The Iraq / war on terror thread

[Rain]

i wanted to get rid of saddam for years. he was an obvious threat to many nations across the world. that's why clinton bombed him in 1998. bush and all the leaders in the US government realized this, and that is why it was approved almost unanimously by congress.

You wanted to get rid of saddam ? you didn't go there what a pity 

And let me just refresh your memory ... Why is that measure : Oil for Food was first instaured ? Wasn't it because the United States kept refusing to finish with an idiotic embargo which aimed at first the iraqi people rather than its sadistic dictator ?
Ah and let me put it that way too, you tend to forget the french army participated in the Desert Storm operation and if we didn't free Iraq back then it was because of Bush Father's decision not to go to bagdad and not to support the iraqi resistance ... 

[matt88]

Again I see the word Europe and it only lists two European countries.

That's like saying Idaho and Nebraska equals USA......?


Are you saying France and Russia didn't support USA because of this or are you saying the majority of European countries were in this thing together with those two?

You failed to mention that more than two European countries were with USA in that war. Basically you could say "Europe supported the war" if you wanted.?




/jarmo

Well France and Russia are 2 powerhouses in Europe. Plus they have Veto powers. Maybe that matters?

[jarmo]

Well France and Russia are 2 powerhouses in Europe. Plus they have Veto powers. Maybe that matters?

Yeah, but they still don't equal all of Europe so stop trying to make it seem like every European country is against you when that's not the fact.



/jarmo

[sandman]

i don't think this is an internal conflict. even bush has admitted that some mistakes have been made. there will always be mistakes made in a war. it's a complicated matter and things are hard to predict.

hindsight is 20/20. easy to say what "should have" been done.

also, it's interesting that fox news had people on to criticize bush. everyone always assumes that they are a mouthpiece for bush.

[sandman]

neither I, nor anyone else, have claimed that every European country was against the US.

OVERALL, support from europe was lacking.

and Bush Sr. DID try to authorize the capture of Saddam, but US Congress voted against it.

so since we can all agree that France and Germany and Russia were profiting from Saddam being in power, i think it's unfair to criticize bush for going to war with iraq without the UN's approval. there is obviously a conflict of interest there.

[matt88]

Well France and Russia are 2 powerhouses in Europe. Plus they have Veto powers. Maybe that matters?

Yeah, but they still don't equal all of Europe so stop trying to make it seem like every European country is against you when that's not the fact.



/jarmo

Mate i never said or made it seem every european country was against me.

I just pointed out the fact that they ar 2 powerhouses with veto powers and alot of influence in europe. Thats all. Their involvement would have made the war alot easier and would have influenced alot of european countries on the subject.

[GnRNightrain]

i wanted to get rid of saddam for years. he was an obvious threat to many nations across the world. that's why clinton bombed him in 1998. bush and all the leaders in the US government realized this, and that is why it was approved almost unanimously by congress.

You wanted to get rid of saddam ? you didn't go there what a pity?

And let me just refresh your memory ... Why is that measure : Oil for Food was first instaured ? Wasn't it because the United States kept refusing to finish with an idiotic embargo which aimed at first the iraqi people rather than its sadistic dictator ?
Ah and let me put it that way too, you tend to forget the french army participated in the Desert Storm operation and if we didn't free Iraq back then it was because of Bush Father's decision not to go to bagdad and not to support the iraqi resistance ...?

No thats not what the embargo did.  Suddam starved his people not the US.  So dont come here with that bullshit.  Classic way that you guys deal with things:  there is a scandal like the oil for food, and you guys turn it on the US


If this thread doesnt show the bias, I dont know what does

[GnRNightrain]

Here is another related article:

Possible Saddam-Al Qaeda Link Seen in U.N. Oil-for-Food Program
Monday, September 20, 2004
By Claudia Rosett and George Russell


Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda (search) that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam's coffers and Usama bin Laden (search) declared his infamous war on the U.S.

Now, buried in some of the United Nation's own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link ? clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort. (To review a series of documents, audits and other stories related to Oil-for-Food, click here.)

Next to that door, a festive sign spells out in gold letters under a green flag that this is the office of MIGA, the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber (search). Registered here 20 years ago as a society to promote business between the Gulf States and Asia, Europe and Africa, MIGA is a company that the United Nations and the U.S. government says has served as a hub of Al Qaeda finance: A terrorist chamber of commerce.


[Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles about the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. Check back Sunday for the next installment and watch FOX's "Breaking Point" on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT for an hour-long special on the Oil-for-Food program.]

