Demos,

Come to live in the real world for a day have you Demos?

It seems you have little understanding of the conflict in Iraq or you would know that Fallujah is now one of the quieter areas of Iraq.

I have a number of reasons for using “we” when I talk about this conflict, but I’ll suffice by saying that the actions being undertaken in Iraq are being carried out by OUR gov’t in OUR name.

You’re a sad sad man, Demos, I know that you loony lefters are comfortable with dictators and strongmen but even I am surprised that you could ignore the bestiality of life under Saddam Hussein. Saddam's mukhabarat and other instruments of state power were so pervasive and had Iraqis SO brutalized that they could not speak their minds for fear of the consequences. The Shiite were not only brutally repressed, their infrastructure was allowed to wither whilst Saddam built new palaces and acquired expensive armaments.

I know freedom is a concept you leftists don’t really understand. Its can be quite messy and sometimes there are great costs to pay. But only the Baathist beneficiaries of the old regime preferred life under Saddam. The explosion of inter-sect violence had its roots in Saddam’s divide and conquer ruling style and was inevitable whenever their was no longer a leader who was prepared to brutalise his own citizens to keep them in line. Any suggestion that it was the Coalition that caused the infighting in Iraq is not only wrong it is an intentional misrepresentation.

You say >> “should i tell you about the destroyed infra-structure? how about the collapse of education and medicine”

Should I need to remind you that it was the insurgents who did the vast majority of damage to infrastructure in Iraq. It is the Islamic extremists who stored arsenals in schools in order to keep them safe.

Things certainly might not be running as smoothly as under Saddam. But if that is your argument you are a very sick man with NONE of the compassion you feign to posses.

TBC,

cont,

The Coalition has been fighting an insurgency which has attempted, by destroying the infrastructure of public life, to make the country ungovernable. That’s a fact that you seem to gloss over in your simplistic analyses. You may well be correct that literacy or numeracy is not as good as it was under Saddam. SO WHAT?? Not only does the blame for that lie with the insurgency, but there is very strong evidence that there is improvement in all these areas. And the potential for improvement way beyond what was possible under Saddam, is now foreseeable.

Steel,

>> “Paul, you've said nothing about the USA's strategic interests in Iraq. You've said nothing about the private profits. In light of my recent thread on that subject, I would have thought it was notable.”

Sorry I haven’t seen your latest, no doubt enthralling, thread. But anyway, the idea that you should’nt be doing something which is in your strategic interest is infantile.

When a course of action like the invasion of Iraq is proposed each department is asked for assessment on how it might affect their particular portfolio. So Department of State looks at how it will affect Diplomacy and such matters, Defence will look at the military ramifications, Commerce will look at Commercial ramifications and so on. When deciding whether to act or not, all this is taken into account and if there are ticks in more than one box, then you are more likely to go ahead.

But this idea of yours that the US convinced the coalition to go to war to advance Americas oil interests is just nonsense. If it was purely a financial issue they would have cut their costs years ago. There is NO DOUBT whatsoever that the war in Iraq is not going to be a positive for the US treasury. Oil security is much worse than it was and could probably be improved by just withdrawing. So yes I have no doubt that Strategic factors influenced their decision but I would deny absolutely that they are the sole motivating factor as you propose.

TBC,

cont,

>> “ you did say once recently that you did not care about sovereign rights of nations that have a different way of life and political philosophy from you”

WHAT? This is absolute rubbish and borders on a lie. Show me where I said I don’t care about nations with a different way of life, Steel. What you’ve done is put your own juvenile spin on something I’ve said and attempted to feed it back to me. Well I’m not buying it mate, try again.

>> “The USA does not support democracy, except where it sees a tangible strategic benefit.”

It is this sort of childish nonsense that you seem unable to avoid. Let me run through some of the countries the US has assisted or attempted to assist to democracy. Germany, Japan, most of the old soviet bloc, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Cuba and many others.

>> “You are the aggressor and provoker of war in these things. You are the archetypical hypocrite who believes that another country can invade another...but only if it's Us Spreading 'Democracy'. Who cares about international law?”

What are you ranting about now? Tell me who, besides you and your fellow loonie-lefters, has suggested that the coalition has breached international law? The UN? NO!!. Maybe NATO? Nope again. Who’s ruling is it then Steel?? Yours?? What a joke.

Rache,

>> “The presence of foreign Al Quaeda fighters has always been considered to be relatively minor - about 5% of the total belligerents”

Its not just the foreign fighters though, Rache. Many local Sunni’s were part of Al Qaeda in Iraq and many more were operating in conjunction with this group. What is of importance here is that these Sunni Iraqi groups which were once attacking the Coalition and Shiite Iraqis have turned their allegiance back to the gov’t and the coalition and have assisted in removing Al Qaeda from their strongholds. This is a particularly important victory as it was Al Qaeda who was responsible for the much of the original Sunni-Shia atrocities.

