I am curious about some of the arguments made by antiwar people before the war. It would seem to me that some of the notions bandied about recentl;y and leading up to the war have been shown to be incorrect, inaccurate, or just plain dishonest, but as I'm sure no one here wants to say "I was wrong", I am curious as to how people will try to rationalize these notions back into the realm of believability. An article: The fiction of the peaceniks is overdue for pulping Michael Gove We may not quite have won yet, but three myths are ripe for deconstruction Why did Saddam Hussein have that Pulp Fiction DVD? Quentin Tarantino’s Meisterwerk was found nestling incongrously in a corner of one of the Iraqi President’s own signature achievements, the gilt and marble palace he built on the banks of the Tigris while his people starved. Finding a video nasty with random violence, gratuitous bloodshed and torture in Saddam’s boudoir is not perhaps surprising. But why did the Iraqi dictator need to shell out on fantasy footage from Hollywood? His son Uday could have provided hours of documentary material for free. The disintegration of Saddam’s regime has been revealing, not just about the grotesque nature of Baathist tyranny, but also about the faulty world view of those who opposed this war. It would be premature to rejoice while Iraq’s dictator has not yet been run to ground, and while fighting that will claim more lives continues. But it is not too soon to expose the pernicious nonsense that passed for geopolitical wisdom before the conflict began — the pulp fiction of the peaceniks — so that we can learn from their mistakes. Honest men can differ. But we will find it more difficult to build something worthwhile on the rubble of Saddam’s regime if we do not also dismantle those positions occupied before the war that were built on intellectual dishonesty. Three myths stand out as ripe for deconstruction. The first is the allegation, peddled by Charles Kennedy and Robin Cook among others, that Britain and America armed Saddam’s tyranny. The second piece of nonsense is the notion that targeting Baghdad was somehow a “diversion” from the war on terrorism. The third canard overdue for stuffing is the argument that we must now show “evenhandedness” by enforcing UN resolutions against Israel, just as we have against Iraq. The first myth, the claim that Iraq’s liberators were once Saddam’s armourers, may seem to be of diminishing relevance now that so much of Saddam’s arsenal is scrap metal. But it matters because it encapsulates the tendency of those who oppose Anglo-American policy to believe the worst of the US and Britain, to attribute cynical commercial motives to those governments actually prepared to take risks for international security, and to pass over the sins of the world’s real cowboys. It is certainly true that most of Saddam’s apparatus of terror was supplied by permanent members of the UN Security Council who have abused their position to further their own interests, heedless of innocent deaths. But the guilty men are not the Americans and the British, but the French, Russians and Chinese. According to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 1973 and 2002 Russia supplied 57 per cent of Saddam’s arms imports, France 13 per cent and China 12 per cent. The US supplied at most just 1 per cent and Britain significantly less than that. Brazil supplied more weaponry to Saddam than the US and Britain combined. No wonder France, Russia and China declined to support action to disarm one of their best customers. And no wonder they are so keen to have their pet UN run the country now. We cannot have any inconvenient invoices falling into the wrong hands now, can we? If it is important to remember just who Saddam’s real friends in the international community were, it is also vital that we do not forget who he invited over to join the party when the presents arrived from Paris, Moscow and Beijing. The “secular” Iraqi regime played host to a variety of Islamist terrorists from across the Arab world, training them on its territory, supplying them with its weapons and sending them abroad on missions to kill its enemies. During this war it has been striking to note that Saddam’s most determined defenders have not been the Iraqi Army but Islamist fanatics. Far from this campaign having been a distraction from the wider war on terror, it has been a hammer blow against a regime which sponsored, succoured and exported terrorism. The lesson to potential terrorists is simple: you will not prevail. We have been told that this war has put a smile on Osama bin Laden’s face. Yeah, and D-Day had Hitler laughing all the way to the bunker. The third myth that cannot be allowed to persist is perhaps the most widespread of all, the proposition that it is somehow hypocritical to act against Iraq when Israel is also “in breach” of UN resolutions. The attempt to imply some parity of guilt between Iraq and Israel is morally shameful and a wilfully blind misreading of the relevant UN resolutions. Iraq