Throwaway lines like this are the way history becomes distorted over time, Poirot, as people pick them up and pass them on as being "true".

>>Cheryl, Strangely enough, "bombing them back into the stone age" was the Bush administration's solution to ending Saddam Hussein's reign.<<

The phrase first came into public usage during the Vietnam War. Wikipedia tells us that:

"...in his 1965 autobiography, co-written with MacKinlay Kantor, [General Curtis] LeMay is quoted as saying his response to North Vietnam would be to demand that 'they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power—not with ground forces.'"

According to Professor Nick Cullather of Indiana University however, the phrase originated with humourist Art Buchwald, to caricature Barry Goldwater's approach to solving the problem of recalcitrant foreigners:

"LeMay, however, had cribbed it from a June 1967 column by humorist Art Buchwald, who used the phrase to caricature the Goldwater Republican attitude toward Vietnam."

http://hnn.us/articles/30347.html

No-one yet has been able to pin the use of the phrase on anyone else. Attempts have been made in relation to Pakistan...

"The intelligence director told me that Mr Armitage said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age'," he said."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm

But the source is just a tad suspect, given the phrase's propaganda value, and the "plausible deniability" of reported speech.

Afghanistan too:

"Last week I heard a lot of talk about 'bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.'"

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0919-02.htm

So there you have it. The phrase has become a cliché, true enough.

But there's nothing particularly credible to support the idea that it was "the Bush administration's solution to ending Saddam Hussein's reign"

rstuart - you've shown me up! Yes, I seem to have a poor memory and obviously like beating my head against a wall - or should that be being bludgeoned by Curmudgeon.

Pericles,

"But there's nothing particularly credible to support the idea that it was "the Bush administration's solution to ending Saddam Hussein's reign""

Except for the bit where they ended Saddam Hussein's reign by bombing the crap out of Iraq. Did you sleep through 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', AKA the 2nd Gulf War?

michael_in_adelaide

the earlier encounter is of no account.. In this encounter your counter argument underlines my point.. people in those countries are able to live in tolerable comfort so why can't the people in Pakistan or Nigeria, where they have loads and loads of resources, notably oil?

To pound the point home the wealth of individual countries has nothing to do with resources.. or population.. the main factor remains rule of law and government transparency.. once we get that, then we can see whether there are any of these limits which you see everywhere.. If these limits exist, then we can work out how they can be overcome??

You are right Curmudgeon but also wrong. Certainly the wealth and peace of a nation has a lot to do with societal education and organisation - the will to distribute resources equitably rather than have them acculate in the hands of a few (or even a "1%"). But wealth must also depend on ACCESS to resources. The former industrial might of the USA was built on possession of the world's largest area of good farming land and very bountiful resources - formerly crude oil and the USA is still the world's largest coal province. Currently the US military guarantees access for the USA to the resources of other areas in the world. My point is that, if you are not educated and equitable but, instead, have a massive poor population breeding like rabbits - then what hope is there of ever becoming better off? The dramatic population growth of Pakistan and Afghanistan is now the driver of increased poverty and conflict which undermines efforts to e.g. educate women, distribute resources etc. There is a nasty positive feedback there. Pakistan is not resource rich, especially when it comes to water - just go to Google Trends and so a search for "water crisis" and you will see that there are more hits from Pakistan than anywhere else in the world.

Michael,

You wrote, quite correctly: "The industrial world is only "wealthy" because it exploits the resources of the poorer nations and the world's resource base is not large enough to provide for an entire world living as we do."

But your 'solution' - to wipe out excess populations, mainly in the Third World, so that we happy few can maintain our income level - may not be the only one: what might actually occur, thanks to the GFC, is that after a period of civil and international wars, there may be an evening-out of incomes internationally, a forced 'sharing' of resources and incomes, at a lower level but for far more people, over the next few decades.

I hope that this evening-out can be achieved more peacefully, but inequitable standards of living may be your culprit, Michael, not Third World populations.

Joe