The main reason for a perceived downturn in civil violence in Baghdad is due to the fact that one side effectively “won”.

The Shia now effectively control the city, and Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed. That’s why the civilian deaths are down.

The reason US military deaths are down is because Moqtada al-Sadr called a cease-fire between his Mahdi army and the US and that the the US is now working more through personnel-safe airstrikes, plus the US has temporarily bought off the Sunni insurgency so that they’ll fight Al Qaeda in Iraq instead of American soldiers.

Every savvy reporter that has spent time on the ground in Iraq says that Iraq does not really exist any more as a country, that the Iraqi government is a fiction, and that the Shia-Sunni civil war will likely re-ignite sometime soon.

Nobody knows more than the Iraqis do about what will happen if the coalition pull out, yet the last batch of statistics I read said that around 70% of Iraqis still want them to leave ther country.

I admire your optimism and I hope you’re right but I think this was just a very bad idea from the start.

According to the documentary “No end in sight” and the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City”, the US spent two years planning the eventual occupation of Germany after WW2 but only 60 days for occupying Iraq (with a tiny agency who didn’t even meet for the first 10 days, miniscule staff and almost no resources).

We were told specifically and clearly that it was never about regime change, just disarmament. When did this change?

Some interesting background here too, plus at the author's web site.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0703.dreyfuss.html

PaulL.>> Sorry I haven’t seen your latest thread.

you posted in it.

PaulL.> the idea that you should’nt be doing something which is in your strategic interest is infantile.

That's the way the U.S. runs it's foreign policy, so you can call them infantile if you want but it's essentially a fact.

PaulL.>"But this idea of yours that the US convinced the coalition to go to war to advance Americas oil interests is just nonsense."

I never said that. Convincing idiots is far different from private intentions....obviously. Nevertheless, lets see Brendan Nelson had to say as Defence Minister last year:

"The Australian Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson has admitted that oil was a major factor in the government's decision to keep troops in Iraq" -http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australian-troops-in-iraq-because-of-oil-456159.html

PaulL.>"but I would deny absolutely that they are the sole motivating factor as you propose."

I never said it was the sole motivating factor.

PaulL>"WHAT? This is absolute rubbish and borders on a lie. Show me where I said I don’t care about nations with a different way of life"

You made it about the Palestinian democratic elections of Hamas.

PaulL.>> "It is this sort of childish nonsense that you seem unable to avoid."

If it served the economic and political interests of the US, overthrow of democratically elected governments was routine in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Pakistan, for example.

Also, in Iran on several occassions, including the present time:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-bush-iran-report.html

have you ever heard of the School of the Americas, Paul?

PaulL.>> "What are you ranting about now? Tell me who, besides you and your fellow loonie-lefters, has suggested that the coalition has breached international law? The UN? NO!!. Maybe NATO? Nope again. Who’s ruling is it then Steel?? Yours?? What a joke.

There you go again with your inept name-calling, even though you hold socialist views yourself. It is pathetic and it pains me to bother with your biases and prejudices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war

Rache,

>> “The reason US military deaths are down is because Moqtada al-Sadr called a cease-fire between his Mahdi army and the US and that the the US is now working more through personnel-safe airstrikes,”

The ceasefire that you are referring to was broken by the coalition and the Iraqi gov’t. Maliki has used the Iraqi army in conjunction with Coalition forces to disarm or destroy much of the mahdi militia by moving in force into Sadr city and Basra.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/03/iraqi_security_force_11.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/26/iraq.military

Further, the fact that the Iraqi gov’t has recognized that military action must be complemented by political action in a counter revolutionary warfare environment is a good sign, not a bad one. There are viewpoints which they must accommodate, that is the nature of democracy.

Secondly, Iraqi civilian and military deaths have reduced in similar ratio to the reduction in coalition service losses. It is plain nonsense to suggest that the US has withdrawn their boots on the ground, which was at the heart of the SURGE strategy, to be replaced by AirForce bombing runs. It’s just not true.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-07-07-carbomb_N.htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article4276486.ece

>> “Every savvy reporter … says that Iraq does not really exist any more as a country,”

This is just ridiculous. Without seeing you’re references its hard to comment but I could certainly replace “savvy” in that sentence with “left-wing” or “progressive” and be able to agree with the statement.

Certainly Iraq will only work as a loosely federated state, all the Shia-Sunni bloodletting has seen to that. But the Sunni-Shia rivalry wasn’t created by the coalition, it wasn’t even really created by Saddam, although he certainly fanned the flames. It’s a long standing rivalry which underpins much of the tension in the Muslim world. The only way Saddam kept a lid on that conflict was through brutality.

What are you suggesting Rache? That Iraq would have been better off under Saddam?

BTW It would be appropriate, if you are trying to convince anyone of the validity of your claims, to use references. (eg your claim that 70% of Iraqis want …)