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It’s a documented fact that European countries and the USA provided Saddam with everything he needed to build WMDs. Your attitude seems to be “we sold him the stuff, but isn’t it outrageous that he actually used it”. A responsible barman wouldn’t sell booze to someone who was already drunk, a responsible gunstore owner wouldn’t sell a gun to a lunatic, yet our governments saw fit to sell weapons of mass destruction to a homicidal maniac.
Getting back to the point, the war was supposedly aimed at setting the downtrodden free which isn’t the usual objective of a military occupation and yet we see coalition troops carrying out terrible abuses on the people they are supposed to be freeing from injustice.
What worries me is the reluctance to hold to account any coalition soldier that abuses his power. We have no problem pointing the finger at other countries and saying how terrible they are but when one of our own does it we just say “bad things happen in war, it’s not an easy job”. When a wrongdoer is prosecuted it’s usually the lowest possible rank and they usually just get a slap on the wrist.
@drivel wrote:
It’s those nasty bloody Americans again !!!!
The sooner China wipes them off the map – the safer the world will be !!!!!!!!!!!!
I think you’d all miss me too much if I was wiped off the map – :lol: :lol: :lol:
I’m not going to make any excuses for the soldiers if what you say is in fact true. I haven’t heard about it so I’m not going to give an opinion or defend them. I will say that Saddam, his sons and his regime were evil and they did awful things to the people of Iraq. Monstrous things were done to the women and children and that’s been proven. It’s horrendous what these people have to go thru. But eventually, there will be an end; the people will be better off. I know I’ll get bombarded with criticisms here since I am an American, so have it. I do support our troops, but not the ones who participate in such acts. It’s not the majority, it’s just sick perverts who found there way into Iraq and the military.
Iraq might be better off in the long-run with saddam gone. If things had be done differently then I would have no doubt. However, the incompetent post-war strategy has made the future of iraq very uncertain. I still maintain that with a budget of several billion dollars, Saddam could have been removed by other means.
Yes saddam did terrible things but if our troops start doing the same type of things then it makes a mockery of the “liberation”. I doubt that the Haditha massacre and the atrocity carried out on this 14 year old girl and her family will be the last we hear of coalition abuses. Of course coalition troops have a difficult job but none of them are conscripts, they are supposed to be professionals and as such they should behave professionally.
Remember that there are bad people in our forces as there are in the real world.
This hurts me more than I can say, ….but I have to agree with Mr B’s take on this mess.
It seems absolutely clear to me that the invading forces (US + UK + an assorted rag bag of miscellaneous ‘others’) appeared to have had NO clear strategy once they had defeated Saddam’s army; thay had NO real vision of the country they were ‘liberating’; they have NO exit strategy either. In fact they are flapping around from one incident to another simply firefighting.
There sems to be a total lack of intelligence on the ‘opposition’ to the military government; they seem not to know who is to be trusted and who isn’t; they lost the Media war months ago.
OK so they removed the ‘despotic’ leadership of Iraq – hurrah !!! …freedom for the poor old oppressed Iraquis …. no more state sponsored murder & torture …. no more corruption… yeah, right.
So now we have sectarian warfare on a vast scale. Sunni Moslems murder Shia Moslems in cold blood , and vice-versa. Both lots hate the coalition forces with a passion. The country is rapidly decending from chaos into what amounts to civil war.
Every incident where the poorly trained, poorly led, and poorly motivated US troops even so much as clip a murderer round the ear is blown up into an international crisis. Naturally the Media will blow everything up out of all proportion. There will no doubt be show trials of the soldiery, severe punishments for the lowest common denominator, etc etc, Academics, opinion formers, Liberal politicians, even student radicals will be demonstrating on the streets demanding an end to the ”illegal occupation of Iraq’
This appalling debacle will provide ‘motivation’ for every religious nutcase to focus on and give them yet another excuse for bombings and murders. The show will go on and on and on…………
This is the problem with war though, it’s unpredictable. The decision was made pretty quickly due to people believing (wrong as we now know) that there was a serious WMD threat. Exit strategies take time to formulate and with the situation in Iraq changing on an almost daily basis there will be no clean way of getting out. People will die on all sides, military, insurgent and civilian. I for one just hope that the civilian and military casualties are kept to a minimum, the more dead insurgents the better.
Anyway, I’m currently more worried about Afghanistan, that looks like it could seriously kick-off soon.
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