You have been listening to Howard Dean too much. I liked Sen Lieberman's comment on Dean- if Dean can't see why the capture of Saddam makes us safer, then maybe Dean shouldn't be in charge of our national security.
We are better off because a crazed dictator who is sworn enemy of the United States with terrorist connections and an arsenal of weapons is no longer in power. We are better off because a free and democratic Iraq will transform the entire region into a more stable and less hostile place. We are better off because other crazy dictators have seen the results of Saddam's actions, and they are reacting to it (and at the same time they are proving that the Bush Doctrine works).
It appears that he didn't have any WMDs, so he couldn't have been going to supply those to terrorists. So I'm no safer for his having been deposed.
There are lots of weapons that are not accounted for. Are you really ok just waiting for them to be used before we anything about it?
UN resolution 687 in 1991 required Iraq to produce an accurate declaration of the location, types, and quantities of all of their WMDs. That resolution was passed unanimously under Chapter 7 of the UN resolution that requires member states to enforece it. Iraq never complied with that resolution.
You see, it was never a question of whether or not Iraq actually had the weapons. The world saw him use them, for cryin out loud. The question now is what has happened to the weapons. The UN told Iraq they had to show us their weapons and prove the were destroyed. The fact that the whereabouts of WMDs is still a mystery is proof enough that Iraq was not in complience with the UN, and that alone is enough justification for military action.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, they are probably German or Japanese. In fact, they explicitly ruled out the possibility of them coming from the US.
Finally. After Saddam gassed the kurds and those awful pictures got transmitted the UN drafted a resolution condeming Saddam. The resolution never passed becasue the Reagan Administration (Reagan, Baker, Bush sr, Cheney etc) vetoed it.
You have made this claim before, but it just isn't true. Out of the 5 UN resolutions that condemned Iraq for it's chemical weapons use (540, 582, 589, 612, and 620), none of them were vetoed, and ALL of them passed. When Rumsfeld went to Iraq in 1983, he explicitly cautioned Iraq to not use chemical weapons, and we publically condemned their use in the Iran/Iraq war in 1984.
Please tell us exactly which resolution you think it is that we vetoed.
Given the hatred of the US in certain parts of Iraq, it could just be random farmers picking up weapons and capping servicemen while they sit in traffic
Nobody disputes that some Iraqi's hate the US, and that those people are probably taking part in the attacks on our troops. I do believe, however, that these people are in the minority. I base that belief off of conversations I have had with Iraqi coworkers and from various articles on the subject.
So you don't think that the Supreme Court's invention of a new job for itself - The Decider of Tough Elections - was scandalous.
They didn't decide the election, they decided that selective had recounts are not constitutional, and those selective recounts that Gore was asking for wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway (Source).
I tend to think the voters should decide the election, not a bunch of potentially partisan judges
They did. The votes were counted. Twice.
We've got election protocol so that this sort of influence is supposedly impossible.
Right. Like the Florida statute that required the vote counts to be certified by November 26th.
Actually, we're not turning over control on that date... what we're doing is changing the name of the occupation.
Whatever. They are going to complete a bill of rights by February, hold elections for members of the national assembly in May, and those people take office in June. And with a fledgling police force and a disserting army, maybe the Iraqi's will still want a US presence there...
Because then we would still have a tyrannical dictator committing genocide, funding terrorism, and seeking ways to destroy the United States? Or did you just forget about that part?
The freedom fighters are just that - fighting for control of their own country.
They don't have to fight- Iraqis get control of the country at the end of June.
You can't dismiss as everyone who is anti-US as an Islamic terrorist
I didn't, and on the same note, you can't dismiss the entire nation of Iraq as anti-US. We are doing a lot of good in Iraq, and they are appreciative (unlike some countries)
That's most likely why they're attacking the occupying forces whenever possible
For the most part, they aren't attacking us. The attacks are coming from a minority of Saddam loyalists or foreign Islamic terrorists.
Of course most right-wing appologists will tell you that the Iraqis are backward people who are not capable of carrying out a democratic election by themselves
Bull crap. In fact, we are turning control over to an Iraqi government at midnight on June 30th next year to do just that.
Bush's appointment wasn't without scandal.
I think the word you are looking for is controversy, not scandal. Any close election is going to be controversial.
