The war was justified even without WoMD!

Chris OConnor

Have any of you seen the newly released videos of Saddams henchmen beating and torturing people? Check out the news folks. Even if we never find a single WoMD that evil bastard and his sons needed to be ousted from power.

Read this

And this

Oh, and this

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci

Chris OConnor

I am only responding to my own post here so that I can take credit for making the 1000th post in this forum. :rollin

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci

LanDroid

"If no weapons of mass destruction or only a residual capacity (is) found, the principal justification enunciated by the U.S. government for launching this war will have proven not to be credible."
- Former CIA Director John Deutch 7/24/03

Timothy Schoonover

(1) I don't know anyone who ever disagreed that Saddam was a ruthless and cruel politician. (2) I know lots of people that think war against Iraq is not justifiable.

Those in favor of a war with Iraq argue that (1) is incompatible with (2). If Saddam is as we think he is, then we are obligated to dispose of him by whatever means necessary. This reasoning is simplistic and misleading and designed to whip up the masses into a emotional frenzy. What everyone seems to forget in their righteous indignation is that war is quite often worse than the crimes it seeks to prevent. Why is it that we are so damn happy to go to war? Why are we so giddy to 'save the world (again)?' War should be accompanied by nauseating dread and revulsion. Why? Because war is horrible, horrible, horrible! It is the wholesale slaughter of innocent humans for the benefit of this intangible thing we call a state and its 'version' of what is right. Joe kills Mohammed, Omar kills Joe, Bob kills Omar; Bob wins. Bob has now 'liberated' Mohammed and Omar's mother, wife, family and friends. Omar Jr. is now free. The state oppresses individuals and the state goes to war to 'save' them. Oppression and tyranny are very real, but going to war ought to be tantamount to the admission of critical failure. It should be like getting your arm caught in a trap and being forced to choose to starvation or amputation. But I don't see this. Instead I see people sitting on their couches watching CNN and laughing when an Iraqi paramilitary truck is machine-gunned by incidiary American ammunition. I see bright-eyed 'lovers of democracy' talk about the newest bomb, or rocket, or tank, or aircraft with enthusiasm and revel in the imminent display of American 'technological authority'. I see people posting on the internet about how we should kill thousands of innocent Iraqis, distrupt their way of life, and demolish their country because Saddam is such a very bad man. Well maybe we should. But I just don't see the dread that ought to accompany any commitment to such a terrible terrible course of action. I don't see our humanity. But then again, why shouldn't we be happy about saving the world from evil (again)?

rielmajr

I think that most people who've done any reading or thinking on the subject of Saddam will agree that his regime was at least on a par with Idi Amin's in Uganda. I would guess that it might have even come close to Kim Jong Il's in North Korea. Or Charles Taylor's in Liberia. But there are some real differences: Uganda and Liberia didn't float on a sea of oil, and their fates weren't tied up with our (or Israel's) strategic interests; and N. Korea actually has a program of producing weapons of mass destruction. But, given the rationales offered by the administration for the invasion of Iraq (it posed an imminent danger because of wmd, Hussein was a murderous dictator and did cruel things to his people), we should have already jumped on N. Korea and liberated the people of Liberia from random slaughter.

But the question is actually not whether or not Iraq actually has wmd but the use of lies to goad our nation into a pre-emptive invasion. Extended and made a common, that practice will spell the end of our democratic republic. One wonders about the strategic use of hype (aka "public lies") to rationalize the diminution of civil liberties through the monstrous "Patriot Act." Bush is to the US as Caesar was to the Roman Republic. I wonder if an American Suetonius will arise in the future to chronicle this event.

Consistent with the metamorphosis into an empire is the arrogant and unilateral manner in which the war was initiated. We have become, as Clyde Prestowitz has perceptively noted in his book of the same name, a Rogue Nation.

I am also nauseated by Saddam's (and his sons') atrocities but am also appalled at the underreporting of Iraqi civilian deaths that have occurred after the war was declared over.

Chris OConnor

I'll respond to each of you individually...

Lan Droid

Quote:
"If no weapons of mass destruction or only a residual capacity (is) found, the principal justification enunciated by the U.S. government for launching this war will have proven not to be credible."
- Former CIA Director John Deutch 7/24/03

John Deutch is correct in my opinion. If it turns out that Bush lied to the world in order to justify this war then we have a serious problem. At this point I'm not sure if it was a lie or a mistake. Leftists are quick to assume it to be a lie, while people on the conservative side are equally convinced that it was either a mistake or was actually true...and that the WoMD are going to eventually be found.

