From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Thu Feb 07 2002 - 00:34:11 MST
On 6 Feb 2002 at 4:54, L' Ermit wrote:
> [Hermit 1] Actually, the money is for external, not internal payments and is
> never "distributed" as money, so it can't be "distributed unfairly" or even
> spent "incorrectly". This idea betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the
> "Oil for Food" program and the swallowing of the idea that Saddam has
> "diverted funds" - which would imply that he is responsible for this
> process. This is just plain wrong. Refer
> [url]http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/[/url]. Citing resolution 986, "To finance
> the export to Iraq, in accordance with the procedures of the Committee
> established by resolution 661 (1990), of medicine, health supplies,
> foodstuffs, and materials and supplies for essential civilian needs, as
> referred to in paragraph 20 of resolution 687 (1991)..." and the
> distribution is certified by the "United Nations Inter-Agency Humanitarian
> Programme." Thus the distribution policy is determined by the UN Security
> Council, not by Iraq.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] But all Iraq has to do, and what they are doing, is to sell
> such items to neighboring countries and spend the cash on military pursuits.
> Plus they smuggle oil.
>
> [Hermit 2] Please read Resolution 661
> [url]http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/scrs/scr986.htm[/url] before you make an
> ass of yourself.
>
The Iraqis are doing what they are doing regardless of what the resolution says.
>
> [Hermit 2] Your allegation that "Iraq" is selling materials obtained under
> the "oil for food" plan, is ridiculous, as the aid is distributed directly
> by the UN and carefully monitored by the UN - at immense cost. If the Iraqi
> recipients are selling it to "neighboring countries" (where did you get that
> from?), I guess that is free enterprise is at work and they are selling it
> in order to buy items they consider more valuable - bottled water and
> medicines perhaps.
>
As carefully monitored as the Iraqi waepons program was? A country that is
determined to get around such things will find ways.
>
> [Hermit 2] Please note clause 18. Iraq remains sovereign. In terms of
> International law, Iraq is entitled to sell their oil to anyone prepared to
> buy it or transport it. The onus is on other nations not to buy it. But
> sanctions are easy to bust. As a by the way, the records show that the US
> bought a lot more South African steel under sanctions, when they were the
> largest buyers, than they did after the sanctions were lifted (when the
> prices went up). Of course, the cost of sanctions can still be seen in the
> South African economy. Iraq's problem is even more severe, they are not
> short of willing buyers, it is that their drilling and recovery equipment
> (which they cannot replace) is failing and their wells (the second largest
> proven reserves) are "freezing" and will eventually become useless, due to
> under utilization. So they can't even pump what they are entitled to sell.
> But every dollar sold "under the table" gives them a far better return than
> oil sold through the U.N. so I am sure they are doing their best to make
> such arrangements.
>
Letting the 'tu quoque' fallacy vis-a-vis SA aside (pointing fingers and saying-'you
did it, too!' does not relegate it to nonviolation), the reason they cannot replace
their oil infrastructure is that it is manufactured in the US. I do not mind them
modernizing their pumping infrastructure to the degree that it allows them to pump
enough oil to fill the quotas they have been given.
>
> [Hermit 1] What is desperately needed is the delivery of appropriate
> chemicals and equipment to get the water purification and sewage processing
> infrastructure working again (and as they are partially reliant on PEM
> technology, getting at least enough of the power infrastructure working to
> operate the pumps and processing equipment. The reasoning behind the denial
> of access is pure "slippery slope" taking to extremes. While there is a
> "possibility" that some of the needed supplies or equipment could be
> diverted to "dual-use" the probability is close to non-existent. Chemical
> weapons are not particularly effective at the best of times, and without a
> means to deliver them in vast quantities, any damage they do would be
> symbolic. Denying access to water purification and sewage treatment is
> causing vast number of deaths - no "slippery slope" about it, and impossible
> to transfer the responsibility to a third party - not even to such a
> convenient "evil" scapegoat as Saddam.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] Actually, chlorine is a manufacturing component of several
> chemical agents, and I'm quite sure that the Kurdish village that we
> received the pictures from (especially heartrending was the dead Kurdish
> mother cradling her dead newborn child) would heartily disagree, if the
> villagers were still alive (instead of actually, not symbolically, dead),
> that such weapons are ineffective and merely 'symbolic'.
