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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Berzerker
Oh geez, not this BS about Saddam invading Saudi Arabia again. Several months after Gulf War I, a Florida paper exposed the lie, yes, another lie from a Bush, that satellite photographs revealed Saddam's tanks had rolled into NE Saudi Arabia - the photos were bogus! They were used to convince the Saudis to let us "save" them and along with God only knows what bribes, helped do the trick.
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Actually, the Saudis paid us.  And the satellite photos didn't show the Iraqis in SA, they showed IRG Medina and Tawakalna and IRG Special Forces Division units in forward positions near the SA border, in position to move into SA if they so chose, and regular Iraqi Army units also moving forward. Those photos were accurate. What wasn't accurate is that at the time the photos were shown to the Saudis, the Iraqis were commencing a general repositioning of forces, and subsequent photos showed the Iraqis pulling back their IRG units and replacing them in the line primarily with second rate regular army units. We didn't "lie" to the Saudis (hell, they have their own photorecon capability in their airspace), we just didn't continuously update them regarding all new developments.
quote:
Use a little logic, Saddam didn't invade Kuwait until after meeting with the US ambassador and getting what in effect was a green light. Saddam was told the US had no treaty with Kuwait and had no desire to get involved in an existing dispute between the 2 countries (Kuwait may have been side-drilling into Iraqi territory - stealing oil).
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April Glaspie (who is nonetheless not very impressive) has been unfairly pilloried on this issue for years. Transcripts of the meeting with Saddam clearly showed her statement about the US having no position in the territorial dispute between Iraq and Kuwait was clearly made in the context of an upcoming Arab League meeting in which the issue was supposed to be mediated. Glaspie never gave a "green light" to invasion, and the Iraqi government never suggested that they had any such intent. The intel assessment at the time, by all agencies, was that Saddam was just saber rattling and trying to intimidate the Kuwaitis and make the rest of the nearby Arab League members nervous.
quote:
Hell, I'm shedding no tears over Saddam's predicament and I'm quite happy the Iraqi people are free of him, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow obliged to condone the lies and falsehoods told by the people running the US government. Just tell us the truth... |
The truth is it's about power projection. Just like all other foreign policy, but unlike a lot of countries, we have power and the capacity to project it. 
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HershOstropoler
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"We could take over all of Europe, if we wanted to"
But why would you want to? Apart from the north sea, there's little oil round here...
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:31
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quote:
I'm not a peacknik!
I support war in most circumstances |
 Hey Ben, another one for the sig.
Spencer - quote:
Sorry, it doesnt hold water. Iraq's arsenal of wmd (as well as his heavy combat units) were considerably reduced after GW1. The wmd he had left (or was preparing to make) were not enough to bluff the Iranians if they decided to re-take Basra. |
If that explanation doesn't hold water, how do you explain the apparent absence of WMD? The Iranians wouldn't know what he had, that was kind of the point of obfuscating - pretend you have them or at least leave neighbors with that impression. If you were legitimately worried about a neighbor, would you want them knowing you're darn near defenseless?
MtG - quote:
And the satellite photos didn't show the Iraqis in SA |
The photos allegedly showed Iraqi armor across the border, and that was what Bush and his cronies told us and the Saudis (I presume). I remember that was the message we were told in the lead up to the war.
quote:
Those photos were accurate. What wasn't accurate is that at the time the photos were shown to the Saudis, the Iraqis were commencing a general repositioning of forces, and subsequent photos showed the Iraqis pulling back their IRG units and replacing them in the line primarily with second rate regular army units. We didn't "lie" to the Saudis (hell, they have their own photorecon capability in their airspace), we just didn't continuously update them regarding all new developments. |
Maybe we're talking about different photos, I believe it was a Ft Lauderdale paper that exposed at least some of the photos had been doctored to show Iraqis in SA. Perhaps I heard the story wrong, but I'm very sure of this.
quote:
April Glaspie (who is nonetheless not very impressive) has been unfairly pilloried on this issue for years. Transcripts of the meeting with Saddam clearly showed her statement about the US having no position in the territorial dispute between Iraq and Kuwait was clearly made in the context of an upcoming Arab League meeting in which the issue was supposed to be mediated. Glaspie never gave a "green light" to invasion, and the Iraqi government never suggested that they had any such intent. The intel assessment at the time, by all agencies, was that Saddam was just saber rattling and trying to intimidate the Kuwaitis and make the rest of the nearby Arab League members nervous. |
I don't hold her accountable, she's just a bureaucrat who I assume was following orders. But when "Hitler revisited" is massing troops on a neighbor's border ~immediately after another war had ended, telling Saddam we won't get involved in his dispute with the Kuwaitis and that we have no treaty with them is, in my book, a green light. Call it incompetence if you want, but it's clear to me that if the US had told Saddam the truth then there wouldn't have been an invasion of Kuwait and a Gulf War. At the time, Christopher Hitchens portrayed that meeting as a "green light" and he based his conclusion, in part at least, on the Iraqi transcripts which may have differed from the US transcripts (both sides having reason to present the meeting differently obviously). Baker said he asked the Russians if they were going to pull on Saddam's leash and I have to ask why we didn't when we had the chance.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:31
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A word on the so-called "humanitarian" arguments for the war. Excluding those pathetic individuals who are using it because all their other arguments have collapsed, this one does deserve some attention.
Presumably, the argument is that the war is justified because the Iraquis are better off without Saddam, whatever the reasons the US had for invading the country. This excludes those people who are so pathetically naive as to believe that the US was acting for humanitarian reasons rather than some other agenda (it isn't clear what). Given the support of some of the very people who overthrew him to his 1980s exploits, this argument is extremely hollow, unless you believe that Donald Rumsfeld et al had some sort of "Road to Damascus" experience ten years ago.
There are several cogent counterarguments to this position.
1. Trusting your humanitarian intervention to people who have showed in the past that they don't give a **** about human rights is really stupid.
2. Iraq is not a viable democratic country so the best you could hope for is a "Saddam Lite" or a group that serves the same function. That is, unless you break the country up, which would be optimal from a democratic point of view, but would lead to massive instability. Turkey is not going to put up with an independent Kurdish state on its borders and the Saudis and Kuwaitis do not want an Iranian dominated Shia Republic next door (why do you think the latter supported Hussein in his war against Iran?).
3. The coalition is largely responsible for the humanitarian disaster in Iraq due to it's enforcement of useless sanctions. They can talk all they like about Iraq not complying with inspections, but Saddam was entirely justified in refusing inspections because they had been used to conduct illegal espionage. In fact, add to the sanctions the Halabjah massacre (which Berzerker was right about - it was an accidental gassing), the massacre of Kurds and Shias as the worst of Saddam's crimes and the US is complicit in all of them through its own acts or failures to act. So much for their record on human rights. IMHO the easiest and best thing to do would have been to drop the sanctions and keep the no fly zones intact.
4. If the US has an easy time of it in Iraq, that will give the Bush administration carte blanche to conduct aggressive wars against its enemies for whatever reasons they see fit. It also signals to other countries that they can do the same. In short, it undermines an already fragile consensus on the conducting of wars and replaces it with a Hobbesian state of nature. Hence, more violations of human rights may ensue.
5. The United States is pathetically useless at nation building, is hated by the majority of the people they are supposed to be helping, and is widely suspected by them of carrying a hidden agenda regarding the country. In short, it doesn't seem like it's going to work.
In essence, the response to the humanitarian argument is "that would be nice, but please start living in the real world."
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29-09-2003 00:28
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