US not right to invade say Iraqis Re: [extropy-chat] letterconcerning presidential growth

[Jeff Davis]

Before I start in on Herb's post down below a ways, a
comment.

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:20:52 -0600 Herb Martin wrote:

> ...if you ask those troops who lost
> their friends and who risk their lives 
> you will almost universally find they 
> believe it was a VERY GOOD THING.

> So do most of us who have served...

I take you at your word, and thank you for your
service and sacrifice.  I hope and pray that your
friends all come back safe and whole,...and soon.  No
matter how harshly I take you to task for your views,
do not doubt this.  In a bad war, those who have died
cannot be dishonored by an immediate corrective
withdrawal.  I feel certain they themselves would say
that their sacrifice would have the greatest meaning
with the rapid realization of error, and rapid
correction, so as to prevent further loss of life.

That said...

> ...if you ask those troops who lost
> their friends and who risk their lives 
> you will almost universally find they 
> believe it was a VERY GOOD THING.

This is a powerful rhetorical ploy, as there is a
strong disinclination to say anything critical about
the troops.  For all sorts of reasons.  I'm gonna get
over that hesitation.

I've been in the army.  During Vietnam.  The army
indoctrinates you full on.  Breaks you down and then
builds you up.  Makes you a member of the tribe. 
Bonds you with your fellows.  Gives you a new meme
set.  "The right way, the wrong way, and the army
way."  It ain't no Chautauqua.  No bohemian
free-thinking philosophers club.  Rather, it's a
flippin' mind-control cult of militarism, embedded in
a two-tiered (officers and enlisted men) class system,
totalitarian and hierarchical, where instant
unquestioned obedience is the rule and dissent is
betrayal.  It's pure tribalism.  Loyalty is all.

Supposedly this achieves that "unit cohesion" thing,
making for more effective soldiers.  Supposedly saving
lives.  Supposedly.  What it doesn't do is make anyone
from grunt to captain, an expert on ethics or
geopolitics.  In fact, quite the opposite.  It fills
your head with jingoist hogwash.  Wraps you in the
flag and stuffs the ends in your ears.  Feeds you,
clothes you, houses you, trains you, employs you,
tells you what is true and what to think(the
SupremeAmerica myth), and then seals you in a cultural
bubble with the rest of the cult.  

So, much as I honor and respect their service and
their sacrifice, the nature of the cult of militarism
pretty much guarantees that the troops will believe,
and say they believe that the war they're in is a good
war.  Their training would be for shit if they didn't,
and it's my impression that US military training is
top drawer.

Ergo, a priori, the troops' opinion of the rightness
of the war, insofar as it is based on cult
indoctrination and tribal loyalty fails to meet the
lowest possible standard of evidentiary validity.  The
same holds true of your opinions, Herb, expressed
below.  It appears you have uncritically swallowed the
Bush/Rumfeld/DoD line, and now parrot and defend it
with that fierce tribal loyalty instilled by your
training.

You're out of the cult bubble now.  Time to rejoin the
reality-based community.  This one time I'll give you
a hand up.  Then you're on your own.  I'm on your
side.  Time for you to be on your side.             

--- Herb Martin <HerbM at learnquick.com> wrote:

> Again someone like Jeff posts the "common knowledge"
> that is JUST WRONG.  

Oh my! Look at those caps. I tremble.!

> It is so tiring when people fail to see through 
> such propaganda and bithely repeat it.

I try not to do bullshit, Herb.  I try for facts
supported by documentation.  So watch close.  I'm
going to show you how it's done.

> The US WANTED to support Iraq against Iran in those
> days when the main enemy was the still vital and
> threatening, but was unable to stomach Soddam and
> his behavior and so stood aside mostly during the
> war with Iran.

Ha ha ha ha ha.  Sweet. 

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm
>From the National Security Archive

U.S. DOCUMENTS SHOW EMBRACE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN IN EARLY
1980s
DESPITE CHEMICAL WEAPONS, EXTERNAL AGGRESSION, HUMAN
RIGHTS ABUSES

Read the docs.  Official US docs.

