Liberation of Iraq

[Stan]

Quote:

From CNN

Bombings in Baghdad kill 127 people, including 82 in an attack at a market, the Iraqi Interior Ministry says.

This is a big one, but almost daily news..

My question is this, did they have these before the 'Coalition forces' "liberated them" and set them "free"?

[Taylor]

I understand that they did, but I think in some areas it has escalated. I do think in some areas it has improved but without Sadam in power the local factions are going to go after each other whether we were there or not, I fear.

[Woody]

Saddam would simply gas thousands of his people at a time. So ... although attacks may have not been as often ... Saddam would kill more at one time than we see now.

[Bravus]

Hmmm - did that even happen more than once?

[Bravus]

The gassing of the Kurds is a horrible thing, don't get me wrong. But it seems to have happened once, killing about 5,000 people. This war has killed inumerably more than that. It's also misleading to say Saddam gassed 'his own people', since at that time the Kurds were fighting against him in the Iran-Iraq war.

Saddam was a horrible guy, and did some horrible things, no doubt about it. But there is no comparison on grounds of numbers killed.

[Stan]

I come back to a question I asked before..

If I ask what you think of a President of a Country who

uses the Gov't soldiers to kill people who are trying to seperate during a civil uprising...

Am I talking about Saddam or Abraham?

[Stan]

Sorry, Abraham as in Abraham Lincoln

[Dr. Shane]

Very good question and America has a black eye of a double standard. America thought the Soviet republics should have had the right to break away from the USSR too.

The truth that few Americans want to admit, but I will do so freely, is the Abraham Lincoln was wrong. The individual states freely joined the union and should have been able to freely leave the union.

Now wars are bloody messes - literally. Are things worse now than they were before the war? I can't imagine why anyone would deny they are. Saddam ruled with an iron fist and while he killed thousands without a trial or representation, he prevented the type of terrorism that is taking place now and will escalate even further if we leave too soon.

The real question is will things be better after America leaves than they were before America got there. American must leave the country in a better condition than she found it.

[bevin]

Quote:

American must leave the country in a better condition than she found it.

(a) This might not be possible

( Staying/escalating might not be the best way to do it, if it is possible

One should never let the heart's desire for the goal overrule the head's judgement about how to attain the goal.

Being desirable does not make it attainable.

/Bevin

[bevin]

The whole Middle East layout was artificially created at the end of WW-I and distorted even further with the post-WW-II creation of Israel.

It was hacked out, basically by the British with a few other stirrers, from a nomadic desert society with some cities. Lawrence of Arabia backing one family, Shakespear backing another. The Saudi kingdom was basically conquered by the current ruling family in the 1910-1950 period - and they started with practically nothing.

The boundaries don't follow natural cultural, geographic, or resource lines.

Historically Europe and the USA used wars to reset the boundaries, getting something plausible and workable only after (a) the costs of the wars went too high, and ( the switch from dug-up-wealth to manufactured-wealth happened.

We are holding the costs of wars in the Middle East down - so that is not stopping them.

Wealth there is dug up, and unevenly distributed.

It takes strong wealthy families to rule through strength under such conditions - otherwise you get feuding fiefdoms.

We took a stable situation, and made it unstable. Just like all the experts told Bush we were. He "thought" we were creating an attractive flower of democracy. Quote marks, because there is not a lot of evidence that any real thought went into the decision - either that or, really cynical, it really was a plan to loot both the USA and Iraq into Halliburton's coffers.

/Bevin