In a recent interview, U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Juan Zarate described MIGA as "a very good example of an investment company that is used as a shell to hide and move money."

As is typical of terrorist financial webs, the details surrounding MIGA quickly become bewildering ? part of the point being to camouflage the illicit flow of funds with legitimate business. Part of the problem in finding the truth is that cross-border transactions out of such financial havens as Switzerland are smothered in banking secrecy.

But even with that secrecy ? and shortly after the Sept.11, 2001, attacks on the United States ? both MIGA and its chief founder and longtime president, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, landed on the U.N. watchlist of entities and individuals belonging to, or affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Nasreddin is a member of the terror-linked Muslim Brotherhood (search).

Nasreddin's longtime business partner, Egyptian-born Youssef Nada, also of the Muslim Brotherhood, likewise appears on the U.N.'s Al Qaeda watchlist, as do a slew of both Nasreddin's and Nada's enterprises. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in August 2002 described Nada and Nasreddin as "supporters of terrorism" involved in "an extensive financial network providing support to Al Qaeda and other terrorist-related organizations."

Far less attention has been paid to the small, select band of MIGA's other charter members. But one of them, Iraqi-born Ahmed Totonji, set up shop years ago just outside Washington, D.C., and is now among those named by U.S. federal authorities in an investigation into a cluster of companies and Islamic non-profits based in Herndon, Virginia, suspected of having funneled money to terrorist groups.

MIGA had other founders as well. One of them, who does not appear on the U.N. terror list, is an Arab businessman now in his early 60s, Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed.

Described by an acquaintance as urbane, polite and fluent in English, Hayel Saeed was born into one of Yemen's most prominent business clans, owners of a family-held global conglomerate based in the Yemeni capital of Taiz and named for its founding patriarch: the Hayel Saeed Anam Group of Companies, or HSA.

From Yemen, the HSA group boasts a far-flung business empire, including a Yemen-based Islamic bank, and a host of business subsidiaries, affiliates and regional trading offices in places ranging from the United Kingdom to Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and China.

Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed sits on the HSA board of directors, and ranks high in the management ? he is currently running HSA's regional office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In MIGA, Hayel Saeed holds a prominent spot, as one of four co-founders who back in 1984 delegated power of attorney to the terrorist-linked Nasreddin, giving him authority to run the company.

Swiss registry documents show that Hayel Saeed has never resigned from MIGA, nor revoked that power of attorney. Queried about this link to MIGA, neither Hayel Saeed nor the HSA Group's chairman of the board, Ali Mohamed Saeed, has made any response.

HSA is unquestionably a company involved in legitimate business. But given the involvement of Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed, it is striking that between 1996 and 2003, while the United Nations ran its Oil-for-Food relief program in Iraq, the HSA Group ? via U.N.-approved Oil-for-Food contracts ? sold at least $400 million worth of goods to Saddam.

That might be unremarkable, had the United Nations ran Oil-for-Food with enough integrity and transparency to prevent Saddam and many of his business partners from plundering oil earnings meant to help the people of Iraq. The original United Nations plan was to let Saddam sell oil solely to buy humanitarian goods such as food and medicine, with the U.N. Secretariat (search) collecting a 2.2 percent commission on Saddam's oil sales to supervise the integrity of this process.



 

[GnRNightrain]

As the Oil-for-Food program actually worked, however, the United Nations let Saddam choose his own business partners. The world body also kept secret the details of those contracts and the identities of the contractors, and it let Saddam graft at least $4.4 billion out of the program through manipulated contract prices, by estimates of the U.S. General Accountability Office.

Saddam's standard scam was to underprice oil sales and overpay for relief supplies, thus generating fat profits for his business partners. Many of those contractors would kick back part of the take to Saddam's regime ? or divert it to whatever uses Saddam might fancy. By various accounts, those uses ranged from building palaces to buying arms to supplying Saddam's sadistic son Uday with equipment for torturing Iraqi athletes.

One of the big questions is whether any of the money skimmed from Oil-for-Food also slopped into terrorist-financing ventures such as MIGA.

It's important to note that in tracking terrorist financing, the simplest starting points are the visible links, the potential connections through which money might most easily have flowed. Proving that funds actually coursed through those conduits is far more difficult.

In the case of Hayel Saeed, MIGA and the HSA Group, there is no public information available about the precise flow of funds, and no proof that Saddam's money made its way to MIGA. But in looking for patterns that beg for further investigation ? especially by authorities with access to detailed U.N. records and information on MIGA accounts ? some items here stand out.

