The Politics Thread

What's the source on that? The press here are saying that to date there have been no proven links to wikileaks and deaths in the past.

 

There is no definitive proof of that. And if you want to talk about people whose actions have cost lives, should we start by prosecuting all the politicians in London and Washington who sent our young men and women into Iraq under false pretences so that the speculators could get rich?

 

A Long Short War by Christopher Hitchens described what it was like in Saddam's regime; It was awful, and I'm personally glad Saddam was removed from power.

 

I'm personally glad that Saddam was removed from power too. Any reasonable-minded person would be. But at what cost to our nations? There are other regimes across the world that are equally distasteful, but I don't see us diving in to rescue the persecuted population in those places. In fact, we turn a blind eye to grave injustices in other Middle-Eastern states, just because their rulers are "Western-friendly".

The politicians sold us the invasion of Iraq on a long list of false pretences.

 

but that isn't the reason we went to war in Iraq. And i'm not sure the Iraqi's would agree with you. Iraq Body Count has civilian casualties at 106,000.

There's a great biography of saddam Hussein that i read a few years ago. On the eve of the Kuwaiti war SH rang Bush senior (this is when the US and Iraq were friends) and asked if the US were bothered if they reclaimed disputed territories.

GB replied: "we don't get involved in border disputes."

 

You are right, and I do agree with you. The problem with the War in Iraq for me is I don't really know where I stand on the whole issue, my opinions on it change pretty much every month. Sometimes I think the war was really worth it, because there was never really going to be a major coup-de-tat against Saddam with a stranglehold on the Iraqi people like he had; other times I wonder why we didn't act in other places of the world that are at least very similar to what Iraq was under the Ba'ath party, which leads me to think the entire war was just an exercise in imperialism.

Two very condensed points, but those are the two I keep returning to over and over in my head.

When I wrote my post before I really battled against the idea of stating if I supported the war or not. I'm still not 100% sure what I think now.

Like I just said, I wrote that post not stating if I supported the war or not, only I do appreciate the outcome, with regards to Saddam.

 

If you have a specific political point to discuss, and it is not inherently inflammatory, a thread may be started. That thread will be closed when and if it ceases to be peaceful.

A blanket thread on politics is just begging for trouble.