Intrepid Washington reporter Robert Dreyfuss interviews Salah Mukhtar, who is "close" to the Iraq opposition. It’s clearly as bad or worse than you think.
Our choices seem to be:
1. Stay the course, installing the dictatorship of the Iran parties,
2. Switch sides back to Saddam’s Ba’athists,
3. Break the former country into three, "hardening" the soft regional borders (and leaving many stuck on the "wrong" side of them), or
4. Get out now and leave no more guilty than at present.
It has been three and a half years of this Tom Palmer-style, "we can’t leave until we make everything better" strategy, and everything has only gotten worse. It is for the people of that land to determine their future.
As for the pro-American quislings there, it is only fair that the government provide them all entry to the most pro-war American states. Or better, the houses of the War Party’s highest members.
No more bullshit. This war, which America had no right to wage in the first place, is lost - has been lost.
All U.S. forces out of Iraq now!
so, according to this information, this war has accomplished absolutely NOTHING. except litterally an insane group educated beyond their intellectually capacity-the trotskyites (with the exception of bush the uneducatable moron)- of running around in an very costly and destructive circle only to end where they began with saddam hussein and/or the ba’athist party in power with the blessing of the iraqi citizens. what a waste of time, lives, resources and materiel.
can we have the war crimes trials now?
Goes right along with the story on the antiwar site: “White House Denies Iraq Timetable”
Welcome to America… Invade a functioning country for no good reason, destroy its society and infrastructure and then give the people who are left an ultimatum to shape up and straighten out the mess that you created… It defies any logic or reason that I know of but we are living in BUSHWORLD and that means he in his role as the great “decider” defines reality. Scary stuff.
KW
Scott -
The ONLY CHOICE is to get out and get out now.
The CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY that the Iraq war is only grows the longer we are there.
Kirk A. Hayes
Fascinating, especially about the American Base attack – which I assume was the destruction of the Camp Falcon arms dump.
Unfortunately I rather doubt that the Shite Militias will accede to a Baathist (Sunni) takeover. This is inconsistent – he says there are shiites in the resistance – which I don’t doubt – but that pro-Iranians are in power in the Oil Rich south (also seems true).
So, while I think this is an interesting interview, it is also propaganda from one faction.
(yes, I agree this war is lost).
(slightly off topic)
Have you heard of the book Destined for Destiny (http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?sid=33&pid=521550)? It’s an unauthorized biography of George Bush from some of The Onion guys. Pretty funny. Here’s a link to the Simon & Schuster podcast with excerpts from the audiobook: http://www.simonsays.com/assets/isbn/0743299663/PC55_0743299663.mp3
Give it a few years and Iraq will be as peaceful as um…let me see Vietnam!
Dear Mr. “U”
All well and good but you fail to count the $billions and gallons of blood that it will take to get to that point. Iraq was already there before the US invaded. i.e. a threat to no one… They were invaded because Iraq was put on Bush’s S-list. The only difference in your fantasy outcome will be that Saddam will not be in charge. But don’t bet on that… He may yet rise from the grave. You are a midget intellect and a Bush apologist.
KW
Arabs have said along that Iraq couldn’t be held together without someone like Saddam in charge. I guess they were right…
Unfortunately Scott I believe you are quite wrong on one account, you seemed to have left out one choie the United States government could pursue:
1. Help the Iraqi people establish a truly democratic government based on a sensible election process instead of the bullying and fear employed by Saddam to remain in office.
This choice is clearly far superior to the ones you previously laid out in your “comment”.
Please also inform me of how things in Iraq have “gotten worse” as you put it. I believe the removal of the torture sites (such as the one to punish losing Iraqi olympic teams) is not “getting worse”. The trial against one of the world’s most notoriously brutal dictators is not “getting worse”. The installing of a democratic system of government is not “getting worse”. The damage done to Al-Qadea’s (excuse me if I commit a spelling error with that word) leadership in Iraq is not “getting worse”. The smallest compartive death toll to any real and lasting conflict in America’s history of warfare is not “getting worse”.
