Reason 3 : Iraq has fought a war with two countries. They fought a war in the 80s with Iran, a war that may or may not constitute self defense. A war that USA, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, supported. His vice president btw was Bush Senior, and the guy they sent over to do the dealings with Saddam was Donald Rumsfeld. Guess we should be thankful he’s the one in charge of destroying that country. Then they invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait. More oil for them, but the USA wouldn’t have it and knocked them back. And now USA have invaded Afghanistan, a war that may or may not constitute self defense after 9/11. And then they invaded Iraq. And dare I say “more oil for them”? So to summon up : Iraq invaded 2 countries, USA invaded 2 countries – FOR NOW.
Reason 4 : Saddam and the Iraqi government are constantly defying the UN and pushing it as far as they can, but without breaking any clear set rules. They’d go along with a UN resolution, like the inspectors, for a while, then stop. And that’d go on for a while, but did they break any resolutions? Meanwhile we got the US who are constantly defying the UN. Every time there is a resolution up for condemning Israel when doing something with their military against the civilian palestinian population, like rolling in their tanks saying “we occupy this place now, you – move!”, the US is very quick to put in their veto. Not to mention that they defied the UN by invading Iraq in the first place. And also breaking the Kyoto agreement because they felt that the pursuit of a clean environment was too expensive for them. So yeah, Iraq was bad at following the UN, but the Bush administration just doesn’t care about the world opinion or UN.
Reason 5 : Saddam is a dictotor that need to be replaced by an government elected by the people. This reason has replaced all talks about WMD’s so I guess it’s gotta be important. But like the WMD’s argument, doesn’t really work considering… was Bush elected by the people? Nope! More people voted for Gore and then we had the Florida screwup. The american election system of having electorates instead of actually letting the people decide let that happen. But what would you expect from a system that dates back to the Roman empire. And if you’d look up the definition of “dictator” it’ll say “An absolute ruler”. Which Bush seems to be when he can’t only invade a soverieng nation at his own will, lie about and not be held responsible for it but actually might be reelected! And btw, how’s that “government elected by the people” going in Iraq? Got any elections coming up anytime soon?
Reason 2 : Iraq has proven it’s willing to use WMD’s, on it’s own people no less! Indeed they did, but USA is the only country in the world that’s ever used The Bomb for any reason other than scientific and that was against two civilian targets. Kinda hard to forget. And when Iraq did gas their “own people”, it was on the kurds up north and as I understand it, they don’t really consider the kurds iraqi citizens? They’re kinda of low on the social scale down there so I’m sure they didn’t really consider them “own people”. Not that it makes it any less horrible from our point of view. But USA also kill their own citizens systematically. Only they do it in the name of “justice”. During Bush’s time as governor, a position that would allow him to pardon people on death row, more people were executed in Texas than in any other state. And as president he also has the power to pardon people and even to abolish death penalty completly. But what tha hell, it’s only criminals and murderers so it’s not really “their own people” either is it? Just check with Amnesty how many people have been found innocent after they’ve been sentenced to death, or even worse – executed. As long as that figure is greater than 0 I’m afraid to set foot on their soil knowing I could be framed for a murder and executed for it (even though that’s unlikely since they would have trouble executing a foreign citizen quietly).
On a happier note – gotta love Agassi’s comments.
Do you remember Powell’s “Top 10 Reasons Why Invading Iraq is a Good Idea” speech he did at the UN Security Council two years ago or something? Wouldn’t it be totally cool of someone with enough balls and power at the UN to do a “Top 10 Reasons Why Invading USA is a Good Idea”? ‘Cause when going through it all 2 years after the fact it’s still bothers me. I’m gonna start my own little top 10 list now. But now that the entire war is done (more or less), the only valid reason they had was that Saddam was a bad guy. And really, how many countries in the world would sign up on a “Bush is a bad guy”-list? Enough to invade them I’m sure! I think it’s time for someone to step in, before the election, and give those americans a wake up call because it looks like it is gonna be close. And 4 more years with that guy and I’ll have no more respect for them. He was appointed once, never elected that we can blame on a clerical error or something lame, but if he’s actually elected… oh, dude….
Reason 1 : Iraq has WMD’s. Now we all know they didn’t. They had them 10 years ago but the only thing they found, according to Bush’s “State of the Union” speech quoting the Kay report, was “WMD related program activities” which is so vague that it may include chemistry lessons in grade school! Btw, Kay resigned just after Bush gave that speech because that’s not at all what it said. Now, the USA has the biggest WMD arsenal in the world and as Bush himself said in a speech on August 5th – “[Our enemies] never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”. Aside from it coming out totally wrong, it still says that USA still continues to develop WMD’s. And as soon as any other country in the world, like the current North Korea thing, try they are shut down by USA who seems to think they are the only country in the world who should have them.
Interesting day I had today. Rewind a week when I went over my budget for Christmas and come to the frightening conclusion I HAVE NO budget for Christmas! For some reason I can’t phantom I have no savings or anything and my finances are down the drain. But fortunately I have a very supportive family so I’ll make it somehow. Reminds me of the 111th Rule of Aquisition – “Treat people in your debt like family…exploit them.”. ANYWAY, I joked that my car breaking down would be like the worst thing that could happen. And on saturday it started making noises. Nothing big, just… inconvinient. But today when I was driving home it got worse and by the time I got home I drove it right into the shop. Again! Probably the rear brakes. So by now I was pretty upset over the bad timing, but what can you do. So I get home and realise that they changed my rear brakes two years ago so there should be some warranty on that job. Then I spend about 3 hours going through old papers and drawers full of old “should save just in case”-things. And this is when the day turned around from annoying to a great nostalgic event. Going through old stuff and finding things like our airline tickets from our trip to Greece, old photos and even our high school photoalbums! Damn that was fun! I didn’t find what I was looking for ofcourse, but hey, I’m a computer engineer not a filing clerk! (I actually found my old engineering diploma!)
Go and see “Control Room”. Now please. It’s a documentary showing the difficult task the media and the liaison officers had during the war in Iraq. It mostly focuses on Al Jazeera who were showing the other side of the war and being hated by Rumsfeld and at the same time hearing the iraqi information minister call them “the american propaganda machine”. Surprisingly, the liaison officer in CentCom (Rushing) liked them alot and they showed alot of their conversations and alot of interviews showing what a difficult time this guy had trying to be objective in that bloody mess. Really powerful stuff. Go see it! It’s not really an anti-america or anti-Bush movie. Just a documentary showing propoganda up close.
You all remember Bush wonderful attitude towards the environment, right? That he called off the Kyoto agreement and doesn’t bother about “naturual reserve” signs when drilling for oil? And the lovely “it would cost us too much to care for the environment” attitude (not an exact quote, but the point was the same)? So, who in the US southern states believes that mother nature isn’t striking back with all typhoons and cyclones and stuff that have hit them over the past 3 weeks? It’s a record number of weather related disasters over there, and now we got Mt. Helen warming up for a party. And perfect timing too with the election coming up. I love the irony…