The news media could care less about truth and fact, and too many people don’t spend the time to find the truth, they just believe their bias.
You can debate whether we should have gone to Iraq or not, that’s what free speech allows (for those of us who are lucky enough to still enjoy it).…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Victor Plenty
Dictators only imagine they create their own laws. The government of any nation is legally responsible for the protection of the people who live under it, nor merely responsible in some vague sense of moralistic idealism. Without this core principle, all government is meaningless, and naked oppression need never seek any other justification.
In the case of a dictatorship, the government's responsibility to protect its citizens falls on the shoulders of one person.
This is why Saddam Hussein failed to meet his moral and legal responsibilities as the single person in control of the government of Iraq. He was a failure when he led that government to murder its own citizens, even if those who died were Kurds and he was not himself a Kurd. He was a failure when he led that government in the invasion of Kuwait, no matter what historical injustices may have brought Kuwait into existence in the first place. And of course he was a failure in his countless other acts of oppression against his own people.
Note I am not saying these failures are sufficient to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I am not addressing that question at all right now. It is an error to assume I would agree with every policy decision made by others who have pointed out Saddam Hussein's moral and legal failings.
As for my alleged lack of reading comprehension, even if it exists, I am far from alone in that flaw, considering the vast gulf between anything I have said and the accusations you have leveled against me, J.J.
27 - RJ
Saddam gassed the Kurds. They are not "his own people" as he is a Sunni, so let's get all the facts straight, shall we?
Kurds are an ethnic group. Sunnis are a religious group. You're comparing apples to oranges. (In fact, most Kurds in Iraq are Sunnis!)
Also, your "larger point" is bogus as well. Are you suggesting that if Bush gassed Black Muslims in the United States, that this would be somehow more acceptable because he wouldn't really be gassing "his own people" ???
Perhaps "you should stop now before embarrassing yourself any further" ... :-/
28 - RJ
Okay, I now see that others have commented on this disgusting statement as well ... good to see. :-)
29 - P. Marlowe
RJ... I always find comfort in the continuity of life. The way fresh cow manure smells, the absolute absurdity of the High Priests of Political Correctness, the way network execs will pull any show that requires its audience to have an IQ at or slightly above that of a Chia Pet... And how your intellectual and emotional "growth" must have come to a screeching halt at the age of 13...
Ahhh... I love Spring!
P. Marlowe
30 - Dave Nalle
I agree Vic, and I still can't figure out why Bush, Sr., financed Iraq's military.
Your ignorance knows no bounds. We started financing Iraq's military well before Bush Sr. It started with the fall of the Shah, because when we broke ties with post-Shah Iran we wanted to put them under some pressure and the best way to do that was to provide support to Iraq. The level of support we gave Iraq was far lower than what we had been giving Iran. Under the Shah Iran had been the testing ground for the newest US military equipment and enjoyed a special status that we've really never given to any other nation. When they turned against us US political leaders were pissed and turned to Saddam as the instrument of revenge.
Dave
31 - Victor Plenty
So, Dave, you're saying U.S. leaders knew what a monster Saddam was, and they were more than happy to inflict him on Iran. This certainly gives the lie to Matt Finley's odd claim about the alleged "pacifism" in America's long-standing policies toward the Islamic world.
The high price Americans are now paying in Iraq may function as some sort of penance for what our leadership did to create the hellish conditions of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
It doesn't seem to be earning us much forgiveness in the Gulf region, or anywhere else in the world, unfortunately.
32 - MCH
Re#29;
"Okay, I now see that others have commented on this disgusting statement as well ... good to see. :-)"
Is it as disgusting as your statements making fun of the size of Elizabeth Edwards' butt?
33 - Dave Nalle
So, Dave, you're saying U.S. leaders knew what a monster Saddam was, and they were more than happy to inflict him on Iran.
Yes, that's about the size of it. We didn't at that time know about his potential for genocide, but we knew he was a brutal dictator. Our support for him did start to wane very quickly after he decided to use WMDs we'd provided for use on Iran on his own people.
