sometimes the truth reveals itself at the most unexpected moments.

but it wasn't wholly one man that launch the [redacted] war against Saddam. it was the work of many.

SIDEBAR: recall during those times, the administration tried five 'slogans' to sell the war. wasn't until WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMDs) that they found a 'winner'.

Colin Powell forever gave up his chance at the US Presidency when he tried to sell the UN on the idea. Remember it well. Watch it live, at work, with w/boss. We saw nothing to warrant a war.

Remember it well, indeed. Hunter S. Thompson was a guest on Letterman the following night and said something to the effect of "you couldn't get a search warrant for a known mobster's house w/that kind of evidence". (have looked on YouTube for it but can't find it)

Also, remember Angela Merkel saying she couldn't ask her people to go war w/info given. A comedian remarked later that when you can't Germany to agree to invade a country - there has to be something terribly wrong w/the idea.

Sadly, this was the moment the Republicans must have believed they could sell any lie, anytime, anywhere, about anything.

They might be correct.

The U.S. doesn't fight hand to hand ground wars against governments.
China won't be fighting a guerilla war.

China has men, not current equipment. Remember Saddam...he had WAY more tanks, we hardly lost one because ours are infinitely better. Same goes for Chinese, rifles don't beat high altitude bombers.

Kuwait. Iraq.

Everyone loses to those goat farmers, they're called the graveyard of empires for a reason. Russia lost big time, and are so dumb they're poised to try again. We lost the day we went in with troops instead of an assassination squad.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cia-veterans-who-monitored-crackdowns-abroad-see-troubling-parallels-in-trump-handling-of-protests/20
20/06/02/7ab210b8-a4f6-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

A taste....
Other former CIA and national security officials rendered similarly troubled verdicts.

Marc Polymeropoulos, who formerly ran CIA operations in Europe and Asia, was among several former agency officials who recoiled at images of Trump hoisting a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington after authorities fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the president’s path of protesters.

“It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” Polymeropoulos said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”

Lets get all countries to organize their institutions in such a way that idealistic moral imperatives and vows are binding. No cheating, not even lying. Ever. Yes you too, Saddam. And Vladimir. And Pooh too. I mean Xi Jinping. I am sure if we ask them all nicely or sign a petition or demonstrate in front of the Indian and Pakistani embassies 24/7 surely they will come around.

If we disarm now, how do we divert that asteroid when we need to?

I am actually doing just fine simply completely ignoring her hysteria. First time I listened to her is this video.
What is her impact in China? Russia? India? Brazil? Indonesia? On people who make decisions?
Perhaps in the USofA hysteria can have an impact on future elections (I am actually doing just fine simply completely ignoring the current administration) but will global ecology really be a big (or medium..) election theme in the USofA in the near future, like 20 years?

Im washing out those plastic bottles and sorting trash and keep my car serviced properly and fly rarely. But if this type of hysteria is randomly aimed against nuclear power, attempts to talk to women in the workplace, and eating meat regularly on other days, could we please not go that way... too late.

What can be done to move the 6 countries mentioned at least slightly in the direction of Europe on pollution? To stop China building coal power stations all over Africa? Brasil and Indonesia deforesting? What has (or can) Grrreta really do to help there? This is like trying to shame Saddam Hussein to give up those WOMD he hid so well. How dare you Saddam? Bad boy!

Also how dare three quarters of us not just lie down and die without children to save the planet? Or are we evil and not mature enough to forego making money to buy food for our families? Which in most places on the Earth means polluting like hell. Vicious cycle. Maybe people should be more modest, maybe rich white kids should not be the ones saying that.

Grreta so reminds me of west european academic communism in the 60s. CND in the 70s. Greenpeace. And so on. Should find out more about people, now that she has read all those encyclopediae. Everyone has to eat and f*@k or we die out in one generation.

Comparing post-Saddam Iraq to the current state of the US is more than a bit disingenuous. There's no 1:1 comparison here, or anything even remotely close.

