Iraq is such a mess--should we bring back Saddam?

[Blue_Roses]

I know, I know, it's not possible, but after reading about the latest suicide bombings in Iraq:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15873863/

I can't help but wonder if things will ever be peaceful over there. It breaks my heart to see the killing that is going on in the name WHAT? Religion? Territory? What the hell is it going to take to get this place under some kind of peaceful resolution? As I sit here and read about these "militiamen" pouring kerosene and setting these people a blaze, I agree more and more with Bill Maher's comment about Saddam needing to be put back in power. Whether that sounds like crazy talk or not, it's for damn sure it couldn't be much more crazy than the crap going on there now:crazy:

What a f****** mess!!:argh:

[LeighAnn]

1. Not crazy talk

Put him back, then get ready to spend the rest of our lives paying reparations. And imprison Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rice, Powell, and others. Too bad we attacked a nation that did nothing to us.

[Blue_Roses]

2. Bush did this and he will end up being remembered as the

worst President in history. History will not be kind.

[spillthebeans]

3. They should have let Jay Garner do his work, instead of

firing him, putting Paul Bremer in and resolving the army

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

30. Jay Garner was a peach.

:sarcasm:

[partylessinOhio]

4. Saddam had Iraq under control. Compared to * he was idolized.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Saddam had three things we never will have in Iraq

An army consisting of half a million soldiers.

A fully functioning police force.

A top notch intelligence service who actually spoke Arabic.

Don

[everythingsxen]

6. Even if we could, we shouldn't

Saddam was an asshole. I mean, let's face it even if the crimes he committed were exaggerated, he was still a pretty bad guy. We should not have attacked in the first place, but that is a another matter entirely. But now as the situation is we cannot simply put the genie back in the bottle. The best thing we can do is split Iraq into 3 separate territories of Kurdistan, Shiastan and Sunnistan. Take Baghdad, divide it up ala Berlin post WW2 and have some areas that are "neutral ground". That's all we can do. If they want to keep fighting after that, they will and there is little we can do about it.

[Imagevision]

8. split Iraq into 3 separate territories? - US. should stop nation building

They've got their own government! - time to pull the plug!!

[canetoad]

10. Sorry, but I disagree vehemently

What the US should do is admit it has failed. Withdraw troops immediately, throwing large wads of cash behind to rebuild what they have destroyed. Then, in abject humility, ask for advice and help from the United Nations and every other country in the world.

That would go about one tenth of the way towards making good the damage it has caused.

[everythingsxen]

14. Right well we can do that too...

However, the best possible thing we could do would be to partition the country as fairly and equitably as possible and split them up. Otherwise, we will leave and Iran will march a million troops across the border and hook up with the Shi'a forces and wipe out or suppress the Sunnis and Kurds and there will be "peace". The peace of unburied death unfortunately for most of the people.

Splitting the country though and stepping down our forces is the better way to proceed. Then it doesn't give Iran any justification to enter Iraq and it will mean more lives are saved.

[canetoad]

20. Yeah, like the Shia's will not want the Kurds land

or the Sunnis.

Get real - this is just further arrogance. What happens when Iran builds an alliance with the majority Shi'ites? Partitioning is short sighted and only under consideration because it MAY save some US face. I can just see it now, 'We gave them all a state, now lookee, they keep on fighting among themselves.'

It makes me more than angry when I see Iraqis blamed for the mess that the US started, continued and refuses to gracefully withdraw from. It's their fucking country, not the US's to divvy up as they see fit.

[everythingsxen]

21. Well if you want to get technical..

I have yet to blame the Iraqi's for the situation at hand. It is the US fault, but it is what it is. Partitioning is the most realistic option. Especially if we just dissolve Iraq as a whole nation and make it 3 countries, which of course is what it was before the British and French redrew the maps after WWI.

[canetoad]

37. Partitioning is NOT a realistic option

It's the tragic last stand of an imperialistic power, desperate to rescue some tiny shred of credibility on the world stage.

Get out now and pay what is due to the Iraqi people. Mate, I don't much care if it leaves the US in debt for generations to come. May be a lesson to you to stop invading countries that have not attacked you.

