quote:"In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism. ....
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al Qaeda," the report reads, citing multiple government reports, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 9/11 Commission and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, which reported that Hussein had suspended Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to revive it.
The overview of the study also calls the media to task, saying most media outlets didn't do enough to investigate the claims.
"Some journalists -- indeed, even some entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical," the report reads. "These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."
I'm glad they took the media to task there too. The fourth estate are supposed to be the ones investigating stuff like this. Journalists used to make their careers on this kind of thing.
Short of him actually admitting it, it's impossible to call him a liar, that just comes down to your personal feelings on the man. But if he isn't, he's the the most inept fool I can think of in presidential history, and if that wasn't enough, his inept handling of the war that he foolishly got us into seals the deal.
I know this is a drum that's been beaten a lot over the last year or two, but I don't think anything is lost in hammering this point home, especially now that the war is actually starting to turn for the better. That might seem like a weird thing to be pushing when the war is doing better, but just because things are going good now shouldn't mean we forget all the stuff that came before it.
posted
I'm not the biggest fan of Bush, but I also think that we've done a lot of good in Iraq. I don't think that anyone will argue that getting rid of Saddam Hussein hurt Iraq and it's people more than helped.
I also don't think that the media can EVER claim to be to uncritical or deferential. If there is one thing I have a lower opinion of than politicians, it would be the main sources of news media.
Posts: 208 | Registered: Sep 2007
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quote:I don't think that anyone will argue that getting rid of Saddam Hussein hurt Iraq and it's people more than helped.
As of this moment in time? I'd say it's probably six of one half dozen of the other. I'd say, well until very, very recently, the Kurds were by far better off now than when they were under Saddam's rule. But everyone else? Hard to say. At least back then they had access to electricity and such, and they didn't have to worry about being caught in a gunfight on their way home, or about having a relative turn up dead in the Tigris, well, they might have, hence it's really just a different form of bad.
But I won't make a judgement on that one way or the other until it's all over. This thing could still descend into civil war. There's a tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen, and thanks to us, now there are tens of thousands of armed Sunni militiamen too. We've set up both sides against each other, and both against us. We aren't out of the woods yet, and even with Saddam in power, I think you could argue that's better than all out civil war. We won't know for a few years.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:I don't think that anyone will argue that getting rid of Saddam Hussein hurt Iraq and it's people more than helped.
I will. What was it, the Lancet that reported that approximately 100,000 have been killed due to US intervention. Now, I don't think that exceeds the numbers killed by Saddam Hussein, but I do think that, at least, they died quicker under our mismanagement than under his. That's better on both counts, right?
quote:About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
And that was 2004! So, things are roughly doubled now.
quote: I don't think that anyone will argue that getting rid of Saddam Hussein hurt Iraq and it's people more than helped.
If it had been done competently, then perhaps few people would be arguing that, since it's a plausible hypothetical that we could have positively changed Iraq.
When we wander out of theory and into reality, the sad fact of the matter is that the only significant group of people we've really helped more than we've hurt with our actions are presently in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The rest of the country, to put it bluntly, has been screwed.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:When we wander out of theory and into reality, the sad fact of the matter is that the only significant group of people we've really helped more than we've hurt with our actions are presently in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The rest of the country, to put it bluntly, has been screwed.
Oh, I don't know. While mismanagement of this war is so obvious to me as to be a given, I can't think of many plausible scenarios in which the Iraqis got out from Saddam & Co's boot without massive civilian death.
Revolutions or coups eventually come to such societies, and would probably have come to Iraq sooner or later. I suppose we could've simply waited for that to happen. Or tried more diplomacy, for however long that would've taken (I'm referring to changing Iraq from a dictatorship).
quote:Do we factor in losing husbands, wives, children into the helped vs hurt equation?
While we're apportioning blame (though, since things have recently been improving, fewer detractors are interested in doing so), it should be noted that plenty of Iraqis have killed each other, too. It's hardly all our mismanagement.
