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[nyong]

sarcasm? what we're seeing now is an organic process that, thankfully, has little US grandstanding and overt interference. it shares little with the Iraq war, or how neoconservatives wanted to force democracy through the barrel of a gun.

You honestly think that demonstrations would be taking place in the streets of Iraq if Saddam were still in charge? The invasion absolutely made this possible.

That said, the way we carried it out was still wrong.

 

[Dude Abides]

You honestly think that demonstrations would be taking place in the streets of Iraq if Saddam were still in charge? The invasion absolutely made this possible.

That said, the way we carried it out was still wrong.

Just a few weeks ago it was unthinkable that there would be massive protests against a strongman dictator in Egypt. It's impossible to know whether this current wave would not have spread to Iraq even if Saddam was still in power.

 

[theignoramus]

The US didn't kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to get to Saddam.

Nice try.

It didnt, it's just legally culpable for the crimes that followed the invasion,at least by the standard of its own judges at Nuremburg.

 

[scorcho]

thought it was obvious that his quip was about the Tunisian, and now Egyptian revolution being a product of neoconservative ideology from the late 90s-early 2000s.

it's obvious that Hussein would've quelled any such uprising now were he in power, but then again the country wouldn't have gone through 4 years of bloody sectarian warfare/ethnic cleansing that destroyed a large part of their infrastructure and economy. but that point is all academic, anyhow. the war shouldn't have happened, but did. life moves on.

 

[nyong]

Just a few weeks ago it was unthinkable that there would be massive protests against a strongman dictator in Egypt. It's impossible to know whether this current wave would not have spread to Iraq even if Saddam was still in power.

Saddam was slightly more ruthless in putting down dissenters. Pro-democracy demonstrations under Saddam are literally unthinkable. But yes, historians will probably squabble over it in the decades to come.

but then again the country wouldn't have gone through 4 years of bloody sectarian warfare/ethnic cleansing that destroyed a large part of their infrastructure and economy.

Well, we destroyed their infrastructure in the first Gulf War. Same thing with their economy. Remember, 500k children died under our sanctions. The secretarian violence is where Bush failed the hardest, in my opinion. They convinced themselves they could do it without sufficient troops in place and ignored/replaced the generals who said otherwise. 100k+ people died not because we invaded, but because we lost control.

Morally I don't think the invasion was wrong, per se, in and of itself. The sanctions were worse in many ways.

 

[John_B]

Documented civilian deaths from violence
99,711 – 108,864

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
The count encompasses non-combatants killed by military or paramilitary action and the breakdown in civil security following the invasion.

Let's not even try to imagine how many people have died (or babies born deformed) due to the affects of war. The real tragedy is how we just prove - despite our own proclaimed self-awareness of good and evil actions - that on a larger scale, all humans are shit. We all deceive and murder for greed, and if not in person then most certainly by proxy. What is good and evil is not a question of morality, but a question of PR. Though in the end we care enough to feel bad, just not enough to really give a fuck.

 

[scorcho]

yes, the millions displaced, the millions orphaned and the hundreds of thousands killed as a result of the civil war is due to the decision to invade. by not invading, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to fail so spectacularly at nation-building.

a macro view of history might prove that it benefited the population as a whole. i don't think it's fair to say that what we've seen since the invasion is somehow an improvement over the status quo at the time.

 

[Trurl]

People will believe what they want to believe. The right wanted all this to be true so they can invade. So they ignored all the red flags that indicating he was lying.


People, from all views, really need to challenge themselves instead of just willingly believing what you want to believe just because you found someone that said it.

That's the way I feel about it too. I don't believe that the Bush administration lied but in their eagerness to find a casus belli they abandoned appropriate critical thinking.

 

[RustyNails]

W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz and Condi Rice are a bunch of Warcriminals. Should be tried in Hague.

 

[nyong]

yes, the millions displaced, the millions orphaned and the hundreds of thousands killed as a result of the civil war is due to the decision to invade.

It's not as simple as the decision to invade, though. Had we gone in with the right number of troops, had we kept control, the civil violence probably would not have happened. At least, not on the same scale. Once we lost control, the Iraqi people stopped trusting us--remember that many were FOR the invasion--and the militias were able to gain a foothold.

i don't think it's fair to say that what we've seen since the invasion is somehow an improvement over the status quo at the time.

