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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSee What Iraq Was Like Before George W. Bush And His War Criminal Cabal Destroyed It (PICS)
Before the Bush regime thrust America into an illegal war in Iraq in 2003 based on lies and misrepresentations of facts, the country was a thriving place. Before the decades of strife that have overtaken the region, especially since Saddam Husseins removal, Iraq was a booming, rapidly-modernizing place.
Iraq had a thriving middle class, girls were encouraged to go to school, and people were free to live their traditional lifestyles.
VIDEO: http://aattp.org/see-what-iraq-was-like-before-george-w-bush-and-his-war-criminal-cabal-destroyed-it-video/
OP NOTE: Hold BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD, WOLFOWITZ, and the rest of the WAR CABAL accountable. There's no excuse why these weasels are getting off. They are war criminals!
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Perseus
(4,341 posts)I am not sure that the pictures show a time during Saddam, no denying that Iraq was in a better place prior to the invasion but to try to make an argument with pictures that predate that era weakens the argument.
deutsey
(20,166 posts)he gave a glimpse in Fahrenheit 9/11 of what Baghdad was like right before the US unleashed Shock and Awe.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)and quite a courageous one given how easy it makes it for people to call him an apologist for Saddam, or to accuse him of portraying Saddam's Iraq as some kind of paradise. Neither of which is true.
However the article this OP points to isn't the same. It says "Look what Iraq was like before Bush and Cheney broke it" and then puts pictures up from the 1950's, which of course makes no sense. The original article in Business Insider accurately says "Pictures of Iraq before decades of chaos", but then the site that reposted it, "Americans against the Tea Party", changes it to be more like a parody of bogus antiwar sentiment.
The photos are oddly dated.
I should've elaborated that I thought Moore did a better job of comparison by showing contemporary footage.
SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)It is page out of the Right playbook...People try to hard to make the case of why invading Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea...It was an ILLEGAL WAR, period!
Seriously, trying to say life was good & prosperous under Saddam, even compared to today, is NOT a strong argument especially when one uses photos from a time before Saddam to do so. And it is not one that even needs to be made when there are so many other very real reasons as to why the invasion was wrong.
FailureToCommunicate
(14,007 posts)butterfly77
(17,609 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)kpominville
(330 posts)The first picture shows a plane sitting in what looks like a stream or small river.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,319 posts)I'm going to guess that's a Vickers (or Vickers-Armstrongs) VC.1 Viking.
Iraqi Airways was one of the operators of that aircraft. It had the type 644, a Viking 1B.
FS2004 Iraqi Airways Vickers VC.1 Viking
Screenshot of Iraqi Airways Vickers Viking in flight.
BlueMTexpat
(15,365 posts)between Sunni & Shia were either NOT Iraqi, not living in Iraq or were dissidents - even criminals like Ahmed Chalabi - who had not lived there for several years.
See http://usiraq.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000919 and http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/20/an-iraqi-perspective-how-americas-destruction-of-iraqi-society-led-to-todays-chaos/
Yet another deliberate bit of "misinformation" from the warmongers, who lie as often as they breathe.
Scarsdale
(9,426 posts)Where IS he? All his war mongers are on TV, repeating their warmongering, yet he is strangely absent. Is is somewhere painting self portraits as therapy? Is he incapable of speaking rationally on TV? I mean even less rationally than he was before.
former9thward
(31,949 posts)Last edited Mon Jun 23, 2014, 10:21 AM - Edit history (1)
A vicious dictator who murdered and tortured tens of thousands of his people.
This is what Iraq was like after Hussein gassed to death 1500 Kurds:
The U.S. should not have invaded Iraq but there was never a better day when he met his end with a rope around his neck.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Just saying that perhaps wiping out a few hundred thousand people to get to him wasn't as honorable a venture as people like to think.
It's like trying to capture a serial killer by carpet bombing New York. "Hey! We got him! High five!"
Luckily now that he is gone and thanks to our honorable efforts, Iraqis are free and under no dire threats by their countrymen.
High five!
on point
(2,506 posts)jwirr
(39,215 posts)fact that he used it for his purposes instead of ours is still part of what we did to the ME in our endless quest for oil. And a lot of the dictators we have installed over the course of modern history have not been good to their own people and that does not excuse them only implicates us.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Here's the big picture on Iraq, courtesy of the BFEE and the late William Safire, who detailed in 1992 how Poppy Bush helped arm Saddam's Iraq
William Safire was almost alone tying George Herbert Walker Bush to the illegal arming of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
In fact, very few liberal and almost zero conservative voices have dared oppose the Bush bandwagon, let alone the War Party. The story, read by the late Representative Tom Lantos (D-California), into the Congressional Record (public domain, emphasis by Octafish):
THE ADMINISTRATION'S IRAQ GATE SCANDAL
BY WILLIAM SAFIRE
Congressional Record
Extension of Remarks - May 19, 1992
Washington
Americans now know that the war in the Persian Gulf was brought about by a colossal foreign-policy blunder: George Bush's decision, after the Iran-Iraq war ended, to entrust regional security to Saddam Hussein.
What is not yet widely understood is how that benighted policy led to the Bush Administration's fraudulent use of public funds, its sustained deception of Congress and its obstruction of justice.
As the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, was urging Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker to buy the friendship of the Iraqi dictator in August 1989, the F.B.I. uncovered a huge scam at the Atlanta branch of the Lavoro Bank to finance the buildup of Iraq's war machine by diverting U.S.-guaranteed grain loans.