>
> [Hermit 2] Anything that Iraq has done to the Kurds (who were and are
> terrorists) has been matched and outdone by our "valued allies" the Turks.
> Even more poignant, it is vastly exceeded by the proven efficiencies of
> American weapons against Iraqi civilians. Examine the demonstrated PoK
> (Probability of Kill) for the chemical weapons deployed. In one documented
> case, the attack on the unprotected town of Halabja in 1988, Iraq took two
> days of flights and the dropping of thousands of chemical and cluster bomb
> weapons by two squadrons - to kill 5,000 villagers out of 70,000. Had the
> villagers even used burkhas and wet towels to improvise shelter, far more
> could have saved themselves. Against this, a single flight of conventional
> bombers dropping HE, followed by incendiaries and then cluster bombing the
> survivors would have killed a lot more - and, as the US has demonstrated, a
> fuel-air explosion delivered by three multi-role ground-attack aircraft
> could have killed over 50% of the population in a single attack. Which makes
> the same point as I did, but more nastily. Chemical weapons are not
> efficient or cost effective - except as a threat to conventional forces, as
> the threat of chemical weapons is sufficient to force the defending forces
> to take precautions all the time, which greatly impedes movements and leads
> to combat stress as the defenders are constantly reminded of their potential
> vulnerability. It is worth noting that the attack was "tribal", and was
> prompted by suspicions that the residents had collaborated with Iranian
> forces who had just captured the area. Concentration camps might have been a
> more effective solution - and as Turkey and Iran have shown would probably
> have been more lethal and nobody would have complained.
>
All I can do when presented with this amazing combination of blame-the-dead-
victim viciousness, bad analogy (the few US fuel-air bombs used were dropped on
Al Quaeda caves and Taliban front lines, not villages filled with civilians) and tu
quoque fallacy is wonder where you have been keeping your head lately (at least
the logical part). And you seem to actually bemoan the fact that iraq, hobbled by
sanctions, was not able to kill Kurdish civilians MORE EFFICIENTLY! Sheesh!
>
> [Hermit 2] As to the claim of Chlorine as a precursor, Iraq has deployed
> three kinds of chemical weapons, neurotoxins, mustard gas and cyanide.
> Cyanide has been responsible for the vast majority of deaths. Chlorine is
> not a component of Cyanide weapons. Neurotoxins are not usually made from
> raw chlorine (although chlorine is a likely ingredient), are tricky to
> manufacture and trickier to store which might explain why despite their
> theoretical lethality under optimum conditions, they have been least used.
> Mustard gas, undoubtedly the least lethal, but cheapest, does require
> chlorine as a precursor, but as Germany and the UK demonstrated during WWI,
> its very low PoK is such that vast amounts of it have to be used to achieve
> even moderate kill rates. I just don't see this as a believable argument,
> especially as Iraq does not have the means of deploying chemical weapons
> effectively (much more difficult than building them).
>
Tell that to the Kurds after you read some of the URL's I furnished you in the other
long post. Walk up to them and say, "Hi, I'm Hermit, and I'm feeling sorry for Iraqi
children, so I'm gonna campaign for Saddam Hussein to be able to receive
chlorine to purify their water even though it can be used to make chemical
weapons just like the ones that killed 5000 people in a single one of your villages
in three minutes, becuase I don't think they are as effective as other ways to kill
you, and because there is only room in my heart for one set of children at a time"
I'd like to hear their answer.
>
> [Richard Ridge 1] 1). Lift the sanctions. The US has done deals with morally
> repugnant regimes before; I have little doubt that they are perfectly
> capable of doing so again.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] But this morally repugnant regime is actively pursuing the
> means to kill Americans and to conquer its neighbors. That's a bit
> different, security-wise, than turning a blind eye towards a regime that
> only seeks to subjugate its own people, although, that, too, is ethically
> disturbing.
>
> [Hermit 2] Your joke is in poor taste. According to the "U.S. Chemical and
> Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible
> Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", (Senate
> Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export
> Administration, reports of May 25, 1994 and October 7, 1994),
> [quote]From 1985, if not earlier, through 1989, a veritable witch's brew of
> biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers
> pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
> Amongst these materials, which often produce slow, agonizing deaths, were:
> Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
> Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
> Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal
> cord and heart.
> Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
> Clotsridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
> Clostridium tetani, highly toxigenic.
> Also, Escherichia Coli (E.Coli); genetic materials; human and bacterial DNA.
> …
> Dozens of other pathogenic biological agents were shipped to Iraq during the
> 1980s.
> ...
> These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable
> of reproduction.
> ...
> It was later learned, that these microorganisms exported by the United
> States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and
> removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program.
> …
> These exports continued to at least November 28, 1989 despite the fact that
> Iraq had been reported to be engaging in chemical warfare and possibly
> biological warfare against Iranians, Kurds, and Shiites since the early
> 80s.[/quote]
>
It was a stupid thing to do, based upon the miscalculation that the Iraqi leader was
not inhumane and indeed inhuman. I'm sure that it won't happen again.
>
> [Hermit 2] In 1990 the US said that Iraq was an important ally, a barrier
> against Iranian fundamentalism. Meantime Kuwait was stealing from Iraq.
> Saddam Hussein a small time tribal leader did what small time tribal leaders
> do when they are stolen from, having checked with Washington whether it was
> ok. Washington effectively said, "we don't care" and he went ahead and beat
> up Kuwait. American politicians might have seen this as a "threat to the
> world", but to military observers it was a joke. Saddam Hussein could never
> have successfully attacked Saudi Arabia. He had neither the men nor the
> material to do so.
>
This is incorrect; Saudi Arabia is a sparsely populated country with a small army
and a terrain that was eminently suited to the kind of massive and tank-led army
that Iraq had amassed. Bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia against iraq
with his 3000 mujahedin and was laughed off the stage. They came to the US
because there was no one else who could protect them, not even themselves.
>
> Saudi Arabia knew it, Israel knew it, Turkey knew it,
> Iran knew it, even he knew it. But the US political view, always in terms of
> "powers" rather than of "princes" meant that the US did not know it - his
> actions and intentions were misconstrued. Six months later, Iraq, one of the
> world's smaller nations, paid the price of this misunderstanding and was
> "knocked back to the stone-age" by the US, the world's largest. And that has
> had severe repercussions for the US in foreign relations. Since then the US
> has caused the death of over 1 million Iraqi and claims that Iraq is a
> threat to her neighbors persist. Such claims are nonsense.
>
While Saddam Hussein remains in power in Iraq and harbors and pursues his
aggrandizing ambitions throught WMD programs and the buildup of the republican
guards, Iraq remains a potential threat for the nations of the Arabian peninsula.
>
> [Hermit 2] Meanwhile, Iraq, and area larger than California is difficult to
> "prove clean", which is what the US appears to be demanding prior to
> allowing sanctions to be lifted.
>
He was transparently playing a shell game; signs of recent mass movement,
prompted by surveillance and possibly moles, were present in many of the places
that the UN inspection team looked. If there's nothing to hide, there's no reason
to play such a game. Saddam finally kicked the inspectors out when he figured
out that sooner or later he'd fuck up or they'd luck up.
>
> [Hermit 2] It may be instructive to contrast what the US is demanding of
> Iraq, still a sovereign nation, in terms of inspections, and the U.S. Senate
> implementation of the "Convention on the Prohibition of the Development,
> Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their
> Destruction" (Short title: Chemical Weapons Convention). The Senate act,
> Section 307, stipulates "the President may deny a request to inspect any
> facility in the United States in cases where the President determines that
> the inspection may pose a threat to the national security interests of the
> United States." Section 303 further states that "Any objection by the
> President to an individual serving as an inspector ... shall not be
> reviewable in any court." Both of these clauses echo repeated complaints
> from Iraq - which the US claims is invalid. I think that from Iraq's
> perspective the US is regarded as rogue - and that sanctions which are seen
> as emanating from a nation which has dropped more munitions on Iraq than it
> dropped on Germany and Japan combined during WWII, performed more damage to
> Iraq in terms of percentage of infrastructure destroyed than was achieved
> against Germany and Japan during WWII, and has killed far more Iraqis than
> Iraq has killed anywhere are not particularly worthy of respect. I'm not
> sure that Iraq is wrong.
