Posts by Simon Grigg
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I'm sure Davies is a bit tired of some of the same ol's, but shit, not playing Waterloo Sunset is a bit like the Queen saying 'Oh, sod trooping the colours this year'...
Ha, when I was younger (much) I was persuaded to go and see Procul Harum at the Auckland Town Hall. They didn't play "Whiter Shade Of Pale".
Seriously....
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the lying, the sheer, crack-smoking craziness ...
Not least of which is the bizarre argument that "we've severely fucked it up getting to this point, so we need to be allowed to stick with it".
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Just in case anyone didn't get it, the "odd boy who doesn't like sport" line is from another Bonzo song.
I assumed it was something like that but the Neil Innes and co are almost as obscure as Barclay James Harvest in 2008, Rob....talking of which, I see that the Rutles has had a welcome remastered reissue. I want.
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its an odd boy who doesn't like sport
I guess I was happily odd then
Re the Youtube clip....it never fails to bemuse me when I talk to an older Dutch person here how often Focus is raised as a favourite band. Scary. Similarly older Germans seem to opt for Barclay James Harvest. And we all thought they were listening to Kraftwerk.....
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You’ve criticised James for being rather blasé about the costs of the war, I think you're doing much the same re containment. That cost was not inconsequential and it would have continued.
About 1 billion a year. vis a vis the 1 billion a day right now,give or take. That argument is a bit of a non-starter.
The idea that the containment regime was there specifically to punish the Iraqis is a bit ridiculous.
uhhh...really? Pray tell, what military use do medical texts have (they were specifically banned) beyond hurting the populace.
The sanctions were only fine tuned after quite some outrage and the oil for food abuse, while it existed is happily overstated.US troops were going to remain in Saudi Arabia until Saddam was gone. I'm sorry but that is the reality. Protecting Saudi Arabia from Saddam was one of the US's major objectives.
Uhhh no...not reality....there is some controversy and evidence (including photographic) that the threat to Saudi Arabia was overstated intentionally.
The reality was that before 11/9/2001 no-one in the US military could see any good reason for moving the bases and spending the billions of dollars to do so..remember these were built from scratch in the desert. Osama was not really being taken seriously.
In January 2002 the Saudi government asked the US to remove all bases but what reason was there to do so before that? Hence the swift removal in 2003
A quick glance at any map would indicate that any threat to SA from Iraq's largely disintegrated war-machine in the 1990s could easily have been dealt with from Kuwait, in fact the location offered advantages for doing so.
Zinnni on containment: We contained Iraq and Iran with fewer troops than report to the Pentagon every day for work. The president said containment didn't work. I don't know what the hell he was seeing. But for a decade, unless something flared up, we had on average 23,000 troops in all of CENTCOM in the most volatile region in the world.
We also had our allies contribute to our presence out there. There was $300 to $500 million a year the Saudis and Kuwaitis paid us in in-kind assistance—fuel, food, water. The Saudis built a $450 billion complex to house our troops. We had a nice arrangement out there. Containment worked. And the proof is in the pudding that the president was wrong when he said containment didn't work: Saddam was no threat to his neighbors. He didn't have WMDs. He was contained by every definition of containment.
We have this lack of satisfaction about containment because it leaves things undone. We've contained Korea. We've contained Cuba. We've contained the Soviet Union for 50 years. We were effectively containing both Iraq and Iran. I'm saying, go back to what worked
who to trust on this, eh? You or the guy on the ground running the show...
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That's the mess that would have existed indefinitely had the war not occurred. Now given the choice between the two containment may been the least worst option but one should have to front up to the consequences.
But isn't that the point, containment was working but it had to go somewhere. That somewhere was never explored..quite the opposite..the US and the UK actively and quite dishonestly herded the world towards a war from 2001 onward. And now up to a million people are dead and a nation is a trainwreck because of that. How are we, or Iraq better for that?
And there was no reason not to trade with the Iraqis...much of what was in the sanctions had no reason to be there beyond the notion that Iraq (ie the Iraqi people) needed to be punished. Medicines, medical equipment, vitamins and countless other non military items were cut off...and then the UN handed the oil for food program to Saddam to atone for that. And that was always going to be abused.
(another unfortunate necessity for containing Saddam)
The southern no fly zone could have been administered from Kuwait...they made the offered several times to host it.
The cost of containment when compared the financial and human cost of the war was inconsequential and would have remained so.
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Polls. What is wrong with using polls, if as best you can tell are legitimate? How else are you supposed to determine opinion on any subject? I think the real issue here is that those who don’t like the poll I linked to on opinion in Iraq don’t like the results of the poll and message conveyed, it doesn't fit their views, so lets just criticize polls instead.
for a start because several polls came out within days of each other last week all of which contradicted each other. Polling accurately in a warzone is largely impossible, especailly the sort of polls that media organisations do.
