“The last time Washington engaged in deep sanctions was from 1991-2003, when it was been verified that over a million Iraqis, including a huge number of children, died from various deprivations from hunger to unclean drinking water.”

Sanctions always hit the people on the street, disproportionately of course, on the poor.

And as you can see, the sanctions imposed on Iraq already exacted a huge toll even before the invasion.

I remember an Amnesty or HRW report that Saddam caused about 350,000 politically motivated killings in his reign of terror, but that it had dwindled to the low hundreds per year by the time of the war. Still horrific, but nothing like sanctions and the war caused.

The end did not justify the means, and only a racist or an imperialist could say it does. Which are you? Both?

Abu Ghraib was an overblown beatup, the “torture” claims too.
Guantanamo was & always has been a necessary facility.
The wars, necessary too (if badly run in the aftermath).

Like Hitler or Amin? Fuck, that’s just leftists packing a sad that they couldn’t have another skirt chasing dribbler like slick Willie to worship & model themselves after. LOL

Never forget that Suddam invated Kuwait, murdered entire villages of Kurds using chemical weapons, fired cruise missiles to Israel. How many times did we hear that UN weapons inspectors had been booted out of Iraq, a country with a regime who had proved that they were more than willing to develop and use WMD’s, how many warnings from the UN had Suddam ignored. He was even given a warning prior to the invasion that Iraq would be invaded if they didn’t allow weapons inspectors. The biggest crime was that Suddams regime wasn’t crushed after the gulf war.

In hind sight, the world is probably a better place now that Suddam was crushed, it was a shame that the US lied to justify the invasion as they already had enough reason to do so. The US also made a mistake in trying to install a democratic government… really, does anyone see a democracy working in a country fulled with people with such descriminating and restrictive religious beliefs.

I guess according to him, Apartheid is okay as long as its against the Jews.

The comparison he made of Bush and a certain German leader is sick, its just another cheap shot at America.

The far left people like Minto have never been about Equal Justice for all, they just use it as a disguise for their own political beliefs.

Can’t be, who would be such a hypocrite?

How many Iraqis are now dead who wouldn’t have been if the US hadn’t, david? How many Iraqis think life is better now than under the US. Remember, even under Saddam, at least they had stability and basic utilities, FFS.

“The invasion was about a variety of things…”

Yeh but mostly it was about made up shit by the neocons because they really really wanted an excuse. Bush was ultimately responsible and was an idiot because either (a) he didn’t see through their evil at the time which was in fact transparent or (b) he actually agreed with them because he believed their lies via the PNAC.

david, if you have any doubt whatsoever that Iraq was nothing else than a setup from start to finish, then would love to debate it on the general threads over the weekend. This is not the thread nor the time.

I’ll be there.

Although Saddam was truly bad, you exaggerate his death toll many times over, but you are in cuckoo land about Iraqis alive today thanks to the invasion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

And this report is way out of date by now. The main point, by 2006, 650,000 extra deaths in Iraq, and a mortality rate four times higher, than pre-invasion.

Here is the 2001 Amnesty Int report on Iraq. http://www.atour.com/news/international/20010710l.html You will note that Iraq rejected the inspections resolution at that time. Many UN resolutions are rejected by the target country but we don’t go to war with them – just look at Israel’s record.

And if Saddam was so effective in obstructing the inspections teams, how come Hans Blix correctly foretold there were no WMDs or WMD programmes in Iraq BEFORE the invasion.

I was taking the piss on the resistance angle, for a laugh, and copying your semantic resistance to the fact that the UN didn’t actually say No (the sort of argument we see all the time in rape cases -”I had to sort of prise her legs apart, your honour, but she never said no.”

It seems spurious statistics are your stock-in-trade.

War is always a humanitarian catastrophe.

I certainly wouldn’t expect Mandela, or anyone else who saw that regime at its ugliest, to shrug it off.

The invasion was about a variety of things… http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf lists several pages of them. It took me about 30 seconds to find this authoritative source online… there really isn’t any excuse for you missing every aspect of the decision to invade except one.

The evidence for Annan being a party to genocide and a multi-billion dollar multi-hundred-thousand-person-death fraud is overwhelming. But it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t his job to issue bizarre “rulings” on facts of international law. Neither Annan or the UN can restrict the right to self defence.

As for the no fly zones… No, shooting at US aircraft enforcing them wasn’t legitimate resistance. Iraq agreed to certain conditions in order to end the Gulf War without surrender or occupation. That included weapons inspections, sanctions, and no fly zones. Iraq spent the next 12 years stopping weapons inspectors from doing their jobs, busting sanctions (and paying enormous bribes to various Annan hangers-on to do it), and shooting at aircraft. It isn’t the fault of the US if Saddam and the Iraq government pursued a half witted strategy that caused them to be invaded.

But regardless of the US’s rights to invade under international law… there is a moral dimension to the invasion. Saddam was a shit who murdered millions of people and brought misery to about 99% of the population of his own country, as well as the populations of the neighbouring countries he attacked and invaded. Now he is dead. Iraq is a democracy, if an imperfect one. Its violent death rate per capita is lower than South Africa’s, and a tiny fraction of Rio de Janiero’s. Around 500,000 Iraqis are alive today who wouldn’t have been if Iraq hadn’t been invaded. Opinion polls show that support for the invasion is almost unanimous among Kurds, a clear majority among Shiites, and a minority only among Sunnis. If it came down to a choice between an interpretation of international law that was in favour of a psychopath that murdered millions of people and looted his country, and the right of his people to be free of death and torture, then I’ll go with the ordinary people.

“Just saw the most awful sight.

“John Key was posing outside on the 9th Floor Beehive balcony for a photo op.

“He looked just like Mussolini at the Piazzo Navona. I couldn’t resist leaning out my window and calling out to John that he resembled Mussolini.

“He responded “IT WORKED!”

“Says it all, really.”

* * *

Trevor Mallard or someone must have seen the post, complete with a picture of Mussolini. They withdrew it and probably put the cork back on the Chardonnay bottle.

Love your honesty Hurf. You come up with some great lines. How many lines do you do to get that creative?

Hahaha oh wow. Course, we always knew you were a loony moonbat, so that kind of attitude towards at least one part of the Iraq containment measures which had wider support was expected.

Occupy, occupy, milk dry. Fuck guilt.

What sort of fantasy land do you live in? The invasion was all about WMDs, remember?

Unproven allegations against Annan do not detract from his statement as UN head that the UN did not authorise that war.

As for Iraq shooting, with not one success, at US planes, the no-fly zone imposed after the First Gulf War is a form of occupation, surely, to which resistance, although not including war crimes, is legal.

But, semantically, you are correct in saying there was not a no vote, although there would have been had the resolution not been withdrawn. If this perverse state of denial pleases you, so be it.

Does that apply to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as well? Just wondering.

I have never agreed with anything john minto has ever,ever ever said until today.

Bill, nice to know you still support apartheid. Don’t worry, on this site, you are not alone. There is huge support for the apartheid Israel practices in the OPT.

so the mere act of invading Iraq wasn’t a war crime in of itself…