Saddam started the Iran Iraq war, which saw over a million dead, including the most prolific deployment of chemical weapons since WW1.

Saddam followed that up with the Al-Anfal campaign. Read up on it, it's one of the most brutal attempts at genocide in recent history, including chemical weapons, concentration camps, over a hundred thousand deaths and an effort to breed the Kurds out of existence through systematic rape of Kurdish women.

Saddam followed that up with the complete annexation of Kuwait. Effectively removing a UN member state and claiming at as part of his Iraq.

Saddam followed up his forced removal from Kuwait with a retaliatory genocide of Shia Iraqis again topping a hundred thousand dead again.

But yeah, he fortunately lacked the military might to succeed in such ventures for a time. He was bluffing having stocks of chemical and nuclear weapons to keep his neighbours in check. Pity he was removed from power then and we didn't wait till he could make good on his bluff.

Yes, Saddam era Iraq was better for the rest of the world than the current situation, by far. Far from perfect, but far better. More mass killings, rapes, and threats against us and our interests (and Iraqis, Iranians, and Kuwaitis)today than under him from what I see.
We didn't go to Iraq to support Iran or (in the latest instance) to support Kuwait. We put and kept Saddam in power BECUASE he was an enemy of Iran. I supported ousting Saddam out of Kuwait, and even limiting his abilities then, but not a second protracted 'war' for chameleon reasons with no plan for after he's gone. Removing him left a power vacuum that was an easily foreseeable problem we did little to solve and is now biting us in the ass.
You are misunderstanding because you are apparently equating what's 'best' for their 'neighbors' with what's best for the world. Saddam had little to 0 ability to strike beyond his border nations, so he did not pose a threat to us (except to those still believing the BS apocalyptic hype for the 'war' which have all proven to be lies). A power vacuum in the middle east is NOT what's best for all, or obviously even what's best for the neighbors, and IS a threat to us.

Forgive me but I don't understand. Are you telling me you believe that Saddam era Iraq was better for the rest of the world? I hope I'm misreading you, because I'm pretty certain the entirety of the populations of Iran and Kuwait at a minimum are unanimous in feeling more secure in the absence of Saddam's military threatening them with repeats of his previously devastating wars of aggression against them. Tell me I'm somehow misunderstanding you,

What's even worse is many people still want to cling to the fantasy that Iraq wasn't already a disaster under Saddam's reign of terror.

@lantern53

ah my friend.
you seem to have fallen into the propaganda trap.
allow enoch to chat with you for a bit.

are you comfy? need a drink? coffee? a beer?

ok,then let us begin

this is not a political ideology.
this is not right nor left.(seriously limiting terms anyways).

this is about the full picture.

so let us discuss WHAT propaganda actual is,rather than what we are TOLD it is.
propaganda is simply manipulated information presented in a way to appeal to our irrational and emotional response rather than our rational and reasonable.

when i use the term "manipulated" i am not inferring or implying an outright conspiracy (though often-times it may possibly be a conspiracy) but rather a set goal to illicit the desired response.

and there is always an element of truth in propaganda but the truth being presented is controlled and manipulated.which is apparent in your commentary.

corporations use this tactic and we call it mass marketing but the first usage was that of the state to control its own citizenry.america being the major and first to pioneer this tactic.see:edward bernaise and the council of propaganda (later changed to the council of public relations).

so let us break down your examples which i assume are an attempt by you to discredit the assertions in dr wasfi's speech in this video.

1.to point out the crimes against humanity is a straw man argument.
it is irrelevant.
it is a last ditch effort by the american government to excuse and/or validate an illegal war of aggression:
a.no weapons of mass destruction
b.no connection to al qaeda
c.almost 1 trillion lost (literally,they cant account for that money)

so the american government points to the atrocities of saddam hussein and says "look! look at what a bad person he is"!

SQUIRREL!

which brings us to your next point.

2.the atrocities you are referring to were well know when saddam was a paid participant by multiple government agencies.
let me say that again for you:
saddams atrocities were WELL known and was on the american government payroll.
did saddam gas the kurds?------yes
who sold him the gas components?---we did.

so when my government,in a last ditch effort to absolve its complicity in the wreckage that is iraq by pointing to the awful and horrific acts saddam perpetrated on his own people as somehow making the invasion of iraq a righteous act is utter..and complete..hypocrisy.

they KNEW what he was doing and did nothing because it was politically expedient for them to do so.they wished to corral iran and the ends justified the means.see:Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard

there are many MANY accounts where the american government turned a blind eye to the suffering of other nation-states citizens because it did not align with our interests.

i find the whole situation morally repugnant and it angers me even further when i see the propaganda twisting my fellow countrymen into believing this is somehow a morally just way to deal with despots,tyrants,zealots.

when it was MY country who put them in power in the first place!

the rationalizations are so deeply cynical and hypocritical that it creates an almost vacuum of cognitive dissonance.