I believe it is a matter of opinion that the war is lost. We are making progress, war is not simple, and war is not pretty, but sometimes it is necessary.
Btw, I have a number of friends who were born and/or lived in Iraq for some time and they all support this war and had to leave Iraq (usually illegally) to escape unfair persecution from the sadistic Hussien and his political party. But of course, some of you may believe that is a “functioning” country.
Let’s see if I can figure out these forum tags….
1. Help the Iraqi people establish a truly democratic government based on a sensible election process instead of the bullying and fear employed by Saddam to remain in office.
This choice is clearly far superior to the ones you previously laid out in your
The Australian opposition leader Kim Beazley has labelled Iraq, the worst foreign policy failure since Vietnam. Beazley, recently in the US, outlined a proposed withdrawl plan he calls ‘repositioning’. Beazley is generally considered to be ‘on the right’ of the Australian Labor Party (which is itself generally to the right of the UK Labour Party). Beazley has also been considered amongst the most pro-US of ALP leaders.
The Beazley position has come under fire by both the governing party in Australia and the Iraqi government. The government however now has an internal problem over Iraq with a senior Senator breaking ranks. During the actual invasion the government had serious criticism from conservative circles, including a former Liberal Party leader who described it as a war crime, but the criticism came from outside of parliament.
Australia’s military commitment to Iraq is largely symbolic but the polls show 2 out 3 Australians want the Australian force pulled out. All told however the issue probably does not rank high with voters and is unlikely to be an election winner or loser. Australia has troop deployments in Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. The Labor Party is not disputing those deployments and their leader Kim Beazley often describes the conflict on the Afghanistan / Pakistan border as ‘the real war on terrorism’.
1. Help the Iraqi people establish a truly democratic government based on a sensible election process instead of the bullying and fear employed by Saddam to remain in office.
This choice is clearly far superior to the ones you previously laid out in your comment.
So you’d recommend they use red, white, and blue thumb die with star-shaped glitter mixed in it? Or did you have something else in mind to implement your “choice”?
The choice the poster offered is to stay the course of installing a democracy. Note that this is not Scott’s choice 1 of installing a dictatorship.
Please also inform me of how things in Iraq have “gotten worse” as you put it. I believe the removal of the torture sites (such as the one to punish losing Iraqi olympic teams) is not “getting worse”.
From what I’ve seen the torture sites are just under new management. Torture sites used by Stalin have been reopened. Freedom on the march with thumbscrews, right?
This is hyperbole. No rational assessment of torture occuring under the current Iraqi government and US forces would conclude that it anywhere near approaches systemic torture which occured under Saddam.
The trial against one of the world’s most notoriously brutal dictators is not “getting worse”. The installing of a democratic system of government is not “getting worse”.
US-backed sanctions killed far more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein is accused of. I thought “choice 1.” indicated the US didn’t install a “democratic system of government” to your liking?
The sanctions didn’t kill anyone. Saddam’s beligerent behavior when faced with sanctions killed Iraqis. Indeed, had Saddam not invaded Kuwait, he would not have faced the threat of sanctions at all and would likely be head of Iraq today.
The damage done to Al-Qadea’s (excuse me if I commit a spelling error with that word) leadership in Iraq is not “getting worse”?
Maybe they didn’t report this on Faux News, but Al Qaeda was never doing anything in Iraq before the US aggression.
True, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgency. To Iraq’s detriment, the main front in the war against Islamofascism is in Iraq. The poster’s comment identifies a U.S. benefit.
The smallest compartive death toll to any real and lasting conflict in America’s history of warfare is not “getting worse”.
Yeah, who cares if tens of thousands of innocent people die. They’re mostly brown-skinned, and not your loved ones anyway. People die in car crashes and lawn mower accidents!
This implies you have compassion for the “mostly brown-skinned” “innocent people”. Tens of thousands of innocent people died under Saddam. Did you care then? Also, your responses have shown a clear anti-U.S. bias. You didn’t post to defend “mostly brown-skinned” people. You posted to bash U.S. policy in general and any opinion defending it specifically. Any rational person would acknowledge that the U.S. military (which is directly responsible for the deaths of some of Iraq’s innocents) has rules of engagement which are specifically designed to minimize non-combatant casualties. Many U.S. casualties are a result of this policy.
