No it doesn't strain my brain, apparently you were the one with the brain cramp. You said Soviet Union in the present tense, so I thought it was pretty funny, that you backed into Reagan mode trying to scare the country with the Soviet Union. BTW, what is the only country that has ever use an atomic or nuclear weapon in actual combat?
I'm sorry, but I also had to say this, It is funny that you would mention the Soviet Union actually, a country that we know had nuclear weapons actually pointed at us. Maybe the reason we never took action against them is because we knew we would have a real challenge on our hands. Instead of bullying countries like Iraq, that we don't know what they have and we haven't been presented with evidence linking them to Al Queda.
Based on our support for Israel, the US was actually thrown off of the UN Human Rights commission and walked out of the Human rights conference in South Africa. So most of the world doesn't feel that we are a great example of human rights to others.
FD Khan, I think the Human Rights commission is a joke. And for what it's worth, Israel doesn't oppress it's own citizens, whether they are Jewish or Arab. You can't say the same for many other Muslims coutries (which aren't democratic, which is my real point). Yes, it's a pre-emptive war. But it's not a war of conquest. The point is to get them to disarm, which is what they were supposed to do after their invasion of Kuwait failed. I'm not saying anything really controversial here. Democracy>Autocracy. Very simple.
You mean it's hard to attack countries with nuclear weapons? Wow! Thanks for the relevation. The REAL lesson is not that the US "doesn't want a challenge." The real leasson is that the world community should NOT let autocracies obtain these weapons, because then they will have protection and safety as they brutalize their neighbors and own people. As far as the Soviet Union, I wasn't going into Reagan- mode. It was just an example. I could have mentioned Nazi Germany (imagine what they would have been like with nuclear weapons), but they didn't have them back then.
I'm not saying we don't won't a challenge, we will accept a challenge win neccessary as in WWII. But the key word is neccessary.
The problem is that Israel is an Occupier of territory and over a people, the Palestinians, that have no rights and are treated as garbage because they are not Jewish. That is apartheid, not a human rights action. I think it is great that Israel has democratically elected officials, but like Iran which has a democratically elected president, its a theocracy in which religion interferes with everything. I feel those governments though are a blessing compared to the tyrranical dictatorships in that region. I think Israel is a strong nation that has many positives. But its illegal occupation, settlements and expansionism is hurting its economy and livelihood. I think its quite obvious that we are after oil, which means we wish to have a conquest of sorts.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1786643 Don't believe peace signs: It's not `blood for oil' By KEN ADELMAN Placards with "No blood for oil" adorn anti-war protests across Europe. That slogan gained additional respectability over the weekend, when large protests displayed the point largely. It's a vile accusation that President Bush would sacrifice young American servicemen and women for cheap oil, but one that needs to be answered. Were it true, the United States could get Iraqi oil most easily by merely scrapping the sanctions the United Nations imposed on Iraq a dozen years ago. This is what the Iraqi ambassador at the United Nations advocated in Friday's remarks to the foreign ministers assembled. Lifting these U.N. sanctions would free up all Iraqi oil, much more quickly and easily than war. That's in fact precisely why the French appease Saddam Hussein. They -- the French anti-war crowd, not the American liberation folks -- just want the oil. Those in the so-called anti-war crowd seem to care little about Iraqi suffering or Saddam's hell-bent drive for weapons of mass destruction. It's remarkable how Iraq's huge oil reserves -- the second-largest in the world -- prove two key points. First, just how desperately Saddam clings to his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. His refusal to scrap them 12 years ago, as he pledged, cost Iraq more than $100 billion in lost oil revenue, perhaps as much as $200 billion. That's a lot to forgo for a WMD arsenal. But it's WMD that Saddam values most. No price his people pay is too high for his personal ambitions. Second, Iraq's having gobs of oil shows how principled America and England are. For unlike the French and Russians, our leaders -- both Republican and Democratic, Labour and Conservative -- have willingly sacrificed acquiring cheaper oil to force Saddam's scrapping his WMD arsenal. We had hope this would be done through U.N. sanctions and inspection teams. It was a nice try, but that effort obviously hasn't worked. So force must now be used. One last point on "blood for oil." Iraq's having substantial reserves -- and the whole Middle East holding much of the world's oil supply -- is a legitimate factor in our concerns in the region. Even the recent Noble Peace Prize winner, President Jimmy Carter, understood the importance of oil to the development world when president. In 1979, after the Soviets brutally invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter asserted the Carter Doctrine, which offered U.S. protection of Persian Gulf states precisely because of their abundant oil. It was during the Persian Gulf War -- a dozen years ago -- what we first saw the "blood for oil" placard hoisted at "peace" rallies. The inanity was answered nicely by the pre-eminent oil expert, Daniel Yergin, who wrote in The New York Times: "The focus even then (during the 1991 Gulf War) was not so much on access to oil as on the ability of a Greater Iraq to transmutate oil into economic, political and military power -- especially weapons of mass destruction." Since then, new oil stocks, including those from Russia, have reduced the world's reliance on Iraq, and somewhat on the Gulf states. Moreover, Iraqi oil is not just there for the grabbing after liberation. Iraqi oil fields have become as dilapidated as has Iraq under Saddam. The successor government will need huge resources to modernize and expand its oil equipment for exploitation. To turn the protesters on their head: President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair don't act on the basis of "blood for oil." It's Saddam who's been on a clear path of "oil for blood." That now must end.
