[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by King Kebab)
Intuition. I can not really provide evidence other that that is what my gut feeling is. The only person who knows what George W Bush really thought is himself.

Can you show me this evidence?

I have not seen any as of yet.

I think they could have made an oil deal with Saddam without costing the lives of thousands of people. That is what President Chirac of France did. Both politicians certainly did not do it for popularity. The war was unpopular in both countries.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/show...3#post38338013

I doubt they could. France didn't screw over Iraq the same way USA did. The US was the one that called for invasion in the first gulf war. Jacques Chirac was friendly to Saadam even in the 70s and France was the nation that helped him build a nuclear reactor and they generally shared a good relationship. The US on the other hand have been undermining Iraqi government since the 60s. Can't really compare the two.

[King Kebab]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/show...3#post38338013

I doubt they could. France didn't screw over Iraq the same way USA did. The US was the one that called for invasion in the first gulf war. Jacques Chirac was friendly to Saadam even in the 70s and France was the nation that helped him build a nuclear reactor and they generally shared a good relationship. The US on the other hand have been undermining Iraqi government since the 60s. Can't really compare the two.

Thanks, I'll have a look in good time.

The USA could easily have made a deal for oil in Iraq. They could have made a deal to get oil by agreeing not to interfere with Saddam. I suspect Saddam would have been happy to agree with a compromise like this.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by King Kebab)
Thanks, I'll have a look in good time.

The USA could easily have made a deal for oil in Iraq. They could have made a deal to get oil by agreeing not to interfere with Saddam. I suspect Saddam would have been happy to agree with a compromise like this.

BRB trusting a country which has been undermining you since the 60s.

YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

And the US wouldn't even trust Saadam because they were trying to weaken him so he didn't develop weapons. If they stopped interfering then he would develop weapons of mass destruction thus creating problems from their other allies i.e. Saudi Arabia and Israel.

[King Kebab]

I meant by not removing him from power via invasion. They could have made a deal to get oil and for him to stop developing nuclear weapons but agree that he could stay in power. I still think the war had nothing to do with oil.

It was a huge misjudgement and I believe history will show that.

[rawkus]

(Original post by King Kebab)
I believe Bush and Blair believed (wrongly) that Western intervention would emancipate the people of Iraq.

No, I don't think it is ridiculous to believe Bush wanted to emancipate people living under terror.

How could Bush have invaded Iraq at the time of the mass killings if he wasn't President until 2001?

Saddam was torturing and brutalizing his own people at the time of the war albeit not on a mass scale like he was in the early 1990's.

I am not forgetting about the sanctions. I don't agree at all with sanctions. They almost never work and only hurt the civilians in the country rather than the leaders of the country.

I opposed the war. I don't however believe the outcry about oil has any credibility though.

lol, this reads as though you just mindlessly memorised a list of sound bites. I don't agree with you nor OP but at least he provides substance to what he says. Annoying-Mouse was right, if this war was to emancipate the Iraqi people from the brutalities of Saddam's reign, why was it undertaken in 2001 and not the 1980s when Saddam was still brutalising his people, but was a key ally of the US in the middle east?

[King Kebab]

(Original post by rawkus)
lol, this reads as though you just mindlessly memorised a list of sound bites. I don't agree with you nor OP but at least he provides substance to what he says. Annoying-Mouse was right, if this war was to emancipate the Iraqi people from the brutalities of Saddam's reign, why was it undertaken in 2001 and not the 1980s when Saddam was still brutalising his people, but was a key ally of the US in the middle east?

It was undertaken in 2003, not 2001.

Because Western foreign policy is very renowned for being Hypocritical. The WMD provided an excuse to invade in 2003. This excuse could not have been used in the 1980's.

[Aj12]

(Original post by King Kebab)
It was undertaken in 2003, not 2001.

Because Western foreign policy is very renowned for being Hypocritical. The WMD provided an excuse to invade in 2003. This excuse could not have been used in the 1980's.

