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?? I'm lost with that one
i pressume you believe it was right to free the people of afghanistan from the taliban as well ...did you know that afghanistan has been invaded many times but never conquered ...we have manged to take the capital city which has had the effect of making life even harsher for women in the smaller towns ...to stop them getting any fancy ideas about behaving like those in the capital?
Do you think it is acceptable that woman are unable to vote?
Eta: In any case that wasn't what I was saying, its more than just that.
I have read your diatribe at length and am amazed at how continuously you fail to go the extra distance and connect your supposed moral outrage over another nation's leader's actions (which you clearly have no real historic grasp of beyond the now well repeated - and actually in many cases well debunked - inflated televised claims) with the very actions demonstrated by our own illegal war of aggression against another sovereign state.
You cite the worn out and quite faulty Hitler comparison and fail to recognise that the acts of Nazi Germany which prompted retaliatory aggression was precisely his assumed right to launch "pre-emptive" attacks against his neighbours and occupy their lands. The war was already well underway long before any mass killings of Jews ever began (or was even conceived as a policy option). Thus what you refuse to see is that it is not Saddam/Iraq which can be equated to the actions of Germany but our OWN leaders who have claimed the right to attack, decimate and occupy a once wholly secular thriving nation for the real purpose of assuming hegemonic control over the future production and distribution (or if preferred, non-distribution) of its vast resources.
You also talk of "mass graves" and, as intended originally by Chalabi and co, wrongly conflate any and all such finds with calculated political "genocide". The truth of the matter is:
1. no evidence has ever been demonstrably presented and independently verified that most of these mass graves were/are not simply the rushed battlefield graves of the tens of thousands of iraqis slaughtered (by your own declared standard of "understandable consequences of war" [to paraphrase your glib excuses made for the tens of thousands of innocents now dead at our hands]) during the Iran-Iraq War, which Saddam was compelled to fight by the Reagan administration to advance US interests against Iran.
2. The alleged "indiscriminate slaughter" at Halabja (another matter subsequently and well revealed as selectively tailored and decontextualised by Chalabi and key Kurdish political interests) remains much more uncertain a matter than alleged. The more likely and contextualised reality is that the Kurds were using Halabja as a penetration point to allow Iranian troop incursions into Iraq at the height of the war. It shouldnt require a PhD to comprehend that such activity would even by our own governments be quickly declared open treason against ones own nation and would likely result in a slaughter of those involved every bit the same.
Oh and I would remind you that slaughtering entire villages and even hundreds of thousands is fully consistent with US policy as well. You might like to acquaint yourself with Mai Lai as well as the more than half million slaughtered in our undeclared and illegal mass bombings of Cambodia only a few decades ago (at the start in fact of the current Washington cabal's political careers, imagine that!).
3. Claims of widespread "terrorist" activity have also become less than clear cut for those who actually bother to read more than the daily broadsheet/tabloid headline. I remind you that both US and UK agents (of which in the case of the CIA for certain, there are more than 500 operative in Iraq alone) have been caught disguised as Arabs and in possession of high powered explosives. False Flag terrorist action to propagate a false view of matters, especially in theatres of war, is a long-used tactic of the Pentagon (not to mention by MI6 and the Mossad).
Perhaps you might care to reread the Nuremberg Principles once again as well and note just how many of the points, by which the Nazis were deemed guilty, apply directly to our own nations' actions in the present day.
No, you have provided no consistent argument whatsoever - none which has any moral or rational consistency to it at any rate - however sentimentally persuasive you may be find it.
Iraq is not better off than before and tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) additional innocents have been slaughtered willfully to satisfy the economic and political ambitions of those with no right to be in that country in the first place.
Just as our own citizens themselves were tasked - in our respective national histories - with the responsibility of throwing off their own shackles to achieve political self determination, so too must it be for any other nation or people if the end result is to have any legitimacy. Otherwise all you have done is repeated the errors of past such claimed "liberations" (i.e. Faisal I, The Shah, Pinochet, etc..) which have proven themselves nothing more than new forms of dictatorship often worse than their predecessors.
Live long enough and I trust you'll look back on your naive youthful assumptions (above) with a different eye in decades to come.
if they want it bad enough ...they'll do something about it.
is the 'right' to vote ...all it's cracked up to be?
some people in this nation believe only people with a certain iq should be able to vote which though i disagree ...i can see some sense in it.
walk through any town in this country and look at some of the bozos who are allowed to vote ...it's fucking scary!
Apparently you also have failed to note that women have lost numerous rights under the new "Coalition-approved" Iraqi Constitution that they enjoyed previously under Saddam. No step forward there.
