Second, the U.S. doesn't have clean hands in the matter, but other countries were far worse offenders.
Worse, I contend, but far worse, I do not contend. The US sent weapons, including chemical weapons, it sent expertise, it offered military support and equipment, it offered political support, all of this on a significant scale. While other countries did this on an even greater scale, the US support does not pale in comparison. At any rate, my point is that for a long time, the US and other countries did in fact
support Saddam Hussein. Many of the critics of the US invasions of Iraq, including I believe at least Zinn and Chomsky of those you singled out, were in fact very critical of this support for the Hussein regime, while it occured. Therefore, it is quite dishonest to claim that these people wanted to
support continued rule by Hussein. Reluctantly tolerate, yes, support, no.
I must confess that I missed one of Saddam Husseins greatest crimes in my exposé: The al-Anfal campaign against the Kurds, during 1986-89, when Iraq did of course have the support of the US and several other nations.
I recommend The Threatening Storm, by Kenneth Pollack.
It is widely considered to be insightful and well-informed. However, Pollack was simply wrong.
Here is an article where he himself admits being wrong, and tries to explain how this could happen - and how the Bush administration twisted his and other analysts' erroneous conclusions even further.
Your statement suggesting that such leftists as Jesse Jackson, Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, the whole A.N.S.W.E.R, NION, United for Peace and Justice crowd, the many, many academics who drew the fire of FrontPage Magazine writers in dozens of essays--the list is long--were rare collapses under scrutiny. You are parroting some of the people here who mislabel anything that embarrasses them as "anecdotal evidence." Did those leftists openly support Saddam? With the exception of Ramsey Clark, who later served on Saddam's defense team and has never met an America-hating dictator he didn't like, the others stopped short of expressing approval.
Unless you believe Hussein should not have had a defense team, I don't think the single fact that someone served on his defence as evidence that said person supported Hussein politically. As you agree yourself, the others did
not express approval.
They left no doubt, however, that they regarded America as the greater threat to the world.
This is perhaps true in some cases. However, I think they were right. the US, led by the Bush administration,
was a greater threat to the world.
Except, they did. You are either misinformed or lying.
How did they offer themselves to Saddam Hussein? Unless you mean that they gave Hussein the opportunity to kidnap them (though he did not do that), they clearly did not do this.
Your premise is disingenuous. America is not seeking to cause civilian casualties.
Irrelevant. Saddam Hussein also did not seek to cause civilian casualties. He seeked to maintain power. Causing civilian casualties is, in both cases, a side-effect - and a tolerated side-effect. Additionally, you fail to take into account the violence in today's Iraq that is not perpetrated by the US. Saddam Hussein's regime was brutal, but it kept a certain order in place. Removing that order without any realistic plans for a different order to put in its place implies responsibility for the ensuing chaos. Even if you were to argue that this violence was impossible to predict - even though I think mr Pollack does in fact warn of this problem in his book, as did many others - we clearly cannot discount this violence in an honest post-invasion analysis of the objective outcome of the invasion.
We don't have any reliable stats on the average weekly death toll directly attributable to Saddam.
No, but we have estimates, none of which come close to today's levels of violence. You may have had a case for a 'humanitarian' invasion during the Iran-Iraq war, or in order to stop the Anfal. But that was not what happened.
No, my sources are quite good. The complaint voiced most often by the people who actually serve in Iraq is that the mainstream media completely ignores all indices that don't fit their template. You, of course, have no interest in learning what is actually happening in Iraq apart from the violence in Baghdad.
That is false. However, the increased violence
is the most significant change. At least outside of Kurdistan. I should perhaps note that I believe it would be a good idea to keep troops in Kurdistan, unlike in the rest of Iraq. This is based on the fact that the Kurds want the troops to stay, unlike other Iraqi.
Notice that the frauds who bray continually about "evidence" haven't challenged any of your fabrications.
If I fabricate, why don't
you challenge it?
The South was not attempting to conquer the North. There were no guerillas supported by South Vietnam conducting terror campaigns in the North Vietnam--as you know.
No, because they didn't need a guerilla when they could use massive terror bombings.
There is a simple question that the "peace" movement always ducked: if the North had called off its invasion of the South, wouldn't the result have been peace?
You mean, if North Vietnam had passively allowed South Vietnam/the US to slaughter the FNL?
There were of course doves also in South Vietnam, but they were not in power.
How? Are you claiming that the document is forged?
Saddam's WMD were widely regarded as very real. We still don't know what happened to them.
As shown in the article I posted above, your own expert of choice disagrees..
His defense, as you might expect, is that we were bombing WMD facilities. Is that a satisfactory defense?
Very doubtful, given what was known at the time.
