i'm calling b.s. on this. i'm not saying they were best buddies...but al qaeda was targetting US citizens and interests since deep in the clinton administration...was he doing the same with iraq or saddam's interests? if he was, i certainly never heard about it. he slammed two commercial jets into office towers in a downtown location to maximize american civilian casualties...he encourages his followers to kill americans whereever they may be found around the world. but he hates iraq worse than the us. yeah. right.
Well, the American media never even looked into this; it didn't fit with the "Saddam=Sept. 11" story line. Had the lazy media even given this issue a cursory nod, 70 percent of the American people wouldn't mistakenly believe Saddam had anything to do with Sept. 11. But there's little question that America is *the* top target for al queda.
Yes, they did...there were stories posted here all the time about that. And then there were counter-stories as well. Personally, I have no idea if there's connection or not. But I do know that common enemies produce seemingly strange alliances...the US was the common enemy of Al Qaeda and Iraq. But your last point is exactly what I'm getting at.
Stories and coverage are two different things. Running an occasional story isn't coverage -- if the Houston Chronicle ran only a story or two on the war this year, would that constitute coverage? The United States went to *war* with Iraq, and the administration made no qualms about connecting Iraq to Sept. 11. This is a HUGE leap of faith, and the media never drilled the administration on why such a leap was made.
i'm not getting your point...what "coverage" was there that Iraq and Al Qaeda were joined at the hip...or working together? i didn't see coverage of that...i saw editorial opinions suggesting that. the media DID drill the administration...through editorials...the only place in a newspaper where commentary should be relevant.
When the US left the military bases in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War, they moved past Iraq on al Queda sh*t list. Bin Laden has said as much during interviews. Saddam has persecuted Iraqi Islamic fundamentalists from the start of his regime. Saddam ran Iraq as a secular state. Saddam loved booze and supported state own distilleries. etc. Don't you remember the al Queda statement before the US invaded Iraq. Something like "Even though we consider Saddam a traitor to the Arab race and to the Islamic religion, ..." Hardly an endorsement. Something else to consider is that had Saddam really wanted to strike out against the uS via terrorist attacks, he certainly had the motive, means and opportunity. I suspect that Saddam valued his political survival over seeking revenge against the US.
For the record after 9/11 the Bush administration put out a map highlighting all the countries in which Al-Qaeda was active. Iraq was not highlighted. This is from the Bush administration itself. Its tune changed when they wanted to sell the war, though. Also Charles Taylor of Liberia had more connections to Al Qaeda than Saddam Hussein did. The fear that two enemies might join together to get us, isn't the same as a documented connection.
Agreed. But this whole "enemy of my enemy makes them my friend" argument being floating here is nonsense. Al Queda appears to hate everybody but Islamic fundamentalists. I can not see al Queda looking past Saddam's faults to join forces with him. I also can not see Saddam embracing a terrorist group that clearly hates him. Saddam giving al Queda WMDs to use against the US would be equally as foolish. The WMDs would be traced back to Saddam and the US would change his regime. Thus, al Queda could kill two birds with one stone, terrorist attack against the US and removing Saddam.
You seem to be missing the point, and that may be because you didn't read the whole thread. I was discussing with Timing how I came to the conclusion that Saddam was a threat and removing him was a good thing. How I didn't rely on reports about connections to Al Queda or aluminum tubing. You'll notice I emphasize the danger of him acquiring nukes specifically out of all the possible WMDs. Yout answer fails to deal with that. He hasn't had nukes before. The threat changes radically once that happens. He would not, as I have pointed out numerous times before, have even had to USE the nukes to present a national security threat to the US. He could invade Kuwait again, for example. Would the international community so readily volunteer to intervene when the aggressor is a nuclear power? I don't think so. He wouldn't even have to invade someone. For example, he could threaten Saudi Arabia for concessions, which might include cutting off oil to the US, or Western Europe, or Japan. That would have disasterous implications for us. Of course, you argue we're worse off, but I don't believe that is the case either: -we cannot sit by and allow genocidal regimes to continue their evil ways. -these 'nutjobs' already have an endless rallying cry against the US, whether it be Israel, or Afghanistan or countless other 'wrongs' we've done to keep the emasculated Arab down. Its no greater or less than before the intervention. -you are wrong about sanctions on Iraq. Had the UN concluded they had no WMD they would have lifted sanctions, and containment would have ended. -I think you've mistaken attached your support to 'containment' as have so many others. Sanctions were driving anti-americanism. As was our presence in Saudi Arabia. BOTH were KEY components of containment. Al Queda flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon because of containment. Doesn't sound like a such a good policy, does it?