Most simply, there is the question of why HSA was among those companies favored by Saddam for such a fat slice of business. It is increasingly clear that Saddam did not, on average, choose his contractors either at random, or because they were the most cost-efficient suppliers of relief for the people of Iraq. While some of the deals may have been entirely legitimate, many melded payments for humanitarian goods with illicit kickbacks and payoffs. In such cases, it was a lucrative privilege to be tapped as an Oil-for-Food contractor by Saddam's regime.

The lingering question, for any individual case, becomes: Was there a quid pro quo?

For reasons still unknown, Saddam clearly smiled upon the HSA Group. Not only does HSA account for the bulk of all Saddam's business with Yemen, but dozens of deals that appear in the United Nation's generic public records to originate elsewhere were in fact signed with HSA companies in countries such as Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Within that HSA empire, one company in particular stands out: A trading house called Pacific Interlink, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed also sits on Pacific Interlink's board of directors.

From leaked copies of secret U.N. Oil-for-Food records, it appears that Pacific Interlink alone accounted for more than half the HSA group's sales of relief supplies to Saddam, with contracts for such goods as soap, ghee and construction materials totaling at least $246 million. Pacific Interlink (search) also belonged to the select set of companies chosen by Saddam and approved by the United Nations as authorized to buy Iraqi oil under Oil-for-Food ? though whether Pacific Interlink actually got any of Saddam's fat oil contracts is something the United Nations has so far managed to keep secret. FOX News attempted to reach Pacific Interlink for comment, but to date has received no reply.

And though there is no public proof that Pacific Interlink took part in Saddam's kickback scams, there is an intriguing item in a study of Oil-for-Food pricing methods released last year by the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA).

Just after Saddam fell, the DCMA, together with the U.S. Defense Contract Audit Agency, looked at the terms of 759 sample contracts out of the tens of thousands of deals done by Saddam's regime under Oil-for-Food. In that sample, Pacific Interlink pops up as a purveyor of $20 million worth of palm oil to Saddam, via a contract approved by the United Nations under Oil-for-Food in mid-2001. By DCMA estimates, Saddam overpaid Pacific Interlink on that contract, to the tune of about 15 percent above market price, which would work out to some $3 million in funds diverted from relief on that deal alone.

If similar arrangements went on within other Pacific Interlink Oil-for-Food contracts, which totaled close to a quarter of a billion dollars, then even at the more modest rate of what has been widely described as Saddam's typical 10 percent over-pricing scam, that would suggest well over $20 million diverted from relief.

If so, where did it go? The question is vitally important, because much of the money grafted out of Oil-for-Food by Saddam remains unaccounted for.

Both HSA's and MIGA's offices overlap in locations that are hubs of normal commerce, but also served as hotspots of Al Qaeda meetings and finance, such as Dubai (where Hayel Saeed reportedly ran an HSA company, Frimex, in the late 1990s) or Kuala Lumpur (where some of the Sept. 11 hijackers gathered for a planning conference in January 2000). Pacific Interlink boasts offices or agents in places thick with terror networks, such as Algeria, Sudan, and Syria. MIGA, on its Lugano sign, lists offices in places such as Italy, Turkey, Syria, Nigeria and Kuwait, and both HSA and MIGA list offices in Morocco, Malaysia and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Hayel Saeed is now based.

MIGA is now under active investigation by the U.S. Treasury and prosecutors in Switzerland and Italy. But there is no sign that any of these investigations have been tracking funds specifically via Oil-for-Food contracts or that any of the multiple investigations into Oil-for-Food have zeroed in on possible terror connections. It's not even clear that the United Nations has allowed terrorist-tracking authorities full access to its records.

And though MIGA's door in Lugano may be locked, and its president and some of his associates posted on the U.N. terror watchlist, none of these figures has been arrested. Nasreddin, long a resident in Lugano and neighboring Milan, Italy, is believed by Italian investigators to have moved about two years ago to Morocco. From there, says an Italian state investigator who asked to stay anonymous, Nasreddin maintains a global business network that includes some 2,000 links so far identified to businesses and individuals worldwide, some tied to terror, and some not.

It is precisely that mix of legitimate and sinister business that makes it so difficult to prosecute Nasreddin, or shut down his businesses, says this Italian investigator. Among Nasreddin's holdings, for instance, is a four-star hotel in Milan, Hotel NASCO, which opened ? ironically enough ? in September 2001, at the same address as Nasreddin's longtime residence. That is also the same address used by a precursor of MIGA, an outfit called the Arab Gulf Chamber. Hotel NASCO remains open for business, serving tea and crescent-moon shaped sugar cookies at its non-alcoholic lobby bar. MIGA remains active in the Lugano business registry, and listed in the Lugano phone book.

