"Denial" is not just a river in Egypt

[Nono]

Originally posted by David Kay All I can say is "denial" is not just a river in Egypt (...) Right now we have a lot of people who are desperate to justify the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq. They will focus on issues such as intent. You will also hear that although we haven't found the weapons or manufacturing capability, they could have been shipped across the border. You can't ship that which you haven't produced. You can't bury that which you haven't obtained or produced. (...) [Saddam] had a lot of intent. He didn't have capabilities. Intent without capabilities is not an imminent threat.

This is what the Bush administration's own original weapons man in Iraq is now saying. Would anyone like to have one last go at persuading us that the Iraq thing is above board?

[giuliano]

*gassed kurds, 100,000s of deaths due to sanc...saddam, terrorist ties, advancing middle eastern democracy*

let me just reach into my bag.... today's prize is "humanitarian gains for the iraqi people"!

[Technosoul]

Giuliano, you really should check the historical facts. The England supplied the bio-chemicals (not gas) that was used by Saddam to fight the armed revolution from the Kurds. The Kurds were backed by Russia and Saddam had the "best wishes" of people like Rumsfield for those activites as well as our backing (at that same time) to put military pressure on Iran.

England made big bucks selling those chemicals to Saddam and supported the idea they could be "field tested" on some Kruds. At that time germ warfare was not yet "outlawed" by international agreements.

So what you really should say is that "the world would be a safer place without England" - as Saddam was just another pawn among many.

Your estimated 100,000 figure is just a wild guess. But right now we know that our war and continued struggle to hold on to Iraq has caused about as much harm already, our military has cast tons of radioactive materals all over Bagdad and elsewhere in Iraq and left it for kids to play on and die of cancer.

The difference between Saddam and Hitler is that Hitler was attacking and killing off the Jews because he just did not like them, where as Saddam was protecting his government from a Krud revolution and the Kruds were in fact attacking Saddam who defended his position with counter-attacks (while Rumsfield posed for a photo-opt shaking Saddam's hand). Saddam was not just "killing his own people" as Bush said, he was stopping an armed revolution and had he not done so we can have little doubt that Iraq would now be another state for Iran.

The USA in no way was supportive of the "humanitarian gains" you are talking about, as those gains would mean that the Kruds might have won that civil war and at the time we supported Saddam as one of our pawns., nor was the USA interested back then in preventing England from selling those biochemicals to Saddam and we helped fund that operation.

That is common knowledge and the whole world knows it, I cannot believe half our population is still so un-informed.

Technosoul.

[PatrickHenry]

Techno, I think you missed the irony of giuliano's post.

And don't just blame the "English"/UK. The US was Saddam's buddy in the eighties, too. Most of the biologicals that Saddam considered as a means of pumping up a "germ weapon" came from the American Type Culture Collection.
http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintelligence...ssentgerms.html

Between 1985 and 1989, the Senate testimony shows, Iraq received at least 72 U.S. shipments of clones, germs and chemicals ranging from substances that could destroy wheat crops, give children and animals the bone-deforming disease rickets, to a nerve gas rated a million times more lethal than Sarin.

And if you don't stop calling the Kurds "Kruds", I am gonna send the Peshmergas your address. I mean, dude, krud is a pejorative word ain't it?

And what makes you think the Kurds, if independent, would want to join in with the Iranians? They want their own nation, based on their own distinct ethnicity...

Furthermore, there is a major parallel between the Nazi program against the Jews and Saddam vs. the Kurds. The Kurds just didn't go along with the extermination and they happen to be well armed...

[Scribbler1]

Originally posted by giuliano, *gassed kurds, 100,000s of deaths due to sanc...saddam, terrorist ties, advancing middle eastern democracy* let me just reach into my bag.... today's prize is "humanitarian gains for the iraqi people"!

Anything REAL in that bag? I especially disagree with you using "advancing middle eastern democracy" as if it has already happened. You don't know that and neither do I, but I DO know it sure as hell isn't a democracy NOW. Even if it does happen, if we leave the Iraqi's to govern themselves without our "help" they will be reabsorbed into a region filled with tribes, warlords, monarchies and dictatorships.
The country is FAR too unstable at this time to declare it anything but a huge mess.

[Sonart]

Scribbler, methinks Giuliano is playing the scoundrel :) He's suggesting, in his delightfully sarcastic manner, that the justifications for the war seem to morph with the realities of the day.

It's WMD and gassing the Kurds!... no, wait... it's ties to terrorists... no, um, not that...it's .... an Iraqi democracy!.... um, no, that doesn't look right either..... ummm .............. errr...... its'...................