Given that the US is already excluding foreign nations from lucrative rebuilding contracts in Iraq
Um, no they aren't. They are excluding nations that obstructed any action in Iraq, but the more than 60 countries in the coalition are more than welcome to bid on the contracts.
If France and Germany had had their way, there wouldn't be ANY contracts to award in Iraq, so I don't know why they think they are entitled to some now.
So where's the alternative to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office that will run ALL Windows programs and properly open ALL Office documents?
So? There are viable alternatives to all of those.
You think we live in a free market? Do you really think that Microsoft Windows would have a 95% desktop market share in a "free market"?
A company becoming a monopoly is not a market failure. Whether you like it or not, Microsoft became a monopoly because everybody wanted to buy their OS. OEMs would not have agreed to exclusive Microsoft contracts unless their customers wanted Microsoft products.
US disregard for civilians has made them quite a few enemies
Bullcrap. We are doing a lot of good there, and the people appreciate it. It was Saddam and his regime that showed a complete disregard for Iraqi civilians...
Clear majorities of Americans have called for the votes in Florida to be counted in polls as did four out of nine members of the supreme court.
The votes in Florida were counted- twice.
Now, if you are claiming that a "clear majority" of Americans wanted the hand recounts in the 3 counties carefully selected by Gore to continue using arbitrary standards in each county, then I would dispute that. That is what the Supreme Court ruled on. And even if somebody does believe that the hand recounts should have gone forward does not mean that they think the President is illegitimate.
Blanket dismissals and ad-hominem attacks by anonymous cowards do not change the fact that a lot of people believe this.
Yes- a lot of people believe this. A lot of people also believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked or that they were abducted by aliens. But these are people are in the minority.
If Diebold's CEO had spoken to some Democrats he would have understood just how seriously some people consider the threat of compromise of the election system.
And if Diebold really is involved in some conspiracy to rig elections, then they are exceptionally bad at it. Isn't it taught in Conspiracy 101 that if you are planning conspiracies, you should not talk about them in public before they start?
The malpractice of Bush and Harriss is extensively documented.
No its not. Outside of some fringe lunatics like Palast, nobody is claiming this.
There are 500,000 individual donors to the Dean campaign and about 90% of them hold that view.
Ok- so you claim that these 450,000 people (90% of 500k) don't believe Bush was legitimately elected. Even though that is impossible to prove, lets assume it is true. There were over 105 million votes cast for President in 2000. That 450,000 people represents about.4% of the electorate, and I would be willing to bet that part of that 450,000 thinks that any non-democrat President isn't legitimate regardless of the election results. I don't think that is very "substantial".
Unfortunately, the US is about as anti-UN as they come.
No, the UN is anti-UN. The US has tried to salvage it, but the security council has proven itself to be worthless. If it wasn't for the US/UK, who actually give the UNSEC some credibility, it would already be long gone.
Gee, when you put it like that why would I take offense?
You know, if somebody questioning an uncorroborated story (that both the United Nations and the US State Department dispute) that was told on a semi-anonymous forum is so offensive to you, all I can say is TOUGHEN UP.
Those crayons were taken away at a checkpoint because they were deemed to be in violation of UN sanctions.
If your story is true, and the crayons were actually confiscated, then it wasn't because of the sanctions because the sanctions didn't ban them.
The current administration attempted to justify this war with Iraq as an extension of the "War on Terrorism".
s/attempted/succeeded
Iraq had massive WMD stockpiles they said.
They did (and in all likelyhood, probably still do somewhere). Nobody, including France, Germany, and Hans Blix, really disputed that.
These could be readied for use within 45 minutes they said.
The threat was never a direct attack from Iraq.
Iraq had definite links with Al Qaeda they said.
According to this memo sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee a few weeks ago, the links are pretty definite.
There have been no WMDs found,
Like I said, the question was never if he actually had weapons. Iraq admitted to a nuclear and biological weapons program after a series of defections in the mid 1990's, and we have seen them publically use chemical weapons. What we don't know, however, is what happened to those weapons. Saddam was required to point to the weapons and have the UN watch him destroy them. He never did.
