Bomb Squad Sent to Rush Limbaugh's House

[Denny Crane]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties#Criticism

The ORB poll estimate has come under strong criticism in a peer reviewed paper entitled "Conflict Deaths in Iraq: A Methodological Critique of the ORB Survey Estimate", published in the journal Survey Research Methods. This paper "describes in detail how the ORB poll is riddled with critical inconsistencies and methodological shortcomings", and concludes that the ORB poll is "too flawed, exaggerated and ill-founded to contribute to discussion of the human costs of the Iraq war".[8][9]

Epidemiologist Francisco Checci recently echoed these conclusions in a BBC interview, stating that he thinks the ORB estimate was "too high" and "implausible". Checci, like the paper above, says that a “major weakness” of the poll was a failure to adequately distinguish between households and extended family.[10]

The Iraq Body Count project also rejected what they called the "hugely exaggerated death toll figures" of ORB, citing the Survey Research Methods paper. IBC concluded that, "The pressing need is for more truth rooted in real experience, not the manipulation of numbers disconnected from reality."[11]

John Rentoul, a journalist with The Independent newspaper, has stated that the ORB estimate "exaggerate the toll by a factor of as much as 10" and that "the ORB estimate has rarely been treated as credible by responsible media organisations, but it is still widely repeated by cranks and the ignorant."[12]

 

[jlprk]

You left out all the criticisms of the studies which made the criticisms of ORB (e.g. they counted only deaths reported in the media, they mainly counted only deaths in Baghdad, etc.). The reader should just go to my link and read several sources to get a balanced view.

Whether or not you like the study, the point is that I was not lying when I said that there is a study which, when the 4 subsequent years are added, and the Clinton years are added, justifies the word "millions."

 

[Denny Crane]

Balanced? Hahahahahaha

1.5m over 5 years is more killed per month than the actual war where we had 250K troops and fleets of ships and vast numbers of bombing missions.

The survivors of anyone killed would ask for a death certificate so they could collect survivor benefits. There's no chance, zero chance, that only 1 in 10 filed or made it to the morgues.

You may as well make up any old random number, like 50 million. You obviously want it to be an absurd number, and you don't see how your lies fly in the face of reason.

 

[jlprk]

Death benefits in a destroyed socialist nation went the same place as air conditioning after Saddam was gone. It's a primitive hellhole banana republic now.

You call me a liar one too many times for my taste. Your disagreement with the expert actuaries need not include me. You should aim your fighting words at this respected outfit:

...a new report by the British polling organisation, Opinion Research Business (ORB). ORB is no dissident, anti-war outfit; it is a respected polling company that has conducted studies for customers as mainstream as the BBC and the Conservative Party....

Iraq Body Count (IBC) does not at all offer a “total” figure to be compared with the Lancet and ORB studies. IBC only collects records of violent civilian deaths reported by two different (mainly Western) media sources operating in Iraq. Epidemiologists report that this type of study typically captures around 5 per cent of deaths during high levels of violence, such as exists in Iraq. By contrast, the Lancet studies provide figures for all deaths - violent and non-violent, civilian and military, reported and unreported.

http://medialens.org/alerts/07/070918_the_media_ignore.php
------------
Here's today's Cheney news. Canadians treat him like a war criminal. Imagine what less friendly countries think of him.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/321101

 

[Denny Crane]

Sorry, but the death toll is on the order of 150K. Saying anything else is lying. And you can quote all the other liars you want who've been debunked.

If there are 100 estimates of the deaths at 150K and one at 30M, you'll pick the 30M and claim it must be true.

There are many different estimates of the deaths at 150K (including New England Journal of Medicine, UN, WHO, etc.). One at 600K (lancet), and one at 1.2M. Ever notice the word "outlier" almost has the word "liar" in it?

 

[jlprk]

You really don't know much about how the government orchestrates accepted methods, do you. Remember when the outliers said there were no WMBs? Remember when Cheney got the CIA to conform and say Iraq would have delivery systems for atomic bombs to hit us within a couple of years?

Republicans worry more about the 1% outliers instead of the mainstream conformists, like in health care. You usually post in favor of outliers. Now suddenly, you want to baah with the flocks of sheep instead of biting at their heels like a wolf. What happened to your howling pride?

 

[Denny Crane]

You really don't know much about how the government orchestrates accepted methods, do you. Remember when the outliers said there were no WMBs? Remember when Cheney got the CIA to conform and say Iraq would have delivery systems for atomic bombs to hit us within a couple of years?

