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According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein'..., estim

by lambda 13y ago

According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein'..., estimates of Iraqis killed by Saddam range from a quarter million to a million, and estimates of Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq are in a similar range. So, let's call his death toll a half million to two million. About a decade after the Gulf War, which had pretty much put a stop to Saddam's killing spree, the US decided to invade Iraq again, on the pretext that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. The evidence was quite flimsy, and it turns out not to have been true. In the process, the US and allies, plus the destabilization of the country after, managed to kill another half million Iraqis. Think about that for a minute. A half million people, killed based on a flimsy pretext, that anyone with half a brain could see through (and no, I don't just say this in hindsight, I thought the justification was flimsy at the time as well). Somewhere between a quarter as many and as many people killed by the Iraq War as Saddam himself had killed. How did we come to this? How is it possible that we have gone so far astray that we are slaughtering as many people as someone we vilify as part of the "axis of evil"?

arcadeparade 13y ago
Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5. It was called genocide by both men who were in charge of it, both of whom resigned in protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimate... I also find it interesting that many people who deny that this many people were killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion will have no problem believing the 100,000 figure of people who were killed in the Syrian Civil War so far, which has been a much smaller conflict than Iraq.
- berntb 13y ago
  >>Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5 Saddam wanted to get rid of the sanctions, it was in his direct interest to inflate the statistics. (There were reports of e.g. multiple funerals for a given dead child, too.) His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot. These resources weren't used for that, as far as I've read. I never got a good answer to my standard point, when this was a hot subject: It is arguably bad to give in to extortion from dictators. In this case a dictator isn't using his resources to alleviate the suffering of civilians in his own country! To let dictators get their will through by the suffering of their own civilians is obviously a very, very bad precedent.
  - anuraj 13y ago
    Let us not play politics on deaths, that too of Children. It is plain truth that the illegal invasion of Iraq by US in 2003, and the sanctions prior to that exterminated millions and millions of lives - on what basis can we defend loss of innocent lives?? On what basis can anybody defend violence - war? When will we see a civilized humanity and not war mongering nations and industrial complexes?
    - berntb 13y ago
      >>exterminated millions and millions of lives Wow, many times more than the Wikileaks data and even the most extreme academics. HN is going downhill :-(
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    >His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot. Because he was a horrible dictator who had little regard for human life. Would you expect him to put any of his people's needs ahead of his own? If not, then it's a bit stupid to pretend it's not your fault if when you reduce the resources available to Iraq, children die and Saddam's control gets even tighter. If you hear that someone is abusive to their 5 children, is your solution to cut their wages in half?
    - berntb 13y ago
      >>If you hear that someone is abusive to their 5 children, is your solution to cut their wages in half? My point was that it is very, very bad to let dictators use their own civilians' suffering as an argument. But you knew that. Edit: To the downvoting idiot -- if you check my history, there is a comment I made yesterday on another subject that is not too old, so you can still downvote it :-)
  - gruseom 13y ago
    You can justify anything that way; just find somebody bad who's against it. The reason not to do something bad is that it's wrong. How a dictator feels about it is beside the point.
mcantelon 13y ago
Well, Western responsibility for the slaughter is less direct than Saddam's killings (although that doesn't help the victims much). Yes, Iraq seemed to have been selected as a military target for reasons not disclosed to the public.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  Actually, the reasons were disclosed: [1] http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm [2] http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses... [3] http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm You might find the signatories of [1] particularly interesting.
scaramanga 13y ago
It's incorrect to say the evidence on WMD was flimsy, it was very solid. That is to say that it was almost certain that Iraq had no usable WMD. The "evidence" to the contrary were fabrications, obvious at the time, without the benefit of hindsight. As was widely pointed out then.
- mcantelon 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
  - gruseom 13y ago
    I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Some of it ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud") was even laughable. Nor did the US or other Western intelligence agencies believe it. Analysts tried to submit good reports, but they were overridden. People have often spoken of an "intelligence failure", but there wasn't such a failure; what there was was a success in politicizing intelligence on the part of political leaders. That of course did not stop them from blaming the analysts later for "failure". Careful observers have noted signs of significant pushback from the intelligence community in response to political pressure since then.
    - berntb 13y ago
