Pissed Iraqi foreign minister kicks UN squarely in the nads
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/in...st/17NATI.html (registration req.)

Those of you who bring up the fact that human rights is not part of the US equation, imagine what kind of government actively worked to save Saddam's ass just for the political opportunism of poking the US in the ribs and saving their own opportunistic oil contracts.

There's your treasured France and Germany.

Continuing instead of editing the first post.
"The time for that was a year ago, while you were still having your families tortured and killed just because they were Kurds," Annan pointed out. "Obviously we honestly believed that an oil-bearing Stalinist dictator would be hurt by sanctions and stop feeding your people into those plastic shredders. Now please, we prefer to be diplomatic here at the UN, no more of this blunt talk."

Re: Pissed Iraqi foreign minister kicks UN squarely in the nads
 

Or perhaps it was to discourage the reintroduction of the doctrine of preemptive war onto the world stage. Both countries have historical reasons not to want to see that again.

Well, that's what happens when you put China and Libya in CHARGE of the human rights commission. Heck, it could easily been the case that one of those two countries suggested or even provided the plastic shredders to Uday along with the instructions to video tape the shredding and send it to the victim's families.

On a follow up note, it is my understanding that the UN, in a move that will surprise no one, is about to appoint North Korea to be the next head of the Human Rights Commission. Kim Jong Il jockeyed for the appointment as he thought it would help him score with Brittany Spears.

Re: Pissed Iraqi foreign minister kicks UN squarely in the nads
 

I understand your need for blind patriotism, but let's be realists here. The US supported Iraq. They basicly handed Saddam the gun and said, "Here, shoot thousands of your people."

So how again is the US so great in their handeling of Iraq? You kid only yourself if you say the US did all of this to help the Iraqi peoples. That is just icing on the cake. An added bonus, a bit of marketing spin to help sell the war.

You're right, "gun" isn't the right word. The word is gas. They basicly handed him the gas and said, "Kill your people. We like you. We hate your enemies."

Saddam's only problem was that we no longer hated his enemies so we could afford to not like him any more.

Quzah.

[smug intellectual]

Nice try UT, BUT the ONE PERCENT that the United States of America sold them killed 300.000 Iraqi civilians and 1,000,000 Iranians whereas the 99% Saddam got from everyone else were used passively as deterrents to discourage attacks from Iraq's bloodthirsty neighbor, Kuwait.

[/smug intellectual]

:D

Um. Joking or no, Beestie? If not joking, sources please?

I don't think that chart is WMD specific.

I admire the guy for lashing out at the UN. The UN hasn't been all that effective in recent years.

Now, why his tirade can easily be blown off (not saying it should be necessarily, but why it can be):

--He's a Kurd. Kurds have had their freedom within Iraq more or less for several years, as I understand it. Has he been a guerilla fighter recently (between the time of Kurdish self rule and the US invasion)?

--The Iraqi Governing Council ultimately has to answer to the US. Therefore, this could easily be viewed as a US propaganda stunt.

--What exactly DID the US give Iraq in that one percent?

--Freedom is not free. I'm not saying that there haven't been Iraqis that have given their lives for freedom. But neither the United States nor the United Nations can or should be expected to come in and save nations. If one truly believes in freedom from oppression, you have to fight for it, and never stop fighting. And from where I'm sitting, it seems that the Iraqis quit trying shortly after the first Gulf War.

I'm not against going to help you out, but you have to help yourself too...

Furthermore, this spans nearly thirty years. I'd imagine that in 2002 since we weren't friends with Iraq, we weren't selling them anything. How about a chart pre-"War with Iraq" for a bit more accuracy?

On a related note, who cares how much other countries sold them? The fact remains we sold them shit. That means we're two faced assholes for getting pissed off when they use it.

"Oh, here's a new car. That'll look nice in your driveway."
"What the fuck are you doing? You can't fucking drive that!" *BLAM*

You can dance around it, shine it up, make it as pretty as you want with your charts. But the fact remains: We sold weapons to Iraq knowing full well what they'd be used for. They killed a bunch of people with them. We looked the other way.

Later, when we don't need them any more, we decide they're evil. We overthrow their goverment. This isn't the first time this has happened. This isn't the first time America sponsored a bloodbath. I doubt it will be the last.

Quzah.

I'm just wondering where they compiled the information for the chart from, since our CIA mad money is off the books.

Quzah's right. We should have just let him go on killing and torturing people since it was our fault, anyway.

