we CAN use military force in various Byrnzie-approved situations then?
Such as helping to stop a genocide, as opposed to creating one.
How extremist of me.
Saddam was committing genocide on the Kurds and Shittes yet you don't support the Iraq war. its so funny how convenient it is to pick and choose when you support the US going to war.
Where did Sadaam get the chemical weapons from that he used against the Kurds?
The simple fact is that Iraq received less than 1% of its military imports from the US, and by far the bulk of Saddam's weapons came from the USSR, France, and China.
going to war to stop Saddam from genocide was one of several reasons we went to war. personally, I don't agree with any of them, but the reasons still exsit.
Actually, helping the people of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it, as was demonstrated by America's abandoning of the Shi'ites and the Kurds at the end of the war.
'..On February 15, 1991, in a carefully crafted and well-publicized statement, then-President George HW Bush appealed to “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands-to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.” To underscore the point, Bush repeated it verbatim in another speech that day. In early March 1991, a massive Shi’ite rebellion swept across southern Iraq from Basra to the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. Ba’athists were tortured and executed in massive numbers throughout the south; pictures and portraits of Saddam were smashed to pieces. By mid-March, the Iraqi government lost control of 14 of the country’s 18 provinces.”
As the rebellion spread, representatives of the most prominent Shi’ite cleric in Iraq attempted to contact American forces that were then occupying parts of Iraq to assess Washington’s support. The US Commander in the region, General Norman Schwarzkopf refused to meet with them. American and other allied forces, meanwhile, destroyed and confiscated Iraqi munitions that could have been used by the rebellion. But the deathblow to the uprising came when the US lifted the over-flight ban on Iraqi aircraft, allowing the Iraqi government to send in attack helicopters to mercilessly crush the rebellion in late March. On top of this, the elite Republican Guard units that General Schwarzkopf had allowed to retreat to Baghdad at the end of the war led the counteroffensive on the ground against the rebellion...'
the point of the first gulf war was to remove Saddam from Kuwait and liberate that country. but I'm sure you knew that.
Sure, and the point of your invasion of Panama was to remove Noriega and liberate Panama, right? And the reason you backed the death squads in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El-Salvador was to liberate those people too. The benevolence of America's foreign policy really is never-ending.
Actually, helping the people of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it, as was demonstrated by America's abandoning of the Shi'ites and the Kurds at the end of the war.
I'm talking about the current Iraq war. keep up. we obviously haven't abandoned anyone seeing how we've been there for over 6 years now
Sure, and the point of your invasion of Panama was to remove Noriega and liberate Panama, right? And the reason you backed the death squads in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El-Salvador was to liberate those people too. The benevolence of America's foreign policy really is never-ending.
the purpose of the first Gulf war was to liberate Kuwait.
The simple fact is that Iraq received less than 1% of its military imports from the US, and by far the bulk of Saddam's weapons came from the USSR, France, and China.
September 8, 2002 by the Sunday Herald
'...Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.
The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'
This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.
Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs.'
Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.
The simple fact is that Iraq received less than 1% of its military imports from the US, and by far the bulk of Saddam's weapons came from the USSR, France, and China.
yea, like I said. depends on what source you use. its no secret the US gave Iraq military aid. but you'll conveniently ignore that other countries did too in order to fit your agenda.
its no secret the US gave Iraq military aid. but you'll conveniently ignore that other countries did too in order to fit your agenda.
And what agenda might that be?
We were discussing the rights and wrongs of military intervention. You pretended that the U.S government invaded Iraq because about the people of Iraq. It's common knowledge the U.S sold Sadaam chemical weapons with which to murder his own people, and abandoned the Shi'ites to be massacred at the end of the first Gulf war. Therefore, your claim of U.S benevolence and good intentions towards the people of Iraq holds no water. We may also like to consider the fact that over 1 million Iraqi's have been killed since the U.S invasion in 2003. I don't see how that qualifies it as being a benign intervention.
We were discussing the rights and wrongs of military intervention. You pretended that the U.S government invaded Iraq because about the people of Iraq.
we did, among other reasons. secondly, the US government went to war with Iraq in 91 to liberate the people of Kuwait
It's common knowledge the U.S sold Sadaam chemical weapons with which to murder his own people,
its also not common knowledge that those weapons and many others were supplied MOSTLY by the USSR, France, and China. something you continue to ignore, even when given evidence of such.
and abandoned the Shi'ites to be massacred at the end of the first Gulf war. Therefore, your claim of U.S benevolence and good intentions towards the people of Iraq holds no water.
so the fact that we stayed this time is a good thing in your opinion?
