>> ^ShakyJake:
You're right, Bcglorf, it was a bit of a snide drive-by comment. But the point I was trying to make is that as bad as conditions there and elsewhere in the world are, they'll never get the same kind of mainstream attention as places where we have a vested interest. Call it despicable all you want, but it seems more like an unfortunate reality to me.


I agree, though even in a place like Iraq where we have a personal interest the media still is giving little to no attention to the Saddam era genocide through chemical weapons on villages and gathering civilians in concentration camps before marching them to mass graves and a bulldozer burial. Our main stream media gives the impression that dictators like Saddam and Kim Jong Il aren't really all that bad. In reality though, they have committed the exact same crimes we condemn the Nazi's for. But, we'd rather have weekly 1 hour TV specials with celebrities visiting starving children in Africa. It's great to raise awareness of Africa, but most people don't realize that the conditions for the every day North Korean are not only much worse, but the North Korean don't even realize that a better life exists anywhere else.

Oh, an an up vote to go with your snide comment might help get some attention to the cause.

>> ^Farhad2000:
I don't need to ask anyone, I live in Kuwait. People are still sour at Iraqis and Saddam and are still pressing for the new Iraqi regime to honor all post 1991 debts.
But to say that people wanted the removal of Saddam Hussein due to some altruistic feelings is simply false when looking at these issues on a international level. The secular wedge of Iraq divided the Sunni and Shia worlds of Saudi Arabia and Iran, and threatened them at the same time something neither liked but something that was used to great affect by the Americans to secure beneficial trade and oil agreements and massive weapon sales.
Iran didn't start the war, it was Iraq who needed something to unite the people for after the prolong political cleansing that Saddam inflicted on the government.
Hussein Khomeini is in league with the fallen Shah government that was installed in a CIA backed coup, the religious regime that came in was no better then the Shah. But I would not give any voice to someone who is sympathetic to the neoconservative cause.
Yes he was a bad bad man, but to say that the American invasion and removal by force is the best way to deal with such instances is just lunacy.



Here is what I actually said:

"shoot people in their own homes and cities..."
Do you really mean to make it sound like civilians are the intended targets?

"in a preemptive global police action"
Removing a dictator that committed genocide against his own people, annexed a neighboring sovereign country and failed at annexing a second is pre-emptive?

"instigated for monetary purposes"
Really? Even after this video and the well documented down turn the American economy is going through? Are you sure?

"If China or Russia came over here and did the same to us..."
Oh yeah, let's go really far out into left field. Let's pretend that the insurgence in Iraq is fighting to reinstate the toppled Baathist regime. Let's ignore that the true liberation army of Iraq, the Peshmerga army of Iraqi-Kurdistan, is fighting alongside American troops. Let's even pretend that American citizens are just as unhappy with their government as Iraqi's were with Saddam. That's an insult to every man, woman and child now buried in the mass graves of Northern Iraq.


I never suggested what the 'best' way was. I just stated that the current situation in Iraq, as bad as it is, isn't as bad as the genocide that Saddam was continually pursuing. More over, one can hardly look at pre-war Iraq under Saddam and say that some kind of collapse and ensuing civil war wasn't already on the way. You can't say that the factionalism that the American's have blundered into worsening, wasn't being fed even worse by Saddam's heavy handed oppression of all Kurdish and Shiite people.

More importantly, the main point I was addressing is the notion that the video speaks of, the cost to American tax payers of the war. It is pretty ridiculous to suggest that the Iraq war could have been anticipated to be good for the USA's economy by anybody, and so talk of a war based on American greed is just hyperbole. The only benefit to America of removing Saddam is the same enjoyed by many other countries the world over, one less dictator encouraging war, genocide and division. Pretending the disaster that is the current state of Iraq wasn't well in the works since even before the first Gulf War is extraordinarily dishonest(though that lie was pushed the most by Bush/Cheney pre-War)

>> ^Sniper007:
Oh my, classic. "...ravages of market forces." Damn that market! Damn it all to hell! We need the government to control that evil market!
The 'experts' on this video can see the problem, but they have absolutely no clue what to do to fix it. Domestic "insecurity" is what the government should be addressing? What, now the Feds are supposed to make sure everyone is warm, well fed, healthy, happy, moral, educated, exercised, wealthy, insured, safe, and secure? When did the Feds acquire that responsibility, or that power? What if someone doesn't WANT to be warm, well fed, healthy, happy, moral, educated, exercised, wealthy, insured, safe, or secure?
Oh, and we aren't at war. Call it what you like, but it is not 'war.' Wars are declared by Congress. If you're in the military, and really love this country and it's Constitution, you may want to think twice (or even thrice) before you travel over seas to shoot people in their own homes and cities in a preemptive global police action instigated for monetary purposes. If China or Russia came over here and did the same to us, without even declaring war, we might be a little pissed off ourselves.


"shoot people in their own homes and cities..."
Do you really mean to make it sound like civilians are the intended targets?