As a whole, probably not. Places like Basra are much better off, though.

 

[nyong]

That's the way I feel about it too. I don't believe that the Bush administration lied but in their eagerness to find a casus belli they abandoned appropriate critical thinking.

Meh, I've never been able to jump on the "Bush lied" bandwagon. The fact that no WMDs turned up destroyed the Republican Party and Bush's credibility...an easily predictable outcome. The guy went on strong anti-depressants shortly afterwards and generally looked like a wreck the rest of his presidency.

 

[Dude Abides]

Saddam was slightly more ruthless in putting down dissenters. Pro-democracy demonstrations under Saddam are literally unthinkable. But yes, historians will probably squabble over it in the decades to come.

Yes he was quite ruthless, but it's not "literally unthinkable" that there could have been a democratic movement in Iraq even under him. To credit the Iraq invasion with what's going on now seems like a case of unfounded American hubris and narcissism.

 

[nyong]

To credit the Iraq invasion with what's going on now seems like a case of unfounded American hubris and narcissism.

No, it's common sense. Iraq was under a brutal dictactor who ruthlessly killed people for the most trivial of dissenting opinion, to include members of his own family. Now Iraq has a government in place which makes zero effort to stop such demonstrations. There really is no arguing against this, try as you might.

To not credit the invasion with making this (more) possible is nothing more than a case of close-minded, stubborn, clinging-to-anti-Bushness.

 

[slider]

Multiple intelligence agencies reported that Saddam had WMDs, not just the CIA. In his interrogation he claimed he believed the staying power of his regime was based on such weapons, real or not, which explains why he was so coy with weapons inspectors when the UN was hammering him.

Haven't been following this but he went to the BND and later the CIA, right?

It's common knowledge that the UK's "dossier" clearly ignored SIS' statement that the presence of WMD was based on single source reporting from an asset with a time limited relationship with the Service (and hence it wasn't possible to validate his reporting).

Who else was reporting the presence of WMDs? And was it simply based on CIA liaison reporting? I genuinely don't know.

 

[nyong]

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

There are multiple quotes from world leaders, all who thought that Saddam had WMDs. I'm sure there is some overlapping intelligence, though. Remember that Curveball wasn't CIA, but actually a German source. Hell, the same Democrats who later pretended that Bush lied had made similar claims:

http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/demsonwmds.php
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

The WMD failure is a failure of all Western intelligence agencies, not just the United States. Even the UN inspectors reversed course only because the invasion was imminent. Most people thought that something would turn up in Iraq.

 

[Dude Abides]

No, it's common sense. Iraq was under a brutal dictactor who ruthlessly killed people for the most trivial of dissenting opinion, to include members of his own family. Now Iraq has a government in place which makes zero effort to stop such demonstrations. There really is no arguing against this, try as you might.

What are you even arguing? You simply have no idea whether, with Saddam in power, there would have been demonstrations. None whatsoever. This is just smug jingoism.

 

[theignoramus]

What are you even arguing? You simply have no idea whether, with Saddam in power, there would have been demonstrations. None whatsoever. This is just smug jingoism.

Well there was an uprising in 91, but nyong is neglecting to mention the fact that the US supported (literally) Saddam's ruthless crushing of it, because Bush Sr. preferred Saddam to a populist uprising and the unknowns it would bring.

 

[nyong]

What are you even arguing? You simply have no idea whether, with Saddam in power, there would have been demonstrations. None whatsoever. This is just smug jingoism.

I'm arguing that the invasion made it easier for such demonstrations to take place. They probably enabled them, in fact.

I mean, yes...hypothetically Saddam may have had a change of heart and allowed pro-democracy demonstrations to undermine his iron-fisted rule. Hypothetically the Germans may also have lost WWII without American intervention, slavery would have ended without Lincoln, and the North Koreans would be flourishing without Western sanctions. Lots of hypotheticals...ignoring a logical variable--like the invasion of Iraq--because it's uncomfortable to consider is just dumb, though.

History will almost certainly credit the invasion. That doesn't mean praise or even condone it.

 

[nyong]

Well there was an uprising in 91, but nyong is neglecting to mention the fact that the US supported (literally) Saddam's ruthless crushing of it, because Bush Sr. preferred Saddam to a populist uprising and the unknowns it would bring.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.

Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles.

Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren – outcome.”

Smarter than his son, that's for sure.

 

[FlyinJ]

Who else was reporting the presence of WMDs? And was it simply based on CIA liaison reporting? I genuinely don't know.

Well, there was the Yellowcake thing. And look what happened there.

I'm not buying for a second that anyone of these guys who actually planned this ridiculous invasion believed "Curveball". If he wasn't simply an actor, they definitely knew he was full of shit.

Look at the records of every single person involved with this debacle. Every piece of "evidence" turned out to be a lie, everyone who spoke out against the invasion was labeled an unpatriotic pussy, a traitor, or at worse had their entire career ruined by these thugs (Plame). The media was terrified to even run anti-invasion op-ed pieces because of the sheer intimidation campaign.

Look at the the previous records of all the players in this. They are the cream of the neoconservative warmongers of the past 40 years. Laos, Iran arms selling, School of the Americas. You couldn't pick a more violent and arrogant group of warmongering cretins in modern US history.

They grabbed the flag of 9/11 and ran with it, and used that banner to carry out the biggest and most nefarious fantasy they could possibly concoct.

And my god did I get a lot of grief for calling a spade a spade when the first rumblings of an Iraq invasion started to permeate the news media. I spelled out exactly why it was occurring, how it was being orchestrated through jingoism and false evidence, and how it would end up.

And almost everyone who I argued this with either gets incredibly defensive or they deny ever supporting the invasion.

 

[Dude Abides]

I'm arguing that the invasion made it easier for such demonstrations to take place. They probably enabled them, in fact.

I mean, yes...hypothetically Saddam may have had a change of heart and allowed pro-democracy demonstrations to undermine his iron-fisted rule.

You realize that sometimes people demonstrate and revolt despite a government's attempts to suppress it, correct?

You're probably right that it is somewhat easier to demonstrate against the current government than it would have been under Saddam. Of course, if the current government is so benevolent and wonderful why are the people demonstrating at all?

 

[Axion22]

Now it's your turn to fess up, everyone who wanted deep down to hear this man's lies as truth.

 

[nyong]

You realize that sometimes people demonstrate and revolt despite a government's attempts to suppress it, correct?

Yes, and in the case of Iraq under Saddam such demonstrations were brutally suppressed and always failed. That's not the case now.

You're probably right that it is somewhat easier to demonstrate against the current government than it would have been under Saddam.

You do realize that you're crediting the invasion--not justifying it, of course--by finally acknowledging this?

Of course, if the current government is so benevolent and wonderful why are the people demonstrating at all?

Because the current government is crap, plagued with corruption and utterly incompetent. The Iraqis deserve better.

 

[Dude Abides]

Yes, and in the case of Iraq under Saddam such demonstrations were brutally suppressed and always failed. That's not the case now.

Past performance does not perfectly predict future results. See, Egypt.

You do realize that you're crediting the invasion--not justifying it, of course--by finally acknowledging this?

I don't think you understand the argument. Your claim was:

You honestly think that demonstrations would be taking place in the streets of Iraq if Saddam were still in charge?

I read that as a claim that the demonstrations we are seeing would not be taking place if Saddam were still in power. If that is a misreading, please correct it. As it stands, it's a claim you cannot make with any reasonable degree of certainty. That's all. The wave of protests could easily have spread to Iraq and for you to claim you know otherwise is nonsense.

 

[theignoramus]

Smarter than his son, that's for sure.

that's not even related to the Shia rebellion, that's about the Gulf War.

Mr. Bush never supported the Kurdish and Shiite rebellions against Mr. Hussein, or for that matter any democracy movement in Iraq. The President felt that Mr. Hussein and his army were broken and no longer represented any external threat, especially since Mr. Bush contentedly assumed that his intelligence reports were correct and that all of Mr. Hussein's nuclear capabilities had been destroyed. Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr. Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein.

