What can the American People do to make up for the injustice

[John317]

I'm a rugby player, Redwood - 'rough brutes' is a term of affection!

That's what I thought when I first saw your post. I felt the affection somehow.

[Neil D]

Originally Posted By: Shane

1. Violation of Cease-fire Agreement of first Gulf War

Please notice the number one reason. This is why it was not two wars but one. We continued the war because they were in violation. They attacked Kuwait and signed a cease fire agreement. Over many years ... they continued to violate the cease fire. So, the reason we went to war was to Free Kuwait. That is the reason we are in Iraq.

Don't be playing this card....It is as weak as a straw man arguement.

For 7 years, Iraq has been violating the cease fire agreement...But the main reason that we did not attack before then, was because [and this is important], IRAQ WAS ALREADY CONTAINED.

I know that Shane makes a big deal over the UN scandle, but I tend to think, since it did not materialize, that more was made of it than the PR surrounding it.

[John317]

How about the question what we should do to make up for the injustice we have done to the Afghan people? Does anyone think we ought to give them back their Taliban, the public executions, and the terror?

Our neighbors, who are from Afghanistan, could not talk to their families there during those years because the Taliban would not let the people communicate with the US. Our friends both had parents who died without being able to talk to their son and daughter. Now they're free to talk to relatives in the United States or in Europe. They're no longer executed in public the way they were under the Taliban, and women are able to go to school.

[fccool]

I think the best questions to ask at this point is not How Can we make up for the injustice . The reason that I'm saying this is because this is not the question to ask Americans, but Iraqis.

Mainly because.

1) We do not experience what Iraqis are going through, so they can not possibly understand, and probably think that what is going on in every day Iraqi lives are good for them

2) Same as #2, with addition that any solutions that will be proposed here take America centered approach that we know what's best for them. So any solutions will be thought up probably irrelevant to the people who lost their home, families, and reasons to live. We count these as casualties... but they are real people just like us.

3) I don't want to generalize, but you have to understand that the soldiers that we are sending to Iraq today are not the same soldiers that went to Nam. The values changed drastically over past 50 years. Viet Nam war change many people for the worse, Iraq war only amplifies today's cultural norms. Many of these people were raised in today's culture of pornography, gangster rap and violent video games. I know that there are MANY exceptions, yet I think that many of these guys find those things acceptable norms... these things are foreign to Muslim cultures and these will be. As much as I would like to believe that all of the US military personnel are morally upright people, I know it could not be further from the truth. With shortage of troops, and people needing money... the kind of people who end up in the military are not exactly the shining examples of moral behavior. Many times US Army overlooks these. I mean, let's be realistic.

Even if these are small cases of rape and trigger happiness... these viewed very negatively by the locals who join in with insurgency by large numbers to oppose the "immoral infidels". People are loosing trust... even enough to pick up a weapon, or even blow themselves up.

A good documentary to watch on this subject is Soundtrack to War. It's an interesting study, and you can view it online here.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...h&plindex=0

So with that being said I think it is important to assess the damages before thinking about paying up reparations. When the damages come to lost loved ones... I don't think we can ever make up for it... not even by preparing the country and leaving. All I can say is that many people have lost their willingness to live as they are willing to die... in a very extreme and stupid manner. We have to understand.... that whatever we have experienced during 9/11, that fear, that uncertainty, that loss... Iraqi people as a nation experience it every single day since 2002. Can you imagine living like that?

[Gerr]

:dumbfounded: (again)

Now we share the same affliction!

Gerry

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

Remember, before Iraq went into Kuwait, GB sr said to SH, via the Iraqi embassy "the borders of the muslim countries are not of concern to the american people' then he flip-flopped, after the Kuwiat gov't in excile hire a 5th Ave PR firm to sell the war.

