Ron Paul for President!!!

[Aggrad02]

One quick question: Does the number of deaths from the sanctions match the number of deaths from Saddam?

Chris,

Exact numbers are not known for either deaths from the sanctions or deaths associated with the regime of Saddam Hussein, so all figures are only rough estimates. Saddam Hussein, during the years that he ruled Iraq, is estimated to have killed about 200,000 Iraqis. During the 8 years of the Iran - Iraq war, Iran is estimated to have suffered about 1 million deaths, including an estimated 100,000 killed by Iraqi chemical weapons. Some of these weapons or their precursors were provided by the United States.

As for the sanctions, as I indicated in an earlier post on this thread, estimates of deaths caused by these sanctions range between about 100,000 and 1 million. So, not counting the deaths from the Iran - Iraq war, it is quite possible that the sanctions killed more Iraqis than did Saddam Hussein. This is typical of the kind of "help" that the US government frequently provides. The sanctions, which were justified as being necessary to destroy the Hussein regime, may have killed more Iraqis than the Hussein regime itself.

Martin

The alternative to avoiding collateral damage is to let the bad guys do whatever they damn please. Is that what you want?

Ba'al Chatzaf.

What was Saddam doing to us that was any of our concern?

Dustan

[BaalChatzaf]

What was Saddam doing to us that was any of our concern?

Dustan

Threatening Saudi Arabia which is one of our main oil suppliers and invading Kuwait. Someone once remarked that if Saddam threatened half the world's supply of prune juice we would not have sent in a single soldier.

Ba'al Chatazaf

[Aggrad02]

What was Saddam doing to us that was any of our concern?

Dustan

Threatening Saudi Arabia which is one of our main oil suppliers and invading Kuwait. Someone once remarked that if Saddam threatened half the world's supply of prune juice we would not have sent in a single soldier.

Ba'al Chatazaf

When did he ever say he wasn't going to sell it to us?

[Martin Radwin]

Ba'al Chatzaf wrote:

But it worked! There is no more Saddam regime. If the objective was regime change, it has been achieved. All Saddam had to do was resign and no further deaths would have occurred. Clearly the blame lies with him.

The relatively secular Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein has been replaced by a theocratic, Shiite Muslim dominated government with close ties to Shiite death squads, who are engaging in ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims, who are themselves ethnically cleansing Shiites. Iraq has been plunged into a violent, sectarian civil war. We have transformed Iraq into hell on earth. Iraq had never had suicide bombers before the US invasion; now, it is swarming with them. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by the sanctions, hundreds of thousands more Iraqis have been killed by the US bombing, invasion, and subsequent civil war. At least two million Iraqis have fled Iraq and become displaced refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan. But what the hell, what's a couple of million refugees with shattered lives, hundreds of thousands of dead, a devastated country with bombed out infrastructure, over three thousand dead American soldiers, and over 500 billion dollars spent so far on a futile war. For all of this horror, we've achieved the noble goal of replacing one dictatorship, which we previously supported, with another dictatorship.

Ba'al Chatzaf wrote:

If pedestrians are killed during a high speed police chase, it is clearly the fault of the one who was running away. All he had to do was stop and surrender. Then no pedestrians would have been killed. As long as we charge our police with the task of arresting the bad guys there will be collateral damage.

So just exactly how many pedestrians does a police officer have the right to kill in pursuit of a fleeing criminal? If, in pursuit of the criminal, the police officer runs down and kills 100 pedestrians, is that okay? How about if the police know that a violent criminal is hiding somewhere in a neighborhood where 10000 people live. Do the police have the right to bomb the entire neighborhood into rubble in order to kill the criminal?

Ba'al Chatzaf wrote:

As long as we charge our soldiers with the task of fighting wars against aggressors primarily for national defense there will be collateral damage. There will also be "friendly fire" casualties. It cannot be avoided as long as the bad guys do their evil and struggle against being removed.

So let me get this straight. The US imposed sanctions on Iraq which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, in order to depose a dictator whom the US had previously supported. During this time, the US was continually bombing Iraq. The US was one of several countries that provided chemical weapons to Iraq, which were used to kill an estimated hundred thousand Iranians during the Iran - Iraq war. The US then demanded that Saddam disarm and destroy the chemical weapons that we gave to him. Saddam complied; the stockpiles of chemical weapons were destroyed, as verified by UN weapons inspectors. The US went to war against Iraq anyway, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on the defenseless country in a brave showcase of "Shock and Awe". Then the US invaded Iraq with 140,000 soldiers, disbanded the Iraqi army, and plunged the country into civil war. The Lancet study estimated that the second gulf war led to the deaths of an additional 600,000 Iraqis, although this figure has been disputed and may be too high. The US has devastated Iraq, a small third world country that never seriously threatened us, just so that we could install a dictator friendly to the US who would let us build permanent military bases there. But after all the death and destruction we have leveled against Iraq, they are the aggressor against us, and they are evil? An objective observer might just conclude that the US is the aggressor, and that the US government is evil and has committed war crimes against Iraq.