Republicans worry more about the 1% outliers instead of the mainstream conformists, like in health care. You usually post in favor of outliers. Now suddenly, you want to baah with the flocks of sheep instead of biting at their heels like a wolf. What happened to your howling pride?

Use some common sense, man.

Your death figures are similar to Vietnam and the Korean War, where we had millions of soldiers deployed and were using heavy artillery and napalm and bombing villages on a daily basis. There was nothing even close to that kind of combat going on in Iraq after the "mission accomplished" speech, and even before that the death toll was incredibly low considering the forces we brought to bear.

 

[jlprk]

There was nothing even close to that kind of combat going on in Iraq after the "mission accomplished" speech, and even before that the death toll was incredibly low considering the forces we brought to bear.

So you're saying that it was a fake war with little action. The American military in Iraq was a bunch of lazy dilettantes who didn't do any work? They hardly killed anyone, just cruised around like surfers on the sand getting tans in their Hummers? Who managed this waste of a trillion dollars when a platoon could have done the job?

 

[Denny Crane]

So you're saying that it was a fake war with little action. The American military in Iraq was a bunch of lazy dilettantes who didn't do any work? They hardly killed anyone, just cruised around like surfers on the sand getting tans in their Hummers? Who managed this waste of a trillion dollars when a platoon could have done the job?

I'm sure the military killed people when they were fired upon or otherwise threatened. But they sure as hell didn't kill hundreds or thousands on a 24/7/365 basis. Not even close. A really bad day for Iraqis was a mosque bombing that killed a couple hundred, but that was a rare occurrence vs the daily kind of thing required to generate those absurd numbers you believe (because you want to tho it's a lie).

As far as war goes, this was a low grade one. We didn't draft millions to fight, we didn't carpet bomb daily, etc.

We lost 4k good men there. A war that killed millions would mean we would lose over 10x that many, simply by having people in firefights with large enough forces against us. It just didn't happen, and you know it.

 

[jlprk]

Hundreds of thousands of American troops, tens of thousands of American civilian contractors searching for enemies, the American economy ruined, and all they did was sit in their tents in front of the air conditioners? Why aren't you criticizing this? Oh that's right, you say that once a war begins, it behooves us to stay a long time to finish the job, even once the pretext is proven to be a lie. What was the job that they had to finish, if few Iraqis needed to be killed? Why not send missionaries? It worked with the Indians.

 

[MARIS61]

Not that Denny Crane ever had any credibility in his seesaw arguements about the wars for oil, but he has now fallen into a bottomless chasm of absurd denial unlike any I've seen.

Typical armchair general. Never been to war, never witnessed people killing people, unconcerned about human beings at all outside of his family and small circle of friends.

Without guys like him, war would not exist.

 

[Denny Crane]

What part of "take out Saddam and go home" leads you to your straw man arguments?

Those in charge, including Obama, escalated the wars whether I liked it or not. Don't blame me, I didn't vote for bush either time, Kerry, or Obama. My guys would have brought the troops home immediately.

 

[rayhow]

I think the occupation was a debacle. We didn't kill many civilians - Iraqis were killing Iraqis with car bombs and militias, etc.

"14,754 (13%) of all documented civilian deaths were reported as being directly caused by the US-led coalition. ... The frequency of small-scale killings involving US-led coalition forces is illustrated by data showing that for the period from 2005–2007, on average, they were killing civilians in 1 or 2 incidents per day, and over 3 civilians per day, for three straight years (1,512 incidents, 3,617 deaths averaging 3.3 deaths per day; with 1.4 incidents per day, or almost 10 per week, averaging 2.4 deaths per incident)."

And:

"Iraq War Logs ‘Enemy’ (minus IBC overlaps) - central estimate 20,499" - which basically means Iraqi insurgents or militia members killed by US forces.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2011/

Not sure how you'd categorize 35,000 Iraqis killed by US forces as "not many". It's more than ten 9/11's, or if adjusting for population size (iraq is 1/10th the size of the US), it would be more than 100 9/11's.

Only a liar would grossly inflate the figures. As if for political gain, or some sense of holier than thou bullshit.

Yeah, that 1 or 1.5 million stuff is a total crock, but still the US forces did kill a lot of civilians.

 

[Denny Crane]

A good post rayhow.

