So its America's fault that Saddam used all of Iraq's money for himself and not his people?

Or are you agreeing that Iraq is better off nowadays?

3/22/2007 11:30:21 AM

Quote :

"So its America's fault that Saddam used all of Iraq's money for himself and not his people?"

He wouldn't have been able to do that without the sanctions.

We can call it a team effort.

3/22/2007 11:31:54 AM

Why wouldn't he be able to do that without the sanctions?

Is it the United States' fault that the oil-for-food money was misappropriated by Saddam to not buy food for his people?

BLAME AMERICA FIRST

3/22/2007 11:33:38 AM

Just look at the numbers, Twista. Iraq's economy went to hell after the sanctions.

I think it's fair to assume the sanctions caused this. Saddam was in power both before and during the sanctions. It's tough when you can't import much of anything into a country.

3/22/2007 11:37:58 AM

Iraq's economy went to hell after the sanctions? Yes

The US imposed sanctions? Yes

Its Saddam's fault for invading Kuwait? Yes

Invading Kuwait is what prompted the sanctions? Yes

Saddam could've spent some of his billionaire money on feeding his people instead of installing more solid gold toilets in his many luxurious palaces? Yes

BLAME AMERICA FIRST!

Blaming the US for Iraq's problems during the sanctions is like blaming the arresting officer if an inmate dies in prison

3/22/2007 11:42:09 AM

Quote :

"BLAME AMERICA FIRST!"

Please continue putting this in every post. It is great increasing the pleasure and intellectual value of Soap Box experience.

Quote :

"Blaming the US for Iraq's problems during the sanctions is like blaming the arresting officer if an inmate dies in prison"

No, it's not really like that at all. Collective punishment and individual punishment are not the same. However, the US government is responsible for conditions inside prisons.

We knew the sanctions were causing humanitarian disaster in Iraq, we just didn't care.

Reporter: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright: "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."

3/22/2007 11:49:59 AM

Its still bullshit...I guess all of Cuba's problems are our fault too since we don't trade with them?

You're essentially saying its the United States' responsibility to make sure that Iraq's dictator doesn't misuse his money<

and i simply put the 'blame america first' because thats essentially all people like OEP usually do...everything bad in the world is either directly or indirectly the United States' fault

[Edited on March 22, 2007 at 11:55 AM. Reason : .]

3/22/2007 11:50:56 AM

Quote :

"who said that, Madeline Albright?"

Indeed.

Quote :

"I guess all of Cuba's problems are our fault too since we don't trade with them?"

It certainly hurts the country, yes.

For all of their problems, it's not my fault you can't understand more than one person being responsible for a given outcome.

It's not the guys with white hats against the guys with black hats.

Usually, in the real world, everyone's wearing a black hat.

3/22/2007 11:54:56 AM

just seems to me like another example of people not taking responsibility for their own actions

meaning saddam's actions are what got saddam's country in this mess where saddam made the choice to spend billions of dollars on his own luxuries instead of saddam paying attention to his own people

3/22/2007 11:58:08 AM

Quote :

"just seems to me like another example of people not taking responsibility for their own actions"

I agree. You refuse to accept that the US is responsible for the humanitarian disaster caused by the sanctions. US policy makers chose to impose the sanctions. Claiming Saddam forced the hand of the most powerful country in the world is ridiculous.

Hell, Albright accepted that the sanctions were killing thousands of children. She didn't contest the point. She just said it was worth it.

Quote :

"meaning saddam's actions are what got saddam's country in this mess where saddam made the choice to spend billions of dollars on his own luxuries instead of saddam paying attention to his own people"

That view completely ignores the agency of US policy makers. They made choices as well.

3/22/2007 2:04:15 PM

that line of thought seems parallel to some "she was wearing that dress? she was just asking for rape"

dont blame the rapist, blame the woman for dressing that way

[Edited on March 22, 2007 at 2:09 PM. Reason : .]

