Saddam Hussein: Captured

Please dont bring Americas influence on getting rid of Hitler ,you had your share there but it was just a small help(appreciated but relatively small).
Secondly-who says only way to get rid of Saddam was through warfare?Just America and Britain.International inspectors were screaming out loud-theres no threat,we have no evidence.
Monitor-would you still approve this action if u were told your parents and your brothers and sisters gonna be dead for it?And that you will have no house or food after?Maybe this slight change of position would affect your opinion?
And lastly- why America deals with Korea diplomatic way even when they openly admit they are preparing mass destruction weapons and laugh at everyones face?
Why for years and years it looks at Tibet being invaded by China where human rights are being broken day by day?
Answer is as usuall-theres no business to be made:(
I dislike this humanitarian argumentation a lot
And after all- only stupid and hypocrytic person says “we need to kill to stop killing”.
Im surethat if America pumped enough money into education and living standarts of people in those regions there would be no need to kill anyone.But thats just not profitable.

I gotta agree with Monitor199a

Saddam may not have had nukes, but you can guarantee he was working to get his hands on them and use them. Saddam has used WMD when he gassed the Kurds. The risk of nukes in Saddam’s hands and him calling the shots is a threat to America.

The military action in the mid-east is about securing America and the World. Not liberation. It’s a nice by-product though. :smile:

The ONLY way to eliminate all threats is to nuke every country 20 times every day for 2 weeks, including our own. (though the nuclear fallout would kill everyone anyways)

I think I find this an even more offensive reason for war than to liberate the people. To invade Iraq in order to dissuade other countries from engaging in terrorism when there’s been no proven links between Iraq and terrorism? That’s equivalent to punching a kid you don’t like because some other kid once threatened you. I’m not sure that knee-jerk schoolyard behaviour is the best model for military action.

We can’t (well, clearly we can, but I’d argue that it’s immoral) take action against countries due to some vague belief that they may pose us a threat in the future. We need hard evidence to justify military action, anything less is indefensible.

Surely the whole point is that we can’t guarantee he was doing anything of the kind. That’s the basis for the argument against the war. There simply wasn’t enough evidence to make this judgment, this has been made clear by Hans Blick, the leader of the group specifically employed to answer the question.

“He’s a bad guy so yeah he’d probably want nukes and maybe he’s trying to get them” just doesn’t cut it as justification for invasion. It needed to be beyond doubt.

The point of my post was that the WMD that Saddam has had before, he has used. I’m sure the innocent Kurd civilians thought of it as terrorism.

Please don’t rearrange my words and dumbify it by saying

It did go beyond that. He is a person that has used WMD on innocent civilians. Why wait for the bomb to get bigger?

Is that really what they teach you? America sent the money, ships, tanks and equipment that made Britain and Russia’s survival possible, while providing the army that made the invasions of Italy and France possible. America did not play a small role in defeating Hitler. Without the United States’ involvement in World War II, the Axis would have won.

Some people claim that there were other ways of getting rid of Saddam’s regime, other than war. But what were they? I guess you could try assassinating every member of his regime, but that would require a war.

It’s never been proven that Saddam played a role in 9/11, but his association with other terrorist groups is well-documented. It’s well known that he spent over $35 million since 9/11 solely in funding Palestinian suicide attacks.

Jack - the United States is, unfortunately not all-powerful. It cannot eliminate all of the dictatorships and tyrants of the world. As a result, it has had to make diplomatic arrangements with many of them, just as every other country in the world has had to. But when we do have the ability to remove someone like Saddam, it’s a cause for celebration.

Even if I and my own family were on the front lines in the Iraq war, it would not change the military necessity of the action. I am thankful that my family was not one of those either being tortured by Saddam’s men or being accidentally bombed by American planes. But even if it was, my own family is not more important than the security and freedom of the rest of the world.

Many different methods have been put to effect to change the way other countries are, even by sending billions of dollars to help with their standards of living and education, as you suggest. America has always been very generous in its giving. Unfortunately, we cannot spend money on whatever we want, because as soon as it enters another country, that money is under the control of the dictator who rules the country. The dictators almost invariably spend that money on building their own palaces and stocking their weapons caches.

I understand…and youre right about your help in defeating Hitler,i may have used unproper sentence-i was meaning to say America was among many many other countries..what i feel bad about was their timing,took quite a while. Also youre right about generosity of Usa.
But i will never agree on killing people for the sake of better tomorrow.There is allways a choice and war shouldnt be that case in our civilized times.
I remind you that by going into war Usa and Britain violated ONZ decisions which is quite opposite to democracy they so much value.
Ps.What im suprised about is “why iraq”?America could have picked up just any country and many of them had more cases of breaking human laws.
Actually im not really against USA…its same way like with Germany- it wasnt the Hitler who just arose from nowhere-it was thousands of people looking at him doing nothing or approving such actions.

Possession and use of chemical weapons fifteen years ago doesn’t equal proof of WMD today. Iraq needed to be a “clear and present danger,” it wasn’t. The weapons inspectors found no evidence of WMD, there was no bigger bomb to wait for.

Not true. Since 2000 Saddam has given that figure to the relatives of suicide bombers and those whose relatives died in uprisings. This doesn’t equate to funding attacks and doesn’t even put Saddam on a par with those in America who have been directly funding Irish paramilitary groups for the last thirty years. And in the case of Palestinian suicide bombers I’d argue that the Palestinians are the ones responsible. A US invasion of Palestine as yet seems unlikely.