-we cannot sit by and allow genocidal regimes to continue their evil ways. We can and do. -you are wrong about sanctions on Iraq. Had the UN concluded they had no WMD they would have lifted sanctions, and containment would have ended. Not factual. France was strongly considered using their UN Security Council veto to stop the Iraq sanctions (versus their previous no-votes). Also lifting the sanctions would not have stopped the UN weapons regime, which would have carried on for decades (more in a monitoring than search mode). -I think you've mistaken attached your support to 'containment' as have so many others. Sanctions were driving anti-americanism. As was our presence in Saudi Arabia. BOTH were KEY components of containment. Al Queda flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon because of containment. Doesn't sound like a such a good policy, does it? Not factual. Bin Laden said that his hatred for the US came from the US military bases left behind in SA after the first Gulf War. No mention of Iraqi sanctions. The sanctions were actually doing Bin Laden a favor by trying to provoke an ouster of Saddam.
but we shouldn't. and if this is an example where we bucked the trend, then hooray...not boo because we haven't elsewhere...but hooray because we did there.
Max answered this one sufficiently. We are talking about what we SHOULD be doing. In this instance we did the right thing. Of course, your counterargument really has no logical validity. You try to defeat the point by saying we support genocidal regimes elsewhere, which begs the question of what what we should have done/be doing in Iraq. If I had said 'we don't support genocidal dictators elsewhere, and so shouldn't have in Iraq,' your statement would have been relevant. I didn't and so its not. -you are wrong about sanctions on Iraq. Had the UN concluded they had no WMD they would have lifted sanctions, and containment would have ended. ?? Your sentence about France makes no sense. Please clarify. The point of sanctions were to prevent Saddam from rearming. Those are not meant to be permanent, and NO ONE suggests such. Once it was confirmed that Saddam had no WMD, there would be no justification for sanctions, hence they would be removed. You argue that inspections would have continued, which may or may not be true, but again it is impossible to have a policy of 'containment' without sanctions (ie preventing material from being bought by Iraq. That is simply false. -I think you've mistaken attached your support to 'containment' as have so many others. Sanctions were driving anti-americanism. As was our presence in Saudi Arabia. BOTH were KEY components of containment. Al Queda flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon because of containment. Doesn't sound like a such a good policy, does it? Yes, it is factual. Our presence in SA was part of the whole containment regime. Had there not been a policy of containment, we would not have had troops there. And you are confusing two points I've made. Sanctions drove anti-americanism across the middle east as people (just as you've done) blame us for 'millions of dead Iraqi children' that resulted from sanctions. I did not say sanctions drove Al Queda, nor did I connect the two.
The "we invaded Iraq since Saddam was a genocidal tyrant" argument is a thow away argument, since that is NOT why we invaded. If Iraq did not have oil and the military built by it, their genocidal tyrant would have been off of our scope. See Sub-Saharan Africa. See Cambodia. I am not saying that this is the right or wrong thing to do. It is just how the US has behaved in its not too distant past and how the US will likely behave in its near future. My comment wrt France was a bit muddled. France did not believe that Iraq was completely disarmed but they were likely to cause the sanctions to end via their UNSC veto. Thus, complete and total disarmament was not a strict criteria that would have to be meet before sanctions were lifted. Also the containment effort through the UN weapons regimes would not have stopped, when the sanctions were lifted. At least, that was the intent. Al Queda flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon because of containment. Your unstated impication here is that only the SA military bases leg in the Iraqi containment was responsible for 9/11, versus all aspects of containment being responsible? Perhaps you could have been more precise to avoid confusion.
Hardly a 'throw away' argument. I have always contended that this was justification enough to intervene in Iraq. I admit it was not the Bush Administrations main justification, as they did offer NOT to intervene if Saddam allowed complete inspections. However, it certainly is a relevant point when discussing whether or not the intervention was justified. You keep saying this and I keep correcting you. Then you say it again. Not sure why. You statement is ABSOLUTELY DISPROVEN by the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo (without the UN), where there is NO OIL, and by other interventions like Somlia and Haiti (with the UN). You are just wrong and irresponsible to continue saying this in the face of FACTS that contradict your assertion. If you looked at recent US interventions, there ISN'T one where humanitarian reasons were absent for the intervention. There are many recent interventions where humanitarian concerns were the ONLY reason. And again, past policy is really IRRELEVANT to whether or not the intervention in Iraq is justified. Its simply begs the question. Your point only feeds my argument that sanctions would have been lifted at some point, and that the nature of the threat from a renewed Iraqi regime under Saddam was large. Seemingly contradicting your assertion about the French not caring about total disarmament. Aside from the fact that 'containment' would be IMPOSSIBLE without sanctions. Look at the countries we've had 'containment' policies with in the past, all of which we've attempted to restrict what materials they could acquire and export (sanctions): PRC, USSR and Warsaw Pact countries, Cuba, North Korea, and Iraq. Al Queda flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon because of containment. Absolutely. I am not saying that the fate of Iraqis hurt by the sanctions caused Al Queda to act. I am saying that those of you who favored continuing containment fail to realize the impact of containment. The most dramatic of which is 9/11, and the less dramatic of which is the general anti-americanism it caused because we are blamed by the average middle easterner for the ill effects it had on the Iraqi population (despite the fact they were UN sanctions). And another thing you might not have thought about is that the US is the country taking the brunt of the backlash from containment (as in 9/11), not France or Germany or the other countries that didn't support intervention. Why would they? They get no ill effects and all the benefits.
