Saddam offered to go into exile 1 month before Iraq war

[JustUs]

So you're saying the U.S. Army War College is a bunch of slackers? Sounds like you've got a beef with their commander then. Do you presume they didn't talk to eyewitnesses and doctors? Sounds like the Army needs your help!

I find it staggering that you're actually casting doubt on the people who actually researched this situation, rather than the people that have an incentive to use propaganda for their nefarious purposes.

So you're taking the hedged "impossible to confirm" and "all the evidence available to us" (which is not "all the evidence") non-conclusion of the AWC over the testimony of eyewitnesses and researchers and doctors who have confirmed the use of chemical weapons.

If not by chemical weapons, how did all those thousands of people die, anyway?  The attack was confirmed and acknowledged by the Iraqis, even.

[mvpel]

The attack was confirmed by Iraq itself, and was documented by Iranian journalists.  The AWC is out-documented.  When was that report prepared anyway?

[JustUs]

The attack was confirmed by Iraq itself, and was documented by Iranian journalists.  The AWC is out-documented.  When was that report prepared anyway?

See link above. Stephen C. Pelletiere wrote the Jan 31 '03 Times article, cited at the linked WRH page and states: "The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein."

... and later: "I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair."

... and later: "And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas."

... and finally: "accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war."

It ain't good stuff that happened to those people, but let's be a little wiser than to fall for propaganda ploys of this vile administration. They lie for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and, of all people, libertarians should know propaganda to be a staple of agressive imperial states and call "bullshit" on it.

Pelletiere concludes: "Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?"

Stephen C. Pelletiere is author of "Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Persian Gulf."

[JustUs]

That doesn't mean that a secure and reliable supply oil is not an essential aspect of our nation's national security.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to call bullshit on this one! How did our oil get under their sand??

[mvpel]

That doesn't mean that a secure and reliable supply oil is not an essential aspect of our nation's national security.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to call bullshit on this one! How did our oil get under their sand??

Just because a secure and reliable supply of oil is an essential aspect of our national security doesn't mean we don't have to pay for it, and have people willing to sell it to us.  How old were you during the oil embargo?

[toowm]

OK, hate to get into this now, but I was just explaining the 70s OPEC embargo this week.

Oil is a commodity, sold in a market that is not free. But every market that moves away from freedom creates incentives that move it back towards freedom, with a black market as the extreme.

If all the oil producers refused to sell to the US (which didn't happen) there would be a huge incentive for non-embargoed countries to buy excess and sell it to the US at a profit. If nobody did this visibly, it would be in a black market. Once smuggling started, non-embargoed countries would see big profits and decide to ignore the ban. Finally, OPEC countries, seeing profits, would cheat and finally the embargo would end. They never had an effective embargo and admitted that it would never be possible.

The reason we had gas lines in the 70s is that the US government maintained price controls, which encouraged hoarding and created scarcity.

[JustUs]

Thanks, twoom! You mean we don't have to invade and occupy other countries to drive the old Hummer down to the gas station?

[Insurgent]

A picture is worth 1,000 words...

[JustUs]

Thanx for that map, Insurgent, "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's oil", eh? You can buy it tho', eh, twoom?