That's the correct assessment of the thinking at the time. Some of the same Republican officials ecstatic about bringing democracy to Iraq were literally opposed to it after the Gulf War.And their opposition to Iraqi democracy wasnt in name, it was in deed. Not only did they permit Saddam's use of attack helicopters in no fly zones, American troops disarmed rebels wanting access to captured Iraqi arms dumps. Mainstream commentary's refusal to comment on the indifference to Iraqi suffering and support for Saddam's crackdown in 91, then the subsequent 180 to feigned concern about the suffering of the Iraqis--the Clinton/Blair sanction regime brought non-Kurdish Iraq exponentially more suffering and strife than Saddam ever did-- is an astounding indictment of establishment journalism in the lead up to the war.

 

[nyong]

I read that as a claim that the demonstrations we are seeing would not be taking place if Saddam were still in power.

I think it highly unlikely that these demonstations would be taking place were Saddam still in charge. This is pretty much common sense based on widespread fear of Saddam and the way such uprisings were handled by him in the past (i.e. violently squashed like insects).

At a minimum it would have been much, much more difficult. You seem intent on ignoring the role the invasion played, without a shred of evidence, but a whole lot of weird, baseless optimism.

Today's Egypt is not Iraq under Saddam. Not even close.

 

[nyong]

Not only did they permit Saddam's use of attack helicopters in no fly zones, American troops disarmed rebels wanting access to captured Iraqi arms dumps.

Link? I'm well-aware that some were promised support that we later refused to offer, but I have never seen evidence that we actively help Saddam.

 

[Dude Abides]

I think it highly unlikely that these demonstations would be taking place were Saddam still in charge. This is pretty much common sense based on widespread fear of Saddam and the way such uprisings were handled by him in the past (i.e. violently squashed like insects).

At a minimum it would have been much, much more difficult. You seem intent on ignoring the role the invasion played, without a shred of evidence, but a whole lot of weird, baseless optimism.

Today's Egypt is not Iraq under Saddam. Not even close.

So now the goalposts have moved to highly unlikely. Once they get to "It's difficult to say with any reasonable certainty" we'll be in agreement.

 

[nyong]

So now the goalposts have moved to highly unlikely. Once they get to "It's difficult to say with any reasonable certainty" we'll be in agreement.

It's impossible to say for certain virtually anything when discussing history. Pulling a figure out of my ass, I'm 99% certain that the invasion played an important role in the current pro-democracy demonstrations in Iraq.

 

[theignoramus]

Link? I'm well-aware that some were promised support that we later refused to offer, but I have never seen evidence that we actively help Saddam.

John Simpson, "Surviving In The Ruins," Spectator (U.K.), August 10, 1991, pp. 8-10. An excerpt:
An Iraqi general who escaped to Saudi Arabia in the last days of the uprising in southern Iraq told us that he and his men had repeatedly asked the American forces for weapons, ammunition and food to help them carry on the fight against Saddam's forces. The Americans refused. As they fell back on the town of Nasiriyeh, close to the allied positions, the rebels approached the Americans again and requested access to an Iraqi arms dump behind the American lines at Tel al-Allahem. At first they were told they could pass through the lines. Then the permission was rescinded and, the general told us, the Americans blew up the arms dump. American troops disarmed the rebels."

 

[nyong]

While interesting--and not necessarily untrue--that's a single Iraqi general making the claim. The passage is a bit misleading too, as the "disarming" appears to be destroying an arm's depot that didn't belong to the rebels to begin with. Nor does it state the American's reason for blowing it up.

Most importantly, none of this supports your claim that the Americans actively helped Saddam squash the uprising.

 

[RustyNails]

I think it highly unlikely that these demonstations would be taking place were Saddam still in charge. This is pretty much common sense based on widespread fear of Saddam and the way such uprisings were handled by him in the past (i.e. violently squashed like insects).

There's difference between uprisings and peaceful pro-democracy Movement. I'm not sure which uprisings you are talking about. Saddam did not Tiannanman Squared his people. The squashing you are talking about (I assume) are related to the Peshmerga rebellions in the Kurdish provinces of Iraq and aligned with Shite rebels in the south, which Saddam qualified as seditious by non Sunni citizens. These were not peaceful, youth oriented pro-democracy revolts, but more of an insurgent, pro-independence movements by minorities tired of Saddam's grand designs.

Both sides were armed.

In today's world of twitter and facebook, who knows what could have happened.

 

[Forkball]

tryin to get that oill..cough..oooillll

Don't drop that shit!