You kind of noted it yourself, but Saddam DID use hope as well. He spent lots of money on the people that were loyal, obedient or just kept their heads down. You just can't ignore that his approach of giving the people the choice of a decent life if obedient or the risk of a horrific suffering one for disobedience secured him great power for multiple decades.

Using violence, torture, and the backing of the Russian military, and after numerous failed coup and assassination attempts he took and held tenuous control. Torture hardly played a huge roll or he would have been successful the first time, or the second. He retained and increased that power in the 70-80's by spending his huge amounts of oil money on the people, mostly not by torturing them (except for Kurds).

The "others in the room" we're his forces, not random people who murdered for him out of relief. He didn't hand weapons to an adversarial group he was convincing to follow his lead by having them kill those who wouldn't. I mean...WHAT?

You use fear mongering as proof torture works? Um... ok.

Since what I've been discussing is torture working to get sensitive, useful information, not the long term terrorism and brutal oppression of a population, I'll just move on.
Yes, despots can ride nations into the ground by making the populations powerless and fearful until those populations revolt. Yes, an iron hand and willingness to make your population stone aged can allow you to hold on a long time. Yes, torture can be part of that, but only one small unnecessary part, a strong military willing to murder unarmed civilians is what it takes, torture or not.

Wow, now you think the U.S. military taking out Saddam proves torture works because ...force and violence?

Strength vs weakness is what worked, not torture or terrorism, that's why he failed, brought down by a coalition of locals and Americans with his military deserting him in droves when he needed them most.

Torture is not a functional interrogation technique nor a means to foster loyalty, only fear. Fear only works until someone adds hope to the equation.

Saddam took control of an oil rich nation of 30+ million people using violence and torture. He had them record his clinching moment on video, where you can still watch him drag out a visibly broken man(well agreed to have been broken through torture, Saddam deliberately flaunted this), and has the man read out a list of names of co-conspirators. Sure, Saddam undoubtedly wrote the list himself, but he was already powerful and feared enough it didn't matter and this evidence was enough. The co-conspirators were hauled out for execution, and the others in the room were fearful/relieved enough that when they were ordered to perform the executions themselves they did.

Saddam then ruled Iraq for another 24 years before he was forcibly removed by foreign powers, not any manner of domestic uprising.

Don't tell me that nobody else in Iraq wanted the job for that quarter century, instead Saddam's brutal methods were successful in keeping his hold on power throughout that time. None of that makes his methods 'right', but to declare that the methods are ineffective is just silly. Doubly so if you observe his hold on power wasn't removed by crowds of peaceful protesters rising up removing him in a bloodless coup, but rather through the use of more force and violence than Saddam could muster in return.

Torture is good for getting someone to name any person they know. It is not good for getting useful information....so it's only barely useful if you torture someone weak who knows the name of others you are looking for, and gives them up. That's useless information, even to a monster like Saddam. He would never know if the important names were withheld and only acquaintances named, so would be forced to murder the entire country eventually. Only unknown hermits would be "safe".

Your example assumes dissidents with families would be allowed to have sensitive information.
Clearly it didn't work, too. There was a strong opposition to Saddam he utterly failed to destroy even though he tortured without pause. You create more enemies than you could ever catch by torture. Smart leaders start to wonder if torture for information is worth the cost. (Hint, it's not)

Torture for coercion, a different topic, that often works, but only until the tortured decide death is preferable and try to revolt, which requires you to keep them in N Korea conditions to keep any revolt from winning. Hardly a net gain for even third world nations.

I'm sorry, you have misunderstood me.

What I mean to say is that your post that included the example does not contain an actual example, only a generalization devoid of any reference.

I don't trust that you are a reliable source of information on the history of Saddam Heussane's use of torture and whether or not his results could deem an interrogation effective.

You are speaking generally enough that I'd like evidince I can inspect for myself before I take your word on this or that point being factual or definite.

In other words, I did read your comment and found it unconvincing in terms of substance.

Or in other words, I don't believe you know what you're talking about.

Would you do me the courtesy of reading what I say before rejecting it? I specifically said: "Somebody like Saddam Hussein usually didn't care about Jack Bauer style, minutes count specific intel."