was in breach of Chapter 7 resolutions, which provide for military action to deal with threats to international peace and security. The resolutions which concern Israel are based on Chapter 6 of the UN Charter and they are non-binding recommendations for settling disputes. To bracket Iraq and Israel in the way that Robin Cook did is to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between a murderer and someone who is having difficulty with marriage guidance counselling. It may seem a waste of good ink to take apart Robin Cook’s arguments when he has done such a good job of discrediting himself. But if myths such as Mr Cook’s bogus line in moral equivalence are not exposed, they have the capacity to do harm long after their propagator has been laughed off the stage. Jack Straw, of all people, has now been arguing that, after Iraq, Israel must abide by UN resolutions. In so doing he blights one achievement in the war on terrorism by placing terrorism’s biggest victim, rather than its perpetrators, in the dock. After the demise of the epic horror that was Saddam’s regime, the inventions peddled by those who would have left him in power should be seen for the myths that they are. The appeasers’ fictions are overdue for pulping. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-638446,00.html These are just a few of the questions I'd like to see some of our resident antiwar folks address. Among others would be "the majority of Iraqi people do not support us", "it's all about oil", "we are going to destroy the country", and "we are using too much force/we will kill too many civilians, etc". Any comments welcome.
I find it funny when people find something that defines or backs up how they view things and its "truth" Yet when it does not back up what they think it is "garbage" or left/right wing propaganda. I dont think a person here needs to justify their feelings on the war because of an article written by someone that may or may not agree with someone elses position.
If I could have my own Country, I would declare war on every poster on this site. And then I would get my ass kicked, but the peaceniks would cry about my being beaten so thoroughly.
I guess this war was a warm-up for N. Korea the real threat to the US. There is no doubt Saddam is a bad guy, but why didn't he use any WMD against us. He had no problem using them against his own people you'd think an invading military would share the same fate. Thats the main reason we went in to get WMD but where are they? Maybe we will see them when we hit Tikrit, what we will see though is more looting and destruction. Something you would see in America if law enforcement was removed.
The reason Im against the war: We can have WMD but others cant. You gotta play on an even playing field. If we want Iraq to disarm, we should too. What makes us the world police?
One other thing, It would really make me feel a little better if they found these so called WMD. It wouldnt change my stance on the war, but for US's sake, they need to find them.
Tree... I can't speak for others, but from my point of view you have once agaon shown that, intentionally or not, you just don't get the arguments agaist the war, and never have. What, in your opinion, has happened which should alter my stance on the war in any way? I see a lot of people confusing military sucess against a vastly inferior opponent with justification of a war...and I predicted this would happen. Try and remember tree, I said the 'war' would take a matter of weeks...To somehow blur the lines between military power and moral right is exactly what i was arguing against in the first place, so doing so after only reinforces my point. The only things which have happened so far in the 'war' part of this thig which surprised me are A) I felt that it was likely that SH had some sort of limited WMD, and would use them when backed into a corner...That he didn't, and that we have been effectively in control of the country for weeks but haven't found any yet is surprising. My stance was never contingent on his having/not having lesser WMD, so I won't belabor the point. B) The fact that we didn't succeed in getting one of SH's henchman to betray him. This is very surprising, as dictators by and large depend on fear and the assurance of their continuation in power to hold absolute control over their immediate underlings, and the fact that we didn't, to my knowledge, get one of his to look out for his own skin when those factors were reduced is odd...C) The fact that we managed to neutralize the Turkish problem...That seemed to me to be a potential serious problem, and remains the kind of thing we will have greater difficulty in dealing with in the future, but the fact that we manged to forestall what could have been a significant negative so quicky and fairly quietly was surprising...and I'd like to know how we did it. But aside from those three thingd, tree, nothing has happened other than as I imagined...so why on earth should I be apologizing for my stance, let alone reconsidering it?