This certainly gives the lie to Matt Finley's odd claim about the alleged "pacifism" in America's long-standing policies toward the Islamic world.
Yes, well that claim was never believable to anyone, now was it?
The high price Americans are now paying in Iraq may function as some sort of penance for what our leadership did to create the hellish conditions of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
If the Carter administration had possessed even one gonad they would have backed the Shah and kept him in power, thereby checking Saddam with a far more benevolent dictator and a more powerful neighbor and preventing this entire debacle. Iranians I've talked with recently blame almost the entire current mess in the region on the fall of the Shah and the weakness of our foreign policy after Nixon.
Dave
34 - G. Oren
Stimulating posts here - especially from Dave N and Ruvy. The history of U.S. involvement in the Mid-East, especially during the cold-war, is not a simple manichean dualism and the administration does little justice to the complexity of the problems faced by every Mid-East state with its rhetoric and current practice.
What I find most distressing about the current plight of the Mid-east is the seemingly intransigent trajectories of both Sunni and Shiite fundamentalist. Knowing their own weakness, the Saudis seem particularly distressed at the current state of things in Iraq - as it appears most likely that a heavily Iranian influenced Shiite majority will call most of the shots. I think it most likely that any Iraqi "state" that emerges from the current conflagration will be a weak confederation of balkanized regional provinces. The Kurds have their mini-state already functioning, the Shiites have the South, the Sunnis hold the weakest hand in the center. A conference of the nations bordering Iraq, including Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Iran should be a required first step in attempting to bring an uneasy peace and some stability to the region. Unfortunately, even the best diplomatic efforts may not prevent surrogate warfare from continuing among the factions within Iraq.
Even if we are succesful in bringing about some modus vivendi around Iraq and its neighbors perhaps with the help of Russia and China - who have reasons of their own for favoring relative calm in the region - we still face two other seemingly intransigent conflicts. The Pakistanis seem entirely unwilling or unable to control their own borders with Afghanistan or to go beyond certain capacities in rooting out the remnants of Al Queda from their western border. As they sponsored the rise of the Taliban, they are reluctant or incapable of rooting them out either - leaving the Taliban free to threaten the unstable Afghani government. The second conflict is, of course, the continued lack of resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Israel cannot accede to any signficant "right-of-return" for the palestinians, and the only real solution must come from some form of two-state compromise - which appears less likely with Hamas holding the upper hand among the Palestinians.
All of this may provide the U.S. with some opportunity to exert diplomatic influence, but precious little advantage or even disadvantage for exercising military options. We have shown that we can eradicate armies in the field, but that is of little consequence without a reasonable option for replacing a supposed enemy with something better and we have lost most of our credibility among the Arabs for acting as an honest broker.
How do we approach these problems other than to adopt some kind of containment strategy that somehow fits into the ill-named "war on terror"? Given the nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, both Sunni and Shiite, we cannot afford to be unengaged. Neither can we afford to be sanguine about the increasing Islamification of Europe.
35 - G. Oren
Dave #34
Yes, the greatest legacy of watergate was the collapse of our foreign policy and the relative weakness of the Ford and Carter administrations. Hamstrung as Ford was by the anti-war Congress of Dems that resulted from the 74 elections and poor Carter with his insistence on Human Rights and Detente with the Soviets. I'm not sure we could have prevented the Shahs fall without assasinating Khomenei. There was a brief period immediately after the Shah's capitulation when it seemed a fairly moderate group of pro-western Iranians would fill the void, remember Bakhtiar and Bani-Sadr?
36 - STM
"The greatest legacy of watergate was the collapse of our foreign policy."
What, as America suddenly turned inwards? America's always been a very inwards-looking culture. Try asking the average schoolkid to find Mexico, Canada, Britain, Australia, Africa or China on a map of the world and they won't be able to do it. Many can't even identify the US. Not their fault, as they haven't been taught, but it has to start at that level, because most adults won't be able to do it either. I'd guarantee 90 per cent of adults in the US can't tell you on a map even roughly where Iraq is. The vast majority still also DIRECTLY connect 9/11 and the war in Iraq. That's a worry.