From your own link:

Most deadly period of violence from coalition forces:
Over half of the civilian deaths caused by US-led coalition forces occurred during the 2003 invasion and the sieges of Fallujah in 2004.

And still, 87% of the deaths (which the US is responsible for as occupier) were not our troops firing on civilians, it was militias and insurgents and rabble rousers from other countries killing civilians. We were not prepared to police the place, and we had no business doing more than taking out Saddam, as I have written numerous times.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

it would be more than 100 9/11's.

[video=youtube;zZcZ6eJoxeE]

 

[rayhow]

And still, 87% of the deaths (which the US is responsible for as occupier) were not our troops firing on civilians, it was militias and insurgents and rabble rousers from other countries killing civilians.

That's not quite true either:

"We analyzed the Iraq Body Count database of 92,614 Iraqi civilian direct deaths from armed violence occurring from March 20, 2003 through March 19, 2008, of which Unknown perpetrators caused 74% of deaths (n = 68,396), Coalition forces 12% (n = 11,516), and Anti-Coalition forces 11% (n = 9,954)."
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000415

So it's a stretch to claim what you do for "87%". Most of the unknowns probably were along the lines you claim, but a lot probably weren't. This would include things like mortar fire, which both sides used, but where it isn't known who was firing them, bodies found shot after the fact, bodies recorded at morgues over the course of a month with no specifics about who killed each person, etc. Some of them probably were "our troops firing on civilians". Then some were likely killed by Iraqi government forces. Others have reported on a secret assassination program that was being run by the US in Iraq, and which deaths would likely wind up as "unknown". And when you say militias, you should recall that some of these militias were aligned with the government (on "our side"). So I don't think you can pick out the direct US forces fire number and just say all the rest is "the bad guys" on the other side.

 

[Denny Crane]

Do the math.

74% unknown perpetrators, + 11% from anti-coalition forces = 85%. But your numbers don't add up to 100%, so...

But I think we're arguing past the point that we weren't there to kill civilians. We used smart bombs (and developed them in the first place) to minimize collateral damage (killig civilians). I repeat we didn't do a good job of being the police they needed, to protect the people from violent other people.

And UNICEF reported 500K children died during the oil for food program; it's a tough trade, but 100K to 120K dead in exchange for saving 500K is a terrible choice to have to make. It's a choice we made in Bosnia during the Clinton years, too. We failed to intervene in Rwanda.

My position is clear. We should have taken out Saddam and left the people to figure out their own government. That's something they could not do with Saddam firmly entrenched and with weapons and WMDs, and his brutal sons in the wings. Those are things we inflicted on the people there without boots on the ground. We had to do something to push things in the fair and proper direction, and we did. The war was over in about 3 weeks, and the regime was gone. We should have gone home and made it clear we would provide financial and trade for their country once they figured out how they wanted to govern themselves.

 

[rayhow]

Do the math.

74% unknown perpetrators, + 11% from anti-coalition forces = 85%. But your numbers don't add up to 100%, so...

But "unknown perpetrators" is not the same as what you said before.

But I think we're arguing past the point that we weren't there to kill civilians. We used smart bombs (and developed them in the first place) to minimize collateral damage (killig civilians). I repeat we didn't do a good job of being the police they needed, to protect the people from violent other people.

And UNICEF reported 500K children died during the oil for food program; it's a tough trade, but 100K to 120K dead in exchange for saving 500K is a terrible choice to have to make. It's a choice we made in Bosnia during the Clinton years, too. We failed to intervene in Rwanda.

The 500k children dying from sanctions claim is also suspect. See here:
http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Truth and Death.pdf

Basically, the 500k claim first appeared in a Lancet paper in 1995 (before the Oil for Food program was underway). And that paper was subsequently withdrawn when a follow up study couldn't confirm a lot of the deaths reported in the first one. But a lot of people heard the 500k claim and never heard about it being withdrawn. Then a UNICEF study in 1999 made almost the same claim based on a different survey. Then the 500k thing became conventional wisdom. But over the years since then two other major surveys have found nothing like what the UNICEF one did. It now seems like a big outlier, and it's hard to say what number might have died from sanctions.