Btw, I have a number of friends who were born and/or lived in Iraq for some time and they all support this war and had to leave Iraq (usually illegally) to escape unfair persecution from the sadistic Hussien and his political party. But of course, some of you may believe that is a “functioning” country.
And I know of lots of people who can’t tell you whether they “support this war”, because of their status as barely recognizable decomposing scattered body parts. I wonder if they were better off under Saddam Hussein?
Can anyone find the picture of the little Iraqi boy carrying his arm down the street for Anonymous? Maybe we could start a “Hot or Not” style site where people get to rate whether or not the person pictured was better off under Sadam?
This argument is unconvincing. You can make the same argument of Saddam’s reign. There are dead from Saddam’s reign who would have lived without him, and surely there are those alive today who would have died under his reign. The little Iraqi boy photo is tragic, so are the photos of victims of Saddam.
The choice the poster offered is to stay the course of installing a democracy. Note that this is not Scott
Evil Paul is right. Never mind the fact that the USA was Hussein’s biggest patron – including providing him with chemical weapons – before the great backstabbing of 1990 and that this government – in fact Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, etc. are responsible for the deaths of many Iraqis and Iranians – who the Reagan team also armed – during the war and many more Iraqis after it, during the great backstabbing of 1991 when Bush Sr. and Dick Cheney encouraged the Shia to rise up and then betrayed them Bay of Pigs style.
Oh, and to call the majority rule of the Iran parties anything but dictatorship – as ineffective as it may be – is preposterous. There are thousands of Sunnis whose drilled corpses will testify to the fact.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) sound familiar? That’s the theocratic Shia government the US government installed. According to the Iraqi Constitution all laws are to be based on Islam. The Iraqi Bill of Rights equivilent explicitly states that any of the supposedly protected rights can be overridden by new laws.
So, “Stay the course, installing the dictatorship of the Iran parties,” sounds pretty accurate to me.
All I have seen is an ineffective Iraqi coalition government. A dictatorship would not allow itself to be restricted by a constitution. I’ll stand by my original assertion that staying the course of installing a democracy is not synonymous will staying the course installing a dictatorship.
To the Bush-hating reader of this thread, Bush has frequently been referred to as a dictator. This is just frustrated emoting. It isn’t rational. If Bush were a dictator he would not be constrained by a constitution, legislature, etc. Bush has been unable to get his conservative judges appointed, unable to get his social security reforms put in place, etc. Calling the Iraqi government and Bush dictators is demagogic. There are problems with the Iraqi government and Bush’s polices. If you want to be taken seriously in a discussion of their merits or detriments, leave the emotion out of your arguments.
To the initial part of your response, SCIRI is distasteful to me, but I have no better alternative to offer. What would you suggest as a practical remedy today? (That is, don’t tell me what should have been done. Tell me something practical that can be done moving forward that has the best chance of improving the situation.)
This is hyperbole. No rational assessment of torture occuring under the current Iraqi government and US forces would conclude that it anywhere near approaches systemic torture which occured under Saddam.
You have no rational basis to say this about secret prisons that there is very little public knowledge about.
The US government routinely abducts and “renditions” people off to ally countries that systemically torture people with the same techniques used under Sadam.
Given that neither of us has much knowledge of the magnitude of the rendition program, I’m happy to agree to disagree. Neither of us is offering the other compelling evidence to change our views.
The sanctions didn’t kill anyone. Saddam’s beligerent behavior when faced with sanctions killed Iraqis. Indeed, had Saddam not invaded Kuwait, he would not have faced the threat of sanctions at all and would likely be head of Iraq today.
Sadam was called, long before sanctions, a “new Hitler” the “most evil dictator in the world” and quite a few other things. Yet, somehow neocons and their liberals brothers expected him to behave benevolently when faced with sanctions? The US government was aware thousands of Iraqis were dying, and they would not be were it not for the sanctions.
