Should Canada Go To Iraq?

dylan_infantry said:
thank you for the compliment, are in the army if so witch country

dylan

I'm from Italy (...) but we can't go off-topic, man. PM me for further questions and I'll be more than happy to answer.
 
Missileer said:
You're right, we should broaden our horizons.

CRIMES OF RECENT TIMES IN CANADA -Dr. Daya Hewapathirane, For Sinhalaya Worldwide

Roman Catholic and Christian religious residential school programs for the indigenous native children of Canada have existed in eight of the ten provinces of Canada for over 100 years until the 1970s. The indigenous children of these schools have been subjected to rape, beatings and emotional abuse by the Catholics and Christians who ran these schools. The children suffered and continue to suffer from the terrible effects of School abuse. The schools were run by Roman Catholic, Anglican Christian, Presbyterian Christian, and United Churches.

What does this have to do with Canada going to Iraq.
 
CanadianCombat said:
What does this have to do with Canada going to Iraq.

Well, this was in answer to the following post which alluded to the fact that we here in the US don't keep up with news articles anywhere except in our own local sources. There is negative news about any country if you search the web. This has gotten totally off topic and is slipping into country flaming.

Quote: I can understand you doing so. But if you see things from the POV of someone sitting in another country, with access to ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, then BBC, CBC, CTV, Global and Reuters, the BS flag would not be very quick to come out. Unquote.

At all.

Dean.

(no, I'm still not.):m1:
 
Italian Guy said:
Bin Laden was talking about the first Gulf War, the one with the UN brandmark and the approval of many Arab countries. Just like the London alqaidists don’t make any distinction between wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and exactly like Al Zarqawi never make it a problem to blow up the UN base in Baghdad killing 22 UN employees, Bin Laden doesn’t make any difference and believes it’s all part of the great war against the west and the moderate arab countries.
The Saddam defeated and abandoned by the other arab leaders (apart from Arafat) turned out to be a natural ally. Osama shared a common political plan with Saddam: Take over the whole arab world, chase the Americans and erase Israel.
But there’s more: It was Clinton the liberal, in 1998, who preemptively bombed a foreign country, Sudan, because it was developing together with Iraq chemical weapons to provide Al Qaeda. Richard Clarke, the then chief of anti-terrorism and today Bush’s archenemy, justified the bombings of the pharmaceutical facility of Shifa with these words: “The intelligence data link Bin Laden to the current responsibles of the factory, which are the Iraqi experts of nervine gas and Sudanese Islamic National Front”. On an email sent to the then National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke wrote that the presence of those Iraqis was “probably a direct outcome of the Iraq- Al Qaeda agreement”.
Nobody would ever question that, back then.

I have no major problem with Clinton's actions concerning the Sudan. As long as the information was irrefutable, it was pretty justified. However, it was extensively questioned outside of the US, and in fact, the general consensus was that there were no chemical weapons being produced at that site, although there was a project to do exactly that. As I saw it, the end result of that attack was to warn other countries what could happen if you let A-Q or other terrorists get too active in your country. The warning was heeded, so the raid was worth it. Personally, I believe that it was this event that got Quaddafi to open his sites to inspectors.

Italian Guy said:
Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, interrogated by the 9/11 Commission, confirmed last year that the Sudanese facility “had to do with Bin Laden and with the Iraqi chemical weapons plan leadership”.
The relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda have been acknowledged by the 9/11 Commission as follows: “Bin Laden has looked for the possibility of a cooperation with Iraq when he resided in Sudan”. The bi-partisan Commission goes ahead: “In order to protect their own relations with Baghdad, the Sudanese arranged contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq. A top rank officer from Iraq’s secret services went to Sudan three times, and met Osama Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden asked for large spaces for his training camps and assistance for weapons, but apparently Iraq never answered”.

That says a lot right there. If you want to diplomatically say no, but not to someones's face, you say, "I'll get back to you." Gawd knows, I've heard it often enough... usually from someone who is quite cute! (sigh)

Italian Guy said:
More: “The contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq went on also when Bin Laden went back to Afghanistan, but it doesn’ t seem like they brought to a collaborative relationship”. The Commission could not go any further with its inquiries because its task was only bound to 9/11, and this is why it doesn’t have “credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated in the attacks against America”, which is the attack on the Twin Towers. But the Commission does have evidence of meetings, contacts and exchange of intelligence.

