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And in every last single count we were unfortunately proved right.
There were no WMDs.
There were no links to terrorism.
There was no threat to others.
An attack would make the region more unstable.
An attack would invite the likes of Al Qaida to move in.
An attack wouldn't make the people of Iraq better off- in fact things are worse than they were under Saddam.
That is why opposing the war was the right thing to do and why anti-war protesters can claim the moral high ground and without any reservation shout "we told you so" in the faces of Dubya and poodle Tony.
Not that they give a fuck of course, seeing as the wellbeing of the Iraqis was never their concern or reason to go in... :rolleyes:
And that is worse than a combination of religious crackpots and the US army doing it because?
You don't say.
How?
Because they have "democracy"?
Because they're not getting carbombed?
Because they don't have to follow religious doctrine?
Oops.
I'm not sure whether you're missing the point deliberatley or because you don't understand it.
However, if the wellbeing of the Iraqis was the concern of the anti-war marchers why were they marching in support of a genocidal dicatator. And while you say they weren't - that was the consequences of their actions.
I do support the war - I accept that the consequences of my support is that someone people die who wouldn't have done otherwise. I believe it is less than would have been under the continued rule of Saddam and his successors and that will be a brighter future, if we can stick it.
Fact is, little war-loving hypocrit, this invasion and occupation was and is not only illegal under the very precepts by which we Judged the Nazis of their transnational warmongering according to the Nuremberg Principles (do read them again if in doubt), but also morally untenable in the light of well exposed revelations that this conquest was ever intended by the present cabal in Washington regardless of the results of the so called "diplomatic" charade which preceded it.
One day, you might even awaken to realise just how hollow your notions of morality truly are. The Iraqis most certainly know it.
The only morality you follow is that of might makes right, an anachronistic morality which belongs buried in the graveyard of 19th century colonialist era dogma.
My concern wasnt for Iraqi's if I'm quite honest, I marched for purely personal reasons.
- I didnt want my cousin (in the navy) to die for no good reason
- I didnt want an increase in people hating Britain
Every empire falls eventually, as the Brits more than most should be most acutely aware.
Sort of, our Empire didnt really fall as such, just slimmed down a bit, we still have the Commonwealth.
Right now, i'd guestimate that the Iraqi's are wondering what they let themselves in for, welcoming the West with open arms, then losing Electric and Running water to their homes, no Law and Order, and just as much abuse of Power by those that hold it - only difference is - this new thing is called Democracy, regardless of the fact it isn't really.
Soon as we leave, I bet somesort of Dictatorship returns.
Clan, like everyone else, I can do whatever I can get away with. There is no piece of paper ever written that can stop anything from happening. You belief in "the law" while touching, is just ignoring reality.
The largest military in the world won't invade whenever it's chief says so just because someone has written their opinions down? Don't be soft.
They would do it anyway. The people at the top are the same sociopathic fucknuts everywhere. Only the mentally damaged would seek power in the first place. Yeah, an excuse might have been given through this action, but those future rulers would just make something up lke the present ones do.
Sadly, they follow rabid and myopic ideologues in Washington on an ever increasingly rapid collision course with history. No morality involved, just wanton aspirations of power, control and short term profit.
The demonstrators protested against an illegal and unjustified war of aggression that did not serve any purpose (other than to further the interests of an American right wing think tank and the oil industry) and that would make the country and indeed the world a more dangerous place.
No one supported Saddam Hussein and could not have cared less about his regime.
To suggest that opposing illegal wars that make things worse not better is in effect supporting dictatorships is a cheap, irrelevant and completely untrue trick and typical mantra of the neocons in America but something I had not expected to hear in this country.
You might as well go the full length and call anti-war protesters 'traitors' and 'un-British'.
Of course, the funniest thing of them all is that only a few years ago absolutely no neocon or warmonger I've ever heard of couldn't give a toss about the wellbeing of the Iraqi people or the fact that their country was ruled by a brutal dictator. Why, the neocons and the warmongers supported Saddam Hussein and happily looked the other way as he gassed Kurdish civilians and Iranian soldiers.
Tell me, were you in favour of waging war against Iraq back in the 1980s when Saddam was shaking hands with US government officials and buying weapons galore from Britain?
That may have been there intention, but as saying goes 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' and its what would have been the result that counts. There were two options, both bad, but one less bad than the other 1) remove Saddam by force 2) allow Saddam to remain in power and for him to remain a threat to his people and his neighbours.
There was no good option.
Oh, I'm sure there were very few Saddam loyalists in the crowd, but its irrelevant, by default you were supporting option 2, even if you hadn't thought it through enough to realise it.
What rubbish. My point is that by oppossing a illlegal war (though given that the only legal document I've seen says it was legal is at best, dubious) is neither here nor there. It was a war against a dictator who had invaded two of his neighbours, and mass-murdered his own people.