Would it be better if Dubya at least said, "We're sorry we were assholes, but we've changed our minds and we didn't want him to hurt any more people"...?

Riiight. Dubya said he's sorry for us selling weapons to them.

First off, Dubya did not enter into Iraq with the intention of "helping" the people of Iraq. It was under this bullshit pretense of saving the world from terrorists. Squashing the "axis of evil", all that.

He's apparently forgotten that he lumped North Korea in that "axis". I wonder why that is?

As I've stated, it's fine for you to be all pro-America. But you're only kidding yourself if you think he had some great "save the people" agenda. I don't see him storming China to help those people out. I don't see him bombing North Korea to help those people out. Any idea why? Oh, that's because unlike the case with Iraq, they actually really believe that their really are WMD in NK and China.

"Never start a land war in asia!"

We'd get fucked. Again.

Plus, there's no oil. But that couldn't possibly be a motive. No, it was definately only to liberate the country from it's horrible government.

Here's a novel idea: Why don't we leave soverign countries alone instead of deciding when it's ok to overthrow them? Hmm?

Seriously folks, who the fuck do you think you all are? You'd just sit there and say "Hey, great. Thanks China. We're so glad you came in here and bombed the shit out of us and killed our government. That's a million!" "Hey thanks Great Britian! We like a monarchy much better." "Hey, thanks Japan. I didn't know you had those secret Giant Robot armies, but since you took us over, that's cool. We're so much better off now!"

Give me a fucking break. No one here would just sit back and let some foreign country come in and take us over without doing anything about it. You'd be all up in arms freaking the fuck out.

Never bothered to look at the other side of the picture did you? You just assume that every single person in the country is happy we stomped the shit out of their country.

Why, I bet Chile was glad we overthrew their Democratic govermnent in '73 huh?

What the fuck do I know, right? Everyone loves America. They do no wrong in your eyes.

Quzah.

Not to mention intelligence and satellite photos we shared with him when he was 'the lesser of two evils' in our war with Iran.

Both Hussein and Bin Laden were on our Christmas list in the 1980's. Not to mention, Marcos, and our friend Manuel Noriega.

You can be a vicious dictator, just as long as you're not a Commie vicious dictator, or get in our way, or threaten to destabilize a region supplying our oil.

BTW, Hussein could never go to trial in the US or in the world court. Especially not in the world court. He knows way too much about US involvement in Iraq and the Middle East and has no incentive to keep quiet. The US will have to see him tried and executed in Iraq.

Well... the chart seems to include the years in which you're interested. It goes back to '73. Saddam Hussein assumed the presidency of Iraq in '79.

Do you think that a chart that only included the years through 1991 would look significantly different? After all, Iraq was firmly a client state of the Soviet Union for most of that time.

If you'd like, we can start a separate thread in which I will explain to you how Salvador Allende got exactly what he deserved. I'd be glad to help. I can see that history isn't your strongest subject.

*smacks forehead*

Ok, let's do a bit of basic math real quick:

Three countries sell weapons to another.
Country A sells 50% volume.
Country B sells 40% volume.
Country C sells 10% volume.

Let's assume country D, the buyer, buys 100 weapons per year.

Thus, a ten year graph has something like:
A: *****
B: ****
C: *

* = 100 units of weapons.

Now, we extend that out another ten years, without C selling anything. The others still sell the same number of items, to simplify the graph:

A: **********
B: ********
C: *

Notice anything different? The graph is based on precentage. Thus, if you stop adding volume to one of the countries some point along your time table, while the others continually add to theirs, you'll find a huge altering in the end result. To further extend this another ten years, and you'll now find that countries A and B have three times the volume of a ten year span. Thus, percentage wise, country C really only has less than three percent.

A: ***************
B: ************
C: *

So in short, yes, I expect a much different graph. Because simply looking at the first graph you say "Ah, well there's not that huge a difference."

Graphs and charts can always be tweaked to show whatever you want. You want your processor to look way faster than someone else? Show the graph with a ton of increment points. Thus, the speed difference of 50mhz on a graph where the scale is incremented 1 at a time, shows the processor with the 50mhz lead fifty points ahead! HOLY CRAP!. You want to show that 50mhz is nothing at all? Put it on a graph with 500 point increments. "Shit, that processor is barely a tenth of the way to the next point ahead."

Illustration:

ProcessorA: |**************************************************
ProcessorB: |*

* = 1Mhz increments.

The graph starts at N mhz, where N is the base speed of the other processor.

