On Dec 16, 2008, at 11:34 AM, Chris Gehlker wrote: > > On Dec 16, 2008, at 8:43 AM, Charles Bennett wrote: > >> Yes. You still know where he is. Under Saddam he would have >> vanished along with his family. >> You really want to argue that? > > I really want to argue with your whole viewpoint because I think it > relies on a willful disregard for the facts. You speak of "parading > around in underwear" when it is uncontested that US personnel beat and > tortured detainees *to death*.
Millions? There were only a couple that suffered that fate. The people that did it were punished and it was not the norm but a CRIMINAL act and treated that way once it was discovered. The perpetrators are in prison. If you had your way Saddam would STILL be murdering people by the thousands, the UN would still be skimming the oil for food project, thousands would be dying ever year, Saddam would still be doing the two step with the weapons inspectors and there would be no end in sight. There *is* a hell of a difference to me. > You speak of "mass graves" under Saddam > while ignoring the fact that the rate of violent deaths in Iraq > increased during the US conquest and occupation. > And you don't speak of them AT ALL. It's as if the millions that died under his rule don't matter and didn't happen because it doesn't fit your story of life being better under Saddam. Uday and Qusay RAPED more women and fed them to their dogs than we killed detainees but I guess that didn't count. Yes, during the conquest, the rate of violent death was high. Those dying were mostly Saddam's soldiers. Soldiers die in combat. Mostly violently and at a high rate, if you are doing your job correctly. That's the way it works. During the occupation it was not the US doing most of the killing of civilians. We used very expensive smart munitions to avoid it when possible, even though a simple carpet bombing of Fallujah would have saved American lives. You Tube some of our gun camera video taking out road side bombers sometime. You can ignore the video, but listen to the number of steps and approvals it took to get permission to fire and this was to kill people obviously planting bombs or firing mortars. We didn't target civilians on purpose. Ever. It was Iraqi's and outsiders that decided to blow up schools, markets other innocent civilian targets to either intimidate or to try and foment a civil war. It backfired and part of the reason they were defeated was that sort of behavior turned the locals against them. So yes. the rate of violent death went up but the one's *we* killed mostly needed killing. > The movement to defend the Iraq war is proceeding exactly as the > movement to defend Vietnam did: postulate some non-facts in an offhand > manner and then draw false conclusions from them. A few years after > Vietnam a frightening proportion of the population accepted the non- > facts as reality. There is no defending that the intelligence was wrong. A lot of people got it wrong, and not just in the US. But it was wrong and we need to face up to that, if for no reason other than understand how we got it wrong and to make sure it doesn't happen again. OTOH, I am really glad that Saddam is gone and there are a lot of people alive right now because he is gone. Bagdad has been turned over to the Iraqi security. Fallujah has been turned over to the Iraqi security. Mosul has been turned over to the Iraqi security. The Kurds didn't need Iraqi security. There is no civil war and almost no prospect for one to start now. OTOH, we could have left it to the UN to deal with. They are doing such a great job of stopping the killing in Darfur, the world should look to them as an example of how to deal with tyrants. =c= _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