And even though we bear a moral responsibility for not adequately (or even nearly adequately) preparing for that, we do not bear full moral responsiblity for all civilian deaths which would not have happened had we not invaded Iraq.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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It still depends on one's definition of a weapon of mass destruction. Mustard and Serin munitions have been recovered.
I do recall a lot of discussion of Saddam's Nuclear Capabilities, though, or some regional dialect variant of that phrase. But the intelligence that we went in on, which was chemical munitions found by U.N. Inspectors, played out.
Is it 935 discrete lies or a few dozen lies repeated by different people?
I have said from the beginning that the WMD pretext was a mistake because it hinged on the definition of "what is a WMD?"
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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No, I'm afraid it doesn't, pooka. Not really. We didn't go into Iraq on claims of those munitions.
quote:I have said from the beginning that the WMD pretext was a mistake because it hinged on the definition of "what is a WMD?"
It was a mistake for one of two reasons: one, the WMDs we said we knew were there simply weren't; two, the WMDs we said were there were, but were able to be flawlessly smuggled out of the country or hidden within it before we arrived.
I find the second reason pretty implausible.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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We went in on findings of U.N. Inspectors, and from that was extrapolated existence of mobile weapon production facilities and fears of a nuclear program.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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We went in on partial findings of UN Inspectors, pooka. The UN and its inspectors did not favor our invasion.
There's really no way around this, you know. We claimed WMD reasons for our invasion, and if those reasons existed we have found no tangible evidence for them.
You need tangible evidence to have credibility on something like this, particularly given our stated degree of certainty years ago.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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So no other intelligence agency in the world thought Iraq had WMD's? How many times do we need to go through this? How many UN resolutions did Saddam violate? How many years was he given to come clean about his WMD's? How many years were inspectors kept out of Iraq? How many obstacles and denials did Saddam use to keep inspectors from doing their job? The burden of proof was on Saddam to fully comply with terms set forth by the UN after he lost the first gulf war and he did not. How about the corruption in the Oil for Food program? Payments to suicide bombers families? Rapes committed by his sons? Child slave labor? No interest? How many misleading statements have you made today? This is a stupid story just to keep the Bush bashing zealots feeling good about themselves. The "Bush is a liar or incompetent" drum has been beaten ever since he took office in 2000. Remember? Cheney runs everything! Bush is just a frat party boy! I get that none of this matters because no opinion is going to change. The people who have hated Bush all along are going to continue to hate him.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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And the ones who hate the people who hate him will continue to hate them, no matter how often they're proven right, right? Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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You're missing the point. It doesn't really matter how many other intelligence agencies thought he had WMDs, what matters is who among the nations who invaded thought he did?
I agree that the burden of proof was on Saddam, and I agreed then and agree now that we should have invaded. I disagree that the war has been managed capably.
As for supporting suicide bombers, raping civilians, child slave labor...let's be honest. Neither America nor any other nation really cared about that, as a nation. Horrible human rights violations against some other, unconnected group of people have never been a sufficient cause for another nation to invade.
But the point you're missing (deliberately) is that what matters is that our government claimed it knew where the WMDs were, on more than one occasion. Frequently the matter was presented--or at least suggested--as being as simple as, "We know where they are. We can invade and get them quickly."
Well, we were wrong, DarkKnight. You know how I know we were wrong? Because we didn't find the freakin' WMDs, that's how! It's pretty damn simple. Did we find the WMDs? Did you hear a lot of warnings before the fact, something like, "Now just to give fair warning, America, we know they're there, but there's a chance that they'll get smuggled out or hidden so perfectly that we'll never find a trace of them."
Yeah, I don't remember hearing anything like that, either.
Even if I was certain that our stated belief in the existence of those WMDs was genuine - and I am not certain of that, nor should you be - it's not enough. Sincerity and good intentions aren't enough. You have to have tangible evidence to be justified in your reason for starting a war.
