ya no one wants to talk about saddam. people make it sound like we invaded iraq like it was canada or something. do people actually know what used to happen in iraq before all this?
I would think the media of the world view him just as you state. In the case of the populace, I would say you grossly exagerate the world's view of him. Sure, there is a very loud and well publicized ignorant hatred of him that is fed by a biased portrayal of current events. I just don't think it can be factually stated that the world judges him as negatively as you assume. The election of more right-leaning governments in Europe seem to offer evidence that maybe the populations of these country aren't as monolithic as you would think. I could see the opposite view from many people in the middle east as well. The countries that should no doubt have a very high view of President Bush are more numerous than the countries who should not. I would remind you that the "pre-emptive war" followed many violations of the peace agreement signed by the former regime after the previous war in 1991. Also, why is that our country get the lame "inocent civilians died" nonsense when not one other country spends nearly as much in dollars and serviceman blood just to prevent such innocent death? Maybe the war was unneccessary. General Powell has proven himself a capable leader and he seemed to think so: however, it is a fact that the war was not pre-emptive. Bush's incompetence kept him from being a war hero, but he is in no way a criminal of any sort!
Did they ever find anything that David Koresh did that was illegal? I was under the impression that all of the FBI's and ATF's reasons for going in were false, and some of them were blatant lies. We weren't talking about domestic criminals, but I'd throw Janet Reno into my list of tyrants guilty of crimes against humanity.
El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala would be much better off if they had been able to seek their path democratically rather than have the U.S. prop up right wing regimes that tortured, raped, slaughtered thousands of civilians over decades. Specifically regarding El Salvador- there are atrocities on all sides any time there is military conflict, but that doesn't make all sides morally equal. Equating the behavior of the Salvadoran military and right wing death squads with that of the left wing insurgents is preposterous.
Many innocent lives were being lost before the US invaded as well. Let's not forget that. I think people have a vision of Iraq as some kind of tropicval paradise before the US invaded. Saddam killed and tortured innocents to keep "order" in the country. The US invasion ended up giving freedoms to people they never had. With that freedom they decided to start a civil war. Maybe they were given freedom to fast, maybe this is just how a true democract starts. I don't know. But when most of the deaths are Iraqi on Iraqi, kind of hard to blame George W.
Well Duh! Everyone knows the Garden of Eden was thought to be in Iraq. Its the land of milk and honey. All was perfect before Bush intervened and killed off all the virgins that are suppose to be in heaven. As far as El Salvador and other South American countries, those people actually want something better in their lives. The last two men left in the middle east would still try to kill each other to get power.
Things done in the name of our country... at the request of the President of the United States of America and his advisers... http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/
If we had shown moral superiority then maybe you could make an argument that we were better than Saddam. However we ended up torturing them anyways. Instead what they were left with is 100s of thousands of people dead and crumbling infrastructure.
The law forbids me to express in public what punishment Bush deserves for what he did in America's name.
Some Andrew Sullivan passages on the topic... all from http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/... I couldn't agree more.
What the hell is wrong with 50% of the people participating in this poll? Did you not know that people have been killed by torture in your name? Did you not know that the President of the United States of America, one George W. Bush, authorized techniques that led directly to deaths of people in the custody of the United States of America? Did you not know that this administration has lied repeatedly about their involvement in torture? Did you not know that American soldiers are now in prison because they were conveniently scapegoated by the politicians who want you to think they look after the troops? Or do you just not care? Or perhaps it is too uncomfortable to face the fact that the United States of America, at the behest of the President, tortures and kills people using techniques borrowed from Communist China and Nazi Germany? Or maybe you're still hoping to run into W. somewhere and have a beer with him? Good Lord!
Bush didn't do anything to stop the deaths of innocent folks in Iraq. The genocidal village wipes were done long before Bush was in office. At that time Saddam was protected from retribution by the U.S. So please don't act like it was a great humanitarian undertaking. It wasn't.
It is really sad that people try to make one guy look less despicable by bringing up one that is even worse. Saddam sucked and he would be considered a criminal, no doubt....what does that have to do with Bush being considered a War criminal? Answer: Nothing. DD
I would have responded sooner, but I had to finish laughing first. You really think that they would have chosen their path democratically? REALLY? Wow...just wow. They would have been taken over by the communists in a bloody coup. We all saw how well that worked out for the citizenry in the USSR.
