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Jus**t a little something I wrote for a college publication. I think about five get handed out free of charge, so not much chance of anyone reading my article, but I'd like people to proof read it, tell me what they think and point out any glaring errors.
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Iraq: were we misled?
The issue of whether the general public were misled regarding the war on Iraq is not really an issue at all. We were misled. It’s a fact. Regardless of what your opinion on the war is, we were told several things before our troops entered the country in order to gain our support, mos**t of which turned out to be false.
In the latter months of las**t year and the early months of this, the situation was “urgent”. Saddam had chemical and biological weapons amongs**t other forms of WMD, he could launch them within 45 minutes and posed an immediate threat to Wes**tern targets and the Wes**tern way of life. In fact, the threat was so dangerous that Tony Blair felt the need to send tanks to Heathrow, and we certainly didn’t have time to let the UN in on the action (because, you know, weapons inspectors are the las**t people you’d expect to be able to find weapons…).
All of a sudden the country thinks “Oh sh*t, maybe this is a threat, what with 9/11 and Osama bin Lay-din and all”. A large part of the country is soiling itself. When people think they’re 45 minutes away from radiation poisoning, they tend to support anything to reduce the chances of it happening.
So we went to war. Not only did we go to war, but we went to war with the cons**tant nagging of “You’ve got to support our boys out there now!” Really? I wasn’t aware that I have to give support to people who mindlessly carry out orders of murder because they come from the same land-mass as me. My mis**take.
Anyway, we go through with the war, Saddam is nowhere to be found and it looks like we’ve got mos**t of the playing card pack (although for me Bush can shove it up his ‘earts). And now the ques**tion s**tarts to arise…where are these mys**terious weapons of mass des**truction? “Iraq’s a big country, there are lots of places to hide them. Give us time” is the answer that inevitably came. Okay…it’s a few months on, how about now? “Well, you see, we gave him so much warning that he had time to dispose of them.” So why didn’t he jus**t use them agains**t us? After all, he did have these things trained on every kitten, pony and small child in the country. “Well, you see, we hit him so fas**t, and with so little warning that he didn’t have time to.” Right…
Over six months on and we s**till haven’t found weapons, nor are we going to. The US and UK are reduced to finding the ingredients for WMD (although the average swimming pool contains essential ingredients for chemical weapons) or plans for cons**truction of WMD. Not a massive difference in wording, but large implications.
Add to this the recent news that Blair was told pre-war that what he was about to do could actually increase an al-Qaida threat (to quote the warning of Whitehall’s Joint Intelligence Committee: "al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greates**t threat to wes**tern interes**ts, and that threat would be heightened by military action agains**t Iraq…any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terroris**ts, including al-Qaida”), the 45 minute claim was actually referring to short range battlefield weapons (helpfully edited out of the dossier) and a quote from Donald Rumsfeld to say that we had no new evidence at all, but only old intelligence “viewed through the prism of September 11th”. Now it looks as if the countries involved knew the WMD weren’t there to s**tart with. Oh-oh.
So now the pro-war lobby no longer have chemical weapons as the jus**tification for their war. What do they have? Iraq’s been liberated! Of course. The people are jus**t so much happier, and live in freedom, as people in favour of the war like to tell us so very often. And I’m sure they are. I’d be happy too, with no clean water or electricity. But hey! These citizens can now speak out agains**t Saddam without fear. The only problem is they can’t speak out for Saddam. Far be it from me to sugges**t that this is jus**t a reshuffle of what the Iraqi people can and can’t do…okay, that is entirely what I’m sugges**ting. We as a country have imposed our beliefs onto another, without gaining UN backing, as if we’re some kind of public avenger. And before we forget, there s**till isn’t a new democratic government set up.
Then why did we invade Iraq? There mus**t be some reason. Well, it could jus**t be a coincidence that the five companies who put up 68% of the funding for Bush’s presidential campaign are now the five companies with the larges**t contracts in Iraq. No it couldn’t. I’m talking about companies like Halliburton (former chairman and CEO: Dick (…) Cheney. Vice President of the United States of America. And while we’re at it Donald Rumsfeld has changed his tune a bit – in 2000 he was the director of a company selling nuclear reactors to North Korea…but I digress). It could be twofold if the “finishing off what Daddy s**tarted” argument holds any water with you.