But even if you believe the UNICEF estimate, most of this will be deaths before the Oil for Food program was underway. That didn't even really start until 1996, and a lot of the restrictions only loosened up over time after that, while UNICEF is talking about deaths from 1990-1998. So even if you buy that estimate it can't be blamed on the OFF. Moreover, the invasion didn't happen until 2003, and every study that's been done since the invasion has found a pretty low 2002 or pre-invasion death rate, nothing like the UNICEF numbers. So even if you think there were a lot of kids dying from sanctions before 1999, it seems clear that this was no longer happening by 2003. (You'd also have to conclude that OFF was very successful at saving lives.)

The comparison to Rwanda is also nonsensical. Intervention there would have been on the basis of stopping an ongoing mass genocide. There was no mass killing going on in Iraq in 2003 or for many years before it. This is confirmed in a Human Rights Watch report called "War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian intervention":
http://www.hrw.org/news/2004/01/25/war-iraq-not-humanitarian-intervention

The very idea that the invasion of Iraq was about the US government making a choice to "save lives" from sanctions the US government was imposing is just ridiculous to begin with. Nobody in the US government was making this choice you're imagining.

My position is clear. We should have taken out Saddam and left the people to figure out their own government. That's something they could not do with Saddam firmly entrenched and with weapons and WMDs, and his brutal sons in the wings. Those are things we inflicted on the people there without boots on the ground. We had to do something to push things in the fair and proper direction, and we did. The war was over in about 3 weeks, and the regime was gone. We should have gone home and made it clear we would provide financial and trade for their country once they figured out how they wanted to govern themselves.

Well, this has been debated to death, but there was no legitimate basis for "taking out Saddam" either. There was no self-defence justification, no legal justification and no humanitarian justification. It was just a power grab, and one that got too out of hand for the grabbers to control.

And, by the way, the recent Arab Spring events should put to rest this idle speculation that Iraqis could never have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein without a US invasion. Iron-fisted dictators just as bad as him have been overthrown by their own people without our "help" many times throughout recent and not so recent history.

 

[jlprk]

87% of the deaths (which the US is responsible for as occupier) were not our troops firing on civilians, it was militias and insurgents and rabble rousers from other countries killing civilians. We were not prepared to police the place, and we had no business doing more than taking out Saddam, as I have written numerous times

This does not absolve the U.S. from causing those deaths. The divide and conquer strategy created ethnic divisions, and it armed groups to fight each other. This privatized the killing. The U.S. funded and trained Iraqis to kill each other.

 

[Denny Crane]

But "unknown perpetrators" is not the same as what you said before.



The 500k children dying from sanctions claim is also suspect. See here:
http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Truth and Death.pdf

Basically, the 500k claim first appeared in a Lancet paper in 1995 (before the Oil for Food program was underway). And that paper was subsequently withdrawn when a follow up study couldn't confirm a lot of the deaths reported in the first one. But a lot of people heard the 500k claim and never heard about it being withdrawn. Then a UNICEF study in 1999 made almost the same claim based on a different survey. Then the 500k thing became conventional wisdom. But over the years since then two other major surveys have found nothing like what the UNICEF one did. It now seems like a big outlier, and it's hard to say what number might have died from sanctions.

But even if you believe the UNICEF estimate, most of this will be deaths before the Oil for Food program was underway. That didn't even really start until 1996, and a lot of the restrictions only loosened up over time after that, while UNICEF is talking about deaths from 1990-1998. So even if you buy that estimate it can't be blamed on the OFF. Moreover, the invasion didn't happen until 2003, and every study that's been done since the invasion has found a pretty low 2002 or pre-invasion death rate, nothing like the UNICEF numbers. So even if you think there were a lot of kids dying from sanctions before 1999, it seems clear that this was no longer happening by 2003. (You'd also have to conclude that OFF was very successful at saving lives.)

The comparison to Rwanda is also nonsensical. Intervention there would have been on the basis of stopping an ongoing mass genocide. There was no mass killing going on in Iraq in 2003 or for many years before it. This is confirmed in a Human Rights Watch report called "War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian intervention":
http://www.hrw.org/news/2004/01/25/war-iraq-not-humanitarian-intervention

The very idea that the invasion of Iraq was about the US government making a choice to "save lives" from sanctions the US government was imposing is just ridiculous to begin with. Nobody in the US government was making this choice you're imagining.



Well, this has been debated to death, but there was no legitimate basis for "taking out Saddam" either. There was no self-defence justification, no legal justification and no humanitarian justification. It was just a power grab, and one that got too out of hand for the grabbers to control.

