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He was de facto leader well before Bakr abdicated. Saddam and his Tikrit clan had controlled energy and defense for over a decade with Saddam conducting all oil, military and nuclear business on behalf of the regime.Quote:
Originally Posted by Del Arroyo
Wait, what? :dizzy2:Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaknafien
Yeah I am scratching my head as well. Didn't most Russians hate him?Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJager
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2822029.stm
Pretty disturbing. Kinda like still thinking facism is a good idea, or something.Quote:
A survey by the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion released this week showed that 53% of 1,600 people polled said Stalin had played a "mainly positive role" in the country's history.
That's right. And every Russian I've ever known (granted, they're all military) look up to him as their greatest leader.
I find it funny that people insist comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler and Stalin. It makes him look a lot scarier and worth bothering with than he really was.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ser Clegane
As for Stalin, I say again: Even though he was a paranoid psycho, he transformed the nation from a fractured series of rebellious farming villages into a powerful entity that rivaled (and to an extent still does) the powers of the world.
I would not go as far as saying that he was as bad as Hitler - my point rather was that even for Hitler - who was even worse, in terms of the overall impact - you could start to paint a rather rosy picture based on the same line of arguments that has been used here for Saddam.Quote:
Originally Posted by CrossLOPER
In actuality though Hussein was no worse than the myriad other Arabic dictators the west has propped up for decades. The same things he did happen in Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria too, you know.
If Saddam had the same amount of power that Hitler or Stalin did heaven help us. You would see just how bad he really was. Thats the only difference . Germany and Russia were a bit stronger than Iraq.Quote:
I find it funny that people insist comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler and Stalin. It makes him look a lot scarier and worth bothering with than he really was.
I am not sure that you can show the same level of genocide-like (Kurds?) activities in those countries. Granted, when a lot of these things happened Saddam was also propped up by the West - but that does not excuse his actions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaknafien
Please note that I have not been a supporter of the Iraq invasion and I fully agree with you that the results have been far from satisfactory (although - once the invasion was a fact - I would have rather loved to be proven wrong by seeing Iraq being turned into a stable and peaceful country).
However I have a bit of a problem with accepting statements that Saddam wasn't such a bad guy. He was - that things do not look rosy now either does not change that..
If you will excuse me, the whole debate about exactly how nasty Saddam was seems like a bit of a distraction from the here and now.
An article that sums up much of the conundrum we're facing:
To put all this in context: Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted candidly in mid-March that without sectarian reconciliation among Iraqis the “strategy won’t work.” Indeed, the entire point of the surge is to bring such reconciliation about by, in Gates’s words, “buy[ing] the Iraqis time.” But that’s the problem. The United States is ever more dearly buying time, and Iraq is ever more freely spending it. As this article goes to press, the parliament is set to embark on a two-month vacation, during which, if current trends hold, 200 more American troops will be killed.
It seems so straightforward -- they are wasting time, and therefore wasting American lives, while the various insurgencies provide valuable training for future terrorists. But the politics are so frickin' complicated:
Haunted by Vietnam, Democrats are determined to express support for the troops. This is admirable. The truth of the matter, however, is this: many troops in Iraq, perhaps even most of them, want to stay and fight. That doesn’t mean that we should stay in Iraq any longer. It does mean, however, that if Democrats want to bridge the divide between themselves and the military—an effort further complicated by their opposition to the war—they’re going to have to recognize that arguing in the name of the troops isn’t going to work.
Elsewhere the author has the most elegant summary of the problem I've ever read:
The uncomfortable reality is this: nothing in Iraq worth fighting for remains achievable, and nothing achievable in Iraq remains worth fighting for. Democrats have made the decision — rightly, I think — that withdrawing from Iraq is the least bad of many bad options. But they shouldn't kid themselves into thinking that a majority of the troops doing the fighting agree with them.
I remember reading an article recently in which an Army officer argued that we had to stay in Iraq because of the sheer evil we're facing. He said something along the lines of "every day I'm saving children from being run over by a bus." Of course our troops, who are moral, loyal, good men and women, want to stay and save everyone they can. But as a blogger put it today:
If the Democrats are smart, they will immediately start figuring out and debating the way in which the US withdraws and redeploys in Iraq. How we do this strikes me as more important than the simple fact that we will do it. How do we do so while strengthening the Anbar tribes' hand against al Qaeda? Which of the Shiite and Sunni factions are we going to grant more sway in Baghdad as we disengage? How do we keep control of the Turkish-Kurdish border? What constellation of diplomatic initiatives best complements the withdrawal - and what is our game-plan? All I can say is that I hope someone in the Pentagon and State Department is figuring a serious strategy out. The Darfur Dems, in particular, are going to have a serious quandary if they do not advance a realistic and hard-nosed strategy for the most advantageous withdrawal - for the West and our friends. They're against a genocide in Africa but in favor of one directly precipitated by US forces in Iraq? Run that by me one more time.
