Now the real question though is, What Next? One of the reasons the Hussien regime was left in power in 91 was that no one wanted to see what would happen when the strongman holding the country together was removed. Iraq is an inherantly unstable mass, largerly thanks to the aestheticly and economicly motivated British who invented it in the first place. Notice the Shia’a leader assassinated this morning? There will be many more of all demographic groups as old feuds are reignited and political power strugles take to the fore. I think there will be some messiness in the short term, a period calm, then things will begin to fall apart. Look at Afganistan as an example. There was a united coalition governent for two weeks before warlords decided that their interests were better served outside the government. In this case, the US will probably care enough to supress the dissention, but that comes at a cost. In this case, the people who make me most nervous are the Kurds. Elements of them will probably be the first to break with the post-war regime. Their ultimate goals are not served by a united Iraq. Niether are the Shia’as for that matter, but everybody knows who the only twelver Shi’ist state is in the world.
At least this will be less messy than an internal collapse would have been.
Jinx Remover: If you truly believe this is for oil, then the oil company stocks will rise dramatically. Put your money where your mouth is and invest.
We left him in power for political reasons, and he did leave Kuwait, and we stopped the war, and started the inspections. The recent inspections were going exactly as they were before. It was a political game Saddam was winning. After September 11 things changed, and he had a hand in it. I have posted links previously proving the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and so have others. And not the bs crap links I have seen others post to strange little communist based organizations. The inspectors were only functioning because we were backing them up with force.
When we supported his country, we did little, not as much as the politically biased people make up. The ulterior motive was not only to get rid of the Iran problem, but have Iraq only strong enough that Iran falls, and week enough that Iraq may fall as well.
I know you don’t like us dealing with bad people, but when Clinton decided the CIA could not deal with people who were “unsavory”, it broke down our source of information, and made 911 possible. Do you think the police can only use information from non-criminals? You may not like it, but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to get a job done.
Back to my first statement, I have said it before every time someone comes up with some sort of conspiracy theory involving business. After I tell them this, they start stammering, and don’t know how to react. No one has yet done this. Knowing all of these conspiracy theories can easily make a person rich if they are true.
I always thought the real issue wasn’t if USA would win the war(duh!) but rather, who will replace Saddam? This is the only important question to be answered, IMHO.
Don’t worry, if the US replace Saddam by a puppet-dictator, you’ll see the same people burning US flags and spitting on Bush’s portrait. Such is the human nature.
Let’s just hope that we have a good puppet in line. Someone who won’t backfire on us for a change, like the Shah did, or Saddam, or Noriega, or Osama, or many others. Hopefully we will consider our many failures with this practice in the past and try a different tact.
I would be worried if Bush was truly the one running the show, but luckily he is just a puppet as well, so maybe one of the smart people he “surrounds” himself with will look at the last 50 years of our own history and recognize that we have traditionally had BAD judgement in this area.
In terms of puppets, the Shah was a pretty damn good one. Unpopular puppet figures are quite perishable (in that popular resentment builds) and the Shah lasted ~25 years. Not bad. I question how long any regime following Saddam will last, once US troops leave because of the instability inherent in the country. The only reason Saddam managed to stay in power so long was because of his Gestapo like methods. I seriously doubt any regime will be able to last in a united iraq. Give it 6mths to 3 years and there will be open rebellions. This was one of the major motivations for arab opposition to the war about which few in the US spoke. Instability in Iraq will prompt Arab interevention to protect interests. Once one state in the region intervenes, all the others will soon have to follow. The US can’t stay there forever (nor would it be wise to for other reasons).
To scall144: Finding out who killed more Iraqi’s, Saddam or the u.s. would probably dwindle down to opinion and not pure fact. Estimations are different, all depending on the source. Amnesty estimated 5,000(mostly children) a month. There are other various factors which further explain/confuse the situation. If the u.s. had not armed and supported Saddam in the Iran/Iraq war, he might have been eliminated before he had a chance to invade Kuwait. Duirng the 1980’s, most of the deaths attributed to saddam were combat deaths on both sides. The “gassing” of the Kurds was orchestrated by the CIA: Iran was using poison gas on the battlefield and the u.s. advised saddam to do the same. In the border attack where both iran and iraq used gas, the Kurds(who were fighting on both sides, as well as innocents being caught in the middle) got the brunt of the gas. CIA analysts say that the kurds were being killed by iranian gas, but they were most likely trying to cover their own asses.
To me it’s clear that saddam would not have had the opportunity to be responsible for most of the deaths if it were not for the u.s. aiding and abetting him at every step of the way, including the impositions of sanctions in the 90’s.
Did you know that several Americans were fined $50,000 each for delivering medical supplies to iraq in violation of the sanctions? The U.N.(led by the u.s.) threatened a group in Jordan that delivered a million pencils to iraqi scholchildren. Graphite pencils sre a “dual-use” item under the sanctions. They could have whittled down all the pencils to extract the graphite for use in nuclear reactors.
The oil-for-food program was the only legal way for iraq to get any payment for delivery of oil. During the 90’s the #1 “buyer” of iraqi oil under this program was the USA.
Sanctions have been tried many times before and all they have ever done was strenghten the current leader of the said country. Why the hell did the u.s. try it with iraq?
How do we get rid of saddam? I’m not sure but I bet thier are other ways. Of course we wouldn’t get control of the oil. I have a question, why do you think he is such a threat? What the hell are we doing in thier anyway?
I don’t think I mentioned anything about current atrocities in my last post. I only mentioned past atrocities committed by the u.s. whether we were directly involved or just supported governments who were responsible. You gave w a clean slate reasoning that since he wasn’t in office during past atrocities then it doesn’t have any bearing on the current situation. But you left out the fact that some of the people who were in positions of power when past atrocity occured are in his administration now.
Now you ty to back out of your statement that the US killed more Iraqis then Saddam. Now you run behind some other issue well ok lets start disproving the rest of your blind statements
Why do you continue to bring up past mistakes commited by the U.S? They are not relevant to this situation. Saddam is a murderous ditactor, should we not remove his oppressive regime because of the use of small pox through blankets against native americans.
Now onto Sanctions, you don;t want to forceably remove an opressive dictator, you don;t want to impose sanctions, what is your solution, bring out the ouiji board?
Also the US consumes the most amount of oil in the world (26%) that may explain why we imported the greatest percentage from IRAQ.
The rest of your information I am not aware of so I am unable to comment on it.
to scall144: What issues am I hiding behind? Everything in my last post is diresctly related to the killing of the Iraqi people and who is responsible. Q:If Saddam did kill more Iraqis than the u.s. where did he get the weapons to do so? A: the u.s. Like I said in my last post, it would be difficult to find out the xact numbers. But, why is Saddam a madman now and not during the 80’s when we supported him?
Should we go around the world and wage war on every country who has a dictator as a leader?
What do the founding fathers say about such foreign intervention?
Once again, isn’t it so ironic that we are supposedly “liberating” Iraq but doing everything to get rid of liberty here.
P.S. Invasions of other countries are not “mistakes”.