Forget Michael Moore: THIS is why we are in Iraq

[Borealis]

Iraq is not the only, and not the worst for being know for killing..
(Maybe you didn't know, but Iraq actually had some of the better hospitals in the worlds- Maybe you should talk to some people who have lived there????)
Africa, has been non-stop for a longer time...

OIL, economy, corporate gain(oil buddies)and building a stronger america(without care for cost), Is the purpose for the war... I think that is almost obvious.....WMD's turned to, fighting insurgents, then to bringing democracy.

I can support hope and peace, but I can never support the corperations who are have made and are making money off of this, this is wrong, so wrong. This is corperate warfare.

Let me ask you this: with all the talk about Halliburton getting contracts and getting rich off of Iraq...

Can you name one other corporation or entity that could be doing the work that Halliburton is doing over there? Can you name even ONE? Because there aren't any others; no other corporation in the world does the stuff Halliburton does. Since the stuff they are doing needs to be done, how else is it going to get done unless Halliburton does it? That's not corporate graft, that's just using whatever tools are available to do the job! It's like accusing a carpenter of favoritism towards a hammer because he's nailing a couple of two-by-fours together, instead of using a saw!

 

[ScottishJohn]

What is it that Halliburton can do no one else can do? Should we be reporting them to the monopolies and mergers commission?

Building roads...
Building powerstations...
building hospitals...
rebuliding infrastructure...
telecomunications...
oil...

No I can't think of any reason why Halliburton should be the only company suitable for these tasks? What tasks do?

 

[kurabrhm]

And you know what's really extra disturbing? Much of Saddam Hussein's war machine was carried out with weapons, conventional, biological, chemical and dual-use, that were provided to him by Western nations - notably, the USA - up to the early 1990s. The purpose for this support? To help him put down uprisings - who do you think was in the older of the mass graves? - and to fight Iran. The United States helped Saddam consolidate power, and he killed uncounted people in the process, and now the US decided to remove him from power...killing yet further people. There is a serious need for examination of conscience here.

Its not easy to understand the American connection with Saddam because its just utterly unbelievable that a free and supposedly democratic country would ever support an autocratic government.
One can argue that saving further Iraqi's from dying at the hands of Saddam was a morally justified cause which lends support to getting rid of Saddam. But going in and tearing the country to pieces does not help. The objective was simply to remove Saddam from power. The American govt has done that but it still continues to tear the country into pieces. This is not justifiable. Once you've achieved your objective that was morally sound, its time to get out. There's no point in hanging around and fire bullets around aimlessly whilst pretending to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
The Western coalition should be intellegent enough to realise that things just can't be solved properly by simply pointing a gun.
What is needed is butter (diplomacy) to work things out. We witnessed this during the Clinton era and in many ways it was a positive time for US relations with the Middle East. But now Bush is struggling, even with Condoleeza Rice, to use more of the butter and less of the gun.
The power of the American president is huge. Someone as clever as Rice is not enough to counterbalance the rather mundane thinking of the President.

 

[kurabrhm]

Democrat, Republican...it's all the US government. The Democrat/Republican distinction means very little to most other nations, especially since the there is so slight a difference between the US's two parties compared the the differences between parties in many other nations. It's not a matter of one party or the other - it's the simple fact that the US government as a whole needs to realize that all actions in int'l relations have long-lasting effects on real living people and that this is not just a game of Risk. It's simply not acceptable to play this game of pitting one nation against the other, especially when it is done with so little regard to the long-term consequences and humanitarian effects. This applies to both Democrats in the US and Republicans.

Yes but surely its important to realise, at least within the field of diplomacy, that there are in fact differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. For example, if the Democrats were in power in the post 9/11 period, is it really plausible to think that they would have sent American troops to spread fake puppet democracies to Afganistan and Iraq? the republicans don't mind dealing with puppet governments in remote parts of the world as long as they can earn cold cash.
Also, if it were the Democrats and not the Republicans ruling in America there would be less alarm and less money being wasted on the defense budget. This would create the positive effect of lowering levels of paranoia regarding terrorist attacks. Budget deficits in the US economy wouldn't be so high and therefore there would be less frantic borrowing. This increased borrowing means the Americans have to keep digging in Iraq as long as the budget is in the red. This is hardly good for Iraq, let alone the world.

