Imagining a World in Which We Did Not Remove Saddam
There are only two major possibilities: either something continues to exist or it ceases to exist. Either the “presidency” of Saddam Hussein, if left unchecked, would have continued on — or his rule would have imploded under the weight of both external and internal forces.
The point should be made that either scenario would have opened up a Pandora’s Box of likelihoods, few of which were pretty. Whether or not the regime had lived on with continuity or if it had crumbled to smithereens, the consequences would have been highly problematic, mandating international assistance and intervention regardless.
Even if we were to overlook the obvious doomsday possibilities — I know it is a sin to mention the words “Saddam Hussein” and “terrorist attack” in the same sentence — the continuation of Hussein’s rule would have posed serious predicaments for future U.S. administrations. Hussein was becoming ever more deranged, seeking out jihadist groups with which to cooperate — from Algeria to the Philippines — and was showing no signs that, in his old age, he would have a sudden “death-bed conversion,” to paraphrase Bill Clinton.
The various bipartisan reports and congressional commissions we now have the luxury of reading — the David Kay, Robb-Silberman, and Charles Duelfer reports, the Institute for Defense Analysis investigation, etc. — all conclude that while the Iraqi regime may not have had stockpiles of unconventional weapons at the time of our intervention, the highest levels of the Ba’athist government, particularly Saddam, maintained the capacity, the infrastructure, the desire, and the intent to reconstitute all WMD programs, including nuclear, once international sanctions were lifted — which was likely to happen by 2005.
So we can draw one such conclusion: today, Saddam would have likely been four years deep in pursuing the deadliest weapons in the world. These were weapons he alone had already used, and this was an elusive nuclear program he had tried to reconstruct for many years, after being thwarted in 1981 and 1991.
Rather than have an infant parliament in Baghdad, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi servicemen fighting theocrats and terrorists across their territory, we would still have had to deal with a dictator’s malevolent aims. And while pacifying post-Saddam Iraq has constituted a large fixation of our resources and attention since 2003, a Saddamist Iraq in 2009 — free of sanctions and inspectors, void of no-fly zones, gaming billions out of the UN’s Oil-for-Food Program, transferring near-trillions in profit into subsidies and weaponry for terrorists — would have been an equally significant and dangerous, albeit different, preoccupation of ours.
It would have amounted to an unsolved dilemma, and the risks of the Iranian nuclear program would have been underscored if the world had to deal with similar nuclearization in neighboring Iraq — where Saddam’s stated primary rationale for nuclear prestige rested on warding off his feared Persian rivals.
When President Obama speaks about Iran “being contained” during the years of Saddam, he thinks he’s found his diamond-in-the-dunghill argument. But this geopolitical logic comes straight out of the Kissingerian playbook, where “realists” argue that the U.S. could have “played off” Iran versus Iraq, and vice versa. Of course, such realpolitik never offered a progressive vision for the region. We had been there and done that.
With all this said, the end of Saddam Hussein, occurring at a moment and in a way outside of the world’s control, would have been equally problematic. International sanctions were crippling Iraq’s economy, not to mention the utter destruction they caused to Iraqi civil society.
In order to be a surviving subject in what was Hussein’s police state, Iraqis of all stripes turned inward to their most basic attachments of locality: the tribe, the sect, the sheikh. It was a Hobbesian world, where people watched what they said and to whom, where neighbors ratted on their neighbors, where citizens looked over their shoulders and worried about their environs. In order to survive, you had to distrust. In a police state like this, a lack of suspiciousness, even of one’s own kin, would get you killed.
Visualize what would have happened if Saddam had fallen and all this had been left unchecked: no interim Iraqi governing council, no Paul Bremer, no CENTCOM, no Marine Corps. Just anarchy. What would have become of Iraqi oil fields? What would have become of Iraqi polity? What would have become of the Iraqi people themselves?
The Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, and al-Qaedists all had their shot in Iraq with a considerable coalition presence. What would have happened had they all been granted a free shot without such a presence?
Either Iraq, as we know it, would have devolved down into a permanent state of militia rule, Iranian-stoked sectarianism, ex-Ba’athist assassinations, and confessional, ethnic murder — or the sadistic Uday Hussein would have succeeded his father, free of sanctions, and with total commitment to pursue nuclear weaponry into this upcoming decade.
Considering these various alternatives — all of which would have mandated American intervention regardless — the decision to topple Saddam in 2003 was the right one. To intervene at a time and in a way of our choosing was prudent and necessary, despite the tragic cost in blood and treasure.
Mr. Guariglia,
Can I ask why it took you 13 paragraphs to get around to your hypothesis? Your preamble is half the damned article.
No… wait… sorry… you wait until the SEVENTEENTH paragraph before you even begin to hypothesize what the alternate scenario would look like:
“So we can draw one such conclusion…”
I’m drawing the conclusion that this is the single worst alternate history article I’ve ever wasted lifespan on.
Put Harsh Reality in the “Throw ‘Em Back In The Plastic Shredders” column.
The most likely outcome would have been that Saddam, the master pragmatist (by MidEast standards), would have continued his policy of covertly supporting radicals as a way of paying “protection money”, i.e. “I’ll give you what you want as long as you leave me alone”. Which means that he would have been bestowing largesse upon the likes of al-Qaeda, et al., with money gleaned from his under-the-table deals with supposedly “unfriendly” governments (like France and Germany), and if he did develop WMDs, would make same available to the radicals (as long as they didn’t use them on him) in return for their continued acceptance of his rule in Iraq. He would have proclaimed himself a pious Muslim, devoted to Sharia, just as in the 1970s and 80′s he proclaimed himself a “moderate” and attacked Iran, because the bread would be buttered on the opposite side after 9/11. In short, he would have morphed from being a “Muslim moderate” like Sadat in Egypt into being a radicalized terrorist paymaster and “Islamist loyalist”, like Qaddafi in Libya. The objective being to stay in power, no matter what. Call in “Realpolitik, MidEast Style”.
It’s really that simple. And I didn’t need seventeen paragraphs to say it, either.
clear ether
eon
“If you could change history, would you really take the Iraq war back?
To intervene at a time and in a way of our choosing was prudent and necessary, despite the tragic cost in blood and treasure.”
That invasion should not have happened THEN. It was not right or wise. Maybe further developments could have justified an intervention, especially one supported by allied countries. It was an continues to be a mistake.
Harsh: But taking too long to get to the point does not undermine the validity of Guariglia’s article which is absolutely correct. Furthermore, the truth is that Sadaam already had attacked us twice; WTC bombing in 1993 was headed by Ramzi Yousef using Iraqi passport and another passport, a Kuwaiti passport taken from a dead Kuwait. Also the bomb mixer on that mission, Yasin, fled to Iraq and was harbored for a decade (remember the Bush speech about harboring terrorists which also included Abu Abbas). And the Iraqis helped with 9/11. Shakir, their intell agent met with two 9/11 highjackers at the key meeting in Malaysia in 2000 before the hijackers entered the US; and agent Hijazi delivered blank Yemeni passports to Bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998 and Zawahiri met with the Iraqis and other AQ staff met in Feb/March 1998 in Baghdad with Iraqi intell. Saudi born terrorists were trained in 1999 in southern Iraq. And Al Ani, Iraqi intell agent met with Mohammed Atta before going on his mission. Finally, no mentions the fact that Russia in the 1990s signed an agreement to sell hundreds of tanks to Sadaam as soon as sanctions were lifted nor that during the first couple of years of this century Sadaam’s sons had cemented good relations with Iran, destroying the notion of Iraq as a block against Iranian expansion. The current Syrian-Iranian alliance undergirded by Russia would have included Sadaam as a third partner; a much stronger dangerous alliance than we face today thanks to George Bush’s intervention.
What a dopey, poorly written article. How’s this for a what-if: what if we had just stuck with catching bin Laden and subduing the Taliban who had helped him, and had simply ignored Iraq since it had nothing to do with 9/11 or the people involved in it? It’s been over 7 years, Iraq’s a smoldering mess and Hussein’s former rival Iran is now more of a nuisance and threat than ever, bin Laden’s still free, and Obama is having to ramp up the military operation in Afghanistan to take care of unfinished business there.
Nothing good whatsoever came from us screwing around with Iraq (except for maybe that shoe-throwing bit.)
Absolutely. Iraq is not worth the money and lives we spent on it. Call me cold-hearted, but as one of the younger Americans who will have to pay for that debt, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Iraq and would gladly have left it to Saddam because it was never in our interests.
People who think that Saddam Hussein was a serious terrorist threat need to have their heads examined. There is no way in hell a plutocrat like Hussein would have launched a nuclear strike or wanted any connection to one against two countries (Israel and the US) that could reduce Iraq to a smoldering pile of irradiated glass in a matter of less than 1 hour.
The most important point is the presence of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. If Saddam were in power, he’d have no choice but to develop his own program… which would set off a arms race over the middle east. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Libya would all nuclearize. We might even be stuck having to tacitly support Saddam as a counterweight to Iran, again, as we did in the ’80s.
The sanctions were breaking down anyway due to money coming in from the oil-for-food program and smuggled oil. France and Russia were actively working to dismantle the sanctions (until they reversed themselves in an attempt to avoid the invasion).
Remember also that it took surrounding Iraq with 250,000 troops just to get the inspectors back in.
Without invasion, then we’d have seen a gradually strengthened Iraq . Once the Iranian weapons program was unveiled, then we’d have seen an arms race between Iran and Iraq . This would have eventually involved nuclear weapons (they are, after all, 1940′s technology). Such a situation would have certainly forced Egypt and Syria to nuclearize. Libya ‘s program was surprisingly advanced as well. Do we really think that Saudi Arabia and Turkey could be convinced to rely on the US nuclear umbrella in that situation? Even if so, tensions would be immense in the entire area. Think India-Pakistan times ten. Oh, and don’t forget Israel in the mix. Because missile flight times are so short (small distances), the area would lack even the stabilizing effect of MADD (because a response to a massive first strike could not be guaranteed).
All of this occurring over the world’s energy reserves. Not good. And what of Lebanon ? Jordan ? Afghanistan ? How would Greece react to a nuclear Turkey ?
Of course, Saddam’s Iraq was unlikely to last forever. Either it would get passed on to his sons (even worse), or it would break up into civil war on its own. A civil war much bloodier and more destructive than the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. Besides the sectarian armageddon in central Iraq , Turkey would feel compelled to invade in the north and go to war with the Kurdish population. Iran in the south. Saudi Arabia and Syria in the west.
In short, you can’t just project the prewar status quo into an infinite future. You also have to consider important, likely possibilities. Does the outcome of the Iraq invasion look better than any of those possibilities? Yes. Who knows what would have happened without invasion, but an Iraq frozen in 2002, contained, is completely unlikely.
#5 vivo:
“That invasion should not have happened THEN. It was not right or wise. Maybe further developments could have justified an intervention, especially one supported by allied countries.”
Just out of curiosity, what WOULD have been the opportune to invade and remove the Hussein family from power, in your opinion?
We DID have allies in ’03 y’know. The UK, The Poles and the Spanish, chiefly.
I think that the born-again Muslim Saddam would have sought to become the new strong man for jihadis as we weakened AQ. With sanctions lifted and arms programs resumed, he would have tried to dominate other oil countries, which would have seen us as wimpy. He would gradually have increased his power and hold over the region. He would have bragged about standing up to the Big Satan At some point in the future, a succession war would have occurred. And the allies vivo mentioned would have been willing to let George or a succssor do it–it being the dirty work needed to protect the West.
The real problem with all of you idiots that claim to have been against the SUCCESS of the Iraq war is that you just hate the FACT that George Bush did something right and good. If it had been your precious Bill(bj)Clinton or Barrack (the socialist) Obama then you would be cheering them on with praise and honor. The problem with that theory is that neither of them have the moral courage to do something right because it’s the right thing to do. The only reason either of them would take on something like that would be to further their political resume. I thank God above for a man like George Bush that was willing to do what he believed to be right no matter what the political fallout would be and I believe that history will be much kinder to President Bush then you phonies could ever dream of being.
