h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Starbirth, I assume you *know* that the USA ran the Sanctions Committee and was behind the imposition of the sanctions! I have somewhere, in the book 'War Plan Iraq', by Milan Rai, statements made by American leaders about the purpose of the sanctions!

Maybe it would help if the foreign policy of the United States wasn't administered by the party in charge at the time. We keep switching horses in midstream - imposing sanctions for one term of office, then abandoning them the next, then rescuing the poor souls when the party switches over.

The 1880's method of dealing with the world (mentioned earlier) was the 'Monroe Doctrine' which we had abandoned after 1960 or so. Now we seem to be basing policy decisions upon that theory again. The Monroe Doctrine came from the Christian-centric view that *God* intended the U.S. to be the dominators of the world. Now we have the PNAC, which has basically the same idea. It's kinda creepy, and it's weirding me out.

This is going to look like I'm picking on you Zagreb but I'm just catching up while home sick.

Zagreb ? ?Rubbish! I *have* taken that position and I retain it. Kindly don't try and tell me what I do and do not think! (something you consistently try to do).? ? example?

?Bosnia - UN inaction allows thousands to die.

Rwanda - UN inaction allows millions to die.

Somalia - UN inaction allows warlord rule.?

C?mon, these are the same three you always trot out. It?s interesting that you show three examples among so much done right to say the UN is useless. When it comes to the US you show 2 or 3 examples among so much done badly to show how good the US is.

?I notice you didn't bother replying to any of the points I raised in the same post re: the turnaround of the anti-war people.? ? If I did Zagreb then I?d be talking out a hole in my ****. You may have noticed that I didn?t join the ?opinions? thread for about a week or two. I came late to taking notice of the whole thing.

?Condemning Bush Sr for failing to support the Iraqi uprising in 1991 and then condemning Bush Jr for attempting to finish what his Dad wouldn't in 2003. I mentioned it above somewhere.?

Betraying an uprising and mounting an invasion. Both deserve opposing. What you?re doing is rephrasing to tweak the history of the two actions.

Heading a committee does not mean one controls the votes of that committee.

The purpose of the sanctions was to persaude Iraq goverment to honor their agreements they made at the end of the war they lost that allowed them to remain in power.

Why is it that the US is damned whether they go along with the UN or not?

I guess your views of the worlds politics should be taken as a compliment as it seems the US control's all that happens and all others just blindly follow.

Lets look at a few fact about the UN and the US govts relationship to it.
Throughout most of the 80's and 90's the U.S. refused to pay its dues to the UN because senator Jesse Helms, who controlled the foreign relations committee in the U.S. Senate didn't like the fact that UN family planning missions in the third world sometimes offered the idea of abortion as an alternative to having an unwanted child.
this failure to pay by the organizations largest single contributor - UN dues being based on the size of a nation's economy - severely hobble the organization's ability to function.
Conservatives in the US then slammed the UN for not being able to fulfill it's mandate.

In Iraq, the US insisted on packing the teams of inspectors with such obvious special forces scouts that Iraq finally barred the teams because they were no longer inspecting but scouting targets for bombing raids. The US then reacted with shock and horror that Iraq was kicking out the UN inspectors and decided to mount another huge bombing campaign.

The US insisted that the UN's prewar inspection program wasn't working and that no more time could be wasted on it. Now they are saying that either Hussien destroyed his WMD before the war so they wouldn't be found by weapons inspectors or that the weapons are still there but it is 'going to take time' to find them.

The whole lead up to the first Iraq war was based on a massive propaganda campaign mounted by US PR firm Hill and Knowlton. The famous 'incubator babies' bit of misinformation being the best known bit of bamboozling.

The first thing the US has done in its current campaign has not been to establish civil government, police patrols or even get the electricity and water going again in the major cities - but oil has been flowing since less than a week after major combatr action ceased.

There really isn't any alternative - Bush is either a hapless puppet of warmongers like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and their ilk or he is the dumbest man to hold public office in the history of the United States, neither of which are very confidence inspiring scenarios.


and as for the French, well..............................................
read this and then tell me
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/10/1055010952644.html

Did they serve 'freedom fries' to the evacuees or just a heapin' helping of crow?

You're right, Apparition - both actions deserve to be condemned! It's inconsistent to support one and oppose the other - or to say that your opponents should!

"Betraying an uprising and mounting an invasion. Both deserve opposing. What you?re doing is rephrasing to tweak the history of the two actions."

In order to support the uprising, Bush had to invade. Both actions were effectively the same.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/10/1055010952644.html rev's link , although typical of spin.

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"In order to support the uprising, Bush had to invade. Both actions were effectively the same."

In what version of reality? The uprising was organised and assured by Bush's administration and when the time came. The uprising was betrayed. Even hollywood can admit to that [Three Kings - George Clooney] why can't you?

The two events are markedly different.

>>Heading a committee does not mean one controls the votes of that committee.<<
It does in this case! I'll give details when I can.

>>In order to support the uprising, Bush had to invade. Both actions were effectively the same.<<
No he didn't have to invade, Zagreb - the Americans *were* *already* *there*! So, that's nonsense.

Well, not exactly. The Americans were next door in Saudi Arabia - they needed Iraq as a new base of operations; one of the main reasons why Iraq was invaded.

Iraq needed our help back in 1991, in Operation Desert Storm. Operation Desert Storm was timed to boost confidence in Bush Sr. right before the election in 1992. British-controlled Kuwait was rescued from Saddam's clutches, but Iraq remained under his control. Why? Because Bush wanted to win in 1992, and was afraid his approval rating would go down if the war lasted too long. I expect if he had won the election in 1992, we would have invaded Iraq eventually and removed Saddam.