If I become convinced that Bush lied I will be so disappointed. Maybe embarrassed is the word...possibly outraged. If he lied and knew that those reports were fabricated then he deserves to be punished for this is a serious and horrible crime.

My original post is not defending Bush or any of the reasons Bush gave for the war. It was more of an extremely emotional post that came straight from the heart. I just watched a video on Fox News where an Iraqi man was having his feet beat horribly with a stick. These things should not happen in a civilized world. The good thing is these videos are circulating in Iraq, and the Iraqi people are getting to see what a brutal person Saddam was to his own people.

I believe that any dictator/nation that abuses his/it's people to the extreme that Saddam did deserves to be removed from power. I am not concerned with what the White House did right or wrong. This is straight from the heart. And there are many other hot spots throughout the world that need to be addressed as much or more so than Iraq.

But I do not adhere to the philosophy that we must either do something about all civil liberties infractions or do nothing about any of them. And here is how I explain this. Imagine walking down the street and you see a skinny and weak man beating up and robbing another man. You know you can quickly put an end to the abuse you see in front of you...so you do.

Then a little further up the road you see a big man with a knife threatening another man. You know if you get involved you may piss off the aggressor and end up with a knife in your belly. Instead...you go get help from a few other people so the aggressor realizes he is outnumbered. You still do something about the sight unfolding in front of you, but your course of action is altered by the potential risks.

To me we should have removed Saddam from power. Maybe we could have taken more time and got the assistance of the UN, but do you think the UN ever would have come around? Maybe they would have had we made a case for the atrocities he was committing.

So I agree that our expressed reasoning for invading Iraq was bullshit...if it really was fabricated. I just hate to see people being beaten and tortured...and it happened in Iraq way too much. Anywhere in the world it is occurring should be addressed by the entire civilized world. Fuck money and politics...this is about humanity.

Tim

Quote:
If Saddam is as we think he is, then we are obligated to dispose of him by whatever means necessary. This reasoning is simplistic and misleading and designed to whip up the masses into a emotional frenzy.

I don't think its fair to call this reasoning simplistic....or misleading. Yes, it is designed to whip up the masses into an emotional frenzy, but this is exactly what needs to be done. Americans need to see videos of Iraqis being tortured and raped and oppressed. If it is happening it needs to be seen. Just like people need to see the videos of the airliners slamming into the World Trade Center. When is the last time you saw that on TV? We forget so easily and so soon. We can't afford to forget - in my opinion.

Quote:
What everyone seems to forget in their righteous indignation is that war is quite often worse than the crimes it seeks to prevent.

You may be right. But do we do nothing and allow dictators to rule by force and fear? I thought we did a pretty damn good job of keeping civilian causalities to a minimum. Don't you? Or do you think that any civilian causalities are too many.

Quote:
I see people posting on the internet about how we should kill thousands of innocent Iraqis, disrupt their way of life, and demolish their country because Saddam is such a very bad man.

I haven't read anything of the sort. You actually see people saying we should kill innocent Iraqis? I thought we targeted their military infrastructure. You commented about how the media/Whitehouse portrays things in a fashion to whip up public emotion. Well, you just did it too. We all do it. We all are trying to sell people on one thing or another. It’s quite human. But have you really heard people say things about their desire to kill innocent humans? Or was this a tinge of the strawman fallacy?

Have you ever heard anyone say that they think we should disrupt their way of life? Was that ever really the goal of this invasion? Or was disrupting their life an unfortunate externality of removing Saddam from power? I liken the temporary, yet unpleasant, disruption to the incision and scarring that are necessary to operate on a person to remove a cancer. We cut a cancer out from the body of Iraq, and in the process made a bit of a mess. Iraq will heal and hopefully the cancer will not grow back.

And finally, do you think we demolished their country? I watched the news everyday for hours and was very impressed with the precision of our attacks. We demolished Iraq’s military. We killed thousands of soldiers. But did we really demolish their country? I don't think so. We avoided bridges and monuments and roads and such. What other nation in human history put so much effort into not causing mass pain and destruction during a war? Only the United States. I find it strange that at times when I feel proud to be an American so many of my fellow citizens are feeling repulsion. One thing I am happy about is that we have the right, and choose to exercise the right, to discuss and disagree about such matters. This thread is awesome.

rielmajr

Quote:
But, given the rationales offered by the administration for the invasion of Iraq (it posed an imminent danger because of wmd, Hussein was a murderous dictator and did cruel things to his people), we should have already jumped on N. Korea and liberated the people of Liberia from random slaughter.