Perhaps, as many have speculated, this war also was intended to serve notice to other countries. If so, it may be working. North Korea Makes Big Shift in Nuclear Talks Demand
I must have missed something in the original article. I read the entire thing and the only facts used in the entire discourse was when the guy listed the percentages of weapons sold to Iraq by various countries. He spent the rest of the time, as Macbeth said, equating military victory with moral victory. First we go to Iraq to disarm Saddam of the WMDs we know he has. Then it's because he's a bad person who doesn't like puppies. Then it's because he's training terrorists. Make up your mind guys. Knocking Saddam out of power is positive byproduct of the conflict, but it doesn't really do anything to change my opinions on why the war was fought in the first place.
Some people will never see the light. It looks now like Russia was sharing intelligence with Saddam, while Germany, France, Jordan, and Syria were providing him with military hardware. Americans who protested this war did so for the benefit of a United Nations that was actively working to damage our country. The fact that some Americans still find the UN credible makes me thankful that our forefathers instilled a system that protects our culture from emotional and irrational thinking. We will find WMD, including a nuclear program. The anti-war crowd has been completely humiliated, and totally discredited. The coming months will be full of "I told you so" for the American Left, and Syria better start reconsidering it's recent behavior.
My reason for not going to war has nothing to do with if Iraq has WMD. It also has nothing to do with if Saddam is a good guy or not. I disagree with the war because we have WMD, but we tell others that they cant have them.
A message for johnheath. Thanks johnheath for making this message board more entertaining for me to read. Someday when you learn to look up facts and catch up on your history you might stand a chance of making a post where you don't make yourself look like a moron. I suppose as a final defense you can blame it on the education you didn't recieve because your party is so fond of gutting funding for schools and universities. How much time did you spend in the military Captain America? I'm sure someone who puts so much faith into our government would be a great candidate for military service. Or did you have something better to do? I'm failing to see how people like me are discredited and humiliated when almost everyone from both sides essentially agreed on two points. 1) The war would be short. 2) Saddam is a bad person. The argument concerned the justifications behind the war. One side believes the war is a just cause and we're the good guys liberating the poor people of Iraq out of the goodness of our own hearts. The other side has a variety of beliefs but some common ideas floating around include: Oil war, Iraq having no established links to al queda while it's fairly clear that the money behind 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia, and among the more radical is the theory that we're going to war to keep our more gullible citizens in a constant state of fear so people are less resistant to such abominations such as Patriot Act 1 and 2. Now be a good boy and shout me down and call me a American hating pinko commie liberal hippie b*stard so I can be entertained for my last two hours here at work.
IVFL: How do yuou get that from what I wrote? Few Questions: 1) Do you deny that the Iraqi people *do* in fact support what we have done? 2) Do you deny that in fact there has not been a large addition to the current global terrorist pool as a result of our action (ie, "it will create more terrorism")? I think that the Arabs have been cowed more than anything else... 3) Do you still think it's "all about oil"? All - and I mean every - indications are that the Iraqi people will control their oil (despite France's attempts to steal it under UN auspices)... 4) Do you still believe that the war in Iraq has been a "diversion" from the war on terrorism? Keep in mind ongoing worldwide antiterrorism operations, including the recent one in Afghanistan... 5) Do you deny that the situation between Iraq and the UN and Iraq and Israel were/are not equivalent? These argumnents have been smashed in my opinion. I am just curious as to how your type will continue to maintain their validity in the face of current events. (Also noticing that you did not try to defend your position in your post... Hmm.) underoverup: There are a number of possibilities that have already been discussed: 1) His military commanders (and/or their subordinates) simply refused orders to do so - most likely, and some evidence to support this. Keep in mind that the Iraqi army, including the RG, is the only body in Iraq that had both the capability and the authority to use these weapons, and that the Iraqi army pretty much stayed out of the fight. 