We may also like to consider the fact that over 1 million Iraqi's have been killed since the U.S invasion in 2003. I don't see how that qualifies it as being a benign intervention.
well should we have just "abandoned" Iraq once we toppled Saddam?
We may also like to consider the fact that over 1 million Iraqi's have been killed since the U.S invasion in 2003. I don't see how that qualifies it as being a benign intervention.
well should we have just "abandoned" Iraq once we toppled Saddam?
No, the illegal invasion should never have occurred in the first place. Dealing with Sadaam was something that was the business of Iraqi's, not Americans. Since when has it been legal for an outside entity to topple a sovereign head of state? Isn't this why the U.N was created at the end of WWII, in order to prevent such rogue behaviour from happening again?
Or is it just o.k if Americans do it?
You invaded Panama and massacred approx 5000 people, but when Iraq invades Kuwait it's a terrible crime that needs to be punished?
Why is it o.k for America to run amok in the world and not o.k for anyone else to do it?
Once again a simple thread has gone way off course.....thanks to the select few that like to shit on topics just hear themselves bitch......
You know this threat is about honoring those who landed on Normandy beach right? Save the armchair general shit for another topic.
No offence intended, but message boards are here to generate discussion and debate.
The anniversary of D-Day was 6 days ago. Threads related to war generally throw up discussions about war, which tend to go off in different directions.
If you really want to honour the dead of D-day then you can always go and lay some flowers at a cemetery.
going to war to stop Saddam from genocide was one of several reasons we went to war. personally, I don't agree with any of them, but the reasons still exsit.
It wont become truth if you keep repeating it. The massacres only became the reason after the first lie was uncovered.
the point of the first gulf war was to remove Saddam from Kuwait and liberate that country. but I'm sure you knew that.
I'm sure you knew this..
"With regard to the direct causes of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, several factors can be mentioned. First, there was a special relationship between Iraq and Kuwait that goes back to the fact that Kuwait was officially part of Iraq until the break out of World War I. There were several attempts by successive Iraqi government to restore Kuwait before 1990. These were in 1901, 1902, 1937-39, and 1961. All of them were stopped by Britain, the imperialist "protector" of the oil-wealthy chiefdom. Second, the Kuwaiti government was accused by the Iraqi government of working against Iraqi interests. It contributed to lowering oil prices, stole oil from the border Rumaila oilfield, refused to accommodate Iraqi demands for larger access to the Arabian Gulf, and demanded Iraq to pay back the Iran-Iraq war debt while Iraq was defending Kuwait. Third, the position of the US towards the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait. The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, demonstrated during a Congressional hearing that she conveyed to the Iraqi President that the US has no position on inter-Arab disputes. She conveyed that position to him according to instructions she received from President Bush, Sr., and his Secretary of State, James Baker, III. The US position in effect was a green light for the Iraqi government to invade Kuwait."
"With regard to the direct causes of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, several factors can be mentioned. First, there was a special relationship between Iraq and Kuwait that goes back to the fact that Kuwait was officially part of Iraq until the break out of World War I. There were several attempts by successive Iraqi government to restore Kuwait before 1990. These were in 1901, 1902, 1937-39, and 1961. All of them were stopped by Britain, the imperialist "protector" of the oil-wealthy chiefdom. Second, the Kuwaiti government was accused by the Iraqi government of working against Iraqi interests. It contributed to lowering oil prices, stole oil from the border Rumaila oilfield, refused to accommodate Iraqi demands for larger access to the Arabian Gulf, and demanded Iraq to pay back the Iran-Iraq war debt while Iraq was defending Kuwait. Third, the position of the US towards the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait. The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, demonstrated during a Congressional hearing that she conveyed to the Iraqi President that the US has no position on inter-Arab disputes. She conveyed that position to him according to instructions she received from President Bush, Sr., and his Secretary of State, James Baker, III. The US position in effect was a green light for the Iraqi government to invade Kuwait."