Ba'al Chatzaf wrote:

The alternative to avoiding collateral damage is to let the bad guys do whatever they damn please. Is that what you want?

Of course not. Only the US should have the right to do whatever it damn well pleases. We should have the right to bomb whoever we want, whenever we want, for whatever reason we want. We should have the right to go to war with anyone we want, for any reason we want, whether the victim nation has attacked us or not. We should have the right to kill as many innocent people as we want and call it collateral damage. It's only right that we should have a thousand military bases all over the world, so that we can make sure that the rest of the world lives up to our high ethical standards of behavior and bomb the hell out of them if they don't. It's our job to liberate all the poor, oppressed people of the world who live under governments that are not friendly to us, even if we have to kill them all of them in order to liberate them. Of course, if they live under despotic governments that are friendly to us, that's perfectly fine. God bless America!

Martin

[BaalChatzaf]

Of course not. Only the US should have the right to do whatever it damn well pleases. We should have the right to bomb whoever we want, whenever we want, for whatever reason we want. We should have the right to go to war with anyone we want, for any reason we want, whether the victim nation has attacked us or not. We should have the right to kill as many innocent people as we want and call it collateral damage. It's only right that we should have a thousand military bases all over the world, so that we can make sure that the rest of the world lives up to our high ethical standards of behavior and bomb the hell out of them if they don't. It's our job to liberate all the poor, oppressed people of the world who live under governments that are not friendly to us, even if we have to kill them all of them in order to liberate them. Of course, if they live under despotic governments that are friendly to us, that's perfectly fine. God bless America!

Martin

If that is what our survival as a nation requires, so be it. The planet Earth is a rough neighborhood. One does what he must to stay alive in it. Our job is NOT Nation Building. Our job is Nation Wrecking if our survival requires it.

If he comes to murder you, rise up early and slay him first --- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72A.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited July 6, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Iraq invaded Kuwait having virtually been given the invitation to do so by the US State Department.

In the context of the "war on terror" Iraq was essentially a secular bulwark. To invade it as opposed to bullying it into giving up "weapons of mass destruction" was a terrible waste of US resources. The US could have left an army in Kuwait and stabilized the entire Syria-Iraq-Iran situation.

The US is at war with Iran and even Syria, only the US does not acknowledge this, leaving that situation again, to the US State Department.

The US State Department is about philosophy (talk) and the US Defense Department is about science (force). Unfortunately, mixing them up has made a bad mess messier.

The situation in the Middle East as perceived is small potatoes. Here's the big potato: a nuclear device will destroy NYC or Boston or Norfolk or Washington, DC or Houston or LA or San Diego or San Francisco or Seattle or London or Tel Aviv. Then the shit will really hit the fan. I'd give it 20 years at the most.

I think President Bush is stupid, incompetent, ignorant, terrible and just too bad. However, he is leaving us with a chance to avoid disaster. That would not have been true with President Gore. President Clinton had the most to do with the WTC fiasco. The next President will be primarily responsible for the next big disaster, not Bush.

--Brant

Edited July 6, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[BaalChatzaf]

The situation in the Middle East as perceived is small potatoes. Here's the big potato: a nuclear device will destroy NYC or Boston or Norfolk or Washington, DC or Houston or LA or San Diego or San Francisco or Seattle or London or Tel Aviv. Then the shit will really hit the fan. I'd give it 20 years at the most.

Five to ten years. Maybe even sooner.

Eem yavoh l'hargecha, hashkeem l'hargoh.

If he comes to kill you, rise up early and slay him first -- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72A.

However, given the character of our "leadership" we will take the first hit. Actually we have taken two hits. One in 1993 and the second in 2001. In the first instance the Clinton Adminstration regarded it as a criminal felony, not an act of war. God knows what President Bush was thinking, if he was thinking at all.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Eem yavoh l'hargecha, hashkeem l'hargoh.

Is this Hebrew? Seems expressive. I think Yiddish reads left to right and uses different lettering. Maybe I've got it all backwards.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Eem yavoh l'hargecha, hashkeem l'hargoh.

Is this Hebrew? Seems expressive. I think Yiddish reads left to right and uses different lettering. Maybe I've got it all backwards.

--Brant

English transliteration of the Hebrew. My interface does not have the Hebrew alphabet. Pronounce as written.

Bob Kolker