>
Kuwait is a sovereign nation today because of the action that the coalition took; I
guess you find fault with that, too.
>
> [Hermit 1] According to the UN Inter-Agency Humanitarian Programme the
> sanctions imposed by the Security council has killed far more people (over 1
> million to date) than anything done by Saddam Hussein and the moral
> responsibility is ours, not theirs.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] I disagree, for the reasons that both Richard and I have amply
> provided. This is something that Saddam does to his own people because 1)
> it frees more money to pursue WMD's and military upgrades and 2) the
> resultant deaths can be blamed on the US, and the naïve, superficial and
> credulous will be taken in by such claims, especially when they dovetail
> with their own economic interests.
>
> [Hermit 2] Please support your assertions. I do not find this in the UN
> reports, nor in Jane's analysis, nor in the published NWC analyses all of
> which I follow.
>
The deprivation of one's own people is not listed along with numbers of tanks and
personnel carriers. And if the WMD's were listed in Jane's, then they wouldn't be
secret, now would they?
>
> [Hermit 1] It is my considered opinion that the sanctions will never cause
> his overthrow, and that recent actions taken to pursue other heads of state
> after they have left office will ensure that he will never willingly
> relinquish power without some quite exceptional guarantees of immunity. Then
> too, not only has the US dealt with - and is dealing with "morally repugnant
> regimes", it might well be argued that our actions in respect of Iraq and
> the Kurds have made us a "morally repugnant regime". Moral issues should not
> enter into the affairs of nations as morals are essentially locally defined
> and are not recognized in International law.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] Then let's morally unrepugnantize ourselves, by assisting the
> Kurds and Shiites in ridding the skin of Gaia of this crepuscular bastard,
> and remaining engaged in order to help guide and assist a post-Saddam Iraq
> towards a free, fair and responsible society. If the Kurdish and Shiite
> minorities were treated in an egalitarian fashion in Iraq, they would not
> itch so much for secession and self-rule there.
>
> [Hermit 2] You don't have the right to do that and besides it would not be
> sensible.
>
I don't care; Iraq had no right to invade Kuwait, and Saddam Hussein had no right
to attempt to assassinate ex-president Bush. The man is an outlaw, and his
nation is a rogue nation because it is run by a rogue. Let's give the Iraqi people a
break and rid them of him.
>
> Iraq is a sovereign nation, and the US claims to being offended by
> the attack on NY were that they were an attack on her sovereignty.
> Suggesting that the nations ignore the sovereignty of others is what got the
> world into the mess that formed the period 1850-1950 and even beyond. Or why
> we formed the UN. The age of gunboats is past. We live in an age with the
> potential at least to be reasonable. What you suggest is not reasonable.
>
I think that allowing him to continue to murder minorities while he misspends his
country's coffers in order to develop bigger and better ways of killing others is
unreasonable in the extreme.
>
> [Hermit 2] If as seems likely, the US will shortly withdraw from Saudi
> Arabia, (having already quietly removed all her strike-capable aircraft at
> the Kingdom's request and it being very unlikely that they will be allowed
> to return), it seems that we will be needing Turkey more than ever if we
> wish to retain any sort of strike capability in the area. Offending Turkey
> by siding with the Kurds, particularly just as the EU is about to determine
> the validity of Ocalan's death sentence (which may well trigger a further
> round of Kurdish terrorism) would not be sensible.
>
Giving the Kurds the part of their traditional homeland that is presently part of Iraq
might actually, by giving Kurds a place of their own to live (combined with a right
of return for all Kurds) might actually relieve some of the pressure in the short run;
in the long run, 30 million people cannot remain disenfranchised.
>
> [Hermit 2] Perhaps the reason I am having trouble conveying why these
> sanctions are so wrong to you, is that I think that you have no idea of the
> suffering caused by these sanctions, even less idea of how ingenuity
> explodes in the face of opposition or even of how the US has strengthened
> Saddam Hussein and allowed him to draw on his populations "patriotism" and
> their refusal to bow in the face of adversity. Imagining that Saddam is
> hated and that the US would be seen as a liberator were you to go to war
> with Iraq again is a triumph of rationalization over reason. To the average
> Iraqi, America is not just the devil, America is now the hated enemy. If the
> average Iraqi had the power to make your children die in exchange for
> theirs, I suspect they would. And those who identify with the Iraqi are
> reacting the same way.