Why? I don't think their traitors. I think they're wrong, but that doesn't mean they're seeking to betray their country. And I never really heard the term un-British - could you explain what it means?
Iraq was a client state of the Soviets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_sales_to_Iraq_1973-1990
Look at the wepon sales from the Soviet Union (and the French - no suprise their then). British arms sales are so insignificant so as to not even have its own column.
Funnily enough socialist, pan-arabic nationalist Govts who hate Israel tend not to be on the US/UK's top list of friends. that said of course US (and UK) officials talked to them and followed the diplomatic niceties. But it doesn't mean they supported them - if you bother to look you could probably find pictures of the Queen and Ceausceau - it doesn't make the Queen a Marxist.
In fact any attempt by the US to attack Saddam whilst the Cold War was going on would have almost certainly led to a mass outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, Soviet involvement and the the start of WW3. Do you think that's a better option.
Of course the other question is if you supported overthrowing Saddam in the 80s - why don't you do so now?
I was very much in favour of the war before it happened, not remotely because of WMD's however, my purpose for supporting the war was regime change. I honestly thought at that time that this was to be a change in global policy towards dictatorships. I believed that first Saddam would be removed from power and the country secured and a new democracy established, as was the case in Afghanistan. I thought Iran, Syria would be next, actions with Israel and Palestine would occur and Libya i already suspected with the Lockerby compensation would change tact too. That was what i thought.
During the war, when Iraq fell so easily with such few casualties, i continued to think my stance was right and the anti-war protestors were indeed wrong.
After the war, when the real fight began, the fight for the peace, i realised that although Saddam could not be removed from power by any other means except military intervention. It was completely the wrong time to go to war with Iraq and the methods and motivation behind the war were completely wrong too.
Securing oil was not a right reason for war and the failure to even secure any oil only adds to that.
Failing miserably to secure power, water or any infrastructure at all is yet another example of the coalitions poorness in this conflict.
Americas inability to control its soldiers resulting in numerous friendly fire incidents with the British and then the brutal mistreatment of prisoners taken in Iraq, makes me realise that American involvment in the conflict, though the catalist for war was compeltely wrong for the peace.
Now i can see Afghanistan was a half-assed job, not finished with Al Quida and the Taliban as strong as ever in that country again.
Iraq is equally as poorly maintained, although they do now have mostly power and water and infrastructure back and working as before, the arrival of terrorism by outsider (Al Quida) forces and religious zealots encouraging hatred and superiority of one branch of Islam over another, has undoubtedly made living in the country as much a hell as it was under Saddam.
Although Saddam been gone from power is a good thing, as he murdered Millions of people in his time as dictator, i think letting him stay in power murdering his people as he did would have been much better then taking the country by force, because at least then our soldiers would still be alive.
Although Libya would most likely still be an enemy/rogue state rather then one with diplomatic relations open to us.
False again NQA, my how you do regurgitate the televised "official" line to a "T".
The war was an illegal unprovoked act of transnational aggression every bit as heinous as that for which you accuse Saddam himself. Matters little if it is one's immediately neighbours or a sovereign state thousands of miles away.
Now as to Saddam's invasions, being only two in the entire 25 years of his rule, the first was a proxy war fought entirely at the behest of and for the interests of the Reagan administration which sought vendetta against Iran for the ousting of the much more brutal Shah years before. Thus no viable pretext for wholesale invasion there without similar invasion and judgement of most of the presently serving cabal (who also served in the Reagan admin).
Secondly, once again by our very standards (and oft repeated justifications) both in regard to US and UK warmongering, the preponderance of deaths and mass graves repeatedly cited as a warrant for war were "collateral damage" of that aforementioned war. This again leaves all who supported that war both in Washington and in London without any moral platform to justify present acts of aggression toward Iraq.
Moreover, an intellectually honest review of the actions of the supposedly "poor innocent Kurds" will reveal that they were, in point of fact, directly collaborating with Iran to infiltrate Iraqi soil, an act of outright treason against their own state again by our standards. Show me a US or UK government which would not summarily execute outright traitors caught aiding an enemy in time of war and Ill show you some choice pasture land at the top of Mt. Everest.
This of course leads to the invasion of Kuwait, an action for which Saddam first sought direct assurances from Washington to redress both the theft of Iraqi oil reserves from the border region as well as Kuwaits purposed refusal to reduce quotas so that much of the Iran-Iraq war debt could be recovered by Iraq. Again our own governments would have invaded a neighbouring state just as readily if it were our nations facing either or both of those conditions.
All in all, your moralising is entirely spurious and based on the most sanitised recollections of the longrunning history of our relations with Iraq.
