US Treasury and Whitehouse looked away on oil for food scam

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@Ragusa- when you argue that the sanctions worked, I assume that you don't buy the argument that floated around before the war that around a million Iraqis, children and adults, died because of them? And I also assume that you were happy with the status quo before the war: i.e., the US and UK aggressively inforcing "no-fly zones" in northern and southern Iraq. Good thing the US and UK have air forces, eh?

Plus the whole set up for this thread seems kinda funny. 1) Illlicit oil transfers under oil-for-food (to benefit the million dying Iraqis, mind you) perpetrated by French, Russian, Swiss, etc companies under the direction of the UN, vs. 2) illicit oil transfers not under oil-for-food perpetrated by Turkey and Jordan while the US Treasury looks the other way: without even addressing the difference between allowing for corruption and actively facilitating it, are you trying to say that Swiss business standards and Jordanian business standards should be held to the same, erm, standard? (Well, andererseits, I know how much Germans like to drive their Maibach's full of cash over the border to Switzerland or Luxembourg to make those secret untraceable deposits...)

 

BTA, it has been a rather underreported that Iraq actually tried to comply with the UN resolution and reinvite the weapon inspections. If the idea was to simply disarm Iraq, he cried the proverbial uncle. It was in the last minute, but I suppose he could be expected to try to weasel out of it. Doesn't any politician do that? Anyway, the attack began a few days afterward, iirc. Noncompliance might have therefore been a pretext, but I can't agree that the war can't have been avoided. Plus, if Saddam is the biggest problem - there are only so many humiliations that a dictator can take before he is ousted one way or another.
My personal opinion on the WMDs is that Saddam did not restart the program and had not weapons. He did not like to acknowledge that for several reasons - a possible one, and probably the leasti important one, was bargaining in the UN. A bigger threat, as he might have perceived it, was Iran - for several reasons:
- it is a country several times stronger, in population, army and during the sanctions economy
- it's the patron of Shi'ah islam (Saddam was a Sunni, a minority, and he oppressed the shi'ah)
- it was likely to be interested in extra oil, given the animosity of many OPEC members
- and after the 1980's war, when it was invaded and on the receiving end of Iraqi chemical weapons, it was likely to be rather pissed off and looking for a chance to pay Saddam back.
So I presume that he might have tried to keep the illusion to try to hold them back. I doubt he would get any help from anyone if Iraq were invaded, right? Plus, if he made the pretense that he still had weapons, this might have given him the "strong man" aura in the internal politics. After the loss in the war and the sanctions it is possible that there were some factions aimed at his overthrow.
On your link: first time I actually heard the entire thing. Well just keep in mind that the kuwaiti secret services are somewhat renowned for less-than-honest methods when iraq is concerned.

 

I’m sort of glad about what you wrote, Shaman, because it’s about what I wanted to write, so I can be briefer now

BTA,
You’re making a big fuss about Iraq’s non-compliance, and I only have two points to make, and a few questions:

• What if the U.S. demands for proof were impossible to meet?
• What if Iraq in fact indeed had complied, but in secret - for the reasons Shaman posted - and therefor was unable to prove it?

One is still somewhat at loss to explain the utter absence of any findings confirming that grave and gathering and mushroom-clouded threat the US went to war against.

While everyone in the west still believed that Saddam had some WMD the consensus was that, however, the U.S. were vastly exaggerating the threat and that they didn’t pose a threat - not even to Iraq’s neigbours.

So what happened to Iraq’s WMD? As the option that Saddam did comply and ordered their destruction seems incomprehensible to you - where did they go to? Iran? Syria? Saudi-Arabia? Fat chance. Face it - the US went to war against a phantom menace.

Bion,
You raise the point of sanctions vs. humanitarian aspects - and on first read I indeed make a point that might appear as a logical contradiction when I accuse the U.S. of having killed vast numbers of Iraqis through the sanctions but that the sanctions worked in containing Iraq. But only on first read.
The problem with the sanctions was what the U.S. and the UK made of them - it was them who controlled the sanctions office and vetoed any change in the sanctions for most of the previous decade whenever it was suggested to loosen them.

You read that part in the article I linked about smart sanctions? Sanctions aren't sanctions - they can be varied.

The sanctions on Iraq not necessarily needed to ban water clarification equipment and chlorine gas - yes, a WW-I poison gas, but so ineffective as a weapon that it wasn’t used anymore by 1916 already - the lack thereof proved to be one of the prime killers of Iraqi children who died as a result of water-carried diseases - a natural risk in a country with that climate.
Smart sanctions taking into account this and similar factors could have prevented most of the civilian deaths in Iraq - all that without compromising the disarmament of Iraq.

You put it as if the US committed blameless carnage (That’s from a libertarian, that is, rather conservative site) - it’s all Saddam’s fault. Yeah? Ain’t that a bit easy?