If I say that something exists, and that something is reason to go to war, and I go to war, and then that thing doesn't exist...I don't get a pass on it! Now, it doesn't necessarily mean I started an evil or unprovoked war, because my belief may have been (as ours was, in my opinion) reasonable and sincere. But I still have to 'take my medicine' on the mistaken belief.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Philosofickle: I'm not the biggest fan of Bush, but I also think that we've done a lot of good in Iraq. I don't think that anyone will argue that getting rid of Saddam Hussein hurt Iraq and it's people more than helped.
I'm glad we killed him. But we didn't have to invade and demolish the country to do it.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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There is no question that Saddam was a Bad Guy. Nor is there a question that he was not obeying the UN resolution, or that the world is a better place without him or his sons in it.
There is a big, big question in my mind, one I wrote about here extensively during the runup to the war, and that is: why invade him now? Why was it absolutely imperative that we skip away from the Bin Laden hunt and throw everything at Iraq? Why was it vital that we bully the UN into going along with it, why was it important that we attack unilaterally, why was it necessary that we piss away the almost universal good will and support we had against terrorism from 9/11?
The answer seemed to be that Iraq was an imminent threat. Not that he was a Bad Guy, but that he was a Bad Guy who was going to attack us or Israel, possibly by Tuesday. We had evidence of this, given to us by Bush and Cheney and even poor Colin Powell. So we attacked.
And we did it poorly, with no workable plans to sustain the place afterwards, with the intent to hand it over to a man who was found to be a con artist. In fact, we created the exact situation that Cheney described, several times, when asked why we didn't go ahead and invade Iraq in the first Gulf War.
1991: “The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one in terms of what we’d have to do once we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire.”
Sentiments he repeated in 1994 and 2000, by the way. Smart ones, too.
So we now have tired troops in Iraq, a good chunk of the world mad at or afraid of us (or both), a rapidly growing deficit as we continue to borrow money to cover the war costs, and a president who seems unaware of any of that. Why shouldn't we be upset? Especially when we saw it coming? Especially when, apparently, they saw it coming, and lied to us to make it happen anyway?
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
And that was 2004! So, things are roughly doubled now.
The more recent Lancet study from Oct. 2006 concluded there had been 655,000 excess deaths since the US invasion. That study compared deaths in the 5 years prior to the invasion to deaths since the invasion. Its numbers at least try to answer the question how much better or worse are things now than they were under Hussein, and at least in terms of how many people are dying -- it is far worse.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.
And that was 2004! So, things are roughly doubled now.
The more recent Lancet study from Oct. 2006 concluded there had been 655,000 excess deaths since the US invasion. That study compared deaths in the 5 years prior to the invasion to deaths since the invasion. Its numbers at least try to answer the question how much better or worse are things now than they were under Hussein, and at least in terms of how many people are dying -- it is far worse.
Of course, if they went back to include Saddam's slaughter of 300,000 Shiites in 1991, the year-to-year average numbers would be quite a bit closer.
<edit>And I concur with Rakeesh that calling deaths due to the internecine feud that erupted between Shiites and Sunnis as excess really just means "could have been delayed for a few more years." And if the US military hadn't been on the ground at the time it did erupt, I'm not convinced it might have been much more bloody. Not that I'm excusing the death, I just think the use of the particular statistics sited are extremely misleading. Any sort of "it would have been like this if we'd done this" hypothesizing is next to futile, IMO.</edit>
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Any time you are in a position where you can COMPARE the United States to a terrorist regime, as in:
"Well, the US was only responsible for between 100,000 and 200,000 'needless' deaths, and Saddam Hussein killed at least 300,000 Shiites",
the United States loses.
On a similar note, Canada having listed the US, along with China, Saudi Arabia, and other "Axis of Evil" countries as being places where prisoners are likely to get tortured, is also shameful.
quote: ''We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it's absurd,'' U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins told The Associated Press
posted
I usually find myself being defensive of Bush; he's not as bad as what the liberal extremists that make up my neighborhood make him out to be. What I can't let go is the way he picked out his administration. His cabinet is chosen mainly based on loyalty to Bush, Cheney has become more powerful than any vice president ought to be (unless the succession clause steps in), and overall, I find nothing conservative in the way put his administration together.
