I'm sorry...did I actually read "women had rights" in the dog's commentary? Two words...rape rooms. And how man y of the bodies found in mass graves were female so far?
I don't support the war or the invasion of a soveriegn nation. I don't support lies told to get us there, and I don't think the war on terror can be won or will be won, but bull is bull. The idea that anything was good under Saddam is a joke. The disengenousness of the dog, whom I am sure hammers Bush all day long for being close to the corrput and oppressive Saudi regime, excusing Saddam's regime because it was "useful" to us is laughable. Oh, it's ok to cozy up to a dictator when Bush wouldn't do it but it's not ok when Bush wants to do it. Hmmm...seems very consistent and well reasonned......not. There is no correct side in this argument. Saddam was evil, and the actions Bush took to oust him were evil. Anyone who tries to build some straw man argument because they hate one of the two choices by making one seem better is full of something other than logic. I paint the righty warpublicans who claim the "any means necessary defense" with the same brush. Two bad options, no really good choices.

No one is making the argument that Saddam wasn't a heinous SOB but that simply that as a practical matter it is hard to argue that the Iraqis are now better off. You write that the idea that anything good under Saddam is a joke. It is relative isn't it? It seems to me that going to the store without worrying about getting blown up is a good thing, or having power to your home is a good thing. Being able to buy gas for your car without waiting in line is a good thing, and the list goes on. Saddam was ruthless when it came to political opponents and their families, but the average Iraqi it seems was able to lead a reasonably normal life. The choice for the United States was not invade and remove Saddam or not do anything, and those who argue that Saddam was better than the situation now are not claiming he isn't an evil fuck. But even an evil fuck isn't evil every day and every minute and in every way. They do, for practical reasons, some things that have positive results.

Norm, brilliant point. This administration fucked with the world and this country's heads by highlighting the most terrrible parts of the regime to get people to want this war... Hussein tortured people in his family, soccer players were tortured by his sons but was that not a minority? as you said the average person led a decent life there... again not saying Hussein shouldnt be gone, but not the way we did it going it pretty much alone... and making more of a mess for everyone's life... o god help us all.

His own family? Soccer players? Here's a scant few links to make you rethink those ideas. Try women and children. I believe the word you're looking for was genocide, at least in terms fo the Kurds. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/13/iraq.graves/ http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/27000.htm

Again, if this were the justification used to topple Saddam, I'm in. Kicking his butt because he's a monster that kills his own people I can get behind. It wasn't, Bush lied, and we went in for some other reasons. But to state that the Iraqi's, living under sanctions from the Gulf War that resulted in an increase of 90,000 deaths per year vs the pre-sanction era (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War), their scant allowable resources drained off by UN Oil for Food corruption, with somewhere between 300k and 1M of it's citizens slaughtered by their sitting leader, were living La Vida Loca seems a bit of a stretch for me.

Interesting, the use of human-rights group figure of 300,000. I believe the latest human-rights group figures of deaths since we started participating is 125,000 and that in less than two years. What was it took Saddam twenty-four, and how many more will die in a likely civil war. Tis true that Saddam killed members of his own family, politics is particularly personal when it's close to home, and Uday or was it the other brothers experiment with tough love and the soccer team was equally heinous. Like I said they were sick fucks, but it usually wasn't random killing just for the hell of it. It had a political point. I would be interested if you have figures that give a breakdown of the 300,000 how many of them were victims shortly after the first gulf war, when the Shia's held their ill-fated uprising. How many for instance died by Saddam's hand during the five years before we invaded. The point is the killing usually had a political point when the population was passive life was fairly ordinary for someone living in a totalitarian regime. And to blame Saddam for all the suffering caused by the sanctions. It was entirely predictable that he would look out for himself. When we decided on sanctions it was with knowledge that it would impact negatively on the general population. It takes two to tango and we played our part in that little dance of death.

Norm, as I understand it, the 125k number has been discredited by every major stat house going. It was arrived at by a group of medical professioanls at Johns Hopkins, not statisticians. The went house to house and interviewed Iraqi citizens and arrived at a number more than 5 fold higher than any casualty rate ever computed for civilians in an urban war zone - but went with it anyway.
This super antiwar organization communicates the majority held beliefs on war casualties: http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ Come on Norm. You can do better. We already had the discussion on statistics and polling.

