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Your Daily Bad News From Iraq
How's that Iraqi free press going, you ask? Not exactly "free."
Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.
Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who "publicly insults" the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.
Obviously the code isn't as harsh as it was under Saddam Hussein. But this "burgeoning free press" is one of the purported bright spots in the new Iraq, and one of the things the administration always hauls out to wail on war doubters. If the press is only as free as, say, Venezuela's, it's worth knowing that.
|9.29.06 @ 10:09AM|#
But what about all the reporters who WEREN'T carted off to jail
for criticizing the government? Why don't you ever write about
them?
No, seriously, don't worry about the Iraqi government's commitment
to freedom. The corporate tax rate is capped at 15%. Mission
Accomplished.
|9.29.06 @ 10:40AM|#
I thought we were over there to enforce U.S. imperialism and
democratic values at gun point? If that were shouldn't the U.S. be
putting a stop to it? Good God Joe, Iraq is part of the American
empire? How dare we allow this happen.
Look it is their country. Within limits, namely genocide and
totalitarian government, they can run it how they like. If you are
going to let people determine their own government, you have to be
willing to live with the fact that they are going to screw it up
sometimes and the government isn't always going to look like we
would like it to. If throwing a couple of reporters in jail in the
middle of an insurgency is the worst thing that happens, things are
not so bad.
But this raises an interesting point. The opponents of the war
bitch and wail about imperial America enforcing American values on
innocent Iraqis. Then of course when the Iraqis use their
sovereignty to do something that they don't like, the opponents
scream their heads off that the U.S. allowed this to happen. Do the
Iraqis have sovereignty or not? I say they do and they can as a
sovereign government can pass whatever laws they want and if I or
Joe or any other American doesn't like it, too damn bad, we are not
Iraqis. Of course if what they are doing with their sovereignty
shocks your conscience so much that they should be stopped, aren't
you really saying that they are not worthy of sovereignty and we
need to step in and put a stop to it. That sounds pretty imperial
to me, which of course is exactly what the opponents accuse the
U.S. of except when they are whining that the U.S. is not imperial
enough.
|9.29.06 @ 10:43AM|#
Well, at least the Iraqi wingnuts (if there are any) won't have any ground complain about the MSM only reporting the bad news in Iraq.
|9.29.06 @ 10:53AM|#
Do the Iraqis have sovereignty or not? I say they do and
they can as a sovereign government can pass whatever laws they
want
Good point John - so would you pressure the American government to
talk to the democratically elected Hamas?
Jennifer|9.29.06 @ 10:55AM|#
If throwing a couple of reporters in jail in the middle of
an insurgency is the worst thing that happens, things are not so
bad.
This is true. However, when the worst thing that happens is a
brewing civil war with innocent people being tortured and killed
every day, things pretty much suck.
|9.29.06 @ 11:03AM|#
MarkVII
I think we should. The Palistinians elected Hamas. Fair is fair. I
don't like Hamas but you can't say that the Palistinians can have
elections only if they elect who we tell them to. I do, however,
think we have every right to cutt off aid to the Palistinians if
they elect a warlike government, but we should not refuse to
recognize a government just because we don't like who won, no
matter how lousy the winner may be.
|9.29.06 @ 11:03AM|#
"This is true. However, when the worst thing that happens is a
brewing civil war with innocent people being tortured and killed
every day, things pretty much suck." - jennifer
Yep. Things pretty much suck. Do you tink they'd be better or worse
without U.S. and coalition troops there? Or are you claiming that
it's the U.S. that is torturing and killing people? (Sometimes it's
hard to tell with your posts...)
Jim Henley|9.29.06 @ 11:07AM|#
John, partisan politics is taking your eye off the ball.
Remember, the Grand Strategy was, "A free Iraq will become a beacon
in the Middle East," inspiring the rest of the Muslim Middle East
to democratize and, free of oppressive governments stoking hatred
of external enemies as a distraction, the people of the Muslim
Middle East would turn from extremism, "draining the swamp" that
nurtured terrorism.
That's the bill of goods we were sold. It was always a crock -
there are too many dubious links in the chain of justification. But
that was the pitch. "Iraq the Model." You may have heard the
phrase.