And, by the way, the recent Arab Spring events should put to rest this idle speculation that Iraqis could never have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein without a US invasion. Iron-fisted dictators just as bad as him have been overthrown by their own people without our "help" many times throughout recent and not so recent history.

Thanks for the link. I read it word for word. Two parts stand out:

Second, we are aware of, but reject, the argument that past U.S. complicity in Iraqi repression should preclude U.S. intervention in Iraq on humanitarian grounds. This argument is built on the U.S. government's sordid record in Iraq in the 1980s and early 1990s. When the Iraqi government was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops in the 1980s, the Reagan administration was giving it intelligence information. After the Anfal genocide against Iraqi Kurds in 1988, the Reagan and first Bush administrations gave Baghdad billions of dollars in commodity credits and import loan guarantees. The Iraqi government's ruthless suppression of the 1991 uprising was facilitated by the first Bush administration's agreement to Iraq's use of helicopters - permission made all the more callous because then-President Bush had encouraged the uprising in the first place. In each of these cases, Washington deemed it more important to defeat Iran or avoid Iranian influence in a potentially destabilized Iraq than to discourage or prevent large-scale slaughter. We condemn such calculations. However, we would not deny relief to, say, the potential victims of genocide simply because the proposed intervener had dirty hands in the past.

and

That does not mean that past atrocities should be ignored. Rather, their perpetrators should be prosecuted.

As for legal justification, I think you overlook volumes of actual legal justification. The US had a regime change policy, embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which passed 360-38 in the House and unanimously in the Senate. Iraq was defeated in the first Gulf War and failed to live up to its legal requirements it had agreed to after that war. There were numerous UN resolutions, including 1441. We and the British felt we had to institute no-fly zones over the country to protect the people and our aircraft were routinely targeted or fired on.

The past history of mass murder is sufficient along with the deaths before and during OFF was plenty of justification to go take out Saddam and his sons. The HRW piece suggests there was no imminent or ongoing mass killings, yet you point out it was going on since before OFF. And what was really imminent was the end of no-fly zones, OFF, and countries like France and the Russia resuming normal trade and diplomatic relations with Iraq, and countries like Russia, Germany, and China with ready oil deals with Saddam in place.

GHW Bush urged the Iraqis to rebel against Saddam and provided none of the expected military aid for the process. The rebels were easily squashed and 100,000 people gassed in their villages. The people simply could not do it alone because Saddam was too powerful and we had a hand in it.

Given the impending end to no-fly, the oil deals, Saddam still in power with history of abusing his people, we had few choices:

1) Stand by and do nothing while dooming the good people there to more of Saddam's rule (and then his sons' rule)
2) Invade and take out the regime and rebuild the nation (which was the choice made)
3) Invade and take out the regime and bring Saddam to justice and allow France, Germany, Russia, and China (and the US and anyone else) to participate in normal free trade and diplomacy with whatever government formed by the people.

I choose 3.

W's mistake was going through the UN, where France, Germany, Russia, and China had (oil) motives to block us. Clinton did not go through the UN to take us into Bosnia - he was smart enough to realize the UN route was futile. He used our pull with NATO to get it done through that organization.

You may want to consider the HRW article seems quite biased to me. There's mention of the USA's assistance in making Saddam so powerful, but not a single mention of Germany, Russia, or China. In Gulf War I, the Iraqi air force flew their MIG fighters to Iran or buried them in the desert. Iraq fired SCUD missiles at Israel and our troops. The Iraqis flew Mirage F1EQ (French) fighters against Iran's F14 (USA) fighters. The army was armed with AK-47. The RPGs were Russian made. The gas used against the Kurdish towns was of German or Russian manufacturing process. Iraq used Silkworm (Chinese) missiles in its war against Iran.

 

[rayhow]

As for legal justification, I think you overlook volumes of actual legal justification. The US had a regime change policy, embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which passed 360-38 in the House and unanimously in the Senate. Iraq was defeated in the first Gulf War and failed to live up to its legal requirements it had agreed to after that war. There were numerous UN resolutions, including 1441. We and the British felt we had to institute no-fly zones over the country to protect the people and our aircraft were routinely targeted or fired on.

