War crimes by US troops

[Jedi Master Spock]

I'd love to respond but your post makes about as much sense as a monkey at a typewriter.

Only to you MORON

Cool it. Now. And please.... review the forum rules, before I need to start counting and dating offenses.

[Feldercarb]

This is taken from Wiki itself:

In August 1991 Iraq had declared to the UNSCOM biological inspection team that it did indeed have a biological weapons program but that it was for defensive purposes.[39] Iraq then provided its first biological weapons declaration shortly after. After UNSCOM determined such declarations to be incomplete, more pressure was placed on Iraq to declare fully and completely.[39] A second disclosure of the biological weapons came in March 1995 however after UNSCOM's investigations and the discovery of inreffutable evidence, Iraq was now forced to admit for the fist time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program.[39] But Iraq still denied weaponization. Further UNSCOM pressure resulted in a third prohibited biological weapons disclosure from Iraq in August 1995. Only after General Hussein Kamel, Minister of Industry and Minerals and former Director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, with responsibility for all of Iraq's weapons programs, fled Iraq for Jordan, Iraq was forced to reveal that its biological warfare program was much more extensive than was previously admitted and that the program included weaponization.[39] At this time Iraq admitted that it had achieved the ability to produce longer-range missiles than had previously been admitted to.[39] At this point Iraq provides UNSCOM and IAEA with more documentation that turns out Hussein Kamel had hidden on chicken farm. These documents gave futher revelation to Iraq’s development of VX gas and its attempts to develop and nuclear weapon.[39] More declarations would follow in June 1996 and September 1997. However, in April and July 1998, the biological weapons team and UNSCOM Executive Chairman assessed that Iraq’s declarations were as of yet “unverifiable” and “incomplete and inadequate”, seven years after the first declarations were given in 1991.[39]

In August 1998, Ritter resigned his position as UN weapons inspector and sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM's work. "Iraq is not disarming", Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike." In 1998 the UNSCOM weapons inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq. They were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his "axis of evil" speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant, it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes which eventually took place from December December 16-19 1998.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_w ... estruction

Aside from Praeothmin’s points (thanks BTW) I'd like to know what the state of Iraq's weapons program was in 2003 during the run up to the invasion as opposed to five years earlier. If WMD was a reason (pick one, there's been a bunch) to invade then it's more pertinent to discuss the programs status at the time.

Only to you MORON as it is actually a quote from the Show Babylon 5 in which Delenn confronts a group of leftards bashing the Alliance and the memory of her beloved husband John Sheridan. In a nutshell it perfectly describes your Ilk...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA-omGPUwBE

I am referring to your horrible grammar, it's rather hard to make sense of a run-on sentence.

So sorry this small oversight changes nothing you have claimed that the inspectors never found any weapons ever and that they were all confirmed as destroyed long before the war and so on and all of it lies as the evidence in the article clearly shows. I made an oversight and can accept I did you on the other hand cannot accept any facts because you find them inconvenient so you choose to ignore them instead and on top of that you invent actually invent history right out of your arse...

What would be wonderful is if you would run your post through a spell/grammar checker before you post. Half of your posts border on unreadable.

Cool it. Now. And please.... review the forum rules, before I need to start counting and dating offenses.

As you wish.

[PunkMaister]

Aside from Praeothmin’s points (thanks BTW) I'd like to know what the state of Iraq's weapons program was in 2003 during the run up to the invasion as opposed to five years earlier. If WMD was a reason (pick one, there's been a bunch) to invade then it's more pertinent to discuss the programs status at the time.

Since no inspectors had been into Iraq since the 1990's it was largely unknown.

As you wish.

You are a bad liar sir look:

Don't discourage them; I'm very interested in hearing about this mental condition that, conveniently enough, is not listed in the DSM.

[Feldercarb]

Since no inspectors had been into Iraq since the 1990's it was largely unknown.

That is simply wrong, there where inspectors in Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003 and they had to leave because of it.

You are a bad liar sir look:

Don't discourage them; I'm very interested in hearing about this mental condition that, conveniently enough, is not listed in the DSM.

That was a different thread and a response to "leftist thinking" being a mental condition.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Originally, I didn't want to participate in that debate.

But I have to interject, that, if the USA would indeed have believed, that Iraq has WMD's, they wouldn't have attacked with conventional means.

