Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology

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Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
OP - February 07, 2010, 07:51 PM

Hi All,

I'd like your opinion on the basis of the Iraq war. I was a teenager at the time it started and knew there wasn't any WMD, and felt the war was unjustified. Now with all the inquiries, this is even more blatantly obvious. But, although back then I was against the war, I think Bush and Blair were right to go in, for neoconvervatist reasons.

Blair will still be defiant. It appears spin is only the real way to move the majority in a democracy when perhaps they won't buy a preemptive war.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #1 - February 07, 2010, 08:30 PM

Quote from: HighOctane on February 07, 2010, 07:51 PM
... and knew there wasn't any WMD, ...

Well Iraq clearly did have WMD in the '80; they did use them on Kurds. However whether they have had WMDs at the time the Desert Storm was launched is unclear at best; I am pretty sure however that American intelligence had every reason to believe that Saddam might still be in possession of WMDs for a simple reason that USA likely supplied or at least helped Saddam in acquiring WMDs in the first place (as far as I know USSR, France and UK all helped in this regard at various times).
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #2 - February 07, 2010, 08:33 PM

copy/paste from another thread:

I happen to think neocons are NOT waging a war against Muslims.. they're simply waging a war FOR OIL.. and I can quote those filthy pigs too.

Quote
On Sept. 15, according to Bob Woodward?s Bush at War, ?Paul Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan.? Why Iraq? Because, Wolfowitz argued in the War Cabinet, while ?attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain ? Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable.?

[comment: yeah, right! don't punish the terrorists in Afghanistan, propose going to war with the not so dangerous Iraq only 4 days after 9/11... But what about WMDs? Isn't Iraq supposed to have very dangerous WMDs? How did medieval Afghanistan become more scary than WMD laden Iraq? And, again, what about punishing the terrorists?]

Quote
Donnelly was echoed by Jonah Goldberg of National Review: ?The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense.?

[comment: so it really isn't about WMDs... I'm surprised!]

Quote
Goldberg endorsed ?the Ledeen Doctrine? of ex-Pentagon official Michael Ledeen, which Goldberg described thus: ?Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.?

[comment: so war is a favorite American pastime? So, like a thug, the US must bully some poor weak country to show that they mean business! Capiche?!]

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Podhoretz wrote,

We may willy-nilly find ourselves forced ? to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat?s Palestinian Authority). I can even [imagine] the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place. ? I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else.

[comment: hmmm? Imperialism is needed because those savages need to become civilized... (of course OIL just "happens" to be part of the equation) ].

Does it need to be ANY MORE OBVIOUS THAN THIS?

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/mar/24/00007/

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #3 - February 07, 2010, 08:40 PM

@ debunker

It's a bit more complicated then just oil; you do have to add a whole plethora of geopolitical reasons to the equation.

As far as US Imperialism is concerned I partially agree, but I sure do hope that you apply the same logic when the very spread of Islam throughout the globe is concerned.
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #4 - February 07, 2010, 08:42 PM

Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) is all about OIL...

Oh I almost forgot:

There's only one report from the Associated Press that gives a glimpse of the true extent of Saudi involvement in helping with the incredably monstrous boming campaign of Iraq. Of course, since the US government is not really interested in the Saudi people "expressing their views freely", they agreed not to publically thank Saudi Arabia for its spectacular treason of Iraq!
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-04/25/content_326110.htm

They want free speach? yeah right!

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #5 - February 07, 2010, 08:44 PM

Why start searching for reasons? You already have the reasons:
1- Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).
2- Destroying non-existent WMDs.

Of course, never mind that only 4 days after 9/11, the neocons suggested Bush attacks Iraq instaed of resourceless Afghanistan.... it doesn't get any more obvious than that. (not to mention the other plans for the middle east).

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #6 - February 07, 2010, 11:54 PM

I voted because Saddam going nuts, but only because there was no option for the reason I believe to be the reason.

I think it started because he was making a mockery of the weapons inspectors that had a mandate to go in & inspect. However he kept denying the access, and was making a continual mockery out of the UN mandate.