And again Norm, I'm not assigning blame to us or Saddam for life in Iraq sucking before the war. Of course the IUS contributed to it sucking. Your point continues to be that it was a warm, friendly, dictatorship. I say nonsense.

You're projecting buffalo. I've said nothing to give anyone the impression that I thought it was a warm friendly dictatorship it was as dictatorships go on the more heinous rather than less heinous side of things, but certainly not the worst one could mention. The point is that people can lead somewhat normal lives even under a dictator. Feed their families, educate their children even attend the church of their choice. Is that what you mean by warm and friendly. Would you call the current state of affairs a warm and friendly, after all Saddam is no longer in power. Perhaps life will change for the better as a result of our efforts but I doubt it.

Well, honestly there are warm and friendly aspects to today as well. A bombing in Bagdad or Mosul affects a few hundred people, maybe a thousand. The country has 26 million people. The Kurds have been able to return to their traditional homelands and regions (Kirkuk) - that's warm and fuzzy. There are over 100k Iraqi workers employed in US recontruction projects. The violence is not affecting them all, and I am sure there are some warm and fuzzy soldier/civilian stories as well. The reconstruction effort is ahead of pace and there will without question be a better infrastructure, etc when it is all done than there was. http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net/portal/page?pageid=75,80077&dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

If there is a civil war, as you state, I agree - all bets are off.

Norm, I entirely agree with you, and the more you talk to Iraqis, they'll tell you the same thing, "The Americans got rid of the evil of Saddam, and delivered us more evil"

The whole point of Saddam having killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, is moot in the context of this war, as most of those killings happened while the US was all chummy with him, or after the US encouraged the Shiites and the Kurds to raise against Saddam after GW1, just to step back as they were moving forward. So, if the US claims now, to be avenging those victims, or uses them as a justification for their own killing, all I can say is that you guys are like, 1 or 2 decades late... As for the deaths of Iraqi civilians NOW, the study in The Lancet is country-wide a lot more accurate than your link, whose authors painfully admit to be incomplete, because they can only include those cassualties that are reported at LEAST in 2 newssources. Now, it doesn't take a statistician to see, that only a ridiculously small fraction of Iraqis killed has made it into even 1 newssource... see the problem there?

But let's talk about the issue of civil society, it is indeed true that women had quite progressive legal rights in Iraq (for ME standards), but don't take it from me, hear it from a woman in Baghdad: "Women enjoyed nonnegotiable rights like inheritance, the right to an education, the right to work and earn money (equal pay for equal work), the right to marry according to her will and the right to divorce her husband" Now, under US occupation, they cannot even leave their homes because security is so bad, and if they do, they now rigorously wear the hijab, while before you could see girls at the university wearing jeans and t-shirts. And let's not go into the fact that if there is a future of a "democratic Iraq", it looks poised to be the Islamist variety, so there go all those rights we mentioned previoulsy...

As for Qusay and Uday, US soldiers have exponentially increased that threat, now, instead of having to watch out for 2 power-tripping wackos, they have thousands! An example: US soldier kills 17 y.o. Iraqi http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1941428p-8299574c.html Which raised 2 issues in my mind: 1) Is the US hiring under-age minors for the Iraqi National Guard? Isn't that illegal? 2) When an adult has sex with a minor, it's called rape, not "consensual relationship", specially, when the minor can't deliver his version of the events because the US soldier (who has changed his version 3 times) put a bullet through his head.