Fuck it, I'll post the whole thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlwk8rh425Y

 

[theignoramus]

While interesting--and not necessarily untrue--that's a single Iraqi general making the claim. The passage is a bit misleading too, as the "disarming" appears to be destroying an arm's depot that didn't belong to the rebels to begin with. Nor does it state the American's reason for blowing it up.

Most importantly, none of this supports your claim that the Americans actively helped Saddam squash the uprising.

This is fuller picture of what went on:http://www.alternet.org/world/49864/?page=entire

Rocky Gonzalez was a Special Forces warrant officer serving with U.S. troops in southern Iraq. Because he spoke Arabic, he was detached to serve with the Third Brigade of the 101st Infantry when the ground war began. There were about 140 men in his unit, which was stationed at Al Khadir on the Euphrates, just a few kilometers from Kerbala and Najaf.

Rocky was one of the few Americans who could actually communicate with the Iraqis. When the Intifada erupted, the Americans prompted the rebels to raid the local prison in Kerbala and free the Kuwaitis who were being held there. "We didn't think there was going to be a lot of bloodshed," said Gonzalez, "but they executed the guards in the prison." Prior to the uprising, the rebels had also been feeding intelligence to the Americans on what Saddam's local supporters were up to.

From their base, Rocky and his units watched as Saddam's forces launched their counterattack against the rebel-held city. Thousands of people fled toward the American lines, said Gonzalez. "All of a sudden, as far as the eye could see on Highway Five, there was just a long line of vehicles, dump trucks, tractors -- any vehicle they could get -- coming to us in streams."

"The rebels wanted aid, they wanted medical treatment, and some of the individuals wanted us to give them weapons and ammunition so they could go and fight. One of the refugees was waving a leaflet that had been dropped by U.S. planes over Iraq. Those leaflets told them to rise up against the regime and free themselves."

"They weren't asking us to fight. They felt they could do that themselves. Basically they were just saying 'we rose up like you asked us, now give us some weapons and arms to fight.'"

The American forces had huge stocks of weapons they had captured from the Iraqis. But they were ordered to blow them up rather than turn them over to the rebels. "It was gut-wrenching to me," said Gonzalez. "Here we were sitting on the Euphrates River and we were ordered to stop. As a human being, I wanted to help, but as a solider I had my orders."

Ironically, according to a former U.S. diplomat, some of the arms that were not destroyed by American forces were collected by the CIA and shipped to anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, who at the time were being clandestinely backed by the U.S.

A Shiite survivor of the uprising later said he had seen other American forces at the river town of Nassiriya destroy a huge cache of weapons that the rebels desperately needed. "They blew up an enormous stock of arms," he said. "If we had been able to get hold of them, the course of history would have been changed in favor of the uprising, because Saddam had nothing left at that moment."

Indeed, Saddam's former intelligence chief, General Wafiq al-Samarrai, later recounted that the government forces had almost no ammunition left when they finally squelched the revolt. "By the last week of the intifada," he said, "the army was down to two hundred and seventy thousand Kalashnikov bullets." That would have lasted for just two more days of fighting.

In his autobiography, General Schwarzkopf, without giving details, alludes to the fact that the American-led coalition aided Saddam to crush the uprising. According to his curious reasoning, expressed in another interview, the Iraqi people were not innocent in the whole affair because "they supported the invasion of Kuwait and accepted Saddam Hussein."

Iraqi survivors of the Intifada also claimed that U.S. forces actually prevented them from marching on Baghdad. "American helicopters landed on the road to block our way and stopped us from continuing," they said. "One of the American soldiers threatened to kill us if we didn't turn back." Another Shiite leader, Dr. Hamid al-Bayatti, claimed that the U.S. even provided Saddam's Republican Guards with fuel. The Americans, he charged, disarmed some resistance units and allowed Republican Guard tanks to go through their checkpoints to crush the uprising. "We let one Iraqi division go through our lines to get to Basra because the United States did not want the regime to collapse," said Middle East expert Wiliam Quandt.

The U.S. officials declined even to meet with the Shiites to hear their case. As Peter Galbraith said, "These were desperate people, desperate for U.S. help. But the U.S. refused to talk to any of the Shiite leaders: the U.S. Embassy, Schwarzkopf, nobody would see them, nor even give them an explanation."

