(07-30-2014 01:51 PM)Max Power Wrote:  As for giving Saddam the gas, we didn't manufacture it here and supply it to him, but rather Reagan lifted the restrictions and US companies sold him the materials to make mustard gas, and the CIA was complicit in his use of the gas because Reagan wanted Iran defeated by any means necessary, and even pointed fingers at Iran knowing that it was Saddam.

You know what? In no way should we have allowed Saddam to get the dual use materials that could be allowed to manufacture the gas. We should not have facilitated it, etc. I vehemently disagree with that policy decision by Reagan, et al. However, it isn't the same as giving him the finished product to use. I do not think the difference between the two is insignificant.

Max Power Wrote:Here's what I expect them to do as an American taxpayer furnishing those weapons. I expect them to wage war in compliance with international law and minimize casualties, which reports are suggesting they are not doing. They just hit another UN school yesterday despite 17 warnings from the UN. They also hit the city's largest hospital and power plant and a playground on Monday, and then blamed it on Hamas even though witnesses including an NBC reporter said they saw it come from a drone. This draws international ire toward us as well as them, because the world knows we're supplying them with the weapons. I'm sure it's helping terrorists recruit.

The U.N. has found Hamas hiding weapons in schools in Gaza. Hamas regularly puts weapons and fighters around civilians. International law doesn't prevent one from pursuing a military value target if shielded by civilians. I don't know that you know enough to ascertain that Israel is regularly, repeatedly and willingly violating international law. Hamas, by their nature of warfare, does nothing but violate international law.

Max Power Wrote:Are you aware of the conditions in Gaza? The people there are trapped and a blockade prevents the trade of not only raw materials that can be converted to weapons but everything from water to crayons. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) had a good op ed yesterday in the Washington Post that I agree with. Hamas should give up their weapons and tunnels in exchange for Israel relaxing the blockade.

Gaza is a hellhole. And, that is the fault of Hamas and the remaining elements of the PLO. In fact, any Palestinian who voted for either of those organizations bears responsibility for the conditions there as well. It is terrible. However, when you are poor and you still prefer to spend your limited funds on rockets and other weapons, isn't that a foolish choice?

With all due respect, your suggestion that Hamas get rid of their weapons is naive. Don't you think Israel would take that deal in a second? Hamas wants to destroy Israel. Hamas derives its power from keeping the Palestinians poor. If they laid down their weapons, and life improved for the average person, Hamas likely ceases to exist because their ideology drowns under economic prosperity. Hamas could stop agitating at any point. They choose not to. And, Israel is left to attack Hamas, killing civilians in the process and destroying infrastructure, further worsening conditions in Gaza.

Max Power Wrote:Yes Clinton bombed and imposed sanctions on Iraq. But our longstanding policy of regime change wasn't necessarily a policy of ground troops nation building. There was no evidence Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 and the Bush administration capitalized on public hysteria at the time. I don't understand why any of the rest of that is justification.

Again, I'm not justifying the invasion. However, many on the left, act as if we just picked a fight with Saddam. Twelve years after the initial ceasefire, we were STILL patrolling the skies of Iraq. Saddam was still lighting up our aircraft and we were still dropping bombs. During that time, he made an attempt on the life of GHWB in Kuwait. We were still there, engaged. Most people just forgot about that, tuned out that we were at that time, still getting shot at by his forces.

(07-30-2014 01:51 PM)Max Power Wrote:  

(07-30-2014 10:19 AM)GeorgeBorkFan Wrote:  

(07-30-2014 08:32 AM)BobL Wrote:  

(07-29-2014 07:08 PM)GeorgeBorkFan Wrote:  

(07-29-2014 05:34 PM)BobL Wrote:  Supporting the Shah and Saddam are part of the reason no one in the Arab middle east trusts us. Our policy has been what's best in order to secure cheap oil not promoting the values in which America was founded.

Max just said that supporting the Shah (and perhaps Saddam) was the right thing to do. So, which is it?