A recent phone call to MIGA's shuttered office in Lugano, Switzerland, was answered by someone who picked up the phone in Milan, Italy ? in the Hotel NASCO (search). MIGA's network, it seems, migrates as needed.

Nasreddin's longtime partner, Al Qaeda-linked Youssef Nada, still lives in his plush hillside villa in a small Italian enclave on Lake Lugano, just a short drive from MIGA's office. Right next door to MIGA's Lugano office, on the same floor of the same building, is the Islamic Center of the Canton of Ticino, founded by Nasreddin in 1992 - and operated initially out of his former Lugano residence a few blocks away. The Islamic Center later moved next door to MIGA.

Swiss registry documents show that in 2003, after Nasreddin made it onto the U.N. terror watchlist and moved to Morocco, he resigned as president of his Lugano Islamic center. He was replaced this year by the center's current president, a man called Ali Ghaleb Himmat, who attended one of MIGA's founding meetings 20 years ago, and since 2002 has been designated by the United Nations as affiliated with, or belonging to Al Qaeda.
 
At that Lugano Islamic Center (search), which also serves as a mosque, a spokesman denies that the center has any links to Al Qaeda, and says of Nasreddin: "He was a Muslim rich man, and he prays, and he loved God, and that's it." Just down the road, Swiss businessman Fulvio Passardi, who at one point served as corporate secretary for MIGA, says he knew nothing about the chamber, saying it was "an empty box."

According to U.S. officials and the United Nations itself, MIGA is less an "empty box" than a container of Al Qaeda-related mysteries. One of those mysteries appears to be Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed, with his charter MIGA membership and his prominent part in a Yemen conglomerate doing hundreds of millions worth of business with Saddam.

Unraveling the mystery requires much greater access to Oil-for-Food records than the United Nations currently allows.

Claudia Rosett is a consultant to FOX News and Journalist-in-Residence at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

[Rain]

i wanted to get rid of saddam for years. he was an obvious threat to many nations across the world. that's why clinton bombed him in 1998. bush and all the leaders in the US government realized this, and that is why it was approved almost unanimously by congress.

You wanted to get rid of saddam ? you didn't go there what a pity?

And let me just refresh your memory ... Why is that measure : Oil for Food was first instaured ? Wasn't it because the United States kept refusing to finish with an idiotic embargo which aimed at first the iraqi people rather than its sadistic dictator ?
Ah and let me put it that way too, you tend to forget the french army participated in the Desert Storm operation and if we didn't free Iraq back then it was because of Bush Father's decision not to go to bagdad and not to support the iraqi resistance ...?

No thats not what the embargo did.? Suddam starved his people not the US.? So dont come here with that bullshit.? Classic way that you guys deal with things:? there is a scandal like the oil for food, and you guys turn it on the US


If this thread doesnt show the bias, I dont know what does

Saddam did a lot of things to his own people but before the first gulf war I never heard about starvation in Iraq, did you ?
Oil for Food is a direct consequence of the embargo if you don't understand it I'm beginning to understand why you still support an intervention to find wmds now that it's proven there were none ... your sense of logic just might be upside down ... 

[SLCPUNK]

i don't think this is an internal conflict. even bush has admitted that some mistakes have been made. there will always be mistakes made in a war. it's a complicated matter and things are hard to predict.

hindsight is 20/20. easy to say what "should have" been done.

also, it's interesting that fox news had people on to criticize bush. everyone always assumes that they are a mouthpiece for bush.

Nah....you can read it anyway you'd like, but when his own people are criticizing him that says it all in my book.

[GnRNightrain]

i wanted to get rid of saddam for years. he was an obvious threat to many nations across the world. that's why clinton bombed him in 1998. bush and all the leaders in the US government realized this, and that is why it was approved almost unanimously by congress.

You wanted to get rid of saddam ? you didn't go there what a pity?

And let me just refresh your memory ... Why is that measure : Oil for Food was first instaured ? Wasn't it because the United States kept refusing to finish with an idiotic embargo which aimed at first the iraqi people rather than its sadistic dictator ?
Ah and let me put it that way too, you tend to forget the french army participated in the Desert Storm operation and if we didn't free Iraq back then it was because of Bush Father's decision not to go to bagdad and not to support the iraqi resistance ...?