The stonewalling continued even when evidence that Saddam was using chemical weapons against the rebels emerged. "You could see there were helicopters crisscrossing the skies, going back and forth," Rocky Gonzalez said. "Within a few hours people started showing up at our perimeter with chemical burns. They were saying, 'We are fighting the Iraqi military and the Baath Party and they sprayed us with chemicals.' We were guessing mustard gas. They had blisters and burns on their face and on their hands, on places where the skin was exposed," he said. "As the hours passed, more and more people were coming. And I asked them, 'Why don't you go to the hospital in Kerbala,' and the response was that all the doctors and nurses had been executed by the Iraqi soldiers, 'so we come to you for aid.'"

One of the greatest concerns of coalition forces during Desert Storm had been that Saddam would unleash his WMD. U.S. officials repeatedly warned Iraq that America's response would be immediate and devastating. Facing such threats, Saddam kept his weapons holstered -- or so the Bush administration led the world to believe.

Rocky's suspicion that Saddam did resort to them in 1991 was later confirmed by the report of the U.S. Government's Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Saddam's WMD after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and concluded that Saddam no longer had any WMD. Almost universally ignored by the media, however, was the finding that Saddam had resorted to his WMD during the 1991 uprising. The "regime was shaking and wanted something 'very quick and effective' to put down the revolt." They considered then rejected using mustard gas, as it would be too perceptible with U.S. troops close by. Instead, on March 7th, 1991 the Iraqi military filled R-400 aerial bombs with sarin, a binary nerve agent. "Dozens of sorties were flown against Shiite rebels in Kerbala and the surrounding areas," the ISG report said. But apparently the R-400 bombs were not very effective, having been designed for high-speed delivery from planes, not slow-moving helicopters. So the Iraqi military switched to dropping CS, a very potent tear gas, in large aerial bombs.

Because of previous U.S. warnings against resorting to chemical weapons, Saddam and his generals knew they were taking a serious risk, but the Coalition never reacted. The lingering question is why. It's impossible to believe they didn't know about it at the time. There were repeated charges from Shiite survivors that the Iraqi dictator had used chemical weapons. Rocky Gonzalez said he heard from refugees that nerve gas was being used. He had also observed French-made Iraqi helicopters -- one of which was outfitted as a crop sprayer -- making repeated bomb runs over Najaf.Gonzalez maintained that, contrary to what the ISG report said, many of the refugees who fled to U.S. lines were indeed victims of mustard gas. "Their tongues were swollen," he said, "and they had severe burns on the mucous tissue on the inside of their mouths and nasal passages. Our chemical officer also said it looked like mustard gas." Gonzalez suggested that local Iraqi officials, desperate to put down the uprising, may have used mustard gas without permission from on high. "A lot of that was kept quiet," he said, "because we didn't want to panic the troops. We stepped up our training with gas masks, because we were naturally concerned."

Gonzalez's unit also passed their information on to their superiors. "There was no way that officers higher didn't know what was happening," Gonzalez said. "Whether those reports went above our division, I have no idea." Gonzalez's former commander turned down my request for an interview. At the time, few subjects were more sensitive than Saddam's potential use of WMD. It's difficult to believe that reports from Gonzalez's unit weren't flashed immediately up the chain of command in the Gulf and Washington.

There were other American witnesses to what happened. U.S. helicopters and planes flew overhead, patrolling as Saddam's helicopters decimated the rebels. Some of those aircraft provided real-time video of the occurrences below. A reliable U.S. intelligence source confirmed that such evidence does indeed exist.

On March 7th, Secretary of State James Baker warned Saddam not to resort to chemical weapons to repress the uprising. But why, when the U.S. was notified that the Iraqi dictator actually had resorted to chemical weapons, was there no forceful reaction from the administration of the elder Bush?One plausible explanation--denouncing Saddam for using chemical weapons would have greatly increased pressure on the U.S. President to come to the aid of the Shiites.

Instead, the American decision to turn their backs on the Intifada gave a green light to Saddam Hussein's ruthless counterattack. General Wafiq al-Samarrai learned of the decision after Iraqi units intercepted frantic conversations between two Islamic rebels near Nassariya. One told the other that he had gone to the Americans to ask for support, and twice was rebuffed. "They say, 'We are not going to support you because you are Shiites and are collaborating with Iran.'" After hearing that message, al-Samarrai recalled, "The position of the regime immediately became more confident. Now [Saddam] began to attack the Intifada."