My "naive and youthful assumptions" may well be different in years to come and no doubt that will be down to me furthing my education which I can freely do In the Uk, and will probably be based on much of the insights I gain from this very forum.
I realise that you are attempting to belittle me and the way I express myself, but this forum would be pretty boring if everyone agreed and I fully expected to be flamed when I posted my views.
I have nothing else to add I don't think, I still support our troops and the fall of the Saddam Regime and I hope that the killing of innocent people all of the world can someday stop. I'm pretty sure that is something which we can all agree on.
so far ...they still can in iran ...but 'our boys' ...haven't arrived yet riding their death machines.
You mean they could if they supported their ruler, if not they'd get their heads chopped off.
surely anyone with the most basic education would know how to behave though ...
the country was a thriving place with a highly educated population ...scientists engineers doctors lawyers etc.
you seem to have the impression everyone was living in fear and want.
iraq was a hugely sucsessful country.
saddams biggest mistakes were doing the bidding of the west.
did you know the invasion of iraq and afghanistan were planned back in reagans day?
daddy bush totaly detroyed iraqs military ...totaly.
then ...ten years of sanctions to weaken the country further ...once it was on its knees ...it was a walkover for bush jnr.
there was no military to fight back ...the way the americans like their wars.
You really need to educate yourself out of these inflated myths you've so internalised, dear boy. Contrary to what the liars Chalabi and Allawi have managed to insinuate into mainstream Western media, the preponderance of Iraqis led daily lives no different than you or I.
Not so today, especially where coalition forces are kicking in doors in the middle of the night and dragging people away on mere "say so" to indefinite detentions and torture, even those as young as 12 and 14 years of age.
Oh yes, wave your flag and tell us all about your beloved liberation (which the Iraqis see for its true face daily).
Yes I did know, that is partly what informed my answer to the original question posted, we left the people that chose rise against him once I do not believe we should do it again.
Thank you, but I do question my views and that is exactly why I post on this forum.
Again see my previous post...
Am I to be punished because I believe something different to you?
I haven't read the full thread, but my fella did 6 months over there and said the reception from the locals to him and the troop he was with (in and around Basra City) was appalling.
You want to believe lies, be my guest, but don't make statements of fact that are nothing more than theatre of war propaganda.
Regardless of whether most Iraqis are happy to see the back of Saddam, most of them are not happy about the war and subsequent occupation by the coallition of the killing.
I havn't made any statements of fact, I thought I was clear that I was stating my opinion. I am not trying to be a martyr. I was simply stating my own personal views which I have reached according to what knowledge I have of the situation as I see it.
I suppose it depends where abouts the troops are, my friend never came across any bad treatment in Iraq.
I will be glad to assist you with reference material (off thread) if you have an interest to confront some of the false assumptions upon which you have based your opions.
:thumb:
Cheers, you really are a seasoned arguer arent you? Here's me thinking that I could leave the thread happy to know that we agree to disagree and then you get a little dig in, right when I wasn't expecting it.
But you also agree that the real reasons for the war weren't because of Sadam and that Iraq is in a worse place after the invasion than beforehand?
How can you still support it then?
yes
yes I agree that the war was not because of Saddam (I think I said that earlier, sorry if I didn't make that clear) I do not know that it is a worse place after the invasion. I believe that for some yes it is but but for others no.
I still support it because of all the reasons I said before and wont repeat because even I am bored of myself, so I am sure everyone else is.
- Weapons? So what, let the silly cunt have them. If he uses them against anyone, he'll get his arse kicked again.
- Regeime Change? Not really necessary in any way. Iraq was stable and didn't suffer from terrorism before. He wasn't really even a threat to anyone. His army was quite well destroyed. He couldn't afford anymore stuff either.
over a hundred people a day being taken to the main morgue in baghdad.
there are no figures yet for the other morgues in the city.
no figures yet for the other towns and cities.
these dead people are mostly iraqi civilians ...shopping ...looking for work ...taking their kids to the park ...
and you don't know if it's a worse place ... :eek2:
Yes, but then there are governments just as bad, if not worse. Such as China, or Burma to name a few. Shall we invade them too? Steal their natural resources, drop phosphorous and cluster bombs on civilian populated areas? Set up camps to torture people in?
At the end of the day, this war is about economics and keeping the rich wealthy with their big cars and heated outdoor jaccuzi's.
Even now Saddam has been romoved, it does not mean that whoever ends up leaving the country will be any better, or that America and the UK will give a shit or not.