This is where Bush errs the greatest: he doesn't let anybody give a second opinion. He hires his advisors to agree with him. This is probably why he was so frequently wrong in instances such as this.
Overall, however, I think Bush is a decent president, even if I would never consider him to deserve his face on Mount Rushmore (that is, unless he does something completely unexpected this year). But there is no defending the means of assembling the Bush Administration.
Posts: 1029 | Registered: Apr 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: Any time you are in a position where you can COMPARE the United States to a terrorist regime, ... the United States loses.
I could compare the millions of German deaths due to US/allied attacks to the millions Hitler was killing. Godwin aside, I don't see how a realistic appraisal of what damages are and were being caused can be considered an automatic loss.
We were directly responsible for the death of far fewer Rwandans because we didn't try to stop the Hutu-led genocide, but I don't know that that makes our decision morally justifiable.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Any time you are in a position where you can COMPARE the United States to a terrorist regime, as in:
I disagree that this is true, at least in the sense that you mean 'loses'. In WWII, I suspect us and our allies killed (directly) at least as many civilians, yet I would not categorize us as a 'terrorist regime' for such things.
You're being too absolute, and too selective.
quote:On a similar note, Canada having listed the US, along with China, Saudi Arabia, and other "Axis of Evil" countries as being places where prisoners are likely to get tortured, is also shameful.
I do not necessarily find the idea of(not 'prisoners are likely', mind, overstate much?) certain kinds of prisoners being tortured for certain ends to be a shameful one.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:We went in on findings of U.N. Inspectors, and from that was extrapolated existence of mobile weapon production facilities and fears of a nuclear program.
Nope! The US claims were at the time in direct contradiction to the findings of the UN weapons inspectors.
The claims regarding the nuclear program were discredited before the invasion began. If you read the papers from Europe and Canada rather just the US news, you would have known as I did before the invasion even started that Bush was lying.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Had we invaded in 1991, the argument Boothby and others are making would have been even stronger. Look at all the deaths the US is causing! What did Saddam ever do to us? At least with him around there weren't all these widows and orphans.
Well there are hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans because we didn't go in. Making these sorts of comfortable arguments about how jolly things were under Saddam is absurd. He was a rabid dog who deserved to be put down. I don't know how many would have died in the next Shiite or Kurd uprising; I'm glad the world won't have to find out.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
We won't find out who might have been killed if we hadn't invaded; we only know of the hundreds of thousands who are dead because we did. Do you have any idea if a Shiite or Kurd uprising was in the works or how that would have played out?
Everything we have done with regard to Iraq has been misguided. Starting with propping up Saddam in the first place, selling him the weapons with which he committed his atrocities (none of which bothered us at the time), letting him think that we would be okay with his invasion of Kuwait, imposing an embargo that created a humanitarian crisis (which also didn't bother us) while only making Saddam stronger.
No one is saying that he was a good guy or that things were "jolly" under his rule. Although before the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was a fairly modern, "western" country, that does not excuse his oppression. But pretty much everything we have done has made matters worse. And if you think that we invaded to rescue the Iraqis that were being killed a decade earlier , you are not thinking clearly about this.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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SR, You are missing the point. Yes things were bad under Saddam. Unfortunately, by most measures they are even worse now.
UN Human Right chief for Iraq
quote:The former U.N. human rights chief for Iraq said abuses are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein. Extrajudicial killings and torture are soaring, and morgue workers are being threatened by both government-backed militiamen and insurgents not to properly investigate deaths, he told AP in Sydney, Australia.
"Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK," said John Pace, who last month left his post as director of the human rights office at the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. "But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone."
Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq
quote:'Under the previous dictator regime, the basic rights for women were enshrined in the constitution,'' Houzan Mahmoud from the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq told IPS in an interview. The group is a sister organization of MADRE, an international women's rights group.
Under Saddam, she said, ''women could go out to work, university and get married or divorced in civil courts. But at the moment women have lost almost all their rights and are being pushed back into the corner of their house.''
Children
quote: Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.
Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.