Talking about conventional means, it is important to notice that the use of DU and NDU in the region in 91 and since the "retaliation" following 9/11 had and still has dramatic effects on these countries' populations.
The amount of uranium found in bodies and utterly gross genetic defects exemplifies this, and has led some scientists to consider that the US had been using mini-nukes without telling much, or weapons with relatively similar effects in terms of fallout. The consequences of dispersal of radioactive particles is dramatic, not only for both Iraq and Afghanistan, but for neighbouring countries as well.
It makes it harder to consider that the US leaders are concerned with the health of the people in these countries when they didn't even care that much about the health of their own troops (see DU poisoning on American soldiers).

EDIT: For those who are able to read this language: clicky

[Mr. Oragahn]

Not directly but he could have made deals with terrorists and so on and equip them.

Yes, he may, might, could have, possibly, eventually, etc.

In reality, he had absolutely no reason to go stir trouble. He ranks very low on the interest scale.
His army was totally powerless, and it was nothing short of a super duper overkill that the invasion was.

And in regards to the WMDs they did exist that is undeniable as is the fact that we will never know where the damn things ended up althougb given Bush's stumbling around they probably ended where nobody wanted them in the first place. In the hands of terrorists themselves or countries that openly support them such as Siria for example.

Undeniable like made up until proven. Blix disagreed though. But why should we listen to that anon?

Surely we could complain? He used gas to kill women/children the works and deliberately so! Could complain geesh!

There are at least some positive evolutions to reap from his fall, but this should not cloud the real reasons of the invasion.

[Praeothmin]

So sorry this small oversight changes nothing you have claimed that the inspectors never found any weapons ever and that they were all confirmed as destroyed long before the war and so on and all of it lies as the evidence in the article clearly shows. I made an oversight and can accept I did you on the other hand cannot accept any facts because you find them inconvenient so you choose to ignore them instead and on top of that you invent actually invent history right out of your arse...

I believe you are mistaking me for someone else.
I have only pointed out that everytime the inspectors were asked to leave, it was because of an imminent attack by the US.
Those points you're accusing me of, were made by others...

And you say this is a slight oversight, yet this has been at the base of many replies you made to show how Saddam wasn't cooperating with the UN and as an example you stated he had thrown the inspectors out, which he never did...

[Flectarn]

So sorry this small oversight changes nothing you have claimed that the inspectors never found any weapons ever and that they were all confirmed as destroyed long before the war and so on and all of it lies as the evidence in the article clearly shows. I made an oversight and can accept I did you on the other hand cannot accept any facts because you find them inconvenient so you choose to ignore them instead and on top of that you invent actually invent history right out of your arse...

I believe you are mistaking me for someone else.
I have only pointed out that everytime the inspectors were asked to leave, it was because of an imminent attack by the US.
Those points you're accusing me of, were made by others...

And you say this is a slight oversight, yet this has been at the base of many replies you made to show how Saddam wasn't cooperating with the UN and as an example you stated he had thrown the inspectors out, which he never did...

he's perhaps confusing Iraq with North Korea

though in his defense there were a number of occasions during the 90's and early Ought's when the Iraqis would deny inspectors access to such and such sight for some amount of time. The goal apparently was to keep people guessing about weather or not they actually had any production capacity... principally to keep the Iranians on their toes, but with out providing enough proof (or going through the expense of building weapons...) to incur a severe reaction from the west. This plan seems to have backfired.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Punk, you may want to send that link to your brother, and check this video.
Call it enemy propaganda if you want, but I think that would be pretty low and ridiculous. The guy talking has been 12 years in Marine Corps. A mindless killing machine by his own words, sent to Iraq to testify on the presence of Iraqi weapons in Salmon Pac... only to find racks of US weapons...

[Mr. Oragahn]

Surely we could complain? He used gas to kill women/children the works and deliberately so! Could complain geesh!

Thinking of it, what's the evidence of that, and if there's any, what do we precisely know of it?

[Who is like God arbour]

Surely we could complain? He used gas to kill women/children the works and deliberately so! Could complain geesh!

Thinking of it, what's the evidence of that, and if there's any, what do we precisely know of it?

