From: jturner@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Jeffrey Turner)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Foreign policy musings
Date: 1 Sep 92 02:43:13 GMT
	<Bt6Dw1.9CF@world.std.com> <2796988236@dwetzel.mis.stratus.com>
	<BZS.92Aug18195036@ussr.std.com>
	<JTURNER.92Aug21202104@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu>
	<BZS.92Aug21234633@ussr.std.c
Organization: College of Engineering, Northeastern University
In-reply-to: bzs@ussr.std.com's message of 30 Aug 92 01:07:29 GMT

In article <BZS.92Aug29200729@ussr.std.com> bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:

> From: jturner@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Jeffrey Turner)
> >	I never intended to justify Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
> >I castigated the US invasion of Iraq.

> To my knowledge the US has not invaded Iraq. Do you know something
> different? Or do you mean you consider Kuwait to be part of Iraq?

	Well, if you don't count air space as belonging to a
country.  But then I have felt that you are living in another
century (or was that another planet?).

> Then why did the Allies limit themselves, within reason, to strategic
> targets? How much was destroyed in Baghdad? (a lot) How many people
> were killed in Baghdad? (not many) Why? Because much of the bombing
> was confined to verifiably strategic targets, bridges, power stations,
> communications hubs.

	By whose count?  oh, and I suppose water purification plants
and sewage treatment plants are military targets?

> Obviously in many cases we even warned them to evacuate or bombed when
> a facility was emptied (remember that footage of ``the luckiest man in
> baghdad'' when they took another fly around to let a guy drive off the
> bridge before hitting it? I know, you think it's hogwash, you don't
> know why however other than you want to believe otherwise.)

	Gee, a couple hundred thousand dead and they are so
concerned about one civilian when they're on national TV.  Pure
"sound bite" Amerikan conscience.  The US dropped more bombs than...
go ahead, you pick a war.

> Even much of that was calculated crap, the same Iraqi woman (who just
> happens to speak English quite well) appears on videotapes at several
> completely unrelated sites chastising the press and the US. That has
> been independently reported here on the net by people who home-taped
> CNN broadcasts.

	Oh I see.  All the civilian damage was Iraqi hype.
The US had no right nor moral justification for being there IF
you do more than parrot the self-serving twaddle coming out of
Washington.  So what does it matter how hyped it was THE US WAS
WRONG TO BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

> You know, to be honest, you ought to read the sort of stuff Nazis in
> America wrote during WWII to defend Nazi Germany's actions. It's
> almost like you just substitute the protagonists from that stuff,
> never talk about what the other side has done, only keep questioning
> the "legality" or "morality" of everything the other side does, "How
> dare the US/France/Britain interfere with Mr Hitler's internal
> policies". Etc.

	More Hussein = Hitler nonsense.  Gimme a break.

> Maybe Bush ain't no angel, I don't love the guy, but this Saddam
> feller is one evil, brutal bastard with more blood on his hands than
> you are apparently capable of imagining.

	Did I defend him?  Did I leave him in power?  Why can't
you see that two wrongs do not make a right nor that there are other
ways to settle international differences than with military muscle?

> Including 1 million deaths in
> his war with Iran, gasssing of Kurdish civilians against all
> international standards, the brutal and unrelenting slaughter of his
> own people because they happen to be Shiite, random bombing of
> uninvolved (militarily) civilian nations, the invasion and rape of
> Kuwait, and the callous and reckless disregard for his own soldiers'
> lives leaving them to literally rot in bunkers in Southern Iraq and
> Kuwait for apparently no purpose other than to assuage his own ego.

	To the US establishment, as exemplified by Bush, 1 million
deaths is small potatoes.  (thanks dan).  And none of those deaths
bothered the US until a few thousand very wealthy and strategically
allied Kuwaitis were killed or threatened.  Why do you believe,
against all other available evidence, that the US was/is a moral
actor on the world stage??

> No thank you, it's unfortunate SH is still alive.

	But doesn't THAT FACT discount all your blubbering about how
horrible he is and how the US was right to try to get rid of him,
even to the point of killing a hundred thousand Iraqis who weren't
him before packing up and going home?

					--Jeff Turner