I think the governments of the U.S. and U.K. are looking at this situation from a broad perspective, with hopes for very sweeping changes in the world. The target was going to be a country that supports Muslim terrorists, since Islamic terrorism is seen as the main force of effective terrorism. Also, the target country had to be one where the people would welcome a change in their government, even if it came at the hands of the western world. Saddam Hussein played a critical role, since he is recognized in the United States as a terrible man and the government would need popular support to execute a war for reasons so complicated and seemingly so far off. The entire war on terror concept is so confusing to many that I think many Americans simply chose to think of it as “vengenace for 9/11” since that is an easier, more natural concept.

Saddam’s Iraq was more secular and in some ways more western than other middle eastern dictatorships, which also paved the way for its being chosen as America’s target. Ironically, this was why American leaders once viewed him as the lesser of the evils in the middle east. Similarly, installing a free, democratic regime in Japan was easier because it had a history of emulating the western world in an attempt to become more powerful.

You are forgetting that it was America who gave him the funds?And it wasnt so long time ago…and it wasnt the education cash…they actually armed him.Whos next?:slight_smile:

They also trained bin laden…

Monitor: Sure USA gave us some help during war, but they where not the solely reason for winning… I have family members who was in the war, i believe they know something too about what happened…

We also built the planes that flew into the WTC, and trained the pilots/terrorist that crashed the damned things into the buildings and ground.

Bin laden is a traitor and liar. Is that much of a surprise? It’s disheartening to see our deeds, funds, tools, services, and knowlege reformed into weapons against us. This is abusing it’s original purpose. It’s also the method that terrorist seem to be using.

Maybe not weapons of mass destruction, but it is weapons of mass murder.
The man is guilty of going to war with civilians! Period! He mass mudered civilians no different than Hitler did. Maybe on a smaller scale, but (*to rephrase my question) how many innocent civilians must he purposely murder before something is done?

Ok, all in the same thread I hear that America waited too long to do something about Hitler in WWII BUT! now we do something about a similar dictator before he get’s too much power and we catch it from that end too! How can you have both opinions?

[color=brown]This arguement will continue into infinity just as the wars have in the middle east. When people debate war it becomes a history lesson from all the previous junk dug back up. I can’t really waste my time debating over it anymore because it never ends and I like to schedule some time for my personal peace. I think all peace starts with personal peace.[/color]

Britain, Russia and the United States were the essential Allies in World War 2. If any of the three were taken out, the Axis would have won. That’s my official position :cool:

No, I haven’t forgotten how the U.S. funded and supported both Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden in the past. In both cases, they were considered the lesser of the evils, and they were played against greater evils to give them trouble. Bin Laden against the Soviets, Hussein against the Iranians I believe.

It’s not pretty, but I think it’s necessary. Like I mentioned, Russia was essential to the allies in WW2, yet Stalin was arguably even worse than Hitler. We used him to get rid of Hitler, and many decades later the Soviets lost control in Russia.

Maybe it’s a natural progression we see. Bin Laden helps us screw the Soviets in Afghanistan, then later we dis-arm Bin Laden. Hussein helps neutralize Iran, then we get rid of Hussein. The lesser of the evils help defeat the greater evil, then that lesser evil becomes the greatest evil remaining. We take him out and move on down the line. Is it cleaning up the world? :grin:

I see it more like causing troubles for yourselves and other countries.Thats right -russia was supported.With that support they invaded poland as soon as they could.Then Hussain was supported,he turned against you.Gods it all goes same circles over and over again.
I must agree with Dreamaddict…hehe i was about not to take part in that discussion cuz i knew i might get a bit emotionall.Im sorry for the moments where i was:)
greetings:)

But there’s a way out of the circle. We no longer have to deal with Hussein or Stalin. If we’d done nothing, we’d still have to deal with Iran and Hitler. But thanks to our decisions, we’ve gotten rid of both, and didn’t have to take them both on at the same time. It’s only too bad there was never a good guy version of Stalin or Hussein for us to support, and we have to muddy our hands with those creeps. But at least they eventually get what’s coming to them. :cool:

But at what cost?? They have been bombing targets in iraq for years, where many innicent civilianz lost their life… Those who did not die of getting bombed, got sick and died of the polluted water and the lack food caused by the sanctions… Also alot of birth defects due to the pollution caused by all the bombings, the once nice enviroment is now totally destroyed… people will have to live the consequenses of this for decades… All this harm due to removing one man from power?

I honestly believe that this has killed more people than saddam did alone…

But i guess it can be hard to understand, as there has never been any “real” war on american soil…

Well, we did have the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, but the real big war on American soil was the Civil War, over 600,000 dead.

I know it’s hard to imagine, but Saddam Hussein was actually responsible for more deaths than all of the civilian casualties combined. All of this stuff will come out in Saddam’s trial, no doubt. I think the tally will be even more than people imagined.

When someone is in a powerful position like Saddam, it’s nearly impossible to remove them from power. Think how many innocent Germans and Japanese died during WW2, just to remove corrupt leaders who knew that they were destroying their own country in war. The good news is free democracies don’t produce people like Stalins and Hitlers. The worst we can come up with is Bush, and we’re allowed to insult him up and down to his face. :wink:

There was an interview with Saddam Hussein once, where the American reporter (Barbara Walters, I think) was asking him about how he put people to death for publicly criticizing him. Saddam said something to the effect of “well, you have your own laws in your country prohibiting people from criticizing the President.” Walters replies, “uh, no we don’t.” Saddam Hussein was totally shocked. I think he genuinely believed that a country cannot function if people have different opinions. I’d feel sorry for the guy, if he didn’t take such pleasure in killing people and torturing them. :bored:

“t’s only too bad there was never a good guy version of Stalin or Hussein for us to support”

Actually there are few if not lots to name just Ghandis family and Mother Teresa.But i guess they never could get even half of what countries spend on wars.

Right, I was referring to a rebel leader in a country who was in favor of freedom and western values. It’s a lot easier than having to make a government from scratch like in Iraq, but at least some Iraqi exiles are returning home to help with the country.