Now we have yet another well-timed invasion - right before the election in 2004.

Approval rating is pretty high among the Republicans, but the Democrat approval rating is low. I think it's because of all the partisan behavior going on. They're being really petty in the White House - calling the Democrats cowards because of their refusal to support the invasion, renaming the french fries 'freedom fries,' and labeling protesters 'anti-American' because they decided to speak their mind.

I know that Zagreb mentioned that some of the protesters are not so much protesting the war as they are protesting against the American government. This is a question of semantics. Why did the war happen? Because of the people currently in charge of the government - the Republican majority in the Senate, and a Republican president. If I were going to protest about the abortion clinic down the street, (Which I wouldn't - I believe in the right to choose - but that's another post altogether) would my objection be to the doctor performing the surgery, or to the abortion clinic? To the clinic, of course. So it makes perfect sense to protest the decision makers that caused the war to happen. Protesting war is like protesting disease, or the weather.

Sorry... I guess it's Zagreb's turn to be picked on.

Yes, Lentilla, but picking on Zagreb is so *justified* - not to mention fun!Below is some of the references and facts regarding sanctions I said I would supply. This is for birth and Zagreb, nice boys both of them...
The sanctions on Iraq were re-imposed on 3rd April 1991, a month after Iraq was expelled from Kuwait. The punitiveness of the sanctions was revealed by the vagueness of a crucial element of Resolution 687.
?However by 1994, the US and the UK had moved the goalposts arguing that sanctions should remain in place until other, unspecified resolutions were also complied with - resolutions not mentioned in Resolution 687. Together the two paragraphs add up to a set of goalposts that can be moved indefinitely, a matter not improved by the demand for undefined ?co-operation in all respects? in the later Resolution 1284.? From War Plan Iraq, by Milan Rai, ARROW Publications 2002. Page 177.

The Sanctions Committee.
The Sanctions Committee was set up by UN Security Council Resolution 661 in August 1990 (hence the name 661 Committee). The fifteen members of the Sanctions Committee are the members of the Security Council. Because membership of the Security Council is temporary and rotating (except for the five permanent members - Britain, China, the US, France and Russia) the composition of the Sanctions Committee is always changing.
Holds: Members of the 661 Committee can seek further information (which delays delivery) and/or put an item ?on hold?. Holds can last indefinitely, do not have to be justified and can be imposed by a single country. Goods on hold increased in value from $3.71bn on 14 May 2001 to $5.17bn on 17 May 2002 - 17.9% of the value of all applications. The US has placed almost all these holds. As of September 2002, there are insufficient funds in the escrow account to pay for all goods on hold if they were approved, and this has been true for some months. More information can be found at www.un.org/Depts/oip/

Della, the ?'s come from a direct copy/paste from Word. To avoid them, paste from Word to notepad and then from notepad to h2g2.

otherwise

Thanks, I'll remember that in future. (The ??s are embarassing).

"The two events are markedly different."

Not really. In both instances a foreign army was to invade to remove a dictator. Understandably, the Iraqis weren't too keen to initiate anything second time around (and indeed didn't until US forces were well into the country and Saddam was effectively overthrown).

Della, US forces were in the Middle East to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, not to invade Iraq, so I don't understand the "already there" argument. Not that it would make the point any better. Whether the US troops were already in Iraq is irrelevant, since their intention (removing Hussein) was identical in both instances.

"The first thing the US has done in its current campaign has not been to establish civil government, police patrols or even get the electricity and water going again in the major cities - but oil has been flowing since less than a week after major combatr action ceased"

The US has invited Iraqi political exiles back to Iraq (the first moves towards a new administration, although I know you'll all deny this, or claim that it'll be a dictatorship) and Police Patrols were put back on the streets within days of the overthrow of Saddam. Ironically, I heard an anti-war talking-head on the radio the other day damning the US for putting police patrols back on the streets. Why? Well, they were the same police officers that served when Saddam was in power. According to the talking-head, this "proved" that the regime had "not changed".

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Della, the ?'s come from a direct copy/paste from Word"

Try using Notepad.

"Throughout most of the 80's and 90's the U.S. refused to pay its dues to the UN because senator Jesse Helms, who controlled the foreign relations committee in the U.S. Senate didn't like the fact that UN family planning missions in the third world sometimes offered the idea of abortion as an alternative to having an unwanted child."

I hate asking people for links, because I know these kinds of things are hard to find, but can you find anything to prove that? The US refusing to pay the UN it's dues over two decades because of *one* senator having the hump about a perfectly sensible (and, indeed, responsible and necessary) UN objective that won't even affect his country seems a bit, well, hard to believe

Call me a cynic, but I can't help feeling that it may be something banded around by opponents of the US to "prove" that the country is effectively run by barmy Christian fundamentalists (Barmy Christian fundamentalists will, of course, tell you that the US is run by a cabal of Liberal Atheists. They would probably have thrown Jews in too, but they're being fair-weather friends with the Jewish fundy's at the moment ).

I thought the excuse was something along the lines of the UN threatening their sovereignty ("superpowers don't pay tax," that sort of rhetoric). In fact, something similarly ridiculous to the tripe certain British newspapers keep trotting out about the EU

Zagreb, if you believe that the Iraqis *did* decide to go over to the American side at any stage in 2003, you are as naive as I accused you of being! The 'toppling of the statue' was as staged as the Oscar ceremony and that's well known.
Regarding events in 1991, and the betrayal of an Iraqi uprising, read Milan Rai's book, cited above.