Christians
quote:Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George’s Church in the capital of Iraq told Times Online that day-to-day life was ‘a lot easier’ for Christians when the vicious dictator Saddam Hussein was President of the country.
Maybe some day it will get better. Maybe the time will come when Iraq is better off than it would have been in we hadn't invaded. But as of now, nearly 5 years after the US invaded, things are unquestionably even worse than they were under Saddam Hussein bot in terms of life in Iraq and security for the US.
The question isn't one of whether or not Saddam Hussein was bad. We all agree that he was. The question is whether what has replaced him is better or worse and all the evidence says -- worse.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I didn't have an argument in 1991, I was 7, but, I would have supported the Kurds after we convinced them to rise up. We told them to rise up against Saddam, and then we stood back and did nothing when he slaughtered them. Only afterwards we put up the no-fly zone. It should have been up as soon as we liberated Kuwait.
But if we could have gotten the French and British to go along with us when we were there at the time, I would've said to go in and take Baghdad then. We would have had more troops, and I think an easier time of it. The Egyptians wouldn't have gone along with it, none of our Arab allies would've, but we still had a lot more boots on the ground then than now.
But hindsight is 20/20.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:But if we could have gotten the French and British to go along with us when we were there at the time, I would've said to go in and take Baghdad then. We would have had more troops, and I think an easier time of it. The Egyptians wouldn't have gone along with it, none of our Arab allies would've, but we still had a lot more boots on the ground then than now.
The decision not to take Iraq was made because we didn't have an exit strategy and we feared that removing Saddam would lead to chaos and potentially a civil war and or take over by radical Islamic groups. Every reason we had for not invading Iraq in 1991 was still valid in 2003 and the results have been just what was feared in 1991. Hear it from the horses mouth
Funny how Cheney seems to have been smarted and better informed in 1994 when he held no government post than he is now as President of the US.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I know, that's why I said "if" we could've gotten them to go along with us, but either way I think we had more US troops there in 91 than when we first moved in in 2003. I don't think we should have invaded then or now, I was just saying if I had to pick one, then might've been preferable.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: SR, You are missing the point. Yes things were bad under Saddam. Unfortunately, by most measures they are even worse now...The question isn't one of whether or not Saddam Hussein was bad. We all agree that he was. The question is whether what has replaced him is better or worse and all the evidence says -- worse.
I understand what you and Kate and others are saying. I disagree with the assessments you are making, or at least with the implications I see you making from the assessments. More people died last year in Iraq than in the year before the war. Fewer people had enough electricity. But more people voted. There was more dialogue about how to fairly apportion the countries wealth among the ethnic groups. There was more hope that the impoverished will not remain that way indefinitely. These aren't things that are measured and reported on, but they're real. And when we say "was it worth it" I think it is short-sighted to pick some things and ignore others. Like Saddam's penchant for killing large ethnic populations whenever he felt like it.
To say everything we've done has been misguided is to say you know what would have happened if we had not acted. And to say that is, in my opinion, the height of hubris.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
But that is what you are doing. You are saying that people would have been more impoverished, that people would have been killed in uprisings or whenever Saddam felt like it. We don't know that.
And we didn't explore other ways of making the situation better. We rushed into this war.
edit: not to mention the level of hubris to decide how many of them should die for what we think that they should have.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I know you said "if" we could have gotten them to go along. My point was that there was more involved than the support of our allies at that time. The main points being made by our leaders at the time were not primarily focused on allied support but the aftermath of such an invasion.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:I understand what you and Kate and others are saying. I disagree with the assessments you are making, or at least with the implications I see you making from the assessments. More people died last year in Iraq than in the year before the war. Fewer people had enough electricity. But more people voted. There was more dialogue about how to fairly apportion the countries wealth among the ethnic groups. There was more hope that the impoverished will not remain that way indefinitely. These aren't things that are measured and reported on, but they're real. And when we say "was it worth it" I think it is short-sighted to pick some things and ignore others. Like Saddam's penchant for killing large ethnic populations whenever he felt like it.