      >>I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Interesting, do you have references? To me, it seems really hard to distinguish "obvious propaganda" from low details due to protection of intelligence sources. You would naively/cynically assume that if the US army/etc knew they wouldn't find any remaining WMD programs, they would be planted?
      - usefulcat 13y ago
        Planted? No, they did something much easier--they changed the subject. The "OMG they've got WMD" rhetoric was replaced by something about the freedom of the Iraqi people.
RockyMcNuts 13y ago
what, Iraq wants to join chemical arms ban organization? can't have that http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/world/to-ousted-boss-arms-watchdog-was-seen-as-an-obstacle-in-iraq.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/world/to-ousted-boss-arms-...
MrZongle2 13y ago
As a country, it would appear that we lost our minds in the wake of 9/11. Widespread government surveillance. Armed drones. Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read. Amazingly intrusive security at airports, now filtering down to train and bus stations. Indefinite suspension of prisoners of war. Yes, we have gone astray. For those of you old enough, could you imagine such things happening in the 70s, 80s or even the 90s?
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  > Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read. I expect that to be the norm in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as it is the norm today and will continue to be in the future, for the same reasons. I imagine armed drones coming into use essentially as fast as they're developed; I don't believe any past government would have abstained. I'm with you on the widespread government surveillance, absurd "security" at airports and train and bus stations, and indefinite suspension, though to be fair, I'm not really old enough to have much of an opinion on what things were like (except for airports... truly, these are the end times :( )
  - MrZongle2 13y ago
    "I expect that to be the norm in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as it is the norm today and will continue to be in the future, for the same reasons." Well, I think it's safe to assume that we've always had some amount of idiots in Congress: individuals whose lack of deep intellect and substantive accomplishments in life were offset by their ability to charm others. It seems reasonable that there have been many, many votes in the Senate and House in which the full language of the bills hasn't been read by the people doing the voting. That said, I don't know if bills as massive as the Patriot Act, TARP bailout, or ACA are just "business as usual" for Congress. If you consider the sheer amount of lobbying that takes place today, along with the ease of cutting-and-pasting huge blocks of text into a document and the level of apathy the general public has these days towards all things political, I bet these bills couldn't have existed in decades past. I think in the past, the corruption took place one small-to-moderate-sized bill at a time, with regular frequency. Now, it's a feeding frenzy that is shoved through all at once in the hope that nobody reads the fine print.
phaus 13y ago
There were over two dozen foreign intelligence agencies that agreed that Saddam either had or was attempting to build or purchase weapons of destruction. Nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to hide anywhere on earth, but many other types of weapons of mass destruction aren't difficult to dispose of. That's not to say that the invasion turned out to be a good idea, or that we were justified in the attempt, but those agencies represent thousands of really smart people in positions of authority around the world agreeing that Iraq had them or was attempting to develop them, so its hard to argue that anyone with half a brain could have known the truth. If we were wrong, its because a good percentage of all western civilizations were wrong, not just the United States. You also have to factor in the theory that Saddam himself wanted the world to think that he had them, in an attempt to dissuade Iran from thinking Iraq was vulnerable. Iraq's strange behavior that lead to the invasion can really only be explained in two ways: either he was pretending to hide weapons that didn't exist, or he successfully hid real weapons. Finally, half a million people were killed in Iraq. Clearly every combatant on the battlefield shares a part of the blame, but that includes the enemy combatants. The overwhelming majority of American Soldiers attempt to avoid civilian casualties, often to their own detriment, yet the organizations we have been fighting against in Iraq deliberately target anyone they can. The larger the body count, the better. They view their fellow Muslims as traitors for failing to take up arms against the United States, and so they target them just the same as Americans.
- mikeash 13y ago
  "had or was attempting to build or purchase" is a pretty weak standard. Do I qualify if I put an ad on craigslist asking if anyone has some spare anthrax? How about if I doodle a nuclear weapon design on a napkin? I don't doubt Saddam was trying to develop or purchase WMD. But absent the capability of doing so, such attempts mean nothing. Regardless, it was obvious that Iraq was not a threat to the US. Even if Iraq had had a hundred nuclear bombs, there was no way to deliver them. If you're on the other side of the planet, WMD doesn't matter without ICBMs or long-range bombers to take them to the target. Did two dozen foreign intelligence agencies go so far as to agree that Iraq was an imminent threat that needed to be stopped by overwhelming force? Somehow, I'm guessing they did not. One can debate the specific details, but one can't really debate the question of whether Iraq was a threat to the United States in 2003. They were not, and it was patently obvious to anyone paying the least bit attention.
Theodores 13y ago