So after seven maybe eight years in Iraq we have Kerry and Clinton runnin’ around the world apoligizing for Bush and kissin’ arab ass.
We had this crap before with Bill and despite the loss of our blood and treasure we are back at the same program…..nothings changed except for our dead being dead and the maimed being maimed.
Having watch Vietnam and the way our fearless leaders did there I had NO hope that the same buncha clowns would do any better this time around.
I give Iraq five years and the place will go right back to being the same sheethole in the desert it always was.
If Saddam were still ruling Iraq, it would be Bush’s fault.
To all people who say that throwing out Sadam was not worth the effort
1) Sadam was a panarabist who dreamed on ruling all of what we call the Arab world. That means that in order to create the feeling of national pride he could not refer to the achievemnts of the Sumerians of Babylonians but to the single achievement of the Arabs: Islamic conquests. Also Islam is the only real cement between the Arabic speaking Berbers of Maghreb and the Middle East people. They don’t even speak really the same language and the effort to understand one another is closer to the one required for a Spaniard to understand Portuguese than for an American to understand British English. That means that when you dream of a single Arab country going from Basra to the Atlantic sooner or later you are going to base on Islam for bringing and keeping all those people together. That is why while for the sake of modernization some of the panarabist dictators have held Islam at arm’s length, none of them has has ever been another Mustafa Kemal. All of them have left significant islamic discriminations in place (cf tretment of copts in Egypt) and given enough time sincere panarabists (not Mubarak) ever end allying themselves with wahabi (who are vey “Arabs über alle”) inspired movements because they have basically the same goals.
2) Saying that Saddam could not ally with Al Quaida because he was secular is about as absurd as saying that Stalin could not ally with the Nazis.
3) With hindsight in 2002 knowing from the Koweit experience that his army was no match for America’s Armed Forces the right strategy for Sadam was to rely on the “No War” propaganda and backstabbing democrats to bring down the Bush administration, the same way North-Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge did a few decades before. For that the first element was to destroy or hide into say, Syria, all the WMDs (whose existence was not disputed by any of the opponents to the war), the second one was to prepare for a guerrilla war: daily casualties coupled with the “Bush lied people died” mantra would have a deleterious effect on America’s public opinion and the third one was of course to go into hiding. This way, once the Americans retired he would reemerge, retake power and gain unprecedent prestige into the Arab world. But as I said nobody disputed the existence of those WMDs. Not Chirac, not Putin, not Khofi Anan, not Hans Blick, not Barack Obama. That means that basing on what they knew those who opposed war were ready to let the head of the “National Socialist Party for Arab renewal” be able to get nukes and drop them over Israel, over the oil fields, hand them to Al Quaeda or simply provide the tech to every Arab government who in turn…
Now the plan for after the invasion was to have a democratic domino effect spread through Middle East hoping people would abandon islamism once they would have a taste of democracy. This did not happen for a variety of reasons: continual denigration at home and in Europe by the “enlightened classes”, the guerrilla, mismanagement and the inability to recognize openly that the problem was Islam whose basic tenets are incompatible with democracy.
Your sooooo….right if Bush didn’t get rid of Saddam then that’s what your complaint would be now and admit it your still mad that Al Gore didn’t win in 2000. We would only be 8 years farther down the road to socialism if he had.
There is an important question which people seem to forget: Saddam was pretty old. What would happen after his death?
His older son Uday was a weak-willed alcoholic. Definitely not a suitable person to lead a police state like Hussein’s Iraq.
As for Kusay, no one is sure. He seemed to be more similar to his father.
But any failure during the succession year – and Islamic Republic of Iraq modeled after their Iranian neighbors would be reality.
Come on. There is no question that he had to go since making war was the only way he could stay in power. Why did this require an occupation and if it did require it, can you explain why we had no plan? And can you please explain why the Commander of the US forces resigned? Like Eisenhower resigning a week after D=Day. Getting rid of Saddam was necessary and would have been easier if we had not postponed for months, due to Turkish negotiations, allowing him to prepare the insurrection. Your scenarios evolving from leaving Saddam in place are plausible and support the overthrow but you do not address the key issues still confronting us. The struggle in Iraq will continue and either a civil war will produce a new ruler or the military will seize power. And what will we do if the Kurds are set up for slaugter? Will we withdraw to bases in Kurdistan or simply watch from Kuwait or worse leave our army in harm’s way. The occupation will turn out to have been a profoundly corrupt and ugly experience whose only benefit has been to train a generation of officers who understand the Pentagon is the enemy. Will they gain the upper hand? They never have.
The comments of the realists: eon, Lawrence Kohn, and BBM are far superior to those who think you solve problems by ignoring them.
Liberals apparently believe that Saddam so feared Iran that he pretended to have WMD even at the risk of being attacked by the United States but he nevertheless would have stood by and watched as Iran developed nuclear weapons.
JFW,
Would, not could. Hussein would never have aligned himself with Al Qaeda in a way that could come back to him. There is a difference between allowing terrorists to train on your soil, and arming them, funding them and giving them official state help in carrying out acts of terrorism. Syria straddles that line too, which is why we never attacked Syria. He would never have been so stupid as to allow a relationship that could create a real casus belli to fall into our country’s lap.
It’s noteworthy that the reason we went into Iraq in the first place was a UN sanction, not an act of aggression that justified war. As I said, Saddam was never that stupid.
I think wars like games are best fought after they are over. Saddam Hussein in my opinion would never have become less of a problem, whether he would become more of a problem was conjecture but with the Middle East becoming more and more dangerous the odds to me were that he and his followers and like minded other leaders in that area of the world were salivating at the gates waiting to be free to act.
I am speaking from the vantage point of someone who did not experience personal loss from the war. I can only hope and have read that their is hope for many men, women, and children who suffered under his regime.
If the Iraq War turns out to be a failure for the United States and the Iraqi People, I will have to take my share of the blame because I supported the war.
eon with money gleaned from his under-the-table deals with supposedly “unfriendly” governments (like France and Germany),
yeah, Z’O'Reilly told you that, and he is the one with no source that one can trust LMAO
the reality is that Saddam was the american friend until he planned to get paid in Z’euros, and that the Saudi were complaining that he going to ruin their lucrative trade association with some big oil trusts in the US, that kept/keeps the dollar currency afloat, and he was in way to become an exemple to follow for the rest of the OPEC club, so URGENCE in Pentagon !!!!
the first Irak war was ment to empech Saddam to pursue his projects.
but with the oil for food program he was making some shadow to the Saudi/American oil business again, in selling his oil at a lesser rate.
I’m not providing links again that say that wasn’t only a big deal for the French and or the Germains that didn’t want to endorse the 2nd Irak war, cuz, all the counties took benefit of the cheaper iraki oil, yes my dear lazy eon, even the Americans too, hey, aren’t you businesmen, or dumb idiots that prefer to spit on good opportunities !!!!
The fact is that if today the Saudi choose to imitate Saddam, which they will porbably do in the context of a weak America, and that that will completely ruin the american economy (even the Chinese will then get rid of the dollars… ), so don’t be surprised why Bush family kissed the Saudi ass in the past decades… and that Clinton also is carrying the same dance, cuz they are aware that that is a surviving question !!!
I gotta a better one . . . imagine a world in which we did not remove George Bush.
I would not have invaded Iraq. That decision was a lemon. True, we’re managing to make lemonade, but it was still a lemon. The correct target was Iran. They have been long-time backers of terrorism. This cannot be disputed and would’ve fallen clearly under the principle of GWoT.
Furthermore, there would’ve been less resistance, as there is more goodwill in Iran towards us than in Iraq. It would’ve sent a message to Iraq that we’re not messing around, and thus would’ve contained Hussein. It would’ve given us a better logistical infrastructure in Afghanistan, so we could deal properly with Pakistan harboring the Taliban and AQ. We have reached our high-water mark in Afghanistan, because we’re too dependent on Pakistan.
Iraq was a mistake. Iran was the correct target.
“Imagining a World in Which We Did Not Remove Saddam”
Also known as
“Imagining a world where several hundred thousand people are still alive and Halliburton didn’t make massive amounts of money”
This article will be used, in the future, by Psych 101 students learning how cognitive dissonance works.
I saw Afghanistan as a giant quagmire and exactly where our enemy wanted to meet us after the attack on 9-ll. I don’t think they were counting on the United States putting our foot down right in the middle of the Middle East but wanted to fight us on the perimeter. I also thought it was vital to find out once and for all, without the stalling the United Nations allowed, whether Iraq contained the weapons he has stored, used, and threatened to use. He was becoming more and more bellicose and in fact paying families of suicide murderers. After so many years of taking pot shots at the United States military protecting the Kurds in northern Iraq, I thought enough was enough.
“Imagining a world where several hundred thousand people are still alive and Halliburton didn’t make massive amounts of money”
—
How much did Halliburton make compared to what they made in previous years? The liberation has saved lives even as it was being fought. More innocent people were dying because of sanctions or being killed by the regime each year than have been killed during the 6 years of the liberation. UNICEF claimed 50,000 infants were dying each year. No doubt an exaggeration but pretending Iraqis people were not suffering immensely under Saddam – especially compared to today – is dishonest.
—–
“Iran was the correct target”.
Iran wasn’t in breach of a ceasefire for 12 years. There were no grounds to attack.
Simple.
If we had not removed Saddam, the left would have blamed every atrocity he committed, every child he let die due to rerouting supplies on Pres. George W. Bush. Because, obviously, Bush should have done something to get him out.
Re #23 Marie Claude;
1. I don’t watch Fox News.
2. “Oil For Food” ring a bell?
clear ether
eon
21. Mike T wrote:
It’s noteworthy that the reason we went into Iraq in the first place was a UN sanction
Peter writes: It is also noteworthy that our entry into Iraq was authorized by a law signed by Bill Clinton (D) in 1998 authorizing the US to accomplish regime change in Iraq.
24. one of your own wrote:
I gotta a better one . . . imagine a world in which we did not remove George Bush.
Peter writes: That one I can easily answer! It would be a MUCH better one than the one we have now, at least here in the US. Or have you not noticed the stock market has lost more than half it’s value since Obama was elected because everyone fears the socialist utopia he is trying to implement?
24. one of your own wrote:
. . . imagine a world in which we did not remove George Bush.
Peter adds: Not to mention I feel decidedly less safe for myself and my family with Obama in charge. At least with Bush in charge I felt relatively safe in my own country.
“Imagining a World in Which We Did Not Remove Saddam”
Also known as
“Imagining a world where several hundred thousand more people are still raped, tortured and killed horribly by Saddam and his insane sons, Kurds are gassed routinely by their own so-called government, and terrorist organizations are financied while homicide-bomber families are paid for their sons and daughters to blow themselves up as they try to murder innocents.”
eon, dring, dring, driiiiinnnng !!!! driiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnngggggg !!!!
deaf, my friend ?
in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News last month, he noted that the United States imported far more oil from Iraq than France during the sanction years and that the United States had the right to review every contract approved under the oil-for-food program.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/may/03/20040503-123158-1229r/?page=2
12-7, Japanese bomb Peal harbor, liberals outraged we declare war on Germany.
One notable ‘Rule of Law’ in ‘Sadams Iraq’. There were absolutely no disidents or repeat offenders due to the judicious use of ‘Industrial Shredders (Huge meat grinders). The media loved and adored him (hmm sounds familiar). His last re-election was reported in ‘his media’, at 100% in favor of their elected Messiah (must have used an Islamic version of ACORN). Sadam did always have REAL control (Mafia style). His ruling style seems to be the envy of some in US elected office today. Oh yes I almost forgot, TIME and Newsweek were wringing their journalistic hands over Iraq for many years, as their military was gaining in prominence and according to ‘Them’, becoming a ‘power to be dealt with’. Gotta love the Liberal press. Like the despicable schoolyard crowd of Chicken Hawks in the glass littered alley after class, all circling and goading the combatants they themselves had relentlessly turned against one another, and ultimatily screaching for them to kill each other. The Liberal Press really gets ‘Off’ on that sort of insanity thrill. Journalists and Lawyers,.. the oldest Profession’s mattress mates. ‘Da Flikkers’
#29 Terry Gain – What part of “terrorism sponsor” did you not read? No grounds for an attack, indeed!
