The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[kandrathe]

"He nationalized the oil industry. He instituted a nation-wide literacy project, non-attendance punishable by three years in jail. Hundreds of thousands of illiterate Iraqi men, women and children learned to read. He advocated the building of schools, roads, public housing and hospitals. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East. "

Yup, even monsters need to show the facade of progressive reform. Nationalizing the oil industry means he kicked out western companies and stole the wealth for himself. Literacy at the end of a gun, how magnanimous. And, UNESCO even gave him an award! UNESCO gave him an award for eradicating illiteracy by force. Maybe that would work for health care? BTW... How did Riyadh Ibrahim Hussein die?

"The mass executions documented in this report took place at a time when the Iraqi government was in great turmoil. Its infrastructure and its military were severely damaged from the effects of the first Gulf War and many of its local officials in the south were killed during the 1991 uprisings."

Um, did you read the HRW report? Yes, some people were involved in the uprising, but the HRW story is more of the mothers, daughters and children who were murdered by Special Republican Guard forces led by Qusay Hussein. What they did was go town by town and round up people randomly and bring them to an area where they murdered and buried them. They didn't care who the people were or even question them other than to record their identities.

So, because we had made it impossible for them to deal with (USA supported) rebellions in a decent way, they had to resort to these crimes. Terrible. He should have let his country fall into civil war, of course, just like we wanted.

Sorry, are you trying to justify the Iraqi murders of unknown thousands of people by blaming the US? "Following the defeat of the rebellions in the north and south, the government began indiscriminately arresting tens of thousands of persons on suspicion of supporting the rebellion. Because of the active role played by Shi`a soldiers and deserters in the uprising, they were particularly targeted. In city after southern city, loyalist forces organized checkpoints and went house to house to round up suspects. Their arrest campaign was as indiscriminate as the firepower used to crush the rebellion. Countless civilians, at times entire families, were arrested and “disappeared.”

Note that it says "Following" the brutal crushing of the rebellion. Then the Special Republican Guard went on reprisal killing spree. Did we force Hitler to exterminate the Jews too?

"U.N. economic sanctions were also killing civilians. Critics regularly claimed sanctions caused 4,000 to 5,000 Iraqi children to die per month from poor nutrition and health care. UNICEF attributed some 500,000 unnecessary deaths to the sanctions in the 1990s. The sanctions remained in place as long as Saddam's regime refused to comply with international requirements. Liberation made it possible to lift the sanctions almost immediately--thus saving approximately 60,000 lives a year, if we use UNICEF's numbers." So, because he didn't turn himself in to be hanged, he is responsible for all the lives we took in retaliation.

Ah, so war is bad, and sanctions are bad. What is your proposal for dealing with someone like Saddam? Angry letters? March around Piccadilly with signs and loudspeakers? There was an alternative. He might have complied with the UN's demands which were not for him to be hanged and would have left him in charge. When the US gave him the ultimatum to leave Iraq, he could have gone into exile to any nation that would have him.

"So, by a conservative estimate, the regime was killing civilians at an average rate of at least 16,000 a year between 1979 and March 2003."

By extremely conservative estimate, the number of violent deaths between 2003 and 2008 was over 100000. That's 20000 a year. The real number may be 5 to 10 times as high, unfortunately.

And... Who is killing the people? This is a case of "How to lie with statistics" --> (read more) "In other words, the death rate in Iraq today is less than half of the rate suffered under Saddam"

Do you even know why the USA has always been opposed to the (perfectly fine) Oil for Food program? Have you looked up 'petrodollar' on the internet? Let me explain.

Trading Iraq's oil for food and other stuff meant that there were no dollars involved. So, the USA could make no profit from 10% of the world's oil transactions. That's an awful lot of money, and extremely dangerous if other countries decide to do the same. Punishment was inevitable, and it would also serve as a warning to others.

Venezuela is doing the same, btw. Fortunately for them, their share in the oil market is not big enough to provoke the USA sufficiently.

Ahem, from the Wikipedia... "The programme was introduced by United States President Bill Clinton's administration in 1995, as a response to arguments that ordinary Iraqi citizens were inordinately affected by the international economic sanctions aimed at the demilitarisation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, imposed in the wake of the first Gulf War." (link)

Why would the US introduce a program if we were against it?

From the Duelfer report, "The final official version of the report cites only France, Russia and China (countries who were also strongly anti-war) as violators who paid kickbacks The Duelfer report's list (volume 1, annex B, p. 302) of all "Known Oil Voucher Recipients" includes each recipient's nationality, as well as a chart broken down by nationality (figure 16, p.166). The list indicates that 30 percent of the recipients were Russian; 15 percent were French; 10 percent were Chinese; 6 percent each were Swiss, Malaysian, and Syrian; and 4 percent each were Jordanian and Egyptian. American and German recipients were included in the approximate 20 percent of "recipients from other nations."

So, the same nations that stood firmly against war with Iraq in upholding Resolution 1441, were also heavily involved in getting kick backs on corrupt oil sales. Then, there was also the outright smuggling of oil from Iraq.