None of this is legal justification. The "Iraq Liberation Act" basically authorized supporting internal opposition groups in Iraq, not a foreign military invasion. The UN resolutions, and to what extent Iraq complied with them is a matter for the UNSC to enforce or not enforce as and in the manner the UNSC decides, not as a couple individual member states to decide on their own. This "legal justification" amounts to saying some states should violate the UN charter to "enforce" UNSC resolutions in a manner which those particular states like, but which doesn't agree with what the UNSC thinks should be done. Moreover, you're overlooking the UN Charter altogether, which was also ratified by the US, and everything it says about these matters:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40299.html

None of the things you're citing are ever justifications for war under the Charter.

And the no-fly zones were themselves rather contentious and of dubious legality at best, as they were never authorized by any UN body and many legal experts considered it aggression (as Iraq did). As to Iraq occasionally firing on those planes, Iraq saw those planes as aggressive foreign aircraft that had invaded Iraqi air space and often bombed it. The idea that a legal justification for starting a war is that the country in question had fired on foreign planes invading its airspace with no authorization to be there, is pretty weak to say the least.

The past history of mass murder is sufficient along with the deaths before and during OFF was plenty of justification to go take out Saddam and his sons. The HRW piece suggests there was no imminent or ongoing mass killings, yet you point out it was going on since before OFF.

"past history of mass murder" is no justification for starting a war. Such a justification is flatly groundless and illegal under the UN Charter, and is groundless from any humanitarian perspective, as HRW argues. And "the deaths before and during OFF", if you actually believe there were a large number of such deaths (I'm skeptical) were not killings, but were from deprivation brought on by the US/UK-imposed sanctions. This again has no legal or humanitarian justification for starting a war.

And what was really imminent was the end of no-fly zones, OFF, and countries like France and the Russia resuming normal trade and diplomatic relations with Iraq, and countries like Russia, Germany, and China with ready oil deals with Saddam in place.

Here is where I think we start to get down to some reality. The actual imminent threat was that at some point the UN would have had to rule that Iraq had complied with all the resolutions (which we now know it really already had done anyway, since it had no WMDs anymore), and the US would lose the ability to control Iraq's airspace and its economy. And then Iraq would re-join normal international relations and wind up giving preference for oil deals and such to Russia, France, China, etc. and shun the US and UK that had been smashing it for years. The real threat was that peace would break out, and the likely trajectory of that peace would not serve the strategic interests of the US in the region. So the solution was to start a war of aggression. That's pretty much the heart of the matter. All the rest is smoke and mirrors.

 

[Denny Crane]

You say none of this is legal justification, but you ignore the one legal justification that cannot be weaseled out of. A large coalition of international forces pushed Saddam out of Kuwait. Saddam surrendered. There were surrender terms. Those terms were not fulfilled by Iraq. They were fully, completely, unequivocally in violation of international law, period. When you go to war, get a surrender agreement, and the other side fails to comply, you are still at war.

As for UN charter, NATO agreements, etc., I have zero issue with the US complying with our obligations. As much as I want US troops brought home from everywhere and to just defend the US from foreign attack, the constitution requires us to:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

Article. VI.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Past history of mass murder has to be a consideration. Saddam was never some prince among men, altruistic, worthy of trust as leader of a nation that would be a good actor on the world stage.

OFF was a disaster. Not because the people were deprived of food and medicine, but because Saddam collected the money and built palaces with the money instead of using it for its intended purpose.

The WMD argument is maybe what the administration chose to sell, but it was believed by Clinton (who had access to our intel briefings), to Albright (same access), to Hilary (same access), and to intelligence agencies around the world. The issue wasn't destroying his WMDs, it was completely disarming him and effecting regime change.

Saddam never complied with the UN resolutions. He repeatedly and consistently blocked UNSCOM inspections, etc.

Check this out:

[video=youtube;ACffW99kOB8]

 

[Denny Crane]

Another great video.

[video=youtube;N5p-qIq32m8]

 

[rayhow]

You say none of this is legal justification, but you ignore the one legal justification that cannot be weaseled out of. A large coalition of international forces pushed Saddam out of Kuwait. Saddam surrendered. There were surrender terms. Those terms were not fulfilled by Iraq. They were fully, completely, unequivocally in violation of international law, period. When you go to war, get a surrender agreement, and the other side fails to comply, you are still at war.