ProcessorA: |***************
ProcessorB: |**********

* = 10mhz

Same processors. Here we start 100mhz back on the scale. We now see that processor B isn't that far behind processor A after all...

It's all in the presentation. (Yeah, Illustration 2 is off from my worded example, but I didn't feel like making five pages of asterix to prove a point.)

Quzah.

Since when did this become "getting what he deserved"? This is about America deciding that they don't like a goverment, so they overthrow it, and that it's an absurd notion. A notion we would not tollerate. What part of that aren't you understanding? History has nothing to do with it. If the guy was a dick, it has nothing to do with it. It has to do with America deciding they're the police of the world and that it's OK for them to dish out punnishment on whoever they feel like. Yet at the same time, there is no way in hell they'd take that shit from anyone else.

It's about being two faced. Do you understand that? Or do I need to go over it yet again?

Quzah.

I thought it was all about the bullshit pretense of WMD. Can't you anti-war people keep your bullshit pretenses straight?

(Answer: no, because you keep ignoring the real reason for the war.

The real reason for the war is Middle East transformation.)

Sorry, you guys just keep tossing birds out so fast sometimes we squeeze the wrong trigger. Importantly, Bush will be re-elected on the previous bullshit pretense rather than this bullshit pretense.

UT wrote:
To add to that, I always thought the real reason for the war was to neutralize Iraq's threat to its neighbors thereby allowing us to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia thereby diffusing the tension between Al Queada and the US and between Al Queda and Saudi Arabia.

That and to kick Saddam's ass for the sake of kicking his ass.

Its pretty much the Iran thing all over again. Iran (the Shah) wanted nukes from the US. The US said no. The Shah turned to the USSR. The US said - "your toast" and financed his overthrow. In Iraq, we're hanging around to make sure the replacement Government is more to our liking.

Just one ioiot's opinion, tho.

Um, the anti-war people aren't the ones making up excuses for the war. All of the various pretenses came right out of the White House.

It's Middle East transformation now?

I believe it was always about ME transformation. This was only mentioned in one speech in the runup to the war, but has been touched upon in almost every speech in the last two months.

I believe it is to create a new image of the US to the Arab world, and I believe that the concept of the reformation of Iraq through its rebuilding might be the most liberal foreign policy move EVER.

That's "Lib-ruul" the way Bush Sr. used to use the word as an insult, BTW. As in the sentence "George W. Bush is very Lib-ruul". It is a very Lib-ruul foreign policy to use Billions upon Billions of Free Money to convince a society through Gifts that the US is a Good Giving Country and your Friend. I think getting rid of Saddam was the first Gift. I think the Lib-ruuls invented the idea. And now the Rs have stolen it easily because the Ds are frantically running away from it.

And I think it hasn't worked in the past because those countries have seen us, correctly, as an "indian giver" (to use a politically incorrect phrase). And I think it will work this time because we are giving so damn much that we will build the entire country and make it incredibly prosperous.

But that doesn't mean the administration is beyond criticism. On cue, here is a real criticism and a real problem in the administration.

The Bush revolution is supposedly that of an "MBA President" (cue tw alarm) -- where the guy on the top delegates to his people, makes the big decisions based on their work, etc. This suits Bush well with his buddy-buddy frat-boy cheerleader attitude. (And it drives the opposition nuts because he isn't a details-oriented policy wonk - like they are.) But the ultimate failure would be if the administration tripped for MBAesque reasons, such as lack of focus and political infighting.

I prefer retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowskis' insider view.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

So you're complaint is... mmmm... that the United States (country 'C' in your "example", I assume) didn't sell as many weapons to Iraq as the Soviets and the Chinese did?

You're wrong.

If we exclude the data from the period following the Gulf War, the US percentage of total arms sales to Iraq actually falls slightly, to less than one-half of one percent.

This is because, relative to all the other nations in the world, the US really didn't sell all that many weapons to Iraq.

If you'd like, we can start a separate thread in which I will explain percentages and ratios to you. I'd be glad to help. I can see that math isn't your strongest subject, either.

Not all of the various pretenses came from the White House. A lot of people from both the pro-war side and the anti-war side have generated lists upon lists oif

I see the invasion of Iraq as such an awful political move that I am compelled to try to come up with reasons for us to invade Iraq that actually make sense and justify all of the money we are pouring into this endeavour and bad karma (distrust from other nations, breeding terrorists, reducing stability, debt, distraction of Al-Qaeda & Afghanistan) that we are getting out of it. I think that it will be difficult to maintain our hold on Iraq, although not as difficult as Afghanistan.