2) They could not deploy their WMD in time. You do not just screw a warhead and shoot it at somwone; it is a complicated process that takes place at a factory. It takes time and effort to distribute artillery shells to the frontline units, time that they may not have had. Especially if the weapons are buried. 3) Saddam may have thought that he could actually win the "Battle of Baghdad" without such weapons, in which case using them would only have tipped his hand and forced the world to turn against him. Also not unlikely. 4) There is some evidence that at least some of the weapons were moved to Syria before the inspectors even arrived in Iraq. If so, then they wouldn't have been of much use to him by war's start... There are other possibilities, but these (particularly #1) are most likely. They are probably buried - Iraq is littered with underground bunkers known only to a select few - and it will probably take months to find them all. Did you think that our troops would just walk into a Republican Guard ammo depot and find a bunch of sarin-filled 122mm rounds sitting in the corner? Do you think the Iraqis are that stupid? With UN inspectors running around the country? They're buried, and it will take some time to find them. No one seriously believes that Saddam was WMD-free. Just because the weapons in question have not surfaced - before the war is even over - does not mean they aren't there. All it means is that they are not sitting out in the open for everyone to find. All reports from the troops are that the looting has not been as widespread as has been reported on some networks. And that most of the looting has been of government buildings. What are you watching, Al Jazeera? The Iraqis have had a di*k up their asses for 25 years, and now they're taking something back from the people who put it there... Let 'em vent for a couple of days. They deserve it. As for the destruction... You mean of Saddam's statues? I think it's safe to say that Iraq's cities are being captured largely intact. Sans government buildings, of course... And the law enforcement question is being solved as we speak, BTW. Iraqi police officers are set to begin operations again in Baghdad within a couple of days - without weapons, of course. rezdawg: Yes, I know that you think the double standard is wrong. Even though you fail to take into consideration the fact that we use our WMD responsibly (more accurately, don't use them at all), and the fact that Saddam has been quite reckless with his in the past... Objection duly noted. And quite irrelevant at this point. MacBeth: Your apparent objection to this war was, as far as I can gather, an objection to our "unilateralism". You objected to our use of force without authorization from a world body, correct? Also quite irrelevant by now, but... At least it sounds nice on paper. Better than some of the other objections we've heard. All I can say to that is that your proscription wrt "unilateral" action, ie action outside of the scope of international blessing, is a recipe for inaction in virtually every single security issue that any sovereign nation could face. I think that you and HayesStreet have argued this point before, and I'm sure you can guess who I agree with. At least your objection was not as juvenile as some of the other ones we've heard, and you did a fair job of not trying to throw in such ridiculous arguments as "it's all about oil" or "it will create more terrorism"... Actually, I don't expect you to alter your opinions because of the outcome either, because it is based on a belief that is larger than the war itself. You apparently feel that at least some degree of sovereignty should be surrendered to the UN; obviously I disagree when it comes to security matters. Due to the preemptive nature of this conflict, we will never know which one of us was right on that particular point, although I'd say that the UN's past record of unity in conflict (a joke, of course) speaks for itself. I think you put too much stock in the UN, but that is another argument for another time... Heretic: It is the other points mentioned that we are talking about here. Please read my first post. Do you deny that: have all pretty much been thrown in the toilet? Please keep in mind that A) the plan calls for handing all of Iraq back to the Iraqis when the situation is stabilized, including the country's petrochemical resources; B) Ansar Al Islam, an Al Qaeda subgroup (there are something like 29 of them worldwide), was defeated in the north - an organization with known links to Iraqi Intelligence; and C) is just too 'conspiracy theory' yo be taken seriously.
