Christopher Hitchens writes a great piece today on how the Iraq situation SHOULD of played out, if some of our “allies” had not been in bed with Saddam and some of our “citizens” had showed the same concern for the victims of Saddam’s brutality as they do when some terrorists get panties put over their head:
This commitment doesn’t override truth, and I know that a lot of people feel that they were cheated or even lied into the war. It seems amazing to me that so many people have adopted the “Saddam Hussein? No problem!” view before the documents captured from his regime have even been translated, let alone analyzed. I am sure that when this task has been completed, history will make fools of those who believed that he was no threat, had no terror connections, was “in his box,” and so forth.
[…]Saddam Hussein wanted, until the very last days, to maintain ambiguity about his possession of weapons of mass destruction. Given his past record, there was absolutely no reason why any serious government should have taken his word that he had dropped this stance. (And we also know, from the Duelfer report and many other sources, that he hoped to retain his latent ability to restart production once the sanctions?which were themselves a crime against the Iraqi people?had been lifted or rendered ineffective.) It is in the light of that last point that one of the article’s crucial discoveries must be read. Saddam believed until the end that the French and Russian governments would save him. He also knew what we?at the time?did not: The oil-for-food system had turned into a self-sustaining racket that cemented his support in French and Russian circles. He thought that contracts would speak louder than words, and in this instance he wasn’t completely crazy to do so.
So, now I come at last to my ideal war. Let us start with President Bush’s speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, which I recommend that you read. Contrary to innumerable sneers, he did not speak only about WMD and terrorism, important though those considerations were. He presented an argument for regime change and democracy in Iraq and said, in effect, that the international community had tolerated Saddam’s deadly system for far too long. Who could disagree with that? Here’s what should have happened. The other member states of the United Nations should have said: Mr. President, in principle you are correct. The list of flouted U.N. resolutions is disgracefully long. Law has been broken, genocide has been committed, other member-states have been invaded, and our own weapons inspectors insulted and coerced and cheated. Let us all collectively decide how to move long-suffering Iraq into the post-Saddam era. We shall need to consider how much to set aside to rebuild the Iraqi economy, how to sponsor free elections, how to recuperate the devastated areas of the marshes and Kurdistan, how to try the war criminals, and how many multinational forces to ready for this task. In the meantime?this is of special importance?all governments will make it unmistakably plain to Saddam Hussein that he can count on nobody to save him. All Iraqi diplomats outside the country, and all officers and officials within it, will receive the single message that it is time for them to switch sides or face the consequences. Then, when we are ready, we shall issue a unanimous ultimatum backed by the threat of overwhelming force. We call on all democratic forces in all countries to prepare to lend a hand to the Iraqi people and assist them in recovering from more than three decades of fascism and war.
Not a huge amount to ask, when you think about it. But what did the president get instead? The threat of unilateral veto from Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Private assurances to Saddam Hussein from members of the U.N. Security Council. Pharisaic fatuities from the United Nations’ secretary-general, who had never had a single problem wheeling and dealing with Baghdad. The refusal to reappoint Rolf Ekeus?the only serious man in the U.N. inspectorate?to the job of invigilation. A tirade of opprobrium, accusing Bush of everything from an oil grab to a vendetta on behalf of his father to a secret subordination to a Jewish cabal. Platforms set up in major cities so that crowds could be harangued by hardened supporters of Milosevic and Saddam, some of them paid out of the oil-for-food bordello.
Well, if everyone else is allowed to rewind the tape and replay it, so can I. We could have been living in a different world, and so could the people of Iraq, and I shall go on keeping score about this until the last phony pacifist has been strangled with the entrails of the last suicide-murderer.
Yes, I know, he is wasting his breath and his time trying to talk some common sense into the leftist believe system.? All they know is their Bush hatred, nothing else matters.
The only real scandal in the Iraq war is the oil for food program, but do we hear about it anymore?? These “allies” were purposely working against us, and in the meantime helping to fund the rape rooms and feed Saddam’s ego.? So much so that Saddam believed our “allies” would save him in the end.
On another note, why has the MSM stopped harping on our casualty count?
The press is marking the third anniversary of the liberation of Iraq with an avalanche of reports that a sectarian “civil war” has broken out, which, reporters say, means U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are on the verge of failure.
But only a few short weeks ago reporters were measuring success [or, in their case, failure] in Iraq by a completely different standard: the number of U.S. troops killed in combat operations.
So why the shift in focus? It turns out that while the so-called Iraqi civil war has been raging, the number of U.S. casualties has plummeted to less than half of what they were over the previous five months.
In fact, if the current trend continues, March will be the second least deadly month for American GIs since the war began.
According to the Web site Lunaville.com – which keeps the most comprehensive and up to date statistics on U.S. casualties – about one soldier a day (1.1) has died in Iraq during the first three weeks in March.
That’s a vast improvement over February’s numbers, when U.S. troops were dying at the rate of 2.07 per day. In every month since November 2005, the U.S. death rate has topped 2 per day. In October, it was over 3.
The lowest U.S. troop death rate since the U.S. invaded was in February 2004, when less than one soldier per day (.79) was killed in combat operations.
Big credit goes to the U.S. military: The soldiers on the ground whose efforts to train Iraqis to do the frontline fighting themselves are getting the job done.
Still, don’t look for much coverage of this dramatic turn of events – especially from reporters for whom “good news is no news” in Iraq.
Amazing how you have to dig to find this kind of story in the media.? If this had been a horrible month? casualty wise we would hear nothing but.? It would be plastered all over the MSM.
Other’s Blogging:
The only real scandal in the Iraq war is the oil for food program, but do we hear about it anymore? These “allies” were purposely working against us, and in the meantime helping to fund the rape rooms and feed Saddam’s ego. So much so that Saddam believed our “allies” would save him in the end.
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