The import of Dave's story is that it shows, along with all the
other terrible things happening here, how completely the war has
failed to forge even the first link in that chain of hopes and
dreams. No sane Jordanian or Syrian or Saudi looks at Iraq today
and says, I want me some of that right here.
The Middle East has not heretofore lacked for governments with
press censorship who lock up reporters.
|9.29.06 @ 11:29AM|#
"'A free Iraq will become a beacon in the Middle East,'
inspiring the rest of the Muslim Middle East to democratize and,
free of oppressive governments stoking hatred of external enemies
as a distraction, the people of the Muslim Middle East would turn
from extremism, 'draining the swamp' that nurtured terrorism." -
Jim Henley
That's not "the bill of goods" I was sold. I remember being for the
Iraq War because I remembered the first one and definitely did not
want to continue to wait indefinitely while Saddam's Baathists
continued to act like they had WMD to hide.
In retrospect, it would have been easier if we'd found a huge
stockpile of WMD's, but we didn't. That's the nature of the intel
biz - it's a lot like poker. You take your best guess at what the
other guy is holding by reading him as well as you can, and hope
that your four of a kind will beat his royal flush draw.
But if you call and your opponent only comes up with a pair of
deuces, a win is a win.
What was the bill of goods I was sold? That Saddam most likely had
WMD's because he 1) claimed he did and 2) wouldn't cooperate with
the inspectors. Those are pretty big tells.
So he was bluffing a pair of twos as three aces. He lost, that's
life. And the world is a better place because he was too dumb to
realize the U.S. really WAS coming after him if he kept playing
after we had not only seen all the "community cards" AND we had
flipped over our cards for him to see.
Is Iraq paradise now? Nope. Oh well, real life rarely has a
Hollywood ending. Get over it.
Jennifer|9.29.06 @ 11:33AM|#
Yep. Things pretty much suck. Do you tink they'd be better
or worse without U.S. and coalition troops there?
Things were better for rank-and-file Iraqis before we got there.
Saddam's government was bad, but a power vacuum filled by any
asshole on the street who has a gun and uses it on whoever he
dislikes is worse. As nasty as Saddam was, if you weren't one of
his political enemies and you kept your head down you could still
make your way through life, rather than have to worry about being
randomly murdered because you're in the wrong branch of Islam, or
you're a woman doing unwomanly things like driving a car, or you
simply had the bad luck of walking past a car the second the bomb
inside exploded.
Jim Henley|9.29.06 @ 11:39AM|#
rob, you're a funny man. You're also confusing your own
confusion and panic with the actual facts - Saddam did not claim he
had WMDs, quite the opposite, and inspectors were on the ground
racing to every site the US told them to visit by the winter before
the war - but the big issue is your mistaking your own personal
motives for invading another country ("Hey, it might work!") with
what our rulers and many, many of their supporters claimed as
justification for the war. That "beacon" quote is a very close
paraphrase of one of the President's own speeches. If you never
encountered "drain the swamp" in the pontificating of
Administration spokespeople and their theorists in the hawkish
policy community then you've been paying even less attention to
that than to what you imagine "Saddam Hussein claimed."
You people are funny the way you keep swapping out justifications
on us - Iraq will kill us with scary weapons! Okay, there's no
scary weapons but we're going to make it a model for the middle
east! Okay it's not a model but it was never supposed to be! You
doves don't care about freedom for dark-skinned foreigners! Yeah it
sucks there, but "Get over it!" Like I say, Funny! But we're not
laughing with.
|9.29.06 @ 11:50AM|#
"Things were better for rank-and-file Iraqis before we got
there." - jennifer
You know this how?
"if you weren't one of his political enemies" - jennifer
You really think the guy didn't see nearly everyone as an enemy.
That's the nature of tyrants.
"and you kept your head down" - jennifer
That's good advice if you want to be a subservient serf. How would
you like it?
"you could still make your way through life," - jennifer
Yep. So your argument is "Live chained rather than die free"?
"rather than have to worry about being randomly murdered because
you're in the wrong branch of Islam" - jennifer
Actually, Saddam was pretty hard on religious folks who didn't fit
his worldview. You can look it up at your leisure.
"or you're a woman doing unwomanly things like driving a car" -
jennifer
Because that's how you'd want to live, right? Illiterate, unable to
show your face in public (literally), and subservient to your
husband's every whim?