Jack Bauer style meaning like your revelation of a closely guarded secret after waterboarding...

Saddam would do things like sending his police to a disloyal man's home, and them simply handing over a video of them torturing his son or raping his wife/daughter whom they still had in custody. We don't have to like it, but it absolutely was effective in crushing dissent from not only that guy, but as word spreads a lot of other start wondering if resistance is worth the cost.

Our world is absolutely filled with examples of violence, rape and torture being used as powerfully effective weapons and ignoring it doesn't wish it away. The fact it these things are so powerful makes them all the more awful and more important we discuss it.

@JiggaJonson,

When you say:
...I'm against promoting the idea that torture works...

I can see where you are coming from on this. In the sense that it might then encourage people to accept using it, because it works.

My problem with that line of reasoning though is that torture actually is effective. The simplest proof being that we wouldn't have every single national intelligence agency using it(directly or indirectly by a less squeamish ally as we 'civilized' nations prefer to do it).

Your links to the ineffectiveness of torture only look at the narrowest possible goals from it. Somebody like Saddam Hussein usually didn't care about Jack Bauer style, minutes count specific intel. Getting the names of everyone you knew or 'conspired' with mattered, and torture IS effective at getting people to talk. The trouble your links note is that torture victims will say literally anything to get you to stop. When looking for information though, victims can't name real people unless they know them. Better still for guys like Saddam, if you get yourself 3 victims in the same movement, you can cross reference things and build a list of suspects. To more ethical nations like us that's unactionable intelligence, but if you don't care if you sweep up 5 innocents along with the 5 people that really were a threat to you, it still 'worked'.

Torture also is widely used simply as a tool to instill fear. When your citizens have seen the broken shells of people who's loyalty was deemed questionable, fear keeps them in step. It worked for Saddam until external forces stopped him, and it's helped keep 3 generations in power in North Korea.

Getting back closer to the video, things we don't like don't go away just because we refuse to talk about them. Rape, torture, and violence aren't like the boogeyman that will go away if we just stop talking and thinking about them so much. We need to accept that there are terrible things in our world that people do and benefit from doing them. These are things that people use to gain a feeling of power, or to truly gain real tangible power over other people.

Of course we have to discuss them responsibly, and the danger of shaming victims is an equally real thing to be aware of. At the same time though, humor is one of the ways of bridging the gap to people dealing with trauma, so jokes about things that cause trauma like rape, violence and torture have an honest place in making things better as well.

Lovely how the cronies behind Trump totally cant tell if he is being serious or not. Better than Stalin or Chrushchev. Not as bloodcurdling as Saddam. But in the same general job description and persona.

Actually no, I responded to what you said, which could be taken to mean many things.
I said I thought you meant the current state of Iraq when you said "blaming Sr. for Iraq"...and reading this it seems I was correct.
Imo, the current state or the region is mostly due to jr, not Sr.
Many people still blame Sr for the current state there. I disagree with that theory. That's all.

Sr hardly had a war in Iraq, his barely crossed the border and was mainly in Kuwait if memory serves. They chased the Iraqis out and bombed the shit out of them as they ran.
Kuwait was considered a sovereign nation, not a province of Iraq. Saddam invaded it. Sr never tried to remove Saddam, except from Kuwait. Since he understood the problem of creating a power vacuum there, I think leaving Saddam in power was smart with no feasible plan to replace him, even though it was clearly inhumane....and we have evidence now to support that. Iraq is absolutely worse off today than it was under Saddam, no matter which group you belong to.

Fortunately, all the WMD talk was pure fabricated fantasy...we never had evidence he continued those programs after the first gulf war/Kuwait. If he had had them, Bush Jr might have started ww3 by attacking him, knowing he would use them on his neighbors like he had before. Remember, it was Jr's administration's plan to convince the public he had wmds, so it's no surprise he also had people saying they're too dangerous to attack while he had many more saying he's too dangerous to leave in power....the same people claiming he was involved in 9/11, which was asinine.