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Forums - The lounge
Subject: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Pages: 1 ... 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Original Message Date: 11-Aug-02 @ 12:49 PM - [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
earliest possible opportunity. They threaten the US's
control of this vital oil producing region. If the US has no
access to this oil, the economy will crumble and people
will starve. let's keep the starving where they belong. In
the thrid world!
What's the point of being the world's greatest power if
you can't excercise that power in your own interests?
The whinging liberals can leave the country as far as I
am concerned. The US should use its military, political
and economic power to assure it's safe future. Any
other course of action is mere self delusion. Do you
think that another country with the same power as the
US would act any differently?
Anyone, like bin laden, or arafat, who dares to attack
the US or its interests must be first humiliated and then
destroyed. This may cause resentment in other nations,
but what the hell are they going to do about it? Invade
America?
Anyone who threatens the viability of US corporates
must be taught a lesson. The US controls the IMF, the
World Bank, etc etc. The US should NOT be afraid to
use this leverage to further its own ends.
The time has come for the world to realise that we are
not beholden to any organisation, legal body or treaty,
whether or not we signed it sometime in the past.
Times, as they say, change.
Message 122/168 27-Aug-02 @ 11:07 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
http://www.satirewire.com/news/aug02/red_tape.shtml
Message 123/168 28-Aug-02 @ 01:08 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Message 124/168 29-Aug-02 @ 05:48 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Zazza
Posts: 1502
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'Who is the greatest threat to world peace, George W Bush or Sadaam Hussein'
63% replied George
37% for Saddam
yikes
Message 125/168 29-Aug-02 @ 08:24 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Message 126/168 29-Aug-02 @ 09:02 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Zazza
Posts: 1502
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And apparenrly the US won't let in weapons inspectors either... tsk, or sign up to anti-torture agreements.. or take any notice of international law.. or even their own constiution.. consult congress before making an unprovoked attack on another country.. ha!
hmmm..
Message 127/168 29-Aug-02 @ 09:04 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Zazza
Posts: 1502
Link?: No link
File?: No file
oh, rite..
Message 128/168 30-Aug-02 @ 05:32 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Message 129/168 31-Aug-02 @ 06:22 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
you may weep for us now
Message 130/168 03-Sep-02 @ 12:58 PM Edit: 03-Sep-02 | 01:00 PM - RE: [ot] Should the US invade Iraq?
Open Letter To United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to
Representatives of the Member States, on the Declared Intention of the United States to Commit Aggression Against Iraq
Dear Sirs and Madams:
Although the U.S. government openly plans a war against Iraq, U.N.
officials
and representatives have neither spoken out in opposition nor taken any
actions that might prevent the United States from embarking on this
violent
course. The United Nations was created explicitly to "save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war" (Preamble, U.N. Charter) and "to take
effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to
the peace..." (Article 1, 1). The U.N. Charter condemns unilateral attacks
across borders when not justified by self-defense, referring to the need
to
fend off an ongoing or clearly imminent attack. Otherwise, it is
obligatory
to obtain Security Council sanction for any such military action. When a
country simply takes it upon itself to displace a regime of which it
disapproves by force of arms, this is aggression, described by the U.S.
representative at the Nuremberg trials, Robert Jackson, as "the supreme
international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it
contains
within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." The recent U.S.
assertion
of a right to engage in "pre-emptive" attacks on states, including Iraq,
does not obviate these considerations--it is another expression of an
intent
to violate international law.
Claims regarding Iraq's pursuit or actual possession of "weapons of mass
destruction" (WMD) cannot justify a U.S attack, any more than an Iraqi
attack on the United States could be similarly justified based on the U.S.
possession of such weapons (and much greater threat of their use).
Existing
resolutions that address this issue, such as U.N. Security Council
Resolution 687, do not give the United States the right to launch a strike
without specific authorization from the Security Council. The idea that
the
United States is threatened by Iraq's alleged possession of WMD is
untenable. There is no evidence that Iraq possesses any long-range
delivery
systems, or that its leadership is so irrational as to be planning actions
that would unleash the full force of U.S. military power on their country.
The United States also lacks clean hands on this issue, as it and Britain
facilitated Iraq's acquisition and use of WMD in the 1980s--including the
U.S. provision of high quality germ seed for anthrax and other deadly
diseases--when Iraq was fighting a war against Iran and served U.S.
interests. The United States also compromised the work of the U.N. Special
Commission for weapons inspections (Unscom), using it for espionage and
withdrawing it in advance of the U.S. bombing of Iraq in December 1998.
More
recently, as it seeks to preserve its rationale for going to war, the
United
States has rebuffed offers from Iraq to negotiate on re-admitting
inspectors.
Under strong U.S. and British pressure the U.N. imposed and has maintained
sanctions on Iraq for the past dozen years in the alleged interest of
preventing Iraq's acquisition of WMD. But the price of those sanctions has
been paid by millions of innocent civilians, not the regime or its
leaders.
The embargo has made it difficult for Iraq to recover from the 1991 Gulf
War, undermining its ability to rebuild sanitation and water treatment
systems targeted and destroyed by U.S. bombing. That deliberate bombing
violated Article 54 of the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva
Convention.
Although then-President George Bush stated in 1991 that "we do not
seek...to
punish the Iraqi people for the decisions and policies of their
leaders...[and] we are doing everything possible and with great success to
minimize collateral damage" (New York Times, Feb. 6, 1991), the
necessarily
devastating effects of such bombing on civilians were understood at the
time
and in fact intended by U.S. planners. The Washington Post reported
shortly
after the war that "Planners now say their intent was to destroy or damage
valuable facilities that Baghdad could not repair without foreign
assistance" (June 23, 1991). It is now known that these included water
treatment facilities, whose absence was understood to "lead to increased
incidences, if not epidemics, of disease" (Defense Intelligence Agency,
"Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," Jan. 21, 1991, quoted in Thomas
Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally
Destroyed
Iraq's Water Supply," The Progressive, Sept. 2001). Wrecking these
facilities and preventing their repair or replacement would give greater
bargaining leverage by intensifying the adverse effects of sanctions on
civilian welfare.
As is pointed out in the report recently issued by over a dozen church and
human rights groups, "Iraq Sanctions: Humanitarian Implications and
Options
for the Future" (Aug. 6, 2002), "The 1977 Protocols to the Geneva
Conventions on the laws of war include a prohibition of economic sieges
against civilians as a method of warfare." In their actions involving
Iraq,
the United States, Britain, and the United Nations have violated these
laws
of war in a historically unprecedented manner. In an article in Foreign
Affairs ("Sanctions of Mass Destruction," 78: 3 [May/June 1999]), John and
Karl Mueller contend that "economic sanctions may well have been a
necessary
cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all
so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history." The United
Nations Children's Fund has documented an increase in the under-five child
mortality rate in Iraq from 56 to 131 per thousand in the sanction years
1990-1998, with an estimated child death toll of several hundred thousand.
Having contributed to these mass deaths through economic warfare, the
United
Nations now remains silent in the face of an openly planned war of
aggression against Iraq. The war will be bloody and will have much wider,
potentially disastrous, repercussions. If the Secretary-General and
members
of the United Nations do not speak out, oppose, and attempt to stop what
would be flagrant aggression, will it not be clear that the United Nations
is not an institution serving to prevent war but rather a political
instrument of the United States and selected allies?
We urge the UN Secretary-General and U.N. members to act now or stand
condemned as accomplices of aggression, in defiance of both the clear
language of the U.N. Charter and the desires of the vast majority of the
world's people.
___________________________________
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