But this doesn’t seem to show why we, the UK, played follow the leader. Well, possibly we’ll benefit from the oil gained. Another reason might be that we didn’t want to harm relations with the US (and in doing so harmed relation with France, Germany etc, but it’s alright because we can’t tell what they’re saying anyway. Jus**t speak louder and they’ll get the message). Maybe time will tell, maybe it won’t. The simple fact is that we were misled into the reasons for going to war, and that is that is that.
___
Iraq: were we misled?
The issue of whether the general public were misled regarding the war on Iraq is not really an issue at all. We were misled. It’s a fact. Regardless of what your opinion on the war is, we were told several things before our troops entered the country in order to gain our support, mos**t of which turned out to be false.
In the latter months of las**t year and the early months of this, the situation was “urgent”. Saddam had chemical and biological weapons amongs**t other forms of WMD, he could launch them within 45 minutes and posed an immediate threat to Wes**tern targets and the Wes**tern way of life. In fact, the threat was so dangerous that Tony Blair felt the need to send tanks to Heathrow, and we certainly didn’t have time to let the UN in on the action (because, you know, weapons inspectors are the las**t people you’d expect to be able to find weapons…).
All of a sudden the country thinks “Oh sh*t, maybe this is a threat, what with 9/11 and Osama bin Lay-din and all”. A large part of the country is soiling itself. When people think they’re 45 minutes away from radiation poisoning, they tend to support anything to reduce the chances of it happening.
So we went to war. Not only did we go to war, but we went to war with the cons**tant nagging of “You’ve got to support our boys out there now!” Really? I wasn’t aware that I have to give support to people who mindlessly carry out orders of murder because they come from the same land-mass as me. My mis**take.
Anyway, we go through with the war, Saddam is nowhere to be found and it looks like we’ve got mos**t of the playing card pack (although for me Bush can shove it up his ‘earts). And now the ques**tion s**tarts to arise…where are these mys**terious weapons of mass des**truction? “Iraq’s a big country, there are lots of places to hide them. Give us time” is the answer that inevitably came. Okay…it’s a few months on, how about now? “Well, you see, we gave him so much warning that he had time to dispose of them.” So why didn’t he jus**t use them agains**t us? After all, he did have these things trained on every kitten, pony and small child in the country. “Well, you see, we hit him so fas**t, and with so little warning that he didn’t have time to.” Right…
Over six months on and we s**till haven’t found weapons, nor are we going to. The US and UK are reduced to finding the ingredients for WMD (although the average swimming pool contains essential ingredients for chemical weapons) or plans for cons**truction of WMD. Not a massive difference in wording, but large implications.
Add to this the recent news that Blair was told pre-war that what he was about to do could actually increase an al-Qaida threat (to quote the warning of Whitehall’s Joint Intelligence Committee: "al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greates**t threat to wes**tern interes**ts, and that threat would be heightened by military action agains**t Iraq…any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terroris**ts, including al-Qaida”), the 45 minute claim was actually referring to short range battlefield weapons (helpfully edited out of the dossier) and a quote from Donald Rumsfeld to say that we had no new evidence at all, but only old intelligence “viewed through the prism of September 11th”. Now it looks as if the countries involved knew the WMD weren’t there to s**tart with. Oh-oh.
So now the pro-war lobby no longer have chemical weapons as the jus**tification for their war. What do they have? Iraq’s been liberated! Of course. The people are jus**t so much happier, and live in freedom, as people in favour of the war like to tell us so very often. And I’m sure they are. I’d be happy too, with no clean water or electricity. But hey! These citizens can now speak out agains**t Saddam without fear. The only problem is they can’t speak out for Saddam. Far be it from me to sugges**t that this is jus**t a reshuffle of what the Iraqi people can and can’t do…okay, that is entirely what I’m sugges**ting. We as a country have imposed our beliefs onto another, without gaining UN backing, as if we’re some kind of public avenger. And before we forget, there s**till isn’t a new democratic government set up.