[flying_monkeys]

40. Iraq was only hobbled together recently. I vote let them go back to tribal rule

That area has been fighting for how many centuries? It can only be ruled by a brutal dictator, and that isn't really helping any nation (much less the general populous of Iraq).


Let it break up like Yugoslavia did (another recently "hobbled" together "country) and let them self rule themselves.


Iraq was broken lonnnnnng before B*** got into it - - yes, he made it wayyyy worse - - but we can't "fix" what was broken even before Dubya got his fingers into the pie.


I think the USA should just pull out with an "Oooops, my bad" and let the factions there determine just what *they* want....

[LynnTheDem]

35. Ever wonder why the world considers Americans to be

so damn arrogant?

[newsdude]

18. pie in the sky

who decides how the money will spent?
Who decides where the oil money goes?
Who decides who decides?

[canetoad]

38. A damn good start

would be Iraqis making the decisions for themselves.

Haul Halliburton and KBR out of there by the short and curlies. By their corruption they have forfeited any right to profit from Iraq reconstruction. Employ Iraqis to carry out all jobs from engineering and design to construction and contract administration.

[LynnTheDem]

34. Who the fuck is this "we", Kemosabe?

It sure as hell ain't the people of Iraq.

[Subdivisions]

7. Saddam has been convicted of heinous crimes and sentenced

to die by hanging. If he was restored, you'd see vengeance on a Biblical scale.

[LynnTheDem]

36. No actually.

He was sentenced to die because he signed death penalty warrants for 120 Iraqis found guilty & sentenced to death by the Iraq court.

George w. bush has signed more death warrants than Hussein was convicted for.

FACTS.

[originalpckelly]

9. No, what you are seeing is real democracy in motion...

in other parts of the world where disparate cultures were thrown together by the colonial powers, such as in Africa, people fought massive and bloody civil wars. In countries like Vietnam, the people fought each other and had an awful civil war which killed many many people, but afterwards the country was one and it has done pretty well in the past decade.

We overthrew a government without the consent of the governed. In this case they were happy for a moment that Saddam was out, but then they soon remember how much they hated each other.

They didn't know what democracy was, they still don't or they wouldn't be killing each other for political and religious beliefs. That is in fact the practical implication of overthrowing a government without the consent of the governed, they didn't make the choice, and so they didn't know what they could have. The government they have now is almost undoubtedly considered illegitimate, a sort of puppet regime, because it is.

I have faith, however, that if Iraq isn't invaded by Iran, that Iraq will one day become a real democracy. It will only happen when all the people of Iraq understand what democracy is and why they want to preserve it, and why they should be willing to compromise.

[Blue_Roses]

11. it's gonna take many years for that country to see

itself as a democracy. I don't think it will happen in our lifetime.

[Disturbed]

16. The Dems have no plan.

Oh, wait, that's a Rethug lie.


Kucinich 10 point plan

1. The United States must ask the United Nations to manage the oil assets of Iraq until the Iraqi people are self-governing.

2.The United Nations must handle all the contracts: No more Halliburton sweetheart deals, No contracts to Bush Administration insiders, No contracts to campaign contributors. All contracts must be awarded under transparent conditions.

3. The United States must renounce any plans to privatize Iraq. It is illegal under both the Geneva and the Hague Conventions for any nation to invade another nation, seize its assets, and sell those assets. The Iraqi people, and the Iraqi people alone must have the right to determine the future of their country's resources.

4. The United States must ask the United Nations to handle the transition to Iraqi self-governance. The UN must be asked to help the Iraqi people develop a Constitution. The UN must assist in developing free and fair elections.

5. The United States must agree to pay for what we blew up.

6. The United States must pay reparations to the families of innocent Iraqi civilian noncombatants killed and injured in the conflict.

7. The United States must contribute financially to the UN peacekeeping mission.

8. The United Nations, through its member nations, will commit 130,000 peacekeepers to Iraq on a temporary basis until the Iraqi people can maintain their own security.