>
This is exactly what you would have said of the Afghanis, and what you would've
heard from them, as long as Taliban agents were in earshot. The iraqi regime is
hated enough within iraq that members of Saddam Hussein's immediate family
(for instance, son Uday) have been assassinated by them (other relatives were
assassinated by HIM). His secret police is murderous, brutal and despised, and
every Iraqi knows what they'd better say when they are shown a microphone,
because most likely there is a secret police agent close enough to either hear
what you say, or confiscate it and hear it later.
>
> [Hermit 2] Our actions to now have been - and are - counter pragmatic.
>
You're right; pragmatism demands that we deal with the threat of this ravenous
imbecile directly by toppling him. We should stop fucking around with sanction
half-measures, and stop playing games with the bastard, just depose him, like we
should've done a decade ago.
>
> [Hermit 1] Requiring some other nation or nations to put their soldiers at
> risk and undoubtedly causing the deaths of more civilians.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] And how many of our civilians will be lost because of
> trepidatious hesitation? You made some of the same arguments concerning
> Afghanistan (remember the Rudyard Kipling poem you quoted concerning
> Afghanistan's plains, and your dire predictions that we'd end up like
> Britain and the USSR?), and were soundly proven wrong; others made them
> prior to the Gulf War with Iraq and were proven soundly wrong as well. If
> anything, toppling Saddam would be easier than toppling the Taliban.
>
> [Hermit 2] You are making very invalid assertions about Afghanistan. Far
> from doing what you predicted, and what I warned against, the US did exactly
> as I and countless others with military experience considered sensible. They
> performed a stand-off war. In my opinion they suffered a great deal less
> than I would have suggested, and in consequence achieved a great deal less
> than they should have. The cost for not being prepared to close with the
> enemy is yet to be paid. Remember that there should be 40,000 to 60,000
> killed or captured Taliban/Al Q'aida by even the most optimistic estimates
> prior to the war. Where are they?
>
A lot of them have escaped to Pakistan and Iran. Several thousand were killed,
and another thousand were captured, and many of the Taliban (which constituted
most of the afghan forces) are no longer a threat, having given allegiance to the
old bosses, and just as ready to give allegiance to the new ones (the Karzai
government and their tribal warlords that are allied with it). But we did have
troops on the ground, and they were exactly the troops I said should be there
(special forces), doing exactly the things I said they should be doing (forming
coalitions, formulating war plans, painting targets with lasers for radar strikes).
>
> [Hermit 2] Afghanistan is probably more dangerous than ever
>
It certainly is for Al Quaeda members.
>
>, we do not
> control the ground (and are not attempting to)
>
We are leaving that to the Afghans, even though they are asking us for forces to
do so, and I believe that we should provide them. Most likely, our European allies
will.
>
> as people with far more
> military sense than you appear to have demonstrated to date, agree exactly
> with my estimation. It is still a highly lethal environment for US troops.
> At this time we are still only conducting very limited area security
> operations and that at great risk and to little effect.
>
We're going everywhere we think that Al Quaeda might be found; Baghram, Tora
Bora, Khost, the list goes on.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] So far, Afghanistan is proceesing exactly as intended, with the
> exception that we don't have everyone we want in custody - yet. I sincerely
> believe that the dancing in the streets that was observed in Afghanistan
> would be repeated in Iraq, once its citizens were freed from the oppressive
> yoke of that two-bit satrap despot. As long as the international community
> does it right; i.e. remains involved and engaged in the rehabilitation of
> Iraq, I do not see them backsliding into fanaticism, any more than I see
> Iran invading with the coalition troops we would place on the ground in Iraq
> to assist Kurdish and Shiite forces (they certainly didn't dare to do so in
> Afghanistan,
> and there is not much love lost between Iran and their neighbors on EITHER
> side).
