was Albania, where no one ventured to go for years. People--government officials, weapons inspectors, many people--have been in Iraq for years now. Surely the state of the infrastructure was no surprise to anyone. BTW, if you want to find infrastructure which has been suffering from several decades of neglect, please look at the US. Periodically, we get reports on it (in the past week or two, in fact). The official response so far has been the usual one, lower taxes. Not, Let's fix it.