9. UN troops will rotate into Iraq, and all US troops will come home.

10. The United States will abandon policies of "preemption" and unilateralism and commit to strengthening the UN.

.

[canetoad]

23. He's a good man, Kucinich

And his plan is the best I've seen yet.

Now I have no way of proving this so you'll just have to take my word; before the Iraq invasion, when the US was trying to gain support from UN and other countries my prediction was this. The US will go it alone, fuck it up and the UN and rest of the world will HAVE to wade in and sort it out - because it is the humanitarian thing to do. We have not reached the last stage of my prediction yet, but it won't be long.

[NNN0LHI]

12. More than 600,000 dead men, women and children is real democracy in motion?

Still sounds like genocide to me.

don

[originalpckelly]

19. With a population of 3 million Liberia lost an estimate 200,000...

which percentage wise is far less than Iraq so far. However, now in 2006 they are a democracy, I believe it was last year that their FEMALE President came to speak before a joint session of Congress.

This is what the neo-cons fail to understand, you can't force your beliefs on people they have to want to believe themselves. They sometimes have to see the horrors of war to want to avoid them.

This however, probably didn't have to happen. If we had simply taught them about liberty and what kind of lives they could be living if it weren't for Saddam, and then supported them if they wanted to overthrow him, then I doubt the civil war would be as bad as it is going to get or that it would have lasted as long as it will.

[Imagevision]

13. Ask the Iraqi's, do you want saddam back or, Do you want Bush to continue??

[ECH1969]

15. Saddam was a monster

He went beyond what was needed to maintain security in Iraq like gassing civilians.

Iraq needs a new strongman, but not Saddam.

[newsdude]

17. it won't be saddam

But the US is going to have to install an authoritarian leader to at least get the situation under control
And then that blood will be on our hands.

either way, we're the bad guys.

[MrSlayer]

22. I doubt even he could do anything about the situation now.

It's gone way too far and a lot of his key guys are dead or imprisoned. He wouldn't be able to put it back together again. We should have never bothered him to begin with.

[Big Sky Boy]

31. Yes but we need someone like him.

Tito kept a lid on the Balkan pressure cooker for over 40 years.

Saddam performed a similar function in Iraq. Brutal yes--but I find it impossible to argue he was worse than what is happening right now.

When we leave (not if but when) there will be ethnic cleansing on the scale of Darfur. We need someone who can rule with an iron fist and minimize those casualties.

[MrSlayer]

33. I agree.

Quite frankly, compared to the way things are now, a Saddam type seems more than reasonable. I don't know that we'll be leaving that soon though.

[Karenina]

24. The imperialist arrogance on this thread

is grotesque. :puke::puke::puke: GO HOME. The Iraqis will deal with the hand you've dealt them and YOU will deal with the hand you've dealt yourselves.

[canetoad]

25. Hear hear!

Bad, bad karma.

[fujiyama]

32. You said it

Even among liberals, there is still a sense of arrogance - WE will partition THEIR country. WE will install a strongman.

HOW ABOUT WE JUST GET THE FUCK OUT AND LET THEM DEAL WITH THEIR PROBLEMS?

We've caused enough problems going in the first place, and we'll be causing problems being there. Saddam is now a distant memory. He's irrelevant and would not be able to put that place back together.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Golden Raisin]

27. What do you mean?

Our supreme leader told us the "Mission was Accomplished". Can't you see Democracy is flourishing in Iran and Afghanistan. Peace and prosperity reign and the USA is beloved by the average Iraqi citizen. Stop being so negative. We're turning the corner and making lots of progress. Dick Cheney said so.

[spanone]

28. It's absolutely criminal what bushco has done to the Iraqi nation.

Unprovoked attack on a nation with false evidence and no plan whatsoever.

[and-justice-for-all]

29. Give Iraq to Iran and .....

....other surrounding nations to divide up and take care of. Expand the surrounding counttries terrory to include portions of Iraq and maybe in the distant future once things have settled it can be return back to the Iraqi people.

[canetoad]

39. Get OUTTA here

Do you not wonder how people from other countries find it hard to take US foreign policy seriously?

[and-justice-for-all]

41. So, what do you recommed? nt