I did not read it that way...I dont see where he said we should have supported Saddam, what I read was we should not have deposed him.

That is why I asked for clarification. However, he did say we were right in supporting the Shah.

Well I wasn't making a moral judgment with regards to supporting the Shah, although I suppose it could have been read that way. We supported him because in our calculation we thought he was a better ally than Mossadegh. (Ultimately though, it blew up in our face and we got a government worse than either.)

No I wasn't saying we should have supported Saddam. I don't think we should have deposed him. If sometime in the future Saddam were about to fall it might not be a bad idea to support him though. To be clear, I think we should have never deposed Mossadegh or Saddam, but that's beside the point.

My point there, in response to Kevin S's point, was that a leader being evil has never stopped us before. My secondary point was that we make realistic judgments as to what will happen if a leader is deposed before deposing him, and account for that in our analysis. But we didn't do that calculation in Iraq, or at best did it naively.

As for giving Saddam the gas, we didn't manufacture it here and supply it to him, but rather Reagan lifted the restrictions and US companies sold him the materials to make mustard gas, and the CIA was complicit in his use of the gas because Reagan wanted Iran defeated by any means necessary, and even pointed fingers at Iran knowing that it was Saddam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

Quote:The 2002 International Crisis Group (ICG) no. 136 "Arming Saddam: The Yugoslav Connection" concludes it was "tacit approval" by many world governments that led to the Iraqi regime being armed with weapons of mass destruction, despite sanctions, because of the ongoing Iranian conflict. Among the chemical precursors provided to Iraq from American companies such as Alcolac International and Phillips was thiodiglycol, a substance needed to manufacture mustard gas, according to leaked portions of Iraq's "full, final and complete" disclosure of the sources for its weapons programs. The provision of chemical precursors from United States companies to Iraq was enabled by a Ronald Reagan Administration policy that removed Iraq from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Alcolac was named as a defendant in the Aziz v. Iraq case presently pending in the United States District Court (Case No. 1:09-cv-00869-MJG). Both companies have since undergone reorganization. Phillips, once a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum is now part of ConocoPhillips, an American oil and discount fossil fuel company. Alcolac International has since dissolved and reformed as Alcolac Inc.[26]

Quote:However, I think it is fair to say that Israel wouldn't have launched on this recent campaign if Hamas wasn't trying to infiltrate Israel via tunnels, etc. We can argue who did the last "thing." However, Hamas, in their charter, calls for the elimination of Israel. And, by the nature of the organization, Hamas doesn't wear uniforms, and hides themselves and weapons within the civilian population.

I am not pro-Israel. I don't think we should send them military aid. However, what do we expect them to do? There isn't enough land for a viable two state solution. Hamas and Hezbollah exist to kill Israel. They've been invaded/attacked multiple times. We can fault Israel for being not perfect in their execution in the fog of war, but I find it exceptionally hard to believe that they blow up schools and hospitals just for kicks.

Here's what I expect them to do as an American taxpayer furnishing those weapons. I expect them to wage war in compliance with international law and minimize casualties, which reports are suggesting they are not doing. They just hit another UN school yesterday despite 17 warnings from the UN. They also hit the city's largest hospital and power plant and a playground on Monday, and then blamed it on Hamas even though witnesses including an NBC reporter said they saw it come from a drone. This draws international ire toward us as well as them, because the world knows we're supplying them with the weapons. I'm sure it's helping terrorists recruit.

I don't know whether they're doing it for "kicks" (although I saw a video yesterday of Israeli soldier humping artillery shells, adorning them with Hebrew stickers, and dancing about them to music-- http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/29...Its-Ground ) or they're just being reckless and need to install better protocols. Either way it needs to stop.

Are you aware of the conditions in Gaza? The people there are trapped and a blockade prevents the trade of not only raw materials that can be converted to weapons but everything from water to crayons. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) had a good op ed yesterday in the Washington Post that I agree with. Hamas should give up their weapons and tunnels in exchange for Israel relaxing the blockade.

