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Ping to self.
Bookmark for later reading.
The immoral "containment" of Saddam and Sons, consigned millions to tyranny for over a decade.
And depended entirely on the predictability of a madman and his sons.
I was just a few moments ago thinking about Shawcross, prompted by the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. After "Sideshow" Shawcross wrote a book called "The Quality of Mercy", which detailed the international relief effort on the Thai Cambodian border, and in Cambodia, following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 continuing well into the 1980s. I had occasion to visit both Cambodia and the border area as these efforts were winding down a few times in 1991, and 1992, by which time various NGOs and the UN had developed a semi-permanent infrastructure, so I was quite interested in what had gone on before.
The efforts were a huge mess both which at their best stumbled along in a generally forward direction, but with extreme inefficiency, and lots of graft, corruption, obstinance, venality, naivete, and misunderstanding by a dozen or more interest groups -- including the USA, Thailand, the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, and a host of international relief organizations -- all with different agendas.
Shawcross's book is probably the definitive work on this relief effort,, and does a good job of capturing the chaos and cross-purposes inherent in international relief efforts, or any relief efforts, including the Katrina effort. Much as some would like to think that everyone involved in this sort of effort has the same goals and interests, that is never the case.
My take on Shawcross was similar to that described in the posted article -- a guy who I intially thought was a lefty, who was actually interested in reporting what is going on, in an evenhanded way, without trying to cram it into a leftist view of history.
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Bumpitttt.
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That sort of language, which described the killing in terms of a human sacrifice, simply confirms what I've been suspecting. These boys are Satanists. God doesn't want your human sacrifices, boys, but I'm sure they make Satan really happy. (Please note that I'm talking about these fanatic nut jobs, not all Muslims.)
Even with modest chemical knowledge, low budget for equipment, and fairly common chemicals, I could make certain WMD's in a house basement in enough quantity to kill lots of people. Sarin comes to mind.
I could do the same with bioweapons, though weaponizing them is apparently much harder. WMD does not require 100 acre factory complexes, and the facilities could easily be hidden underground.
Saddam had WMD's. Whether he destroyed them, moved them, or hid them, he had them till a very short time before we came in. He was got rid of them to discredit us and win back the country with an insurgency that he thought would drive us out at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately that strategy didn't work out so well.
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WMD's was always a political excuse, the duplicity of which pales in comparison to the two faced campaign conducted by FDR prior to WWII. It would have been nice to be truthful about our desire to change the world's power balance, but it was an obscure argument and the politicos figured people wouldn't get it.
History exonerated FDR and later will exonerate GWB.
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