Then try this, Herb:

http://democracyrising.us/content/view/30/74/
Arming of Iraq and the Iran-Iraq War 

2. The United States directly and through
intermediaries provided extensive support to Iraq
during its war with Iran . After the revolution,
Washington came to the conclusion that Saddam was the
lesser of the two evils, and hence secret efforts to
support him became the order of the day, both during
his long war with Iran and afterward. This led to what
later became known as the Iraq-gate scandals. Saddam
received dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated
computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals,
and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as
military applications. In February, 1982. Despite
objections from congress, President Reagan removed
Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries. In
November, 1983 a National Security Directive stated
that the U.S would do “whatever was necessary and
legal” to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran .
On December 20, 1983 Donald Rumsfeld, then a civilian
envoy for President Reagan and now Secretary of
Defense, met with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US
friendship and materials support. In July, 1984 the
CIA gave Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its
mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. In March, 1986
the United States with Great Britain blocked all
Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of
chemical weapons, and on March 21 the U.S. became the
only country refusing to sign a Security Council
statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. In
May, 1986 the U.S. Department of Commerce licensed 70
biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and
1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains
of anthrax. In the same month the U.S. Department of
Commerce approved shipments of weapons grade botulin
poison to Iraq. In September, 1988, the U.S.
Department of Commerce approved shipments of weapons
grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq. During the Iraq
War the Defense Intelligence Agency provided detailed
information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical
planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb
damage assessments. A vast network of companies, based
in the US and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war
machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam
invaded Kuwait .  

Source: Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War citing Russ
Baker, IraqGate: The Big One That (Almost) Got Away
Who Chased it -- and Who Didn't, Columbia Journalism
Review, March/April 1993,
http://www.cjr.org/archives.asp?url=/93/2/iraqgate.asp.
See also: John King, Arming Iraq : A Chronology of
U.S. Involvement, March 2003,
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php

          ************************************

Look at the source citations, Herb.  You do "something
I heard somewhere".  I do documented fact.

> As to precursors, these are the same chemicals that
> are used in agriculture as pesticides and are also
> equipement and stocks used in pharmaceuticals

Who you kidding, Herb?  This was the middle of the
Iran-Iraq war.  The whole flippin world knows Saddam
wasn't making bug spray. 

> -- in those days Saddam had not (yet) shown 
> his prediliction for GASSING HIS OWN PEOPLE

No, just the Iranians.  So is unprovokedly attacking
the Iranians and poison gassing them okay, Herb?

(Regarding the infamous "Halabja gas attack", by the
way, the  Defense Intelligence Agency says it was the
Iranians.)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2098.htm

A War Crime or an Act of War? 
By Stephen C. Pelletiere The New York Times, Jan. 31,
2003  

....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. ...

...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.
 
              **********************************

> and developing other weapons of mass destruction 
> BY THE TON (and long since admitted by Saddam.)

In the middle of the war against Iran, Herb.  With US
knowledge and implausibly deniable support.  See refs
one and two.

> The major exception, aid actually given by the US
> during this time, was limited access to satellite
> intelligence given largely when Iran threatened to
> overrun Iraq.

Thoroughly debunked -- by reference one above --
unsupported and unsupportable bull, Herb. 
Documentation, facts, citations from solid sources --
this is the way it is done, Herb.  Believe whatever
"someone told me" you want, but in this forum you
better have some facts and the solid sources to prove
it.  So far you've shown us nothing but personal
assertions, Herb, all of which have been shown to be
junk.  
 
> Doubt this?  Then merely review the weapons used by
> Saddam's Iraq:
> 
> 	Russian tanks and armored vehicles
> 	French and Russian fighter aircraft
> 	French and Chinese Missiles
> 	Soviet block small arms

The world has many weapons suppliers from whom Saddam
purchased his inventory.  Proves nothing.  Irrelevant.


> The US was NOT a major supporter of Saddam 

Flat out wrong and proven so.  See References one and
two.

> despite the lies you have heard and may even 
> have fallen into the habit of repeating.

Not a fact, document, solid source, or citation
anywhere to be seen, Herb.  Just an assertion based on
groundless belief.  That won't cut it here, Herb.  

> The attempts to change history in order to
> rehabilitate the murderer Saddam are just plain
disgusting.

Now you're just wasting my time, Herb.  There's no
rehab for Saddam, or the US power elite who made him.

> 
> Any argument against removing Saddam most devolve
> down eventually to:  THe world would be better off
if
> this murderer were never removed from power so the
US
> should just leave Iraq and return Saddam to power.

An argument against removing Saddam, involving as it
does millions of lives and billions of dollars might
plausible involve weighing the pros and cons, not just
righteously declaring "He's a murderer!!"

However, before anyone will be able to engage you in
an informed discussion regarding Saddam, or what
constitutes the world being better off, you will have
to become better informed.  Have you any inclination
in that direction?    

> What a crock.

Someone as firmly grounded in his own prejudices and
so out of touch with reality is unqualified to
distinguish crock from not-crock.
                ***************************

That's how it's done.

Go thee and sin no more.
 
Best, Jeff Davis

      "We don't see things as they are, 
             we see them as we are." 
                        Anais Nin





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