Have you heard about how the former tchetchen president was eliminated... he talked on his mobile phone, the russians intercepted his phone call and its location by satellite and they killed him.... Now the US is much more sophisticated than Russia and I am sure that if they wanted to kill him they could have done it long long time ago... This is what I think..
The US has a lot of power within the UN but several other countries have the same power (vetoes - France, China, Russia, etc.) So the US is not the UN. Otherwise Bush would not be lobbying right now making deals and trying to win countries over to his side but instead just tell them the way its going to be. I just don't agree that the US has total responsability. Others may see it differently. That is fine! By the way, rs7 made a kick ass post a few pages back. I hope that you go back and read it. He made a lot of good points. ----------------------------------- TF2000, you have a much higher opinion of the abilities of the US than I do! If that were indeed true Osama would be in the US as an enemy combatant facing a trial. Bush would love nothing better than to have him as a trophy. Or Mulla Omar for that matter. Damn! I can't get over your belief that the US has some secret omnipotent ability which it is not exercising on purpose. Great conspiracy theory. Maybe it is some alien technology they got off that saucer crash landing in area 51.
I think that the US has a veto and also they know how to put pressure... I recall seing bush at the UN with koffi Annan and when Annan wanted to shake hand with the US president, Bush did not even look Annan in the eyes... Moreover Israel violated all the UN resolutions for 50 years and the US never complained or attacked Israel????
No aphie, you have it wrong. We did not sentence the nation. It's own leadership has. You don't understand what an embargo is, or it's strategic application and intent. Has it backfired? Yes, but ultimately the suffering of the nation is caused not by the embargo itself, but by the exploitation of the embargo by Saddam. The problem was imposing a strategy that couldn't work in that instance. It was a miscalculation because it is a strategy that only works when dealing with human beings, not monsters. Now the situation is clear. So what is the solution? Do you lift the sanctions and thus reward Saddam for his brutality? You oversimplify a very complex issue. But it was a good try. Keep 'em coming. Peace, Rs7
Sorry, can you explain to me in plain words what does an embargo mean????? and how you can say that the US are not implied .... even Albright said it before changing her mind.. she said that 600,000 deaths was a good price... Kissinger gave you great lessons Rs7... he has done a very good job...
Concerning the statistics they are clear there is a mortality before the embargo and after and the fact is that it increased substantially after the embargo... Irak contrary to what you were assuming was not a savage country.. Of course Saddam is a dictator but he was a laic and his prime minister is a christian... Of course I do not want to live in Irak today but contrary to what you may think people are living normally in arab states it is not middle age... Concerning women they do vote in Irak, Syria egypt... Now talking about Israel ... I can't understand you are defending so weel that rogue state... may be you are jew or your wife or something like that... It does not matter... rs7 please note that contrary to what you may think and I said it before I have nothing against jews on the contrary... But a guy like Sharon for me is simply not the man of the situation... this guy is a fool and he is not working for the good of its own people... He is behaving like a real terrorist and not like a stateman and without a real peace agreement Israelis will still be terrorised and palestinian will continue to be humiliated...
You have to understand that I come from an academic approach since I haven't been alive as long as you old-timers. However, if Saddam is such a problem, why don't we just get some guys in there to take him out? Is it really that difficult? Don't we train these super-elite ninja delta-force warriors to practically blend in with the sand and just take out someone at command? Don't we have satellites in space that can read a newspaper on the ground? I understand the purpose of an embargo, but when you have thousands -- no -- hundreds of thousands of people suffering from the actions of a country's leadership, isn't that a severe lapse of morality and ethics on the part of the nations that impose the restrictions and embargo? I mean, they can't even eat for god's sake -- what did the little guys do to deserve that? Bush Sr. screwed up by not finishing up the job in the early 90's -- no amount of embargos is going to justify his lapse of finishing up the job.
aphex, please understand the situation then. At the end of the Persian Gulf war Kuwait was liberated and the Iraqi forces were beating a hasty retreat north into their country. The coalition was seeing them on satellites and radar and picking them off one by one. But soon it became clear that taht wasn't war but murder. They stopped. The coalition was put together for one resolution, to liberate Kuwait. They did that. Going beyond that was not under their authority because it was not agreed to by the UN beforehand. The new resolutions that came from the UN were a result of the cease fire agreement that the Saddam agreed to. Among these resolutions were 'containment' strategies. The larges of which was the embargo. In hindsight, we can say that they should have continued to pummel the Iraqi forces and forced their way to Baghdad and toppled the whole regime. IN HINDSIGHT!! It is very easy to sit back after 10+ years and say "You stupid idiot! you should have done this or that" But it is not realistic. ok hope that gives you some perspective. How old were you in 91-92? a teenager?