Terry, regarding cease fire violations, we were enforcing no flight zones in the north and south (to prevent genocide) before the invasion; Iraq was firing at our aircraft on a weekly basis. Bush made mistakes, but he did the right thing. By the way, special thanks to all on the left for undermining the effort from day one, giving aid and comfort to our enemies, Jane Fonda style.
ANY time you are grinding up islam…it’s a good day.
Some Inconvenient Truths for those Leftists here still spouting out-of-date talking points…
1. Translations of captured Iraqi documents have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam actively supported terrorism outside of Iraq’s borders. And that he was in fact working with al Qaeda. You silly college kids should stop listening to your 1960s-retread professors who claim that Saddam would never do such a thing because he was “secular”. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Remember-before 9/11 no one ever imagined that fully fueled commercial airliners would be used as attack missiles to bring down 100 story skyscrapers. But guess what? It happened.
2. The Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden in 1998. In said indictment, they specifically cited a connection between him and Saddam’s government. Especially as far as working together on WMDs. Read the indicment yourselves. It does exist.
3. There are many reports out there that foreign-born terrorists were trained in the years leading up to 9/11 by the Iraqis at Salman Pak, specifically in the art of taking over a commercial airliner. And guess what? A fully fueled jetliner is just as much of a WMD as a nuclear weapon. 9/11 proved that.
4. Speaking of 9/11 and Iraq, a Bill Clinton-appointed Federal Judge in Manhattan, Harold Baer, ruled in 2003 in a lawsuit brought by some 9/11 victims’ families that the evidence he heard at the trial convinced him, and in his opinion would also convince an impartial jury, that Iraq did play some sort of role in the 9/11 attacks. This ruling was of course buried by the Bush-hating national media, but the ruling did happen.
5. Saddam and his two sons were themselves WMDs. Mission Accmplished.
As far as the timing of the invasion, let’s face it. If we hadn’t done it then, we would have had to do it later.
As for this drone:
26. RV
“Imagining a world where several hundred thousand people are still alive and Halliburton didn’t make massive amounts of money”
Just curious-did you also oppose President Bill Clinton’s non-UN-sanctioned War of Choice in Kosovo? He gave Halliburton no-bid contracts then as well.
And let’s not forget how Democrat President Lyndon Johnson gave Halliburton tons of no-bid work during the Vietnam War. Lyndon in fact had been sleeping with Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary since 1936, or 5 years before Darth Cheney was even born.
If you do your homework, you would know that Halliburton is one of only a couple of companies on the planet that do what they do. Their only other major competitor is a French firm. Considering that the French refused to side with us in enforcing multiple violations by Iraq of UN resolutions (while at the same time violating the Iraq trade embargo themselves) only an idiot would hire them over Halli.
The anti-war argument would be much more convincing if someone could present an alternative plan that addresses:
- The disintegration of containment (Russia, France loosening the sanctions, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan smuggling oil across their borders for Saddam, the Oil-for-Food scandal, all bringing in BILLIONS for Saddam).
-The costs of containment (militant rage at keeping “infidel” troops in Saudi Arabia Kuwait, etc; rage at the effect of the sanctions… recall that these factors led to the embassy bombings and 9/11, per Bin Laden).
-How you keep the inspectors in Iraq long term (recall that it took 250,000 troops parked in countries surrounding his country in a 6 month buildup to get him to get the inspectors in… and he still didn’t comply with 1441).
-The costs of continued Saddam rule (in human terms of his subjects, continued funding of Palestinian suicide bombers and harboring of other terrorists).
-The chances of WMD proliferation (knowing what we knew then, in a post 9/11 environment, rather than what we know now).
-In a related question, the chances that the mothballed WMD programs we know about now could be reactivated shortly after the inspectors were again kicked out after the 250,000 troops went home… please explain how having mothballed programs that can reconstitute WMD stockpiles in a matter of months is strategically any different for the US and the ME area than weapons stockpiles themselves. And don’t forget that this state of affairs was only discovered after the war.
-How do you square the fact that, as president, you’d need info with nearly 100% accuracy about the state of Iraqi weapons programs (if you were going to pursue containment, that is) with the fact that the intelligence community was so off on the N. Korea, Pakistan, India, Iranian, and Libyan nuclear programs? Please demonstrate how you could be sure you’d be able to act before it is too late, and how you’d “know” when a threat is imminent or not.
-Please explain how you could be sure that deterrence would work against Saddam, when it had not in the past, and how you could guarantee that no technological, intelligence or financial sharing would occur with terrorists.
-How you deal with the familiarity of repeated buildups to get the inspectors back in breeding contempt for the process, leading to noncompliance and subsequent dissolution of the ability of threatening the use of force to get compliance from Saddam and elsewhere. Please further explain why the inability to mount a credible threat of the use of force wouldn’t a) increase the possibility that force would actually have to be used, or b) endanger national security.
-How you deal with the reluctance of surrounding countries to allow you to base troops on their territory when they see that you never actually intend to do anything definitive about Saddam, and they begin to reconcile with him and build bridges to him for their own safety and security (since it isn’t being delivered by the US), making future buildups impossible (we saw something like this already in the initial buildup that led to UN 1441).
-How you would deal with a WMD/nuclear armed Saddam, once containment broke down (due to the factors noted above)… a North Korea in the middle of the richest deposits of the world’s energy supplies?
-How to deal with the resulting arms race, in which Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey would also all be compelled to nuclearize? How do you think that Israel would view these developments?
-What about the costs of business as usual authoritarianism in the middle east, rather than the spread of democracy… like Lebanon still being occupied by Syria etc.
-Direct benefits of invading Iraq, like a Libya that has disarmed and revealed its WMD programs; the uncovering and breakup of the AQ Kahn proliferation network.
-Please explain how you could be sure that deterrence would work against Saddam, when it had not in the past, and how you could guarantee that no technological, intelligence or financial sharing would occur with terrorists.
-Please discuss the long term outcomes if no invasion were to occur:
1. Iraq spontaneously evolves into a nonthreatening democracy: quite unlikely with Saddam in power, and with him due to be succeeded by his sons.
2. Iraq is contained indefinitely at minimal to no political or military cost: unlikely for the reasons noted above (ie prohibitive political costs of keeping troops in Saudi Arabia, the sanctions, and getting surrounding nations and UN powers to cooperate, along with the billions coming in to Saddam by smuggling). For full details, please see The Threatening Storm, written by Clinton’s CIA Iraq expert (before the invasion)… it is well written and documented. A real pleasure is to read it back to back with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And recall Bin Laden’s justification for the 9/11 attacks… US troops in the area (which would be necessary to continue to contain Saddam). This option caries the additional cost of hundreds of thousands more dead from sanctions and Saddam’s depredations.
3. Iraq fractures into a civil war: It would be 100 times worse than what we see now with millions of refugees, untold deaths from starvation, disease and violence (think Rwanda or Somalia) with no hope of an emergent democracy (like we see there now), all taking place in the energy capital of the world… the most likely outcome would be an Afghanistan like failed state. Meanwhile, Turkey would invade the north (to prevent an independent Kurdistan), Iran from the east, and Syria from the west; all claiming to be “protecting their borders” or “preventing a humanitarian catastrophe”. These forces may even clash over territory (ie Syria and Turkey over the oil rich region of Mosul etc). This could result in a general conflagration, or provide cover for a preemptive attack on Israel.
4. Saddam is released from sanctions and goes on to terrorize the area, threaten world energy supplies, and Israel, and the costs of hundreds of thousands more dead Iraqis just so Saddam can stay in power. The arms race between Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Israel makes India and Pakistan look like a spitball fight.
As you can see, there is one fairy tale option, one extremely unlikely option, and 2 nightmares. Invasion was the least bad option, IMO.
Pro-war liberals, conservatives, and libertarians alike been answering questions and criticisms about why invasion was necessary forever. Now it’s time for the anti-war folks to answer some questions of their own. And no, just saying that something wouldn’t happen that way does not constitute a satisfactory answer.
Please explain why the anti-war view is right, and the views of those like Clinton’s CIA Iraq expert (in The Threatening Storm) Ken Pollack are wrong, even though he made it his life’s work to know Saddam’s personality and tendencies, as well as the international political climate concerning Iraq in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Wow, BBM! Long, but very well written.
Thanks!
del dolemonte
If you do your homework, you would know that Halliburton is one of only a couple of companies on the planet that do what they do. Their only other major competitor is a French firm. Considering that the French refused to side with us in enforcing multiple violations by Iraq of UN resolutions (while at the same time violating the Iraq trade embargo themselves) only an idiot would hire them over Halli.
I bet yours was made while watching Z’O'Reille !!!
8. France provided Saddam with extended-range Super Etendard aircraft capable of hitting Iranian oil facilities in the lower Gulf.
WARSAW — After a protest from President Jacques Chirac of France, Poland said yesterday that it had been mistaken in reporting that its troops had found new French-made antiaircraft missiles in central Iraq.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2003/10/05/poland_admits_error_on_missiles/
but the WMD you were searching (really ??? ) were alredy used
15. The US Department of Commerce licensed the export of biological materials—including a range of pathogenic agents—as well as plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities and chemical-warhead filling equipment—to Iraq until December 1989, 20 months after the Halabja atrocity
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/040.html
What Bush learned behind closed doors
If some well-informed experts are right, Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are a fraction of what they’ve been telling us.
Why does it matter? Because everyone has believed for decades that Saudi Arabia’s oil supply is virtually unlimited. That’s what the Saudis have said over and over again for more than 30 years.
If an oil shortage threatens to cause a recession or a market crash, we can count on the Saudis to come through. So people think.
But in a private briefing, one of America’s top oil experts told President George Bush exactly what I’m telling you. In fact, this same man was a consultant to the secretive task force that drew up Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy plan in 2001.
In other words, the guy is a heavy hitter who knows the energy business.
He warned Bush that the Saudis don’t have anything near the oil reserves they claim. They already pump less oil than most “experts” think, and here’s the real kicker…
Saudi oil production is about to drop sharply. And it will keep going down for good.
Other experts have analyzed the numbers and come to the same conclusions. If the charges are true — and I believe they are — we could be facing…
https://www.web-purchases.com/OST_Oil_Hoax_POP5/WOSTJB29/landing.html
Let’s agree you are correct. If I was in charge, I would have given folks 72 hours to get out of,(name your town), and set up road blocks. At the end of the 72 hours said town would be no more. No house to house fighting. That is compassion that cost us lives.
Iran’s IED plants would be destroyed.
Hand holding, and CFR pink panty New World Order BS cost lives!
Halliburton Iraq contract queried
Halliburton could have years of work in Iraq
Halliburton, the oil services and construction group once led by US vice president Dick Cheney, is in the spotlight once again over its role in the reconstruction of Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2950154.stm
Depuis l’invasion, Chevron, proche de l’administration Bush, a pu tisser en toute tranquillité des liens avec les technocrates du pétrole irakien. “C’est le mariage idéal combinant l’expérience de Total d’avant 2003 et celle de Chevron d’après 2003″, souligne Ruba Husari, experte de la revue l’Energy Intelligence Group.
Chevron joins French firm to pursue oil field in Iraq
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×1582996
Perhaps I’m making this too simple. But at a time when stateless middle eastern radical sentiment had visited itself quite aggressively upon a western democracy in a manner that was without precedent — a time when an envious and stronger-developing world watched and waited to see whether America was the dominant hegemon or proverbial “paper tiger” that Osama used to talk about — a time when the untutored masses of the authoritarian world who respect only action awaited confirmation that the world’s single hegemonic power was weak by virtue of democracy — a time that was in fact the opening salvo of what could easily become a clash of civilizations if swift and respected action was not taken — well, let’s just say that Iraq’s great value was (among other things) in asserting that an American President, despite a tolerant government and more than freely expressed opposition, can act swiftly, violently, and disproportionately when provoked. And that, my good folks, was the staunchest defense of the democracy as ever has been summoned, and will benefit the entire world for many years to come. I don’t care what you believe about 9/11. Saddam needed to be made an example of for any number of things — the problem was regrettably that it took 12 years of violated cease-fire agreements and a civilian terrorist attack before America summoned the nerve to tolerate the collateral damage.