At the 1975 OPEC meeting in Algiers a new treaty was agreed on for the Iran-Iraq border. This was in Iran's favour, and, in those days Iran was a US client. The deal was that Iraq would cede territory in the Shatt al Arab area and in exchange Iran would stop arming Iraqi Kurds. This on-going border dispute (which had gone on for centuries) was important to what happened next. In 1979 a lot of stuff happened. There was the Iranian revolution. Also, around this time, not fully understood at the time, there was also the hostage crisis, Iran-Contra scandal and an election in the USA. On 4 September 1980 Iran shelled Iraq, marking the start of the war. On 22 September Iraq full on invaded Iran along the whole length of the border on the assumption that it would be a good idea to do so given that the 'revolutionary' Iran would have so much internal turmoil etc. that their defences would be down. Hence, Iran 'started it' so that particular war wasn't exactly Saddam's devising. You will find this Wikipedia article on the Iran Iraq war to be quite an eye opener: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_... Read it carefully and I think you will see that, much like WW1, the Iran-Iraq war started for silly reasons but then developed into a situation where those that sought to profit through arms perpetuated the war. As they say, 'war is a racket'. Sure Saddam was there commanding conscripts to their deaths and it was all his fault, but it is not as simple as that, is it? In England we know what these sorts of shenanigans are as we are the grand masters of it. We call it 'divide and rule'. Sometimes you have to look at a situation and ask 'who benefits?'. As ever in war, the arms companies, their financiers and those that run off with the loot. P.S. Why are people on first name terms with Saddam, even in his death? People aren't chummy in quite the same way with Barack, Vladimir, Dave, Angela or even Adolf for that matter. Why is the former Iraqi President afforded first name status when every other Great Leader gets to have a surname?
- infinitone 13y ago
  In regards to your P.S. Because Hussein, Saddam's last name, is attributed to a greater person (where the name originated from): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_ibn_Ali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_ibn_Ali Just a hypothesis though..
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
lazyant 13y ago
Since you mentioned the Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq war, the US and other western countries were an ally of Iraq while they knew Saddam was gassing Iranians with chemical weapons, their hypocrisy is astounding.
rayiner 13y ago
There is a bit of a conceptual leap from "started a civil war that got a bunch of people killed" to "slaughtered." The question of "how did we come to this?" obviously has a different answer in the two contexts. In the former, more accurate, characterization, it can simply be explained as: Americans are an optimistic bunch that continually underestimate how deeply dysfunctional Middle Eastern society happens to be and how deep the fissures within run.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 13y ago
The US fighting Iraq was more about being able to defeat a tangible foe and make it look like something was being done in the wake of the WTC attacks - punching ghosts in Afghanistan wasn't providing the balm the politicians were looking for. The invasion of Iraq was more about that "Mission Accomplished" banner for the domestic market than actually doing anything for Iraqis and their neighbours.
- diminish 13y ago
  that's the best tl;dr summary.
aric 13y ago
How did "we" come to this? You're asking the largest military wielder and prison population and the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on real people, people going about their contained lives wanting to wake up to see another day, how "we" came to this. - Hiroshima - Nagasaki - Vietnam - Constant US policy to support genocidal dictators around the world who mass slaughter "their" people, so long as US corporate interests gain over sovereign interests. Millions of killings later directly and indirectly from US hands, entire lands and societies literally poisoned into waste at US policy over the past 70 years, and one asks how invading Iraq (and Afghanistan) on imaginary and unjustified pretexts was possible. The answers are shocking and simple. There are a couple classic "American ways" in spirit. The first has some idealistic value (e.g. individual freedom, can-do attitude). Then the second is one that silences all else: hear no evil, see no evil, support our troops (i.e. in reality, support the political monsters who use them). The simplest answers to your question are related to deeply rooted combinations of nationalism, racism, pride, intolerance, regional proximity to other nations, and systems of governance that are both insufficiently compartmentalized and that run on forced funding (taxation). Guaranteed funding, especially with only the masking of "democracy," was a fast path for a super power that thinks itself a "super hero" in the world's eye -- and largely was seen as such to those who didn't face the brunt of its violence -- to guarantee its continued exploits and an accelerating industry of war. Elections put little if any checks/balances upon a congressional network of plunderers who mostly serve the same corporate and violent interests, policies, and strategists, but through lightly varying vocabulary come election. Paranoia that the US could reasonably claim in that last 'new century' and into this one is dismissed by policies that become brutal and offensive. 1. Google the American timelines and legacy of its direct and proxy imperialism: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism 2. Oliver Stone's Showtime series, "Untold History of the United States," is quite worth watching in full. Sure, we can all find faults with it. It's not intended to give a "balanced" account. Rather, it's a crash course in provoking thought about the seldom discussed or even known aspects of US policy compared to the general public and its vapid historical accounting of its negative actions. It's 10 episodes. http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-united-states/home http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-u...
- briandear 13y ago