The thing that people like you seem to leave out is the fact that if President Bush had been lying about the WMD's in Iraq, we probably wouldn't know about it because they would have magically found weapons after the invasion. It doesn't make any sense that Bush would lie about Iraq's weapons capabilities to justify an invasion when an invasion is the only thing that will bring the truth out. We marched into Baghdad fully expecting to find weapons there. It think the fact that no major weapons have been found yet is pretty solid proof that Bush wasn't lying. To put it another way- if we had found huge stockpiles of chemical weapons shortly after the invasion began, I bet people like you would be claiming that they were planted by the CIA or something, and you would still be claiming that we were lied to.
no evidence of any links with Al Qaeda has been presented
There is plenty of evidence, from Ansar Al Islam to the fact that Al Qaeda fighters were caught fighting US troops in Iraq in the first days of the invasion.
Want a country with links to Al Qaeda? Try the US. Just ask the CIA
I assume you are referring to our support of the Mujahideen in the 1980's in Afghanistan, but the Mujahideen is NOT Al Qaeda, and our support of them was justified.
The US public and the world community were lied to deliberately.
Call me a liar why don't you. This was someone who I personally knew who told me this, not something that I read in a paper.
No offense, but these uncorroborated 3rd person "friend of mine" stories often stray from the truth. My skepticism is justified.
Oh and regarding your "myth", just do a quick google: Google results for "iraq sanctions children pencils"
Ah- the very scientific 'number of google results' method. That gives us some great information from sites like geocities and the International Action Center ("Information, Activism, and Resistance to U.S. Militarism, War, and Corporate Greed"- sounds like a pretty open minded source of information to me).
Look at some of the links there, and who they're quoting. I'll just link to one article, written by a Seattle Times correspondent
Actually, that was not a Seattle Times correspondent. That opinion piece was written by Denis J. Halliday, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq.
Now, I don't pretend to know more about what was going on in Iraq than Mr. Halliday. All I know is what is written in the actual resolutions.
Like in resolution 661 that established the sanctions, that says that the sanctions do not include any "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs, to any person or body in Iraq or Kuwait or to any person or body for the purposes of any business carried on in or operated from Iraq or Kuwait."
Or in resolution 666 that created a full time agency to monitor the humanitarian situation in Iraq, paying special attention to children, pregnant women, the sick, and the elderly, and it establishes an office to provide aid to the Iraqi people if this agency finds the need.
Or resolutions 706 and 712 that urge Saddam to provide more food and medicine to his people, and establish the Oil for Food program to help.
I think it is clear that innocent Iraqis did suffer under the sanctions. I also think it is clear that the blame for this rests solely on Saddam. In spite of the UN's efforts, he purposely starved his people, and used the sanctions as propaganda against the United States. Unfortunately it looks like many people, including you, were not able to see through his propaganda.
Forgive me if I am skeptical about your story, but I kind of doubt that happened.
You probably won't give this much weight, but this is what the U.S. State Department has said about the sanctions (note that this document was produced in August of 2000 under the Clinton administration and well before our action this year).
Myth: Sanctions prohibit the import of pencils, books and journals, and desks for schools.
Fact: Basic educational supplies including pencils, books, and desks have never been prohibited by UN sanctions. They have been sent to Iraq regularly since 1991 and nearly $64 million of supplies for the education sector, including photocopiers, and printing and lab equipment, have entered Iraq under the oil-for-food program.
Then imposed sanctions which drastically slowed the ability of iraq to rebuild hoping that the thirsty starving masses would revolt. It was a sad miscalculation which ended up causing almost a million deaths while still keeping Saddam in power.
I think you are a little confused. The sanctions were only intended to diminish Saddam's capabilities to continue his weapons programs. Food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies were never restricted by sanctions. On the contrary, during the 90's the UN urged Saddam several times to buy more food and medicine, and the (somewhat misguided) Oil For Food program was established to facilitate that. However, Saddam knew he could use the sanctions for in his propoganda efforts against the United States, so he intentionally withheld supplies from his people (while building himself lavish palaces).
The blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people rests soley on Saddam Hussein. It is silly that a leader of a country that is as rich in natural resources as Iraq is would allow his own people to starve.
During the Iran Iraq war Saddam Hussein launched chemical war against the iranians and the kurds.
But a few posts down you say:
You are not alone though lots of people believe it too even though there is not one shred of evidence to back up the proposition.
So I guess the fact that we saw him use chemical weapons isn't enough "evidence" to you that he was developing WMD's?
The UN security council drafted a resolution to condemn him. The US vetoed that resolution.