It was during the 1980's when Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iran. I can't think of a better time to invade than whilst Saddam is using those kinds of weapons. We did't invade during the 1980's because Saddam was dealing with Iran for us and it was useful for America to have him onside.

[Clessus]

(Original post by King Kebab)
It was undertaken in 2003, not 2001.

Because Western foreign policy is very renowned for being Hypocritical. The WMD provided an excuse to invade in 2003. This excuse could not have been used in the 1980's.

Western foreign policy is hypocritical and oppertunistic, but Russian and China's isn't?

It is also important to remember that the 1980s was a completely different time; The Cold War was at its height, during which supporting dictatorships was hardly solely an action of the West. The Americans were not the only ones to supply Saddam, people tend to forget that the bulk of Saddam Hussein's military weapons came from the Soviet Union, including most of his SCUD missiles, for which he was notorious. America was under that scumbag Ronald Reagan, whose foreign policy was far worse than George Bush's.

[King Kebab]

(Original post by Aj12)
It was during the 1980's when Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iran. I can't think of a better time to invade than whilst Saddam is using those kinds of weapons. We did't invade during the 1980's because Saddam was dealing with Iran for us and it was useful for America to have him onside.

That's why I said Western foreign policy is hypocritical. It is similar to Osama Bin Laden. The West supported him during the cold war.

[King Kebab]

(Original post by Clessus)
Western foreign policy is hypocritical and oppertunistic, but Russian and China's isn't?

Did I say that?

[Clessus]

(Original post by King Kebab)
Did I say that?

Your comment was phrased in such a way that implied that only the West's foreign policy was cynical, and I was reminding people that displaying cynicism and hypocracy in foreign policy is hardly unique to the West, as too many people who make that argument are all too willing to forget.

[King Kebab]

(Original post by Clessus)
Your comment was phrased in such a way that implied that only the West's foreign policy was cynical, and I was reminding people that displaying cynicism and hypocracy in foreign policy is hardly unique to the West, as too many people who make that argument are all too willing to forget.

Perhaps it came across that way. I would imagine all countries foreign policy have had a degree of hypocrisy to it.

[Clessus]

(Original post by King Kebab)
That's why I said Western foreign policy is hypocritical. It is similar to Osama Bin Laden. The West supported him during the cold war.

I should also say that the supposed relationship between the CIA and Bin Laden is at best unproven and controvertial. There are no eyewitness accounts, no first hand testimony and no official documentation to support it beyond conspiracy theory status. The aid that went towards the mujahadeen went to Afghan - not foreign - mujahideen. With a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land.

Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention the foreign mujahadeen. Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.

No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers (thanks to Pakistan). The foreign mujahadeen had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders.

[rawkus]

(Original post by King Kebab)
It was undertaken in 2003, not 2001.

Because Western foreign policy is very renowned for being Hypocritical. The WMD provided an excuse to invade in 2003. This excuse could not have been used in the 1980's.

yeah my bad.

well no because once the WMD excuse had been discredited and shown to be false, the cause then sort of morphed into the 'liberation of the Iraqi people'. You yourself mentioned the brutalities of Saddam merited the war?

[King Kebab]

(Original post by rawkus)
yeah my bad.

well no because once the WMD excuse had been discredited and shown to be false, the cause then sort of morphed into the 'liberation of the Iraqi people'. You yourself mentioned the brutalities of Saddam merited the war?

Many people thought Saddam did have them though.

I opposed the war.

I think the West should have done something when Saddam was carrying out his extermination of the Kurds long before the eventual invasion in March 2003.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by King Kebab)
Many people thought Saddam did have them though.

Who are many people? Inspectors from UNSCOM who made those claims retracted them and their initial statements are dubious even their colleagues constantly discredit each other (Scott Ritter was discredited by Richard Butler who was discredited by Christopher Kremmer). German intelligence was found to be shoddy before the invasion. Khidir Hamza was unreliable even before the invasion.

It's pretty clear that the US were intent on making a WMD-argument even if it was unreliable.