and this is my main point in regards to your commentary.
it is a rationalization given to you by those who wish to continue to oppress,dominate and control those who are powerless.

it gives a semblance of morality where there is none.

because if we took your commentary to its logical conclusion:that sometimes war is necessary to rid the world of "evil" (an arbitrary term based on perspective),then why are we not in those countries that ALSO oppress,kill,maim,torture and immiserate their citizens?

answer:because it does not serve the interests of this government.

so the only usage of emotional heart string pulling is to give americans a sense of moral superiority,while not dealing with the actual reality.

you are being manipulated my friend.
and they have given you a convenient myth to hold onto.

by my commentary i am not dismissing the great works of my country nor am i saying that my country is inherently evil.
i served my country and did my duty.

but i also will not turn a blind eye to the reality on the ground just because i find that information..uncomfortable.

many times the truth is uncomfortable and it takes courage to look at it with clear eyes and a critical mind.

i always stick to the axiom:governments lie

as for your nazi reference,
i invoke godwins law.
the death camps were not even a known reality till the war was almost over and were not the reasons for the war in the first place.
so the context is irrelevant.

as always,
eyes open...
and stay sharp.

@lantern53 keepin it frosty since 1982.stay awesome my man

Yeah, Iraq was a virtual paradise under Saddam, what with the rape rooms, the training of terrorists, the gassing of Kurds, the execution of losing soccer players, the human shredding machines, and Somalia...the warlords were doing a great job feeding everyone equitably. Hitler had all those Jews in one or two places, too where they could be in an orchestra and live out the rest of their lives together with their families.

Delaware is considered a northern state. Maybe not by you but by others.
And when I lived in Maryland, everyone there seemed to consider it a northern state too. But ok, you don't consider it a northern state. Cool.
(Ask anyone in Boston if he is a "Yankee" and see how that goes!)

But what's your point now? You agree that the Civil War was a "War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery". That's why he did not invade or interfere with the border states. They did not secede. So how is this relevant to the original point about Jon Stewart thinking otherwise and going off on Andrew Napolitano about it? And are you now trying to claim that the north was acting in "self-defense" because of southern attacks on federal forts?


"In 1862, the General Assembly replied to Lincoln's compensated emancipation offer with a resolution stating that, "when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity." And they furthermore notified the administration that they regarded "any interference from without" as "improper," and a thing to be "harshly repelled.""

The proposal was never put to a vote. It was not tried in other states. And it was not addressed directly to the slave owners but to politicians in the Assembly. No effort was put into it.

Among the tactics employed by the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danes, and others were slave rebellions, abolitionist campaigns to gain public support for emancipation, election of anti-slavery politicians, encouragement and assistance of runaway slaves, raising private funds to purchase the freedom of slaves, and the use of tax dollars to buy the freedom of slaves.

The most charitable thing I could say is that Lincoln tried but failed to come up with and implement any other way to end slavery but to engage in 'bloodshed and violence' (putting aside that he claimed to not care to end slavery except as a way to get one over on the South).

Still, that only says something about his competency, his "political genius" as some say (or lack of it), but not about whether there were other options available that could have worked without the 620,000 dead and 800,000+ more maimed-or-disfigured-for-life.

Of course, there is no empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that any more than there is any empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that, without two nukes, Japan would have lost the war, or that without the Korean war, the Communists would have taken over the world, or that without the Iraq invasion, Saddam would not have built "weapons of mass destruction" to unleash on the world.

What if 'peaceful secession' would have neutered the federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which Lincoln strongly supported), creating a flood of runaway slaves that could not have been stopped and would have broken the back of the slave system'?

The Soviet Union collapsed on its own without the US and its allies going into a bloody war against it. Maybe if the US had started a third world war with the USSR, it would have collapsed sooner. But it certainly would not have been worth the 'blood and violence'. And it is far from certain that the 5 years of Civil War accelerated the end of slavery, while it has certainly served to bolster and continue the decades of segregation, discrimination, and abuse that followed.

The first Republican president seems to have set a precedent for later Republican neocons. When faced with a problem ---> go to war.

I think these so-called unstoppable warlords that siphon off our aid is an even bigger myth. The United States of America defeated the British Empire, invaded Nazi Europe, dropped a nuclear fucking bomb on Axis Japan, sacrificed thousands of lives in Vietnam, stood head to head against the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis, landed on the moon, funded Nicaraguan revolutionaries using money from arms sales to Iran, assassinated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet we can't deal with warlords and civil wars in Africa where (at least with Rwandan civil war) weaponry is in the form of crate after crate of machetes made in China?

If all of those things are possible for the biggest super power in the world, how is it not possible to stop these warlords from siphoning our aid?

Lies.

We don't care so nothing of real consequence happens. All of those above events have one thing in common: our own goddamn self interest.

Everything sucks. May god have mercy on everyone's soul.

