granted, dubya wanted saddam out from the get-go, and i fucking hate 90% of his policies... but so what? if france hadn't systematically waived her veto, rendering the UN security council process useless, and the UN powerless to seriously enforce any resolution, saddam cldn't have hoped to play council members against each other... he would've been forced into exile, as was seriously discussed during the pre-war period... move on guys...
Ridiculous nonsense. It was the United States, UK and Australia that mounted a wholly unjustified attack on Iraq. Responsibility lies nowhere else.
"This war duped the Australian Defence Force and the Australian people in terms of thinking it was in some way legitimate." "It was a cynical use of the Australian Defence Force by the Government," - The Australian SAS officer responsible for tactical planning for Australian special forces in Iraq http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20816990-2,00.html?from=public_rss
what makes you think saddam wldn't have accepted the asylum arrangements for him & his sons, family etc, had the security council members been united?
And what makes you think he would ? With US and UK military clearly building up for an invasion in Kuwait, I can't see how the French joining the party would have made any difference. It must have been quite clear to Saddam at that stage that he couldn't win a military confrontation - France or no France - but he still chose not to surrender. In any case if the French had joined in, it would still be just as wrong. It's just amazing that France (speaking for the whole population of Western Europe) can be blamed for opposition to a US foreign policy driven by the lunatics of PNAC and their grandiose dreams of a new American Empire. It's not the security council that was "useless". It's the US foreign policy that was far worse than useless.
as regards the ultimate justification for the attack, may i remind you that khadafi (lybia) only renounced its own WMD programme and helped expose the whole WMD network starting from Dec 2003, ie 9 months after the beginning of the iraq war... too bad for saddam & his 2 sons if they were deemed to be too dangerous to be left in place... after all they'd only been flaunting UN resolutions and dicking around with IAEA inspectors for what, 10 years? after having initiated how many wars and genocides again?, lost the count, sorry...
i am certainly NO supporter of PNAC by any measure, nor of US foreign, environment etc etc policy under bush by any measure either... nevertheless... its not about france joining in war preparations, but in france playing along when the uk proposed to define standards which, shld they not be met, wld make the recourse to force necessary... how else do u expect any country to ever abide by UN resolutions otherwise? france balked, threatened to boycott security council meetings, waived veto after veto even over working on any such standards... wtf of an attitude is that?? who needs these guys on the security council if they can't make it work? is bush playing hard cop justification enough for making the security council irrelevant? this wasn't about kyoto, the ICC etc... it was about a gamble which, if you play it right, there goes saddam, if you play it wrong, its war on iraq, or wait for the WMD network to "deliver"... not a tough choice imo...
How many dead in Iraq ? And how many more to follow ? As an object lesson to Libya ? Some justification. Iraq is certainly not the only country that's been 'dicking around' with the IAEA. The US has repeatedly tried to undermine the credibility of the IAEA when it's reports did not tally with US propaganda. Before the start of the war in Iraq, the IAEA found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program but the US persisted with what were basically a pack of lies. The same is true of Iran - the IAEA has not found any evidence of nuclear materials being diverted for military purposes. Maybe they are, but there is no evidence. The war mongers are at it again - whip up some hysteria based at best on hearsay - and how many more thousands will die. As for Saddam being "too dangerous" to be left alone. What evidence was there of any immediate threat ? and to whom ? War is a damned serious business, and to launch wars with no substantive reason is just criminal.
i guess we disagree on the lack of substantive reasons then... and on the dynamics that led to the war becoming inevitable... to me its pretty clear though that neither blair, nor howard are trigger-happy bunnies by nature... and people can assert what they want, blair does what blair thinks is the right thing to do, and so does howard imo... no pushovers here... as for iran, totally different ball game... and its being played quite differently by all parties... but thats kinda off-topic here
Wow nice job there DCRAIG......You guys are the best, you find a comment from one of several thousand Aussie Military Officers and run with it like the gospel. Nice work....dumba--.