Originally posted by Muscle_Girl
The most important thing I was asking is why he had to go and do all this shit when it doesnt even have anything to do with anything anymore. The gulf war was a long time ago and yes i dont know too much about it because i was still a baby. I thought the reason the US was angry was because of the September 11 tradegy, I dont understand why all of the sudden, Bush is elected and a whole war starts. As I said in my first post I just think he is trying to achieve what his father couldn't and by now it's just a dead subject.
I would like you to read this article from CNN...notice the date, December 16, 1998
Clinton: Iraq has abused its final chance
American president defends timing and need for strikes
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, December 16, 1988) -- President Bill Clinton Wednesday defended his decision to order airstrikes against Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein had failed his "one last chance" to cooperate with United Nations resolutions. "So we've had to act and act now." Earlier today I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces," Clinton said during his Oval Office address to the nation.
"Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs, and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the middle east and around the world," Clinton said.
A showdown between the U.S. and Iraq six weeks ago, when again the military action was threatened, ended with Saddam Hussein's promise to give U.N. inspectors unconditional access to Iraqi facilities so they could determine if Iraq was rebuilding its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
At the time, Clinton said he "concluded then that the right thing to do was to use restraint and give Saddam one last chance to prove his willingness to cooperate. I made it very clear at that time what 'unconditional cooperation' meant."
The American president said a report by inspectors to the U.N. over the weekend determined that Iraq had failed to fulfill that promise and had instead placed new restrictions on the inspections.
In response, Clinton gave the go ahead for "Operation Desert Fox."
Both directly and indirectly, Clinton addressed the impeachment crisis his presidency is currently facing. He defended the timing of strikes, which his critics have questioned in light of Thursday's scheduled debate and floor vote.
He also said that Saddam Hussein should not believe that domestic troubles in the U.S. would deter the nation from taking decisive action.
"Saddam Hussein and the other enemies of peace may have thought that the serious debate before the House of Representatives would distract Americans," Clinton said. "But once more the United States has proven that although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America's vital interests we will do so."
White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said earlier that the president made his decision Wednesday morning after reviewing the United Nation's report.
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M_G....this didn't just 'all of a sudden' appear for Bush. It has been going on continuously ever since the Gulf War 12 years ago as someone else has already pointed out. Clinton tried to deal with it, but was obviously unsuccessful. Nobody hardly remembers this 'Operation Desert Fox'...because they were more focused on the Monica Lewinsky crap. Saddam has and will continue if allowed to fund terrorists and terroristic groups. Why wouldn't he? He's done it for 30 years. Iraq has tried to get rid of him, but they are mass murdered for standing up against him.
Read this:
2003/03/19): "Iraqi exiles see a U.S. invasion as something to celebrate, not"
Take this war and love it
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Adil Awadh and Sayyid Ali Al-Ridha
March 19, 2003 | So now we know what the American and European
antiwar activists are planning for the first day of the war: sit-ins,
insurgencies and shutdowns. While they are busy planning their acts
of defiance, we Iraqis living in exile won't be joining them.
In fact, Iraqis who live outside the control of Saddam's brutal
regime are overwhelmingly in favor of a war. (A poll last year on the
Iraqi exile site Iraq.net showed 1,762 Iraqi exiles out of 2,709
participating in the poll supported American military action against
Saddam.) From our perspective, the imminent U.S-led military action
is the long-awaited liberation of our homeland, and not an invasion.
Virtually all Iraqis living in exile, and in liberated Iraqi
Kurdistan, endorse this war of liberation. It should be noted that
this is not a small number of people: there are 4 million Iraqis
living in exile and 3 million in the liberated area of Iraqi
Kurdistan. If the flight of over 4 million Iraqis from their beloved
and wealthy homeland -- out of a total population of 24 million --
does not count as an _expression of strong disapproval of the regime
of Saddam Hussein, then what really does?
Ironically, the antiwar protesters continue to base their argument on
the assumption that the war will have adverse consequences for the
Iraqi people. Certainly, Iraqis aren't happy to see their own country
bombed. But sadly, the cancer of Saddam is deep-seated, and today
only radical surgery can treat Iraq's ailing body. Those who feel
that a war led by the U.S. is not worth the price in Iraqi casualties
overlook the fact that Iraqis are already losing their lives daily in
their defiance to the regime. The only way to end this tragedy is by
ending the regime once and for all. In any case, this war is unlikely
to involve many casualties: The Iraqi army is likely to revolt, and
we believe that the Iraqi people themselves will finish the regime in
a mighty uprising, even before the U.S troops enter the Iraqi cities.
Iraqis are not waiting passively for the Americans to come and
liberate them. Iraqis have fought Saddam bravely for over three
decades. Sometimes our resistance was shrouded in secrecy, and other
times our martyrs fell fighting in Iraq's narrow streets.