3/22/2007 2:08:43 PM

Quote :

"that line of thought seems parallel to some "she was wearing that dress? she was just asking for rape""

Explain, please. Your line of thought seems a little like that. Mine isn't at all similar.

Quote :

"dont blame the rapist, blame the woman for dressing that way"

So the US raped Iraq because Saddam tried to wear Kuwait as dress? Is that what you're saying?

3/22/2007 2:20:16 PM

i dont know if you're actually looking for an answer since you're just being a smartass but i'll give you one anyway

US imposes sanctions...Saddam spends his money on himself and blames US for his own people's misfortune (note: SADDAM WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IRAQI PEOPLE, NOT THE US)

Girl wears a sexy dress...rapist rapes her...rapist blames the girl for being too sexy and bringing it on herself (note: A RAPIST IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A RAPE HE COMMITS, NOT THE VICTIM)

i'll go ahead and admit its not the best analogy, though it is a valid analogy

[Edited on March 22, 2007 at 4:13 PM. Reason : .]

3/22/2007 4:08:49 PM

Quote :

"US imposes sanctions...Saddam spends his money on himself and blames US for his own people's misfortune"

So was he just a nice guy before the sanctions? What explains the difference between Iraq after the sanctions and Iraq before the sanctions? I doubt it's Saddam. He was there the entire time.

And it's not as if he had absolute control over all economic activity in Iraq, at least not before the sanctions. The sanctions actually increased his control, as most everything then came through the government.

Quote :

"note: SADDAM WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IRAQI PEOPLE, NOT THE US"

note: THE US IS RESPONSIBLE FOR US ACTIONS, NOT SADDAM

ALL CAPS MAKES IT ALL TRUE

3/22/2007 4:19:46 PM

Quote :

"So was he just a nice guy before the sanctions? "

of course not...but before the sanctions he could buy all his lavish shit and let the virtual welfare system help his people live in poverty...then when the sanctions came, he didnt stop buying his lavish shit...and he didnt try to provide for his people

christ why am i even arguing with someone defending the way saddam ran his country

3/22/2007 4:25:00 PM

Quote :

"then when the sanctions came, he didnt stop buying his lavish shit...and he didnt try to provide for his people"

As I understand it, he even used the scarcity and his increased control of resources to bolster his political position.

So you admit the sanctions made the difference. How, then, do you absolve the US of responsibility?

Quote :

"christ why am i even arguing with someone defending the way saddam ran his country"

You must own a lot of straw, Twista.

3/22/2007 4:31:08 PM

lotta people trolling me today

3/22/2007 4:36:50 PM

Quote :

"lotta people trolling me today"

If that were true, I've got one word that explains it.

Karma.

3/22/2007 4:39:53 PM

karma in the sense of buddhism doesnt occur til after you die...although i get your point, i would offer this one word for the reason

disagreement

course if you think i troll people more than people troll me...well you're not a very keen TSB reader

3/22/2007 4:43:19 PM

I'm quite serious, though.

I think the US bears considerable moral responsibility for the humanitarian disaster caused by the sanctions.

Saddam bears a great deal as well, but that doesn't absolve the US. And he's already gotten his.

3/22/2007 4:46:26 PM

well he's clearly gotten his

but just because somebody gets fired from their job for bad performance doesnt mean the former employer is responsible for the firee's children

thats how i look at it

3/22/2007 4:48:44 PM

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/27/michael-ware-i-dont-know-what-part-of-neverland-senator-mccain-is-talking-about/

3/28/2007 8:45:22 AM

i like to post links even though i have the main poster in this thread on block

3/28/2007 9:21:45 AM

yup... pretty safe and much better off!!!

