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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about WMD.
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No. The topic was whether sanctions were "working". I said sanctions had not had their intended effect: to cause Saddam to comply with UN resolutions. Your reply was "Containment was working, and the sanctions were part of containment," to which I say again: the sanctions were not working.
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Containment allowed a brutal dictator to continue to repress his people.
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Well
that's an understated response to my posting that 5,000 infants and toddlers die each month due to sanctions-related causes. Repression indeed. I'm sure glad you concede these atrocities, caused by continued sanctions as well as Saddam's failure to allow sanctions-exempt humanitarian aid into the country, constitute "repression".
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Containment allowed...repress his people....[but at least it] didn't cost $200 billion and 20,000 Coalition lives.]
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Yeah those sanctions were really great, Ty. And continuing them would have bought us another 15 years of "containment" (or at least "containment more likely than not" since inspectors couldn't fully measure what was happening over there.) Just what we needed - another 15 years of "working sanctions". Another 180 months with 900,000 more dead kids, continued mockery of our inspectors and further encouraging other regimes to develop WMDs since the repercussions aren’t so bad.
Look, apparently you think we should have let this pussyfooting with inspectors/non-compliance with resolutions go on forever, kind of like the parent who continually threatens his child with "do A, B, and C" 'OR ELSE" and then never follows through with the "or else" part. Your candidate’s suggestion that we “bring in allies” instead of “going it alone” may sound nice [to some] on the debate floor but you can’t get blood from a stone or force a country to step up to the plate. Might it be that no matter HOW MUCH “diplomacy” the US President uses, countries like France and Germany aren’t going to be swayed? Might it be that these countries have alterior, unstated financial motives to putting the issue off? That Kerry would be jumping through hoops to sway a country that has no intention of ever being swayed at all – an “ally” like France that is, conveniently,
forever in the "stage of ideas" ? That perhaps these “allies” are not, with their current leadership, in fact allies anymore?