 

[Teutonic Knight]

With all the anti-American propaganda spouted in the European media on a daily basis, of COURSE the people were against the war.

And how much "anti-American propaganda" is that, exactly? You have figures? You keep a running tally of the amount of anti-American propaganda being published in Europe every day?

That's quite a feat. Especially when I consider the number of different countries in Europe.

France's leaders were shouting from the hilltops how America was being unilateral and ruining the 'peace process.' Then we found out they were on the take.

"France's leaders" were not on the take. A handful of businessmen and a couple of rogue officials were on the take. Not "France's leaders."

Read:

The Duelfer report noted that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) sought to influence French individuals connected with Chirac, and also noted an unconfirmed report from an Iraqi official that one oil voucher recipient was Chirac's conduit. But the report did not allege that Chirac was directly involved or even aware of the corruption.

mediamatters.org/ items/ 200412060010

How much play did THAT get in the French media?

Plenty. It was all over Le Monde and Le Figaro, for a start.

Oh, and... Enron, anyone?

Same for Germany and Russia.

True for Russia to a certain extent; false for Germany. Her leaders were never on the take, and Germany itself saw no more than 3% of the entire food-for-oil money, which is as much as America herself received.

Read:

Without any evidence, FOX News host Sean Hannity and former U.S. Representative J.C. Watts (R-OK) accused German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of corruption in connection with the United Nations oil-for-food scandal.

Hannity decried Germany's role in "one of the biggest financial scandals ... in the history of the world," but former U.N. arms inspector Charles A. Duelfer's comprehensive report on Iraq's weapons programs indicates that German individuals and companies received no more than 3 percent of Iraqi oil vouchers.

Therefore, Germans likely profited no more (and possibly less) from the scandal than Americans did. And just as no American political officials were accused of wrongdoing in the Duelfer report, Schroeder was not implicated or even mentioned in the report.

...

While Germany may have had significant financial interests in Iraq prior to the war, their financial interests in the oil-for-food scandal were minimal.

On January 25, 2004, the Iraqi independent daily newspaper Al-Mada published an initial list of "approximately 270 individuals and entities who were beneficiaries of [former Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein's oil vouchers."

No German individuals or companies were named in that list, and the list of oil voucher recipients that was included in the Duelfer report shows that Germans likely profited no more from the scandal than Americans did.

The Duelfer report's list (volume 1, annex B, p. 302) of all "Known Oil Voucher Recipients" includes each recipient's nationality, as well as a chart broken down by nationality (figure 16, p.166).

The list indicates that 30 percent of the recipients were Russian; 15 percent were French; 10 percent were Chinese; 6 percent each were Swiss, Malaysian, and Syrian; and 4 percent each were Jordanian and Egyptian.

American and German recipients were included in the approximate 20 percent of "recipients from other nations." The report did not quantify the exact percentage of German recipients, although it was no more than 3 percent.

The nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations noted in its analysis of the Duelfer report list that "U.S. companies and individuals received between 2 and 3 percent of the total vouchers -- some 111 million barrels out of a total of 4.1 billion."

While the Duelfer report implicates hundreds of individuals and companies in the scandal, it clearly does not implicate Schroeder.

mediamatters.org/ items/ 200412060010

Being in North America, the only way to get THAT side of the story is to go look for it

Poppycock.

it doesn't exist in the mainstream media, does it?

Oh yes it does.

I live in England. On the weekend of the elections, The Guardian (a left-leaning broadsheet) published a huge article on the positive outcome of the vote, with a list of the many benefits that Iraqis currently enjoy, and painting a picture of optimism and hope for the future.

By contrast, The Times (a right-leaning broadsheet) published a scathing and skeptical analysis of the vote, citing a long list of current problems in Iraq and predicting many more to come.

