SpidermanTuba
Rookie
- Banned
- #141
Originally posted by jimnyc
The sanctions were in place to try and get Iraq to comply with resolutions he refused to abide by. There was an oil for food program setup, it's hardly the fault of the USA that Saddam destroyed that as well. Medical assistance was shipped in and Saddam used that for personal gain as well. The intent was certainly not to harm the Iraqi people, that honor falls on Saddam's shoulders. Saddam could have stopped the oppression. Saddam could have cooperated with Kuwait and return their belongings. Saddam could have fully disarmed and fully cooperated with weapons inspectors. Had he done this things the sanctions would have been lifted and war averted.
Now your strictly going on propaganda and opinion. As previously stated, had Saddam fully and unconditionally cooperated I'm confident we would have seen a different outcome.
All I know is that I don't want to live in the world I saw on 9/11. I also suspect the Iraqi people didn't want to live in a world of oppression. I don't think the entire Middle East wanted to live in a world threatened by their neighbors. The sanctions and reolutions were designed to be preventative and failed. I feel the war was necessary to ensure there the freedom of the Iraqi's. It was Saddam's responsibility to come clean with the WMD and he failed to do so. We needed to then ensure the safety of the region and possibly America ourselves.
I know you've stated in many other threads about the WMD. Let me bring something up to you that no one else has yet. Saddam declared tons of chemical weapons in 1998. These weapons and chemicals were verified by weapons inspectors shortly before being thrown out in 1998. When they returned years later these weapons and chemicals couldn't be accounted for. Inspectors repeatedly asked for their whereabouts or proof of their destruction. Saddam failed to answer. What do you suppose happened to these thousands upon thousands of liters of chemicals? Should we just have chalked it up as a mistake?
Oh, I suppose we were to expect a ruthless dictator who lives in magnificant palaces and to whom money is no object to give a damn that our sanctions are starving Iraqi children to death. Right. As if we didn't know Hussein wouldn't give a damn. Sure.
Propaganda and opinion? I have provide you the historical facts that lead me to believe Shrub didn't give a damn about the Iraqi people - i.e. all US Presidents before him, of either party, have histrocial not given a crap about oppressed peoples. And in case you didn't notice, when Shrub speaks, I tend not to believe, apparently his advisors are incapable of providing him with factual information. And I ask you again, had Saddam agreed to inspections, how would that have freed the Iraqi people?
"All I know is that I don't want to live in the world I saw on 9/11."
If that's all you know, you don't know much. Hussein didn't cause 9/11, for one thing, is that a relevant fact or can we ignore it because all we need to know is we don't want another 9/11? You know all the Germans knew is they didn't want to go through another severe economic depression, so they killed 6 million Jews. Of course if history were anything relevant to you, you would have known that.
"We needed to then ensure the safety of the region and possibly America ourselves."
First off, the purpose of the US military isn't to ensure the safety of the middle east. Secondly, you readily admit that Hussen was only "possibly" a threat, which means war might have been avoided, and yet you would prefer war be a certainty.
Easy. Totalitarian regimes are based on lies. Like "we produced X amount of rice this year" when only X/2 amount was produced. People who work in totalitarian regimes are pressured to satsify their superiors or face possible death. If you're making WMD in Iraq and Hussein wants X amount of WMD made and you can only make 3/4 X of WMD, are you going to tell him the truth and possibly be executed? No. Of course not, you're going to forge documents and fake results and do whatever it takes to make the dictator thinks he actually has X WMD when he only has 3/4 X. Hence the "unacounted for" WMD may actually be WMD that was never produced. It may not be the right explanation, but its a lot more plausible that "rather than running at the first sign of trouble he took the time to bury his WMD in the desert"