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

[Samantha Atkins]

On Dec 19, 2005, at 10:37 PM, John K Clark wrote:

> "Samantha Atkins" <sjatkins at mac.com>
>
> > The point was that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi oil.
>
> Saddam said that, but I have some doubt it's true.

It was acknowledged as being true by the US.  Why quibble?

> Just between you and me
> I'm beginning to suspect that sometimes Saddam shades the truth just a
> teeny tiny bit.  Kuwait has plenty of oil and it's hard to  
> understand why
> they'd need to steal it from somebody much stronger than they are, but
> it's irrelevant even if true.
>

How so?  Mangy nations have come to conflict over such things.

> > Saddam asked us if we had any problem with the action he
>> proposed to take.  we said "no".
>
> I've heard conflicting stories about that, but again, for what I was
> discussing the incompetent nature of American diplomacy is irrelevant.
>

That we say one thing and do drastically another while painting the  
set-up party as a monster is irrelevant?  How so?  We weren't  
incompetent.  We set him up exactly as we intended.


> > Then we proceeded to pretend to be surprise
>
> Oh I don't think we needed to pretend very hard.
>

Yes we did.  We even worked hard to make up enough to make our  
actions seem reasonable.  We thought we had to pretend to ourselves  
and to the world apparently.

>> and to outright  lie about the size of force involved and Saddam's
>> intentions.
>
> Why would we need to lie about Saddam's intentions? Nobody needed  
> to come to
> us to know what Saddam's intentions were, they were obvious from his
> actions, his soldiers occupied Kuwait in a matter of hours.

And this was our concern because.. ?  We said we didn't care when he  
asked.

> Saudi Arabia
> would rather eat ground glass than let American soldiers on their  
> land but
> they did it anyway because they knew they were next on Saddam's hit  
> list and
> he had the fourth largest army on Earth; they could never stop him  
> alone.

That is the story we told but I very much doubt it.

>
> > he had no intentions to rule either country .
>
> What on earth are you babbling about?! The man was already ruling  
> one of
> them!
>

Oops.  Yes he intended to take over Kuwait.  but he mad no moves on  
SA or stated such intention.

- samantha