>
> [Hermit 2] Let me remind you of what we have accomplished, I was going to
> write, "what we have not accomplished", but recognized that things have
> changed. Perhaps worth starting with Abdul Haq's advice to the US before his
> death that bombing of Afghanistan was unnecessary and a grave mistake. He
> believed that Taliban control could be broken, where needed, by financing
> tribal uprisings - the standard form of Afghan warfare - without foreign
> intervention. Otherwise, he warned, the Northern Alliance would take over
> and bring in the Russians. He pleaded with Washington for restraint, but to
> no avail. Haq was captured by Taliban during a bungled CIA operation and
> hanged. But Haq was right. While the US bombed 160,000 plus Afghans into
> refugee camps, killed some 2,000 civilians, far fewer Taliban and almost no
> Al Q'aida members, and then hunted for bin Laden, the Bush Administration
> was apparently too preoccupied to notice that its new best friend, Russia,
> had broken its agreement to wait for formation of a pro-US, pro-Pakistani
> regime, and seized half of Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance, armed and
> funded by Russia, directed by the Afghan Communist Party, and under the
> overall command of the Chief of the Russian General Staff, Marshall Viktor
> Kvashnin, deputy KGB director Viktor Komogorov, and a cadre of Russian
> advisors, seized Kabul and all of northern Afghanistan, likely with the aid
> of troops from Uzbekistan and/or Iran, just as he outfoxed the Americans in
> 1999 in a similar coup de main in Kosovo. No wonder they were dancing in the
> streets! I was tempted to laugh myself. The much ballyhooed Afghan "unity"
> conference in Germany produced a sham "coalition" government run by the
> Northern Alliance. The 87-year old deposed Afghan King, Zahir Shah, widely
> blamed for allowing the communists to infiltrate Afghanistan in the 1970's,
> was invited back as a figurehead monarch. The very next day, feuding broke
> among Alliance members. Old communist stalwart Rashid Dostam, who had just
> finished massacring hundreds of Taliban prisoners with American and British
> help, threatened war if his Uzbeks did not get more spoils. The Alliance's
> figurehead president, Prof. Rabbani, a respected Islamic scholar, was shoved
> aside by young communists. One of CIA's Pushtun "assets", Hamid Karzai, who
> represents no one but himself, was named prime minister. There was no other
> real Pushtun representation, though they comprise half the population. Of
> thirty cabinet seats, two thirds went to Northern Alliance Tajiks, notably
> the power ministries: defense, interior, and foreign affairs. Two women were
> added for window dressing to please the west.
> [Hermit 2] In short, we now have a communist-dominated regime, ruled by a
> king, whose strings are pulled by Moscow and with 40% of the country
> unrepresented. Quite a bizarre creation. Especially when we consider that
> this was only possible courtesy of current American ineptitude and
> ignorance. IMO it will take quite a while for the full fruits of this
> exercise to become visible. Right now, it is visibly a severe geopolitical
> defeat for American ambitions to use Afghanistan as a gateway to Central
> Asian oil and gas, and while the "evil" Taliban is gone, the Communists are
> in power in Kabul, the south of Afghanistan is in chaos, Pakistan is
> isolated and unloved by all, Washington has spent $10 billion to date (and a
> lot more to come if we keep our word) - and Mssrs Vladimir Putin and Ariel
> Sharon are happily killing their own "terrorists". How much of this helps to
> fight "evil", prevent further attacks on the US, avenge 911, or indeed to
> achieve any other stated US aim is yet to be explained.
>
I answered this extended screed in your other long post, and do not understand
why you felt compelled to plaigarize yourself with it here.
>
> [Hermit 1] Agreed. There are perhaps other options available however, if the
> International community were able to resolve its own problems*. Not the
> least of which is working on how to restore a country which we have
> deliberately destabilized and "sent back to the stone age", when we know
> that progress, industrialization and a strong middle class go hand in hand;
> and that stone-age cultures result in stone-age brutality.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] Nope, just take him out and Marshall Plan the place. I believe
> that such action could earn us the same gratitude with which we are graced
> from Japan and Western Europe, and which even now is growing in Afghanistan.
>
> [Hermit 2] We have yet to understand what has happened in Afghanistan. I
> cannot comprehend how you can advocate taking out the evil president of
> Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and yet be upset when he returns the compliment to the
> US. Do you have two standards here perhaps?
>
Nope; I'm not for truckbombing him; I'm for toppling the bastard.