Dang White Buffalo, you are gullible. The reconstruction effort is ahead of pace? and you quote the very government office that is trying to account for the missing billions? That's rich

If reconstruction is going so swell: how come people in Baghdad this week went for over 3 days without electricity? and when they get it is so sporadic and capricious? how come that in the country with the second largest oil reserves, to collect gas at a station is a day-long endeavour? I've been told that running water would be nice too...(http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com)

I'm not sure if US built infrastructure will be better or not, that's still to be seen. On the other hand, if you had ever visited Iraq, you would have seen that architectonically, they can handle themselves. AT the beginning of the occupation many Iraqi firms approached the coalition with proposals to rebuild bridges, water treatment plants, roads, hospitals, etc... for a tenth of a fraction of what companies like Bechtell were proposing, only to see Bechtell walk away with overpriced contracts, and the Iraqis unemployed... and to this day, those projects are still to be seen. The only "reconstruction" Iraqis are getting is puppeteering, cleaning, cooking and building the cement barriers that separate the US compounds (formerly known as Saddam's Palaces), from the rest of Iraq.

Warm and fuzzy... lol!

Thank you for the shout out.

I was making yet another point, that some of you may find rather cold blooded, but I think is accurate nonetheless.

We didn't go into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein because of his human rights abuses, abuses he engaged in for decades, even as there are pictures of him shaking Don Rumsfeld's hand and otherwise being our putative buddy (at least in the sense of the enemy of my enemy is my friend during the Iran-Iraq war). Let's face it: had the President TRIED to sell the war on the basis of human rights abuses, he'd have been met with derision from his own party, and this war would have been a dead letter from the outset.

Instead, the Bush team invented the "national defense" rhetoric, premised on people not thinking because of high emotions post-9-11. In other words, WMDs and giving weapons to terrorists, the first of which was being rapidly belied by UN weapons inspectors (even as we tried to thwart them) and the second was simply preposterous as said terrorists might then turn the weapons on Saddam (or based on spurious "evidence" like the Prague Atta meeting; in any event, the 9-11 Commission concluded no such AQ-Saddam link existed.)

Bush's little gambit worked, of course, with the help and acquiescence of a feckless Democratic "opposition". Senators Edwards and Kerry, IMHO, are virtually as guilty as the President because they should have known better, but voted for the war out of crass political ass covering, and little else-- the same reason Tom Daschle even permitted a vote on the war, and for which I say, good riddance to you, Sir. But I digress. BTW-- all three of those right honorable gentlemen would probably have won their elections had they the cojones to oppose the war... Just my opinion of course... But I digress again...

My point is simply that the brutality of the Saddam regime was predictable and orderly; it was, of course, grossly overstated (human beings were not fed into plastic shredders; babies were not pulled from incubators, etc.), though I concede that the existence of Qusay and Uday is problematic, as they were two of the worst monsters our speces ever produced. But the region was more or less stable; Iraq was contained by our sanctions and no-fly zones; it was not the kind of failed state-terrorist magnet that Afghanistan was (and may soon be again) that presents the REAL threat to us. It was simply another nasty regime.

By tossing Saddam, however, we have sowed the seeds of a pretty bad nightmare: a failed state/terrorist magnet not in the middle of nowhere like Afghanistan or Sudan, but on top of a huge oil reserve, and right next to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates.

Americans don't engage in all out war (in human costs, the over 1200 dead puts this well within our top ten) for ANYTHING EXCEPT DOCTRINAL NATIONAL DEFENSE. Certainly not for humanitarian reasons. Recall that in Kosovo, we had virtually NO American combat casualties. So please-- this war was ONLY about our "doctrinal defense"-- the "let's go out and get terrorists where they are", as if they'll wait for us, as if our actions don't sow the seeds of resentment the world over, AND give terrorists the kind of failed state in which they thrive the most.

So, as brutal as it sounds, and even though I fancy myself a liberal, I'm not thinking about the Iraqi people; we have indeed made their life a living hell-- and I would concede it may or may not be debatable as to whether or not organized Saddam brutality was better or worse than the brutal chaos we dumped on them.

BUT--thinking of this as purely an American (and one who works a block from Ground Zero, as I did on 11 September 2001).... for my personal safety from the conditions for terrorists likely to attack me and my family... I'd rather Saddam were still in power.

Period.

Canaria, I prefer the word positive to gullible. I'm not stupid, but I want to embrace what is good and what can be good. It could end up poorly, I admit it above. But if I need to wake up every day thinking the worst about everything, put a bullet in me now. Give me a link that has more than someone's conjecture, and my opinion can be swayed.