My excuses are:
* The Bush Administration wanted to use Iraqi oil to pressure the OPEC to A) set oil prices as Bush and friends (not necessarily we) want them and B) keep the oil traded on the dollar.
* We didn't want to leave the Hussein regime around long enough for Uday or Qusay to inherit - because that would have been Bad™.

/me sputters

Are you suggesting that we kept selling weapons to Iraq AFTER we kicked their asses and declared them an enemy in the Gulf War? And that, in proportion to the other nations of the world, our contributions actually rose!?

If not, then please explain percentages and ratios to me too. I'd be glad to hear how you can account for this otherwise.

[Edit: Oh. I think that UT's graph is rounded, because the same guy who posted the original graph faced the same criticisms and remade it for a 1973-1990 graph; which still gave the US 1%. Now could we see a 1983-1990 graph (or 1979-1990) to signify the years that the US assisted Saddam-ruled Iraq in the slaughter of the armies of Iran?

Oh, and screw your new math, Hubris -- I'm pretty sure that there is no screwy quantum effect on ratios. I'd still like to hear your 'explanation', though!]

I don't need an entire thread to prove a point, unless you're unable to understand the basic mathmatics about to be described to you:

Say that 100 weapons were sold per year for 27 years. 57% of those were sold by the USSR. This means that the USSR sold 1539 weapons. Still with me? The USA however, only sold 1% of them. That is to say, 27 weapons.

Divide 1539 by 27, and you get 57, naturally. Multiply this by 17, and you get the number of weapons that the USSR sold over 17 years: 969.

The US sold 27 weapons over a span of 17 years, and the USSR sold 969. Total sold weapons is 1700. Divide 969 by 1700, what do you get? 57%. Divide 27 by 1700 and what do you get? 1.58%.

Now how again am I wrong here? Please, point it out to me. The percentage cannot drop over a lesser time frame if the volume sold by the USA is fixed. It can only increase.

I have already illustrated this and the manipulation of graphs in the above post. Please refer to it. If you sell five cars, and I sell five, we've both sold 50% of total share. If next year, you sell zero, and I sell 5 more, you now are down to 33% even though your volume has not changed.

Welcome to graph manipulation 101. This is why it's better for the US to present the graph through the 2000 time table versus the 1990 time table. If they stop selling weapons in 1900, then their percentage of the total number sold will drop, while the actual sold number remains the same.

But what do I know right? I mean, I've only proven the point multiple times now.

Quzah.

No prob. It's in your first post in the thread, where you say

H T H

My math is wrong in the first post in this thread? Way to take a phrase out of context UT. Come on, at least try to follow the conversation. The first post didn't have anthing to do with number or graphs.

As for handing them the gun, yeah, we did. Here, let me point it out to you.
But do I really need to keep pointing shit like this out? What, you're saying the US didn't arm Iraq? That's just absurd. The point is: If you sell someone a weapon, knowning what they're going to use it for, and they use it for something "evil", you're at least partially to blame.

I just can't understand why you feel the need to keep white-washing the US as you do. They're pure as the driven snow in your eyes, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why you see it that way.

Fucking-A man, spend two seconds on Google with keywords like "iraq" "weapons" "US" etc etc. It's not that hard a concept. I'm not making all this shit up.

Quzah.

No doubt. But to ignore the scope, to claim it's all blowback, to say it means we can't continue to engage, to search for any little tidbit and call that the foul? That's dishonest.

Is this pretense on or off the table?
 

MSNBC


Dec. 17 - A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.

I put it on three days ago when it showed up with the thought that it was probably bogus. (Go me)

Good man!

GW is that you? I have no idea what the hell you just tried to say.

Quzah.

The reason we're confused is the story from the White House keeps changing.

At first it was %90 WMD, with a few vaque accusations about terrorist ties. The possible uranium purchase was mixed in there somewhere. The trigger was a report of a WMD with a 45 minute prep time.

Now that no WMD's have been found, it's all about freedom and nation-building.

If the Presidents critics seem to be wandering around, it's because we are simply trying to keep track of the changing story out of the White House.

Bush wants everyone to believe that this war was all about freedom for Iraq in the same way everyone believes that the American Civil War was all about freedom for southern slaves.

Its a nice story but that doesn't make it true, or worth thousands of live and hundreds of billions of dollars (future cost over 10 years).