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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:31
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There were many motivations to go to Iraq. None would have been enough to go to war by itself, but the combination of them were a good incentive:
- Oil. More precisely: the ability to get a strong oil producer (a "swing producer" who can supply oil when demand rises drastically) that is not Saudi Arabia. The Sauds have funded terrorism bigtime and will continue to do so until they sufeer from a significant pressure from washington. However, until GulfWar2, the US were tied because they needed Saudi oil; and Saddam would have probably been a very insensitive supplier.
To establish a puppet regime in Iraq allowed not to be dependent on the Saudis anymore, and to actually take real steps in the war on terrorism by acting against the House of Saud.
- With several 'rogue countries' (read: countries that do not follow the rules of the New World Order as they have been defined by the US and their friends) beginning to near completion of their WMD programmes, the US had to show its muscle. Since North Korea is already too dangerous to attack, Saddam was the target of choice.
He was the easiest to attack: his army was weakened by the previous war and 12 years of embargo; his population would love to see him gone; his WMD program was stalled for long; and he was already pictured as the big villain in the American public opinion; his country is mostly desert, and it is much easier to do an airborne assault on such terrain than on Iranian mountains. I don't know if the top US officials at the time knew how much the military leaders would suck, but that may enter the equation too.
- All the ruckus about Iraq begun shortly before midterm elections, at a time when Americans wondered why Bin Laden hadn't been founded yet. For a long time, the threat to Iraq (and then the actual war) was a Wag the Dog operation. I personally expect them to "discover" damning evidence of Saddam's HorribleHorribleOMGOMG WMD during the campaign.
- I think the Neoconservative belief of changing the Middle East so that it becomes democratic had something to do with it too. Iraq was weak, and its atrocious regime wouldn't be missed. Besides, Iraq has the potential of being rich, with its sea of oil and with a possibly strong agriculture. Iraq may have been dreamt as the playground of the neoconservative democracy.
- It also was a power play. The New World Order is being discussed more and more, the USA are losing of their relative strength to emerging powers like the EU or China. Doing this war helped showing who's the boss. It went unexpectedly badly on the diplomatic side, when France, Germany, Russia and China kept being opposed. These countries were expected to follow Washington's lead in the end (such expectations were held for every country on Earth). The mere 40ish membership of the "coalition of the willing" shows that DJ Bush Jr. can't have everybody dance on his music anymore. Such diplomatic failure was unexpected.
- Saddam's WMD may possibly have been part of the reasons. US intelligence in Iraq seems to have sucked very much, and we should not rule out the possibility that the White House actually believed Saddam was developing WMDs seriously, and had to be taken out before being too dangerous to topple.
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Dis
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Feb 2000
time: 21:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
There were many motivations to go to Iraq. None would have been enough to go to war by itself, but the combination of them were a good incentive:
- Oil. More precisely: the ability to get a strong oil producer (a "swing producer" who can supply oil when demand rises drastically) that is not Saudi Arabia. The Sauds have funded terrorism bigtime and will continue to do so until they sufeer from a significant pressure from washington. However, until GulfWar2, the US were tied because they needed Saudi oil; and Saddam would have probably been a very insensitive supplier.
To establish a puppet regime in Iraq allowed not to be dependent on the Saudis anymore, and to actually take real steps in the war on terrorism by acting against the House of Saud.
- With several 'rogue countries' (read: countries that do not follow the rules of the New World Order as they have been defined by the US and their friends) beginning to near completion of their WMD programmes, the US had to show its muscle. Since North Korea is already too dangerous to attack, Saddam was the target of choice.
He was the easiest to attack: his army was weakened by the previous war and 12 years of embargo; his population would love to see him gone; his WMD program was stalled for long; and he was already pictured as the big villain in the American public opinion; his country is mostly desert, and it is much easier to do an airborne assault on such terrain than on Iranian mountains. I don't know if the top US officials at the time knew how much the military leaders would suck, but that may enter the equation too.
- All the ruckus about Iraq begun shortly before midterm elections, at a time when Americans wondered why Bin Laden hadn't been founded yet. For a long time, the threat to Iraq (and then the actual war) was a Wag the Dog operation. I personally expect them to "discover" damning evidence of Saddam's HorribleHorribleOMGOMG WMD during the campaign.
- I think the Neoconservative belief of changing the Middle East so that it becomes democratic had something to do with it too. Iraq was weak, and its atrocious regime wouldn't be missed. Besides, Iraq has the potential of being rich, with its sea of oil and with a possibly strong agriculture. Iraq may have been dreamt as the playground of the neoconservative democracy.