To your suggestion, I'd say: foreign policy? what foreign policy? Truth is, because of what it is the US hasn't really needed to have one, except in time of war. That's not a put down, either, just an observation made with two eyes open ...
37 - Dave Nalle
I do indeed remember Bakhtiar and Bani-Sadr and for that matter Sadegh Ghotbzadeh too.
You know, at one point Khomeini was in France while he was exiled from Iran and the French basically offered to let the Shah kill him in secret and the Shah passed.
Dave
38 - STM
For fu.k's sake Matt, as Ruvy points out, and as this is an international website, if you are going to do the definitive list of islamic terrorist attacks and present it as fact, do the whole lot. You forgot the Iranian Embassy siege in London 1980, numerous aircraft hijackings, the Bali bombings (2002, 2004, killing about 220, mostly westerners), the shooting massacre of western tourists in Luxor, Egypt, the repeated bombings of the red sea resorts (the last one was last year), the Beslan school siege, the Moscow theatre siege, the bombings of two Aeroflot jets over Russia, the Jakarta Embassy bombings, the London train and bus bombings, the Madrid rail bombings. Then there are the regular suicide bombings in Israel, and the many thwarted attacks including the ones that were to destroy western civilian jets over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Add all those in, and you are looking at a whole different ballgame. It's good to give people the real picture, not a piecemeal one.
39 - Doug Hunter
"The vast majority still also DIRECTLY connect 9/11 and the war in Iraq. That's a worry"
What's to worry about the truth? The war in Iraq would not have occured without 9/11. A simple fact only a moron would deny.
40 - moonraven
Well this "moron"--who is probably twice as smart as you are--says that one of the main reasons The Bush Gang did 9/11 was to create a general state of psychotic fear in the US so that you folks would go along with whatever wars in the name of petroleum that they wanted to wage.
War with Iraq was on the neo-con plan for a new century agenda in 2000.
Before The Reichstag Fire--er, The Sinking of the Maine--er, 9/11.
41 - moonraven
Not to mention that there is a whole crew of Rumplestiltskins on this site--led by Nalle--who daily try to convince us that the straw of fiction is the gold of fact.
42 - MCH
"What's to worry about the truth? The war in Iraq would not have occured without 9/11. A simple fact only a moron would deny."
- Doug Hunter
Since you agree with the invasion/occupation, Doug, I'm assuming you've served over there already?
43 - Rumplestiltskin
Queen Moonbeam meet me under the bridge at the stroke of midnight. I await you my love.
44 - Dave Nalle
MCH, nothing Doug said indicated that he supported the invasion or occupation in Iraq. All he said was that it was obvious that without the events of 9/11 the Iraq invasion would not have been possible. That's not an endorsement, it's a reasonable statement of fact.
Are you this imperceptive when reporting the scores on highschool basketball games, or is that a field where you're actually qualified to have an opinion?
Dave
45 - MCH
Well, I saw through your Vox Populi scam, Nalle.
46 - troll
geeze...how does a contrary to fact hypothetical statement morph into a 'simple fact' - ?
who knows what provocation would have been used to justify and motivate support for an invasion if 9-11 hadn't happened - ?
47 - Doug Hunter
"The Bush Gang did 9/11 was to create a general state of psychotic fear in the US so that you folks would go along with whatever wars in the name of petroleum that they wanted to wage."
So we agree the war and 9/11 are connected. Ditto for troll. Inherent in your knee jerk replies is the connection between the two. Thanks for playing. As for the moonie being twice as smart as me, I consider that quite a putdown considering she can't write a simple rebuttal without completely contradicting her own point. Of course anyone that is delusional enough to believe that Bush 'did' 9/11 is probably impregnable to logic anyway.
Troll, try and learn to think for yourself please. Go back and read Bush's pre-9/11 speeches and use your own mind, not the programming coming from the left. There was no serious plan or groundwork being layed for invading Iraq. Missile defense was the main security thrust, not terrorism.
