<p>But Nahra, a government is not a for-profit establishment. And Saddam is not a regular customer. Saddam was a well establish whack job by 1978. I would say giving gas to anybody is insane since gas is not a defensive weapon, but rather an offensive weapon that is completely volatile and impossible to control or use with any degree of accuracy. If the wind changes direction, disaster! But giving gas to a murderous madman like Saddam is tantamount to having a proven pedophile murderer babysit one's children.</p>
<p>"Now, I'm sure intellegence has been working slightly to track him down, but honestly, after Bush got involved in Iraq, he DID have more imperitive matters to attend to...Osama wasn't attacking our troops...radical Iraqi militants were"</p>
<p>thats exactly my point!</p>
<p>he used Osama bin Laden to divert attention to Iraq where he was the one that got himself and us involved.... Had Iraq killed a single US citizen ... NO</p>
<p>but heck, 15 out of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian, does that mean we should invade Saudi Arabia?</p>
<p>btw this description sounds like how I would describe bush</p>
<p>"you CANNOT say that Iraq was better under Hussein's regime....he was a brutal murderer.....his opression went on for several years...he stopped caring about the well being of his citizens and started emphasizing on maintaining and expanding his power...he was abusing his position to the point that it hurt a majority of Iraqi citizens...."</p>
<p>replace hussein with bush and u get the US of A. Think about the country we have become.
We can now hold people incommunicado without charging them(Gitmo). We can create a no-fly list purely arbitrarily and not have a process by which people can appeal their placement
Bush and Co. can inspect your library and medical records
We tacitly use torture by means of "rendition" in which prisoners are flown to other countries for torture.(there's a case with a canadian citizen who had this happen to them)</p>
<p>all of the above remind me of one other nation I know. Stalin's USSR.
My great-uncle was spirited away in the middle of the night in 1951 for saying. "My farm had better yields when I was running it" He was later tried and sent to Siberia. My family didnt even get his body back and now there is an empty grave in the family plot.</p>
<p>The only difference between stalin and Bush is that Bush is brazen enough to be public about the above actions while in the USSR it was "whispered about" I still cannot understand how americans arent outraged by all of this.</p>
<p>Oh and the other difference is that Stalin was a communist who worked for protection and wealth of "Mother Russia". Bush is a fascist who works for... his fat cat donors who use propaganda in the form of evagelical religion to convince people to vote for him as long as (god forbid) 2 guys arent shown on TV kissing, or a black woman's nipple is flashed for a half second.</p>
<p>I find this an OUTRAGE!!!</p>
<p>as to the point of whether it was better under Saddam. I would have to say unequivocally YES. Espescially before sanctions were imposed.
In the 1970's Iraq was considered the modern mecca of the middle east(alexandre can back me up on this one) it had the best healthcare, utilities, etc etc. Sure, Saddam was a strongman warlord who fought with Iran and killed his opponents.</p>
<p>But, it is better to be alive and have a moderate quality of life than to be free but not go out of your house for fear that you will be killed, and have to drink sewage(they actually got some pipes "mixed up" in the reconstruction) etc etc. </p>
<p>As people in Armenia remarked during the 1994 recession when Armenia was at war and famine and energy troubles plagued the country. They said sardonically when referring to bread shortages or heating oil shortages after all we are Free and Independent. But did it help them being free and independent at the time.... obviously not.</p>
<p>The US has tolerated and become uneasy allies with much worse dictators in the past
Stalin
Pinochet
Batista
Musharraf(also a Saddam-like strongman)( harbored Muhammed Khan, who stole Nuclear Secrets from a Dutch company in the 1970's, then sold his know-how to the Libyans, Iranians, and North Koreans.... basically, anyone who would be willing to pay)
Deng Xiaopang(Nixon's visit after China had invaded Tibet and had a war with India)</p>
<p>Saddam was a secular strongman who wouldnt tolerate the hateful antiwestern religious factions to have power. Sure, he was brutal to his enemies, but he still had our support( as long as he was killing Iranians with our supplied chemical weapons).</p>
<p>He provided relative safety in Iraq and a relatively good quality of life(before the sanctions, which are estimated to have killed 50,000 Iraqi children) SO, yes, Iraq in its current state is worse than what it was under Saddam!</p>
<p>"go on a wild goose chase for one man in such a large area"</p>
<p>thats what we did in Iraq but we chased this man because he was the ruler of an area that has lots of oil</p>
<p>"UN has already begun addressing the issue, and China and the U.S. are working on negotiations to make sure North Korea doesn't produce anymore nuclear weapons, and if they produce them, that they will not use them without being held accountable"</p>
<p>last I checked, Bush and Bolton don't have too much respect for the UN or diplomacy. North Korea has nuclear weapons. The only reason we're not doing anything is because:</p>
<p>We CAN't do anything militarily, they have a 4 million man army and our resources are committed to the middle East. A war on the korean peninsula would cause millions of casualties since Seoul is only 30 miles from the DMZ.</p>
<p>It dosent have Oil, in fact, it dosent have much of anything of interest to us. Its only bargaining chip is its military might and its nukes.</p>
<p>Just to add on to your list of dictators the US have supported in the past sempitern,</p>
<p>Stalin
Pinochet
Batista
Musharraf
Deng Xiaoping