"or you simply had the bad luck of walking past a car the second
the bomb inside exploded." - jennifer
I'll take the potential car bombs, with the hope of liberty over
the safety of tyranny. How about you?
|9.29.06 @ 11:59AM|#
Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight
|9.29.06 @ 11:59AM|#
"Things were better for rank-and-file Iraqis before we got
there." - jennifer
You know this how?
"if you weren't one of his political enemies" - jennifer
You really think the guy didn't see nearly everyone as an enemy.
That's the nature of tyrants.
"and you kept your head down" - jennifer
That's good advice if you want to be a subservient serf. How would
you like it?
"you could still make your way through life," - jennifer
Yep. So your argument is "Live chained rather than die free"?
"rather than have to worry about being randomly murdered because
you're in the wrong branch of Islam" - jennifer
Actually, Saddam was pretty hard on religious folks who didn't fit
his worldview. You can look it up at your leisure.
"or you're a woman doing unwomanly things like driving a car" -
jennifer
Because that's how you'd want to live, right? Illiterate, unable to
show your face in public (literally), and subservient to your
husband's every whim?
"or you simply had the bad luck of walking past a car the second
the bomb inside exploded." - jennifer
I'll take the potential car bombs, with the hope of liberty over
the safety of tyranny. How about you?
|9.29.06 @ 12:13PM|#
Jim - That's an impressive mish-mash of things I didn't
say.
"You're also confusing your own confusion and panic with the actual
facts"
Uh, no, but you seem to be very confused about what I wrote. (Maybe
I should take a refresher composition course, since my English
degree isn't getting the job done...)
"Saddam did not claim he had WMDs, quite the opposite," - JH
"Saddam lied to stay in power
On 14 December Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces. Time
Online Edition reports that in his first interrogation he was asked
whether Iraq had any WMDs. According to an official, his reply was:
"'No, of course not, the U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a
reason to go to war with us.' The interrogator continued along this
line, said the official, asking: 'if you had no weapons of mass
destruction then why not let the U.N. inspectors into your
facilities?' Saddam�s reply: 'We didn�t want them to go into the
presidential areas and intrude on our privacy.'" Later interviews
with Saddam's military leaders indicated that Saddam didn't want it
demonstrated through inspections that he didn't possess WMDs in
certain places in order to pose a threat against those who might
attempt a coup.""
From wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Saddam_WMD_search
"the big issue is your mistaking your own personal motives for
invading another country ("Hey, it might work!") with what our
rulers and many, many of their supporters claimed as justification
for the war." - JH
Uh, no, again. That seems to be what you wish I had said.
"That 'beacon' quote is a very close paraphrase of one of the
President's own speeches." - Jim Henley
There were plenty of reasons for going to war in Iraq. WMD's and
failure to allow inspectors in were the big reasons for me. That
was what "sold" me. If the happy, shiny Iraq was achievable, great.
But that's really not my primary concern. My primary concern is
eliminating threats to national security. Yours seems to be whining
about our "rulers" - I can only assume you mean the current crop of
idiots we elected to replace the previous crop. You can hardly call
them "rulers," and certainly not without betraying a rather
pitiable Chomsky-esque view of the U.S.
"If you never encountered 'drain the swamp' in the pontificating of
Administration spokespeople and their theorists in the hawkish
policy community then you've been paying even less attention to
that than to what you imagine 'Saddam Hussein claimed.'" - JH
Sure, I've heard it. But it wasn't the "bill of goods" I was sold.
Maybe YOU bought it, but that just means you are as dumb as the
guys you are complaining about. (I still don't see it as an
impossible future for Iraq, frankly, but it isn't my biggest
concern and never was.)
"You people are funny the way you keep swapping out justifications
on us - Iraq will kill us with scary weapons! Okay, there's no
scary weapons but we're going to make it a model for the middle
east! Okay it's not a model but it was never supposed to be! You
doves don't care about freedom for dark-skinned foreigners!" -
JH
Did you mean that to be directed at me? Because I haven't changed
in my "justification" argument. So I'm not sure who you're going
after with the "you keep changing your rationale bit...
The decision I made to support the invasion was based on the
principle that the risks of doing nothing, sadly, outweighed the
risks of invasion.
Sure, Saddam and his Baathists fooled our intel guys and hence the
guys in charge, but it was a convincing bluff. I think I'd be
fooled by that one twice...
