PRESIDENT BUSH should be tried for war crimes!

[DanS]

"The burden of blame for the decline in the health and welfare of the Iraqi people doesn't fall on Saddam."

You might as well have led with the conclusion and skipped those "reasons".

FACT: Saddam could have provided for his people, but chose to buy weapons instead. He's been smuggling enough oil since the Gulf War to provide for his people, even outside the oil for food program.

[Arrian]

why does [America] not contain Saddam alone and leave the people alone? Let the people eat and drink. Why should America starve 20 million people and Madeleine Albright stand up and say it is the price?

How, exactly? There were two options: 1) conquer Iraq and remove Saddam and 2) leave him in power and attempt to "contain" him with sanctions and such.

Option #1, if I understand things correctly, was deemed to be a coalition-breaker. The coalition had been formed to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, not to remove him from power.

Option #2 was chose, and not just by the US. Then, surprise surprise, it didn't work (have sanctions EVER worked?) and everyone blames us. The primary fault still lies with Saddam, even if our policy was a mistake.

-Arrian

[Guest]

FACT: Saddam could have provided for his people, but chose to buy weapons instead. He's been smuggling enough oil since the Gulf War to provide for his people, even outside the oil for food program.

He's only earning around $20-25 million a month through oil sales - a pittance compared to the massive financial/humanitarian burden created by the sanctions, and the bombing of power plants, water treatment facilities, etc.

It's a joke and a gross oversimplification to think that Saddam is "starving" his people. The sanctions, and their cynical use as a coercive tactic, have affected all aspects of the Iraqis' lives. Everything from educational materials to dental supplies has been held back either from bureaucratic ineptness, or to cater to the whims of the UN's strongest members.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by SpencerH


Heres one I found today

http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.p...ang=e&dir=news

this is about student strike in Techeran,


This article is nice

http://www.usatoday.com/community/chat/2002-05-16-kirk.htm

Pittsburgh, PA: Why isn't this guy dead? Can't Delta Force get to him, or are the political repercussions of an assassination too much for the U.S. to chance?

Mike Kirk: Because real life is not a movie. Delta Force cannot drop in and assassinate any bad guys all by themselves. There was great planning involved in using a Delta team to kill bin Laden during the Clinton years, but when you total up the necessary extraction teams and other logistical elements, it became much more complicated than it seemed at first blush. If you doubt that, take a look back at what happened when we tried to rescue our hostages in Tehran, Iran. The mission was a failure and an embarrassment, and worst yet, there was a loss of many American lives. You can also look at the mission to extract Aideed from Mogadishu in 1993. Additionally, there are at least 11 Saddam Husseins walking around in Baghdad. Which one would you kill

[SpencerH]

Perhaps I misunderstood. Its a webpage of news from an arabic perspective (in english). I thought you wanted to read about what the Arabic world thinks of world events and countries such as the USA.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Arrian


How, exactly? There were two options: 1) conquer Iraq and remove Saddam and 2) leave him in power and attempt to "contain" him with sanctions and such.

Option #1, if I understand things correctly, was deemed to be a coalition-breaker. The coalition had been formed to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, not to remove him from power.

Option #2 was chose, and not just by the US. Then, surprise surprise, it didn't work (have sanctions EVER worked?) and everyone blames us. The primary fault still lies with Saddam, even if our policy was a mistake.

-Arrian

Well true, as 1) the Arab states were afraid of a democracy in Iraq, and they did not want to support it. and 2) well a failure, but US was not the only one that chose it.

Anyway, US is still singled out as the enemy because of Israel, still UK is becoming a very likely enemy #2.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Perhaps I misunderstood. Its a webpage of news from an arabic perspective (in english). I thought you wanted to read about what the Arabic world thinks of world events and countries such as the USA.

well I was asking whethere there was a link to "reasoning for 9-11" by the attacker, Dino says it is US army in Saudi Arabia, I thought one of the main reasons was Israeli occupation of Palestine and US support.

[Arrian]

Didn't one of the hijackers leave a note or something?

Other than that, OBL clearly has a burr up his ass about the troops in Saudi, and it is the basis for his "declaration of war" against the US in 1993. The Pals/Israeli dispute got tacked on post 9/11/01.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

While searching for a link re: 9/11 motivations, I came across the 1998 Fatwah vs. Americans by the World Islamic Front. Accordingly to the website, OBL helped author it.

The first and primary transgression listed is "occupation" of Saudi Arabia by US troops. The second is our actions vis-a-vis Iraq, and the third is our support for Israel.

Link: http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm

The accusations:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

-Arrian

[Lord Merciless]

Why OBL ultimately hates us:

Our support of the corrupt Saudi royals prevented him from overthrowing that unpopular regime and thus gaining resources to fund a world-wide Islamic revolution(terror campagne).

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Arrian
While searching for a link re: 9/11 motivations, I came across the 1998 Fatwah vs. Americans by the World Islamic Front. Accordingly to the website, OBL helped author it.

The first and primary transgression listed is "occupation" of Saudi Arabia by US troops. The second is our actions vis-a-vis Iraq, and the third is our support for Israel.

Link: http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm

The accusations:



Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

-Arrian

Excellent stuff, I was looking for something similar from transcripts of OBL's rhetoric but couldnt find it. "The crusader-zionist alliance" What a toad!

[Arrian]

That "crusader-zionist alliance" phrase is pretty commonplace in the ME... a lot of people buy into it.

-Arrian

[Drake Tungsten]

Why OBL ultimately hates us:

Our support of the corrupt Saudi royals prevented him from overthrowing that unpopular regime and thus gaining resources to fund a world-wide Islamic revolution(terror campagne).

There's the nail. Lord Merciless is the hammer. BAM! Right on the head...

[DanS]

"He's only earning around $20-25 million a month through oil sales "

You've got severe math problems and it's clear that you haven't checked Saddam's propaganda against reality.

You're off by a factor of 50x. More like $20-25 million a day through the "old" oil-for-food regime. This represented 60-70% of Iraq's OPEC quota. Then all he could smuggle above and beyond that was gravy.

Through the "new" oil-for-food program, he can sell as much as he wants, just as long as it's for food and medicine. And he's outputting about 2 million barrels of oil a day--100% of his OPEC quota.

Hell, the US was buying $20-25 million a day worth of oil from Iraq up until a couple of months ago.

"It's a joke and a gross oversimplification to think that Saddam is "starving" his people."

Let me guess. You also believe that Gulf War I wasn't Saddam's fault. Or the Iran-Iraq War.

This guy is bad news.

[Dinner]

If you folks like this stuff then you should try listening to the Pacifica Network's broadcasts here in California. Pacifica bills itself as the "Voice of Progressive reason in a world dominated by Republican greed!"; when I first heard that statement I thought it was supposed to be a joke. Saddly it was true and the entire 24 hour a day broadcast is of old 60's radicals saying the same sort of stuff as in this thread.

I listen to it once in a while but I can only take so much of "Bush is an illegitamate President who stole the elections!" and "white culture's smoothering of minority cultures is only the latest phase in a racist Anglo-Saxon plot to dominate the world!" before I begin to laugh uncontrolably. I'm a Democrat and I can't even listen to it with a straight face!