The US made mistakes after they got rid of a shithead but where is the outrage at Al Qaeda and the various insurgent groups who have killed so many Iraqis?
A shithead that was happily kept in power and supported by the US on a governmental level (and other Western powers on a corporate level). And not only opened the door for but helped arm these insurgent groups, and continues to arm them now, although they are now your guys..same guys though. As you say..where is the outrage?
You created this game James..you can't say "look at all the bad guys killing people in Iraq"...you handed the bad guys the weaponry, place, and opportunity. 'Sir, I didn't shoot him...I just gave him the gun and unlocked the door' is no defence no matter how often you repeat it.
when the US Armed Forces go a long way out of their way to avoid civilian casualties?
but you are not accurate in your suggestion that no preparations and plans were made for post invasion Iraq
Once again, have a stroll through Rick's Fiasco and come back to me on that one.
And yes I know its disputed, but still not in a meaningful, way yet as far as I know (and since you like polls a you can't really argue too much), but the Lancet attributed quite a percentage to deaths directly to US military action.
If he hadn’t been taken out, Saddam and his sons and grandson would have continued to imprison and kill and brutalize Iraqis for decades to come.
So now you are rolling back around to your much touted "our hell is better than their hell" theme. It doesn't do you credit James.
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I really don't get how either side uses polling data in relation to Iraq.
I'm kinda with you and immediately regretted my inclusion of that polling reference in my post...for every poll I can provide you can counter it with another..Al Jaz ran a poll last night here which ran almost exactly counter to the ABC poll, and in an series of almost ethnically exclusive armed zones such as Baghdad I'm doubtful if any polling has much relevance.
moral imperatives in Iraq, but not in some other places around the world
and I scratch my head at poor Burma / Myanmar.
In Singapore last week and noted the official "invest in Myanmar" brochures.
Still Singapore has quite a history.
And for the rest of the world the response to what is going on there all seems so bloody half hearted. A UN envoy shaking a few hands and smiling for photo ops whilst mumbling tsk-tsk.
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As for reflecting on Halabja, that suggestion has nothing to do with one upmanship or whatever. It is worth reflecting on to keep at the front of our minds what a horrendous bastard Saddam was, and how the Iraqi people suffered under his rule. And still would be if he hadn’t been deposed.
I agree he was a bastard, but lets face it, the USA played its part in keeping that horrendous bastard killing for quite some years, and was happy to use Halabja for it's own ends. That's pretty horrendous too.
The thing is James you are playing some grotesque game of one upmanship. There were no "blood thirsty horrendous terrorists" in Iraq until you opened the door for it. You are saying that the deaths, refugees, ethnic cleansing, mayhem and misery that people like you have wrought on Iraq in the past 5 years is better than the hell that Saddam wrought. You don't wriggle out of it that easily.
Virtually every institution the US has introduced into Iraq has been almost criminally incompetent, from the CPA to the US military (spend a few minutes reading through Ricks' Fiasco just to understand how much) and polling is showing that the Iraqis themselves are saying they are better off without the US, as they've been saying for years. Millions are displaced, an unknown number are dead, much of the country is thoroughly ethnically cleansed and you are saying more please......
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Now that is funny!! Unintentionally of course!
Maybe the US/UK enforced no fly zone might have had something to do with "things being fairly ok in the Kurdish areas .. since the 1990s". What do you think? Maybe, just maybe?
James, seriously don't be so bloody smug, it does you no favours. Yes I was well aware of what I was saying as were the litany of US military folks who handled that no-fly zone.Folks like Zinni whom I guessing might have more of a grasp on the day to day realities than you, and was adamantly against the invasion. Your point is really irrelevant to 2008. It's a big so what.
the 20th anniversary of Hallabja
What is with the one-upmanship...your atrocity is worse than mine that you continually throw around. It's all fucking obscene and Halajah (one L) doesn't make god knows how many refugees, bodies and a dysfunctional country for half a decade onwards right.
The survivors of that atrocity seemingly are less than happy too:
On the 2006 anniversary of the gas attack, violent demonstrations erupted in Halabja against the Kurdish administration. An estimated 7,000 demonstrators protested against priorities in reconstruction, claiming party bosses did not care about the problems of the gas attack victims. Road blocks were set up and the gas attack memorial museum was set afire. Police fired at protesters killing one 14-year old boy and wounding many others.
And if the United States had been a little more honest in trying to deflect the blame in the 198090s s at Iran, despite knowing it was Iraq....