And let's not forget that Sadaam agreed to negotiate an end to hostilities before the U.S invasion. They were merely disputing some land along the border with Kuwait - a couple of miles. (These offers of negotiation were documented, but none of this was reported by the subservient media in the U.S) So war could have been avoided if the U.S hadn't been dead-set on the military option and trying to establish yet another client state in the Middle East.
Once again a simple thread has gone way off course.....thanks to the select few that like to shit on topics just hear themselves bitch......
You know this threat is about honoring those who landed on Normandy beach right? Save the armchair general shit for another topic.
No offence intended, but message boards are here to generate discussion and debate.
The anniversary of D-Day was 6 days ago. Threads related to war generally throw up discussions about war, which tend to go off in different directions.
If you really want to honour the dead of D-day then you can always go and lay some flowers at a cemetery.
Thats fine, but people don't always have to post something on every thread. I think this could have been started on AET to avoid this kind of thing.
I've been to the American cemetery in Normandy, Lux., and St. Avoild, and even the British cemetery in Rome. Those headstones remind you that we have a lot to be thankfull for, just on their accomplishments alone during a scary time in world history.
Once again a simple thread has gone way off course.....thanks to the select few that like to shit on topics just hear themselves bitch......
You know this threat is about honoring those who landed on Normandy beach right? Save the armchair general shit for another topic.
No offence intended, but message boards are here to generate discussion and debate.
The anniversary of D-Day was 6 days ago. Threads related to war generally throw up discussions about war, which tend to go off in different directions.
If you really want to honour the dead of D-day then you can always go and lay some flowers at a cemetery.
Thats fine, but people don't always have to post something on every thread. I think this could have been started on AET to avoid this kind of thing.
I've been to the American cemetery in Normandy, Lux., and St. Avoild, and even the British cemetery in Rome. Those headstones remind you that we have a lot to be thankfull for, just on their accomplishments alone during a scary time in world history.
Fir enough. Maybe I shouldn't have posted my thoughts on the issue on here. I suppose I just wanted to get a discussion going.
Comments
Where did Sadaam get the chemical weapons from that he used against the Kurds?
depends what source you use. this one says USSR, China, and France. this persons references many sources...so feel free to research it if you'd like.
http://jarrarsupariver.blogspot.com/200 ... mical.html
The simple fact is that Iraq received less than 1% of its military imports from the US, and by far the bulk of Saddam's weapons came from the USSR, France, and China.
more...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_sales ... _1973-1990
and more...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_sup ... 93Iraq_war
During the Iran–Iraq War, the Soviet Union sold or gave the greatest amount of military equipment and supplies to Iraq,
Actually, helping the people of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it, as was demonstrated by America's abandoning of the Shi'ites and the Kurds at the end of the war.
'..On February 15, 1991, in a carefully crafted and well-publicized statement, then-President George HW Bush appealed to “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands-to force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside.” To underscore the point, Bush repeated it verbatim in another speech that day. In early March 1991, a massive Shi’ite rebellion swept across southern Iraq from Basra to the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. Ba’athists were tortured and executed in massive numbers throughout the south; pictures and portraits of Saddam were smashed to pieces. By mid-March, the Iraqi government lost control of 14 of the country’s 18 provinces.”
As the rebellion spread, representatives of the most prominent Shi’ite cleric in Iraq attempted to contact American forces that were then occupying parts of Iraq to assess Washington’s support. The US Commander in the region, General Norman Schwarzkopf refused to meet with them. American and other allied forces, meanwhile, destroyed and confiscated Iraqi munitions that could have been used by the rebellion. But the deathblow to the uprising came when the US lifted the over-flight ban on Iraqi aircraft, allowing the Iraqi government to send in attack helicopters to mercilessly crush the rebellion in late March. On top of this, the elite Republican Guard units that General Schwarzkopf had allowed to retreat to Baghdad at the end of the war led the counteroffensive on the ground against the rebellion...'
Sure, and the point of your invasion of Panama was to remove Noriega and liberate Panama, right? And the reason you backed the death squads in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El-Salvador was to liberate those people too. The benevolence of America's foreign policy really is never-ending.
I'm talking about the current Iraq war. keep up. we obviously haven't abandoned anyone seeing how we've been there for over 6 years now
the purpose of the first Gulf war was to liberate Kuwait.
September 8, 2002 by the Sunday Herald
'...Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.
The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'
This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.
Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs.'
Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.