"nuff said.

Italian Guy said:
Today, one year after that report, more confirmations begin to flow in, and they are weirdly ignored by the American journalists, with the exceptions of Stephen Hayes, author of “The Connection”, and author of a long and detailed reportage on more recent developments published by the Weekly Standard. He was told that a US intelligence base in Iraq is analyzing more than one million pages confiscated in the secret services offices after Saddam’s fall. In some of the first checked documentations they found that, starting in 1992, the Iraqi regime considered Bin Laden as an asset of its own secret services. It has been read that Saddam protected and hid the Iraqi who admitted he had prepared the bomb for the 1993 WTC attack.
It can be found that Saddam accepted Osama’s request of broadcasting anti-Saudi propaganda on State-owned Iraqi National Tv.
Hudayfa Azzam, son of Bin Laden’s right arm, said that “before the Iraqi war Saddam open armedly welcomed Al Qaeda members which had entered the country in large numbers to arrange a network that would oppose the occupation”.

Interesting hypothesis. I am going to have to read this, it sounds very interesting, and I'd really like to know who his sources are.
The fact that this was "weirdly ignored" by the media may also tell you something. We all know that journalists have their biases, but western journalists are always very fussy about their sources. It may be that the journalists could not find any other confirming sources, in which case they would not have been able to publish. Then again, if there is only one source, the entire story may well be untrue, half true, misinformation or disinformation. In all of these cases, no journalist would have touched it with a ten foot pole. It would be the end of their careers.

Italian Guy said:
King Abdullah of Jordan repeatedly stated that before the war his goverment asked Saddam to turn over Zarqawi, Jordan citizen.
On 1998, February 3, twenty days before the total war declaration on America due to the sufferings caused “to the Iraqi people”, Al Qaeda number 2 man, Ayman al Zawahiri, went to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi leaders. According to the weekly US News and World Report, now confirmed by the documentations found in Baghdad, he was given 300,000 $. The 9/11 Commission added that it found evidence that a few days after Osama’s fatwa two Al Qaeda affiliates “went to Iraq and met with secret services officers”. From Baghdad papers new evidence appears that one of the two affiliates stayed in town from March 5 to 16, in room # 414 at Mansour Hotel. The 9/11 Commission wrote that “a few months later an Iraqi delegation went to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban and also with Bin Laden”. According to the Commission these meeting were arranged by Al Zawahiri, “who had ties with the Iraqis”.
Zawahiri’s visit to Baghdad took place at the same time as one of the yearly Islamist meetings called Islamic People’s Conference, alike to those organized by the fundamentalist Hasan Al Turabi, architect of the Islamist Revolution in Sudan in 1989. The one of 1992 called for 500 Islamists to gather and transform Iraq into “the fortress of islamist jihad surrounded by atheist forces”. Saddam’s Islamist Conferences, started in 1983, regularly took place until the regime’s fall, and had the esplicit goal of involving laicists and islamists in the common fight against America. The Fourth Conference was opened by a message from Saddam depicting war with America as the war between “believers and infidels”. Saddam always tried to match the Islamic extremism with the arab-iraqi nationalism, since the Iran-Iraq war era.

He needed all of the friends he could get. However, I don't think much ever came of this as it was seen by many as nothing more than an attempt by Hussein to appear more "Arab" or "Islamist". His image was in tatters, and he knew that the only way to get more allies was to make himself more palatable to his erstwhile allies. But seriously, do you really think he would have allowed Iraq to be turned into a "fortress of Islamist jihad"? Not likely. He knew that it was power that he could not control. He would not have risked it

Italian Guy said:
All this exposes the fallacy of the “non-religious nature of Saddam’s regime”.

Here, we have to agree to disagree. I believe, and will always believe that his regime was only "religious" when it could be advantageous to itself. At other times, none of the regime members ever paid the slightest attention to Islamic values. For example, according to the Koran, it is a mortal sim for one Muslim to kill another. Saddam Hussein stood that one on it's ear...