The U.S. goal of regime change precluded any cooperation with Saddam on the fate of his people - the allegation that their alarming reports on the situation of the Iraqi people would be ‘abused’ by Iraq as an argument was reason for the US to lobby for the dismissal of UN representatives Halliday and von Sponeck, who in the end both resigned in protest - and they weren’t just some loony, sentimental leftists hating America first.

That’s about as silly as to say: We won’t talk about abuse at Abu Ghraib because it gives our enemy political ammo - that’s why we should just go ahead and continue.

When asked, for Madeleine Albright regime change was worth the killing of 500.000 Iraqi children.

The US took the Iraqi people hostage to enforce regime change, as much as Saddam did the same to put pressure on the US. It showed that the U.S. were no less ruthless than Saddam. The fate of the Iraqi people didn’t matter at all to both parties.

While one may say that Bush’s approach is less cynical and more straightforward than Clinton’s - which is probably true - it needn’t come that far. The idea that it is better to go in and kill people directly to achieve regime change instead of sealing off the borders and doing it via sanctions really strikes me as odd - but I forgot - it wasn’t planned that way - if it was planned at all. Originally the U.S. leaders just wanted to plug in Chalabi, be greeted with flowers and go ahead to liberate Dasmascus, too ... and be back for lunch.

The opposite of ‘well done’ is ‘well meant’ - and that has never been sufficient as an excuse.

There was no need to go to war on Iraq - plain and simple.

What I always wonder is why so many Americans think that Saddam was irreconcilable. Lybia’s Ghaddafi was considered that too, and now he’s good and nice boy again. Why couldn’t work that with Iraq, too?
Oh, I get it: Too evil ... Why do people consider Saddam irrational, but consider a man who claims to talk to god ('God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did ...') as perfectly sane?

It isn’t all about European money interests as you allege. It’s about our safety, too. Europe is just about three flight hours away from the Middle East - when the U.S. screw up there, it hits us first. Nothing wrong about fighting terror, we’re on board - but military action against imaginary threats is just plain stupid.
We clearly have no interest in joining the U.S. putting down that rebellion in Iraq the U.S. unleashed - you broke it, you fix it (while we’ll help you from outside) - and much less in the veteran fanatics from there coming to Europe. We told him it would come that way, but Bush knew better.

What brought Lybia to heel was the prospect of normalizing economic relations foremost with the EU - we’re their biggest trading partner as our southern borders are just some 150km away - Lybia only needed to win the U.S. because of the veto they hold in the security council. That was actually what persuaded them to cave in and disarm and to be sentenced for Lockerbie - and not the U.S. display of military muscle.

I’m glad to see that the EU has told Bush that if he want’s to do Syria, Lebanon and Iran militarily he has to do it alone - and that that's non-negotiable. His reckless and irresponsible policies have brought more harm than good.

Sometimes an imperfect order is preferable to freedom. In it’s ultimate form freedom becomes anarchy - where freedom has no value anymore - you see that in Iraq today. It’s all about more harm than good.

The neo-con ideologues are still locked in the cold-war view, that is shared by Israel through it’s experience of state-sponsored groups like Hezbollah, that terror always has a patron. Why? First of all Al Quaeda is a private enterprise that has most of their supporters in Saudi-Arabia, but not state support - it was only tolerated by the Taleban, but that’s about it.

The neo-cons don’t care and go down their list of rogue states - stumpf ist trumpf!

[ February 25, 2005, 01:05: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Actually I understand you pretty well BTA. You lean back, point to Iraq and say it was up to Iraq to proove their innocence, that is, their compliance.

Plain and simple. But don't you think that's a sort of weird justification for war? How about Iran: Demand dismantling of it's nuclear program, and demand proof for it and when they then bring up evidence, just say that they didn't show you all of it and that you can't wait in face of this possible threat and invade.

Or take Syria ... <repeat> ...

The demand that others please be so kind and bring up proof is quite convenient and actually so arbitrary that you can justify about everything with it - invading Iraq, sanctioning Syria, destabilising Iran - because you can never be sure the others don't hide a thing.

The 'agreements he signed' is a nice term for an armistice imposed at gunpoint. The disarmament wasn't signed by Iraq at all, but rather imposed on Iraq by the UN security council on a U.S. initiative.
The disarmament was actually quite a surprise for Iraq as the original UN resolution called just for the restoration of the status quo ante - that is - withdrawal from Kuwait.

I don't deny that Saddam acted like an idiot for not withdrawing from Kuwait - and he got the defeat he deserved. That he wanted to solve his countries economic problems by annecting Kuwait and get their oil revenues, too, is very much obvious.

To say Saddam's removal became the only option is a convenient excuse for not really trying. As the US wanted regime change anyway, there wasn't really the incentive to try I guess.

 

Probably

 

That's not the right question. The right question is, "Why couldn't we have removed Ghaddafi too?"

At least, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not very happy with our new and improved friend Ghaddafi. It seems to me we're doing exactly what was done in the Cold War--"oh, yeah, well, this guy here is kinda bad, but at least he's not a Communist, and will help us against the Communists, so he can be our ally"

Replace Communist with terrorist, and you've summed up our current foreign policy.