To be honest I’m a pretty hawkish person but I became a lot more disillusioned with military intervention after the mess of this conflict. I’m also much more distrustful of flowery predictions and justifications for using military intervention in the future. Especially in the middle east. That place is extremely ass backwards and islam is followed so fanatically there that it makes common sense policies over there seem impossible to achieve.
But at the same time I think we probably learned a lot of valuable lessons about regime change and nation building after the Iraq conflict. So if we ever had to do it again, God forbid, like in response to another large scale terrorist attack on the US then atleast we could probably do a much better job next time.
Ultimately I blame the islamists for this whole conflict in general. People often talk about Americans radicalizing muslims but they never talk about muslims radicalizing Americans. They attacked us first. That made us go apeshit and invade two countries. And if they attack us again we’ll probably do it all over again. So it’s a two way street and it’s one they need to get much more under control than we do.
All we did was build an Airforce base in Saudi Arabia and kick Saddam out of Kuwait, all with the blessings of the arab leaders mind you, and in the mind of the islamists that’s enough justification to behead tourists from our country, kill thousands if not millions of our innocent civilians on purpose and generally declare full scale war on us. Well they got their war. Be careful what you wish for.
The muslim world needs to stop supporting terrorists. Their actions have long term consequences which they don’t seem to care about. If an islamist terrorist gets a nuke or a biological weapon and uses it in an American city what do you think we’re going to do in response? I don’t even want to think about it. God help whoever we focus our rage on. That’s something we should all be working to avoid together. But they keep supporting terrorism.
PM Readers (myself included) are generally going to agree with you. We also have alot we like to read and speed-read. You needed to sum up your conclusions of your cost/benefit analysis at the beginning. The benefits are “what-ifs”……we know that. A benefit I’m hugely a proponent of, is having a strong Democracy in the cradle of the Muslim world. I didn’t see you describing that early. I don’t like to have to wade all around an article to find out what the most important points are. You really should be clear and succinct, right up front in the 1st paragraph, then elaborate and we’ll know what’s coming. Too many writers are messing this up these days, and people don’t have time to read entire articles to find out if there’s something new and thought-provoking. There’s simply too much to read and enjoy.
Yes, excellent post BBM.
“please explain how having mothballed programs that can reconstitute WMD stockpiles in a matter of months is strategically any different for the US and the ME area than weapons stockpiles themselves”
Rolf Ekeus, head of UNSCOM, said in 2003 that Iraq had abandoned the production and storage of WMD in the early nineties. However, WMD programs were not abandoned. Iraq had changed its focus to maintaining and developing a WMD program that could produce WMD on short notice.
And that, according to Ekeus, was the real WMD threat posed by Iraq.
“The disintegration of containment”
Obviously that was in the books. Several members of the UNSC had been advocating lifting of sanctions since the mid-nineties, even as Iraq was busily obstructing weapons inspectors and repeatedly lying in those WMD FFCD.
And the timing of the invasion? It should have been in 1998 as soon as Iraq refused to allow weapons inspectors to return.
At that point in time Iraq was in total breach of 2 of the 3 disarmament provisions: allowing unrestricted weapons inspections and providing UNSCOM with “full, final and complete declarations” of all its WMD programs. And without inspectors having access to sites and vital WMD information, Iraq was probably in violation of the third and final provision, the destruction of all WMD (and associated programs).
“generating more casualties than most had anticipated.”
Excuse me, whut? In the run up to the war, several NGO’s were screaming that we could not possibly invade because, if we did, casualties would run north of 650,000 in the first year alone. -The first year-.
-Everyone- predicted -much much much- higher casualties -before- the war. I can’t think of one single person who predicted less than 5000 American casualties less than 6 years in, or even someone who predicted less casualties among Iraqis. Or who predicted that Iraq would’ve made more political progress in such a short time.
What people -were- predicting was: millions of deaths, war with Turkey, invasion by Iran, a government dominated completely by jihadists, etc. etc. etc.
The performance of our military (and yes, that goes all the way to the top) has been unimaginably awesome. NO ONE predicted an outcome as absolutely fantastic and with as minimal collateral damage as what we actually wound up getting. All the bitching about how horribly the execution was mangled is nothing but an exercise in rocket-propelled goalposts.
Qwinn
Democrats are always wrong on foreign policy and have been since the civil war. Remember they all voted *against* the first gulf war and for the second. So the relevant question is actually, what would have happened if the donkeys had their way and we had not kicked Saddam out of Kuwait and he was instead allowed to consolidate his forces for several years.
Why am I not surprised that our Gallic lady has tried to entice us to links at the BBC and the Democratic Underground in order to justify the arrogance of France that they were right to oppose us?
France is bitter because we smacked down a major ally and client of France: Saddam Hussein. And they feel ashamed, because they didn’t have the testicular fortitude to put their military into the field at Saddam’s side to fight us.
“But what does difficulty or easiness have to do with objective justification? Why do we allow, however subconsciously, the simplicity of an event to modify how we judge its validity?”
The answer to these questions is, “Everything.”
In fact, I’m certain that the Pentagon did cost analyses and projected casualties related to what they believed were the likely scenarios — or perhaps some less likely scenarios. So would the President, much less anyone else, opted for the invasion had he believed it would take at least five years and cost thousands of casalities and a gazillion dollars? I doubt it. He would have chosen another course, even if it was an alternative way to remove Saddam.
I think the major lesson of this experience should be that any such military undertaking should be patterned after the “punitive expeditions” of an earlier time — go in fast and hard with limited goals (say, in this case, ousting Saddam and destroying any Iraqi offensive capability, including WMD, with power handed over to some effective group less likely than Saddam to cause trouble.
(I should add that I did vigorously support the war and never flagged in my support on the grounds that the nation what finish what it starts or retire from the world stage altogether.)
I blog at:
http://thepurplecenter.blogspot.com/
To people who say Iran would have been the correct target.
Please tell me where you would have based the forces for an invasion. In landlocked territories of the Ex-Soviet-Union who can only be suppkied by air? (a single tank by airlift). In Afghanistan? From Balochistan? aka the poorest and with the porrest roads region of Pakistan The fact is that the only half decent base for invading Iran is Irak.
Another factor is that while Iran can and has helped Al Quaeda being a Shia and not Arab country would have not forced Al Quaeda to lift the gauntlet and send jihadists to theiir doom.
As long as we’re talking hypotheticals here, I wonder how history would have unfolded if we had never sold Saddam all the weapons he desired and then turned a blind eye when he blasted the Kurds into oblivion?
http://thewholegardenwillbow.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/rummy2.jpg
re 56:
Hmmm … a D-Day Normandy-like operation from the sea, targeted at Abadan or Bandar Abbas as a bridgehead?
But the casualties for such strike would be order(s) of magnitude greater than in May 2003 against Iraq. Urban warfare is not pretty.
re Marian Kechibar.
D-DAY came to a single demolition team of failing: Omaha Beach (I visited it) is bordered by steep, almost cliff like hills who are difficult to climb for an unemcumbered man and completely unpassable for vehicles. The only exit from the beach is a single 150 yards pass and the Germans had blocked it. If the Americans didn’t manage to blast the barbed wire they would be stranded to die on the beach. Eight demolition teams had been assigned the task. The first seven failed… Also, there was a large port (Cherbourg) conveniently located at the tip of the narrow peninsula of Cotentin so it was “easy” to isolate him by pushing from Utah Beach. I don’t think there is an iranian port who is on a long and narrow cotentin-like peninsula
But you could also have pictured a Tarawa-like operation…
To steven12x
I, know that photo and it means nothing: it is usual between gentlemen to stretch hands even when they have a declaration of war in their pocket… or when they meet to say the other they will give him nothing. Now please show me a single photo of an iraki F16, of an Iraki M60 tank or of an iraki soldier carrying an M16 assault rifle. And look at the cold numbers: the US sales of weapons to Saddam amount to 20, twenty, times less than France’s sales and to more than 30, thirty, times less than either Soviet Union’s or China’s sales. Also I remind you that in the eighties US was stuck between the Iranian rock and the Iraki hard place just like at one point it was stuck between Hitler and Stalin. Are you going to tell that America shouldn’t have aided Soviet Union?
51. tournefort wrote:
And the timing of the invasion? It should have been in 1998 as soon as Iraq refused to allow weapons inspectors to return.
Peter writes: In 1998 I was serving aboard a fast attack sub on deployment in the Gulf. We were scranbked out of our home port almost a month early to be on station for what was expected to be another offensive against Iraq as part of the John C. Stennis battle group. During a port call in Bahrain I even bought a t-shirt ‘advertising’ “Gulf War II” (as if it were a big Hollywood production) that listed almost every US and allied ship in the fleet over there.
As usual, Clinton backed down and we spent six months doing a lot of training but not much else.
Two months after we left Clinton ordered a few Tomahawk missile strikes in Iraq, called Operation Desert Fox, but that did little to deter Saddam or make him comply with sanctions.
If Clinton had paid more attention to Foreign Affairs and less to Oval Office Affairs, we would not have needed to invade Iraq in 2003, and we most likely would NOT have experienced the USS Cole attack or 9/11.
54. fred wrote:
France is bitter because we smacked down a major ally and client of France: Saddam Hussein. And they feel ashamed, because they didn’t have the testicular fortitude to put their military into the field at Saddam’s side to fight us.
Peter asks: Hey, did you hear about the French army rifle for sale on eBay? Never used, dropped once.
peter the bubbledeadhead your 6th sense is fascinating
lets re-do the last election while we are at it
the US sales of weapons to Saddam amount to 20, twenty, times less than France’s sales and to more than 30, thirty, times less than either Soviet Union’s or China’s sales
8. France provided Saddam with extended-range Super Etendard aircraft capable of hitting Iranian oil facilities in the lower Gulf.
so OK, planes are more expensive than “biological materials” and their manufacture (and kill less people, or different technologies on a bill
you are not the “angels” you would like the whole world believes you are, neither us, but we don’t advocate our sanctity
@57
The amount of weapons we sold Saddam were extremely small. In fact our entire arms sales to Saddam probably equated to less than 1% of their entire arsenal. He got most of his arms from the French, Soviets, and the Chinese. Your comment stems from a moronic assertion that just because we sold someone arms or gave someone military aid it makes us responsible for all their subsequent actions. We gave the Soviets lots of aid during WWII. So what? That doesn’t make us responsible for the humanitarian crimes of Stalin. It was simply a pragmatic foreign policy decision. Ditto for giving Osama stinger missiles to shoot down Soviet aircraft in the 80s. Whether or not we sell someone military equipment doesn’t make us responsible for their actions. Especially if it happens decades later. It would be like blaming a gun store owner for handgun murders.
fred
Why am I not surprised that our Gallic lady has tried to entice us to links at the BBC and the Democratic Underground in order to justify the arrogance of France that they were right to oppose us?
did I say “I told you that”, once more you’re working out excuses in your mind, excuse me non rational for a philosopher !!!
BTW, I was just responding on the “usual suspected” allegations that we are the devil face that the Americans see in their mirror
France is bitter because we smacked down a major ally and client of France: Saddam Hussein. And they feel ashamed, because they didn’t have the testicular fortitude to put their military into the field at Saddam’s side to fight us.
Not at all, we are bittered because you spraid all these lies on us and your organised French bashing
escuse-me only you have the fortitudes to accuse us of failing balls, ask the Maghreb, Africa, ME, and yes Afghanistan what they think… might be the raison of the last Cairo terrorist attack !!!
Mrs Marie Claude. Would you mind if I talk of the pure hate French have for Americans, a hate they never had for, say, the Nazis?
Mr Bubblehead? Would you mind if I talk about how the French forced George Washington to surrender, a feat the British were unable to?
This article is exactly right and all the usual lefties spouting the usual inane moveon talking points show that it hit it’s target.