No thats not what the embargo did.? Suddam starved his people not the US.? So dont come here with that bullshit.? Classic way that you guys deal with things:? there is a scandal like the oil for food, and you guys turn it on the US


If this thread doesnt show the bias, I dont know what does

Saddam did a lot of things to his own people but before the first gulf war I never heard about starvation in Iraq, did you ?
Oil for Food is a direct consequence of the embargo if you don't understand it I'm beginning to understand why you still support an intervention to find wmds now that it's proven there were none ... your sense of logic just might be upside down ...?

Suddam starved his people not the embargo.  He still had money, however, he used it for one of his twenty palaces.  Oil for food is a consequence only because it set up a climate in which people could undercut the UN and cheat.  You think the intentions were to feed the people in Iraq?  I think you are horribly mistaken.  That is sad, if you actually believe that.  People can believe Bush is Hitler, but cant believe that oil for foods was a bad thing rather than a result of US policy. 
Its almost as if you are jsutifying oil for food, because of US policy.  I get it now, everything is a result of US policy!  Sometimes you just cant win in these arguments.  I think this is one of those issues.  Your logic is so backwards, so dont start questioning mine.  So it is OK to break the law and make money, if you can undercut what you think is horrible US policy against a dictator.  I see your brilliant logic rain. 
For your information I dont necessarily support the intervention to find WMDs, I support it for other reasons.  Are you suggesting we just pull out?

[Rain]

Where exactly do I justify corruption ? I'm not defending the french governement here ...? I'm not even chiraquist quite the opposite you see ...? To translate it in your political system he's a conservative and I'm not ...?
Of course food for oil is a resultance of the embargo ...? We had 10 years to see that it wasn't working that it was affecting the population and that it was strenghtening Saddam's powers ... what did we do (UN and the United States) ? Did we stop the embargo which made saddam stronger and richer ? No ... we set up food for oil ... what a brilliant idea? ! Now you can go on and tell me that we supplied drugs and food to the population and that the evil dictator didn't distribute them to his own people ... don't tell me you haven't seen it coming? ... and you didn't answer my previous question : have you heard about starvation in Iraq prior the first gulf war and before the embargo ??

[loretian]

In an unprecedented move for The Jungle, I've decided to post an article which Iraqi women talk about all the positives that have happened because America freed them.   This only makes more more proud of Bush and the good he has done. 

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/10821339p-11739307c.html

Before Iraq's liberation, Ahood al-Fadhal spent her days preoccupied with how she and her husband would feed their three children.
The rice and flour they could get was buggy. Three brothers were killed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, and her husband was imprisoned for three years. In her lifetime, she never expected to see a free Iraq.


  Since Saddam's overthrow, al-Fadhal finds life moving in directions previously unimaginable. She teaches literacy classes and writes a biweekly newsletter for women; she was elected to a district council seat in Basra as an advocate for women's rights.
Al-Fadhal sat at Cafe Bernardo in Sacramento on Monday morning, describing how her life has changed since the war in Iraq began in March 2003.

"You (Americans) see (television images of) a lot of violence" in Iraq, and there is violence, she said. "But a lot of good things are happening to us. ... Un der Saddam, we had no rights, especially women. Women could not speak openly, even to their children, not even in their own homes."

Al-Fadhal is part of a group from Iraq touring the United States to tell Americans about the democratic "transformation," albeit slow, in their country. Their opportunity to give voice to the Iraqi experience comes at the invitation of the Iraq-American Freedom Alliance, a project of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Founded two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FDD is a conservative nonprofit providing research and education on the war on terrorism.

Al-Fadhal, a real Iraqi woman speaking to the situation in her homeland, says most Iraqis are overwhelmingly grateful to the United States for freeing their country from tyranny. *

With her is Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, and a frequent contributor to op-ed pages in her adopted country, America.

At age 19, Al-Suwaij was forced to flee Iraq after participating in a 1991 failed uprising against Saddam and resettled in the United States. Now she writes to try to explain to Americans why their presence in Iraq is needed.

Because television images focus on the negative, Americans have a distorted view of what's happening in Iraq, both women said.

"When I come here and watch TV, I think this is the end of Iraq. It's over," al-Suwaij said. In Iraq, however, she sees a country "taking baby steps" toward democracy. She says the economy is booming. Schools are improving. Women fill 25 percent of elected positions, a milestone not seen even in the United States.