Of course, you can read minds so you could never be bluffed. How
come you're not in charge? It's a damn shame, they could use a guy
like you over at the CIA mind-reading and parapsychology
department.
Jennifer|9.29.06 @ 12:23PM|#
Because that's how you'd want to live, right? Illiterate,
unable to show your face in public (literally), and subservient to
your husband's every whim?
That's not how I'd have lived in Saddam's Iraq, but that's how I'd
live there now. We turned a secular nation into a nation on the
verge of Islamic theocracy.
I've pasted here the address of a story CNN ran yesterday, about an
elderly Iraqi woman gunned down by Sunni extremists in front of her
own home; since she was a Shiite it was assumed she was an American
spy.
According to the story, her family is devastated by her loss. Which
is ridiculous, right? They should be consoled by thoughts like "I'm
glad that she died free. That's better than living in
chains."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/28/iraq.victims/
Jim Henley|9.29.06 @ 12:34PM|#
rob, you realize your wikipedia quotes do not support your
statement that "Saddam claimed he had WMD," right?
"There were plenty of reasons for going to war in Iraq. WMD's and
failure to allow inspectors in were the big reasons for me. That
was what 'sold' me."
Again, as a factual matter, Saddam let the inspectors in. Saddam
had not kicked them out in the first place.
During the three-odd months that inspectors were in Iraq the US
kept telling them exactly which sites to go to - Donald Rumsfeld
said explicitly that we "know" where they are - and finding
nothing. This was in all the papers. It was a source of endless,
contemptuous amusement in the jingo media. Meanwhile the Iraqi
regimes official statements were, "There are no weapons to find."
The UN kept demanding document dumps. The UN sent the CDs of the
documents directly to the US government. Every time, within a
couple hours of getting the disks, well before any competent
analyst could have begun to inventory their contents, the
US authoritatively pronounced the latest pack of documents as
"inadequate."
It was all a shadow play on our part, but the widely publicised
facts remain: Inspectors were in Iraq; Iraq claimed that their
programs were long since ended; The US government ritually declared
the inspectors incompetent and the Iraqi claims dishonest on
essentially no basis.
|9.29.06 @ 12:51PM|#
Jennifer - That's sad. No doubt about it. But do you think it's
worse to be someone that a group of thugs target because you're a
Shiite, or the target of a gov't with a standing military that
targets whole groups of people?
You know the groups you mentioned, like:
1) People murdered because Saddam and his Baathists believed they
were political enemies.
2.) People murdered because they were brave enough not to meekly
"keep their head down."
3.) People murdered because they were in the wrong branch of
Islam.
4.) Women murdered for doing unwomanly things like driving a car
(or reading).
Saddam was Sunni. Granted, he was not a good Sunni Muslim and his
displays of piety were mostly just that - for show. But that
certainly doesn't mean that the Baathists did not oppress the
Shi'a. Again, you can look it up.
But you can't claim Saddam's regime was a great secular gov't that
kept people from oppressing other religious groups. That's just
bizarre. Currently there's violence, but it is not
state-sanctioned. That's a big difference that you fail to take
into consideration. At least now the gov't will try to protect you
from that crap, instead of being the ones actually doing it to
you.
"Oppression of Shi'a Muslims
The hypocrisy of the supposed commitment of the Saddam Hussein
regime to Islam is shown by its long oppression of the country's
Shi'a Muslim majority. Restrictions on Shi'a Muslims include:
placing conditions and outright bans on communal Friday prayer;
prohibiting Shi'a mosque libraries to loan books; denying
permission for Shi'a programs on government-controlled radio or
television; banning Shi'a books, including prayer books and guides;
banning many funeral processions and other funeral observances
other than those organized by the government; and prohibiting
certain processions and public meetings commemorating Shi'a holy
days. Shi'a groups report capturing documents from the security
services during the 1991 Shi'a uprising that listed thousands of
forbidden Shi'a religious writings."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/islam.html
This is your idea of religious oppression?
"In Iraq, 80 percent of the country is populated by Muslims, with
60 percent of these being Shiites, according to the World Almanac
and Book of Facts. However, with Sunni Muslim Saddam Hussein as
head of state, the Shiite population has been largely ignored, and
at times repressed, for over a decade. With U.S. occupation of
Iraq, things are looking different for the Shiites.