Despite the long list of mistakes and missteps made in getting to this point (as happens in every war), the facts are that Saddam Hussein’s regime started a war of aggression in 1991 and was beaten. He was allowed to stay in power by agreeing to a cease fire which required him to CERTIFIABLY disarm and end WMD programs. He completely failed to keep his end of the deal and the 2003 war was just an end of the first war. You couple the terrible damage that allowing him to go right back to where he was in the 1980′s with the changing nature of terrorism and his support of it, and it should be clear to any thinking person that the choice we made was a necessary one.
That Barack Obama gambled on a cynical position in regards to the Iraq war and the left was able to push it’s dishonest agenda to mislead the public on Iraq to his advantage is another reason why I have little faith in his judgment.
67. JFM wrote:
Mr Bubblehead? Would you mind if I talk about how the French forced George Washington to surrender, a feat the British were unable to?
Peter writes: I don’t understand the question or how it relates to this article.
JFM, WTF has virginian 18th century affairs have to do in that topic ?
is it the reason why you’re advocating them as pure remnent french hate towards the poor ol Americans ?
and BTW, would you mind if Roosvelt hadn’t well acknoledged the Nazy Germany until America got hurted too ?
Roosevelt stated that the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions . . . should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole North African population. He endorsed the same plan for Germany. Limiting the number of Jews in the professions, he stated, would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore toward the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a single part of the population, over 50 per cent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc., in Germany were Jews. 3)
http://kimel.net/fdr.html
JFM, I must say that the french/indian coallition against the british/ virginian Washingtonian coallition wasn’t taught in our history, just Yorktown !!!
now, I understand that the French were defending quite well their positions, (uh, fred, with balls of course,
that the british/virgnian coalition failed to show LMAO, uh, sullied, on which side was the bitter hate ? !!!)
so I update the story :
http://www.fortedwards.org/gwpage.htm
Would I have ordered Iraq invaded?
Well, if we had finished the job in 1991-92, saved the hundreds of thousands of Shia that died during the uprising we fostered and then didn’t support, why sure. We wouldn’t know we had saved their lives, of course, but it was the right thing to do, then and *not* put the word of the United States into a situation where it could be so harshly devalued that guys like bin Laden could point to our unwilling to finish a job as a weakness.
Along that line of thought, I don’t think HW Bush had a real good handle on the affair and would have botched the post-war and then Clinton would get elected to try and figure it out… which would have occupied his time no end, and so keep a raft of poor first term decisions from going on. Clinton would schmooze his way to getting things going, be seen as salvaging Iraq and, generally, had problems getting enough time to do fun things in Somalia, Kosovo and elsewhere because he would have had his hands full.
So, yes, I do support the decision and support the word of the Head of State who is the President in foreign affairs, especially during armed conflicts and wars. It would have been done faster, cheaper, with fewer lives lost and nipped a lot of terrorist training in the bud, plus WMD proliferation by Saddam to al Qaeda. We wouldn’t know that, in that time line, but we probably would have seen far fewer attacks by al Qaeda as they were not set up with funds or manpower to do much of anything in ’91-92. Iran was likewise pretty exhausted after the Iran-Iraq war.
Yes, indeed, I do support the decision to hold a war time leader to his agreements made to get a mere cease fire, and withdrawing the cease fire when he first abrogates them. That would have finished things off pretty quickly and we would be over and done with it by now.
Good article. I don’t think that you deserved the criticism given by the earlier commenters. Didn’t get through all 72 comments, though.
I have been looking for an opportunity to share something that I thought was VERY STRANGE at the new whitehouse.gov website. When you click on “presidents” and click on George W. Bush, there is NOTHING written about the Iraq war!
My 21 year old daughter had this comment:
“What is Obama trying to do…rewrite history?”
Is anyone else bothered to learn about this?
Ok, Mr Bubblehead I agvrede my comment was not adequate to your rant. Here is a better one: it is no wonder the French rifle has never been used, the French prefer using American rifles like the ones they picked after the Americans fled at Kasserine.
Now if you want to continue your racist rants, bring them on.
Ditto for Marie-Claude.
Mme Marie Claude,
First of all, show me the victims of American biological weapons given to Saddam and tell me how he managed to avoid them killing his own troops. In exchange I will tell you about the country who provided him with nukes, pr would have without the Osier
Jeezus, you rightards would find the world much more comprehensible if you stopped imagining it.
JFM,
I suspect that the story about biologicals is one that was covered rather thoroughly by the International Herald Tribune. An American company that supplies bacterial strains to research institutes did send strain samples of anthrax to a lab in Iraq. I believe it occurred sometime in the late 90s. It was a standard order and it was not illegal at the time. Pasteur Institute send similar sample strains at the same time. There were just no flags. Known, characterized strains are essential for controlled reseach experiments. Furthermore, anthrax can be isolated from the soil, so if you aren’t interested in repeatable experiments but just want some nasty bugs, you can get them.
woah, a revisitor of history !!! I like that, history is one of my “dada”
While complete disaster had been averted, the Battle of Kasserine Pass was a humiliating defeat for US forces. Their first major clash with the Germans, the battle showed an enemy superiority in experience and equipment as well as exposed several flaws in the American command structure and doctrine. After the fight, Rommel dismissed American troops as ineffective and felt they did offer a threat to his command.
Rommel was invincible then, finally Montgomery had him later on, though this was a Churchill’s idea to make the unprepare Americans land first in Maghreb :
Americans were eager to punish Japan as 1942 began, but Roosevelt was persuaded by Churchill that a “Europe first” strategy was the only one that made sense, and it did make a lot of sense- for Churchill. The British were bracing for an amphibious invasion (which, as it turns out, never happened). Churchill needed a distraction to divide Hitler’s attention. He calculated that he could use Americans for just such a purpose! Invading Europe directly with green, American troops was deemed unlikely to succeed, as the British had so unpleasantly discovered with the Dunkirk disaster. So, French North Africa was selected as the site for the War’s first major allied offensive, not because that is where the enemy was, but because that was where the enemy wasn’t! American forces were not ready for an opposed landing.
um, the rifles, the Germans got them, cuz the “vichy” maghrebin troops lead by Gl Giraud, (the future american chosen pawn vs de Gaulle though) had already reversed into allied troops !
http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/vichy/empire.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_French
well, saddam used his biological weapons against the Iranians first, then against his Kurdes… tell me which nukes France provided to Saddam (umm with trusful links, I am impatient to learn more of my country history!)
what do you mean with the Osier ?
74. JFM wrote:
Ok, Mr Bubblehead I agvrede my comment was not adequate to your rant. Here is a better one: it is no wonder the French rifle has never been used, the French prefer using American rifles like the ones they picked after the Americans fled at Kasserine.
Peter writes: I still have no clue what this person is writing? Does anyone have a translation into English?
75. Dr Zen wrote:
Jeezus, you rightards would find the world much more comprehensible if you stopped imagining it.
Peter writes: And you leftards would find the world much more livable if you didn’t keep giving it away to people who don’t work for it or would prefer to just kill you for your trouble.
stevent12x:
Not sure your point on the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. Didn’t FDR shake hands with Stalin? Many times? A man that is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions?
As for the support we gave Saddam in the ’80s, it was pretty minimal (which is why all of his tanks and airplanes were RUSSIAN, and his nuclear power plant and missiles were FRENCH, and most of his chemical weapon precoursers were obtained from GERMANY). The minimal assistance we gave Saddam (mainly in the form of intel on the locations and movement of Iranian troop concentrations) was in the context of a possible Iranian revolutionary victory sweeping across the middle east overturning regimes they hated like the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and…oh yeah… ISRAEL.
We gave MUCH more support to the USSR during WWII, a regime that killed tens of millions. But this was in the context of WWII. So it made sense, and was necessary at the time.
and his nuclear power plant and missiles were FRENCH
the missiles Roland were sold between 1983-86, and certainly not after 1990 as far as some rechange pieces ; besides their manufacturation stopped for some part in 1990 and definitely in 1993
http://www.desinfos.com/IMG/article_PDF/article_345.pdf
as far as the nuclear power, I can see how many persons are ignorant about nuclear stuff, (anyway it was Osirak, bombed in 1981 by the Israeli) it is quasi impossible for an idiot like saddam to make bomb out of an uranium stuff made for civil nuclear plant, unless you are an american/candadian system like “candu” that use natural uranium (sold to Pakistan BTW). In any case, the french civil nuclear is not NATURAL, it need a complicated transformation that saddam had no possibility to make. I bet the Israeli knew that too, unless they use “candu” too, hey didn’t they stole the plans from the US ?
anyway, I have posted the links below many times, I expect it won’t be the last…
An American visited our installations in France and tells about the difference between civil nuclear and military nuclear
Atom or nuclear civil energy….
explained to the Dummies.
Many times I had to say about the same things on different blogs. Uh, I live nearby a nuclear site and most of my custommers are nuclear technicians and ingeenors.
William Tucker, in his blog and on “National review”. I like how he tells his travel in France, even with a cliché on our aptitude to “surrender” (as usual)… Well it’s all worth of reading.
I’ve just gotten back from a weeklong tour of France’s major nuclear facilities. It was like wandering around Narnia. Here’s a country that gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear, that doesn’t burn a single ounce of coal or oil, that isn’t uglifying its landscape with giant windmills, that imports only half as much natural gas as Germany and Great Britain, and that is reprocessing all its nuclear fuel both for itself and other countries. One of their biggest projects is taking enriched uranium out of former Soviet weapons and “de-enriching” it down to the level where it is being used for fuel in American reactors. As everyone says, one out of every ten light bulbs in America is now being powered by a former Soviet weapon.
http://terrestrialenergy.org/blog/
Let’s begin by understanding that the scale of the energy stored at the nucleus of the atom is so great — so completely unlike anything in human history — that people are having a hard time understanding it. Everybody thinks of the atom in terms of a big, big bomb. But that’s the wrong approach. You have to think of it as a small, small amount of matter producing almost unimaginable amounts of energy. That’s what makes uranium so easy on the environment — because it takes only a very small quantity of material to produce statewide levels of electrical power.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDIwMjVjMTIyZTQ1NTJhNjM1YzFmZmFmNWVkNDA4ZjE
“Nothing good whatsoever came from us screwing around with Iraq (except for maybe that shoe-throwing bit”.
Oh lookee! Another self centered stooge who could care less whether 25 million Muslims have to live under a brutal dictator(Saddam) or live in a country where they get to choose from 14,000 candidates who governs them. Dude your truly and pathetically uncaring about your fellow man. I’m sure a whole hearted OHM or two would have been your gift to help free Iraq from 25 years of slavery. If your ever getting the life beat out of you I hope no one rescues you, just like you do not really care about helping free Iraqi’s. JERK!
Mr Peter Bubblehead
I thought the link between your assertion that the French rifle was never used and the explanation I gave (use of American rifles dropped at Kasserine) was obvious to anyone. In case you still don’t understand I suggest you get an adult to explain it to you. Now, unlike you I don’t like racist jokes, be it the one you made or my reply, but in case of need be assured that I am able and willing to fight fire with fire.
I think the man who threw the shoes at President Bush, if he had a do-over would have waited until he was in the United States. Like the Germans who found it was better to run toward the Americans rather than the Russians when surrendering, I wonder if that thought went through his head before being carted off. I flinched thinking what was in store for him.
I recall reading that in order to control the Iraqi’s in the south Saddam ould use the rivers flow to contaminate the water and keep the people sickly and under control. I read the children died in droves with dysentery and other ailments.
I also read that the United States was frantic to inoculate the women in Afghanistan because many needed tetanus shots to protect them and their unborn children. The taliban did not see the need for women to seek medical help in time of need. A throw-away people these woman
I think that far left liberals are not necessarily bad, but they don’t like to hear about or learn about the tragedies going on in the world unless of course they can find a way to blame the United States for the cause or to blame them for not doing enough. I think they feel better and function better thinking in three dimensions; me, myself, and I. Anything else and they become very angry, lashing out, not thinking clearly, not curious, grabbing at the easiest explanation so they can go back to their world again.
83. JFM wrote:
I thought the link between your assertion that the French rifle was never used and the explanation I gave (use of American rifles dropped at Kasserine) was obvious to anyone.