Idi Amin
Pol Pot</p>
<p>Countries they have invaded (similar to what happened in Iraq, but sometimes on a worse scale... some of the countries are still experienceing the aftershocks of the invasions, decades after it happened)</p>
<p>Iraq
Vietnam
Somalia
Nicaragua
Afghanistan
Congo (responsibile for genocide atleast)</p>
<p>And loads of others that dont come to mind immediately...</p>
<p>The administration has a habit of alienating other countries...</p>
<p>Getting back to the Bush Administration, where there is a similar parallel.</p>
<p>After 9/11, all the citizens of the world were New Yorkers.. They sympathised with America and wanted to see justice being done... To get these same people to now hate (and be scared of America) takes something INCREDIBLY STUPID.. George Bush - take a bow</p>
<p>as I look back at my post, I cant believe I've writted that much</p>
<p>but when I get passionate, my fingers fly over the keyboard</p>
<p>hahah, funny how uc_benz noticed my post and but never gave an explanation for it. Thats probably because he doesnt want to admit Bush is a two-timer when dealing with terrorists like Bin Laden. Awwww...... what will he talk about next !! </p>
<p>I like nahrafsfas explanation but there are some thing that need to be cleared</p>
<p>there are good chances he's dead...he was suffering from kidney disease, which had progressed to critical levels</p>
<p>ummm .. if he was dead, why does he still send video tapes threatening to attack America again? I think his most recent tape was found just days before the 2004 election.</p>
<p>.what would you do if you were president?...go on a wild goose chase for one man in such a large area?...think about it...what are the chances he could find a single individual out of every Middle Eastern in the area?....</p>
<p>I understand what you are trying to say. But that doesnt mean that Bush forget about him and divert the publics attention to a useless war in Iraq. And please dont mention the fact that Iraq was liberated. Bush found out that Iraq had no WMDs and so he diverted attention (just like uc_benz does) to Iraq being liberated. Come on, cant you see that he had protect his presidency?!! And like sempitern555 said, they did capture Saddam </p>
<p>And sempitern, Bush is a lot like a dictator himself!!! LOL</p>
<p>He is a joke before he is president!!</p>
<p>watercannon, dengwiaoping was not a dictator. He actually played a key role in china's economic growth, well umm, he made some speech at least.</p>
<p>hey seth, i saw your post at picture thread. I am LMAO after i read it!</p>
<p>
[quote]
After 9/11, all the citizens of the world were New Yorkers.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's laughable. Give me your e-mail address, and I will be GLAD to send you a clip of Muslims cheering in the street on 9/11. Then tell me if they are "New Yorkers."</p>
<p>what is this idiot above me talking about?</p>
<p>UC Benz, I know hundreds of muslims, literaly. Not one of them cheered on 9/11. It is easy to find the picture of a few morons who celebrated that darkest of days. I am sure there were such idiots of all fatihs everywhere celebrating 9/11. But the majority of people, regardless of race, nationality or religion, mourned that day. </p>
<p>But more importantly, the most important nations on Earth, like France, Germany and Russia, all sided with the US and supported the US at that point in time. I agree that Bush really must have done something really boneheaded to lose the surpport of those important nations.</p>
<p>Even an insignificant and poor nations such as mine (lebanon) spent untold thousands of dollars to post a solidarity message covering an entire page of the NY Times in 9/12. And Lest we forget, Lebanon is an Arab country that is 65% Muslim.</p>
<p>umm, the "you're incredibly brave" post, or the other two where the op called me a jackass? And what's LMAO?</p>
<p>"you're incredibly brave post"</p>
<p>LMAO= Laughing my a** out!</p>
<p>i cant believe many Americans have so much spite against Muslims. I mean just because the pilot of the plane was Muslim, doesnt mean the Americans have to blame the entire "Muslim" race. And since when did religion become a factor? Open your minds people!!! Bush is Christian, does that mean I hate Christianity? No. So what problem do conservatives have against Islam?</p>
<p>Islam is a religion...not a race :)</p>
<p>oops. my bad</p>
<p>I was not speaking for all Muslims in my post, but the people who were cheering in this particular instance were indeed Muslims. Now whether they practice the traditional Islam religion or they follow militant Islamic beliefs is another story, but they were still Muslims, and that's why I denoted them as such (I have nothing against Muslims). I was merely disproving the notion that the entire world sympathized with the United States as that is far from true.</p>
<p>And since when did we start outsourcing our nations best interests to other countries? Obviously, you don't want to upset other nations, but when it comes at the expense of protecting our nation's best interests it is definitely worth it. A lot of countries didn't even agree with the War in Afghanistan! And are you going to tell me we shouldn't have gone into Afghanistan either?</p>
<p>UC_Benz, a nation, even one as powerful as the US, cannot act on its own without considering the opinion of other powerful nations and should only follow its own best interest if it does not harm innocent people.</p>
<p>Why does primitive whine about ppl making "personal attacks?"
"what is this idiot above me talking about?"</p>
<p>hmmmm...whose making personal attacks now?</p>
<p>Well, I hope you all enjoy this little debate (or lackthereof). I won't be able to participate in it any longer because I'm going to London for several days.</p>
<p>I will, however, leave you with one last parting thought:</p>
<p>"John Kerry says the 'W' in George W. Bush stands for 'Wrong.' But he still can't explain what John Kerry stands for."</p>