Italian Guy said:
After the 1991 defeat, the rais insisted for a strong islamist breakthru of Iraq well visible in the rhetorics, such as the ongoing references to jihad and the writing inserted in the middle of the flag “Allah is great”. In the Baghdad Great Mosque, inaugurated in 2002, he had 650 Koran pages shown, along with 20 liters of his own blood donated in 20 years.
As a result of the Clinton’s bombings on Baghdad in December 1998, which went on for 4 days, Saddam sent his most trusted agent, Faruq Hijazi, to Afghanistan to meet Bin Laden. Newspapers from around the world wrote about it. Even Italian most important newspaper made headlines “Saddam Hussein and Osama made an agreement”. Newsweek quoted an arab agent who said “Very soon you are going to witness a large number of terrorist attacks worldwide aimed at Western targets, led by Iraqis”.

Did it happen? At this time, did a state of war exist between the US and Iraq?

Italian Guy said:
Information was convergent: Osama wanted to move to Baghdad. Richard Clarke wrote very clearly that had Osama been aware of American plans on Afghanistan he would have very likely fled to Iraq.

I'm sorry it's the first time I post something this long.

No problem for me. I am finding that my posts are getting longer and longer with time. Approaching senility, no doubt. I am going to have to read Clarke, as some of the ideas and theses he proposes are very interesting.
 
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Italian Guy said:
It wasn't mine. Those were the media, my friend. The media love to pick those aspects that can draw the people's attention and alarm. That is precisely what happened there. But no, terrorism was not necessarily related to AQ in that context, and the democracy issue proves it.
I am not going to touch the "democracy issue" in this thread. It was a non-starter from the beginning, and if the US government thinks that it can install a US style government based on the constitution that has been adopted, they will have to leave the troops there for at least 12 to 20 years.


Italian Guy said:
Pretty naive of you. You kind of figure the world works just like a single country does. It does not. The world does not work like Portugal or Kansas does.

Maybe I am a pie-in-the-sky optimist, but I have always believed that you have to practice what you preach. All of the western countries, including the US want to spread the idea of political freedom. But if you want that spread to be successful, people have to have a reason to adopt it. The US has been rather strange about which governments it supports, and as a result, many people feel that the ideals that the US preaches are for convenience only. The US has supported dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, Vietnam (3) Iraq, (yes you read that correctly) Indonesia, and elsewhere. People in other countries know this and think, "yeah right, they're after the oil". I can't blame them.
If the US has the right to go to war and that the burden of proof for a crime is on the accused country, it is hypocritical at best and despotic at worst. The Soviet Union (Finland, Afghanistan) and Nazi Germany (all of their wars, but particularly the USSR) went to war for the same reasons. Are you suggesting that the US should follow suit?

Italian Guy said:
See, the point here is I do not trust the UN nor do I trust any of its representatives, one of the wisest things the US ever did was not trusting the UN. And more and more people are starting to feel the same way around the world. You are not exactly talking to a huge UN fan.
Then please (you said: "Also, the Iraqis also got very cooperative in the final months as Hussein was desperate to avoid a war that he knew he could not win") do not forget what you hero Blix said on March 7, 2003:

Well, the fact that the UN and their weapons inspectors were right should make you feel better. They may be far more trustworthy that we all thought. :roll:
Seriously though, I also have my problems with the UN. Having been involved in peacekeeping since its inception, Canadians have often seen the worst and the best that the UN has to offer. (the worst more often) But remeber one thing. When the UN takes something very seriously, they usually get it right. The problem is that it takes one hell of a long time to get them to take anything seriously. The herd has no leaders.)

Italian Guy said:
Hans Blix reports to the UN Security Council. Blix said basically the same thing as he did in previous reports. Iraq has shown some progress, but has still not yet fully disarmed. Blix also filed a 173 page document with the Security Council which said that inspectors discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone, with a wingspan of 7.45 m (24 ft 5 in), suggesting an illegal range that could potentially threaten Iraq's neighbors with chemical and biological weapons.

And please remember France was sure Iraq had WMD's: On March 17, 2003 Chirac announced that his country would support U.S. troops if Iraq launched chemical weapons against U.S. forces.