Peter writes: I thought it was pretty obvious that I was referring to the French predeliction to simply surrender and capitulate instead of fight for what is theirs.
The lefty world view:
US invaded Iraq: Why did the US do this! Those poor suffering innocent people! The US must be punished!
If US did NOT invade Iraq: Why isn’t the US doing anything? Those poor suffering innocent people! The US must be punished!
cher Mr JFM, you have a curious way to reverse your statement, it was obvious to me that you were ironising on the Frenchs supposed malevolent intentions, while bubble-gum-head was making the usual basic french bashing
The Bush Administration’s work in Africa was often overlooked and ignored until circumstances would force the press or television media to grudgingly acknowledge it, or a photo would surface of a sign reading “Please help us United States” or an African citizen would speak.
The far left people like to see an actor walking through village posing for a photo. It fits their moment in time mentality, and they don’t have to think any further knowing that an attractive American is taking care of and fixing what the evil United States Government has wreaked upon the world. So much easier to point out the bad and mistakes in order to feel better and justified with their rabid hatred.
Such a safe little world this me, myself, and I, especially under the protection of the United States.
87. Marie Claude wrote:
cher Mr JFM, you have a curious way to reverse your statement, it was obvious to me that you were ironising on the Frenchs supposed malevolent intentions, while bubble-gum-head was making the usual basic french bashing
Peter writes: Who’s bashing the French? Just pointing out it has been over 200 years since they helped us when called, but it seems we need to dig their country out of holes of their own making every few years for the entire 20th century and beyond.
peter void head, stop talking horse s***t get a life, why don’t you open some good history books instead of trying to find unwitted jokes !!!
90. Marie Claude wrote:
peter void head, stop talking horse s***t get a life, why don’t you open some good history books instead of trying to find unwitted jokes !!!
Peter writes: World War One we saved your @$$. World War II we saved your @$$ AGAIN. No help from the French when the US needed to pass through airspace to fight the Lybians in the 80′s. No help from the French in 91. No help frin the French in 2001. No help form the French in 2003.
Yeah, real funny jokes I read.
Try opening a REAL history book some time toots.
Now, back on topic and off the Frenchies.
Obviously the world, and the middle east, is much better off BECAUSE of US actions in 2003 than it would be without. Without US action to back up INNUMERABLE UN sanctions that the UN was not man enough to enforce ON ITS OWN, the area of the Persian Gulf would likely be a mile-deep dung pit right now.
Chèere Mademoiselle Marie-Claude your dear ex-president Chirac told it lou dand clear when he was PM in the 70s: that he saw no problem in Irak getting nukes. Now I will tell you a dirty little secret: Natural Uranium is composed of basically useless as fuel U-238 and a small part of U-235 (the thing who generates energy). Separating the U-235 from the U-238 is very difficult and costly because they are chemically identical so you have to resort to complex and costly physical technologies based on the fact that the U-235 atom is slightly lighter and smaller. Probably too difficult for Irak. But when you run an uranium reactor, any
uranium reactor, part of the uranium becomes plutonium. And separating uranium from plutonium is trivial (chemical process). And for making a workable bomb, it is easy enough that it was made as a project by an undergraduate Physics or Engineering student in the 70s. His design was inspected by experts and they agreed it would work… provided he had enough fissile material, that is plutonium or enriched uranium.
And now I will tell you another secret, you have been lied to. Osirak wasn’t a natural uranium reactor, it used uranium enriched to 93%, ie 7% of U-238 and 93% of the thing who goes boom and France provided the fuel.
yeah, gargle yourself, if that makes you feel better, I fucin don’t care
so what ? chere Mr JFM, at this time Saddam was the best Allie that the US and the western world could possibly dream of, he was making war to the evil Iranians
“And separating uranium from plutonium is trivial” uh ???
But that’s not the real irony. The most preposterous thing is you can’t build a bomb from the plutonium in a commercial reactor. You have to build a special reactor for making only bomb material. (That’s what the Russians were doing at Chernobyl.) The reason is this. There are four plutonium isotopes produced in a commercial reactor. Only one of them — Pu-239 — can be used to make a bomb. The others are too fissionable or not fissionable enough. They “poison” the chain reaction by going off too slowly or too quickly. At best you can get a bomb maybe big enough to blow up a single building. (The terrorists have already figured out how to do this with airplanes.) In order to separate the plutonium isotopes, you’d have to build an enrichment plant far more complicated than the ones used to enrich uranium. Nobody has ever done it. So plutonium from our reactors is essentially useless, except for producing more electricity.
William Tucker
Hmmmm. Nuclear power, nuclear waste. Hmmmm What to do with it.
Ah oh. My mind is getting dirty…..better not go there.
What a terribly inept article.
For better or worse, here’s the more likely scenario, based in the current state of knowledge and established historical precedents.
1) Saddam was a spent force. This was a guy in his sixties who spent more of his time writing arabic romance novels than he attending cabinet meetings. His regime was on autopilot, taking almost no measures to deal with the prospective American invasion. It was rotten to the core and holding itself together through repression and corruption. Saddam had long ago exterminated every potential rival and successor within his organisation. His annointed sons had no power base of their own and no support.
2) There were not going to be any more wars. He’d already picked his low hanging fruit: ie, a tiny nation on his border: Kuwait; and a large country in the throes of internal collapse: Iran. Both were disasters. He wasn’t going to go after Kuwait again. He was in terror of Iran. As to the other countries on his border: Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia were simply not viable targets.
3) The argument that Saddam had anything to do with the original WTC bombing or 9/11 is wacky conspiracy theory stuff not worthy of being spit upon. Saddam and his organisation had no operational ties to or support of international terrorist organisations like Al Quaeda. His dabbling in support of Fatah and Hamas was minimal and aimed at salvaging some Islamic street cred.
4) There is no evidence that a secularist regime like Iraq would have forseeably allied with or supported fundamentalist terrorists like Al Quaeda. The two were bitter enemies, as Quaddaffi demonstrated in Libya, or Assad of Syria demonstrated in the Syrian town of Hama.
5) The most likely outcome would be that Saddam Hussein would have continued to rule a creaky and ineffective Iraq, maintaining some form of internal stability.
6) To the extent that there was a viable role model for him anywhere in the world, that was Quaddaffi, the tyrant who came in from the cold, or perhaps Sadat, the Egyptian peacemaker – both of whom where dictatorial modernising secularists in the Baathist mold. He might have been prepared to offer economic or political liberalisation in return for easing of sanctions. However, its not clear that economic sanctions were ever going to be lifted.
9) A possible outcome is that efforts at liberalisation might well have undermined his regime – as with the Shah in Iran, Suharto in Indonesia, Marcos in the Phillipines, or Pinochet in Chile. All of these tyrants found that letting a little freedom out of the bottle was difficult to do. But of course, thats dependent on liberalisation for which there was little incentive.
9) If Saddam dies or retires, then succession in Dictatorship is problematic. Both Assad and Duvalier attempted to pass it on to their sons. Sadat was replaced by Mubarak. Trujillo was replaced by democracy. Most strongmen eventually give way to a free society.
10) Saddam was more like Duvalier in this case, than Sadat or Assad. Both Sadat and Assad were merely the top members of viable organisations which could sustain the regime and produce replacement leaders. When they went, there were powerful players waiting in the wings. With Saddam, as with Trujillo, Duvalier and Franco, there’s nothing… In eliminating any possible opposition, and any possible rival, and any possible internal threat, he’s eliminated any replacement. There’s no team, no one else with their own power bases, nothing to carry on. Instead power is passed on to an impotent heir, who lacks the old man’s authority, connections and ability.
11) Within a year or two of Saddam’s passing, the Iraqi people would have struggled their way to Democracy on their own.
And if you believe #98 I’ve got some land in Florida…..
We already have had our share of speculators thank you skeptic. Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction. He can’t threaten with them, he can’t lie about them, he can’t use them on the Iraqi People or anyone else. He can’t have the United Nations dancing to his your in your out beat.
His sons won’t take over. He is not around to wonder about for the next ten to twenty years getting older crazier and more of a puppet for some other evil creep to pull his strings. It’s over for Saddam Hussein no matter how you want to resurrect him into some harmless doddering old man who’s family affectionately laughs about and nods their heads, as he fades away ushering in a new age of freedom and democracy for Iraq.
98. Skeptic wrote:
11) Within a year or two of Saddam’s passing, the Iraqi people would have struggled their way to Democracy on their own.
Peter writes: Unlikely. If Saddam’s sons did not take over (and they were both worse than their dad), the power vacuum would have been filled by the Mullahs of Iran. And we would be in an even worse state in the Gulf region than we are now. Gas prices would likely be $10 per gallon and shooting higher, religious violence would be breaking out all over the region, and likely al Qaeda would have another even bigger area to set up their training grounds in, making like for Americans even worse in years to come.
Skeptic, I read your comments more seriously than I read most of the comments from lefties because you obviously actually thought about them, and I think they deserve to be taken seriously. You are correct in your formulations regarding “Islamic street cred” I think, and you are correct that the Uday Qusay rear-entry torture party would not have lasted.
You’re wrong in your estimation of Saddam’s motives, because you do not acknowledge that Saddam had some pan-Arab, tyrant-style goals that created the need for “Islamic street cred” in the first place. Usurping Iran and dominating the pussified greater Middle East was on the agenda. He certainly wasn’t after the Islamic street cred to maintain order amongst an Islamic population, as he simply killed all who crossed him, that’s how strongmen roll and he was quite good at it. Why else would a secularist desire Islamic support, if this is not a manifestation of aspirations for regional dominance? He certainly wouldn’t have spent his time growing old Quaddafyi-style, and if you read his bio you will see he is made of more sociopathic steel than Q is.
You are also wrong in your conclusions. Peter is quite correct, no way a headless former dictatorial state in an area of authoritarian religion would have “struggled” towards democracy. Particularly with Iranian meddling, but also without it. No inbred monarchy to fall back on and all.
And most of all, Lynn is quite correct that we don’t get to find out, and that the world and Iraq are much better off. W was right to go into Iraq, but the right involves more generalities on how the US needs to follow up on its commitments and demonstrate aggression every now and again to keep the heathens in line. All clearly identified challenges to the US must be swiftly dispatched if the world order is to be maintained, and all humans are safer because of that.
so what ? chere Mr JFM, at this time Saddam was the best Allie that the US and the western world could possibly dream of, he was making war to the evil Iranians
First of all, if you are French it is funny you use chere and Mr together. Second, the Osirak contract was signed several years before the Iran-Irak war, in fact the Shah was still in power. So it was not “so what?”, so Chirac and Giscard were happy to put nukes in the hands of Saddam. For a price, athbing even the Soviets hadn’t done. Just continuing France’s long tradition of siding with mustached genociders be they Hitler (Petain), Stalin (de Gaulle) or Saddam (Chirac, Giscard).
Mr Bubblehead
I would like to close this chapter because in case you haven’t noticed we agree on the essential: Bush was right.
But I take the liberty to remind you that the French are in Afghanistan and, while their presence is not as large and active as the British one, they aren’t sitting on their a..s sipping beer and getting fat (cf a German report about German soldiers in Afghanistan becoming overweight) hundreds of miles away from Taliban territory like the Germans. In fact ten French soldiers were killed just a couple of months ago. Please refrain from spitting on their graves or making jokes about dropped rifles.
“so Chirac and Giscard were happy to put nukes in the hands of Saddam. For a price, athbing even the Soviets hadn’t done. Just continuing France’s long tradition of siding with mustached genociders be they Hitler (Petain), Stalin (de Gaulle) or Saddam (Chirac, Giscard).”
world first arms trader : America, 2nd Russia, 3rd China, 4th UK, 5th France, 6th Germany…
OK, I see, “chere” was a typo, escuse-me Monsieur the details lover !
Yeah, the Shah should have never been removed by the Americans, thus Saddam would have had no motive to make war with Iran, unless CIA pushed him, he owed American his position too. Umm, traditionally siding mustached genociders ain’t only a french privilege, you can investigate any government changes in latin America and see CIA hand behind, OK you also tried the muslim world, that is not so easy to control.