You know, you really shouldn't make stuff up when the facts are publically available. During the 1980's the security council passed about 12 resolutions against Iran and Iraq, and the US did not veto a single one of them. Out of these resolutions, 5 of them delt with Saddam's use of chemical weapons:
Resolution 540, which "condemns all violations of international humanitarian law, in particular, the provisions of the Geneva Conventions" was passed by a vote of 12-0 with Malta, Nicaragua, and Pakistan abstaining.
Resolution 582, which "deplores... the use of chemical weapons" was passed unanimously.
Resolution 598, which also "deplores... the use of chemical weapons", and was also passed unanimously.
Resolution 612, which "condemns vigorously" the continued use of chemical weapons, was adopted unanimously.
Resolution 620, which "condemns resolutely" Iraq's use of chemical weapons, passed unanimously.
Also consider this. Bush has created a brand new govt branch. He has grown the size of the govt more then anybody else in recent history.
We still only have three branches in our government (exective, legislative, judicial), so I assume you are talking about the new Department of Homeland Security (under the executive branch). But that wasn't as much growth as it was a reorganization, and besides, providing for homeland security is one of the most important roles of the Federal government.
He has also (almost) created the largest entitlement program since the advent of medicare and social security (the drug benefit). He is running enourmous deficits. Despite all that he is the darling of the conservatives who supposedly are for smaller govt and fiscal responsibility.
You obviously don't listen very closely to conservatives, then. They have been extremely critical of the spending increases and entitlement programs that Bush has supported.
Slashdot Mirror
You have been listening to Howard Dean too much. I liked Sen Lieberman's comment on Dean- if Dean can't see why the capture of Saddam makes us safer, then maybe Dean shouldn't be in charge of our national security.
We are better off because a crazed dictator who is sworn enemy of the United States with terrorist connections and an arsenal of weapons is no longer in power. We are better off because a free and democratic Iraq will transform the entire region into a more stable and less hostile place. We are better off because other crazy dictators have seen the results of Saddam's actions, and they are reacting to it (and at the same time they are proving that the Bush Doctrine works).
It appears that he didn't have any WMDs, so he couldn't have been going to supply those to terrorists. So I'm no safer for his having been deposed.
There are lots of weapons that are not accounted for. Are you really ok just waiting for them to be used before we anything about it?
UN resolution 687 in 1991 required Iraq to produce an accurate declaration of the location, types, and quantities of all of their WMDs. That resolution was passed unanimously under Chapter 7 of the UN resolution that requires member states to enforece it. Iraq never complied with that resolution.
You see, it was never a question of whether or not Iraq actually had the weapons. The world saw him use them, for cryin out loud. The question now is what has happened to the weapons. The UN told Iraq they had to show us their weapons and prove the were destroyed. The fact that the whereabouts of WMDs is still a mystery is proof enough that Iraq was not in complience with the UN, and that alone is enough justification for military action.
Actually, Iraq's chemical weapons are NOT from the United States.
9 84.html
http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/research/factsheet-1
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, they are probably German or Japanese. In fact, they explicitly ruled out the possibility of them coming from the US.
What makes these people the experts?
Ok. What makes you an expert, then?
Finally. After Saddam gassed the kurds and those awful pictures got transmitted the UN drafted a resolution condeming Saddam. The resolution never passed becasue the Reagan Administration (Reagan, Baker, Bush sr, Cheney etc) vetoed it.
You have made this claim before, but it just isn't true. Out of the 5 UN resolutions that condemned Iraq for it's chemical weapons use (540, 582, 589, 612, and 620), none of them were vetoed, and ALL of them passed. When Rumsfeld went to Iraq in 1983, he explicitly cautioned Iraq to not use chemical weapons, and we publically condemned their use in the Iran/Iraq war in 1984.
Please tell us exactly which resolution you think it is that we vetoed.
Wow... you're really carrying the party line there, huh?
No more than you are...
In reality, we don't know who is organizing and executing these attacks.
We have some pretty big clues.
Given the hatred of the US in certain parts of Iraq, it could just be random farmers picking up weapons and capping servicemen while they sit in traffic
Nobody disputes that some Iraqi's hate the US, and that those people are probably taking part in the attacks on our troops. I do believe, however, that these people are in the minority. I base that belief off of conversations I have had with Iraqi coworkers and from various articles on the subject.
So you don't think that the Supreme Court's invention of a new job for itself - The Decider of Tough Elections - was scandalous.