Personally, I really believe that if France really believed that Iraq had WMDs, we would not be having this conversation.

Italian Guy said:
Ummm, I did not think war was about blowing buses or deliberately killing civilians. You forget war and terrorism are two separate things.

War has been about hurting your enemy as much as is humanly possible. Civilians are a part of a country, (their most valuable resource) and attacking civilians has been fair game since the Germans started bombing London during the blitz. It was confirmed that the Nazis were serious about it when they bombed Canterbury, and the Allies proved they agreed when they bombed Dresden. (this was the raid that added the word "firestorm" to the English language) All of the Western Allies were agreed on this one.

Italian Guy said:
Are we going to start a new thread on the Contras?
Nope.
Italian Guy said:
And also, if you say so I believe you are explicitly recognizing the legitimacy of those US acts.
Nope. I never believed the legitimacy of those acts at all. The Sandinistas started as a broadly based group that was opposed to the US supported dictator Somoza. While they were supported by the Soviets at the time, I always felt that they were closer to a popular government than the thugs the US were supporting.
My idea was to compare US support of terrorist groups to Iraqi support of terrorist groups. Why should the world believe that Hussein was such a bad guy when he did exactly the same thing as President Reagan and had been previously a big friend of the US? Now, of course we had a reason, I know that. But knowing all this, it makes it a lot harder to send troops into harm's way.

Italian Guy said:
Third, Dean, neither Bush nor the neocons were in power at the time. Had they been in power THAT would have never happened. :thumb: Y'know the neocons in DC would be proud of you here. P.S. You forgot to say the government the Contras fought was cruel and non-Democratic. Otherwise you make it sound like you side with the Sandinistas who were, IN FACT (recent discoveries) funded by the Soviets.

That's funny, as I remember hearing that they were Soviet funded while they were fighting the Somoza regime. In fact, I got the first clue from photos showing them using AK-47s. Up until that time every country in central America was using 7.62 battle rifles, (FN-FALs with a smattering of M-14s) and the Contras were arming themselves with the same thing. All of a sudden they all had AKs. It was pretty obvious where they came from, and the Soviets never tried to hide it. So I always thought of that as old news. As for Bush supporting the Contras, you're probably right. But the fact remains that the US did support them, and that others remember it. Some of those old alliances may well have come back to haunt the US. There are many people out there with a better memory than mine.

Italian Guy said:
As I stated above, the PLF had not to do with AQ of course, I just pointed out how tied Saddam was to terrorists. And terrorism (and NOT just AQ) was one of the 3 reasons to go to war.

Point taken.

Italian Guy said:
I was there in 1997 and 2000, I flew into Toronto and visited AB and SK. I also enjoyed the company of a Quebecois girl before entering a serious relationship with a Saskatoonian. Great country :wink:
Go Harper :rock:

I married a Québecoise. Best decision I ever made, even 21 years and 2 kids after the fact:thumb: !!!

G'Night, all...

Dean.
 
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Only one thing: You say " War has been about hurting your enemy as much as is humanly possible. Civilians are a part of a country, (their most valuable resource) and attacking civilians has been fair game since...etc etc". Did the US try to kill as many civilians as humanly possible in Iraq 1991? What about Iraq 2003? What about Serbia 1999?

I noticed we agree with each other on many points and most of the times disagree on some minor approaches. You are an informed person, of course, and it's been a pleasure to exchange opinions with you on the topic. I mean I'm right when I say the realists at the DoD or the White House in the 80's (though Reagan himself was hardly a realist- speaking in "doctrinal and ideological" terms) and back in the 60's and 70's did things that today's neocons reject and that today's neocons' approach is something entirely different than that. This is why it misses the point to keep accusing W for something that is so far from the approach of his administrations. On the other hand, you're perfectly right when you say many people don't see the difference and couldn't care less if W or Condi disagree with what Brzezinski or Kissinger did or still say.
On most things, we argue on points whose sources are not clear about (did France really know? Then why did they say what they said? etc) and it merely becomes a matter of personal suspects or opinions.
As for the rest, considering your view on things, I believe you and I will find ourselves agreeing on 99 % of the things on the boards.
Thanks Dean.
 
