Harper Responds to the Washington Times

Yaro · December 19, 2005

The Republicans have a long history of freeing the oppressed, from slavery to freedom, to the Civil Rights in the 60s, from Abe Lincoln to Ronald Reagan liberating 160 million Eastern Europeans,, to President Bush liberating 55 million in Afghanistan and Iraq.....

Lie much? oh ya that's right you do. The Democrats were unilaterally responsible for the Civil rights movement in the 60's in fact until that point most of the south had been democrat to the same degree it is now republican. And Abe Lincoln had more in common with today's democrats then then republicans. But as per the norm you love to take the Ann coultier route.

Meanwhile, the Dems have done everything in their power to make sure those "brown-skinned Iraqis" are subhuman scumbags who deserve nothing better than to lie under the boot of a massmurdering dictator....
Pure unadultered racism....

Careful with your stupid statements or I might point out that more "brown people" were killed in South America by your beloved Reagan then were killed by Saddam, not that there is even a shred of evidence to support the scope of US claims on how many people Saddam had murdered.

The rise of fundamentalist Muslims and their percieved threat on the western world required leadership, the UN dithered and US acted. Saddam was a provocateur and was wealthy enough to do substantial damage. There is also no question he was amassing significant weapons including chemical weapons, medium range missiles for delivery and nuclear potential. On the latter the Isrealis had done several unilateral bombing missions to keep him in check. Where his armaments went is still a mystery, but there remains no evidence he destroyed much of his weaponry.

Wow is this paragraph full of factual errors, lets count?

1. The rise of Muslim fundamentalism started around 1890, it has continued at pretty much the same pace world wide only ever resulting in a single rather dysfunctional government (Afghanistan). It should be noted that this government came to power largely because of US support.

2. Saddam was considered a blood enemy of Al-Qaeda, he was a militant secularist that believed strongly in Iraq and its people. More calls had been made by Muslim fundamentalists for the head of Saddam then any other world leader, and every US leader combined.

3. There is a question as to whether he ever had a significant weapons program, and there is absolutely no evidence he EVER had a nuclear program. Indeed noted Hawk Hans Blix, a man virtually hand picked by the Bush administration to find some/any possible pretext for invasion came out of Iraq with the statement that he could find neither evidence of there being any weapons or that they ever existed.

4. There is no mystery of "where the weapons went", there weren't ever any real WMD. Although chemical weapons are nominally considered WMD most military experts agree that they don't belong in the group and any chemical weapons that Saddam is believed to have once had were expired long before the turn of the millennium.

Basically everything you said in that paragraph was factually wrong, research is our friend.

You have to recall that Muslim fundementalist terrorists have been striking western targets since the late 80's, clearly they were gaining strength and confidence. Saddam had links to fundamentalist and continually meddled in the affairs of other countries, in fact prior to the fall of the Shaw, Sadam had willingly protected the Ayatolah who later took the US hostages.

Muslim fundamentalists have been striking western targets since WWI. They have not been gaining strength or popularity, in fact there influence had been noticeably diminished in most muslim countries right up until the Afghan/USSR conflict.

Saddam was a mortal enemy of fundamentalists, they literally couldn't have thought more differently. Saddam did not meddle in the affairs of any other country, in fact he was quite the isolationist.

The Shah and Saddam were completely opposite at the time Iraq and the US were staunch Allies, and Iraq and Iran despised each other.

Good god that was a horrific post.

I find it very interesting that the US talked so much about giving Iraq back to the people and letting Iraqies be free to determine their own destinies under a democratic nation, and yet so many oil contracts (Oil being the biggest money earning commodity in the country) were handed out before the Iraqies were able to determine what they wanted to do with "their" wealth. I agree that the royalties will still be paid to the government, but if owning the rights to the oil wasnt worth a lot more than said royalties, oil companies wouldnt be so rich.
What an interesting turn of events it would be if the Iraq Supreme Court (Apologies if this is not the correct name for it) ruled those contracts void because they werent offered by the people of Iraq and chose to form their own companies to reap the rewards of the oil rather than the US Companies. Granted they would need to bring in specialists, but there are many countries around the world with those people.

Good post, the missing piece your looking for is Iraq Reparations. Reparation payments will be the method by which the US recovers the cost of the war--theoretically, of course the war paid for by the citizens of the US won't ever see that repayment as the vast majority of it will be made directly to US corporations. The same thing has been going on since Iraq I.