They didn't decide the election, they decided that selective had recounts are not constitutional, and those selective recounts that Gore was asking for wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway (Source).
I tend to think the voters should decide the election, not a bunch of potentially partisan judges
They did. The votes were counted. Twice.
We've got election protocol so that this sort of influence is supposedly impossible.
Right. Like the Florida statute that required the vote counts to be certified by November 26th.
Actually, we're not turning over control on that date... what we're doing is changing the name of the occupation.
Whatever. They are going to complete a bill of rights by February, hold elections for members of the national assembly in May, and those people take office in June. And with a fledgling police force and a disserting army, maybe the Iraqi's will still want a US presence there...
Why didn't we do that?
Because then we would still have a tyrannical dictator committing genocide, funding terrorism, and seeking ways to destroy the United States? Or did you just forget about that part?
Anytime anybody posts a link to the washington times I completely dismiss their entire post.
3 153543.asp m 0 ,-3517412,00.html 0 3/12/18/2003080039 / 2001817106_iraqdig17.html
Thats pretty childish, don't you think?
How about these links, then:
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/12/1712200
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s1012216.ht
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,128
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/20
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld
Those all say pretty much the same thing as the Washington Times, or do you dismiss posts that link to the taipeitimes or guardian, too?
Was the war an effort to obtain these contracts?
Of course not. Any other questions?
There are no Saddam loyalists.
= 36512&d=16&m=12&y=2003 a l_packages/iraq/7511113.htm 0 .html
Bullcrap.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/speci
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003580992,0
The freedom fighters are just that - fighting for control of their own country.
They don't have to fight- Iraqis get control of the country at the end of June.
You can't dismiss as everyone who is anti-US as an Islamic terrorist
I didn't, and on the same note, you can't dismiss the entire nation of Iraq as anti-US. We are doing a lot of good in Iraq, and they are appreciative (unlike some countries)
It's Iraq's money.
Um, what are you talking about? This is US taxpayer money.
That's most likely why they're attacking the occupying forces whenever possible
For the most part, they aren't attacking us. The attacks are coming from a minority of Saddam loyalists or foreign Islamic terrorists.
Of course most right-wing appologists will tell you that the Iraqis are backward people who are not capable of carrying out a democratic election by themselves
Bull crap. In fact, we are turning control over to an Iraqi government at midnight on June 30th next year to do just that.
Bush's appointment wasn't without scandal.
I think the word you are looking for is controversy, not scandal. Any close election is going to be controversial.
Given that the US is already excluding foreign nations from lucrative rebuilding contracts in Iraq
Um, no they aren't. They are excluding nations that obstructed any action in Iraq, but the more than 60 countries in the coalition are more than welcome to bid on the contracts.
If France and Germany had had their way, there wouldn't be ANY contracts to award in Iraq, so I don't know why they think they are entitled to some now.
So where's the alternative to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office that will run ALL Windows programs and properly open ALL Office documents?
So? There are viable alternatives to all of those.
You think we live in a free market? Do you really think that Microsoft Windows would have a 95% desktop market share in a "free market"?
A company becoming a monopoly is not a market failure. Whether you like it or not, Microsoft became a monopoly because everybody wanted to buy their OS. OEMs would not have agreed to exclusive Microsoft contracts unless their customers wanted Microsoft products.
US disregard for civilians has made them quite a few enemies
Bullcrap. We are doing a lot of good there, and the people appreciate it. It was Saddam and his regime that showed a complete disregard for Iraqi civilians...
No wonder you have the highest crime rate
a p
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_tot_cri_c
So I guess you don't count New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, Chile, the United Kindgdom, Dominica, or Montserrat as democracies?
and the most people in jail of any democracy.
Yes, because we prosecute more adults than anybody else. That means our law enforcement is more efficient. So what?
Clear majorities of Americans have called for the votes in Florida to be counted in polls as did four out of nine members of the supreme court.
The votes in Florida were counted- twice.
Now, if you are claiming that a "clear majority" of Americans wanted the hand recounts in the 3 counties carefully selected by Gore to continue using arbitrary standards in each county, then I would dispute that. That is what the Supreme Court ruled on. And even if somebody does believe that the hand recounts should have gone forward does not mean that they think the President is illegitimate.
Blanket dismissals and ad-hominem attacks by anonymous cowards do not change the fact that a lot of people believe this.
