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

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (130419)	4/29/2004 10:44:19 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

That is why it is irrelevant whether there is electricity, or that hospitals function or not. Those are secondary considerations. Nice to have. But not worth putting in the plan. Sarmaz.. you seem to imply that there is less electricity being produced in Iraq than prior to the war, and that's just not the case: ameinfo.com Due to the efforts of all parties taking part in rebuilding the Iraqi electricity system, power output exceeded pre-war levels for the first time during the month of October. Output reached a peak load of 4,518MW on October 6, compared with barely 3,200MW in September. The achievement marks the first milestone in the plan to restore Iraq's ramshackle generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. Since October 1, USAID claims that Baghdad in specific has received an average of 1,241MW a day. USAID has now set the ambitious plan to increase power output to 6,000MW by May 2004 while the Ministry of Electricity also hopes to increase total production to 7000MW by June 2004 to provide for a five hours on and one hour off rationed schedule in the summer. This is in comparison to the current three hours on, three hours off being implemented throughout the country. Despite these impressive achievements, plants are still working at much less than 50% of capacity. The country's eight large-scale thermal plants account for most of the installed capacity, which at full output could produce 5,415 MW of power. Gas turbines account for 2,181MW and hydro stations for a further 2,518MW of nameplate capacity. Part of the problem is that Iraqis have been flocking to purchase appliances that place an even larger burden on the power grid and continue the shortages. They aren't paying for the electricity, so we have the classis "Tragedy of the Commons" scenario occurring here.. Anyway, Israel's goal is accomplished. There is no reason to stay in Iraq. The US will kill a few more thousands of people then leave. And what, pray tell, will be the result of a unilateral US withdrawal? Hawk

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (130419)	4/30/2004 12:19:22 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Sarmad Y. Hermiz; Re: "... I really do think the Saddam Hussein was an evil man who should be toppled. Not for his non-existant WMD's but for being a brutal dictator." Sure, if one could get rid of Saddam without the expenditure of any effort it would be worth it. But it's not the US's job to go around solving problems for the rest of the world, except when those problems are in our "sphere of influence", i.e. North America. As far as I'm concerned, if the Iraqis wanted liberating, they could damn well have done it the same way the Americans did it, by themselves with a bit of foreign assistance, but only after they had proved that they were serious about it. Re: "But I am convinced the US did not invade to do the Iraqi's any favor. They invaded to remove a little bit of support Iraq was giving to Palestinians. ..." You're analyzing the "US" as if it were a person. It's not. The US is a huge collection of people with very differing opinions, desires, hopes and beliefs. Even the Bush administration is not homogenous. This huge collection of individuals cannot have a single reason for doing anything. There were undoubtedly some who felt we should invade Iraq primarily to assist Israel in their hopeless attempt to eliminate their Palestinian problem. By reading this thread, it should also be clear that there were some who favored going into Iraq so that we could steal their oil, and others who saw the Arabs as dangerous people who needed to be brought under control. There was another group of people who truly believed in those WMDs, and imagined them under every bed, like frightened children. Re: "Anyway, Israel's goal is accomplished. There is no reason to stay in Iraq. The US will kill a few more thousands of people then leave." I don't think the US will leave until we've a hell of a lot more soldiers. There is little support for leaving. So we'll stick around until it becomes truly painful. The only way we could get out earlier is if we are forced to choose between having our soldiers truly slaughtered (think Dien Bien Phu), or sending a lot more of them over. My guess is that this won't happen, but it could. As far as Israel's goal, after we leave they're next. Like you said, "Israel knows that it only takes one country with a credible deterrent, to provide arms to palestinians." In the case of Iraq, the "credible deterrent" is the chaos of anarchy (no one leader, so no one to punish), and the arms provided are all those SAMs that Saddam bought. -- Carl