'This is truly an amazing day,' said Jasam Hamad, a Shiite Muslim
in Basra on April 11, according to a New York Times article. �For
35 years we had to pray in our homes or in secret, but not
anymore.'"
From
http://courses.washington.edu/com361/Iraq/ethnic_differences/differences.htm
What you're arguing is pretty much like arguing that the slaves
were better off in the South during slavery than they were after
the Civil War because the KKK might come for them in the night and
because services and food were scarcer.
Weird.
|9.29.06 @ 12:53PM|#
Nobody got killed because of their religion in Iraq under Saddam. Saddam definitely did not persecute Shiites. He was a secular dictator. Here endeth the revisionist history lesson.
|9.29.06 @ 12:55PM|#
John,
"I thought we were over there to enforce U.S. imperialism and
democratic values at gun point?"
It appears that the people running our government know, and care, a
lot more about "gunpoint" than about "democratic values."
I don't think the Gread Democracy Crusaders have the foggiest idea
what democracy is. They're pretty sure it has something to do with
low corporate taxes and foreign ownership of oil companies, but the
whole free-speech thing is, apparently, not something worth
worrying about.
Anyone else see the polls - please note the "s," as I'm referring
to a set of independent polls - that show about two thirds of the
Iraqi public supporting the withdrawal of American forces? How's
your smugness about your superior democratic credentials holding
up, John? On the most important question facing the democratic
polity in Iraq, which side are you on - the public's, or the
foreign government's?
That's Democracy, GOP style. It has very little to do with
"American values." Apparently, John's support for Iraqi sovereignty
extends up to, but not including, the decision to allow foreign
troops to occupy your country.
rob, the guys in "the intel biz" told the administration not to
raise, because the odds were too sketchy. That's why they put
together the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon - because they
couldn't get the CIA to say what they wanted to hear.
"And the world is a better place" Yeah, the dramatic increases in
terrorism, decreased ability of the democratic world to cooperate,
and the reduction in the capacity of the American military to
respond to new threats or opportunities has really been a gold
mine.
But, to be fair, the Iraqi security personnel torturing people to
death are now aligned with Iran instead of hostile to them. So
there's that.
The Soviets used to talk about the slaughters they created in other
people's country's being democratic regime changes, too. Garbage
in, Garbage out - and the understanding of democracy among the
people who started this war is garbage.
|9.29.06 @ 12:58PM|#
I'll take the potential car bombs, with the hope of liberty
over the safety of tyranny. How about you?
wow.
talk doesn't get any cheaper than that when you live in a place
where neither your liberty nor your safety has ever been
meaningfully threatened.
yes, the iraqi people are free of the generally un-benevolent
though relatively quiet rule of saddam hussein. in its place, they
enjoy an islamic gangland, where they have freedom in name but are
threatened with oppression and violence on a much more personal
basis every day.
the whole "it's better to die free than live chained" business is
great for showing what an internet tough guy you are, but really
quite meaningless when you know it will never be put to the
test.
|9.29.06 @ 1:04PM|#
"Again, as a factual matter, Saddam let the inspectors in.
Saddam had not kicked them out in the first place." - JH
Since this is the only fact you assert and the rest is a bunch of
Chomsky-esque nonsense, I'll address it.
From the same wiki article you claim doesn't support what I've
said:
"The United States and Britain, along with many intelligence
experts, believed that Saddam Hussein possessed hidden stockpiles
of WMDs, and must be prevented from building anymore. Hussein
denied having any such weapons while at the same time refused to
allow weapons inspectors unrestricted access to his country's
various facilities." -
Which part of that article is confusing to you?
1.) We knew he had WMD's in the past.
2.) He had used them as recently as 1991, so he wasn't exactly shy
about having and using them.
3.) He claimed to still have them.
4.) He denied inspectors access to facilities that were likely WMD
locations.
I'd have thought he had them, too. And I thought he did. Even tho I
could pretend that I knew better then and that I know better know.
But I don't. I honestly think the guy left no alternatives beyond
more opportunities for obfuscation and sleight of hand while the
inspectors tried to conduct a real inspection.