Chere JFM, you can’t twist the history facts to fit your angelic consciousness, cuz America sided Hitler too, until she got hitted. Hitler was making war against the commies and that was what prevailed for capitalist Americans. Had Churchill not been so convinceful, Roosevelt would never have thought of helping us, it was not his prime worry to consider that Europe turned fashist and or nazy, so long that didn’t empech him to trade with her, and Jews’ fate didn’t enter in his considerations either.
So your are not in the moral position to lecture the French.
BTW you should return untill Charlemagne, he, we made wars and alliance then, and was it a good intervention that these bloody french bastardised Vickings invaded the anglo-saxon barbarians ???
The whole history is full of interests conflicts, hardly of good feelings, ah yes the crusades, in appearence, cuz ask the Jews, ask the populations that the crusaders subjugated if they think it was ment to deliver them from an evil occupation.
Mademoiselle Marie Claude
First time you used chere I thought it was a typo. I thought it was funny because unlike me you make few of them. But you have used chere a second time despite assumming, rightly, that I am a he. So you are definitely not French and in fact your mastery of the language is not very good. I suggest you attend a Berlitz school, buy a good computer assisted course or search the Internet for a free one before you try again to pass for a French
So because you are not a French but just a, probably male, American rich white kid who has read too many Chomsky books during the time he spent in a soft science class it is of no use I either defend America or expose France’s own shameful actions (eg Rwanda). I also notice that time and again you have changed subjects (eg about the date of the Osirak contract). That is not what honest people do. That is what trolls do. I am willing to discuss with honest people who happen to have different ideas but not with trolls.
JFM, you’re not a male from what I can understand of your writings LMAO
uh, lots of people here, and a few more conservative blogs can attest that I am french and a Madame. I have had many undecent propositions because french sex is seen “kinky” across the pond by puritan christian Americans LMAO
I see that you want to win on the BS monopoly, but I can counter your dires, and if you’re setting Rwanda, your not clean either
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/index.html
If you are French then you know what the poet asks time to do, where hope switched sides and who gets to bed early. (the later is very, very easy).
In winter I get up at night
And dress by Yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
How beautiful the sun is when it rises, all fresh,
Hurling out to us “good day,” like an explosion!
– Happy is he who can also lovingly
Salute its setting, more glorious than a dream!
I remember! … I saw everything: flower, spring, furrow,
Swoon under its eye, like a palpitating heart …
– It is late. Run toward the horizon, run quickly!
So that we may catch at least a last slanting sunbeam!
But I pursue in vain the departing God;
Irresistible Night establishes its empire,
Black, damp, deadly, so full of shivering;
An odor of the grave floats in the darkness,
And at the edge of a swamp my fearful foot
Wounds unexpected toads and cold snails.
The war should never hve taken place while the true perpetrators of 911 were (are) still at large. Much of our current economic criis can be tied directly to our paticipation in this war.
To imagine one day without Saddam Hussein
is to imagine one less
tortured
maimed
abused
fearful
soul
and perhaps the sun shines on a soul
not tortured, maimed, abused, fearful
Some would rather the sun not shine on the deeds of a monster
for fear their peaceful slumber
will be interrupted by a little chill
that touches their nape
causing them to wonder
what if it were I
who’s hungry gaze that monsters eyes rest upon
Miss Marie Claude
You try to pass as a French but don’t know French litterature 101. Agreed the question about the poet was very hard but you only needed to translate into French “hope switched sides” and do a google search to know it was an exert from Victor Hugo’s poem about Waterloo and had you been French “Who got to bed early?” “Qui s’est couché de bonne heure?” would have brought you memories of “Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure” who is the most famous sentence in French littérature.
Also puritan christian Americans believe, wrongly, that French women’s hygiene is as bad as in 1944 when soap was rationed (1), therefore only in your dreams they would make you indecent proposals.
(1) At least that (poor hygiene) is what GIs told their wives and girlfriends when they went home.
JFM, you must be one of those old skunks that I met elsewhere on the net, and you perfectly knew that I am frech, otherwise you wouldn’t have written such rubbich non senses.
GI were not allowed to touch french women, though they were allowed to brothels, otherwise, as individuals some of them thought that they had the right to rape them, as it was said that we were a “defeated collaborative nation”, therefore the valorous Dday warriors took that for graunted to make what they wanted as “Le Repos du guerrier” ; it was worst for Germany though.
But they wouldn’t have thought of such a behaviour if some people like you hadn’t spraid their “biased objective truths”
Though, your right soap was rationed, it was explained in the booklet that was ordered for the GI education after that the french population had complained that the “warriors” were messing around to the american authorities
http://www.112gripes.com/45.html
about the rapes :
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121793,00.html
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=26324
http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_REVUE=VING&ID_NUMPUBLIE=VIN_075&ID_ARTICLE=VING_075_0109
At least that (poor hygiene) is what GIs told their wives and girlfriends when they went home
I suppose one of them told you to wash too
About Victor Hugo, your translation was so poor, that your sentence could many thing, in particular, considerating your former I thought that you ment that the French are the usual appeaser suspectsAnyway, Victor Hugo is the main french “poet” that is taught in the american schools.
I am surprised that such an educated person passed my second quote from Baudelaire
As far as my tangible “dreams”, LMAO, I’m not from the women rights, just that I found them funny
Mister Marie Clause
My translation was voluntarily bad. Had I used “hope changed sides” you would have been able to google it so I used a bad one (in the poetic sense) but who translated the same so a person translating it into French would instantly recognize it in case he was French (the verse is so famous it appears in Asterix in parodic form) or find it in google in case he weren’t. Provided he/she ws able to translate it into French. Also you should have been able to answer the early to bed sentence. Fear of never finding again the time spent searching?
For GIs not being allowed to touch French women, that is what the women told their husbands and beaus when they returned from captivity. I refer you to the (true) story in the movie “Catch me if you can” (his father knew his mother in 1944), to the book “Is Paris burning?” and to the semi-biographical “Journal a quatre mains” from Benoite and Flora Groult for examples of intimate relations between GIs and french women in 1944
well among the whole lot of sex stories, there also happened some true love’s. I refute your last paragraph that still is cliché that you like to propagate. I wouldn’t put too much credit into novels, even if they are built around a true fact, the truth is not their leit-motiv, but writing a mediatisable and selling story , it’s not like inquiries.
as far as your obsession about Victor Hugo, I couldn’t care less, he is not my favorite poet, author, or whatever, just that he is a top figure of french litterature in anglo-saxon spheres. and I don’t pretend to be an expert (or a library) of the whole french production, as my interests are dispatched in different humanity disciplines
Besides, you, or another person of your style, already set up this Victor Hugo sentence on board (somewhere else)
and I am sure that we already met on the net
Misterr Marie Claude
I saw no need to tell you it was a Baudelaire poem because it is not me but you who is trying to pass for a French. To be honest I didn’t remember the poem and I found it through google. Now I wouldn’t even think in using a such poem for checking if you are really French because Baudelaire’s poems are not widely read and despite their quality have no catchy verses who stick in the mind. That is not true of Victor Hugo’s poem about Waterloo who is in high school text books and the verse “hope changed sides, fight changed soul” is from time to time quoted in reports about sport events. The fact you were unable to find the answer plus the trivial syntax errors settles the question: you are not French.
That is why I see no need to detail about French Army’s policy of tolerance for looting and rape by its colonial troops in Italy or rapes perpetrated by the resistance (both in its national communist form and in its 25th hour form) and the fact that more than one woman thought it was less dangerous to say she had been raped by americans than by resistants or that in those times were out of wedlock and interracial sex were not accepted told she had been raped when she found she was pregnant from an African-American soldier (that is why a very high proportion of reported rapes alleged of Blacks as perpetrators). I would not mention either that the highest numbers (that is you have to apply them a deflator) tell of 3620 rapes and that the perpetrators faced execution There were 300,000 in Berlin alone by French-cherished Soviet soldiers and that this was encouraged by the favorite allies of the French (cf Russian press and radio spreading Ehrenburg’s then Stalin’s favorite poet call to “break the racial pride of the German woman”)
Now I will no longer answer your trollings.
you’re a joke who would never admit he is wrong
BTW I also thought of not carrying on feeding you, funny nah !!!
“I saw no need to tell you it was a Baudelaire poem because it is not me but you who is trying to pass for a French.”
J’ai l’impression, Monsieur “I for Me” ou “Je pour moi” que vous n’êtes pas très doué pour decrypter derrière les lignes. Il est vrai que j’ai souvent tendance à utiliser un vocabulaire ” guerrier”, cela est dû au fait que j’ai acquis de l’expérience à me défendre, ou défendre l’honneur de mes concitoyens sur divers sites américains.
J’ai cependant apprécié que vous preniez à coeur le courage de nos soldants et ne nous ayez pas traité de poltrons, en revanche je vous ai répondu sur vos allégations de “traitrise” de la part de nos élites polititiennes qui n’ont rien à envier au talent des élites américaines, à qui on peut reprocher les mêmes stratégies. Il est un fait que nos intérêts ont souvent été en concurrence depuis la confrontration des deux fortes personnalités, Roosvelt et De Gaulle, le dernier ayant le sentiment d’incarner la France de toujours.
Contrairement à ce que vous avez déduit de mes écrits, je suis bien une femme. Cela étant, j’ai toujours fait attention à ce que ça ne soit pas évident à déceler dans ma façon de m’exprimer, donc être français d’abord me semblait plus consitant.
A part cela, j’ai relu votre analyse du possible panarabisme de Saddam, votre scenario est intéressant, ça voudrait dire que Saddam avait la secrète ambition de recréer la grande Arabie qui avait été promise par Lawrence, umm, possible effectivement, mais difficilement réalisable dans le contexte geopolitique où il vivait, et encore moins aujourd’hui avec un Iran plus puissant. Moi je crois que vous avez fait la guerre des Saoudiens, qui avaient tout à craindre d’un Saddam fort.
__________________________________
I don’t deny the rapes that were committed by our colonial troops in Italy, though no Maghrebin would acknoledge it nowadays.
Also the resistance, or, precisely, the commies resistants, I am not aware of the facts, it is rather surprising ; they are not known for their anarchic behaviour, but well organised’s and or framed’s by their “komissars”. If you have some links or books to advise me, I would be glad to educate myself.
About the real number of rapes committed by the American troops, Robert Lilly, himself, said that we will never know exactly, only 4% were decleared, he also said that the others, wether they felt ashamed, or fear, or not worthy ; this is the history “holes” and subject to suppositions.
Germany encountered lots more cases by both armies, the soviets were by all means the worst.
I notice that you couldn’t, help but insert your last teasing at the end of your rant,
we were not more the soviet army friends than your country was, who helped Stalin to arm ; “break the racial pride of the german woman” is a motto that could be applied for any conquering army, (I give you a bone, that was also what did some of our soldiers in Algeria). I also must acknowledge that the american army wasn’t so bad, the percentage of rapes was very low comparatively.
I consider that faulting the children for the crimes or failures of the fathers is a form of racism so it was natural to counter Mr Bubblehead. Notice that this also applies to French bashing Americans (for many of them their ancestors were still in Europe) their XIXth century history and feigning to give a hoot about Indians or Blacks.
About De Gaulle, if you read his book about the war you will notice that the part about doing something against the Germans is about 10 pages long and the part about being a pain in the a.. to the Allies is 490 pages long. Also keeping in mind that it was Soviet Union’s backstabbing of Poland who made 1940 possible and French Communist Party’s action of defeatist propaganda, sabotaging of tanks and delaying aircraft production then de Gaulle’s shadowy delings with the communists and Stalin appear as selling his soul for grabbing power.
Notice that I consider FDR a first-class bastard too with his dreams about remaking Europe’s map, his concessions to Stalin, making a recession into a depression and leading America on a collision course against Geramany and Japan while letting US Armed fores wither on the vine leading to many unnecessary American deaths when through inferior planes, tanks and torpedoes who didn’t explode.
Lawrence’s vision of Greater Arabia was limited to Middle East. Saddam’s one reached the Atlantic.