Yes- a lot of people believe this. A lot of people also believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked or that they were abducted by aliens. But these are people are in the minority.
If Diebold's CEO had spoken to some Democrats he would have understood just how seriously some people consider the threat of compromise of the election system.
And if Diebold really is involved in some conspiracy to rig elections, then they are exceptionally bad at it. Isn't it taught in Conspiracy 101 that if you are planning conspiracies, you should not talk about them in public before they start?
The malpractice of Bush and Harriss is extensively documented.
.4% of the electorate, and I would be willing to bet that part of that 450,000 thinks that any non-democrat President isn't legitimate regardless of the election results. I don't think that is very "substantial".
No its not. Outside of some fringe lunatics like Palast, nobody is claiming this.
There are 500,000 individual donors to the Dean campaign and about 90% of them hold that view.
Ok- so you claim that these 450,000 people (90% of 500k) don't believe Bush was legitimately elected. Even though that is impossible to prove, lets assume it is true. There were over 105 million votes cast for President in 2000. That 450,000 people represents about
Just because it is a joke doesn't mean that it is verboten to comment on it...
Unfortunately, the US is about as anti-UN as they come.
No, the UN is anti-UN. The US has tried to salvage it, but the security council has proven itself to be worthless. If it wasn't for the US/UK, who actually give the UNSEC some credibility, it would already be long gone.
You are aware that you can buy a tivo unit with built in DVD burner for under $700, right?
p hp?masterid=1361996&ut=c0373404f6bde38f&found=2&se arch=DVR-810H
http://www.pioneerburner.com/
http://devsdeals.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.
Is your video editing and gaming that you can do on pretty much any PC woth the extra $1800? Didn't think so...
Gee, when you put it like that why would I take offense?
You know, if somebody questioning an uncorroborated story (that both the United Nations and the US State Department dispute) that was told on a semi-anonymous forum is so offensive to you, all I can say is TOUGHEN UP.
Those crayons were taken away at a checkpoint because they were deemed to be in violation of UN sanctions.
If your story is true, and the crayons were actually confiscated, then it wasn't because of the sanctions because the sanctions didn't ban them.
The current administration attempted to justify this war with Iraq as an extension of the "War on Terrorism".
s/attempted/succeeded
Iraq had massive WMD stockpiles they said.
They did (and in all likelyhood, probably still do somewhere). Nobody, including France, Germany, and Hans Blix, really disputed that.
These could be readied for use within 45 minutes they said.
The threat was never a direct attack from Iraq.
Iraq had definite links with Al Qaeda they said.
According to this memo sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee a few weeks ago, the links are pretty definite.
There have been no WMDs found,
Like I said, the question was never if he actually had weapons. Iraq admitted to a nuclear and biological weapons program after a series of defections in the mid 1990's, and we have seen them publically use chemical weapons. What we don't know, however, is what happened to those weapons. Saddam was required to point to the weapons and have the UN watch him destroy them. He never did.
The thing that people like you seem to leave out is the fact that if President Bush had been lying about the WMD's in Iraq, we probably wouldn't know about it because they would have magically found weapons after the invasion. It doesn't make any sense that Bush would lie about Iraq's weapons capabilities to justify an invasion when an invasion is the only thing that will bring the truth out. We marched into Baghdad fully expecting to find weapons there. It think the fact that no major weapons have been found yet is pretty solid proof that Bush wasn't lying. To put it another way- if we had found huge stockpiles of chemical weapons shortly after the invasion began, I bet people like you would be claiming that they were planted by the CIA or something, and you would still be claiming that we were lied to.
no evidence of any links with Al Qaeda has been presented
There is plenty of evidence, from Ansar Al Islam to the fact that Al Qaeda fighters were caught fighting US troops in Iraq in the first days of the invasion.
Want a country with links to Al Qaeda? Try the US. Just ask the CIA
I assume you are referring to our support of the Mujahideen in the 1980's in Afghanistan, but the Mujahideen is NOT Al Qaeda, and our support of them was justified.
The US public and the world community were lied to deliberately.
I don't believe we have been lied to.
Call me a liar why don't you. This was someone who I personally knew who told me this, not something that I read in a paper.
No offense, but these uncorroborated 3rd person "friend of mine" stories often stray from the truth. My skepticism is justified.