The repression when it came was as horrendous as everyone knew it would be.

"Women were being raped. People were being shot in the streets and just left to rot there." Zainab al-Suwaij recounted. "The citizens were forbidden to bury the bodies. Many of them were eaten by the dogs. The government ordered people out of Kerbala to take the road to Najaf. They were slaughtered and executed along the roadway. Many of those killed were teenagers."

As an object lesson to his people, Saddam Hussein himself ordered Iraqi television to record and broadcast scenes of the repression: appalling scenes of captured Shiites, some with ropes around their necks, being kicked and beaten and insulted, threatened with pistols and machine guns, a few pleading for mercy. Most of them, eyes downcast, are eventually dragged away to execution.

The Bush administration attempted to disengage itself from any responsibility. They were helped by the fact that there were no graphic news reports in the West of the slaughter that was taking place. U.S. intelligence agencies had their own accounts and explicit images, but they weren't sharing them with the press or the public. Anonymous government figures, wise in the ways of Realpolitik, were making statements such as, "It is far easier to deal with a tame Saddam Hussein than with an unknown quantity."

we can debate whether or not the assistance was "active", but the fact of the matter is they did assist the regime in crushing the rebellion. They took actions that ensured the regime would succeed over the rebels. The facts are overwhelmingly against your denial of them.

 

[speculawyer]

Meh, I've never been able to jump on the "Bush lied" bandwagon. The fact that no WMDs turned up destroyed the Republican Party and Bush's credibility...an easily predictable outcome. The guy went on strong anti-depressants shortly afterwards and generally looked like a wreck the rest of his presidency.

Bush didn't lie . . . he was lied to. Cheney, Feith, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neo-con chickenhawk crowd lied. Bush was just a dumb sucker. Lied or stupid . . . neither one says much good.

 

[Joel Was Right]

By the way, has anyone seen the film Fair Game?

 

[Pterion]

Oil? Oil? Bitch you cookin'?!

 

[bill0527]

Who else was reporting the presence of WMDs? And was it simply based on CIA liaison reporting? I genuinely don't know.

Bill Clinton's administration also believed that Iraq had WMD and I'm sure passed their info along to the Bush Administration when they took over.

Clinton in fact bombed Iraq in 1998 and the justification was to reduce Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles. Funny enough, the republicans at the time claimed this was nothing more than a political ruse so that Clinton could take some heat off the Lewinski scandal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Iraq_(December_1998)

Direct quote from Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright in 1998, 5 years before the Bush Iraq invasion:

"I don't think we're pretending that we can get everything, so this is - I think - we are being very honest about what our ability is. We are lessening, degrading his ability to use this. The weapons of mass destruction are the threat of the future. I think the president explained very clearly to the American people that this is the threat of the 21st century. [. . .] [W]hat it means is that we know we can't get everything, but degrading is the right word.

And a copy of Bill Clinton's address to the nation as the Iraq bombing campaign was underway:

http://articles.cnn.com/1998-12-16/...-hussein-unscom-iraq-strike?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

This is a 5-page presidential address document so I won't quote it. However you will find much of the same language, some it is used verbatim by the Bush Administration to justify war, in Bill Clinton's presidential address to the nation.

I don't really want to rehash old arguments because no one is going to change their mind at this point. Bush, Cheney, Rice and friends all have their place in history now. What I really hope people would do, is to try and take a look at the big picture of our entire history with Saddam. This country was primed to go to War with Iraq for almost twenty years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations and different versions of Congress. W Bush gets the blame because he's the one that pulled the trigger on the invasion, but the runup to invading Iraq was building long before Bush got into office. The entire Iraq fiasco is a complete and utter failure of every level of government and the intelligence community over a period of about 15-20 years.

 

[Joel Was Right]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...up-two-years-before-the-invasion-1885155.html

A secret plan to foster an internal coup against Saddam Hussein was drawn up by the Government two years before the invasion of Iraq, The Independent can reveal.

Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. It promised aid, oil contracts, debt cancellations and trade deals once the dictator had been removed. Tony Blair's team saw it as a way of creating regime change in Iraq even before the 9/11 attack on New York.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml

CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

Also found the Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century report interesting. Look at the signaturies. It's "pearl harbour" reference also was one of the founding aspects for the 9/11 Truth movement.

Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor". Though arguing that Bush administration PNAC members were complicit in those attacks, other social critics such as commentator Manuel Valenzuela and journalist Mark Danner, investigative journalist John Pilger, in New Statesman, and former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle Bernard Weiner, in CounterPunch, all argue that PNAC members used the events of 9/11 as the "Pearl Harbor" that they needed––that is, as an "opportunity" to "capitalize on" (in Pilger's words), in order to enact long-desired plans.

 

[NEOPARADIGM]

We've known you were a liar for almost 10 years now

lol ... this.

 

[Derwind]

 

[HeadlessRoland]

How is it possible that a agency is relying on one man.. Very unprofessional.

They were creating justification for war in Iraq. Their source is saying exactly what they wanted/needed to hear. They required an excuse to get the ball rolling. Knowing that anything discovered after the fact about their dubious intelligence would be lost in the roiling waters of the war. And since nobody has yet been sent to prison for faking a war it appears they were correct.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Man remember Iraq. When we were all convinced that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 because he was brown and a Muslim just like Osama, and grainy photos of "mobile bioweapons factories" were shown to the UN, along with stories of Iraq going to Africa to get yellowcake. How we all made fun of Hans Blix the Time-Sweeper because lol those stupid inspectors the weapons are obviously there!!!! How we insulted France for daring to get in our way, the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

We were all so fucking stupid.

 

[Jason's Ultimatum]

Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. It promised aid, oil contracts, debt cancellations and trade deals once the dictator had been removed. Tony Blair's team saw it as a way of creating regime change in Iraq even before the 9/11 attack on New York.

Jesus Christ. It's like the 50s and 60s all over again when we helped the baathist party come into power. Look what happened then.

 

[Dan Yo]

Wow. The government is really covering its ass this week on past lies.

First they claim to have killed the guy that orchestrated 9/11 .... and then dumped his body in the sea before anyone could ever view the body or give it an autopsy.

Now, we find out that it wasn't really the government's fault that they waged war on Iraq. This guy told them Saddam had WMDs. Now he's letting us know.

 

[Spire]

Wow. The government is really covering its ass this week on past lies.

First they claim to have killed the guy that orchestrated 9/11 .... and then dumped his body in the sea before anyone could ever view the body or give it an autopsy.

Now, we find out that it wasn't really the government's fault that they waged war on Iraq. This guy told them Saddam had WMDs. Now he's letting us know.

Uh.

"Curveball" being full of shit is not news to anyone, the Bush admin used him despite being warned by other intelligence agencies that he just made shit up. They just needed some more justification for going to war with Iraq. They used intel they knew was bad and fabricated evidence (like leaking fake info to the NYT and then citing the NYT article as proof). Bush lying through his teeth to invade Iraq is not new, and I'm not sure why you'd think this guy admitting he lied has anything to do with the current administration saving face.

 

[Enco]

They were creating justification for war in Iraq. Their source is saying exactly what they wanted/needed to hear. They required an excuse to get the ball rolling. Knowing that anything discovered after the fact about their dubious intelligence would be lost in the roiling waters of the war. And since nobody has yet been sent to prison for faking a war it appears they were correct.

.

It's all very very sad. The asshole who lied about the WMDs should be jailed. As should all those who agreed to this knowing it's not true. This bullshit war ruined the whole country even more so.

 

[Joel Was Right]

What was the response by the White House on Curveball's admission? Some members of the intelligence and past administration (I think Powell spoke on it?) were saying they never believed him in the first place. So why would his lies make it into a State of Union address as well as a UN debriefing advocating war? We're essentially talking about people within government conspiring to hide the truth to push for the war.

 

[Agnostic]

Wow. The government is really covering its ass this week on past lies.

What? This thread was bumped. Unless I'm not understanding what you are trying to say.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Wow. The government is really covering its ass this week on past lies.

First they claim to have killed the guy that orchestrated 9/11 .... and then dumped his body in the sea before anyone could ever view the body or give it an autopsy.

Now, we find out that it wasn't really the government's fault that they waged war on Iraq. This guy told them Saddam had WMDs. Now he's letting us know.

:lol The thread was bumped. Also, why would you need an autopsy on Osama?