48 - troll
Doug:
9-11 and the invasion of Iraq obviously were related as the one was used as an rational for the other by the administration...never argued that they weren't related in at least this sense
--
for all of his appeals to isolationism in his speechifying Bush surrounded himself with so-called neoconservative internationalists from before his appointment...my point in #46 is merely that your claim that 'The war in Iraq would not have occured without 9/11.' is opinion and not 'simple fact'
imo eventual occupation became 'inevitable' when the Bathist government finished nationalizing the oil infrastructure and began to exercise total control over development of the fields...and the actual rationalization/sales pitch began during the Clinton administration with the resolution calling for regime change after it became clear that the Socialists weren't going to be overthrown from within by any more 'moderate' group and that the policy of containment would not lead to control by western interests
49 - Dave Nalle
Troll, I think you're making more of the significance of who controls Iraq's oil than makes much sense. Saddam would have gladly worked with western interests if sanctions were lifted - he was working with the French despite the sanctions, after all. Plus if the oil went to China or the Europeans that would reduce their demand for other oil, making it more available for the US and our favorite oil companies.
Nice to see that you realize the Baathists are a socialist movement, though.
Dave
50 - MBD
"'The war in Iraq would not have occured without 9/11.' is opinion and not 'simple fact"
Look at the record.
“Israel can shape its strategic environment…This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq " an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”
-- Prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000." The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy
51 - troll
Dave - I understand that you discount the importance of the production process to the oil industry...I simply disagree
oil becomes fungible at the well head and there's the whole business of getting it there which (for some reason) oil companies compete over
you say - *Plus if the oil went to China or the Europeans that would reduce their demand for other oil, making it more available for the US and our favorite oil companies.*
a country's demand for oil is not static - the more it gets the more it can use
52 - Dave Nalle
I know there's money to be made in actually pumping the oil, but if it were so all-fired much money the companies would be working harder to exploit oil resources in other parts of the world. From what I understand the margins are damned low on actually pumping the oil and the risk is high. This is why they want to be partnered with local governments to absorb some of the risk. The big money is in distribution and processing, and the big oil companies have that market pretty well dominated one way or another.
a country's demand for oil is not static - the more it gets the more it can use
Not sure that holds true for developed countries. There's certainly a finite market in the US or in Europe. Higher supply might reduce cost with some attendant increase in demand, but that market expansion would be inherently limited.
Dave
53 - troll
Haliburton and Schlumberger have done ok on the margin...how's your stock - ? (granted these corporations and their suppliers are involved in infrastructure development and maintenance through all stages of oil production from the fields to the refineries)
--
in terms of economic growth - and therefore energy consumption - even the US is a 'developing country' with ever increasing demand
54 - Dave Nalle
Actually, Haliburton has stagnated a bit, so they decided to split Kerr-McGee off into a separate company and when they did I switched over to KMG stock instead of Haliburton.
Companies like Bechtel, Haliburton and Schlumberger aren't oil companies, of course. Their profits are pretty much independent of who controls the oil or what the oil companies are doing as far as profits. Whoever is sucking the oil out of the ground is going to hire them to do it, and it's going to be at a price set by bid in most cases.
Dave
55 - troll
would China hire Haliburton...it has its own State controlled equivalent doesn't it - ?
and I think it's fair to call any company that's essential to oil production and for which oil production is essential an oil company
(the stagnation and split off were due to that nasty asbestos problem Haliburton inherited when it picked up Dresser Industries weren't they - ? I thought that that was all settled back in '05 although the split off was just finalized recently...)
56 - MBD
"Companies like Bechtel, Haliburton and Schlumberger aren't oil companies, of course."
Maybe they're just common thieves.
In little more than a year, $12 billion in US currency was removed from the vaults of the Federal Reserve and flown into Iraq. This money, mainly $100 bills, was packed into bricks, and each brick was worth $400,000.
The bricks were assembled into large palettes each containing over $60 million in cash and flown into Iraq.