And we still gave him one last chance to spare himself and his
people a world of hurt:
"Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the United States stated that
Saddam Hussein had 48 hours to step down and leave Iraq. As the
deadline approached, the US announced that forces would be sent to
verify his disarmament and a transition to a new government."
Quotes from the same wiki article you claim doesn't support what
I've said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
|9.29.06 @ 1:17PM|#
I don't understand the assertions that Iraqis are somehow less likely to be targeted by state-sanctioned violence than they were before the war. Aside from all of the stories about Iraqi soldiers and police torturing people (remember the secret prison and torture chamber the Interior Ministry was running awhile back?) the major political parties have militias that engage in ethnic violence all the time. They are protected from the government by their powerful political allies. This seems a little bit like state-sanctioned violence.
|9.29.06 @ 1:18PM|#
Look it is their country. Within limits, namely genocide and
totalitarian government, they can run it how they like. If you are
going to let people determine their own government, you have to be
willing to live with the fact that they are going to screw it up
sometimes and the government isn't always going to look like we
would like it to. If throwing a couple of reporters in jail in the
middle of an insurgency is the worst thing that happens, things are
not so bad.
But this raises an interesting point. The opponents of the war
bitch and wail about imperial America enforcing American values on
innocent Iraqis. Then of course when the Iraqis use their
sovereignty to do something that they don't like, the opponents
scream their heads off that the U.S. allowed this to happen. Do the
Iraqis have sovereignty or not? I say they do and they can as a
sovereign government can pass whatever laws they want and if I or
Joe or any other American doesn't like it, too damn bad, we are not
Iraqis.
Careful, John. You are coming dangerously close here to making a
really good argument as to why we never should have invaded Iraq in
the first place.
|9.29.06 @ 1:28PM|#
"The decision I made to support the invasion was based on the
principle that the risks of doing nothing, sadly, outweighed the
risks of invasion." -rob
"My primary concern is eliminating threats to national security."
-rob
"I'll take the potential car bombs, with the hope of liberty over
the safety of tyranny." -rob
Hmmph
|9.29.06 @ 1:30PM|#
"talk doesn't get any cheaper than that when you live in a place
where neither your liberty nor your safety has ever been
meaningfully threatened. " - steven crane
You're the internet tough guy, friend, not me. I know my
limitations when it comes to people who personally insult other
people from the safety of their keyboard.
Whenever someone starts screaming chickenhawk and making claims
about how someone else has never "been there, done that" - someone
they CLEARLY know nothing about - just means they don't have any
real point to make.
I'm not tough, but I do know what tough is, and it's not from
watching it on TV.
|9.29.06 @ 1:35PM|#
"I don't understand the assertions that Iraqis are somehow less
likely to be targeted by state-sanctioned violence than they were
before the war... This seems a little bit like state-sanctioned
violence." - TH
It probably has something to do with the oversight of the Iraqi
police and military by hundreds of thousands of U.S. military
personnel.
Then again, while I think the state-sanctioned violence is less
than before Saddam was toppled I also think that there's no way to
keep all police and military from abusing their authority. Even the
U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib got away with unsavory stuff until they
were caught.
Jim Henley|9.29.06 @ 2:08PM|#
rob, it's cute that you're using wikipedia as an authoritative
source for interpretations of disputed fact sets as
opposed to the sorts of things wikipedia is actually good for. But
way way back before you began doing the usual hawkish fog dance,
you said, explicitly, Saddam Hussein claimed to have WMDs.
Not one quote from the wiki article you like so much has
established Saddam Hussein claiming to have WMDs. Your very word.
Not one quote has refuted the fact - unchallengeable fact - that UN
inspectors were in Iraq starting the winter before the war. Because
it is fact. You haven't even begun to address that Saddam
Hussein did not order the UN inspectors out of Iraq in 1998 - the
UN pulled them out in direct anticipation of the US-British bombing
campaign (Operation Desert Fox).
I can believe that you combined an excessive level of fear and
insufficient knowledge in late 2002 and early 2003 - many Americans
did. But your imagination, then and now, is not history.
|9.29.06 @ 2:11PM|#
Doesn't the Iraqi contitution protect free speech and freedom of
the press? Can't the defendants in these cases appeal to higher
courts and challenge the law on constitutional grounds?