by lambda 13y ago

arcadeparade 13y ago

Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5. It was called genocide by both men who were in charge of it, both of whom resigned in protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimate... I also find it interesting that many people who deny that this many people were killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion will have no problem believing the 100,000 figure of people who were killed in the Syrian Civil War so far, which has been a much smaller conflict than Iraq.

berntb 13y ago
>>Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5 Saddam wanted to get rid of the sanctions, it was in his direct interest to inflate the statistics. (There were reports of e.g. multiple funerals for a given dead child, too.) His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot. These resources weren't used for that, as far as I've read. I never got a good answer to my standard point, when this was a hot subject: It is arguably bad to give in to extortion from dictators. In this case a dictator isn't using his resources to alleviate the suffering of civilians in his own country! To let dictators get their will through by the suffering of their own civilians is obviously a very, very bad precedent.
- anuraj 13y ago
  Let us not play politics on deaths, that too of Children. It is plain truth that the illegal invasion of Iraq by US in 2003, and the sanctions prior to that exterminated millions and millions of lives - on what basis can we defend loss of innocent lives?? On what basis can anybody defend violence - war? When will we see a civilized humanity and not war mongering nations and industrial complexes?
  - berntb 13y ago
    >>exterminated millions and millions of lives Wow, many times more than the Wikileaks data and even the most extreme academics. HN is going downhill :-(
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >His regime also had "extra" income from smuggling, which could have been used to alleviate suffering of civilians under his boot. Because he was a horrible dictator who had little regard for human life. Would you expect him to put any of his people's needs ahead of his own? If not, then it's a bit stupid to pretend it's not your fault if when you reduce the resources available to Iraq, children die and Saddam's control gets even tighter. If you hear that someone is abusive to their 5 children, is your solution to cut their wages in half?
  - berntb 13y ago
    >>If you hear that someone is abusive to their 5 children, is your solution to cut their wages in half? My point was that it is very, very bad to let dictators use their own civilians' suffering as an argument. But you knew that. Edit: To the downvoting idiot -- if you check my history, there is a comment I made yesterday on another subject that is not too old, so you can still downvote it :-)
- gruseom 13y ago
  You can justify anything that way; just find somebody bad who's against it. The reason not to do something bad is that it's wrong. How a dictator feels about it is beside the point.

mcantelon 13y ago

Well, Western responsibility for the slaughter is less direct than Saddam's killings (although that doesn't help the victims much). Yes, Iraq seemed to have been selected as a military target for reasons not disclosed to the public.

unclebucknasty 13y ago
Actually, the reasons were disclosed: [1] http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm [2] http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses... [3] http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm You might find the signatories of [1] particularly interesting.

scaramanga 13y ago

It's incorrect to say the evidence on WMD was flimsy, it was very solid. That is to say that it was almost certain that Iraq had no usable WMD. The "evidence" to the contrary were fabrications, obvious at the time, without the benefit of hindsight. As was widely pointed out then.

mcantelon 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
- gruseom 13y ago
  I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Some of it ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud") was even laughable. Nor did the US or other Western intelligence agencies believe it. Analysts tried to submit good reports, but they were overridden. People have often spoken of an "intelligence failure", but there wasn't such a failure; what there was was a success in politicizing intelligence on the part of political leaders. That of course did not stop them from blaming the analysts later for "failure". Careful observers have noted signs of significant pushback from the intelligence community in response to political pressure since then.
  - berntb 13y ago
    >>I clearly remember how all that WMD stuff was obvious propaganda at the time. Interesting, do you have references? To me, it seems really hard to distinguish "obvious propaganda" from low details due to protection of intelligence sources. You would naively/cynically assume that if the US army/etc knew they wouldn't find any remaining WMD programs, they would be planted?
    - usefulcat 13y ago
      Planted? No, they did something much easier--they changed the subject. The "OMG they've got WMD" rhetoric was replaced by something about the freedom of the Iraqi people.

RockyMcNuts 13y ago

what, Iraq wants to join chemical arms ban organization? can't have that http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/world/to-ousted-boss-arms-watchdog-was-seen-as-an-obstacle-in-iraq.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/world/to-ousted-boss-arms-...