Instead of pressing the investigation or curbing the appeasement, the President turned a blind eye to lawbreaking and directed another billion dollars to Iraq. Our State and Agriculture Department's complicity in Iraq's duplicity transformed what could have been dealt with as `Saddam's Lavoro scandal' into George Bush's Iraqgate.
The first element of corruption is the wrongful application of U.S. credit guarantees. Neither the Commodity Credit Corporation nor the Export-Import Bank runs a foreign-aid program; their purpose is to stimulate U.S. exports. High-risk loan guarantees to achieve foreign-policy goals unlawful endanger that purpose.
Yet we now know that George Bush personally leaned on Ex-Im to subvert its charter--not to promote our exports but to promote relations with the dictator. And we have evidence that James Baker overrode worries in Agriculture and O.M.B. that the law was being perverted: Mr. Baker's closest aid, Robert Kimmett, wrote triumphantly, `your call to . . . Yeutter . . . paid off.' Former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter is now under White House protection.
Second element of corruption is the misleading of Congress. When the charge was made two years ago in this space that State was improperly intervening in this case, Mr. Baker's top Middle East aide denied it to Senate Foreign Relations; meanwhile, Yeutter aides deceived Senator Leahy's Agriculture Committee about the real foreign-policy purpose of the C.C.C. guarantees. To carry out Mr. Bush's infamous National Security Directive 26, lawful oversight was systematically blinded.
Third area of Iraqgate corruption is the obstruction of justice. Atlanta's assistant U.S. Attorney Gail McKenzie, long blamed here for foot-dragging, would not withhold from a grand jury what she has already told friends: that indictment of Lavoro officials was held up for nearly a year by the Bush Criminal Division. The long delay in prosecution enabled James Baker to shake credits for Saddam out of malfeasant Agriculture appointees.
When House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez gathered documents marked `secret' showing this pattern of corruption, he put them in the Congressional Record. Two months later, as the media awakened, Mr. Bush gave the familiar `gate' order; stonewall.
`Public disclosure of classified information harms the national security,' Attorney General William Barr instructed the House Banking Committee last week. `. . . in light of your recent disclosures, the executive branch will not provide any more classified information'--unless the wrongdoing is kept secret.
`Your threat to withhold documents,' responded Chairman Gonzalez, `has all the earmarks of a classic effort to obstruct a proper and legitimate investigation . . . none of the documents compromise, in any fashion whatsoever, the national security or intelligence sources and methods.'
Mr. Barr, in personal jeopardy, has flung down the gauntlet. Chairman Gonzalez tells me he plans to present his obstruction case this week to House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks, probably flanked by Representatives Charles Schumer and Barney Frank, members of both committees.
`I will recommend that Judiciary consider requiring the appointment of an independent counsel,' says Mr. Gonzalez, who has been given reason to believe that Judiciary--capable of triggering the Ethics in Government Act--will be persuaded to act.
Policy blunders are not crimes. But perverting the purpose of appropriated funds is a crime; lying to Congress compounds that crime; and obstructing justice to cover up the original crime is a criminal conspiracy.
SOURCE: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920519l.htm
Amazing stuff. Still...not much else worth remembering, besides how few Democrats stood with Gonzalez. Also interesting to see how ignorance of history translates out into supporting more ignorance and more war and more death.
Aristus
(66,294 posts)It wasn't about getting Saddam Hussein. It was never about that. It was about getting the oil.
If it had been about getting Saddam, we would have done it the way we got Osama Bin Laden: A special operations force. Twelve guys, speaking fluent Arabic and carrying untraceable weapons.
Or, if we wanted to do it on the cheap: one guy, disguised as a janitor, hiding behind the door with a .45 and a silencer.
Far better that Saddam Hussein still be in power today than that the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents be on our hands...
former9thward
(31,949 posts)Everybody says that but no one ever provides any evidence. Hussein never tried to keep Iraqi oil off the market. He sold it to anyone who would buy it. Oil production in Iraq fell after the end of the war. The oil companies now in Iraq operate just as they do in any other country. They pay the Iraqi government for the oil and transport it out of the country. Just like Venezuela or anyplace else.
Aristus
(66,294 posts)Why buy oil from Saddam Hussein when you can just march in and grab it for yourself?
That's not an unreasonable question to ask if you are two former energy company executives who just found themselves in charge of the US military.
former9thward
(31,949 posts)They pay for it just like any other country.
JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)where Saddam gassed his people with stuff from us, you may want to reconsider your chosen rhetoric on this topic.
Julie
former9thward
(31,949 posts)You think Saddam was just misunderstood?
And BTW most of his chemical weapons came from Europe and China
JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)Why ever would you resort to putting words in my mouth? There is much evidence of our selling Iraq lots of chem weapons. I found it easily back when this war was starting and I researched for a letter to the editor.
See, there was a time when Iraq was at war with Iran. We sided with Saddam and supplied him with weapons. It's ugly, I know, but we have to face facts.
Julie
Metric System
(6,048 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(57,319 posts)videos into the public domain. They are a priceless resource. Don't go over there unless you have a lot of time on your hands.
British Pathé YouTube channel
Metric System
(6,048 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,438 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)And have you seen the pictures of Afghanistan before foreign invasion?
America is a criminal nation.
madokie
(51,076 posts)the bush/cheney cabal should be locked up for the rest of their miserable lives. Sentenced to hard labor as long as any one of them were capable of it.
After a fair and impartial trial that is.