That again is not a legal justification. It is itself groundless weaseling. There was a war in 1990-91, to push Iraq out of Kuwait because they had invaded a foreign nation in violation of the UN Charter, and the UNSC approved military action. That military action then achieved its goal and the UNSC declared a formal ceasefire to all hostilities by all parties to that war. The UNSC then passed resolutions requiring Iraq to meet various conditions. Iraq then was subject to a vast series of weapons inspections most of which it complied with. In some cases it did not. In some cases the US and UK also violated those resolutions such as by turning inspections into a spying operation, and constantly moving the goal posts in terms of what kind of places or documents needed to be inspected, all of which also played some role in the problems. In those cases the UNSC that had declared the formal cease fire and imposed the resolutions is the sole authority to decide what to do about violations of its own resolutions, or those imagined violations, not some other state or even 'coalition' of states that's cobbled together to do something other than what the UNSC has decided (which all the way to the end was to call for further inspections, not war). That's called taking the law into your own hands and you've lost any claim whatsoever to legal justification.

And just think of what your argument implies. It would mean, for example, that the first time the UNSC decided that Iraq had not fully complied with some aspect of the resolutions (which I think they did very shortly after the first war), then any state on its own, such as Russia, could then have just sent in its armies to take over Iraq, put in place a government it wanted and they would have had "legal justification". Nonsense. Pravda might have made this argument. To anyone else it would have been a joke.

As for UN charter, NATO agreements, etc., I have zero issue with the US complying with our obligations.

The US abandoned its obligations to uphold the UN Charter in 2003, and you applaud that. So it seems you do have a problem with it when complying with our obligations doesn't suit you.

OFF was a disaster. Not because the people were deprived of food and medicine, but because Saddam collected the money and built palaces with the money instead of using it for its intended purpose.

This is kind of like setting a place on fire and then saying the destruction is all the Fire Department's fault because they weren't doing all they should have to put out your fire. Regardless, as I said before, if you really think a lot of people were dying from sanctions in the 1990's, you'd have to conclude that OFF was quite a success from a humanitarian perspective. It's clear that there were not lots of people dying from sanctions by 2003, so OFF must have done pretty well to turn things around.

The WMD argument is maybe what the administration chose to sell, but it was believed by Clinton (who had access to our intel briefings), to Albright (same access), to Hilary (same access), and to intelligence agencies around the world. The issue wasn't destroying his WMDs, it was completely disarming him and effecting regime change.

The problems are that "effecting regime change" was never, ever, any part of either the UN mandate for the first Gulf War or of the resulting UN resolutions which are supposedly the unequivocal "legal justification" for the invasion. If the proposal is to "effect regime change" by war that is just a prima facie violation of the UN Charter, in which a desire for "regime change" is never a legitimate basis for war. It is just aggressive war, which is a crime under the Charter.

The idea of "regime change" as a goal of supporting opposition groups (as in the "Iraq Liberation Act") is something quite different though, and not inherently any crime according to the Charter. The US had such a policy (implicitly or explicitly) with the USSR for decades, but it never actually came to war or invasion of the USSR. And whatever the Democrats believed before the Iraq war, we know rather well now that whatever the doubts or bluster on all sides, Iraq actually had already complied with the resolutions. They had no WMD anymore, and they were continuing to allow inspections right up until the invasion. There was just a tiny percentage of past WMD which they couldn't account for in any formal way, and which was used as a pretext to keep moving the goal posts and applying more and more pressure, and ultimately starting a war to prevent the looming threat of Iraq being judged in compliance with the resolutions at some point.

 

[Denny Crane]

The US and UK did not violate any of the UN resolutions. All your blather about UN resolutions is made moot by 1441, which states:

Determined to secure full compliance with its decisions, Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

1. Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 (1991), in particular through Iraq’s failure to cooperate with United Nations inspectors and the IAEA, and to complete the actions required under paragraphs 8 to 13 of resolution 687 (1991);

2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council;

and...

13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;

The UN is clear enough that Iraq "remains in material breach of its obligations," and that trumps your protestations to the contrary.

If Russia wanted to build a 40+ nation coalition and take out Saddam, I'd have been happy to see it.

It was the UN that abandoned its obligations by making resolutions that they didn't back up. It was our mistake to trust the "peace" after Gulf War I to the UN.

The first gulf war did not end with a cease fire. The war continued, and the no fly zones, the attacks on our planes and others, the repeated bombing of targets within Iraq, and Clinton's massive attack on Iraq in 1998 are all proof of this.

As for WMDs, it's a myth that none were found. From 2003 until the present, the US and coalition forces there found WMDs all over the place. It didn't make the news because there was no massive cache of weapons like Clinton then Bush claimed.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/201...nt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/