Let's say that Bush 41 did say that. (I haven't seen that reported anywhere else but here) What was he trying to say by it? Do we actually believe Bush 41 was encouraging Iraq to invade their neighbors? And if Bush 41 was so stupid as to encourage that, wouldn't he have had a moral obligation to defend Kuwait since it would have been partially his own fault they got invaded?

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

IRAQ WAS ALREADY CONTAINED.

I know that Shane makes a big deal over the UN scandle, but I tend to think, since it did not materialize, that more was made of it than the PR surrounding it.

Iraq was like a tiger tied on a rope - gnawing through it. Iraq was contained but the oil-for-food scandal showed us that if we hadn't acted when we did, Iraq wouldn't have been contained much longer. The reason it did not materialize is because we invaded the country! If it hadn't been for the invasion, Iraq would have gotten the sanctions lifted and resumed their WMD programs. That is not a guess. We know that to be true because we found the plans to do so in Iraq. He was even planning to go nuclear. And without invading Iraq we wouldn't have learned about the oil-for-food scandal to be able to stop it.

[fccool]

And without invading Iraq we wouldn't have learned about the oil-for-food scandal to be able to stop it.

What do you mean by that? I thought that that program was established by Clinton administration to alleviate the affects on the sanctions. It was a pretty known fact before going to war... sanctions were devastating the country, while giving power to Saddam regime. I see these doing more harm, and Oil for food was hardly a solution. Correct me is I'm wrong, which I could be as I don't know much on that subject.

[Dr. Shane]

Of course we knew about the oil-for-food program. We didn't know about the oil-for-food scandal. We didn't discover the Oil-For-Food Scandal until we invaded Iraq.

Contracts to sell Iraq humanitarian goods through the Oil-for-Food Programme were given to companies and individuals based on their willingness to kick back a certain percentage of the contract profits to the Iraqi regime. Companies that sold commodities via the Oil-for-Food Programme were overcharging by up to 10%, with part of the overcharged amount being diverted into private bank accounts for Saddam Hussein and other regime officials and the other part being kept by the supplier.

The involvement of the UN itself in the scandal began in February 2004 after the name of Benon Sevan, executive director of the Oil-for-Food Programme, appeared on the Iraqi Oil Ministry's documents... The report concluded that Sevan had accepted nearly $150,000 in bribes over the course of the programme...

Peter van Walsum, the now-retired Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United Nations and chairman of the Iraq sanctions committee from 1999 to 2000, speculated in a recent book that Iraq deliberately divided the Security Council by awarding contracts to France, Russia, and China but not to the United Kingdom and the United States...

The scheme is alleged to have worked thusly: individuals and organizations sympathetic to the Iraqi regime, or those just easily bribed, were offered oil contracts through the Oil-for-Food Programme. These contracts for Iraqi oil could then be sold on the open world market and the seller was allowed to keep a transaction fee, said to be between $0.15 and $0.50/barrel (0.94 and 3.14 $/m³) of oil sold. The seller was then to refund the Iraqi government a certain percentage of the commission.

Contracts to sell Iraq humanitarian goods through the Oil-for-Food Programme were given to companies and individuals based on their willingness to kick back a certain percentage of the contract profits to the Iraqi regime. Companies that sold commodities via the Oil-for-Food Programme were overcharging by up to 10%, with part of the overcharged amount being diverted into private bank accounts for Saddam Hussein and other regime officials and the other part being kept by the supplier....

The Duelfer report, released on 30 September 2004, described in a key finding the impact of the Oil-for-Food Programme on Saddam's regime:

• The introduction of the Oil-For-Food Programme (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.[vol. I, p.1]

The final official version of the report cites only France, Russia and China (countries who were also strongly anti-war) as violators who paid kickbacks The Duelfer report's list of all "Known Oil Voucher Recipients" includes each recipient's nationality, as well as a chart broken down by nationality. 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."

On June 5th, 2007, the German chapter of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International (TI) lodged a complaint with the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) against 57 German companies for allegedly paying $11.9m in kickbacks in the United Nations’ Oil for Food Programme in Iraq.