Just last Friday thousands of Shia Muslims congregated in the holy
city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, to commemorate the martyrdom of
Hussein Ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who died
fighting a Saddam-esque dictator close to 1,400 years ago. They
assembled to pay homage to his sacrifice and tribute to his staunch
opposition to tyranny.
Given the background and atmosphere of the gathering, the crowd built
its own momentum, and the assembled masses began to chant anti-Saddam
slogans. According to reports
http://www.annabaa.org/nbanews/18/103.htm from the area, Saddam's
security forces opened fire on the crowd, and dozens of them lost
their lives.
This wasn't the distant past -- this was just last week. Yet while
the streets of the holy city of Karbala bled, the streets of American
and European cities resonated with chants in indirect support of
Saddam.
One of the coauthors of this article served in the Iraqi army from
1994 till 1996, and as a doctor was assigned to the 4th Army in
Southern Iraq. His colleagues, ranking officers of the Iraqi army,
were terrified of the Shia rebels. Saddam had managed to suppress
their heroic 1991 uprising and reoccupy the 14 provinces they
liberated in the wake of his defeat in Kuwait, but he was
unsuccessful in wiping them out. Ill-equipped, malnourished and
without external support, these rebels still manage to control a
territory the size of Lebanon in Southern Iraq. No supporter of
Saddam dares to walk that land after sunset.
In coordination with U.S. forces, the Iraqi opposition forces in
Iraqi Kurdistan and some southern parts of Iraq are joining forces to
topple the regime as quickly as possible. Already, under the
provisions of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, passed with bipartisan
congressional support and signed into law by President Clinton,
thousands of Iraqis living in the U.S. have signed up for training in
Hungary.
Iraq under the totalitarian regime of Saddam is not a country, it is
a vast suffocating prison run by a sectarian maniac. It is a place
where the goons of Saddam roam free, where mothers witness their
young sons being dragged off in the dark of the night, never to be
seen or heard of again.
We personally know one such Iraqi mother: She still cries when she
looks at the worn-out pictures of her four missing sons. All four,
young men in their late teens and early 20s, were arrested from their
home by Saddam's security forces in 1983.
The remaining members of this family were loaded on the back of a
truck and unloaded at the Iranian border. It was a heartbreaking
sight: a broken father, three daughters, two small boys and a mother
without four of her young sons, standing at the Iranian border in the
middle of the night. Unfortunately, this family was not alone in
suffering this horrible ordeal, for over 200,000 Iraqis remain
missing and unaccounted for. The arrests and deportations are part of
the regime's policy of ethnically cleansing Iraq.
Ask the mother of this family, now a refugee in the U.S. and still
waiting for the return of her four missing sons, does she want the
American army to fight Saddam? Her answer without hesitation is an
enthusiastic and passionate yes, and deep in her voice you can sense
the rising hope of reuniting with her missing sons after 20 years.
Instead of opposing Iraqis' hopes for liberation, U.S. peace
activists could contribute more positively to the cause of the Iraqi
people by helping them heal, recover and build anew the country they
lost to the scourge of Saddam. Such efforts should be made in the
spirit of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which mandates that the
United States "support efforts to remove the regime of Saddam
Hussein ... and promote the emergence of a democratic government to
replace it." After all, democracies are the best keepers of peace,
for history shows that the chance of war between two democracies is
next to nil.
Iraq today is a big factory of terror. In Saddam's Iraq, every
Thursday schoolchildren assemble in their playgrounds to pay tribute
to the Iraqi flag -- and to the sarcastically smirking picture of
Saddam. At the end of each assembly, one of the schoolteachers,
dressed in army fatigues, proceeds to fire an entire cache of bullets
into the air. The purpose of this militant ritual is to introduce
Iraqis into Saddam's culture of violence and death early in their
lives. It also sends a message to the terrified children that the
very same weapons will point toward them if they ever choose to
disobey the regime.
Fortunately for Iraq, Saddam has failed miserably in his attempts to
fully subjugate the people of Iraq. His failure was highlighted by
the popularity of the Shia-led Iraqi uprising of 1991. Saddam's
reaction to that uprising was the infamous order, "No more Shia and
Kurd after today." As a result of that heinous presidential decree,
over 300,000 Iraqi Shia and Kurds were massacred in the streets in a
span of two weeks.
To give antiwar protesters a more personal example, we tell them
that, although we were subjected to Saddam's system of terror, like
many others before us, we prefer to ally ourselves with the oppressed
rather than the oppressor. It's sad to see the antiwar protesters
preparing to choose the wrong side in the days ahead.
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There is nothing more I want to add to this...hopefully you will take the time to read all of it. Its very enlightning.