- It also was a power play. The New World Order is being discussed more and more, the USA are losing of their relative strength to emerging powers like the EU or China. Doing this war helped showing who's the boss. It went unexpectedly badly on the diplomatic side, when France, Germany, Russia and China kept being opposed. These countries were expected to follow Washington's lead in the end (such expectations were held for every country on Earth). The mere 40ish membership of the "coalition of the willing" shows that DJ Bush Jr. can't have everybody dance on his music anymore. Such diplomatic failure was unexpected.
- Saddam's WMD may possibly have been part of the reasons. US intelligence in Iraq seems to have sucked very much, and we should not rule out the possibility that the White House actually believed Saddam was developing WMDs seriously, and had to be taken out before being too dangerous to topple. |
good post. That about sums it up. It was a combination of all those reasons.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
quote:
All the ruckus about Iraq begun shortly before midterm elections, at a time when Americans wondered why Bin Laden hadn't been founded yet. For a long time, the threat to Iraq (and then the actual war) was a Wag the Dog operation. I personally expect them to "discover" damning evidence of Saddam's HorribleHorribleOMGOMG WMD during the campaign. |
Get rid of this paragraph and you have a pretty insightful post there, Spiff. |
I think this paragraph ha a lot of truth to it, though not for the reasons stated. What was the main news topic of last summer? Enron, and co, and Bush's own malfeasance in Harken, etc. (of which, despite Ari Flescher's assurances, the Prez was never cleared). It also ut the Democrats on the defensive about defense and allowed the Republicans to pick up a few key Senate positions.
Course, if that was all there was to it, they could have simply let it slide after the inspectors were in. I expect this had more to do with the timing than the motives, since they had been planning on going to war with Iraq since before the Prez was appointed.
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Jack_www
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quote:
Originally posted by carnide_
CNN - Casualties
Is this the way to win the global war on terrorism?
Can someone explain to me the * REAL * reasons to attack Iraq? Terrorism was not one of them, for sure.
Why was Iraq attacked? Afghanistan was a real target for the war on terror, but Iraq?
Because WMD? What WMD? |
I remember well that the main reason was the WMD. It appears now that there was no WMDs, but that they had some short of program going, I am not sure if they could rebuild any of their WMD they had before the first gulf war or not. It also appears that Saddam's own people may have trick him into thinking he had WMD's or he wanted to pretend he had them and apear as if he was more then he was.
What I think happened was that Sadam did not have any WMDs. THat he try and did trick the CIA and other intelligence agencies that he had WMDs and that he had the millitary force to defend his country agaisnt the US, and that he could call their bluff. But Bush was not bluffing this time, and Sadam over estimated the strength of his own armed forces.
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Jack_www
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ANd 390 dead for a conflict is very, very low. Just compare this figure with the thousands to millions that dies in past wars the US has fought.
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Jack_www
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quote:
Originally posted by Dissident
1 person is too many |
Sadly this unrealistic. When ever US armed forces go they will suffer deaths, what ever the cause because of the dangers that go with the job. They only way to aviod deaths is to use robots, but I dont think they have the technology to do that yet.
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st_swithin
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10069
Nov 2002
time: 05:31
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Maybe it was the site of the original 01 and the humans really are bent on destroying the machines.
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Tripledoc
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I can't believe all the crap. The war was about MONEY. All wars are about money, more precisely the kind of money used in international trade, that is reserve currency.
Now, Saddam had decided in the Year of the Lord 2000, to shift his oil revenues from Dollars to Euros. So what is the problem? Well the problem is that every little country on this God forsaken Earth pays for their oil in Dollars. That is the way it is because that was how it was decided it should be. That means that every measly little nation is willing to accept large quantitites of otherwise totally useless Dollars in exchange for their goods exported to the US, beacuse they need Dollars to buy oil. Since Saddam decided, out of spite, that he was not going to play that particular game anymore, he shifted to Euros. What that meant that suddenly the US Dollar lost a lot of its credibility, since now it was not neccesary to hold Dollars in order to buy oil. Now, if all oil-producing countries decided to follow suit, then the Dollar would be absolutely useless. Therefore the invasion was a message which basicly said that if people will not accept the Dollars as the accepted international form of payment in oil, well then they will simply be invaded. Consider this. If in fact all oil was shifted to Euro payment the European Union could do the same as the federal bank. Just kept on expanding the money supply and laugh all the way to the bank. The Euro would never decline no matter the supply - no the price in oil would rise. See.
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19-10-2003 17:15
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