I believe Saddam caused Iraqi deaths by defying sanctions, you believe the U.S. caused Iraqi deaths by imposing (via the U.N.) sanctions. You mention below that you are a non-interventionist. I’m not. We have an irreconcilable difference.
By the way, I just had a great idea I’ll run by you. There’s lots of plenty of known muderers, rapists, pedophiles and other varieties of scum running around the US as fugitives. How about the US government have a lottery and take some random innocent people into custody. (They can work it the same way as the draft, except all age groups and genders can serve their country.) Then, start cutting off food and water for one of them each day until a particular reprobate surrenders himself. Then the captives are released and a new lottery is taken for the next scumbag. The fugitive lottery will never kill anyone, the beligerant behavior of the scumbags when placed in it will sometimes though.
Muderers, rapists, et al., don’t rule over innocent people. Saddam has shown that he invades other countries if left to his own devices. The only other options that immediately come to my mind are to either rein him in via sanctions, or to overthrow him. The U.S. has now done both. I would like to hear your remedy. If the answer is non-intervention (continue to leave him to his own devices) then we again have an irreconcilable difference.
True, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgency. To Iraq’s detriment, the main front in the war against Islamofascism is in Iraq. The poster’s comment identifies a U.S. benefit.
So having thousands of people who previously weren’t fighting the US government now pissed off enough to blow themselves up to kill GIs is a benefit to the war on Iraq? The war in Iraq has convinced millions of people that Osama Bin Laden is right about the US.
The suicide bombers are primarily blowing up Iraqis not GI’s. I posit that other than a relatively small number of people at the margin, those who hate the U.S. now hated the U.S. before. Osama’s initial grievance against the U.S. was the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. Leaving Saudi Arabia did not assuage his belligerence towards the U.S. What is your remedy? What should the U.S. do to keep its interests safe and convert millions who hate the U.S. into millions who are neutral towards the U.S.? Do you recommend reigning all of our interests to within our borders? If so, how would you handle foreign corporations in the U.S., and U.S. corporations abroad?
P.S. There’s no such thing as Islamofascism.
The U.S. (and Spain, and the U.K., etc.) are fighting Islamic zealots who espouse ruthless totalitarianism. I find the label clinical and accurate. How would you label them? I assume you aren’t adverse to labels in principle given your willingness to use the label “dictator”.
This implies you have compassion for the “mostly brown-skinned” “innocent people”. Tens of thousands of innocent people died under Saddam. Did you care then? Also, your responses have shown a clear anti-U.S. bias. You didn’t post to defend “mostly brown-skinned” people. You posted to bash U.S. policy in general and any opinion defending it specifically. Any rational person would acknowledge that the U.S. military (which is directly responsible for the deaths of some of Iraq’s innocents) has rules of engagement which are specifically designed to minimize non-combatant casualties. Many U.S. casualties are a result of this policy
Yes, the deaths that Sadam is responsible for were tragic. According to numbers this week several hundred thousand died as a result of the war on Iraq. I didn’t want either to happen. I feel for both groups. Sadly, there’s not much I could do about it.
I posted to point out that Iraq is in fact “getting worse.” That you and the other poster are callous and indifferent to the deaths of tens of thousand of Iraqis is a side issue really.
I am neither callous nor indifferent. I find it the lesser of two evils. I rue that the missteps the U.S. made and the resulting instability in Iraq. However I do favor in principle the overthrow of regimes such as Saddam’s in favor of democratic replacements. I favor it in principle but I am not dogmatic. I do not, for example, favor marching into Iran or N. Korea.
My posts don’t have an anti-US bias. They have a non-interventionist foreign policy bias. Presumably you can distinguish between a country and the policies of a government?
Then we cannot reconcile our differences. I don’t share your non-interventionist views.
Whether the US military has rules of engagement to minimize non-combatant deaths is irrelevant. Invading a country and overthrowing a government is going to kill an awful lot of people. Any “rational person” would acknowledge that the two are inseparable. It’s nonsensical to claim to be in favor of something, but opposed to inseparable elements of it.