I don’t understand well your 2nd sentence of the first paragraph, could you be a bit more clear ?
I haven’t read De Gaulle’s book about the war, but a few biographies of him.
My reflexion, if de Gaulle didn’t spoke that much of the Germans in the war, it is because as being an expat in London, he life was more of the anglo-saxon side, as far as writing his memories. He had to bear the disdain of the leading class and fight every day for his cause ; Churchill adopted him, because he need someone from France to justify his strategy with Roosvelt ; de Gaulle wouldn’t have been his natural choice, he would have preferred a more docile “resistant”, also his contacts with Roosvelt never were trustful too, even more contempt perspired from him.
Besides De Gaulle had already spoken of Germany in his previous books. He was prisonner in WW1, in 1932, he wrote a book on what should be a new army, and advocated the nessecity of motorisation, tanks. The german responsible of the army had read it, as so an english one, and took the ideas from these 2 books for modernazing the german army. De Gaulle submitted his ideas to the french “Etat-Major”, but was rejected, the old officers preferred to focus on the Maginot line, cuz that was where that the Germans always attacked us.
see, here, De Gaulle is getting some credit :
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/the_golden_anniversary_of_de_g.html
Also keeping in mind that it was Soviet Union’s backstabbing of Poland who made 1940 possible and French Communist Party’s action of defeatist propaganda, sabotaging of tanks and delaying aircraft production then de Gaulle’s shadowy delings with the communists and Stalin appear as selling his soul for grabbing power.
I don’t think that his first thought was to look towards Stalin, remember he was a convinced christian. Though he did say to Churchill, that if he carried on delaying to give him some help, he would turn towards Russia.
WEll I don’t know about our communists sabotaging and delaying our aircraft production, if you have any link, or book to advise me…
The fact that de Gaulle gave credit to the communists, is because they were numerous in the Resistance, as reliant and organised fighters, they may had the idea that a communist government was indeed what they fought for. So his first government was a reward for the Resistants, of all parties, he considered that he had to unify the whole population, to reconstruct France. The objective was to get quick on business, before the British and the Americans imposed their puppet (Giraud was their wish, an ex Vichy officer though). This government had a short life, he resigned soon, then the commies went out too.
I can see that the vision of history is different wether one lives on one side or the other side of the pond. I hope, that one day, when the passions will be over that some “synthèse” will be done, and not evidently on our disfavor
cuz Roosvelt malevolence has done enough for the mutual bitterness
About Communist betrayal in 1940 a good source is Alistair Horne’s book “To lose a battle. France 1940″ also “Le Monde” in 2008 or 2007 published extracts from the submission to German authorities for lifting the ban on “l’Humanité”. In it the communists gave details about their work at easying the job for their German friends. Finally because I am a warbird fan I read lots about WWII planes and stumbled upon an article where French pilots told having been sent to Toulouse in order to get new planes and finding that none was available due to wagons transporting parts being “lost” for weeks through the action of railroad employees who sent them hundreds of miles away of their intended destination. Keept it in mind next time you see one of those newsreels where Stukas blow French tanks sky high.
About rapes by resistants in 1944 look in Le Point web site in the period between June 2004 (60th aniversary of D-DAY) and September 2004 (Liberation of Paris). Here I will teach you “Revolution 101″: in order to ensure the triumph of a revolution you first involve a lot of people into a seemly worthy action against the opposition (eg taking the Bastille) then you manage for something heinous crime to be perpetrated (eg beheading the governor who has opened the doors) so now every participant, every bystander fears for his life in case law and order is restored.
About rapes by armies. There will ever be a number of rapes when a large number of young males are assembled at specially when they are being shot at and specially if they are in enemy territory and the women around re country-women from the shooters. There are bastards everywhere and danger can reveal the darkest corners in human soul. What is significant is not merely the numbers (higher when your army is made of “uncivilized” soldiers) but what commanders do about it: the French looked the other way when native troops to have a bit of “fun” beliveing this made them fight better thus displaying how much they despised those who were fighting for them, how little they cared about laws of war and how morally corrupt they were. Americangs hang rapers. For the Soviets despite what apologists say Russian rapes in Germany were not spontaneous rapes in revenge for previous German atrocities. They were being encouraged to it by their own officers, by their own authorities and Soviet soldiers were as ruthless and savage in every country they occupied, even in theoretical allies like Czechoslowakia. Perhaps it was in order to break spirit of resistance in the population of future satellites, perhaps in order, in case there was a war with the allies to force their soldiers to fight instead of surrendering massively like they did in 1941 but the fact remains that it was intended by authorities.
This makes De Gaulle’s attitude and even nowadays, praise of Soviet Union’s role in WWII by French people still more repellent. For the assertion “we owe a lot to Soviet Union” by a French interviewee during the D-Day calebrations, my personal answer is “Nothing! France would have not been occupied in the first place without the unholy alliance between Hitler and Stalin:”.
Also you fault America for providing weapons to Stalin. I remind you that given the enormous difficulty of an amphibious operation and the disadvantage the landing force will be for weeks after it without those weapons given to Stalin you would be speaking German now. While you are at it you can also fault America for feeding France for a couple years after war and providing it with, between other things providing the thousands of locomotives she needed: en econmy will not go far, people will not get fed if you can’t supply your factories, transport fertilizers to countryside and agricultural products to cities. Not to mention that Americans ciold/should have forced you to pay your share of the bill for Cold War or abandon you to the tender mercies of the Red Army.
Writtings on wars so far were not of my favorites readings, umm, I might become an “enlightened” (umm) at the end of my life :p
I look for the amazon description of Alister Horne’s book on the net, couldn’t find much interesting things. Well the facts about the communists were never put ahead by our medias, OK, the unions surveyed ! Being a communist in my high school wasn’t regarded as a “sin”, for the “priced” (philosophy, sports) teachers were commies, but not virulent, a sort of warrior legend halo was surrounding their personality.
I believe you can read french, in this link there are at 2 articles concerning the french aviation and de Gaulle engagements in the battle of France :
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/histoire-militaire/bataille_secondeguerremondiale.htm
and a general analyse of it until the british retreat of Dunkeerque
http://secondeguerre.net/articles/evenements/ou/40/ev_campagnefrance.html
about the cafarnaum that the battle of Dunkeerque was, there is this movie, “Week-end à Zuydcoote”, that I conveniently watched last week on TV, the leit-motiv idea is that the French felt abandonned to their fate by the British
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Week-end+%C3%A0+Zuydcoote&aq=f
“Revolution 101″, I didn’t know the expression, umm yours was “tea party”, sumthin tells me that they are becoming commun these days :p
There are many things that the French don’t question, De Gaulle gave us our identity back and may-be the honnor too, something without you can’t go further in your life. As being born in the countryside of Brittany, I have no souvenir of anyone in my family that was compromised with the Vichy government, they were “simple” persons, that none cared about in normal times, that only work for their surviving with the produces of their soil, and practicing their religion. Of course they had a better life than those in the cities, they could eat each day. I don’t remember having heard stories on collaborators in the aeras too, Brittany seemed spared from the tohu-bohu franco-français, we were seens as a kind of uneducated and rough french colony from a parisian perspective, though that provided the canons meat for each war.
Well de Gaulle had hard time to be listened by his anglo-saxons alliees, therefore he had to count on every potential help as a good stategist, the Russians came into his frame. And yes the alliance russo-germanique was diabolic. Until Stalin decleared war on germany, our commies were quiet.
Uh, I speak german :p, though I don’t think that Hitler would have removed our language, France was the land of Vacations for the german warriors,(as she still is for the world nowadays) and most likely there would have been some crual guerillas, probably severely reprimed. It would have taken much longer to get rid of the german occupation, and Stalin would have managed it, like Hitler he would have taken France for a vacations land for the soviet nomenklatura. He said, when he was proposed the Marshall plan too, that he had no interest to subordon our country (western Europe)under a severe communist regime, he need the kind of “free” country for trading purposes with the western world, ie the US.
yeah, you feed us, with locomotives, coca-cola… hollywood advertising for the american dream
cuz you wanted to make of us the show-window for the capitalist values vs communist’s, that Berlin became later on. Also your bomb had destroyed most of our infrastructures, and if your country wanted to make of us a future commercial partner, it was evident for your authorities that they had to help to repear the dammages, eh mind the sovietisation 
the French looked the other way when native troops to have a bit of “fun”
I don’t know the whole story, these things are generally not told, some “consensual” silence was de rigueur in our army, isn’t it called “la muette” ? Though these colonial troops were under americano-british commandement, Patton was one famous one I believe, I suppose he had the same regard as you that related of the French for the kinds : they are of those bloody barbarian French and their daemons !
Like for the russian armies, rapes were part of the arms in Algeria too, subjuggate a rebel population
Were you in the US army as a warbird fan ?
I wonder what you would say about this article :
Why is intuition so fundamental? Because all human beings are experts at life. And like all experts, most of their knowledge is intuitive, not something you can write down into a large tome like Das Kapital. Edmund Burke noticed with remarkable insight that French politics of the Revolution was run by intellectuals, who tried to reason out every step of the process. The result was an utter disaster.
After the Terror, with heads tumbling from the guillotine, Napoleon rose to power. He proclaimed himself Emperor — are you listening, Obama? — and led Europe into the most destructive continental war in two centuries. The Napoleonic wars were the first real wars. What Burke understood is that the intellectual arrogance of the French revolutionaries led straight to disaster. We have seen that pattern over and over and over again since that time. Hitler was an Austrian intellectual, who wrote his manifesto in jail. Lenin was a Russian intellectual. Marx was a German intellectual. Obama … yes.
Burke’s intuitionism is an extraordinary political philosophy. Historically it has been far more humane and successful than any airy intellectual confections whipped up by the French pastry chefs of revolutionary academe. Compare Winston Churchill to Jozef Stalin — another intellectual who lectured the world on linguistics — and you get the idea.
my response :
umm, his intuitionism was how to keep a class power for no changes, umm then, was it burkish to bring democraty by force to the Iraki ? uh, our intellectual pastries also are in your menu, and bizarre, french Bakerei opened everywhere in the world, more than rancid Burkerei, I wonder why, a guess,the french touch !!! LMAO
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/obama_appoints_rush_limbaugh_l.html
my intervention :
Edmund Burke noticed with remarkable insight that French politics of the Revolution was run by intellectuals, who tried to reason out every step of the process. The result was an utter disaster. ???? not quite, we’re still alive and worring you by not complying to the dominant power since 1945. While you may vanish as a supposed “moral” and markets aggressive superpower, we still innovate and enjoy the “joie de vivre”
BUT the American Revolution was run by the same intellectuals before that France started her own’s, the difference occured at the avenment of “Terror”, or “Revolution 101″ (I just discovered the term), rather due to contextual climate, economical, and political events, than to the abstract flight of fancy ideas of universalism
umm, Burke was afraid of any change, kind of pro statu-quo of a man in his ivory tower of privilegieds, that doen’t like “le bruit et la fureur” of the “populace”, whose will was to get more justice ; though he wasn’t French, he lived in a country where parliament was a conter power to the greediness of the nobles, therefore where people were in use to discuss concret laws and projects, while it was forbidden to the French, jansenist religiosity was a gangue that didn’t allow to think other than that of the catholic priests (that Voltaire his life long), who also were the best supports of the ancient regime abuses. So no wonder that the ideas went above these tight borders. Suppose Burke was born in France, say, on which side he would have stand ? I bet he would have been more radical than the radical revolutionnaires.
Hitler was an Austrian intellectual ach so ??? I thought he got intuitions from Thule secret society
someone left the salon,
umm I have been searching Alistair Horne s’book, not in the french stores ! got one ofMarc Bloch “l’étrange défaite”, if it is “instuctive”, I project to buyhis “L’histoire, la guerre, la résistance”, otherwise I found another curious book, from Shlomo Sand, “Comment le peuple juif fut inventé”.
I realised there that there are many things that I took for graunted and not questionable, though their hidden faces for good raison were kept secret.
While I still will stand my position as French defenser, I’m not holding their whole history as integrally moral.