MrZongle2 13y ago

As a country, it would appear that we lost our minds in the wake of 9/11. Widespread government surveillance. Armed drones. Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read. Amazingly intrusive security at airports, now filtering down to train and bus stations. Indefinite suspension of prisoners of war. Yes, we have gone astray. For those of you old enough, could you imagine such things happening in the 70s, 80s or even the 90s?

thaumasiotes 13y ago
> Massive bills passing through Congress without being completely read. I expect that to be the norm in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as it is the norm today and will continue to be in the future, for the same reasons. I imagine armed drones coming into use essentially as fast as they're developed; I don't believe any past government would have abstained. I'm with you on the widespread government surveillance, absurd "security" at airports and train and bus stations, and indefinite suspension, though to be fair, I'm not really old enough to have much of an opinion on what things were like (except for airports... truly, these are the end times :( )
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  "I expect that to be the norm in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as it is the norm today and will continue to be in the future, for the same reasons." Well, I think it's safe to assume that we've always had some amount of idiots in Congress: individuals whose lack of deep intellect and substantive accomplishments in life were offset by their ability to charm others. It seems reasonable that there have been many, many votes in the Senate and House in which the full language of the bills hasn't been read by the people doing the voting. That said, I don't know if bills as massive as the Patriot Act, TARP bailout, or ACA are just "business as usual" for Congress. If you consider the sheer amount of lobbying that takes place today, along with the ease of cutting-and-pasting huge blocks of text into a document and the level of apathy the general public has these days towards all things political, I bet these bills couldn't have existed in decades past. I think in the past, the corruption took place one small-to-moderate-sized bill at a time, with regular frequency. Now, it's a feeding frenzy that is shoved through all at once in the hope that nobody reads the fine print.

phaus 13y ago

There were over two dozen foreign intelligence agencies that agreed that Saddam either had or was attempting to build or purchase weapons of destruction. Nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to hide anywhere on earth, but many other types of weapons of mass destruction aren't difficult to dispose of. That's not to say that the invasion turned out to be a good idea, or that we were justified in the attempt, but those agencies represent thousands of really smart people in positions of authority around the world agreeing that Iraq had them or was attempting to develop them, so its hard to argue that anyone with half a brain could have known the truth. If we were wrong, its because a good percentage of all western civilizations were wrong, not just the United States. You also have to factor in the theory that Saddam himself wanted the world to think that he had them, in an attempt to dissuade Iran from thinking Iraq was vulnerable. Iraq's strange behavior that lead to the invasion can really only be explained in two ways: either he was pretending to hide weapons that didn't exist, or he successfully hid real weapons. Finally, half a million people were killed in Iraq. Clearly every combatant on the battlefield shares a part of the blame, but that includes the enemy combatants. The overwhelming majority of American Soldiers attempt to avoid civilian casualties, often to their own detriment, yet the organizations we have been fighting against in Iraq deliberately target anyone they can. The larger the body count, the better. They view their fellow Muslims as traitors for failing to take up arms against the United States, and so they target them just the same as Americans.

mikeash 13y ago
"had or was attempting to build or purchase" is a pretty weak standard. Do I qualify if I put an ad on craigslist asking if anyone has some spare anthrax? How about if I doodle a nuclear weapon design on a napkin? I don't doubt Saddam was trying to develop or purchase WMD. But absent the capability of doing so, such attempts mean nothing. Regardless, it was obvious that Iraq was not a threat to the US. Even if Iraq had had a hundred nuclear bombs, there was no way to deliver them. If you're on the other side of the planet, WMD doesn't matter without ICBMs or long-range bombers to take them to the target. Did two dozen foreign intelligence agencies go so far as to agree that Iraq was an imminent threat that needed to be stopped by overwhelming force? Somehow, I'm guessing they did not. One can debate the specific details, but one can't really debate the question of whether Iraq was a threat to the United States in 2003. They were not, and it was patently obvious to anyone paying the least bit attention.