No one knows what happened to the money...
57 - troll
everybody needs a little pocket cash when in a foreign country
58 - Dave Nalle
Those bricks of cash were in the hands of civilian administrators, NOT Halliburton - just for the record.
And regarding China hiring Halliburton. While they may have some infrastructure services of their own - presumably from the Red Army which does all that kind of work - China hires Halliburton/KBR all the time to provide technical services within China and all sorts of contracting services outside of China.
In researching this I also discovered that some of the infrastructure work in Iraq has been won by open bid by both China's ZTE corporation and Russia's Lukoil. So China, Halliburton, Bechtel, Schlumberger and the Russians are all working side by side in Iraq.
Dave
59 - MBD
Who is everybody?
Does it include the families of dead soldiers?
How about the wounded?
60 - MBD
"Those bricks of cash were in the hands of civilian administrators, NOT Halliburton - just for the record."
Just for the record, you don't know what happened to the money once it got there.
So if you don't know, don't pretend to know.
61 - troll
#58 is very interesting...would you list some of your sources and save others the work of tracking down your facts - ?
thanks in advance
62 - Dave Nalle
Sources for which info, MBD? Just google "china halliburton contract" then google the same with "contract" replaced with "subcontract" - you'll find plenty of interesting links.
If you were looking for info on Halliburton doing work in China or with the Chinese try this link and this link - both press releases from Halliburton.
For other stuff ask me specifically because we're limited to two links per comment.
And yes, I don't know what happened to all that cash, but I have no reason to think it was given to Halliburton. I understand that the general excuse is that it was used for massive and not terribly successful bribes.
Dave
63 - troll
(that request was from me Dave...not from the people's choice - MBD)
64 - MBD
Dave's eyesight is deteriorating along with his other faculties.
65 - troll
(actually I should apologize for asking Dave for links...usually I troll for info myself but my 'due diligence' time is short these days
it's springtime in the Rockies and everyone wants his caballo worked on yesterday - so I'm even more of a drive-by commenter than usual)
66 - Hubert Heaver
"You Can't Create Fact From Fiction"
Of course you can!
Look at all the sordid facts created in Iraq based on the blatant fictions the administration created.
Remember WMD? Mushroom cloud over Chicago? Etc.?
67 - Dave Nalle
I think the peoples choice is actually MGD tho to me it tastes like piss.
Are you a farrier or somesuch, troll?
Dave
68 - Clavos
Yeah, that comment about caballos caught my eye, too.
What do you do with them, troll?
69 - MBD
"I think the peoples choice is actually MGD tho to me it tastes like piss."
What does piss taste like?
70 - troll
(that's MJB)
yup - I'm a farrier
71 - Dave Nalle
Sheesh, MBD. You've never had to drink your own piss? Guess you weren't in a frat.
Nice retro profession, troll. I'm taking blacksmithing classes starting next week - just for amusement and to expand my useless knowledge.
Dave
72 - troll
and you haven't lived until you've down a gourde of peyote laden urine
enjoy the class Dave...I hope you get to work with coal rather than propane - and remember the adage: 'strike while the metal is hot'...you'll avoid wrist injuries that way
73 - MBD
"Sheesh, MBD. You've never had to drink your own piss? Guess you weren't in a frat."
Yup. No frat.
I went to college under the GI Bill. I had outgrown my childhood ways.
Did you have to drink it warm?
74 - Clavos
troll,
I see a farrier here on the road a lot (he must live somewhere near me). From the signs on his truck, I gather he's sort of an itinerant farrier-going to the horses wherever they are.
Is that how you work, or are you connected with a stable or veterinary center?
I agree with Dave, BTW: cool line of work. Years ago, my wife and I had a horse (two people, one horse-go figure), I enjoyed watching her get shod. The horse, not the wife-she has to go barefoot. :>)
75 - troll
Clavos - I do a lot of driving both to individual homes and several stables and I am on call with local Vets for emergencies
...actually the riding boot technology has progressed so much in the past few years I highly recommend keeping horses barefoot too