 

[Teutonic Knight]

France and Germany were too busy siphoning off Oil-For-Food money to care about the populace.

France and Germany both said that the sanctions should only be lifted once Hussein had agreed to the re-entry of weapons inspectors.

If they'd been profiting heavily from the food-for-oil scandal, they'd never have agreed to raise the sanctions under any circumstances.

Read:

Conservative media figures are engaged in an aggressive campaign to use the scandal surrounding the United Nations oil-for-food program to discredit the United Nations as a whole. The attacks focus on Saddam Hussein's manipulation of oil-for-food to obtain illegal revenue, which he used to prop up his ailing regime.

But these attacks on the United Nations frequently deny or ignore three important facts:

(1) as members of the U.N. committee charged with monitoring the sanctions regime, the United States and other U.N. Security Council members played at least as large a role in monitoring oil-for-food as the oft-derided "U.N. bureaucracy" but apparently did little to address corruption in the program;

(2) Saddam obtained a much larger portion of the illicit revenue used to prop up his regime through oil smuggling outside U.N. auspices than he did through the elaborate kickback schemes he devised under oil-for-food;

and

(3) oil-for-food achieved considerable success in alleviating the acute suffering of the Iraqi people that resulted from U.N. sanctions following the 1991 Gulf War.

mediamatters.org /items /200412070005

The Italians haven't been any good in a fight since about 250 AD.

Not true of course, as any half-decent student of history knows. But let's move on.

The Spanish government had its own problems, and anyone electing a socialist government knows full well that they're going to cower in the corner instead of standing up for principles.

Spain's outgoing conservative government had entered the war on Iraq despite the fact that 90% of the nation had been strongly opposed to any Spanish involvement. So the conservatives had already trampled democracy underfoot by ignoring the will of the people. In response, the socialists promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq if they were elected (thereby performing the will of the people. That's called "democracy.")

All of this was long before the Madrid bombing.

When the bombing did occur, the conservative government first tried to blame ETA (which was a lie) and then tried to pretend that it hadn't lied. The Spanish people responded by voting in the socialists, who have since proved themselves to be worthy opponents against ETA (not "cowering in a corner instead of standing up for principles", as you childishly put it.)

Tora Bora wasn't screwed up; John Kerry used that in the campaign and twisted the truth around to make Bush look bad.

Fact: OBL escaped. A dying man with a portable dialysis machine somehow managed to escape the world's most powerful military machine. (Was he limping too fast, perhaps?) You don't need to "twist" the truth in order to realise why that's bad for Bush.

If OBL's effortless evasion of US forces isn't a screw-up, what is?

And if the US is even more hated among the Arab populations, why is Libya suddenly playing nice? Why is Syria sweating bullets at the prospect that their own people and the Lebanese are suddenly going to want the same choices the Iraqis have?

Self-preservation, not love of the US.

The Syrian issue is further complicated by the assassination of Hariri and the corresponding surge in Lebanese opposition to the continued presence of Syrian troops in their country.

Don't judge what's happening in Iraq based solely on what happened before, because the situation is different today. It's being handled differently

How is it being handled differently?

I think you should read The Wars Against Saddam by John Simpson. It will help you to understand the Iraq situation; both pre- and post-Hussein.

 

[Doorak]

To begin with. Nukes were NOT necessary in getting the Japanese Empire to submit. The war in europe was over. Japan's grasp of its neigbours had dwindle'd to non existence. Japan was already fighting a losing battle when America dropped its two nukes. They simply wanted a quick end to a long war (although america really hadn't been fighting for all that long), with fewest casualties on their side. Granted the war might have raged on for a couple of more years (at the very most), but i guarantee you that japan would have and could have been subjued without the use of nukes, and of course even when they did surrender they still got to keep their emperor. Like obviously they weren't going to surrender any time soon until they start seeing a single bomb taking out a complete city... considering nothing like that had ever happened before.

So the nazi's were evil? Please elaberate on this as i don't see how you can define them as being evil, whilst you are good... so i won't bother elaborating yet.

