BH) Iraqi deaths by violence since the invasion would are 100,000 to
150,000. That's less than 40K/yr, which is well under the 60K to 80K deaths
per year that Saddam caused over his 24-year tenure. (BH
SD) If you're counting the Iraq-Iran war, you might want to research the
role of the US in that conflict. (SD
If you think I haven't researched the US role in the Iran-Iraq war, you must
have missed it when five days before your message I posted this here:
I've been answering the anti-interventionist arguments of Libertarians here
in California for over two years, and by now I find it pretty boring. If any
anti-liberventionist thinks he has an argument I haven't answered before, he
might want to read
* my libertarian argument
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; for liberating Iraq [updated
here <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; ];
* my taxonomy <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; of
anti-interventionist arguments and why they're wrong;
* my unrebutted takedown
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; of Anthony Gregory and this
<http://humanknowledge.net/Correspondence/Anthony_Gregory/2005-08-25.htm>
example of the sort of messages that have sent him AWOL from our off-and-on
<http://humanknowledge.net/Correspondence/Anthony_Gregory/> Iraq debate;
* my evisceration <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; of
an anti-intervention speech by Lew Rockwell; and
* my debates
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; on
LPCalPeace, where I've answered every single response to my arguments, as
attempted by Bruce Dovner, Mark Stroberg, Paul Ireland, Jay Eckl, Michael
Seebeck, David Kocot, and Harland Harrison.
Do you want to talk Fahrenheit
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; 911? Saudi
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; Learjet? Downing
Street <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; Memo? the
158 <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; mentions of
Iraq in the 9/11 Commission report? April
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; Glaspie? Teicher's
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; affidavit?
Rumsfeld 1983 <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos;
Baghdad trip? American WMD
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; sales to Iraq?
Saddam's <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; support
for anti-American terrorists? Bush's
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; "lies" in his
pre-invasion speech? UNSCR
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; 1441? Saddam's
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; bodycount?
Halliburton <Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos;
profits? Bush's sales
<Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; of Harken stock?
I've covered all this ground and more.
As I said only a week ago on cal-libs:
BH) Iraq was not an "ally", it was a pawn. When Iran's Shiite revolutionary
fervor was perceived as the greater threat to our actual allies (e.g. Saudi
Arabia) and was coming close in 1982 to winning the war Saddam had started
over American protests, the Reagan administration sought to punish Iran and
forestall Iranian victory by offering limited support for Iraq. The most
significant part of that support was battlefield satellite intelligence. The
role of the U.S. in the Iran-Iraq conflict was accurately summarized in a
PBS documentary:
PBS) "When Ronald Reagan becomes president in 1981, he endorses a policy
aiming for a stalemate in the war so that neither side emerges from the war
with any additional power. But in 1982, fearing Iraq might lose the war, the
U.S. begins to help. Over the next six years, a string of CIA agents go to
Baghdad. Hand-carrying the latest satellite intelligence about the Iranian
front line, they pass the information to their Iraqi counterparts. The U.S.
gives Iraq enough help to avoid defeat, but not enough to secure victory."
(PBS
The arms transfers to Iran were miniscule, totaling less than one planeload
and consisting primarily of about 1000 TOW tactical anti-tank missiles, and
18 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles (which Iran sent back to Israel after being
unhappy with a test firing). The transfers to Iran were well after Iran's
flirtation with outright victory in 1982, and were intended to win the
release of hostages held by Iran's Hezbollah clients. They in fact won the
release of 3 of the 6 Americans taken by Hezbollah -- but some of the 6 were
taken after Hezbollah started freeing earlier hostages.
Reagan's use of Iraq as a pawn in 1982 to stop the possible spread of Shiite
revolutionary fervor toward Saudi Arabia was quite reasonable -- though with
three decades of hindsight we now know that the Iranian revolution
translates very poorly from Farsi to Arabic. Reagan's attempt to buy the
freedom of hostages was incredibly stupid (and impeachable if Poindexter is
lying about whether Reagan knew). The only missiles sent to Iran for that
purpose should have been ones arriving armed and at terminal velocity.
Nothing we've discussed here about U.S. policy in the 1980s makes it
"hypocrisy" for me or America two decades later to include Saddam's use of
WMDs in aggression and genocide as two of the twelve factual predicates I
cited in my justification for taking him and his sons down. (BH
So Steve, do you still wonder whether I've "research[ed] the role of the US
in that conflict"?
SD) If you're counting deaths due to the embargo, again, you may need to
consider US involvement. (SD
Already have -- as recently as four days before your posting, again on this
very forum, where I wrote:
BH) UNSC Resolution 706 of 1991 offered to allow Saddam to sell oil to buy
food and medicine for his people while he was under UN Security Council
disarmament sanctions for his blatant war of aggression. He refused for
five years. Reason magazine says that the estimate of 1 million deaths is
inflated, but whatever the number, Saddam was responsible for every single
one. Food and medicine started flowing to Iraq in 1996, when Iraq finally
signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN. Saddam could have got the
food and medicine any time he wanted. He refused. (BH
If you're going to steal my "you might want to ..." line, then you might
want to read the research I've posted on the topic in question only days
earlier to the very same forum. I've been citing the 2002 Reason
<http://www.reason.com/news/show/28346.html> magazine article on the Iraq
sanctions for over five years.
Mike Denny wrote:
MD) I hear what you are saying and can accept that there may be value in
what you are saying that others are missing. It would be easier to
understand the premise of the value of foreign intervention if there were
good examples of where this foreign policy has actually worked to the
benefit of the "people" and not just the parochial interests of global
mercantilists who run the game. Even if performed properly.in the end it
seems politics and the war machine always end up taking control with the
"intended good" left on the sidelines. That seems to be the case even with
all the "good wars" IMHO. So where's the beef? There may be good examples in
all the work you've done.could you steer me to those sections. I'd like to
review. (MD
It's refreshing to encounter an open mind among antiwar libertarians -- or
pro-libervention libertarians, for that matter. 
My standard list of places where America has used its military for the goal
of local democratic sovereignty includes: England, Italy, France, Belgium,
Luxembourg, Holland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Greece, Germany, Austria,
Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Kurdistan, Haiti,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Taken together with our half-hearted
efforts in Somalia and Haiti, these data points are inconsistent with the
notion that "the parochial interests of global mercantilists" are what
determines whether America conducts military intervention. America
certainly has done some dishonorable things in other places, and not every
one of these interventions has had optimal results, but it's just not
tenable to make the simplistic claim that American intervention is the
product of a U.S. "war machine" trying to build an American empire. When we
make such histrionic and self-marginalizing claims, we surrender the
credibility we need to criticize the many unconscionable mistakes that have
actually occurred in America's foreign policy. I examined the ideology and
psychology of libertarian anti-war absolutism in my recent article for
California Freedom: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos .
MD) as much a fable and fantasy as the one about how the poor are going to
somehow beat the rich in politics (MD
Bruce Bartlett reports
<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BruceBartlett/2005/12/06/who_pays_the_ta
on the 2003 data: "the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted
gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year. The
top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and
the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent". My annual tax bill runs in
the six figures, but my vote counts just the same as that of a welfare queen
or a senior citizen enjoying his Social Security pyramid scheme bonanza.
The first SS beneficiary, Ida May Fuller, paid in a total of $44 and
received benefits that over her lifetime totaled $20,934. I wish I got that
rate of return on the taxes I pay.