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

To: Dayuhan who wrote (218331)	2/14/2007 12:46:47 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Re. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait: By nature and by training, I do not favor conspiracy theories. I am versed well enough in statistics to know about random patterns; patterns that are not really there because the next time you run the experiment a different "pattern" emerges. However, war is a different matter. Nearly 2500 years ago, a wise man (I'll let you guess who), stated that: "All warfare is based on deception" There is no part of the world that is under greater scrutiny than the middle east. The United States spends billions making sure that it is on the top of events there. CIA keeps detailed profiles, psychological and otherwise, on all major and semi-major characters and organizations in the region. Embassies and regional bureaus submit weekly, monthly, and special reports on the currents there. Satellites monitor movements of smallest forces in the region...and Saddam was in no way opaque about what he was thinking and the effects of that economic warfare had on him and Iraq. So to imply that sh!t just happened and we hand no clue to the potential of the invasion of Kuwait, does not strike me as a very convincing argument. At the very least, one has to agree that the US was complacent about the prospects of Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It makes zero sense that the countries that held Iraqi debt would push policies that would make Iraq unable to service the debt they held. The norm in business is not to bankrupt your debtor but to give them a bridge loan so you can collect your debt, especially when the process of such economic warfare, in this case low oil prices, cuts your own income. I tend to believe the involved states were persuaded to follow a cheap oil policy. Equally significant is that in the months before the invasion of Kuwait there was chatter on how thanks to the support of US and its client states in the Persian Gulf, Iraq has amassed an impressive array of armaments with no "good" target to use them on (seeing how the war with Iran had ended). All the arguments that the neocons presented about WMDs at the hand of Saddam in 2002 were A LOT more valid in 1991 than they were now. Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie, Powel, and a slew of other significant characters who pushed for war this time around were also in charge then. So ask yourself these questions: Did these personalities, i.e. Saddam, Cheney, Rummy, etc significantly change their world views between the first Gulf war and now? If yes, then I am all ears to hear your evidence. If not, then given that they were willing grasp at every straw and every opportunity to promote invasion of Iraq now, why do you find it hard to believe that they would have set Saddam up for an invasion back then? ST Side Note re. Kuwait-Iraq borders -- It is a mischaracterization that the British arbitrarily drew the map of the Middle East. The truth is that they drew it to make sure there would be constant conflict and that no single country (or group of countries) could ever get strong enough to challenge them in the future. Iraq is an excellent case in point: made up of 3 ethnicities who don't get along and placement of the minority in power. And just to make sure Iraq would also be geographically challenged, they drew the Kuwaiti border such that Iraq's access to open waters be very limited (this is the expressed reason for drawing the border with Kuwait as they did). Kuwait at the time was nothing more than a small desert dueling tribe. They got far more land than they needed. Their right to self determination does not give them the right to the barren and unoccupied land that cut off Iraq's access to Persian Gulf.