First off, the reports I've read don't support the contention that there is more hope now than there was under Saddam. Since the things you mention aren't measurable, there is no clear way to determine if they are better now or not. Based on all the things we can measure, things are not better now than they were under Saddam.
When we talk about things like poverty under Saddam, we have to talk about both before the 1991 war and after. Iraqi's I know maintain that in the early 80s, had one of the lowest poverty rates in the world. Public education was good and it was a good place to live. During the war with Iran things deteriorated and then following the US war and the embargoes it got very bad. But it wasn't always that way even under Saddam.
quote:To say everything we've done has been misguided is to say you know what would have happened if we had not acted. And to say that is, in my opinion, the height of hubris.
No, to say that what we've done is good because Saddam would have done worse, is the height of hubris. To say that no matter how bad things have been during the past 5 years, they are justified because you have hope they will be better in the future -- is the height of hubris.
All we can say for sure, is that things during the 5 years since we have invaded have been measurably worse than they were during the 5 years prior to our invasion.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by DarkKnight: The people who have hated Bush all along are going to continue to hate him.
Actually, given the current poll numbers, one might find it more compelling how many people who didn't hate Bush are starting to hate him.
If one was of an evidence-based mindset, anyway.
On the subject of tired arguments, the notion that people who dislike Bush somehow feel the way they do in a way that's unattatched to the actions of his presidency pretty much tops the list.
"The fire destroyed my house... My clothes, my papers, my memories, everything!..."
"Oh, you're just one of those people who hates fire."
Sheesh.
In a bottom line sense, I think it comes down to this: we invaded and occupied a country when virtually everyone else, including many within our own country, said, for a wide variety reasons, that it was a bad idea. Having done so, and discovered that, yes, it was indeed a bad idea, we have no one to turn to for help in remedying that mistake.
Oops.
So, again, we have the Kurds looking at a showdown with Turkey rather than being massacred by Saddam. We have a country where most of those who had the wherewithal to do so- the lawyers, the doctors, the engineers- have fled. We have a capital where being a member of the wrong group in the wrong neighborhood can get one gunned down.
Is 935 inaccurate statements an accurate assessment of what led up to this mess? I'll have to give the study a careful look before I could say one way or another. But there seems very little doubt indeed that the prologue to the invasion was more about trying to make a case for the invasion than to prove it. And that's a tragedy, no matter what sort of craven spin one tries to put on it.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Is the world a better place today without Saddam than it was 5 years ago with Saddam?
By all measurable criteria, no its not.
Will the world be a better place in the future because Saddam was eliminated?
We will never no for sure. To claim we know, is the height of Hubris.
If you want to divide things like this, okay. I don't tend to do that; what the world will be in the future is a result of what it is now, at least inasmuch as evaluating the effects of a decision are concerned. Maybe that's not clear. It doesn't really matter.
I can't help but think we've read more into each others comments than perhaps was really there. To my mind, I've tried to make two points: 1) there's no way to know whether the decision to invade was "right" or "wrong" because choosing a path made the alternate path unknowable and 2) if we're going to engage in discussing the "what ifs" of whether things are better or worse we should not neglect the positive elements of the picture, even if they are not feasibly measurable.
I don't know whether the world is better off as a result of the war. Certainly there are more deaths, more blackouts, more malnutrition now in Iraq than there was the year before Saddam was deposed. But there have been more honest votes, more community actions, more involvement by the people in their government. These are measurable things; how you weight them relative to deaths, malnutrition and energy restriction is up to you.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
BTW, the big negative I don't see anyone talking about is the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war that could have gone toward, say, curing dysentary world-wide.
I recognize the negatives. I'm just pointing out there are positives, too, and whether it was "misguided" or a "mistake" and whether the world is a better or worse place today is not a simple or obvious thing.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: By what? or who?
I don't remember, that's why I said "I believe", and didn't give any source. But the first time I saw the article was when it was linked from a report saying that it was false. If I could remember where I would link to it, but for now it's just hearsay.
Posts: 2489 | Registered: Jan 2002
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