Comments on: Selective Amnesia

By: Zizka

Zizka — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 21:32:08 +0000

Sorry, guys. I was getting repeated error messages.

By: GMT

GMT — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 18:48:09 +0000

Is there an echo in here? And why was it so all-fire important to remove our old friend Saddam from power? Think of the billions we’d invested in him that would be wasted! I mean, used to we’d just pay Saddam to kill Iraqis for us. Nice scary man. Keeps the region stable, what with Islamist governments to the East and South and all. Then, we cut out the middle man and butcher thousands of Iraqis ourselves. Reason? Because Saddam was a Bad Man! Get it? Talk about your selective amnesia!

By: al

al — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:59:53 +0000

Sebastian, Jesus Christ, Blix’s mandate was never to get Saddam out of there. It was to deal with WMD, and he did a good job of it. And for that he got smeared, and the facts about Saddam were also unjustifiably misrepresented (NOT an honest mistake). Considering that we’ve just replaced Saddam with a former enforcer goon of his (who was on the outs with Saddam for some reason or another), and the goon who is rehabilitating the Ba’athist police, talking about martial law, etc., the bait-and-switch “bring democracy to Iraq” reason for the war is looking more and more dubious.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:59:06 +0000

By: Zizka

Zizka — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:52:44 +0000

By: zizka

zizka — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:51:56 +0000

By: zizka

zizka — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:51:20 +0000

By: Another Voice

Another Voice — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:36:54 +0000

Ok, want a real perspective on the alternatvies: http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=561&rnd=713.9062175551647 and more. The real military types out there aren’t happy with the current situation in Iraq. You will learn more about what is going wrong over there by reading material like this than you will ever get here. Or from the Greens.

By: Rook

Rook — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 20:00:11 +0000

Huh. It would let me post a comment. Let me try this a second time. I read that first graph of scrambled words and only struggled with understanding two of them. That is really scary.

By: Rook

Rook — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 19:58:38 +0000

You know what is scary? I read that entire first graph of scrambled words and only struggled with two of them!

By: Giles

Giles — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 15:29:19 +0000

“But that’s so inane” Correct – but that was the fundamental flaw in the UN arms inspection regime and Blix is its public face…………Its unfair but presumably he did want the job and so accpeted its premis with all its flaws.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 14:30:00 +0000

And if a feather up my butt made me a hen, I could be laying eggs. My own belief is that Krauthammer resents Blix not just for being right where he himself was gloriously wrong, but for having a name that doesn’t mean Cabbage hammer. I shall venture into GOP territory and declare my absolute indifference to the fact that Kraut doesn’t mean cabbage. It just feels so right!

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 10:07:15 +0000

John, quite right, your position was that if the inspectors couldn’t find anything that Saddam should be left in power. (“in the absence of some sort of legitimate international procedure for removing and trying tyrants like Saddam” being the same as “impossible” in this context). You also took a rather broad view of what compliance with the inspectors was. I was specifically speaking to those who were particularly concerned with the humanitarian disaster of leaving Saddam in power and entertained fantasies of an international coalition to get rid of Saddam if we the US ‘had just waited a bit longer’. I believe Daniel is one such. That combined with the sanctions combined with the UN Oil for Bribes plan, doesn’t leave us with a very pretty picture either. I’m not asking anyone to say that they WANTED Saddam to remain in power. I’m merely pointing out that he would have remained in power, and that ought to be part of the calculation. And if continual disarmament was the goal, please remember that France and Russia were trying to remove sanctions—making that goal highly unlikely to be fulfilled. Unless you have other, yet to be revealed, ideas about realistic levers to apply against Saddam in the absence of sanctions.

By: q

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 09:16:05 +0000

Example relating to the Maghreb: Britain & the Maghreb Conference 2004

By: q

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 08:30:42 +0000

The power of human mind Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit mcuh porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, it atcaluly tkaes in the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? The interpretation of the arguments about the US-Iraq relationship for many people are very similar to the interpretation of the above sentence…it does not matter the arrangement of the individual facts, since people believe what they want to believe. One way to improve the level of information flowing on this topic and combat blind ignorance is to expand the number of social links between Iraq and other countries, cultural exchanges, educational exchanges and academic exchanges. Conferences on political and social theory with colocations in Iraq, through audio-visual links, groupware, virtual libaries and meeting rooms, and physical visits to Iraq by academics would all help initiate understanding and break down prejudices. I hope that academics reading this blog might give a thought to the extent to which they could build links between Iraq and their own country. On a small but important level, it would be possible to offer scholarships to Iraqi students abroad, especially in History, Social Policy and Political Organisation. I would suggest that these are offered in groups rather than individually, since cultural dislocation is likely to be a problem. It would also be possible to sponsor Iraqi academics to visit foreign institutions in order to help build understanding and relationships. There are many improvements in the understanding of Middle Eastern politics and history which could be beneficial to all parties.