First off I want to get this out , I am not anti American , I am anti US policies in general, I am anti US Administration. I have friends who are Americans, people are people whether your from Canada, the US, Iraq, Europe, Africa or anywhere, were all human. I use the word US frequently in my rant , i do not apply it to all citizens , mostly to the Administration, but there is no way i'm typing administration 30 times. I do not know everything, but if there is one thing I do know, it's that opinion can change over time, at this moment this is how I feel and how I see things shaping up. Please forgive any spelling mistakes and bad grammer.
The Horrible Esthete Wrote:CanuckCourage Wrote:You know there's a world outside of the US and your interests, Americans got killed on their own soil ??? Well what the f**k do you think your country does ? It doesn't have blood on it's hands ? What about all the atrocities your country has carried out directly and indirectly by propping up dictators etc for "ideology" , maybe your ideology would change , or maybe that is your ideology.. 13,000 plus civillians have died in Iraq because of the invasion, ( <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://iraqbodycount.net/">http://iraqbodycount.net/</a><!-- m --> )the terrorists did not come from Iraq. Does this make the US a terrorist nation, knowingly dropping dropping bombs on a civillian population ? Insert rhetoric of "that's the price of freedom"
Well, let's see:
Between 150,000 and 340,000 Iraqis and between 450,000 and 730,000 Iranians killed during the Iran-Iraq War. An estimated 1,000 Kuwaiti nationals killed following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. No conclusive figures for the number of Iraqis killed during the Gulf War, with estimates varying from as few as 1,500 to as many as 200,000. Over 100,000 Kurds killed or "disappeared". No reliable figures for the number of Iraqi dissidents and Shi'ite Muslims killed during Hussein's reign, though estimates put the figure between 60,000 and 100,000. (Mass graves discovered following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 suggest that the total combined figure for Kurds, Shi'ites and dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000). Approximately 500,000 Iraqi children dead because of international trade sanctions introduced following the Gulf War. Documented chemical attacks by the regime, from 1983 to 1988, resulted in some 30,000 Iraqi and Iranian deaths. Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam's 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds. The Iraqi regime used chemical agents to include mustard gas and nerve agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish villages between 1987-1988. The largest was the attack on Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths. 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign of terror.
13,000 lives sacrificed to remove a dictator who killed millions and who knows how many in the future? Not what you'd hope would occur, but yes, that is the reality of war, Canuck.
I suppose you have a problem with the scores of civilians that died when the Allies removed Hitler from power, too?
"Between 150,000 and 340,000 Iraqis and between 450,000 and 730,000 Iranians killed during the Iran-Iraq War" Here is where the problem lies, this is reality. The US is not in Iraq because Saddam is responsible for killing millions, I mean come on, they supported and supplied him weapons in his fight against Iran..The U.S. has blood on their hands from that. Not to mention the Sanctions which were UN imposed but US lead, and it was the US who refused to lift them.
Here is why the present invasion on Iraq is unjustified. First of all, yes, Saddam was being uncooperative with weapons inspectors, he hates the US , he hates the western world, of course he's defiant, he wants to show strength, maybe because he's an egomaniac or maybe because his power has dwindled. But he had no arsenal of weapons, he made no threats, he was not on the doorstep of another country ready to to invade. The propaganda machine in the US created a conflict that didn't exist. The UN called for a peacefull settlement to the Sanction controversy, Saddam was allowing the inspectors to go where they chose..This wasn't enough for the U.S. Administration, the Iraqi threat was imminent and had to be crushed. . In early March this year the UN came out with a report that said they now believed there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994. This is the same conclusion made by David Kay, the former U.S. chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion. Yet the rhetoric of WMD continues , nothing was prevented. Here is an exerpt from USA Today;
But U.N. reports submitted to the Security Council before the war by Hans Blix, former chief U.N. arms inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, have been largely validated by U.S. weapons teams. The common findings:
Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant.
No evidence was found to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N. inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq was attempting to develop missiles capable of exceeding a U.N.-mandated limit of 93 miles.