I dont think they had a choice, and accordingly think the Iraq war was justified but think they should have told the truth. They should have been more honest, but the wanted the public behind them so they went along with the 45 min thing.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #7 - February 08, 2010, 05:36 PM

Haha, that 45min spin, the best one I've ever heard! And then later Blair says things in the line of, "What, me? Nooo, it was the intelligence people who told me that!"

Just because the West supplied Saddam with WMD doesn't mean he had loads of it. One can infer it. But more stronger argument would be pictures, videos, satellite imagery. The best of this sort was Colin Powell's bio-trucks at a UN summit which proved nothing!

I knew one of the UN weapons inspectors, he was a physics teacher at my school. He said there weren't the WMD Bush/Blair led on. He reckoned it was due to oil, that Iraq has lots of it and it somehow affected the price of the dollar. That seemed far fetched. Though New Scientist claims Iraq has the second biggest reserves. The other questionable thing he said was that Saddam provided freedom to the many Christians in Iraq that in other nations like Iran they wouldn't have had that freedom.

So, I'm split between oil/military base and a start on fighting the ideology.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #8 - February 08, 2010, 05:51 PM

Quote
The best of this sort was Colin Powell's bio-trucks at a UN summit which proved nothing!

when I watched the evidence presented by Powell, I laughed a lot... he seemed like a bad High School student trying to pass a joke for his term paper...

but then when I saw the commendation of Lou fucking Dobbs on CNN for the clarity of evidence I was about to puke.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #9 - February 08, 2010, 05:52 PM

Oil< Yes, global climate change, reaction due to running out fossil fuels, dad works in oil industry
Wage war on an ideology <Links with al-Qaeda (ps: not really proven) *small link ideology*
Military base in the region < stop off point for afghanistan
... Saddam really was going nuts, an election with only one party?! < dude killed Kurds, regime change (family friend's knowledge )
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #10 - February 08, 2010, 05:53 PM

^ so all but the key one really
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #11 - February 08, 2010, 06:05 PM

I vote for an option not listed-- to establish US imperial hegemony in the region and demonstrate our force projection capabilities. Oil (especially Saddam threatening to tie oil to the euro rather than the dollar), ideology, and military bases all tie into this desire for imperial hegemony there, but fundamentally it was to plant our flag there in the post-Soviet era.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #12 - February 08, 2010, 06:06 PM

Quote from: debunker on February 07, 2010, 08:44 PM
Why start searching for reasons? You already have the reasons:
1- Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).

I have never bought this argument about oil. I know it exponents are usually very passionate and outspoken about it, as they are with most conspiracy theories (like 911).
"come on, you dont really believe what they tell you" is all I ever tend to hear.

I just wonder if the American Government now owns the oilfields, or how many billions Bush has sitting in his bank account as a direct result. For all the effort they went through and are still going through, the argument has really never washed with me. Like I said earlier, i think it was looking for an excuse to flex its muscles over the whole weapons inspector fiasco.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #13 - February 08, 2010, 06:08 PM

Shell has some of the Iraqi oil fields now, headquarters in Kuwait ATM with local offices in the area. Not THE biggest HQs
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #14 - February 08, 2010, 06:10 PM

I'm not telling any more though now as I may compromise something.
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #15 - February 08, 2010, 06:11 PM

There should be an option "All of the above".

Fact is there is a mixture of reasons and various parties involved that pushed that war.

Quote from: thinkfree on September 28, 2010, 07:58 PM
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #16 - February 08, 2010, 06:32 PM

Quote from: Iraqi Atheist on December 24, 2009, 03:16 PM
The US motivations is by proxy the motivations of the lobbies and the PACs which are:
-Economic motivations i.e oil.
-The neo-conservative think-tanks such as The Heritage Foundation and The Project for a New American Century advocated establishing an American Hegemony in the Middle East. Some say that AIPAC had a strong influence I personally don't think so.
-The Military-Industrial Complex doesn't give a shit about specifics as long as there is war.
-Possibly they actually thought we were sponsoring terror and had WMDs
-Spreading democracy and getting rid of Saddam. Not the prime motivation but I suspect deep inside Dubya's born-again heart there was a little compassion and good will.

