Someone's weaseling here, and it isn't me. Medicine and food was not part of the sanctions from the very beginning.
That's just not true. I quoted the security council resolution. Food was only exempt from the sanctions regime when things became desperate.
As for the rest, it was more than predictable that halting all of Iraq's trade would result in a lack of purchasing power. The notion that Saddam would have chosen to spend his meager resources for the benefit of his people was never a possibility. We knew what would happen, and we made that choice because of false fear about a toothless enemy. You'll find that we have a habit of such behavior.
Uh, he was impotent because of the sanctions which prevented him from rebuilding his military. You are engaging in circular reasoning.
Again, that's just not true. Read Hanz Blix and Scott Ritter. The Gulf War bombings destroyed about 90-95% of his capabilities. Most of the rest of it deteriorated with age, and the remaining few percent were eliminated in subsequent bombing raids.
Certainly the sanctions made it more difficult for him to get parts, but he wasn't anywhere near having an actual weapons program. The severity of the sanctions were overkill, which is why they were modified in the late 90's. As I said, when the NGO's were allowed to distribute food and medicine in Iraq, the sanctions were still effective with respect to weapons, and the health situation improved. We could still be operating under that arrangement now.
How is N. Korea "forced"? Why is it ok for millions of N. Korean civilians to starve?
We have to treat North Korea more gingerly because they actually have nuclear capabilities. Saddam was impotent after the first Gulf War, and it was American politicians (both parties) that built up Saddam as an imaginary threat to justify policy choices and secure popularity.
I have no idea what you mean by "the weapons inspectors tried to explain this". Saddam did not cooperate with the weapons inspectors sent there to verify his compliance because Saddam did not document the dismantling of his chemical and biological weapons programs as he was supposed to. It wasn't their job to search for WMDs, it was their job to verify compliance.
What I mean is that the weapons inspectors explained in great detail exactly what Saddam had and what his capabilities were. Here is a really short book by Scott Ritter published before the invasion that categorizes where his stockpiles went:
http://www.amazon.com/War-Iraq-What...=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284954362&sr=1-5
This was proved 100% accurate by the invasion.
And now that revisionist history has set in, it needs to be repeated that Saddam didn't kick the inspectors out, Bush pulled them out before he started bombing. The inspectors said Saddam was hiding certain sites, his palace being one of them, but that there was little chance that anything significant was hidden there.
Saddam just wasn't a threat. The inspectors could document it, and the BEST thing you can say about our case is that it was woefully inept. The more likely situation involved lies. But that's the choice: lying or stupid.
