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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (218299)	2/13/2007 10:29:43 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I believe that legally, a prosecutor does not have to show that the left hand "knew" what the right hand was doing in order to prove conspiracy. By that standard, though, couldn't almost any conjunction of events be interpreted as a conspiracy? I suspect that many of the conclusions here owe a good deal to hindsight, and all of these events have explanations other than "economic war". Sure, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were pumping lots of oil and the price was falling. Everybody was pumping... OPEC collapsed, as economists had long predicted. All the producers needed money. They could have earned more by agreeing to cut back, but nobody trusted anybody to keep the agreements, so everybody ignored the quotas and broke the agreements. Was that "economic war", or a natural economic process? Was the sale of Iraqi debt "economic war"? I'm not so sure. I suspect that the Gulf nations felt obliged to hold Iraqi debt while Saddam was fighting Iran, but once the war was over it began to look like worthless paper. The impulse to dump worthless paper to anyone willing to have it is pretty natural. I don't see anything terribly damning in the Glaspie documents, either, even with the strong possibility that they were edited. It looks to me like a diplomat was summoned to meet with a President, asked for instructions, and was told to make note of everything said and commit to nothing. Really pretty normal. With hindsight, it might have been better for the State Dept. to have instructed her to make a stronger statement, but hindsight does confer certain analytical advantages. Add to this that much of Kuwaiti land should have actually been Iraq's (Iraq does have a legitimate claim here). I don't buy that one at all: self determination trumps historical claim any time. I'm sure Saddam believed that his cause was just and legitimate, and that he was being conspired against. Such beliefs are hardly a justification for invasion, annexation, and pillage of a neighboring country. I don't see conspiracy there, just events. Of course I admit that when faced with a choice between believing in conspiracy or assuming a fuckup, my default choice usually is to assume a fuckup.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (218299)	2/14/2007 8:44:06 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

"Bullet through middle east" predicted by Mq in 1987 or 88 in consultation with Charles Willoughby [both working for BP Oil International at the time]. No insider information, nor access to classified information. Just a conclusion based on cynical view of USA 'interests' and other's interests. < Taken in aggregate, the actions and statements of several seemingly unrelated actors/nations does give credence to the idea that Saddam was set up for attacking Kuwait, but until the related info is declassified, we cannot be sure. Certainly knowing Saddam's personality has to be considered when drawing such a conclusion and it is hard to believe the related parties were unaware of his psychology. > In business, one of the most favoured attitudes is to keep competitors out of the market. Not so many people have Mq's Libertarian approach to competition. Think of the woman skater who had her competitor knee-capped [and she was convicted - it wasn't a rumour or "conspiracy theory"]. Despite my Libertarian ideology, I also promoted a strategy of keeping competitors out by getting governments to promote environmental protection laws [not including the dopey CO2 restrictions]. That would make life difficult for smaller competitors who couldn't invest so well and manage environmental protection. Mqurice