I voted for military bases.
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #17 - February 08, 2010, 06:37 PM

I LOVE Iblis.

I HATE Islame!!!! Why do you think in terms of short-term gains? Bush did NOT do it for him! The region contains 65% of the ENTIRE world's *dwindling* oil reserves. PLUS, the region is volatile... The US is there for long-term goals... for now, they just want to establish their control over Iraq and the region, for when the day comes and, for example, the Saudi government implodes (a very real possibility), they'd be quick to seize the oil fields...

Think of it this way: trouble is coming to the region sooner or later... competition over controling the region will be a reality one day... the US planned ahead of time and surprised everyon else ("OLD" EUROPE and the rest of world powers) by taking the intiative and taking control now.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #18 - February 08, 2010, 06:45 PM

Quote from: debunker on February 08, 2010, 06:37 PM
Why do you think in terms of short-term gains? Bush did NOT do it for him!

You think Bush was thinking beyond his own popularity plight?

I think working towards short-terms gains are more likely given that elections and power for presidents and primeministers are geared over the short term. Same problem with companies and our financing structures - they are all developed for short term gains, and thus decisions effectively are biased in this direction too..

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #19 - February 08, 2010, 06:46 PM

Quote from: debunker on February 08, 2010, 06:37 PM
I LOVE Iblis.

Astagfirullah!

Quote from: thinkfree on September 28, 2010, 07:58 PM
Iblis has mad debaterin' skillz. Best not step up unless you're prepared to recieve da pain.
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #20 - February 08, 2010, 06:56 PM

Quote from: IsLame on February 08, 2010, 06:45 PM
You think Bush was thinking beyond his own popularity plight?

I think working towards short-terms gains are more likely given that elections and power for presidents and primeministers are geared over the short term. Same problem with companies and our financing structures - they are all developed for short term gains, and thus decisions effectively are biased in this direction too..

This would make more sense if it weren't for the fact that many Democrats also supported the Iraq War, including those that didn't have an upcoming election or a serious challenger.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #21 - February 08, 2010, 07:00 PM

Quote from: Q-Man on February 08, 2010, 06:56 PM
This would make more sense if it weren't for the fact that many Democrats also supported the Iraq War, including those that didn't have an upcoming election or a serious challenger.

So? They are still responsible to their constituents for their votes arent they - same problem. In any case what should they have done, voted against and willy nilly allow any nation to ignore any UN mandate in the future? Perhaps another way of resolving conflict - yes maybe, but we are talking about the US..

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #22 - February 08, 2010, 07:03 PM

I always thought it would be interesting to know if Saddam laughed himself hoarse when Blair was scaremongering the British into believing the 'missile in 45 minutes' story.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #23 - February 08, 2010, 07:55 PM

There was interesting analysis by Stratfor.
Basically they felt it was caused by multiple groups (neo-cons, paleo-cons) with different interests - short, medium and long term goals

Long term -
set up bases in Middle East and project then American hegemony as far into the future as possible.
set up a liberal democracy and change the politics of the Middle East (or possibly a client state if you're cynical).
To be able to sit on resources as the resource wars heat up.

Medium Term
To put the squeeze on Iran, Syria etc. - and to serve as a potential landbase to threaten others in the area. If you ever read about the actual logistics involved in a land based war with armour you'll realise the need for good land based areas to be able to launch attacks.
Oil - to ensure stability of supply - in case of worries about Saudi falling to interests less amenable to the US.

Short Term:
To threaten various states to cooperate with the US regarding Al Qaeda by a display of force and prove they were capable of doing more than lob in some missiles (as Clinton used do).
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #24 - February 08, 2010, 08:12 PM

Yup, that sounds about right.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #25 - February 09, 2010, 01:11 AM

Good analysis. Bascially Pax Americana as was advocated by PNAC.