Quote:However, in the case of Iraq, what was the right thing to do? GWB took the long standing policy of regime change and caused it to happen. It was through the lens of 9/11, when we were looking to fight anyone we thought was a threat. Was it the right move? Only time will tell and decent people can disagree. Remember, at the time, we were still lobbing in cruise missiles, occasionally, and patrolling Iraqi airspace every day. Our planes were regularly getting lit up by Iraqi radar and we were regularly taking them out. Granted, we didn't have to invade. But, we didn't just pick him out of a phone book and say let's go. We were already there.

Yes Clinton bombed and imposed sanctions on Iraq. But our longstanding policy of regime change wasn't necessarily a policy of ground troops nation building. There was no evidence Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 and the Bush administration capitalized on public hysteria at the time. I don't understand why any of the rest of that is justification.

Kevin S Wrote:Secondly, the United States was never his friend. That is a liberal lie. We supported him in the Iraq war because we had to take a side and he was at the time the lesser of two evils. Also, Iran is twice the size and has twice the population of Iraq, which gave them an advantage in the Iraq/Iran war which we tried to neutralize with our support. Once the Iraq/Iran war ended, we turned on him which is further evidence that our support was merely a matter of a shared enemy.
Saddam ultimately had to be deposed because he had a history of invading his neighbors, manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and violating treaties and sanctions. Bush ultimately decided to attack Saddam because he refused to end his chemical and biological weapons programs and in violation of the gulf war sanctions was rebuilding the Iraqi Armed forces to the level where he could once again threaten his neighbors.

As to your point about Obama, those foreign policy disasters are his fault. Obama has adopted the University of Toledo's football strategy against the Huskies of rolling over and dying in the third quarter. If Ronald Regan or George Bush were president, they would of stood up to Putin and he would of backed down. The same is true of Iran. They know that Obama will do nothing so they are expanding their nuclear program. Syria also knows Obama is an empty suit. Putin allegedly made the comment that Obama is a pus*y and that is 100% true.

LOL, he was made an honorary citizen of Detroit! Yes Saddam was our friend, all the way up until he invaded oil rich Kuwait.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat...93Iraq_war

Quote:In October 1989, President Bush signed NSD 26, which begins, "Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security." With respect to Iraq, the directive stated, "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer term interests and promote stability in both the Persian Gulf and the Middle East."[44]

Putin would have backed down to Bush? Like when he invaded Georgia in 2008? And if Bush could have stopped Iran's nuclear program then why didn't he in 8 years?

Obama is a ***** huh? Ask Gaddhafi, or bin Laden if they agree. Oh you can't, because he killed them. If Putin really thought that he would've invaded Ukraine by now. All he has is Crimea, but he lost the other 95% of Ukraine to the NATO sphere of influence.

First, if Saddam was our really great friend and pal why were all of his weapons systems Soviet or eastern bloc? His battle rifle was the Ak-47, his tanks were Soviet T-72's, his artillery was Soviet M-30's and T-12's, his planes were Migs and his missiles were Scuds, Buks and Iraq's own Al Hussein missiles. No United States weaponry in his arsenal. If we were such real good friends why did we not sell Saddam American weapon systems? Secondly, Saddam was named an honorary citizen of Detroit! Is that all you can come up with? If I was named an honorary citizen of Detroit, I would take it as an insult.

Next, Obama did not kill Gaddhafi. He was killed by NTC rebels who wanted to topple his regime. Bush could do very little to stop the invasion of Georgia because of its geographical location. The same would be true if the United States decided to kick Cuba's a*s. Russia could do very little to help Cuba. Ukraine is a different story because it has a large western border with NATO allied nations like Poland and Hungary. A robust show of force on the Polish and Hungarian border would probably make Putin end the separatist revolt. All Obama has done is some economic sanctions and tell Putin that he is a very bad boy. Hardly a strong robust response.