I completely agree. If oil is the real motivating force behind this administrations decision to take action then shame on those bastards. I'm not convinced that it is yet. Perhaps this was really about Bush Jr. finishing what his father started. That does make some sense. Saddam tried to kill his father...and now its payback time. And I'm not agreeing that Bush Jr. has the right to send our nations youth into harms way to settle his differences with Saddam. I'm simply stating that this might be the real reason Bush pushed for the war. My personal reasoning for supporting the war was stated in my above posts.

Quote:
But the question is actually not whether or not Iraq actually has wmd but the use of lies to goad our nation into a pre-emptive invasion. Extended and made a common, that practice will spell the end of our democratic republic.

You are so right.

Quote:
Consistent with the metamorphosis into an empire is the arrogant and unilateral manner in which the war was initiated. We have become, as Clyde Prestowitz has perceptively noted in his book of the same name, a Rogue Nation.

I'm not so sure I would go as far as to call the US a rogue nation. Do we really need to get the worlds support to take action when our national security is at stake? I don't think so. But back to the last quote of yours...without these WoMD there wasn't a real risk to the US. So we shouldn't have used that approach. The justified approach would have been that Saddam was causing his people great harm. Then we should have built a case for the UN to step in and do something about it collectively.

Quote:
I am also nauseated by Saddam's (and his sons') atrocities but am also appalled at the underreporting of Iraqi civilian deaths that have occurred after the war was declared over.

Do you have any links or knowledge about civilian deaths? My brother has an incredible Blog written by an actual Iraqi inside Iraq. It starts before the war and he still is writing to this day. You would love to read this inside info.

Ahhh! Here it is Where is Raed?

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci

Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 8/3/03 1:21 am

LanDroid

I think we could have made the case for removing Saddam based on human rights violations, but the Bush administration did not. I think they calculated they wouldn't win international public opinion using that logic and so decided to go with the "imminent threat" scenario. One knowledgeable journalist who makes this case is Thomas Friedman in several books and in NY Times columns. It's not about 16 words - the credibility of U.S. foreign policy is being damaged.

I suspect another reason the Bush administration didn't go with the human rights angle is they try to paint this as a "liberal" foreign policy. Clinton succeeded with this logic in Bosnia and Bush probably didn't want to be compared with that episode. There are a lot of violators on the planet and as President Clinton once remarked, "We can't afford to be involved in ALL of these matters, but we also cannot afford to be involved in NONE of them."

Chris OConnor

LanDroid

You may have hit the nail on the head. And what a shame it is if this is the case. I think the world would certainly have reacted had the humanitarian approach been taken. Just secure and air some videos of the torture and abuse of the Iraqi people and the world would respond. Or at least I would hope.

Politics makes me sick sometimes. Ok, quite often. We need to forget political parties and just do the right thing. I don't care if a particular stance might be deemed as being of the left or right side. Lets just do the right thing.

Liberia is next on the plate it seems. I just listened to Fox News and completely support helping them in their time of need. Americans will die, but how can anyone sit back and watch millions getting slaughtered year after year? Sometimes its worth risking your life...or so I believe.

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci

stevepainter

I haven't replied or participated much in these discussions because of my own mixed feelings.

In essence, I agree with your title, Chris. The war was justified without weapons of mass destruction. We should never have stopped short of toppling Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War. Sanctions were left to fester for years on end while the Baathists played hide and go seek with UN weapons inspectors. Those sanctions only served to make life for the downtrodden in Iraq much worse while Saddam and his cronies contiued to live in the lap of luxury.

In short, we should have finished Saddam off and set about helping Iraq into the 21st century years ago. The problem is, while I agree with the end result, I don't agre with the means used to justify it. Bush didn't just claim that Iraq had WoMD and the will to use them against us. In itself though, that claim is thin. It's a fact that Iraq had chemical weapons - we sold them their first batches back when they were fighting Iran for us. Hussein had a well documented history of using chemical weapons in war and to quell domestic uprisings. However, even during the first Gulf War he never once used chemical weapons on us or even on Isreal, at whom he fired numerous missiles.

Saddam may be a murderous dictator, but he was no fool. He knew that the response to the use of chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons on his part would be an overwhelming nuclear strike on our part. The fact is that the U.S. holds the ultimate trump card. We can choose to use it if things go badly for us. The only catch is that we are concerned about appearing justified in it's use. Given the circumstances, it would be very foolish to give us an excuse to use nuclear weapons.