-edit-
If anyone's interested, here's a link to my How Will the Iraq War End? thread, which contains a reprint of the best article on the subject I've read anywhere. Some of the political analysis is now dated, but the underlying military issues are as sound and sharp as the day it was written.
That is very true. However, support for the war by Soldiers is not as large as some in the media like FOX would have you believe. From my experiences 3 out of 5 soldiers (and these are infantry soldiers, mind you) refer to the war on less than kind terms and largest motivation is the pay bonsues we receive while in iraq which will let us buy new cars or boats when we get home. sure, there are idealists who believe the junk about bringing 'liberty' and 'democracy', but they're increasing rare.
Update of some importance.
This is fascinating. Let me deconstruct it:
1. The split in the Bush Administration on middle east policy is going public. First we had Steve Clemons' report yesterday about the Cheney v. The World split on Iran. Now we have a split between the Secs. Def and State, the Pentagon brass, the intelligence community, and possibly the President on one side and the Generals in the field--Petraeus and Odierno--and the GOP hawks (Cheney, McCain etc) on the other.
2. This plan is very similar to the withdrawal strategy proposed by the Senate Democrats--Carl Levin and Jack Reed. (And which I favor.)
3. The notion that we would continue to train Iraqis may be very significant. It may mean that we've decided to side with the Shi'ites in the civil war since they're the majority and--I don't agree with this, by the way--the best hope for stability. (I disagree because you're likely to get even more instability, with the various Shi'ite factions fighting each other for control).
4. If that's the thinking, it's incoherent. It directly contradicts one of the few recent successes we've had in Iraq: backing the Sunni tribes in Anbar against Al Qaeda.
5. What to watch for: Bush's reaction to all this. My guess is he makes it plain that he's opposed to this plan very quickly.
legitimizing al-sadr has always been our 'punt' backup plan anyway... seems the most sensibile thing to do and put the shia in charge with a weak central government in baghdad.
Wow thats pretty good. Im amazed that many speak in good terms. No one was happy when I was in:laugh4: Soldiers are born to complain. But seriously thats why we really cant fight a war and win unless the man in the trenches believes in the cause. Then everything eles is irrelevant.Quote:
From my experiences 3 out of 5 soldiers (and these are infantry soldiers, mind you) refer to the war on less than kind terms and largest motivation is the pay bonsues we receive while in iraq From my experiences 3 out of 5 soldiers (and these are infantry soldiers, mind you) refer to the war on less than kind terms and largest motivation is the pay bonsues we receive while in iraq
Right. That's why Bush tried to trick us into thinking we were going into Iraq for some sort of security reasons, like we were protecting America. Alot of us believed that, at first.
[QUOTE=Lemur]If the Democrats are smart, they will immediately start figuring out and debating the way in which the US withdraws and redeploys in Iraq. How we do this strikes me as more important than the simple fact that we will do it. How do we do so while strengthening the Anbar tribes' hand against al Qaeda? Which of the Shiite and Sunni factions are we going to grant more sway in Baghdad as we disengage? How do we keep control of the Turkish-Kurdish border? What constellation of diplomatic initiatives best complements the withdrawal - and what is our game-plan?
I think this is the only way to treat the situation in Irak.
Your president was not exact when he said about 'if we leave Irak, it will be chaos there'.
The correct sentence is 'when we will leave Irak, it will be chaos there'.
It is exactly the same for the 'we cannot afford to loose'.
I do not know if this is true but what i do know is that the us army cannot win in this situation as there is nothing to win.
So it is necessary to stop thinking in black/white terms, to fix an achievable objective and to try to leave with as few damage to what remains of US military and diplomatic credibility. At the difference of the numerous different plans to end insurgency in bagdad, it must be precise, adaptable to the changes of the circumstances and include all the necessary compromises with whoever is required.
This is neither a time nor a place for harsh slogans and US politic game based decisions.
...but how can the people do with overly-simplified slogans and generalizations of complex plans????!Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrus
Get drunk?Quote:
Originally Posted by CrossLOPER
If anybody's got the stomach for another long PDF report about Iraq, here it is. (In fairness, this one's only twelve pages long.)
Some highlights from the BBC coverage:
This latest paper, written by Dr Gareth Stansfield, a Middle East expert, is unremittingly bleak.
Dr Stansfield, of Exeter University and Chatham House, argues that the break-up of Iraq is becoming increasingly likely.
In large parts of the country, the Iraqi government is powerless, he says, as rival factions struggle for local supremacy.
The briefing paper, entitled Accepting Realities in Iraq, argues that "There is not 'a' civil war in Iraq, but many civil wars and insurgencies involving a number of communities and organizations struggling for power."