I hope good thoughts for you all - WB

Boy and I tuned in to just say "The Incredibles " really wasn't that bad - I laughed - and here you are talking about really serious stuff.

But since you all brought it up... I think its really pointless to talk about which regime the Iraqs would have done better under - Sadam or Bush. What are we going to do about the current situation? We've got a secretary of defense that has pissed on the Geneva convention and an unacceptable war that has created an intolerable situation in Iraq.

And unfortunately I think that the answer may be to keep trying to wake up the rest of the populace to the immoral nature of the situation and educate them until there are enough people in agreement to cause a change.

And even more unfortunately - I watched the news tonight and saw the mess hall attack and disclosures by the ACLU - What may end up driving a resolution to a lot of this mess is Rumsfeld's own f* ups and the number of people we are losing over there.

Disheartening I know but if anyone has any better ideas...I'll listen.

On a lighter note and back to childrens films The Polar Express was fantastic - if you need a mental break and would like a simple story with fantasic graphics and a happy ending I recomend the 3-D version of this movie.

Peace

Comparison between Saddam and now is hard since today the situation is always changing, and you have to take into a account the way things are headed, which is unclear.

Saddam's behavior to the Sunni was probably as good as the Jordanian or at worst the Syrians to their own people. The Sunnis still give Saddam high approval even after he's out of power and they're being ruled by his enemies. On the other hand Saddam's behavior to the Kurds in the 80s was genocidal, and that toward the Shia was frequently bloody and ruthless. Besides that you have a pointless war which he started, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. I don't know from which of these events the mass graves come from, and no one that I know of has given a decent explanation of it, but it does matter.

One thing is important. Intervention to stop genocide is almost always justified if you can't stop it through diplomacy. But it's quite absurd to wink at genocide then use it, twenty years later to justify an invasion and overthrow. The purpose of intervention cannot be to punish a single person, but to stop an ongoing crisis. Saddam didn't even control the areas where the Shia and Kurds were anymore, and he certainly wasn't carrying on a genocide in 2003. There may still have been rape rooms, but after Abu Ghraib and related fiascos, we need to know more about how many of them there were before we claim that our conduct in governing the country has been much better.

Finally: We're getting into a fairly silly game when we try to justify a war retroactively. Does the morality of this war depend on whether Iraq descends into civil war or eventually becomes a democracy. What if both happen? One might be able to put together a utilitarian justification for the war, but that would inevitably demand of actors that careful attempts be made to discern the possible risks, worst case scenarios. The Bush administration, it is clear, did none of that. If everything turns out okay, it will be luck, not careful deliberate forsight on the part of Bush or his advisors.

You're absolutely right dende, that looking back at genocide the US did nothing about is no justification for invading Iraq.

I hear you WB, and I want you to know, that I think you're a bit more moderate and open minded than other American conservatives I've had the "pleasure" to discuss with. I appreciate that you want to look at the positive side, believe me, in regular circumstances I'm an optimist who believes people will do the right thing more often than not, and what drives me is the understanding that a lot of our current world problems have very basic solutions, that could be implemented, if there were the political will to achieve it, however, to address what is happening in Iraq now (and the world at large), requires not optimism, nor pesimism, but realism. In Iraq the glass is not half full, nor half empty, it's shattered, and it can't hold any water until we are willing to recognize that's the problem at hand, and no matter how much water we keep adding, it simply won't hold, until we accept the reality in front of us.

Also, since you seem willing to read more on the subject, today The Guardian run an article on the very issue of women's rights in Iraq. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1378532,00.html

Good wishes to you too ;)

P.S.> Me and my daughter had a blast watching The Incredibles, but then again, we didn't analyze it's content all that much, we merely sat and enjoyed the show.

The other side to the story of how women are faring in Iraq is presented in this summary by the usaid organization. Surely the truth lies somewhere between the propoganist Guradian that tried to recruit people in Ohio (which hilariously backfired on them) to vote against Bush, and a US government agencies take on the situation. I don't believe either can be fully trusted.

http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/pdf/iraqwomen0504.pdf

That's a powerful article, Canaria. There's a lot to chew on there.