TBH, if the US plays it right they just might be able to do it. I mean apart from China, who could stop them? even China is not and will not be in a good position. After all their economy is largely dependent on exports to the US and its allies.
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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #26 - February 09, 2010, 02:01 AM

Quote from: Iraqi Atheist on February 09, 2010, 01:11 AM
I mean apart from China,

Does not have sufficient force projection capability.

Quote
who could stop them?

a) EU if (1) they wanted to/it was in their interests (2) they had a unified military force apart from NATO and (3) they weren't total pussies.

b) A Sino-Russian alliance with Pakistan and India as clients in their sphere if their alliance was sufficiently developed (which it isn't yet, but is progressively improving), and if Russia's population stops dropping (time will tell).

Quote
even China is not and will not be in a good position. After all their economy is largely dependent on exports to the US and its allies.

Yes, but the US is also deeply in debt to China, so it's kinda a wash, no? And China has a hard economy and industrial base which is lacking in the US right now-- and if it comes to war, that will matter more than consumers.

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Reply #27 - February 09, 2010, 02:45 AM

Quote from: Q-Man
Does not have sufficient force projection capability.

Maybe they have the capability but don't use it on purpose?

Quote
a) EU if (1) they wanted to/it was in their interests (2) they had a unified military force apart from NATO and (3) they weren't total pussies.

1-They will never want to
2-Not homogeneous enough

Quote
b) A Sino-Russian alliance with Pakistan and India as clients in their sphere if their alliance was sufficiently developed (which it isn't yet, but is progressively improving), and if Russia's population stops dropping (time will tell).

Even if all those conditions materialized*, such an alliance would never be on par with a US/EU alliance. That's my opinion anyway.

So basically it has to be a+b or at least b with a neutral EU.

Quote
And China has a hard economy and industrial base which is lacking in the US right now-- and if it comes to war, that will matter more than consumers.

The best point you made.

*My knowledge on Indo-Pakistani relations is very limited but it seems fairly obvious that they won't be military allies in the near future. Plus Indians love the US. Check recent opinion polls on the issue. The Philippines and India come on top.
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Reply #28 - February 09, 2010, 03:28 AM

Quote from: Iraqi Atheist on February 09, 2010, 02:45 AM
Maybe they have the capability but don't use it on purpose?

Not according to most analysts. They don't have foreign military bases, they don't have the necessary air or naval power.

Quote
1-They will never want to

Never's a long time. Who would have predicted in 1812 that the US and UK would be the closest of allies and that many Americans would be anti-French? How many analysts predicted in 1949 that in less than 20 years the USSR and PRC would be enemies?

Quote
2-Not homogeneous enough

NATO's not terribly homogeneous either, but I get your point.

Quote
Even if all those conditions materialized*, such an alliance would never be on par with a US/EU alliance. That's my opinion anyway.

Again, never's a long fuckin time. The East is on the rise, and their industrial economy is kicking ass as the US and EU become increasingly service/finance oriented.

Quote
*My knowledge on Indo-Pakistani relations is very limited but it seems fairly obvious that they won't be military allies in the near future.

Oh, they don't have to be friendly with each other to be part of a larger alliance together. Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO despite generally hostile diplomatic relations between the two, and Russia has historically had a close relationship with India, while Pakistan was/is a client state of China and the US-- considering the recent Russian-Chinese rapprochement it's not that crazy an idea that they could someday be in a larger alliance together.

Quote
Plus Indians love the US. Check recent opinion polls on the issue. The Philippines and India come on top.

Oh, mos def, but that won't necessarily prevent India from orienting towards a regional alliance that may eventually overtake the US.

Don't get me wrong-- I know I live in the New Rome. But no empire lasts forever. Maybe the US hangs on another 10 years, maybe another 500. Maybe the Sino-Russian alliance overtakes us, maybe someone else. But the current situation-- one hegemonic military and economic superpower-- ain't gonna last forever. It's okay, I'm convinced I can survive in the empire or its ruins.

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Re: Iraq, WMD, spin ... & eradicating an ideology
Reply #29 - February 09, 2010, 07:27 PM

Hmm, interesting opinions, nice to have an actual Iraqi opinion too.

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