Actually Max they may be. France AND Germany have longstanding relationships with Iraq's current regime and have had contracts in place to extract oil.
that's kinda what i was getting too...the relatioship between oil incentive and willingness or reluctance to take action against saddam is more closely tied to france and germany than it is to the US. the contracts are already in place. france and germany are just maintaining them.
if france n germany is really after the oil there is a different , is that ameriacan after the oil with war n blood, the france n germany aint!
huh? when saddam uses nerve gas on his own people, as he did once before, whose hands is the blood on? when saddam kills political prisoners, whose hands is the blood on?
Since we're talking about oil and mtivations. Especially interesting is Cheney's lobbying to end the sanctions agsinst Iraw before Bush chose him to be vp. ************************************* ************************************* The Bottom Line on Iraq: It's the Bottom Line By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet February 19, 2003 Boys, boys, you're all right. Sure, it's Daddy, oil and imperialism, not to mention a messianic sense of righteous purpose, a deep-seated contempt for the peace movement and, to be fair, the irrefutable fact that the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein. But there's also an overarching mentality feeding the administration's collective delusions, and it can be found by looking to corporate America's bottom line. The dots leading from Wall Street to the West Wing situation room are the ones that need connecting. There's money to be made in post-war Iraq, and the sooner we get the pesky war over with, the sooner we (by which I mean George Bush's corporate cronies) can start making it. The nugget of truth that former Bush economic guru Lawrence Lindsey let slip last fall shortly before he was shoved out the oval office door says it all. Momentarily forgetting that he was talking to the press and not his buddies in the White House, he admitted: "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy." To hell with worldwide protests, an unsupportive Security Council, a diplomatically dubious Hans Blix, an Osama giddy at the prospect of a united Arab world and a panicked populace grasping at the very slender reed of duct tape and Saran Wrap to protect itself from the inevitable terrorist blow-back – the business of America is still business. No one in the administration embodies this bottom line mentality more than Dick Cheney. The vice president is one of those ideological purists who never let little things like logic, morality, or mass murder interfere with the single-minded pursuit of profits. His on-again, off-again relationship with the Butcher of Baghdad is a textbook example of what modern moralists condemn as "situational ethics," an extremely convenient code that allows you to do what you want when you want and still feel good about it in the morning. In the Cheney White House (let's call it what it is), anything that can be rationalized is right. The two were clearly on the outs back during the Gulf War, when Cheney was Secretary of Defense, and the first President Bush dubbed Saddam "Hitler revisited." Then Cheney moved to the private sector and suddenly things between him and Saddam warmed up considerably. With Cheney in the CEO's seat, Halliburton helped Iraq reconstruct its war-torn oil industry with $73 million worth of equipment and services – becoming Baghdad's biggest such supplier. Kinda nice how that worked out for the vice-president, really: Oversee the destruction of an industry that you then profit from by rebuilding. When, during the 2000 campaign, Cheney was asked about his company's Iraqi escapades, he flat out denied them. But the truth remains: When it came to making a buck, Cheney apparently had no qualms about doing business with "Hitler revisited." And make no mistake, this wasn't a case of hard-nosed realpolitik – the rationale for Rummy's cuddly overtures to Saddam back in '83 despite his almost daily habit of gassing Iranians. That, we were told, was all about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." No, Cheney's company chose to do business with Saddam after the rape of Kuwait. After Scuds had been fired at Tel Aviv and Riyadh. After American soldiers had been sent home from Desert Storm in body bags. And in 2000, just months before pocketing his $34 million Halliburton retirement package and joining the GOP ticket, Cheney was lobbying for an end to U.N. sanctions against Saddam. Of course, American businessmen are nothing if not flexible. So his former cronies at Halliburton are now at the head of the line of companies expected to reap the estimated $2 billion it will take to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure following Saddam's ouster. This burn-and-build approach to business guarantees that there will be a market for Halliburton's services as long as it has a friend in high places to periodically carpet bomb a country for it. In the meantime, Halliburton, among many other Pentagon contracts, has a lucrative 10-year deal to provide food services to the Army that comes with no lid on potential costs. Lenin once scoffed that "a capitalist would sell rope to his own hangman." And, while the man got more than a few things wrong, he's been proven right on this one time and time again: From Hewlett-Packard and Bechtel helping arm Saddam back in the 80s, to the good folks at Boeing, Hughes Electronics, Lockheed Martin and Loral Space whose corporate greed helped China steal rocket and missile secrets – and point a few dozen long-range nukes our way. Clearly, our national interest runs a distant second when pitted against the rapacious desires of special interests and the politicians they buy with massive campaign contributions. Oil and gas companies donated $26.7 million to Bush and his fellow Republicans during the 2000 election and another $18 million in 2002. So does it really come as any surprise that Cheney's staff held secret meetings in October with executives from Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips – and yes, Halliburton – to discuss who would get what in a post-Saddam Iraq? As they say, to the victors – and the big buck donors – go the sp-oil-s. Here's my bottom line: At a time of war, at what point does subverting our national security in the name of profitability turn from ugly business into high treason? cheney & Iraq
saddam is a tyrant, fatcow...not sure if you grasp that. but he's a dictator who maintains power through murder. support that if you will...
Except that it's not true. If Nazi Germany had nuclear weapons then we couldn't have invaded. It would have been like with the Soviet Union, at some point it would just be a standoff and a Cold War. Or maybe they would have just nuked the Allies.
do you have any other source for that glynch....one other than alternet.org...a collection of young journalists looking for shock value to make a name so they can get a job with a real news agency and pay their bills. it has all the credibility of the enquirer.
though apparently i'm wrong on this one, glynch...didn't see huffington wrote this one...she's pretty well published. carry on.