• • Yes. Big wicked evil Americans. Always picking on other people's cultures and beleifs. Rat bastards that they are. Who cares if they rid the world of a mass murdering sunuvabitch(Who's ability to aquire, and willingness to use WMDs can not be questioned. It's already a matter of historical record that the monster in question has unleashed biological WMDs on his own citizens. If, by some miracle, he just happened to get caught at a time when he didn't have any immediately on hand, that doesn't change the fact he's already demonstrated he can get them and is willing to use them when he does).
    
    It doesn't matter that the Number One reason the people can't take advantage of their newfound independance is not the fault of america, but the fault of foreign terrorist powers deliberately inciting inter-faction violence(which frankly, doesn't need a whole lot of outside help anyway).
    
    No, it's all the fault of wicked evil, and above all, insensitive American brutes.
    
    Sorry folks, but the Stormtrooper/American Soldier comaprison just really does not hold up well. Especially measured against current real world issues.

    I don't intend to excuse Saddam Hussein or derogate his crimes.
    
    But what it true has to stay true (I hope that makes sense in English).
    
    What he has done - or what they accuse him that he has done, has he done while he was allied with the U.S.
    
    Rumsfeld has said that he may be a swine but he is their swine (that was the German translation of what he has said - translated back to English from me. Original he may have used other words.).
    
    It is really hypocritically to accuse Hussein whith something that was approved as he was still a "friend" of the U.S.
    
    And there are even American reports they affirm that the used gas against the Kurds was not Iraqi gas but Irani gas.
    
    Please read the following sides:
    

    • • Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement
        
        Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?
        
        Iraq: Why the Rush to Execute Saddam Hussein?
        
        and most important
        
        Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq

    As I have said already: that doesn't excuse all the other crimes he has done. But please, which chief of state, the President of the U.S. including, hasn't done any crimes if they send their state in a war which kills thousands. To be honest, I think that Bush is worse than Hussein. But he is the Chief ot the mightiest state of Earth and nobody could prosecute him for the crimes U.S. troops do in his name.

[Who is like God arbour]

A War Crime Or an Act of War?
By Stephen C. Pelletiere
Published: Friday, January 31, 2003

It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: ''The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.''

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.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

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.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

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.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent -- that is, a cyanide-based gas -- which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But 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. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.

We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades -- not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition -- thanks to United Nations sanctions -- Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one.

Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja.

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.''

[PunkMaister]

I might aswell repost this here:

Wow attacked from all sides at once! Now I know in the flesh how it must be like to be conservative in the middle of the freaking Bill Maher show.

To think a comparison of SDN as some kind of virtual police state to real world police states started all this crap!

The last thing I wanted was to join this board to discuss politics there are plenty of other boards for that that I do go too for that when I feel like bashing heads.
Not too mention that I already get plenty of beatiful death threats from Muslims and leftists alike such this one:

freemason1992 wrote in a PM elsewhere...
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8400/1236876355194.jpg

I am really coming after you for being a member of this site.

I've edited the PM so it does not directly display the disturbing picture...


So forgive for not wanting to play anymore I'm not conceding to anything but if in your narrow twisted mindset that is what you people want to believe fine...

BTW I've refrained as much as possible my use of derogatory language and flames.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I might aswell repost this here:

Wow attacked from all sides at once! Now I know in the flesh how it must be like to be conservative in the middle of the freaking Bill Maher show.

To think a comparison of SDN as some kind of virtual police state to real world police states started all this crap!

The last thing I wanted was to join this board to discuss politics there are plenty of other boards for that that I do go too for that when I feel like bashing heads.
Not too mention that I already get plenty of beatiful death threats from Muslims and leftists alike such this one:

freemason1992 wrote in a PM elsewhere...
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8400/1236876355194.jpg

I am really coming after you for being a member of this site.

I've edited the PM so it does not directly display the disturbing picture...


So forgive for not wanting to play anymore I'm not conceding to anything but if in your narrow twisted mindset that is what you people want to believe fine...

BTW I've refrained as much as possible my use of derogatory language and flames.

What's the point of this exactly?


WILGA: I also found some other pages explaining in detail these traditional accusation claims against S. Hussein, and the amount of spin applied these past events, from the attacks in the North to the UN inspectors and actually true US spy infiltration, to distort truth and make him look like the next Hitler, is truly staggering.

Did he say anything during his trial?

[PunkMaister]

Did he say anything during his trial?

That he is your father...

As I said I just don't want to play this crap anymore not here anyway...