Theodores 13y ago

At the 1975 OPEC meeting in Algiers a new treaty was agreed on for the Iran-Iraq border. This was in Iran's favour, and, in those days Iran was a US client. The deal was that Iraq would cede territory in the Shatt al Arab area and in exchange Iran would stop arming Iraqi Kurds. This on-going border dispute (which had gone on for centuries) was important to what happened next. In 1979 a lot of stuff happened. There was the Iranian revolution. Also, around this time, not fully understood at the time, there was also the hostage crisis, Iran-Contra scandal and an election in the USA. On 4 September 1980 Iran shelled Iraq, marking the start of the war. On 22 September Iraq full on invaded Iran along the whole length of the border on the assumption that it would be a good idea to do so given that the 'revolutionary' Iran would have so much internal turmoil etc. that their defences would be down. Hence, Iran 'started it' so that particular war wasn't exactly Saddam's devising. You will find this Wikipedia article on the Iran Iraq war to be quite an eye opener: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_... Read it carefully and I think you will see that, much like WW1, the Iran-Iraq war started for silly reasons but then developed into a situation where those that sought to profit through arms perpetuated the war. As they say, 'war is a racket'. Sure Saddam was there commanding conscripts to their deaths and it was all his fault, but it is not as simple as that, is it? In England we know what these sorts of shenanigans are as we are the grand masters of it. We call it 'divide and rule'. Sometimes you have to look at a situation and ask 'who benefits?'. As ever in war, the arms companies, their financiers and those that run off with the loot. P.S. Why are people on first name terms with Saddam, even in his death? People aren't chummy in quite the same way with Barack, Vladimir, Dave, Angela or even Adolf for that matter. Why is the former Iraqi President afforded first name status when every other Great Leader gets to have a surname?

infinitone 13y ago
In regards to your P.S. Because Hussein, Saddam's last name, is attributed to a greater person (where the name originated from): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_ibn_Ali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_ibn_Ali Just a hypothesis though..
thaumasiotes 13y ago

lazyant 13y ago

Since you mentioned the Iranians killed in the Iran-Iraq war, the US and other western countries were an ally of Iraq while they knew Saddam was gassing Iranians with chemical weapons, their hypocrisy is astounding.

rayiner 13y ago

There is a bit of a conceptual leap from "started a civil war that got a bunch of people killed" to "slaughtered." The question of "how did we come to this?" obviously has a different answer in the two contexts. In the former, more accurate, characterization, it can simply be explained as: Americans are an optimistic bunch that continually underestimate how deeply dysfunctional Middle Eastern society happens to be and how deep the fissures within run.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

vacri 13y ago

The US fighting Iraq was more about being able to defeat a tangible foe and make it look like something was being done in the wake of the WTC attacks - punching ghosts in Afghanistan wasn't providing the balm the politicians were looking for. The invasion of Iraq was more about that "Mission Accomplished" banner for the domestic market than actually doing anything for Iraqis and their neighbours.

diminish 13y ago
that's the best tl;dr summary.

aric 13y ago

How did "we" come to this? You're asking the largest military wielder and prison population and the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on real people, people going about their contained lives wanting to wake up to see another day, how "we" came to this. - Hiroshima - Nagasaki - Vietnam - Constant US policy to support genocidal dictators around the world who mass slaughter "their" people, so long as US corporate interests gain over sovereign interests. Millions of killings later directly and indirectly from US hands, entire lands and societies literally poisoned into waste at US policy over the past 70 years, and one asks how invading Iraq (and Afghanistan) on imaginary and unjustified pretexts was possible. The answers are shocking and simple. There are a couple classic "American ways" in spirit. The first has some idealistic value (e.g. individual freedom, can-do attitude). Then the second is one that silences all else: hear no evil, see no evil, support our troops (i.e. in reality, support the political monsters who use them). The simplest answers to your question are related to deeply rooted combinations of nationalism, racism, pride, intolerance, regional proximity to other nations, and systems of governance that are both insufficiently compartmentalized and that run on forced funding (taxation). Guaranteed funding, especially with only the masking of "democracy," was a fast path for a super power that thinks itself a "super hero" in the world's eye -- and largely was seen as such to those who didn't face the brunt of its violence -- to guarantee its continued exploits and an accelerating industry of war. Elections put little if any checks/balances upon a congressional network of plunderers who mostly serve the same corporate and violent interests, policies, and strategists, but through lightly varying vocabulary come election. Paranoia that the US could reasonably claim in that last 'new century' and into this one is dismissed by policies that become brutal and offensive. 1. Google the American timelines and legacy of its direct and proxy imperialism: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism https://www.google.com/search?q=us+imperialism 2. Oliver Stone's Showtime series, "Untold History of the United States," is quite worth watching in full. Sure, we can all find faults with it. It's not intended to give a "balanced" account. Rather, it's a crash course in provoking thought about the seldom discussed or even known aspects of US policy compared to the general public and its vapid historical accounting of its negative actions. It's 10 episodes. http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-united-states/home http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-u...

briandear 13y ago