As well as funding for VETERANS. Bush, GOP take aim at vets' benefits By Phoebe Sweet / Staff Writer Friday, April 11, 2003 As American troops complete their assault on Bhagdad, President George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress are launching their own attack on war veterans' medical benefits. According to Mary Ellen McCarthy, a staffer for ranking House Veteran' Affairs Committee member Lane Evans, D-Ill., a GOP-controlled Congress is readying to slice $14.6 billion from veterans benefits over the next 10 years. McCarthy said that Congress is mulling over a budget that takes $449 million of vets medical benefits from next year's budget alone. The cuts will cover projected revenue shortfalls caused by Bush's tax cut proposal. The money will come from funding for treatment of service-connected injuries and pensions for low income vets. Vincent DeStefano, a disabled veteran of WWII, said he is a staunch Bush supporter despite being a Democrat, but that these cuts are a "sad, bad mistake." "I'm sorry to hear that our efforts in WWII are now being negated by this decrease in our pensions and disabilities," said DeStefano. "These youngsters don't know what's going to happen to them. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. Unfortunately, I was wounded." Congress is also crunching numbers for the overall vet benefit budget that are only a slight increase over last year's budget, despite the addition of more than 250,000 Gulf War II vets to the pool of those eligible for benefits. "If they are trying to cut us now, you can just imagine what's going to happen to all these kids over there in Iraq," said Tom Daley of the state office of Disabled American Veterans. "They have fought and died for this country. They have shed blood. They are entitled to A1 medical care," said Daley. The Veterans Affairs Committee recommended $64.1 billion in spending, while the House passed only $60.7 billion and the Senate $63.7 billion. The House and Senate numbers still need to be reconciled. Last year's budget allocated $58.1 billion, and while this year's budget is an increase over last year, the number of veterans is also increasing. "It would be like cooking food for a party and you invite 12 people and 15 show up," said Evans' staffer McCarthy. Many congressional Democrats are speaking out against the budget, saying that Bush is sending mixed messages to troops in the Gulf and Republicans are giving youngsters a disincentive to enlist. "What's the message we're sending to our troops in Iraq?" asked Senator John Kerry in a statement. "The message seems to be, 'do your duty to country, but your country won't fulfill its duty to you when you return home.'" DeStefano said that he thinks the cuts will turn young men and women away from the military. "If I were in the service, I would be quite concerned. I wouldn't consider making it a career," said DeStefano. "I would really reconsider serving." Vets and pols alike say that the president would be ill advised to fund a tax cut for America's richest citizens by cutting medical care for America's soldiers. "We're the richest nation on the face of the earth, and we need to keep faith with our veterans before the government hands out billions more in tax cuts for those who need them the least," said Kerry. "I don't want the 250,000 new American veterans in Iraq and their families to think their country would even consider such misplaced priorities." The same budget that slashes veterans' aide includes approximately $957 billion in new tax cuts. "While our armed forces are waging war abroad, veterans of our armed services are at home watching the programs they rely on being cut," said Senator Edward Kennedy in a written statement. "It is wrong to lavish hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax breaks on the wealthiest Americans, and foolishly shortchange... our veterans." http://www.townonline.com/allston/news/local_regional/ab_covabvets04112003.htm
I believe that oil played a huge part in the decision to invade Iraq. Ever since WWI we've given every country we've defeated their land back. And we've always left behind a U.S. friendly government. It's an economic annexation, not a physical one. The al queda sub-group was hanging out in a no mans land nominally controlled by our good friends the Kurds. Conspiracy theory or no, this administration stands to gain a lot from a scared populace who doesn't ask too many questions. The Bush administration should have won best Oscar for achieving what so many directors aspire to; the suspension of disbelief in the audience.
This is definetly the most likely reason the weapons were not used but I can't imagine that "chemical ali" for example, wouldn't sling out a few shells before he died. Chemical weapons are easy to use once they are weaponized. In the 10 years he was (or was not)hiding and producing these weapons they would have enough time to prepare them for war. Bio weapons are a different story, but no one really expected them to use them in the first place. Your points expressed in 2 & 3 I disagree with, there was time and Saddam knew he would be routed the intial corporation with inspectors would not have happened. There is no way Iraq could move the vast amount of supposed weapons to Syria without the US noticing. I also disagree with the assertion there is really not much looting going on- it is a serious problem. That would be a problem in any country with law enforcement removed, imagine Houston if the police were chased out. Only time will tell as far as finding hidden weapons, I hope they are found to give at least a hint of legitimacy to this war.