HayesStreet, I got to give you credit. You work extremely hard to miss the obvious points I was making I am sure that you and I can come up a whole set of justifiable reasons for invading Iraq at some point in time. Heck, we might even agree on a few. But what we think is not the official US opinion. For that, we have to look at GWB. His opinion, which is now laughable, is that we invaded Iraq to disarm Saddam. Liberating the Iraqi people and democratizing Iraq were secondary benefits, neither of which on its own were enough justification. I do find it laughable and surprising that you mention Bosnia/Kosovo as a relevant comparison to our Iraq invasion. The scope is a bit different, don't you think? The point I was making about genocidal tyrants is that the US does not consistently act against them. The obvious counterexamples do more to prove my point. The vast majority of tyrants in the world have nothing to worry about from the US. I also find humor in your reaction to my sentence with the word OIL in it. My point in mentioning OIL was to show that a penniless tyrant would not have the resources to build a military with WMDs. A penniless tyrant also would fall into the category of those that do not have much to worry about from the US. Again counterexamples here prove my point. As a final note, the stated US policy wrt Iraq has been since the end of the first Gulf War regime change. The sanctions did a great deal of damage to the Iraqi people, but we steadfastly held that their sacrifice for our policy goal was worth it. To say now that we have a newfound interest in the well being of the Iraqi people is ludicrous. Politically expedient is what it is. Another leg in the regime change policy was disarmament. Total disarmement is impossible to prove, even with complete cooperation. We could always find some defector that had knowledge to our liking. This leads into my point about France. France was willing to accept the 90-95% disrmament as proclaimed by the UN inspection teams to be good enough.
Agreed that GWB's justification and mine are different. I have already said that. Not sure why that is the only thing relevant to this discussion. If you want to bash Bush, be my guest. If you want to say the intervention was not justified, then we can continue to discuss that. You seem to be concerned only that we recognize Bush did not act properly when he argued for intervention, not whether or not the intervention was, in fact, justifiable. I disagree. Liberating the people of Iraq is justification enough for intervention. Not sure what you're laughing about. Genocide is hardly something a civilized person would laugh about. Scope is not relevant (as your example of the sub-Sahara proves), and really a pathetic attempt to deflect the facts that disprove your repetitive charge that we don't intervene unless oil is at stake. Whether the genocide involves millions in a large country, or tens of thousands in a small one, we are justified intervening to stop it. We have an obligation to do so, and its revolting to suggest we should sit by and do nothing when we can stop it. True, we do not intervene everywhere there is a genocidal tyrant. What does that get you? NOTHING. As Max pointed out it is not relevant to a discussion of what we SHOULD be doing, nor does it somehow counter the argument that doing it in THIS instance was good. Again you are wrong. Bosnia disproves this. I don't get how you are avoiding that. There was no oil (economic incentive) nor WMD threat to worry about there. And yet we DID intervene to stop genocide. I give four examples (Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia) of humanitarian interventions, you give NONE in the last TWO ADMINISTRATIONS. OVER TEN YEARS. Your counterexamples are old and irrelevant. My examples are recent and much more relevant to determine the consistency of US policy. However, as I point out above, the consistency of policy has NO BEARING on whether or not THIS intervention was justified. First of all you are the one supporting containment, not me. I supported the removal of Saddam. To say that it was expedient for Bush to point to the plight of the Iraqis might very well be true, although I think its plausible that Bush himself (more than his advisors) actually believed that it was the 'right thing to do' to remove Saddam, and that the Iraqis would be better off. And AGAIN I'll point out this doesn't get you anything. My argument is that the intervention was justified. Yours is that Bush justified it to the public poorly. Those two points do not have tension between them. They are not counter to each other. Not sure what you get out of this argument.
You seem to be concerned only that we recognize Bush did not act properly when he argued for intervention, not whether or not the intervention was, in fact, justifiable. My concern is that people are now settling on other justifications for invading. BTW I was not against solving the Saddam/Iraq "problem". My problems lie with the timing and the implied priority in the ongoing War on Terror. I did not see the connection between Iraq and the War on Terror (given the history between Saddam and Islamic fundamentalists). IMO, this problem could have waited at least until the War on Terror was over or in its last stages. Leading into the Iraq war, MM was on the fence and then became decidely for it, saying that Bush has the inside scope and must be trusted. Bush inside scope proved to be problematic and now he has migrated toward the "genocidal tyrant" justification. BTW when was the last major genocidal act that Saddam committed? Were the Iraqi people still in imminent threat leading into the Iraq War? Why did the US need to act now versus latter?
Fair enough. But my advocacy has been constant that this was enough justification, even before the intervention. Understandable. Agreed. Although I don't know what MM stands for: Marilyn Manson? My understanding is that he killed or rather had thousands killed and tortured a year. No indication that his policies would ever change justifying his removal. Waiting only prolongs this. However, I will conceed that if we were to weigh out the implications of the effect of the war in Iraq on the War on Terror, we might conclude that 'on balance' it would have been better to wait. But that can get to be a really murky equation. How do we know the WoT would have been any more effective absent Iraq. I know many people are ASSUMING this, but there is little hard evidence that this is a correct assumption.