This dovetails into the other claim (once downplayed) by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have some form of working arangement. It would seem that the only arrangement the two of them have is that they have a common enemy. I would say that we were more partners with Saddam against Iran all those years ago than he appears to be with bin Laden. Hussein wants power - his goal was not world domination but it was domination of the middle east. As pointed out above, giving the U.S. an excuse to nuke him was not a good strategy. Giving bin Laden WoMD would have created that excuse eventually. It's very likely that we would find out. After all, it's not really in bin Laden's interest to keep it a secret.

Bin Laden is a fundamentalist. He knows he's right and he knows he has Allah on his side. He's openly showed contemp for Hussein even while acknowledging their common enemy. If somehow bin Laden managed to destroy America, Hussein's Iraq would be on the list of his next targets. Everyone who isn't willing to accept a fundamentalist interpretation of an Islamic theocracy will eventually make the list.

Now this brings us to an interesting situation. It would appear that there is a much greater danger that Saddam would deliver any WoMD that he still controls to bin Laden now that he has very little left to lose. It would seem that in some ways we are now less safe than we were when the Baathists were running weapons inspectors on wild goose chases while Saddam feasted and the Iraqi children starved. In effect we have sacrificed some of our safety to try to improve the lot of the common Iraqi. The problem is, the current state of affairs was sold to us with the opposite argument.

Chris, you have stated that you will be disappointed if you discover that Bush was not telling the truth. At the risk of being labelled a "leftist", I must wonder if you're really that niave. As time has gone on, the claim that there were WoMD ready to be deployed - presenting an imminent danger to America - has obviously been proven wrong. At this point, any that are found will have been so well hidden that claiming that they were an "imminent threat" is downright silly.

This leaves us with a few possibilities. The first is that Bush was sincere and completely truthful, but his intelligence organization is of dubious quality. The second is that he exaggerated rather liberally or even outright lied about what we knew in order to convince the world that war was justified on the basis of an imminent threat. Either way our President has committed us to a military action with far-reaching implications and high costs in both life and taxpayers dollars on the basis of an erroneous argument. At best, his competancy should be questioned. At worst, a lie that leads us into war would seem at least as significant as a lie about a blow job. Where is the outrage? No wonder the world often laughs nervously at us.

Lastly, the entire Iraqi situation is about oil. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise. There wouldn't have been a Gulf War I, let alone II if there wasn't so much damn oil in the middle east. For that matter, bin Laden's al Queda would be nothing without oil money and the disenfranchised commonors who get to watch the rich sheiks party. The obvious answer to all this is that we should be and should have been looking to become less dependent on oil. Not just foreign oil, but oil in general. The Bush administration's deep ties to big oil cannot be overlooked. Our lack of alternatives is based in decisions made years ago - but we could do more now - we could start at any time.

Bush has not done anything of the sort - he's opened up national preserves for drilling. There's the "hydrogen car" initiative, but that is a smokescreen. It's simply not feasibile in the forseeable timeframe. We shouldbe bumping up CAFE. We should be taxing gasoline more. But big oil doesn't want us to do that because we would buy less of their product.

You know, those ridiculous ads that tried to link petty drugs to funding terrorists really annoyed me. It's possibile that some of the money drug users spend is financing terrorism. What they don't say is that all of the people driving around in the latest behemoth SUVs getting 12mpg are definitely putting money in al Queda's pocket. Looks like the worst, most addictive drug we've got is oil.

Meme Wars

Sorry Chris, but here is my take.

Iraq was already in the president's scope in January 2001 in the secret energy meeting (why was a national policy on energy secret?) 9 months before 9-11.

Only recently is some information being forced out of that energy meeting. One is a map of Iraq and its oil fields, both developed and undeveloped. Another is a list of oil developers throughout the world answering Saddams plea to assist in deveoping and repairing his oil infrastructure. No developer associated with the United States was allowed on that list. That made Halliburton and other oil companies dear to Bush very upset.

Recent discoveries hinted that Saddam is sitting on far more oil than what Saudia Arabia possesses. Because of the 1991 war, Saddam has cut us out of the loop. Because of the UN embargo, it has prevented us from having a take in his oil. Then we had oil interrupted in Venezuela and Niger due to political unrest. Oil prices started to skyrocket. Our 911 Saudi friends helped by increasing oil production, but that only helped a little.