Considering the Soviet Union fell in 1989, this is even more laughable an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. The Hussein regime was brought to power with the aid of the US and UK and maintained for the greater part by the same. Whoever else they happened to purchase weaponry from is irrelevant to the present issue of our foreign policy duplicities.
At the point at which the present aggression was launched, Saddam was incapable of threatening any of his neighbours, 10 years of crushing sanctions and the extensive dismantling of his arsenals by UN inspectors confirmed that fact.
Do yourself and your intellectual credibility a favour and stop clinging to the lies.
And that is exactly what the anti war protesters (as well as every international observer in the world and every individual and government who wasn't under the wing of Dubya) have been saying all along.
That is why we didn't the war to happen. Look at the result.
Are you in favour of starting wars against every regime in the world guilty of human rights abuses? And if not, why?
It's a variant of un-Americans, a term dished out to anyone who dared to question Dubya's war.
Seeing as we seem to be implying that the millions of people marching against the war were "supporting Saddam Hussein", I'm just wondering how long before we start to say other things as well.
Britain but specially the US were political allies of Saddam Hussein. They provided weapons (and in the case of the US, WMDs), support and information on Iran to Saddam Hussein and didn't have a single word of protestation to utter about Kurd masacres or the use of chemical weapons in the Iraq-Iran war.
Saddam was seen as a key logistical puppet (sorry, ally) and a safe provider of unlimited oil to boot. It was only when the dog turned on its master that the US & co. started to talk about human right abuses and WMDs.
No, you're missing the point again. I (and I suspect the immense majority of the anti-war protestors) don't support the use of force against sovereign nations unless there is an impending catastrophe, and only if it is authorised by the UN. For the simple reason that otherwise you will make things worse (as it has been proven with Iraq).
Bush has repeteadly called Uzbekistan a key American ally and friend, while at the same time sheding crocodile tears about the plight of the Iraqis and calling for a Crusade to liberate them. Funnily enough the neocons and warmongers didn't seem to have a problem with this.
Actually most people believe the Soviet Union fell apart in late 1991 http://www.coldwar.org/articles/90s/fall_of_the_soviet_union.php3
though I am not sure what that has to do with the Iraq being a client state through the 1970s and 1980s.
It doesn't take much to see that the Iraqi were more closely linked to the Soviets - posted again for those who did not read . Andectotally you only need to have looked at the news under Saddam to see a preponderance of Soviet hardware within his army and distinct lack of US/British.
Nice to see how you've deftly avoided all issues of principle in my post above. Your moral arguments remain legless.
Actually, im changing my mind about dictatorships after reading this thread through. I am now moving in favour of them. I mean, they keep their people oprressed brutally and make them suffer and are responsible for human rights abuses, but since we can not stop them doing that forcibly with out it being an illegal action of breach of sovereignty, then all we can do is say those things are bad. But the benefit is a broken people, enslaved nation and no need to worry about terrorist cells or organisations operating. There was no terrorism under Saddam in Iraq for example and there hasn't been any in Libya except for the state sponsered terrorists. Maybe evil mass murdering dictatorship governments are not so bad...From the perspective of a western, rich nation that is.
Just a thought i am having at the moment, i might change my mind next time i post.
So let me get this right Iraq was the puppetmaster for Iraq and controlled all Saddam's moves so deftly
1) He bought most of his military equipment from the US's main enemies - obviously in an insidious attempt to strengthen the Soviet and Chinese economies.
2) They support Egypt and Israel in the Yom Kippur War against the US main ally in the regime - damn the US and the nefarious schemes, they're even anti-semitic.
3) They go to war with Iraq over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait - puppermaster extrodinaire indeed.
4) Twelve years later they go to war again with Iraq and depose him.
Hardly the closest client/clinetee relations in the history of nation states.
And as for this point
Easter Rising 1916 - the Irish (part of the UK at the time) rise up against Britain whilst Britain is fighting for its life against Germany. After the fighting is over the British shoot twelve ring-leaders - note they didn't gas Dublin. Grateful if you could now show me the pasture land on top of Everest.
You might also want to note that not long after your cited time period, Churchill himself ordered the Kurds of Iraq gassed as well as bombed into perdition. Seems history doesn't offer the you or your nation the moral high ground, yet again.
No it was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland - making it treason. whether the Irish wanted to be members of the UK is another matter, but then the Kurds didn't want to be part of Iraq either.
Except it didn't happen, the RAF planes of the period were unequipped to carry out gas attacks - unfortunately many 'historians' read the cabinet papers put two and two together and make five.
No crimes other than for "looking like an Arab in a London Tube Station"...
You often refer to this in your comments about the Iraq invasion.
Can you help me out and direct me to the relevant international laws, and confirm where these laws are enforced and who by...
International Law, ah yes, such a flimsical and un-enforced little thing isnt it.