2 tons of explosives
100 homes destroyed
152 dead
347 injured
75 foot crater

that's pretty normal for safe places all over the world, isn't it?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKPAR34073020070401

Deadliest bomb in Iraq war kills 152

Quote :

"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government raised the death toll on Saturday from a lorry bomb this week in the town of Tal Afar to 152, making it the deadliest single bombing of the four-year-old conflict. Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf told a news conference that 347 people were wounded in Tuesday's attack on a Shi'ite area. There was another, small lorry bomb in the mixed northwestern town on the same day. Khalaf said 100 homes had been destroyed in the main blast, which officials have blamed on al Qaeda. The explosion left a 23-metre (75-ft)-wide crater. "It took us a while to recover all the bodies from underneath the rubble of the homes ... what did they achieve by using two tonnes of explosive to kill and wound 500 in a residential area?" Khalaf asked at a news conference. Only a year ago U.S. President George W. Bush held up Tal Afar as a beacon of hope for Iraq after al Qaeda militants were ousted in a U.S. offensive a year earlier."

3/31/2007 10:14:45 PM

Even Republicans are starting to figure it out.

Quote :

"Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who helped engineer the US withdrawal from Vietnam, says the problems in Iraq are more complex than that conflict, and military victory is no longer possible."

Quote :

""A 'military victory' in the sense of total control over the whole territory, imposed on the entire population, is not possible," Kissinger told The Associated Press in Tokyo, where he received an honorary degree from Waseda University. The faceless, ubiquitous nature of Iraq's insurgency, as well as the religious divide between Shi'ite and Sunni rivals, makes negotiating peace more complex, he said. "It is a more complicated problem," Kissinger said. "The Vietnam War involved states, and you could negotiate with leaders who controlled a defined area.""

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/iraq-victory-not-possible-kissinger/2007/04/01/1175366064559.html

[Edited on April 1, 2007 at 7:05 PM. Reason : i didnt want yet another iraq thread.]

4/1/2007 7:05:05 PM

which is more complicated "sunni versus muslum" or "muslums against israel"

4/1/2007 7:11:11 PM

He obviously hates America.


^ Dude, fucking go away. Your life is a horrible failure for you to apparently gain this much pleasure from trolling this section that you do it on a near constant basis.

Whats wrong, chit chat gotten too boring for you, so you come in here for your fun?

Fuck off and get the fuck out.

[Edited on April 1, 2007 at 7:12 PM. Reason : a]

4/1/2007 7:11:37 PM

sure u dont want to edit that one more time, lol

4/1/2007 7:22:05 PM

McCain told reporters: “that his visit to the market today was proof that you could indeed ‘walk freely’ in some areas of Baghdad.”

Sounds great John. But.....

Quote :

"He was accompanied by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.”"

4/1/2007 10:44:34 PM

^ and if all that wasn't enough, he is also wearing what i believe is a bullet-proof vest.

man, any politicians who lie and cheat the public like that should be whipped in public and then stripped and made to walk home to shame them.

the biggest casualty of this war has been the truth, at every stage, and of every level of significance, from the smallest most insignificant details, to major significant details.

these humans are a disgrace to the human race.

[Edited on April 1, 2007 at 10:51 PM. Reason : ]

4/1/2007 10:50:54 PM

to be fair, its a really shitty bullet proof vest.

4/1/2007 10:57:57 PM

He's livin on the edge!!!!

4/2/2007 8:22:55 AM

I'm glad we made Iraq a better place

BASED ON LIES


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201777.html?referrer=emailarticle

4/4/2007 11:26:18 AM

Washington Post...wow what a credible source

Quote :

"It remains unclear who fabricated the documents. Intelligence officials say most likely it was rogue elements in Sismi who wanted to make money selling them."

but I thought Bush definitely fabricated the documents?

ps: Why do you bother to keep posting in my thread when you have the thread's creator on block?

4/4/2007 11:29:38 AM

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/05/iraq.main/index.html?eref=rss_world

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP!!!

Quote :

"but I thought Bush definitely fabricated the documents?"

Did you flip flop, are you now a Bush hater?

4/5/2007 2:19:41 PM

fuking bastard

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6533367.stm

Cheney asserts Iraq-al Qaeda link

Dick Cheney said al-Qaeda was working in Iraq before the 2003 war

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has repeated his assertion that the al-Qaeda network had links with Iraq before the US-led invasion of 2003.