There was no immenent threat to the US, hell they couldn't even attack Israel. The US has lost more soldiers since the conflict was supposedly over than the entire offensive, you guys rolled over the Iraqi Army like it was the Salvation Army, and this was the threat to America ???? Saddam does not have close to the capabilities Hitler had, correct me if i'm wrong , but Hitler had rolled over a few countries before the US stepped in to lend it's support. Hitler had a massive army that intelligence agencies knew about in the 30's and 40's. The US has satellite capabilities to pinpoint trucks in a desert, intelligence that makes the 40's era look like a joke , and yet with all this technology they thought Saddam was armed to the teeth ? This war was pushed not out of a threat to security, it was not for the people ,and it was not in the name of liberation. Common sense and logic point these rhetoric tactics as the falseness they are.
Bush and company are not stupid, they have control in Iraq. Ideology played a role alright, and their ideology is not that of a liberation, it is that of political and capitalist interest. Logic in it's simplist form says this invasion is unjust, I already explained why the whole WMD doesn't jive. Liberation and Democracy were nothing but catch phrases for the administration to gain support from the American people.This invasion and enforced democracy will be no better, and the reason for this is simple .The US never planned on commiting to Iraq, other than the control of it's oil and contracts and big business. Had the US truly meant to free the Iraqi people from their oppressors, they would have had a solid contingency plan in place, relief efforts would have been co-ordinated, Baghdad wouldn't have been with out clean water/food/medicine not to mention law/order and police services to prevent looting ETC.... These are the simplist things the common man can figure out are necessities. To say the US hadn't calculated these needs would be preposterous, to even consider that the US was unprepared for this is ridiculous. They knew the consequences of bombing Baghdad and what the aftermath would look like. Nothing was done in preperation for this because it was never their intention to come in as saviours of the Iraqi people. Iraq has a puppet government installed by the US , controlled by the US. The US WILL pull out of Iraq, I imagine an American friendly regime will be implemented, they will not relinquish the hold on oil, order will be restored, but the poeple will be suppressed as they always have. Look at the various factions fighting for control of Iraq now, it is obvious the American people are gonna get sick sick of Americans coming home in body bags. So the US pulls out yet relinquishes control by supporting whatever government they choose to instill, call it what you want, the Iraqi people are still dying, but this time it's in a different name and by a different hand. You can argue the number of casualties is different, but time will tell. What will happen when Iraq runs out of oil ? They will be nothing but a 3rd world country with a brutal regime.
Obviously I believe in freedom, I do not wish to see a people oppressed and terrorised, but when the motives of this invasion are so obviously false, there is no room for succuss since the intention was never aimed at freedom or liberation or democracy, those are just fortunate bi products of spin. Saddam is a monster, it's easy to say that Iraq is better without him, but maybe something should have been done before the millions died and for the right reason.
Logic says that if this was a mission to rid the world of tyranny, then why not start in any number of African countries with significantly higher populations not only suffereing from brutal regimes, but from utter poverty, disease AIDS etc... The US could work out the bugs then, help millions...All this points to this invasion having nothing to do with WMD or Liberation or Democracy.
The Horrible Esthete Wrote:13,000 lives sacrificed to remove a dictator who killed millions and who knows how many in the future? Not what you'd hope would occur, but yes, that is the reality of war, Canuck.
I suppose you have a problem with the scores of civilians that died when the Allies removed Hitler from power, too?
First of all it's an invasion, not a war. Actually I have have problem with that comparison, from 1938 to 1940 Hitler had invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands,Belgium and France (and that's to say nothing of Africa). The US did not declare war on Germany until the Japanese attacked their military installment in Pearl Harbour in 1941 and did not participate in battle until July 4th 1942. To compare or make the insinuation of comparison between Saddam and Hitler is silly, other than they are mass murderers. Saddam had not invaded a minimum of 8 countries, Saddam did not have Russia, Italy and Japan as his allies. Saddam had not threatened any country since his foray into Kuwait , Saddam has NEVER had an army that could even come close comparing to Hitlers. The civillian casualties in WW2 were unavoidable due to the German advances, the Iraqi Casualties were.
Mark