Then why did we invade Iraq? There mus**t be some reason. Well, it could jus**t be a coincidence that the five companies who put up 68% of the funding for Bush’s presidential campaign are now the five companies with the larges**t contracts in Iraq. No it couldn’t. I’m talking about companies like Halliburton (former chairman and CEO: Dick (…) Cheney. Vice President of the United States of America. And while we’re at it Donald Rumsfeld has changed his tune a bit – in 2000 he was the director of a company selling nuclear reactors to North Korea…but I digress). It could be twofold if the “finishing off what Daddy s**tarted” argument holds any water with you.
But this doesn’t seem to show why we, the UK, played follow the leader. Well, possibly we’ll benefit from the oil gained. Another reason might be that we didn’t want to harm relations with the US (and in doing so harmed relation with France, Germany etc, but it’s alright because we can’t tell what they’re saying anyway. Jus**t speak louder and they’ll get the message). Maybe time will tell, maybe it won’t. The simple fact is that we were misled into the reasons for going to war, and that is that is that.
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Skarra wrote:
> Also, being a Hypocrite is no reason for not going into Iraq.
>
> You'd be a hypocrite, if you say don't penalise Iraq, but do have a
> go at Israel.
Erm...so you don't think that ignoring Israeli breaches for 30 years and then hammering Iraq for a breach is hypocrisy then? And no-one is saying "Get one and not the other". The point is that if you're going to use the UN Resolution breach as an excuse (and that's all it is), then it's a p!ss weak one because it's only being applied to one country.
Secondly, would you say that we should leave that man in Liverpool free to kill again and again and again whilst all of our resources are set on finding the killer in Dover? Of course not; you'd try and catch both.
> Also, being a Hypocrite is no reason for not going into Iraq.
>
> You'd be a hypocrite, if you say don't penalise Iraq, but do have a
> go at Israel.
Erm...so you don't think that ignoring Israeli breaches for 30 years and then hammering Iraq for a breach is hypocrisy then? And no-one is saying "Get one and not the other". The point is that if you're going to use the UN Resolution breach as an excuse (and that's all it is), then it's a p!ss weak one because it's only being applied to one country.
Secondly, would you say that we should leave that man in Liverpool free to kill again and again and again whilst all of our resources are set on finding the killer in Dover? Of course not; you'd try and catch both.
Before Belldandy calls me a terrorist, I don't agree with suicide bombings. My point was just that they cannot be used as a justification for whatever hare-brained scheme Ariel Sharon plucks from his addled brain.
What Israel are doing now is very similar to the way the Dutch and the British first took control of South Africa. Settlers turned up and kicked the natives off the lands around the ports; natives attacked isolated white farms; government condemned banditry and extended the colony's borders in the name of security; settlers continue to settle and natives were pushed back into more crowded and marginal lands; attacks continued, borders were enlarged...security...blah blah.., natives got annoyed and attacked more frequently, borders etc etc. Eventually you had a situation where native South Africans couldn't leave their immediate district without a pass, which they could only get by working on a white farm. Sound familiar?
It was colonialism then, and it's colonialism now.
It was colonialism then, and it's colonialism now.
Skarra wrote:
> I think it is wrong that Israel break's resolutions, but it's all
> very well us saying, "Bad Israel!", when were not under
> constant threat from suicide bombers targeting innocent civilains, by
> the hour.
Too true. But I think that is the least one can expect when you take someones country because ''well our ancestors lived here some 2000 years ago, before intermarriage all around Europe for most of that time after Rome kicked us out!''
That may be a gross over-simplification, but I don't think our country would tolerate the Celts trying to reclaim Britain or the Babylonians trying to take over Iraq. Indeed it is almost a repeat of the extension of the US itself, by moving in on then destroying the Native Americans way of life, not to mention killing most of them.
