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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: one_less who wrote (698462)2/11/2013 8:00:06 PM
From: Bilow1 Recommendation  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 1573890
 
Hi one_less; This is about Iraq. Re: "We know they used WMDs on Curds." Well, we know the French used WMDs on the Germans and vice-versa. Heck, we used them too.

Re: "We know they had intentions to be a world military power."

LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! -- Wait, we are both talking about Iraq aren't we? This is a place where people live in mud houses and they're going to be a world military power? Just like the North Koreans I suppose.

Re: "We know that Saddam played cat and mouse with inspectors and couldn't or wouldn't give and account of his operations."

The basic problem (I've said it before) is that Saddam ordered his WMDs destroyed but didn't keep "good enough" records to verify the destruction. The inspectors were looking for certainty that Saddam could not provide them. If he could, I don't doubt that he would have done it as it would have made it more difficult for the US politically.

Iraq is not the only country that's lost track of "WMDs". As far as I can tell, every country that's ever manufactured WMDs ended up losing track of them. The USA did it too. Above I linked in the Australians discovering WW2 chemical weapons shells that had been lost for 65 years. No military force is very good at keeping records because it's rare to find accountants who are also warriors. People will be dealing with US WMDs for at least the next 100 years.

Re: "Was he an immediate threat to the USA? Not in my opinion. Would he eventually be able to develop the weapons to make his threats real? I think so."

Your implication is apparently that Saddam, (who had just proved that he couldn't defeat the broken neighboring nation of Iraq), was going to threaten a global military, economic and geopolitical superpower that is tens of thousands of miles away, "eventually". What a laugh. This sort of logic makes the Athenian decision to save Leontini from Syracuse look smart.

Sorry, if we went to war to save someone's backside that would be Israel. We were going to install Democracy so we could Save The Middle East. I can't imagine that Israel is happy with the way their neighborhood has deteriorated since 2001. Democracy isn't necessarily a good thing when the nation becoming democratic hates you.

Re: "Were the Sanctions working? How do you feel about the deaths of 500k children under the age of 5, hundreds of thousands of curds and shiites who were slaughtered, and threats to directed at the US, a direct and intended consequence of sanctions which were known to be failing for several years?"

I don't think the sanctions were working and I thought that the US should simply normalize relations with Saddam's Iraq.

Re: "Was Saddam our enemy? How do you feel about targeting innocents to cause harm to come to your enemy? Isn't that one of our definitions of terrorism? Target the regime or target the innocents hoping the results will spawn a revolution. Given that option, I choose the former. You?"

No, we kept Saddam as an enemy by executing a useless air campaign against Iraq. The whole thing was effective in killing innocent people (I include Iraqi draftees in that list), but it wasn't good at modifying their "bad behavior" whatever that was.

We should consider getting involved when countries step over their boundaries with military force. An example was Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. At that time we had some right to roll on to Baghdad and take him out of power but unfortunately we'd made a deal with our allies that we wouldn't do that. And so the right thing to do after the Kuwait war was over was to say "it's over, don't do it again" and shake hands.

The business of the US is business.

The way the US wins the hearts and minds of people all over the world is business. It ain't our lefty goofball theories on democracy and it ain't our military. It's stuff like Microsoft (gag) and Coca-cola. That's what destroyed the Soviet Union, US economic power, not military power.

-- Carl