4/6/2007 5:12:30 PM

i know for a fact that al queda was never in iraq

4/6/2007 5:14:43 PM

I know for a fact that they didn't ship the weapons of mass destruction out before we liberated them.

4/6/2007 7:47:17 PM

i know lots of things as being facts based on reading a few internet articles

4/6/2007 10:04:51 PM

dude they shipped them to syria

saddams top military dude was on daily show once and he said he knew they had them cause he had SEEN them

4/6/2007 10:18:27 PM

dude we're being sarcastic to attempt to make the point to OEP that a BBC article doesnt necessarily hold more weight than the accounts of someone like Cheney who certainly has an up close and personal relationship with foreign intelligence, etc

4/6/2007 10:20:19 PM

^ umm... did you even click on the link? so are you saying that what is known now about the deliberate mishandling of the intelligence is false?

if so, then the pentagon now is mistaken!!! who would you believe, cheney or the pentagon???

Quote :

"Under repeated questioning by Mr Levin in February, Mr Gimble said the conclusions reached in reports by Mr Feith were not fully supported by the available intelligence. In particular, his conclusion there was a "mature and symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda could not be justified on the basis of the available intelligence. In addition, an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and a leader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, never took place. "

4/6/2007 10:29:58 PM

iraq would not be better off with saddam in power

however, iraq WOULD be better off if we had followed through with the powell doctrine and been less arrogant

4/6/2007 10:32:02 PM

i did click the link, but i also noticed this

Quote :

"Mr Cheney told a US radio show: "They were present before we invaded Iraq." Hours earlier, a declassified Pentagon report said information obtained from Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein had confirmed they had no strong ties. "

so my point is that cheney didnt say something like "I STILL BELIEVE AL QUEDA AND IRAQ CONSPIRED TOGETHER ON 9/11"...he just said essentially that there were al queda people in iraq before 2003...which i dont think is far fetched at all

[Edited on April 6, 2007 at 10:33 PM. Reason : *fetched]

4/6/2007 10:32:19 PM

if by "not far fetched" you mean "they werent there at all" then sure.

4/6/2007 11:04:07 PM

I heard that interview as it happens, on Rush , now I know since Cheney said things on Rush's show they are probably even less credible for you knee-jerk lefties.

However, what Cheney did not say that Iraq was behind 911. He said that allowing states like Afganistan to go largely unsupervised gave the terrorists safehaven to plan their attacks against us. His point was simply that after we invaded Afganistan some of the terrorists went to Iraq to continue their plotting. And after 911 Bush is no longer content watching terrorist training camps from the sidelines.
Also, even the terrorists say that Iraq is the frontline in their struggle against us. So whether or not
the US congress believes it is the frontline on the war against terror the enemy thinks it.

4/7/2007 6:31:02 AM

Quote :

"His point was simply that after we invaded Afganistan some of the terrorists went to Iraq to continue their plotting."

thats not true.

Quote :

"And after 911 Bush is no longer content watching terrorist training camps from the sidelines."

so why havent we found bin laden? why have we put zero pressure on pakistan, saudia arabia etc?

Quote :

"Also, even the terrorists say that Iraq is the frontline in their struggle against us"

do you understand the difference between pre invasion and post invasion?

4/7/2007 9:19:19 AM

Quote :

"And after 911 Bush is no longer content watching terrorist training camps from the sidelines."

Sounds like a plan to me, turn the entire world into a police state to make sure terrorism can't grow anywhere.

This is just retarded. There will always be poor people in the world, and they will always hate us. WHO WILL PUT UP THE WHITE FLAG AND SURRENDER IN THE WAR ON TERROR?

This is sofaking retarded it's not even funny.

4/7/2007 2:04:21 PM

you're so fucking retarded

4/7/2007 5:43:20 PM

out of ^^ and ^, state409c wins

4/7/2007 5:45:28 PM