But since they (Isreal) are hardly going to pack up and leave the area tomorrow after surviving 6 million of themselves being gassed, I think its a no win situation. Hammas say they don't want two states, they want the complete erradication of Isreal, but then Isreal refused a deal to create too states under the UN resolution shortly after the British madate ended.
But I don't think you can compare this to Iraq in a diplomatic way, its a completly differant situation.
> I think it is wrong that Israel break's resolutions, but it's all
> very well us saying, "Bad Israel!", when were not under
> constant threat from suicide bombers targeting innocent civilains, by
> the hour.
Too true. But I think that is the least one can expect when you take someones country because ''well our ancestors lived here some 2000 years ago, before intermarriage all around Europe for most of that time after Rome kicked us out!''
That may be a gross over-simplification, but I don't think our country would tolerate the Celts trying to reclaim Britain or the Babylonians trying to take over Iraq. Indeed it is almost a repeat of the extension of the US itself, by moving in on then destroying the Native Americans way of life, not to mention killing most of them.
But since they (Isreal) are hardly going to pack up and leave the area tomorrow after surviving 6 million of themselves being gassed, I think its a no win situation. Hammas say they don't want two states, they want the complete erradication of Isreal, but then Isreal refused a deal to create too states under the UN resolution shortly after the British madate ended.
But I don't think you can compare this to Iraq in a diplomatic way, its a completly differant situation.
Also, being a Hypocrite is no reason for not going into Iraq.
You'd be a hypocrite, if you say don't penalise Iraq, but do have a go at Israel.
You'd be a hypocrite, if you say don't penalise Iraq, but do have a go at Israel.
Light wrote:
> Why not? Israel gets away with breaching them.
Ok, say a bloke in Liverpool kills somebody, but he isn't charged.
Then, a bloke kills somebody in Dover, should we let him go, just because we can't hold everybody responsable, everywhere, all the time.
I think it is wrong that Israel break's resolutions, but it's all very well us saying, "Bad Israel!", when were not under constant threat from suicide bombers targeting innocent civilains, by the hour.
> Why not? Israel gets away with breaching them.
Ok, say a bloke in Liverpool kills somebody, but he isn't charged.
Then, a bloke kills somebody in Dover, should we let him go, just because we can't hold everybody responsable, everywhere, all the time.
I think it is wrong that Israel break's resolutions, but it's all very well us saying, "Bad Israel!", when were not under constant threat from suicide bombers targeting innocent civilains, by the hour.
Actually, I can see the US's point for this one. The resolution made no attempt to condemn the violence perpetrated by Hamas, Islamic Jihad et al. I do agree with them that the violence on BOTH sides should be utterly condemned.
Also, the US has finally threatened to withhold funding to Israel. THAT will make them sit up and pay attention.
Also, the US has finally threatened to withhold funding to Israel. THAT will make them sit up and pay attention.
Just to dip back in here, I just saw that the US has vetoed a resolution which was supposed to tell Israel to stop threatening Yasser Arafat's exile or removal... I have to say that unless there were some glaring, and I mean GLARING errors made in that resolution, there was no need for the US to veto the resolution.
I'm not judging the US, merely informing
I'm not judging the US, merely informing
I never said we should let them get away with it, but what I am saying is that to do as they do in order to punish them for doing it is farcical. It's like saying "Don't tell people off, it's not nice".
Skarra wrote:
> So you think we should have allowed Iraq to get away with the breach
> of resolutions???
Why not? Israel gets away with breaching them.
Don't get me wrong; I take your point, but don't you think that if we're going to say thatt breaching UN resolutions is a good reason to invade a country, then any Arab nation is fully entitled to take a pop at Israel for that very same reason? After all, Israel has been in breach of UN resolutions long before Iraq even became the subject of one.
> So you think we should have allowed Iraq to get away with the breach
> of resolutions???
Why not? Israel gets away with breaching them.
Don't get me wrong; I take your point, but don't you think that if we're going to say thatt breaching UN resolutions is a good reason to invade a country, then any Arab nation is fully entitled to take a pop at Israel for that very same reason? After all, Israel has been in breach of UN resolutions long before Iraq even became the subject of one.
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