Oh and regarding your "myth", just do a quick google: Google results for "iraq sanctions children pencils"
Ah- the very scientific 'number of google results' method. That gives us some great information from sites like geocities and the International Action Center ("Information, Activism, and Resistance to U.S. Militarism, War, and Corporate Greed"- sounds like a pretty open minded source of information to me).
Look at some of the links there, and who they're quoting. I'll just link to one article, written by a Seattle Times correspondent
Actually, that was not a Seattle Times correspondent. That opinion piece was written by Denis J. Halliday, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq.
Now, I don't pretend to know more about what was going on in Iraq than Mr. Halliday. All I know is what is written in the actual resolutions.
Like in resolution 661 that established the sanctions, that says that the sanctions do not include any "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs, to any person or body in Iraq or Kuwait or to any person or body for the purposes of any business carried on in or operated from Iraq or Kuwait."
Or in resolution 666 that created a full time agency to monitor the humanitarian situation in Iraq, paying special attention to children, pregnant women, the sick, and the elderly, and it establishes an office to provide aid to the Iraqi people if this agency finds the need.
Or resolutions 706 and 712 that urge Saddam to provide more food and medicine to his people, and establish the Oil for Food program to help.
I think it is clear that innocent Iraqis did suffer under the sanctions. I also think it is clear that the blame for this rests solely on Saddam. In spite of the UN's efforts, he purposely starved his people, and used the sanctions as propaganda against the United States. Unfortunately it looks like many people, including you, were not able to see through his propaganda.
You probably won't give this much weight, but this is what the U.S. State Department has said about the sanctions (note that this document was produced in August of 2000 under the Clinton administration and well before our action this year).
Then imposed sanctions which drastically slowed the ability of iraq to rebuild hoping that the thirsty starving masses would revolt. It was a sad miscalculation which ended up causing almost a million deaths while still keeping Saddam in power.
I think you are a little confused. The sanctions were only intended to diminish Saddam's capabilities to continue his weapons programs. Food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies were never restricted by sanctions. On the contrary, during the 90's the UN urged Saddam several times to buy more food and medicine, and the (somewhat misguided) Oil For Food program was established to facilitate that. However, Saddam knew he could use the sanctions for in his propoganda efforts against the United States, so he intentionally withheld supplies from his people (while building himself lavish palaces).
The blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people rests soley on Saddam Hussein. It is silly that a leader of a country that is as rich in natural resources as Iraq is would allow his own people to starve.
During the Iran Iraq war Saddam Hussein launched chemical war against the iranians and the kurds.
But a few posts down you say:
You are not alone though lots of people believe it too even though there is not one shred of evidence to back up the proposition.
So I guess the fact that we saw him use chemical weapons isn't enough "evidence" to you that he was developing WMD's?
The UN security council drafted a resolution to condemn him. The US vetoed that resolution.
You know, you really shouldn't make stuff up when the facts are publically available. During the 1980's the security council passed about 12 resolutions against Iran and Iraq, and the US did not veto a single one of them. Out of these resolutions, 5 of them delt with Saddam's use of chemical weapons:
Resolution 540, which "condemns all violations of international humanitarian law, in particular, the provisions of the Geneva Conventions" was passed by a vote of 12-0 with Malta, Nicaragua, and Pakistan abstaining.
Resolution 582, which "deplores... the use of chemical weapons" was passed unanimously.
Resolution 598, which also "deplores... the use of chemical weapons", and was also passed unanimously.
Resolution 612, which "condemns vigorously" the continued use of chemical weapons, was adopted unanimously.
Resolution 620, which "condemns resolutely" Iraq's use of chemical weapons, passed unanimously.
Also consider this. Bush has created a brand new govt branch. He has grown the size of the govt more then anybody else in recent history.
We still only have three branches in our government (exective, legislative, judicial), so I assume you are talking about the new Department of Homeland Security (under the executive branch). But that wasn't as much growth as it was a reorganization, and besides, providing for homeland security is one of the most important roles of the Federal government.
He has also (almost) created the largest entitlement program since the advent of medicare and social security (the drug benefit). He is running enourmous deficits. Despite all that he is the darling of the conservatives who supposedly are for smaller govt and fiscal responsibility.
You obviously don't listen very closely to conservatives, then. They have been extremely critical of the spending increases and entitlement programs that Bush has supported.