[Scribbler1]

He might be just yanking our chains, but a lot of people who are NOT are using the same "evidence" regardless of any information to the contrary.
I hope he IS being sarcastic, but I dunno.

[Sonart]

I once wrote a cranky post to Giuliano cause of his 4 MORE YEARS pic. As fate would have it, the post didn't go through. It was then that I noticed that in the picture Bush was holding up 3 fingers.

The Lord always takes care of drunks and fools.

[giuliano]

lol :)

yes i was being a bit sneaky there. scribbler is right, conservatives do try to use that magic bag of tricks to defend invading iraq. they just pick another excuse from the bag when you shoot their first one down.

[castille]

Don't forget the Russians. 75% of Iraq's arsenal is made of Soviet armaments.

[giuliano]

either you accept it is evil to sell arms to any despotic regime or you let everyone do it.

[Sonart]

Don't forget the Russians. 75% of Iraq's arsenal is made of Soviet armaments.

Iraq was a Soviet client state during the cold war, who armed them accordingly (where do you suppose all those T-72 tanks and Scuds came from) just as Iran under the Shah was America's cold war client.

As of 1989 the Soviet Union no longer exists, which has made it all that much more unlikely that Iraq could significantly rearm after 1991 after having the majority of the military gutted in Desert Storm.

And despite the fact that Hussein had access tp arms purchases ...

--"The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, night-vision equipment and spare parts for tanks, were not enough to allow Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to the report released Wednesday by the inspector, Charles Duelfer."--

[giuliano]

Originally posted by Sonart, As of 1989 the Soviet Union no longer exists, which has made it all that much more unlikely that Iraq could significantly rearm after 1991 after having the majority of the military gutted in Desert Storm.

it's important to remember tho that arms trading is one of russia's biggest industry's, carried over from the old USSR days.

instead of using it to advance communism as they did under the USSR, today they just use it to draw revenue.

[castille]

I recall democratic Russia sold billions of dollars of arms to Iraq during 1994. In exchange, Russia recieved oil.

I guess Russia still hasn't developed equipment to drill underneath Siberian ice caps for their oil yet.

[Magpie]

Or they want to keep their own resources/oil as long as possible and leech all oil from countries like Iraq as long as they can, just to reduce the shares given to opposing countries like the US. So when the time comes and oil becomes rare, they, Russia can arise as saviour of mankind i.e. delivering that oil needed, making the US dependant on Russia. That's also a reason why they don't like oil companies selling their oil (free companies like Yukos didn't think really about national interests - a real danger to Russias national interests). And think of that why the US wants to circumvent that by getting around this by pipelining Aserbaidshan which the Russians try to limit as well. And oil-rich Chechnya still is not free, think of what happens if they are, immediately non-Russian (US) investors would pop up and tap into the richnesses of oil abundance and additionally they could help making Chechnya strong ! Sibirias resources will continue to slumber a while Do not underestimate Russia, they always think Russia first no matter the cost, politically and economically.

[castille]

Yeah, when those Russians started stealing 99% of Eastern Europe's factories to put in their own, I reckoned they weren't exactly thinking of other people.

[giuliano]

Originally posted by castille, I guess Russia still hasn't developed equipment to drill underneath Siberian ice caps for their oil yet.

and the US hasn't developed the technology necessary to make extraction of canadian oil sands economically effective either.

lovely sweet crude in iraq tho.

[PatrickHenry]

Originally posted by giuliano, and the US hasn't developed the technology necessary to make extraction of canadian oil sands economically effective either.

Do you have an objection to the Canadian process?
http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/decem...nd/oilsand.html

approximately $13 (Canadian) per barrel.

(Note: interesting discussion of the machinery and process)

[castille]

Originally posted by giuliano,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (giuliano,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin-castille, I guess Russia still hasn't developed equipment to drill underneath Siberian ice caps for their oil yet.

and the US hasn't developed the technology necessary to make extraction of canadian oil sands economically effective either.[/b][/quote]
Well seeing how Canada is NOT part of the US, the US would have to invade Canada first.

That might be a thought.

[giuliano]

Originally posted by PatrickHenry, Do you have an objection to the Canadian process? [url=http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/december98/features/oilsand/oilsand.html]

no objection, other than concerns about environmental effects. but not everyone paints as rosy a picture as that article. canadian oil sands are still viewed with scepticism by many.

oil extraction is a lot more complex than simply "yes we can get it out" or "no, can't be gotten". factors include economics and technical limitations of extraction, environmental and political effects, grade of oil, etc.

mining oil sands leaves huge environmental damage. essentially you have to rip up the entire area. it's much worse than logging, where you can just replant trees.