Italian Guy said:
Only one thing: You say " War has been about hurting your enemy as much as is humanly possible. Civilians are a part of a country, (their most valuable resource) and attacking civilians has been fair game since...etc etc". Did the US try to kill as many civilians as humanly possible in Iraq 1991? What about Iraq 2003? What about Serbia 1999?

No, not at all. But then again, was the US really at war with Serbia? It was more of a make-peace-or-we'll-really-start-shooting mission (peacemaking rather than peacekeeping?) and the civvies were more than glad to see NATO troops arriving. As for Iraq, i must admit that US troops did show remarkable restraint during the entire invasion. The post-invasion period has seen a bit more difficult for the civilians, but that is understandable given that much of their infrastructures have been destroyed or disabled.
I was referring more to the common practice of war since mid-WW II. Whether we like it or not, civilians are now a target, and countries have to spend a lot of their resources defending them. The one thing I see changing this trend is the adoption of smart weapons. They cost so much that they quickly become cost-ineffective if used against anything other than valuable targets.

Italian Guy said:
I noticed we agree with each other on many points and most of the times disagree on some minor approaches. You are an informed person, of course, and it's been a pleasure to exchange opinions with you on the topic.

Thanks It has been fun on this end too. I actually find myself looking forward to the next time.

Italian Guy said:
I mean I'm right when I say the realists at the DoD or the White House in the 80's (though Reagan himself was hardly a realist- speaking in "doctrinal and ideological" terms) and back in the 60's and 70's did things that today's neocons reject and that today's neocons' approach is something entirely different than that.

Yes, but it was a different world. What would be interesting would be to put today's neocons into that world, with the problems and fears of that time to see how they would react!

Italian Guy said:
This is why it misses the point to keep accusing W for something that is so far from the approach of his administrations. On the other hand, you're perfectly right when you say many people don't see the difference and couldn't care less if W or Condi disagree with what Brzezinski or Kissinger did or still say.

True. I just think that many of those events have stayed in the popular consciousness of many people all over the world. The White House can say that they are differeent as much as they want, but I do not think that most of the poeple in many different countries )particularly third world countries) will believe them.

Italian Guy said:
On most things, we argue on points whose sources are not clear about (did France really know? Then why did they say what they said? etc) and it merely becomes a matter of personal suspects or opinions.
As for the rest, considering your view on things, I believe you and I will find ourselves agreeing on 99 % of the things on the boards.
Thanks Dean.
Anytime. And thank you.

Dean.
 
Padre said:
Anyway, lets put Canada aside for now, and debate why MALTA hasn't sent anyone to Iraq :eek:

Yes, there is always room for levity amoungst so much heavy debate!
 
:roll: Oh come on, guys, we perfectly know Malta would have altered the general balance of the forces involved in there Middle East.:roll:
 
Padre, do you remember the Peter Sellers movie "The Mouse That Roared"? If Malta won, they'd have to send aid to Iraq.:salute:
 
Missileer said:
Padre, do you remember the Peter Sellers movie "The Mouse That Roared"? If Malta won, they'd have to send aid to Iraq.:salute:

Yea, good funny movie that is Missileer :wink:
 
I have always felt that the Triple M Coalition could do a lot to end this war peacefully. After all, their combined economic power and incredible miltary machines could definitely lay low the insurgents and re-build their infrastructures in a few days. I have often wondered what the governments of Monaco, Malta and Madagascar are waiting for!!!

Dean.

BTW, Missileer, thanks for that. I had forgotten all about the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. That brought back a lot of good memories.
 
Italian Guy said:
Having been to Monaco and Liechtenstein I was impressed by their amazing military achievements.

Last year the armed forces of Liechtenstein pulled off seven amazing rescue missions unparalleled in military history. All seven cats were succuessfully pulled out of the trees while the military sustained no injuries to themselves. If not for the heroism of those brave men and women those cats would have had to try and get unstuck themselves.
 
don't tell me we are going to let FIJI off the hook? Where are the FIJIANS when we need them !!! :eek: :drill:

Their coconuts could take out a regiments worth of insurgents. :p

Lets start "Dob in a country"
 
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