Iraq training children to soldiers

[Pekka]

It's like hostage situation, Saddam being the hostage taker and Iraqi people being the hostages. US is the cops and snipers, rest of the world is audience behind the fence. Saddam wants to get out, bet there's no where to go, except other criminals. So he is still looking to keep his place, kill the hostages, make the cops rush in and accidentally kill more hostages so the audience starts yelling and screaming police brutality etc. Pretty much the same situation.

[Pekka]

And some of the hostages have Stockholm syndrome and rest of them are too scared to step up, or speak against him.

and if he was even half decent, he would let the kids go out from the back door, or at least make them stay in another room so they have a chance to survive the cops and snipers, and not use them as his shields.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Sonic
Well, you can train people of whatever age. I can say that a country must at least try to defend itself whatever it takes. To die heroically is better than to live in chains. Probably Iraq has no chances to stand against, but it is worth to try. It is worth to implode all infrastructure, oil rigs and facilities just before the end of war, so the occupants (werether military or their puppet government) would have to at least pay much money to get something from that country. It is better to die as a martyr for your state than to see it annexed and it's resources exploited. What is it worth to live without your country, or country ruled by other nations or it's government? It is no more worth than to live without eyes, ears, arms and feet... Any independence is better than any occupation...

...so you agree with Hitler's actions at the end of WWII?

[The Mad Monk]

The fact is, what a country does to defend itself must include consideration of what will happen if it loses.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by Pekka
ranskaldan, and you go with assumption that all leaders are evil and only care about themselves .

I go with this assumption because this is a trend world events display. By large leaders don't care about their people unless it also benefits themselves in some way.

And this deterrent is not working. He is looking for nasty headlines, this gives fuel to the anti-war people, and may turn few people to their camp too. It's obvious Saddam just wants to give the biggest possible tragedy he can. He has already revealed his cards. He is going to torch up the oil fields, maybe use chemical weapons, gassing people he don't like, using kids as soldiers, moving the pressure point to Bagdad, making it a fight in the city with all civilians to try to slow down the US bombings, and when the time comes, he will gas his own people in order to make it bigger tragedy. Blame it on Americans, good propaganda and lots of destruction.

Saddam isn't doing things just because he's evil... it is understandable that in his current plight (i.e. about to lose power) he'd want to go out with a bang, but some of these things, at least, are done because he's a politician, like all politicians, in self-service.

This is his tactics. It's pretty good tactics if thinking about him, but it's awfull thinking about the Iraq and its people. And when everything is done, he will flee to another rogue state with his family, or close people, and live like a king.

Well... that's how the world works. We try to make it work some other way, which is why there are things like pressure groups, democracy, capitalism, etc, to divert power away from the select few. It IS very awful thinking about the Iraqi people, but Saddam doesn't care. And the US govt isn't too much better, if you ask me.

What ever he is doing, he is not defending Iraq. He thinks if destruction and tragedy is big enough, the US can't afford it and they leave. It's his only choice because he can't match them in the field. So he needs to get the world to see lots of horrors etc.

He's defending himself and/or trying to go out with a bang. I think that was my original point. (Well, maybe not the bang part.)

[Pekka]

ranskaldan, I agree, he is only defending himself or trying to go out with a bang, thus he needs to be removed. Even if US gov would be as evil as Saddam is, it's better to knock one of them out, and it's better that it's Saddam than the US.

[ranskaldan]

Nice!

So we agree on something.

Should we continue the debate about how leaders are mostly self-serving?

[Pekka]

Well that's a another debate all together .