Anyone in favor of the war in Iraq was in favor of killing the tens of thousands of Iraqis that would inevitably die as a result of it. That’s showing about as little compassion as I can imagine.
So, apparently if I’m opposed to killing tens of thousands of people, I’m not compassionate. But, you and the previous poster who don’t mind killing tens of thousands are compassionate.
Invading Germany in 1937 would have killed tens of thousands of people. The loss of tens of thousands of people in 1937 would have saved 50 million lives from 1939-1945. The political calculus is whether more lives are lost invading or sitting idle. I used Saddam’s history as a predictor of his future behavior, evaluated the potential loss of life in either scenario, and sided in favor of war. In general I evaluate both courses of action and select that course which I believed will result in less loss of life. Do you choose not to evaluate and dogmatically follow non-intervention? How do you reconcile non-intervention with the benefit intervention would have had in stopping Hitler?
You also seem to think that killing people who are defending their country from foreign invasion is justified. That’s like saying if your neighbor breaks into your house he can legitimately kill you if you resist him.
I believe in a strong national defense. In principle I advocate replacing the governments of N. Korea, and Iran with democracies. I am practical though. I don’t recommend military intervention in either case. Given that N. Korea and Iran advocate the overthrow of the U.S., what is your remedy? To ignore them?
There would be different numbers of different people dead under different circumstances if the US government didn’t attack Iraq. But, guess what? The American people wouldn’t be the ones who get bullseyes painted on them for those deaths.
OK, so this partially addresses some of my questions above. Where do you draw the line with regard to intervention? Should we have gone to war on behalf of Kuwait? If not, should we have responded if Saddam then entered Saudi Arabia? Should we have invaded Afganistan after 9/11? If not, what should our response have been to 9/11?
The Bush Admin’s response to 9-11 was to send a whole army over to Afghanistan to find one man, Osama, and in the process wreak havoc, leaving bodies strewn along our path. Before the task was accomplished, somehow our attention–like lions at a kill who found fresher meat–was diverted, and the Bush admin summarily declared war and unilaterally sent hundreds of thousands over to Iraq just to get one man, Saddam, who allegedly had WMD, and they believed they’d be welcomed as liberators.
Our response to 9/11 should have been a secret mission by special forces trained to go into the mountains of Afghanistan and to capture or kill the perpetrator Osama and his top cohorts–if anything to “stay the course” in Afghanistan, then after we got him, come home, and not invade Iraq. They knew there was no WMD before deciding for their own reasons to invade. For three thousand years that region of the world has ways of dealing with tyrants and I think they could have done away with Saddam without our “help.” We had no business setting foot in Iraq. We had no business overkilling. We have no business there now.
Now Bush wants to add another country to his list and invade or perhaps nuke Iran. Publicly he talks about diplomacy but clandestinely there are plans to invade Iran.
Lastly, Evil Paul, you have some great comments. Among other readers I applaud you for going piece by piece, comment for comment, and even engaging adversarial responders and do it via civil engagement–by dialogue. (If you didn’t read Daniel Yankelovich’s “The Magic of Dialogue” I am surprised.) It has served to make very interesting reading because it was all very civilized. Daniel Yankelovich also is a Fellow of the International Leadership Forum, on whose blog, the ILF Post, he commented on his trip to Qatar earlier this year. It is good reading: brief, but concise.
Anyway, as far as I see, we have an administration of a few who want to leave a very big mark and there is some Madhi-like thinking in back of Bush’s own kind of fanatacism. I’ll wager, though, that it is Dick and Rummy, Condi and his fave Texian lawyer, Atty Gen Gonzales, who are putting most of these ideas in his already muddled head. He repeats himself too much. If you listen to him on TV and watch his body language, you cannot help but see a disturbed man who has no mind of his own, except what has been spoon-fed. He’s clever, not intelligent. His own father had predicted all of this Iraq business, but his recalcitrant son did not inherit his common sense (though I disagree about our interfering with Kuwait). George W. has an addictive, fundamentalist, extremist mind, and has managed to gull many Bible-belters and pay others.
Wow, Saddam Hussein might be put to death in the next 2 days. That is some heavy stuff!