Maybe I am naive about this whole thing but I was under the
impression that there must be some kind of judicial review process,
at least in theory, that Iraq's legal system has to overturn laws
that are unconstitutional.
|9.29.06 @ 2:30PM|#
JH - It's cute that you post nothing to refute the wiki
citation, you just try to smear its credibility.
"you said, explicitly, Saddam Hussein claimed to have WMDs. Not one
quote from the wiki article you like so much has established Saddam
Hussein claiming to have WMDs."
Nope. Here it is, once again:
"Saddam lied to stay in power
On 14 December Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces. Time
Online Edition reports that in his first interrogation he was asked
whether Iraq had any WMDs. According to an official, his reply was:
"'No, of course not, the U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a
reason to go to war with us.' The interrogator continued along this
line, said the official, asking: 'if you had no weapons of mass
destruction then why not let the U.N. inspectors into your
facilities?' Saddam�s reply: 'We didn�t want them to go into the
presidential areas and intrude on our privacy.'" Later interviews
with Saddam's military leaders indicated that Saddam didn't want it
demonstrated through inspections that he didn't possess WMDs in
certain places in order to pose a threat against those who might
attempt a coup."
From wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Saddam_WMD_search
Saddam played it both ways, no doubt about it. Just like he played
the secular leader and the devout Muslim leader whenever it seemed
the most useful thing to do.
He claimed to have WMD's on the one hand, to keep his neighbors in
check, and denied having them to the inspectors. It's such a
mystery that a world leader might say whatever is most likely to be
of benefit?
You're the guy who thinks the U.S. people were hoodwinked by the
Bush administration. I think they were bluffed by Saddam's back and
forth takes on it... It was a bad thing to bluff on. Unfortunately,
not only Saddam loses because of this.
Jim Henley|9.29.06 @ 2:50PM|#
rob at 11:29:
"That Saddam most likely had WMD's because he 1) **claimed he did**
and 2) wouldn't cooperate with the inspectors."
I'll give you "wouldn't cooperate with the inspectors" as a
difference of interpretation, so long as we agree that Saddam did
in fact let inspectors back into Iraq during the winter before the
war and did not kick them out of Iraq in 1998. (I've stated some of
my reasons for thinking it's largely a crock.) But "claimed he had
WMD" is a simple question of fact. Saddam did not, after some time
in the mid-1990s if not before, claim to have WMD. He claimed to
have destroyed all stockpiles. Repeatedly claimed.
If you're formally modifying your claim to "Saddam formally
professed that he had gotten rid of his WMDs but did the dance of
the seven veils to fool [someone] into thinking he still had them,"
then we're back into realms of interpretation again. It's an
interesting question whether Saddam was trying to convince some set
of outsiders that he really had WMDs and just who the "someone" was
in the brackets.
If the above adequately clarifies what you meant, then you're no
longer spreading misinformation, just offering a tendentious
reading of events like the rest of us.
|9.29.06 @ 4:41PM|#
Well, never let it be said that rob doesn't support your right to die for his freedom.
|9.29.06 @ 4:43PM|#
If throwing a couple of reporters in jail in the middle of
an insurgency is the worst thing that happens, things are not so
bad.
Completely ignoring the corruption of the officals... I seem to
remember a corrupt official in Iraq a few years back. What was his
name again? Saddam something-or-other...
|9.29.06 @ 5:08PM|#
Rob the "bill of goods" you bought was just as fake as the
others.
If you really believed Saddam had WMD you would have to believe one
of the following.
1. Bush Sr, Powell, and stormin' Norman, failed to removed all
existing WMDs in the first gulf war. (We knew about them back then
didn't we?)
2. Saddam was so slick he rebuilt his WMD while the tough sanctions
were in place for 12 years.
(Hell he couldn't rebuild his own damn power plants under those
sanctions.)
3. Saddam borrowed some from a neighbor.
4. Didn't listen to the experts such as the energy department or
the Air Force when they disputed the DIA assesments on tubes and
UAVs.
(As a matter of fact not one of Bush's claims were without
dissent.)
Come on, face up to it, you were one of those that quickly jumped
on the get Saddam bandwagon and was willing to graps anything that
looked good to you. You never looked for proof or real evidence of
the claims you were willing to believe. Saddam did not say he had
WMD, doing so would have justified our actions from the start. He
did talk tough about war and killing our troops but it was the U.S.
that assumed he would use WMDs against us. Failure to cooperate
does not equal the threat that Bush claimed existed nor is it a
reason to war.