Yeah, sure it was. And the purpose of the second Gulf war was to rid Iraq of Wmd's.
yea, like I said. depends on what source you use. its no secret the US gave Iraq military aid. but you'll conveniently ignore that other countries did too in order to fit your agenda.
if thats all you got then I guess I win.
And what agenda might that be?
We were discussing the rights and wrongs of military intervention. You pretended that the U.S government invaded Iraq because about the people of Iraq. It's common knowledge the U.S sold Sadaam chemical weapons with which to murder his own people, and abandoned the Shi'ites to be massacred at the end of the first Gulf war. Therefore, your claim of U.S benevolence and good intentions towards the people of Iraq holds no water. We may also like to consider the fact that over 1 million Iraqi's have been killed since the U.S invasion in 2003. I don't see how that qualifies it as being a benign intervention.
the truth.
we did, among other reasons. secondly, the US government went to war with Iraq in 91 to liberate the people of Kuwait
its also not common knowledge that those weapons and many others were supplied MOSTLY by the USSR, France, and China. something you continue to ignore, even when given evidence of such.
so the fact that we stayed this time is a good thing in your opinion?
well should we have just "abandoned" Iraq once we toppled Saddam?
Well, you got that much right.
No, the illegal invasion should never have occurred in the first place. Dealing with Sadaam was something that was the business of Iraqi's, not Americans. Since when has it been legal for an outside entity to topple a sovereign head of state? Isn't this why the U.N was created at the end of WWII, in order to prevent such rogue behaviour from happening again?
Or is it just o.k if Americans do it?
You invaded Panama and massacred approx 5000 people, but when Iraq invades Kuwait it's a terrible crime that needs to be punished?
Why is it o.k for America to run amok in the world and not o.k for anyone else to do it?
You know this threat is about honoring those who landed on Normandy beach right? Save the armchair general shit for another topic.
No offence intended, but message boards are here to generate discussion and debate.
The anniversary of D-Day was 6 days ago. Threads related to war generally throw up discussions about war, which tend to go off in different directions.
If you really want to honour the dead of D-day then you can always go and lay some flowers at a cemetery.
Doesn't matter why one goes to war? Classic. Well forgive us if we stick by some ideals and only support war as a last resort to stop more bloodshed.
It wont become truth if you keep repeating it. The massacres only became the reason after the first lie was uncovered.
I'm sure you knew this..
"With regard to the direct causes of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, several factors can be mentioned. First, there was a special relationship between Iraq and Kuwait that goes back to the fact that Kuwait was officially part of Iraq until the break out of World War I. There were several attempts by successive Iraqi government to restore Kuwait before 1990. These were in 1901, 1902, 1937-39, and 1961. All of them were stopped by Britain, the imperialist "protector" of the oil-wealthy chiefdom. Second, the Kuwaiti government was accused by the Iraqi government of working against Iraqi interests. It contributed to lowering oil prices, stole oil from the border Rumaila oilfield, refused to accommodate Iraqi demands for larger access to the Arabian Gulf, and demanded Iraq to pay back the Iran-Iraq war debt while Iraq was defending Kuwait. Third, the position of the US towards the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait. The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, demonstrated during a Congressional hearing that she conveyed to the Iraqi President that the US has no position on inter-Arab disputes. She conveyed that position to him according to instructions she received from President Bush, Sr., and his Secretary of State, James Baker, III. The US position in effect was a green light for the Iraqi government to invade Kuwait."
And let's not forget that Sadaam agreed to negotiate an end to hostilities before the U.S invasion. They were merely disputing some land along the border with Kuwait - a couple of miles. (These offers of negotiation were documented, but none of this was reported by the subservient media in the U.S) So war could have been avoided if the U.S hadn't been dead-set on the military option and trying to establish yet another client state in the Middle East.
Alot of Aussie's are pushing for 18th of August as a memorial day for the Vietnam Vets. The anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.
Thats fine, but people don't always have to post something on every thread. I think this could have been started on AET to avoid this kind of thing.
I've been to the American cemetery in Normandy, Lux., and St. Avoild, and even the British cemetery in Rome. Those headstones remind you that we have a lot to be thankfull for, just on their accomplishments alone during a scary time in world history.
Fir enough. Maybe I shouldn't have posted my thoughts on the issue on here. I suppose I just wanted to get a discussion going.
well said