If we let the embargo follow course, the USA would be left vulnerable as other nations were making deals with Saddam and his vast reserves. Even if Saddam was toppled due to stress of embargo, the rest of the world would be allowed to develope oil fields with USA left out of the picture. The UN solution was not viable to USA interests. We were hungary and our SUV's were running empty--our economy was sour due to higher energy costs.

It was important for us to "go it alone" in Iraq. By doing so, we tore up all those petitions from other countries to assist in Iraq's oil development. USA, Britain, and corporations tied to US interests are now the only ones permitted to develop and drain the world's largest to second largest oil reserve in the world. Once developed, we may then put extreme pressure on Saudi Arabia for its role in 9-11, or maybe even topple their tiny government. Right now, we are vulnerable to them, so we leave them alone even though 3/4 of 9-11 hijackers were Saudi citizens funded through Saudi sources (our oil money.)

It is our national and international policy to use up foreign oil reserves first, then come back to our. It is our international policy to keep international oil as cheap as possible for our consumption. Maintaining our superpower position requires this. Our economy is very energy dependent as we (5% of world's population) use up 25% of the world's raw resources. So we have the biggest military in the world (we can afford it at the expense of the rest of the world's cheap labor and raw materials) and spend the most money in the military-industrial complex to make sure we have the biggest stick.

All the other reasons given are to help self centered American feel good about what we are doing. Most know the reasons given are lame and do not protest about the recent findings. How can they? They got what they wanted! The price of filling up that 30 gallon 7,000 lb vehicle has gone down! So the populace is quiet.

Indonesia massacred the people of Timor. The country of Timor pleaded for our help and all we did was stand aside. Worse yet, we gave the Indonesians military consultation. Thousands died. Timor had nothing to offer us. Timor just wanted to be a self determining democratic country. But Indonesia has alot more to offer USA, and we didn't want to jepordize our trade relations with them. Indonesia has oil. Timor has none.

You watch, our response to Liberia will be anemic. It may be used for polital diversion, but we won't get too serious about it. As soon as it falls from our T.V. screens, troops will be unceremonioulsy pulled out.

Yes, Saddam was a tyrant. And now that we are in, I believe we should pay the horrible price of giving more than lip service to restoring Iraq and making sure it is a modern democracy, no matter how many lives are lost. And we better not withdraw our defence lines to the oil fields and pipelines. We better give a fair price for their oil and make sure the money is put to good use. We better stay in Iraq for at least 15 years, so that we can secure at least one educated generation of Iraqius that can handle and maintain democracy, just as we did for Japan after WWII.

But we have severly damaged our international relations and undermined the U.N. (our creation). We refuse to sign the Kyoto protocol, and International Courts (for good reasons, hindsight). Our international policy is being lead by corporations who are not democratically elected, who wish to dismantle any wall in their way, which is most foreign governments.

Just remember, Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. The only chance against this is for the other countries to get off their asses and heavily invest in their own military, and develop huge international coalitions as a roadblock to U.S. imperialism. That each time USA wants to attack, absorb, or covertly bully a small state because it has resources, this coalition will step in and challenge us, "You have to go through us first!" And force United States back in the U.N. to resolve differences without war. And that the world learns to use the power of embargo against the United States to get U.S. consumption down to reasonable and sustainable levels and to have the U.S. put a leash around its blood thirsty corporations who are out to corrupt and/or topple foreign governments.

Monty Vonn
Meme Wars!

Chris OConnor

Holy shit those two posts were excellent, Steve and Monty. You've both given me so much to think about as I head off today to earn a living. The reasoning in your posts isn't being overlooked...trust me. I'm thinking.

What keeps going through my mind right now is the power of information. I'll admit that I am relatively ignorant about the history and politics involved in this subject, so when I read different viewpoints that introduce new info...I absorb it. Without knowing some of the things you both have said in your posts, it is no wonder people like me remain in the dark.

And therein lies the problem with democracy. How the hell do you educate the masses enough that they can make educated decisions about whom they elect into office? Life is a complex weave of relationships and interactions, and I dare say most people lack the intellect and even desire to acquire the necessary info to comprehend these important issues.

I'm a prime example! I'm above average in intelligence (but not a rocket scientist by any means), but I wasn't aware of much of what the two of you introduced in your posts. There was a secret energy meeting 9 months before 9/11? Where was I? Rapped up in my own little world I suppose.

I appreciate the time you two have spent in explaining things...and I'll be looking deeper into this as time permits.

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be." -- Leonardo da Vinci


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