The false 'bill of goods" arguement will disappear as soon as Bush
gets the victory.
Bush needs to stop talking about winning, he need to do it
already.
U.S. to Bush, SHOW US THE VICTORY
but, if he could, he would.
|9.29.06 @ 5:35PM|#
Rob @ 11:29: it's a lot like poker.
Uh-huh. Where I play, the dealer doesn't shoot me in the fucking
face when I lose a hand, though.
Hundreds of billions of our dollars, thousands of dead Americans,
and no end in sight to any of it. But what the hell, "it's like
poker," just a game, right?
|9.29.06 @ 5:41PM|#
If you really believed Saddam had WMD you would have to
believe one of the following.
1. Bush Sr, Powell, and stormin' Norman, failed to removed all
existing WMDs in the first gulf war. (We knew about them back then
didn't we?)
Might want to take it up with joe, who's fond of the line "Sure,
Iraq had WMDs in the 90s - but Clinton took care of them all!"
|9.29.06 @ 5:56PM|#
While I've long since abandoned any support for the war, I have to note a verbal sleight-of-hand Iraq war opponents have been fond of - the simplification of the claim "Iraq is trying to get WMDs and could make some soon" to "Iraq has WMDs". I know I didn't support the war out of hopes of already-made nukes going off in the Middle East.
|9.29.06 @ 9:08PM|#
ERic .5b,
The 1991 war didn't destory Iraq's WMD stockpiles, or programs.
I've never disputed that fact. Nor have I ever said "Clinton took
care of them all." What I have stated, and what is true, is that
the UN teams, backed up by American and British military force,
destroyed most of Iraq's WMD capacity. The rest was destroyed on
the orders of the Iraqi government itself, after Operation Desert
Fox convinced them that doing so was a good idea.
Also, you might recall the Secretary of Defense, asked if he knew
"where the weapons of mass destruction are located" (please note
the present tense), replied, "Yes," and proceded to provide
geographic descriptions. Completely transparent ones, but all in
the present tense.
rob, I, too, was surpirsed by your assertion that Saddam claimed to
have WMDs. I seemed to recall Saddam Hussein and his spokesmen
denying (truthfully, as it turns out) that they had any WMDs. I
also seemd to recal George Bush himself saying that he wasn't going
to take Saddam's word for it when he denied having WMDs.
So I was interested to see what kind of evidence you could come up
with for your assertion, and was disappointed to note that the
wikipedia entry you quote - that is, the evidence you considered
sufficiently strong to back up your assertion - doesn't actually
say that Saddam Hussein claimed to have WMDs.
I think you demonstrated that your word is worth less than that of
Saddam Hussein. Man, that's rough.
thoreau|9.29.06 @ 11:23PM|#
Well, never let it be said that rob doesn't support your
right to die for his freedom.
Now, now, they don't all have to die. Some of them can just be
tortured...um, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that
were torture when the Vietnamese did it to McCain but aren't
torture when we do it to Khaled El Masri.
|10.2.06 @ 12:14PM|#
The 1991 war didn't destory Iraq's WMD stockpiles, or
programs. I've never disputed that fact.
Neither have I. Other people in this thread have, including the
person I quoted.
Nor have I ever said "Clinton took care of them all." What I
have stated, and what is true, is that the UN teams, backed up by
American and British military force, destroyed most of Iraq's WMD
capacity. The rest was destroyed on the orders of the Iraqi
government itself, after Operation Desert Fox convinced them that
doing so was a good idea.
You've
previously given Clinton explicit credit for this. It's
actually an arguable claim (if not the way you put it), since it
did turn out to have worked - even though Clinton's statements at
the time described the weapons programs as a grave, continuing
danger, not something that had been neutralized.
Also, you might recall the Secretary of Defense, asked if he
knew "where the weapons of mass destruction are located" (please
note the present tense), replied, "Yes," and proceded to provide
geographic descriptions. Completely transparent ones, but all in
the present tense.
Yes, and every citation I've seen of this remark focuses on one
response in one interview, while every other statement of the
administration harped on WMD programs - at least until
they had to give up and admit they couldn't find anything remotely
productive going on.
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