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

To: DavesM who wrote (188621)	6/7/2006 8:23:02 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Jttmab, why the sarcasm? It's a personality trait flaw. I acknowledge it freely and frequently, but can't help myself. Are you claiming that Saddam wasn't responsible for invading Iran... But the US thought that was a good thing at the time. Carter had Iraq on the terrorist list and Reagan took him off so we could support Saddam [and get his oil]. If you want to blame Saddam for killing Iranians, then you should add Reagan and Bush Sr. as helpers. It would have been a bit bizarre for Mussolini to demand that Hitler be tried for war crimes and not admit any involvement in WWII. In case the parallel has escaped you. Are you claiming that Saddam wasn't responsible for using "Oil for Food" monies to bribe UN Officials instead of using the money to purchase food and medicines? Prior to the oil for food scandal the severe malnutrition rate of children was at 13%, under the oil for food scandal it dropped to 4%. It's a pretty difficult argument to make that all the food and medicine wasn't getting to the people/children. I might remind you that the severe malnutrition rate is now at 9% with no sanctions. If you feel like looking it up, the UN assessed the food distribution program in Iraq and found it to be the most efficient program they had ever seen with the least corruption.There were bribes and kickbacks before the food got to Iraq, but once it got there, it was distributed quickly and fairly. Which is what the report assessed. Once the food in Iraq arrives, what happens? Further, the UN take on bribes and kickbacks was insignificant; it didn't add up to more than a 6-figure number and only involved a couple of people. The big $$$ participants in the scandal were the corporations that were dealing in oil. That cames to billions and involved a lot of companies around the world including US companies. In fact, there was a report written that assessed US company participation in dollars as 52% of the total. Not generally reported in the US media. You can thank the MSM for covering that detail up pretty well. You want to blame the United States for the deaths that resulted from UN Sanctions? That Clinton and Gore have committed crimes against humanity? I thought it was very stupid at the time. I'm bipartisan when it comes to US foreign policy. Both parties suck. Sanctions either work immediately or they don't work at all in getting a dictator to change their position. I never saw Saddam get skinny as a result of the sanctions. Severe sanctions do nothing more than punish a people for a policy they had nothing to do with. How long has there been a US trade embargo with Cuba and what has it accomplished? Castro has been in power almost as long as QEII which are the current record holders. QEII will probably outlast Castro, but they are both very likely to die of natural causes. What is or is not a war crime is a subject of discussion. Wars, in general, are not war crimes. Gassing the Kurds is a war crime. If a country provides the material for chemical weapons to Iraq, which the US did, we could debate whether that's a war crime in itself. But it would be an academic question of little interest to me. I'm practical, no one is going to put the US on trial for war crimes. I don't consider sanctions to be war crimes, but you might be able to persuade me. You should know this, to this day Richard Clarke, Mary McCarthy, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore believed (and still believe) that Iraq and al Qaeda were involved together in the development and manufacture of chemical weapons - several testified as such to the 9-11 Commission. So what? I don't give a sh!t what those people believe. There was no active WMD program at the time the US invaded Iraq. There was no known transfer of any WMD to any AQ group. Iraq had established that they had destroyed at least some of the WMD they had in their inventory and were working with the UN to attempt to quantify the amount they had destroyed when the US told the UN to get out of Iraq. Further, Bush dissolved the Iraqi survey team and has completely stopped attempting to account for any "missing" weapons. Bush either believes that there weren't any WMD or he's utterly irresponsible for not continuing to pursue it. Every single piece of intel we passed to the UN to prove Saddam had WMD or WMD programs failed to verify. Every one. I might think that at some point Bush would have turned to Tenet and asked him why that was. I would think that at some point Bush might ponder whether Iraq having WMD wasn't a slam dunk. I would think that knowing where the WMD would have been of the highest priority. I'd prefer to know that a WMD stockpile was under the control of a ruthless dictator than have the stockpile dispersed to places and people unknown. It doesn't seem like Bush shared that philosophy. Quite frankly, I think the importance of WMD was a red herring. A good sounding one, but a red herring none the less. There are a number of countries in the world and specifically in the mid-east that are believed to have chemical and biological weapons, e.g., Syria and Iran, and Bush has zero interest in doing anything. Iran has signed a chemical weapons treaty; Bush claims that Iran has chemical weapons but doesn't use the process of the treaty to pursue it. Iran having CW is bully pulpit stuff. jttmab