@bcglorf @Fairbs

I used to hold the same view on military intervention. If only it were applied impartially by a nation or alliance, then any would be genocidal leader would be deterred by threat of imprisonment or death.

However we all know that in reality this is stymied by the lack of altruistic intentions, the political dimensions of risking soldiers' lives in foreign wars and the unintended consequences of even fully altruistic intervention.

I can't really argue against there being a case for intervention in Rwanda or after Saddam gassed the Kurds.

A sufficiently large force by the US/NATO would have probably deterred the Hutu militias in Rwanda from waging their genocide. Had the international community demanded Kurdish sovereignty from Iraq following the gas attacks, Saddam would have probably accepted it coming off the Iran-Iraq war for fear of being attacked by Iran while he waged a civil war.

In either case I can also play devil's advocate. Would the inevitable Tutsi government set up by intervening forces in Rwanda have been seen as legitimate by its people? Would reconciliation really have been effective if it was effectively imposed by outside powers? Would civil war have reignited? Even with how things turned out in the absence, we know that Kagame's government is increasingly authoritarian and has supported militias like M23 in Congo against the remnants of Hutu militias which has itself been a source of much death and violence. In the case of the Kurds, what if calls for cession resonated in the Kurdish population in Syria and Iran and the opposition turned violent in those countries?

In most cases, while hypothetical intervention may appear the clear moral ground I just can't be certain the outcome would have been better. In the case of Rwanda, probably, a large portion of the 500,000 lives lost would have been spared. In the case of the Iraqi Kurds, no intervention would have pre-empted the initial gas attack, however inciting the situation could have resulted in more people dying in violent struggle and resistance.

And I fully agree and support people getting across the point that aid to places like Africa is not futile. I just fear the big overlap of people that insist that military intervention is therefor always a detriment and the dollars far better spent on aid. I wish I shared your optimism on popular opinion if intervention had taken place in Rwanda, but I just don't see it. The other two genocides I mentioned were committed by Saddam and we've all seen how popular that reception was around the world. The Belgian officer in charge in Rwanda was facing a court martial for putting his men in harms way as the genocide began. I'm afraid I have zero doubt had Clinton sent Americans to stop the Rwandan genocide our popular opinion today would be the lesson of how tragic the foreign intervention was in escalating a civil war into a disaster and if only Clinton had listened to the voices begging for peace not war.

My favorite exchange is near the start:
Ritter: Mehdi Abadi never told us anything when he had plenty of opportunity to...
Hitchens: ...While his family was in the hands of Saddams secret police...
Ritter(hesitantly): ... Yeah, they were with Saddam's police ..
Hitchens: Come on!

It's very difficult to beat Hitchens, he's a master debater.

It wouldn't even matter if you had a stronger position, if you are not at his skill level and I'd say very few people are, he'd quite likely still "beat" you. This Ritter guy is not on equal level, one of his weaknesses is his passion, which I'm afraid in civil debate really just gets in the way.

If you're going to throw out a bone that a country is better off with a Dictator than the growing pains of a revolution, well, just get the shovel out and start digging.

Oh Saddam might of helped the country out a little when it was crashing and burning...oh lord BETTER keep him forever. What a shallow and stupid perspective, why does he want to rule over a dump site? Of course he'd like to improve it so he can rule something a little nicer. He's still a Dictator with crimes against humanity as long as they come.

Just a weird stance to have taken, I feel like Ritter knew he was getting a bit stupid but couldn't realistically back down without reducing the effect of the rest of his arguments.

It wasn't just waterboarding, Hitchens admitted he was wrong on Iraq as well.

One of the things I admired most about him was that on taking a strong stance on his beliefs, he was still willing to put those beliefs to the test and if persuaded change them.

As you know, he was sketchy on condemning water boarding, tried it, and came back unreservedly declaring it as unqualified torture. He did the same thing with his position on Iraq, but I can see how many missed it. During the first gulf war Hitchens was very publicly vocal in his opposition to the invasion, even debating and destroying Carleton Heston. After the war, Hitchens went to Iraq to live with Kurdish people, and he promptly came back with his mind changed and advocated from that day forward for the removal of Saddam.

Spoiler, Hitchens 'wins' the debate. I can't honestly say I've watched or listened to a debate between him and anyone were that did not seem to be the case. As often is the case though too, his grandest victory is understated, brief and easily overlooked.

Ritter thumps hard on the absence of WMD in Iraq to condemn the invasion, which on it's surface seems a strong argument. Hitchens casually references an unwillingness to be lectured on WMD's by those who cautioned against invasion for fear that Saddam would use those WMD on US troops. Scott Ritter went on Crossfire before the invasion to state that Saddam could easily reconstitute his chemical weapons and invading was too risky.

The reason Iran hates the US...

Years of interference, supporting the Shah's oppressive regime, supporting Saddam in Iraq v Iran, constantly interfering in domestic politics, constant support of Israel's interference in Iran...

You bully a country long enough and they're going to have a grudge against you, surprise sur-fucking-prise...