Al Gore, America's only hope ...

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think Sloww must be drunk... either that or he's the only person who can possibly explain what he wrote there.

[Arrian]

The No Fly Zones, Sloww, were NOT UN-imposed, nor UN-approved.

-Arrian

[SlowwHand]

A ceasefire was announced in Washington by President George Bush after Iraq accepted all 12 resolutions made by the United Nations.

It's not the esteemed wikipedia, but BBC will have to do.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/28/newsid_2515000/2515289.stm

[Arrian]

And that addresses the No Fly Zones how?

Oh, I get it, you're sliding from one issue to another again.

-Arrian

[Ninot]

Doesn't specify the resolutions.

[Ecthy]

To be fair, I was always under the same impression as Sloww.

The German Wiki article (how sustainable are these anyway?) linked the creation of the NFZs as being done "under US pressure" to stop Saddam from attacking the Kurdish insurrection in the north from the air. So US imposed indeed. Always seemed UN imposed to me.

Interesting how the US would stick quite literally with the mission given by the security council (drive Iraq out of Kuwait, no further advancing) but then impose this much on their own. Obviously a continuation of the ground war wasn't in their interest, but where do the NFZs come in?

[SlowwHand]

Oh screw it. I'm tired of pointing out facts to people who were like 10 at the time.

[Ecthy]

Having promised to the Kurds to support their insurrection, which they didn't consequently do, it might have been the least they could do to counter Iraqi air superiority (vs the Kurds not the US).

[Ecthy]

Sloww: The NFZs might even have been installed by the UN formally, but most sources seem to agree it happened under US pressure. Which formally delegitimizes the formal UN action.

[SlowwHand]

The **** it does.

[Ecthy]

The "imposing" of something includes 1. the will to do it and 2. the means to get through with it.

[Ninot]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Oh screw it. I'm tired of pointing out facts to people who were like 10 at the time.

[Verto]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Oh screw it. I'm tired of pointing out facts to people who were like 10 at the time.

How about pointing out the facts to the BBC.

Link

The two no-fly zones, one in the north and another in the south of Iraq, were unilaterally created by the US, Britain and France soon after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq was banned from using all aircraft, including helicopters, in the air exclusion zones.

Or the PBS.

Link

PHIL PONCE: After the Gulf war, the allies created so-called no-fly zones over Northern and Southern Iraq, areas off limits to Iraqi aircraft and patrolled by allied planes. After the latest U.S. and British bombing attacks on Iraq, Saddam Hussein's government said it would challenge allied planes patrolling the zones, and twice this week, Iraq fired surface-to-air missiles at U.S. and British warplanes, which, in turn, bombed the missile sites. We get two assessments now of the zones and the potential risks in maintaining them from two officials who helped create and implement them. Richard Haass was the top Middle East staff member on the National Security Council during the Gulf War. He's now director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. General Merrill McPeak was air force chief of staff during the Gulf War and is now a consultant. Gentlemen, welcome.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Haass, just by way of a brief history lesson, why were the zones created in the first place?

RICHARD HAASS: Well, the zones were created to protect the people of Iraq and particularly the Kurds in the North, the largely Shia Muslim people of the South, but also the zone were created to send a signal that so long as Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, Iraq's sovereignty would be compromised, so really it was meant politically to humiliate Saddam, to weaken him, as well as to protect the people.

PHIL PONCE: And just a point of information, you say Kurds in the North, the Kurds are an ethnic group in Northern Iraq and the Shiite Muslims, it's a different branch of Islam from the Sunni Muslims.

RICAHRD HAASS: Exactly.

PHIL PONCE: Which control the country. What countries in the alliance specifically were pushing for these no-fly zones to begin with back then?

RICHARD HAASS: If you'll recall, right after the United States and the rest of the world liberated Kuwait, in the immediate aftermath, then there was tremendous protest within Iraq. The Iraqi government then came down very hard on the Kurdish Iraqis in the North, on the Shia in the South; there was tremendous humanitarian difficulties. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives were potentially at stake. The United States working particularly with Britain and France essentially created these zones. What it took first, though, was a U.N. resolution, Resolution 688, which essentially demanded that Saddam Hussein stop repressing his own people. The resolution itself, interestingly enough, never mentioned the zones. The United States, working again largely with Britain and France, also with Turkey in the North, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the South, then pursuant to the resolution, essentially said the best way we know to make good on this resolution and to make it difficult for Saddam Hussein to continue to repress his people is to deny him the ability to fly his planes over large areas of his own country. That's essentially how they came about in the North in the spring of 1991; in the South in the summer of 1992.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Ming
After reading the original post... it reminds me of a song which starts... "Dear Mr. Fantasy, play me a tune... "

We need an "I'm with stupid" smilee like they have at Speakeasy.

[SlowwHand]

Thanks, Verto.

And 1441 cancelled all previous resoutions of the CEASE FIRE, imposed by UNITED NATIONS.