"in a preemptive global police action"
Removing a dictator that committed genocide against his own people, annexed a neighboring sovereign country and failed at annexing a second is pre-emptive?

"instigated for monetary purposes"
Really? Even after this video and the well documented down turn the American economy is going through? Are you sure?

"If China or Russia came over here and did the same to us..."
Oh yeah, let's go really far out into left field. Let's pretend that the insurgence in Iraq is fighting to reinstate the toppled Baathist regime. Let's ignore that the true liberation army of Iraq, the Peshmerga army of Iraqi-Kurdistan, is fighting alongside American troops. Let's even pretend that American citizens are just as unhappy with their government as Iraqi's were with Saddam. That's an insult to every man, woman and child now buried in the mass graves of Northern Iraq.

That said, history will remember Saddam for the good he did as well as the bad. Infrastructure, child literacy, secularisation, women's rights, healthcare and economic growth.

This is a guy who was essentially a warlord, but an incredibly progressive one.


I'm sorry, but no. You attribute secularisation to Saddam's credit, but I don't think many call brutal repression of religious freedoms a positive. Listing child literacy and women's rights just astounds me. I needn't point out the wonderful benefits that were enjoyed by women and children unfortunate enough to be Kurds. If Infrastructure and economic improvements are enough to redeem a monster, then Hitler did them even better than Saddam.

Saddam wasn't a progressive warlord. He was a cruel, warmongering dictator progressively becoming worse and worse. The number of reining dictators in the world who can be said to have used chemical weapons on their own people to commit genocide, and who had sufficient military strength to successfully annex a sovereign UN member is a short one. Saddam era Iraq was described by Iraqis as "a mass concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath".

To say Saddam was 'a really bad man, but' is to completely misunderstand the situation. The context of calling his actions brutal is not that he would have those opposing him executed. It isn't even forcing their loved ones to watch. It is forcing them to not only watch, but applaud the execution of their loved ones that dared oppose him. It's with extremely good reason that Hitchen's strong anti-war stance was radically altered by his visits to Iraq to actually speak with the people there.

Well obviously... haven't you seen the mass graves outside guantanamo? That's the start of the robot age.

sirex,

There are two maybe three possibilities for Iraq. The obvious one is permanent, endless occupation of Iraq, which leads to constant "state of war" and myraids of daily IEDs and plenty of people willing to cross the Atlantic to "return the favor". Endless nightmarish guerilla war and contant false flag operations to control the public which will have grown sick of the nonsense about when 2009 rolls around.

Choice number 2 is mini-Iran forms and you have one part of Iraq being Sunni, another being Shia, and Kurds probably all slaughtered. Most of the formerly Christian and Jewish Arabs are now left the country or laying in mass graves. Basically Iraq becomes a proxy was for dominance between Saudis, Iranians, and Turkey. Most likely Iraq becomes a major religious controlled theocracy and uses the "fake" democracy we taught them about to pretend to be a democracy. Look, you can't go in an put your own puppets into leadership and run a sham election to "show" a fledging democracy how it is supposed to work.


Anyways, Iraq right now IS a bloodbath. You can theorize that it will be worse, but it couldn't get much worse. There just aren't enough people left to kill. They are dying everyday, at the hands of insurgents, bombs, the army, the iraq army, the private contractors, the sectarian bloodbath..

We created this problem. It was nonsense to invade (just drop a bomb on Saddam if you wanted to overthrow him). It was nonsense to occupy. It is nonsense to continue to stay in the middle of a civil war. The US can NEVER solve this, especially the way they act in the region (Palestine, ignoring Saudi actions, paying the Pakistanis, paying the Taliban, overthrowing people they previously paid and supported)...

There is no "handful of killings" in Iraq. Go to the BBC or something and read a daily account of the scores of murders daily.

Now call me a simpleton (most around these parts do) but for all the gummint's grandiose plans about removing "the leaders" of any gang in the hopes it will crumble, even I know that when and where there's enormous power and money in illicit enterprises like drugs, extortion and contract killings, the fun will NEVER stop. Someone will always be there to pick up the reigns.

Even if you dig mass graves and execute ALL the scum presently behind bars, there will always be more scum to take its place. That is the way of things.

And of course they are using the Kurds and the mass graves uncovered after they invaded Iraq to justify the war which was never the stated reason for going to war in the first place - that was the weapons of mass destruction being launched within 45 minutes claim. This is an after the fact attempt at justification of the invasion, one which sadly uses the bodies of people Bush Snr left to die in the first place as 'evidence'!

I once took a class on Jewish history as an elective. We watched this video in class (I'm actually not going to watch it tonight. This is the kind of thing you only need to see once to have the images permanently seared into your memory, and I've seen it multiple times already).

One of the most horrifying things about watching this in that class was actually not in the movie itself, but in the classroom. I looked around to get my classmates' reactions (and, honestly, to look away from what was onscreen at the time), and right beside me was a girl eating cheetos as we watched bulldozers being used to bury mass graves. I couldn't believe it. It is frightening how detached we can become.