And as for terrorist's. Well of course i don't agree with their methods but that doesn't mean i don't sympathyse with their cause. As they say, one mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

 

[Borealis]

To begin with. Nukes were NOT necessary in getting the Japanese Empire to submit. The war in europe was over. Japan's grasp of its neigbours had dwindle'd to non existence. Japan was already fighting a losing battle when America dropped its two nukes. They simply wanted a quick end to a long war (although america really hadn't been fighting for all that long), with fewest casualties on their side. Granted the war might have raged on for a couple of more years (at the very most), but i guarantee you that japan would have and could have been subjued without the use of nukes, and of course even when they did surrender they still got to keep their emperor. Like obviously they weren't going to surrender any time soon until they start seeing a single bomb taking out a complete city... considering nothing like that had ever happened before.

Sure, Japan would have lost the war. America would have rolled over them, at the cost of probably a million more lives. The numbers game is never pretty, but the total casualties from the two bombs were about 150,000, none of them American soldiers. The Japanese were NOT going to surrender without a desperate last stand. This is a culture that viewed surrender as dishonorable, preferring death in combat. Why do you think they were flying kamikaze missions? And America hadn't been fighting as long as the rest of the world, but three years is still a long time. And while YOU might consider another couple of years of vicious, island-to-island fighting to be no big deal, rest assured that the American people would have burned Truman at the stake if it had been learned that he had possession of a weapon that would have ended the war sooner and saved a couple of hundred thousand American lives, and didn't use it.

So the nazi's were evil? Please elaberate on this as i don't see how you can define them as being evil, whilst you are good... so i won't bother elaborating yet.

Oh, please do. The Nazis weren't evil? You'd better be elaborating on this. Unless you have absolutely no concept of morality, there is no way to possibly describe the Nazi party as anything BUT evil. This was a dictatorship that legalized assembly-line murder. If that's not evil, I'd love to know your definition (although it probably involves being a Republican politician).

And as for terrorist's. Well of course i don't agree with their methods but that doesn't mean i don't sympathyse with their cause. As they say, one mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The only people who say that are leftists who are trying to justify their support for murderous dictators like Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. The word to describe someone who blows up civilians and flies planes into buildings is 'terrorist.' They are trying to terrify people into giving them what they want. I have no sympathy for anyone who thinks killing children is a good way to get your point across.

 

[FutureTeller]

Mathew777

Do u want to tell us that the USA went to Iraq to save the Iraqi people from these murders? Do u urself really believe that?!

Haventu heard about what happened in Falluja?! How many civilians were killed and how many houses were bombed and completely destroyed?! This was under the claim that the people of Falluja can go electing freely! But how they have the nerves to elect while they are homeless?! What is more important: elections of houses?!

Plz dont fool urself or try to fool us. Kids know why the USA in Iraq!

 

[Milla]

I'll file that insightful comment in the appropriate drawer. Why don't you cite a few examples of my 'utter ****?'

How about the fact that you keep insisting that the "Coalition of the Willing" nations' troops represent a significant commitment, when the commitments patently are not (of all non-US nations, I think the largest percentage of troop commitment from any one nation is something like 3 percent of their total military force, as I've pointed out numerous times in this thread, without you acknowledging it)?

 

[Doorak]

Yeah lets take an example of the coalition of the willing. I live in Australia, we've been one of the most willing to go and fight. And lets see why... Currently we're undertaking free trade agreements with the US. Little Jonhny Howard, and the insolent George Bush get to sit at a table and negotiate (obviously not the whole deal) the vast majority of it and to work out the fundamental aspects to it. Considering how large the US consumer market is and that we are one of the worlds largest dairy, wool, and meat suppliers of the world and that currently its all rediculously tarriffed under current trade agreements Johnnies getting what he wants by committing troops for the sake of America's war.

France... now im not all to sure as to whats happened about them, but considering they were one of the strongest voices against the war and Bush didn't seem reason to work out the ties he simply threatened France and made the distinction that if you're not for our war then obviously you're on the (our) enemies side. Definately sounds like a fair and noble leader to me.