See? There we go again with this "go and play in the street" thing. Are you related to AZCowboy? Let me again remind you of what you said: Jerrek: "So you're saying that the United States will treat them worse than Saddam right?" dsdsds: "Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying." However, I have a question for you. How do you think that is going to happen? Can you substantiate that a bit?
dsdsds we did send them humantarian aid like food to Iraq all he did was sell it and buy more weapons. 500,000 children died because of Saddam not the UN or US.
Please provide proof. Last I checked the Oil for Aid programs didn't provide a monetary payment. All payments were in the form of AID. And Yes, the USA is responsible. During the Clinton Admin, every nation on the planet and the UN were all in for getting these sanctions lifted. Only two countries were against it - can't you guess who they were? - the USA and Israel. [now i wonder who's gonna be the idiot and blame the Democrats - "that dirty rotten clinton"]
I have already done that in the previous posts and threads. U.S. does not give a damn about the Iraqi people. The proof is the million+ people that have died as a DIRECT consequence of UN Sanctions. These are facts reported by the UN itself and I have given references to support that. Now you’re going to tell me there was a “oil for food” program run by the UN and It was the UN (not the USA) responsible for that program and any health crisis Iraqi people faced. Or your going to tell me that it was Saddam who prevented the “oil for food” program to work. Yes, the program was run by the UN, but USA had the power to approve or reject every single import item. There is a list of thousands of rejected or put on “hold” items which are critical to maintaining civil infrastructure and curing health problems. Items such as: Medical equipment Medical supplies Water treatment equipment Histopathology labs Sanitary hot water boilers Water dionizers Water treatment chemicals Laboratory equipment Civil engineer lab instruments Diagnostic materials Etc. Etc. Again, these are facts and I have given references to support them. There are also UN reports that give Saddam credit for efforts to make this program (which was created to TEMPORARILY relieve the effects of the sanctions) try to work: In a September 2000 report the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) characterised the Government of Iraq's food rationing system as "effective". It notes that the availability of "cereal imports since 1997/98 under the oil-for-food deal has led to significant improvements in the food supply situation" (p. 31). Nevertheless, a major problem is that "food rations do not provide a nutritionally adequate and varied diet" (p. 33). In addition, poverty compounds this problem: "with the decline in household income, a significant number of Iraqis are not in a position to adequately complement the ration" (p. 14). Tun Myat, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, made similar comments in his first press conference on 19 October 2000. He said that the food distribution system in Iraq under the 'oil for food' programme was "second to none", but that "in order to affect the overall livelihood and nutrition state of the people, of the children, you need more than food, of course". Unless the basics -- housing, electricity, water, and sanitation -- were restored, the overall well-being of the people would not improve. In addition to the collapse of such infrastructure, he said, the major problem was poverty.
Internationally sanctioned by whom? By what? The coalition of the US and Britain. Yes, and Saddam building all those sumptuous palaces for he and his sons to live in opulance, giving millions to his elite Republican Guards over the years to ensure their loyalty, and giving over $30 million to families of Palestinian suicide bombers over the last 4 years had nothing to do with that.
i agree with dsdsds our blocking of common things like medication for diarihha and questioning items like eggs and pencils were a direct violation of human rights.. leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.. so our past kind of gives us a hint of the future.. i really don't think your simplification of the issues to a yes or no helps anything.. its a typical fundamentalist question.. if you admit to the cause a tiny bit then you are expected to go along with a whole load of hogwash, like war etc.. i don't think that the american people, or our soldiers really wish harm on the iraqi people in general, but the bush regime is all about power and profit, not about humanity at all, unless the cameras are around or they are working on PR in some way(which they do). bah, i don't think so.. imperialism is about power and profit however it can be accomplished. like in afghanistan for example.. the reconstruction has stopped and the soldiers have pulled out except for leads on alqaeda.. but our soldiers are still stationed to guard our pipeline constructions.. oops, why so? the ends don't justify the means.. i'm asserting that the UN was functioning.. with inspectors on the ground in iraq there was little chance that saddam was going to be able to do anything.. we could have maintained a 500k a day budget for the inspectors indefinatly.. lifted sanctions and continued with unified pressure on saddam and if saddam lifted a pinky we would have been all over him.. WITH ALLIES! but no, bush couldn't go that route.. and it wasnt for the iraqis, or even terrorism, those are lies.. the fact was(from my perspective) that if he didnt order the troops in(oops on a full moon even) soon he would have lost the chance completely.. and not just becuase of the weather/season. so i do celebrate for the iraqis that are left, but i also fear for the mayhem that will follow our exit.. oh yea and i celebrate for the Americans that get to come home! sucks to be a mercenary though.