"Yes, security is a problem and sometimes there is no electricity and no water," al-Suwaij said, "but at the end of the day when we put our head on the pillow, Saddam is gone and that alone brings us great satisfaction. That allows us hope."

Much of the anti-American sentiment is by those who lost power, together with foreign terrorists who've come into the country through unsecured borders, and the disenfranchised young, the women said. "There is a large population of young Iraqis who don't have jobs, didn't receive schooling and now they are getting money to fight against the Americans and the new democracy," al-Suwaij said.

One of the United States' biggest mistakes, they said, was not securing the borders to keep radical extremists out. To hear them tell it, America's presence is not a mistake.

"A lot of (Iraqi) mothers come to me and say to tell the mothers in America thank you for sending us your sons and daughters, the soldiers, to help us," she said. "We pray for them, the soldiers."

The changes are nearly impossible to comprehend by someone whose country is free, they said. As a young oppressed woman, al-Suwaij recalled wondering, "When is my life going to start?"

Al-Fadhal's three children no longer struggle with the same question. Their father owns a small kitchen and appliance store. The children are mesmerized by computers and the Internet.

More evidence of how their world has changed: Today, their mother meets face-to-face with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

*loretian comments

Shocking, isn't it?  Maybe she's lying?  The evil Bush administration paid her off to say that!   

Sorry for the sarcasm, but after weeks of only negativity being posted here in regards to the war, this article just made me feel good.

[sandman]

thanks for the post, loretian! it was an interesting read. 

these stories aren't exactly posted all over the place.

as bad as everyone tries to make things seem in iraq, there are more murders in detroit on a daily basis than there is in all of iraq. don't get me wrong, it's unstable and not where it needs to be, but all things considered, it isn't as bad as people try to make it out to be.

[Izzy]

Shocking, isn't it?? Maybe she's lying?? The evil Bush administration paid her off to say that!? ?

Indeed, the war was just for oil - we know that!

This wench is just trying to confuse us - we only had money in mind when we invaded!

[GnRNightrain]

Where exactly do I justify corruption ? I'm not defending the french governement here ...? I'm not even chiraquist quite the opposite you see ...? To translate it in your political system he's a conservative and I'm not ...?
Of course food for oil is a resultance of the embargo ...? We had 10 years to see that it wasn't working that it was affecting the population and that it was strenghtening Saddam's powers ... what did we do (UN and the United States) ? Did we stop the embargo which made saddam stronger and richer ? No ... we set up food for oil ... what a brilliant idea? ! Now you can go on and tell me that we supplied drugs and food to the population and that the evil dictator didn't distribute them to his own people ... don't tell me you haven't seen it coming? ... and you didn't answer my previous question : have you heard about starvation in Iraq prior the first gulf war and before the embargo ??

Of course you didnt hear about it, because Suddam wasnt starving them.  But that defeats the point, and that is esactly what suddam wanted you to think.  Its not that they had no food, it is that Suddam deliberately made the embargo hurt the people to try and make the UN and the US look bad.  It wasnt what the UN did, it was what suddam did in response to the UN.  He does this stuff to make the US and the UN look like evil countries trying to starve his people, when in fact it is him that is starving the people.  He wants his money so he can do what evil deeds he wants, his best way to get it is to try and change the policy by making it look like the UN rather than himself was responsible for his people starving. 

And for your information, a conservative in France is more liberal than a democrat in the US.

[D]

war sucks but i dont think bringing peace and democracy to 50,000,000 people is a bad thing, even if there were no WMD or no inniment threat, peace for all is great and i support peace for everyone, a huge middle eastern country is now a democracy, so i dont see how that can be bad, libya have surrendered their nuclear programs so thats great as well.

[SLCPUNK]

war sucks but i dont think bringing peace and democracy to 50,000,000 people is a bad thing, even if there were no WMD or no inniment threat, peace for all is great and i support peace for everyone, a huge middle eastern country is now a democracy, so i dont see how that can be bad, libya have surrendered their nuclear programs so thats great as well.

Have you watched the news?

Do you believe there is peace and democracy over there right now?

 

They are getting ready to go into civil war for Christ sake.

They are hoping to have an election next year, but it is doubtful.

[SLCPUNK]

Shocking, isn't it?? Maybe she's lying?? The evil Bush administration paid her off to say that!? ?

Indeed, the war was just for oil - we know that!

This wench is just trying to confuse us - we only had money in mind when we invaded!

Well maybe if Bush hadn't flip flopped so many times on his reasons for going over there, people would not question the motive. Especially with all the corporate contracts involved.

Pulease......