>
> As for being welcome in Iraq, I
> would find it difficult to welcome somebody whose actions killed my
> children. I am guessing that there are perhaps a few million Iraqis who
> would prefer to welcome Americans with bullets than with gratitude. I am not
> sure about the sanity of a mind that could think that anyone would think
> otherwise. "I love the Americans, they killed my child to rid me of an evil
> oppressor"? An "evil oppressor" that now has more support than when the
> sanctions began... courtesy of sanctions that gave Iraq a visible enemy on
> whom to blame all their travails, and fosters the growth of a religion that,
> like most religions, explains that no matter how fucked-up the world may
> look, that everything will be alright in the next world as long as you kill
> the people who can do this kind of thing first.
>
If the Iraqi people are stupid enough to blame the deaths of their children not on
the government that starves them to pamper its military and build palaces for its
despotic tyrant who does not endeavor to cooperate with inspectors for their
benefit, but on the government that opposed their demented leader's military
adventurism which got them in trouble in the first place, they should be
exceedingly easy to kill. I don't think they're that stupid, but then again, I don't
think that they're stupid enough to admit any different when the secret police
might be listening, either.
>
> [Hermit 1] This almost certainly means working with Saddam Hussein and in
> the long term, almost certainly having to provide him and his near
> associates with guarantees of immunity. Personally, I would advocate that
> this route be explored. Of course, having demonized Saddam Hussein for over
> a decade, this might seem a little less than likely. I find it difficult to
> conceive of either of the two Bs having the imagination, or their citizens
> providing much in the way of support. Strange in a way, since we have had
> the benefits of Niccolo Machiavelli's thinking on Princes and Powers for
> over 500 years (but I doubt that he is Blair's favorite author, and we know
> that Bush is not much of a reader).
>
> [Joe Dees 2] Our history has shown us that if you deal with the devil you
> risk getting singed. I say that we de-demonize Iraq by excising the demons
> in charge there.
>
> [Hermit 2] The only things that we learn from history are that America is no
> exception to the general rule that we don't, and that people playing the
> Devil, seldom see themselves in that role.
>
We were in the wrong in Vietnam, but that fault does not generalize into this
situation. That sort of wistful, reminiscing guilt-mongering will no longer work in a
post WTC (which is a post-Vietnam-complex) world.
>
> [Hermit 1] I suspect that while an international body with appropriate
> technological and financial capability, together with effective teeth, could
> transform the world in under 40 years, I don't see the vision or the
> political will to form such a body coming from existing politicians or their
> UTic populations.
>
> [Joe Dees 2] When a nation has decided that you are THEM and singlemindedly
> endeavors to terrorize your citizens and assassinate your leaders, simply
> maintaining a pollyannish pair of rose-colored glasses on one's foreign
> relations nose will not deter the horrendous spectacles almost surely to
> follow.
>
> [Hermit 2] Notes that pragmatism and rose-colored spectacles are
> diametrically opposed. Joe, when you terrorize a people, others who identify
> with them may reciprocate.
>
That's why much of the world is aiding us against the Al Quaeda.
>
> I suggest that much of the world recognizes US
> action in Iraq as terrorism.
>
Much of the Islamic worrld would consider Bush farting during a swim in the
Atlantic ocean as terrorizing the fish.
>
> When you adopt a policy of assassination as
> policy, it tends to be reciprocated too.
>
Fuck reciprocation; he's already tried the assassination thing! I'm talking about a
military toppling of his regime.
>
> And I suggest that much of the
> world recognizes that the US holds such a policy. On these scores, the US
> appears to have blood on its hands (and in consequence, we appear to have a
> convenient non-disposable target on our back).
>
Name the world leader we have assassinated in the last thirty years.
>
> Perhaps more respect for law
> and sovereignty would also be reciprocated, perhaps it is too late for that.
> I am sure that a more pragmatic approach, dealing with the issues we
> [i]know[/i] cause hatred, like income disparity, injustice and intolerance,
> all issues where we could make a difference, seems more likely to yield
> beneficial results for ourselves, than approaches which exacerbate the
> problems of the world.
>
I am quite certain that it would be a better world for a whole bunch of Iraqis as well
as a bunch of other people if Saddam were subtracted from it, or at least from his
position in it.
>
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