I'm only starting to digest what has happened. I have wondered aloud what is going to happen if history is accelerating, and we each struggle to process with slowly-evolving brains. There is little help from the networks. Mostly I see endless replays of Iraqis attempting to topple a statue, being upstaged by a Hercules topped by a Marine who shrouded the dictator's head with the American flag, who when the nervous order came from who knows how far up the chain of command, replaced it with a smaller Iraqi flag that could not serve as shroud- too pathetically small. So it became a dapper ascot. Foreign crowd control managed the spectacle quite efficiently, and genuine Iraqi pride and relief cavorted as the monster effigy fell in the center of live worldwide attention, and waved goodbye from the cradle of civilization, in the center of a bizarre American perimeter. Two miles away, out of sight and earshot of live cameras in the square, forces mopped up resistance at Baghdad University. Iraqis went down in futile firefights, not dying for Saddam. Dying for what? They are fading back block by block, hour by hour. Not-so-grizzled American teenagers on their first trip abroad direct and wave at the crowd in the square, sit bunched in the open, half-heartedly reposition toward gunfire to one side, wander and mingle in pidgin words and gestures. What is happening here? As I try to grasp at what this means, I have only replayed images of street theatre in Firdos Square to review on TV and in my head. The crowd disperses, some of them to government buildings where the Americans have burst every lock and cleared the way for looting. The sun goes down on a blacked out city. What does this mean? Should we be hopeful? Should we be happy? What is happening in Iraq, in the region, in the world? In the darkened streets, and on the latenight commentaries, we're left searching for where to go from here.
Down with the regime! It's not quite over yet but it will be soon. I hope that the Information Leader catches on soon. I think he's being a little too optimistic. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I hope Saddam and his sons are toast! I hope the same thing doesn't happen, like in the Gulf War, where the military moves on and Saddam comes out from his hiding place to torture the Iraqi people who need protection. Tonight David Letterman said that there's good news and bad news. "The good news," he says, "Iraq is ours. The bad news... Iraq is ours." Hehe.
Palacebuilding: The issue of Saddam's building palaces is complex, but the claim that ithas been the main reason behind the worsening of conditions in Iraq isfalse. Although it's hard to refute it being a diversion of resources, itcannot be used to justify sanctions. In the report "Unsanctioned Suffering," the New York-based Center forEconomic & Social Rights (CESR) cited Sec. of State Albright's claim in1996 that Saddam had spent $1 billion over the last five years on palacebuilding. CESR reported that this estimate was exaggerated because it "wasbased on the cost of constructing similar buildings in the region andtherefore did not take account of Iraq's peculiar economic conditions" suchas low wages and building costs. In her book "Sanctioning Saddam," Sarah Graham Brown states that after theIran-Iraq war, the regime had allocated $2.5 billion on a presidentialpalace. The Iraqi economist Al-Nasrawi, in his book "The Economy of Iraq,"makes the same point. Here's my take on it. Towards the end of the first war, Saddam privatizedthe construction sector, giving preference to individuals with strong tiesto the regime. This in my opinion was part of his strategy to secure theirsupport. After both wars, the construction sector benefited from the needto reconstruct the infrastructure. Although prestige was definitely afactor, palace building may have been Saddam's way of buying them off (bygiving them contracts to build palaces). Although the State Department's figure of $1 billion may be exaggerated,the palace building was probably done by private contractors which meansthat they would charge enough money (in dinars) to make a sizable realprofit in a hyperinflationary economy. A Diversion of Resources? Palace building can only be classified a diversion of resources if fundswere used to import materials that could otherwise have been used to meetcivilian needs. It's not clear how much of the amount allocated for palacebuilding was used for imports. Which brings us to the question of the estimate. Even if the $1 billion isaccurate, it is staggered over five years which means that $200 million wasspent annually on palace building (or $400 million annually if you use theinflated $2 billion estimate from other sources). Iraq's civilian importsin 1989 were $11.1 billion (Alnasrawi). Even if we take the larger $400million/year estimate for palace building and assume that it was all usedon importing materials, that still is only 3.6% of 1989 imports. To saythat $400 million/year on palace building is the leading cause for thehumanitarian crisis (especially in an economy that was importing $11.1billion in civilian goods in 1989) is ridiculous. In short, one should emphasize that a) it's not clear whether this "$2billion" amount was used for importing materials (which would make it adiversion of resources) and b) even if this diversion of resources tookplace, it's an insignificant amount and can not be the main cause of Iraq'shumanitarian crisis. http://www.irak.be/ned/kalender/CAMPAIGNERS%20Guide.htm 7.5 million/year to Palistinian families: That offsets the 4,000,000,000 USA gives Isreal every year don't you think?
dsdsds, You're absolutely right that the Iraqis will ultimately fare just as badly or worse now that their country has been colonized, however the US will not be directly responsible for it. A new regime will be put in place and then allowed a free hand at reinstituting the rule of law in the country which will do so in unimaginably brutal ways. The same arguments the pro-war crowd has been using to justify this war and are now using are now using as "proof" that the war was justified(look! here's a picture of an iraqi kissing the boots of a soldier! that proves the invasion was good for them!) were used to justify the war in Afghanistan. Ultimately, they were proven wrong, and the anti-imperialists proven right, but only after attention had shifted to Iraq. It is only reasonable to assume that the same thing will happen now with Iraq.
saddam had trained iraqis to kiss the feet of the men with guns for so long that many folks in iraq consider that a survival technique, i'm affraid this may get much worse.. like the town leader in iraq that lead the attacking U.S. forces to the cache for saddams forces only to get murdered when the iraqi forces returned from hiding.. so many of saddams forces melted away that they vastly must still be there.. the people fighting now but not fighting for saddam have got to be more of the binladen ilk. their reasons for fighting may keep them going for a long time. its an incredible challenge and opportunity for the iraqis, they are teetering on a fine edge, i hope the arabs in general rise above bush's insanity of escallation.
