Posts by Simon Grigg
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I'm not an expert on how the US military logistics in the Gulf works and what is and what is not possible, but given the fact that the US troops were out of Saudi Arabia the minute Saddam was gone suggests to me that they didn't have many alternatives and getting those troops out was very high on their list of priorities.
Two things...18 Saudi hijackers on 9/11.
And post 3/03 the US had the option to build vastly bigger permanent bases with no oversight and no host to answer to... -
Neil,
Saudi Arabia was not necessary to conduct the no fly zones (which in themselves were voluntary on the part of the US & UK and did the southern Iraqis little good in 91-92, or thereafter, as we know) modern aircraft being what they are. Much of the southern no fly was conducted from elsewhere, including carriers and other gulf states, although clearly the SA bases were extensively utilised (and indeed Southern Watch was for a while headquartered there). Some of it was conducted from as far away as Diego Garcia. Whatever you think of the NFZs, proximity was not a requirement.As to the Iraqi threat, the evidence, independently verified, simply says otherwise.
Also, Norman Schwarzkopf::
recalls the prevailing mood in his autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero. He quotes General Colin Powell's remark to him: "I think we could go to war if they invaded Saudi Arabia. I doubt if we would go to war over Kuwait."
http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/nocasusbelli.html
The US presence in SA actually caused the country a bit of grief rather than the other way around. The Scuds fired into that country were, almost without exception, aimed at coalition targets and the Patriot batteries were afterwards largely deemed a failure in intercepting these.
http://www.cdi.org/issues/bmd/Patriot.htmlI don't deny that the US forces were there over the next decade to keep the pressure on Iraq but the notion that they were there to defend Saudi Arabia is unsupportable.
I would look more at the Bandar relationship with the US administrations, and at the arrogance of the Saudi ruling elite towards it's people as to whether they were concerned with the public popularity of the stationing.
As we now know, that arrogance bit back.
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I think they were mainly there to stop Saddam invading which did protect oil supplies. But having then to deter Saddam made life difficult for the US since having foreign troops in the land of Mecca was a big problem for Muslims. The US was caught a bit there.
The need to deter Saddam after 1990 was superfluous. He had no modern military to invade..his air force was largely in Iran and what small modern working equipment he had were in the hands of the Republican guards. The large and modern Saudi military could easily have dealt with any threat.
And even during GW1 the Iraqi threat to SA was, as Colin Powell later admitted, largely a fiction.
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And talking of echo chambers, the sub editors at the Independent today seem to have found one:
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When I go back to NZ, read NZ media and some of the MSM over here, or read forums like this one, there is usually just one side of the issues related to the States presented and discussed, and it is frequently the negative view of any particular issue.
Please do us the courtesy of assuming that some outside the US are capable of reading more than one source or POV on any given topic. And assessing that information intelligently before absorbing it. I find your statement condescending in the extreme.
Being in the US makes you no less likely than others to live in a closeted world. Lets refer to your appalling post on Abu Graib...as offensively incorrect as any post I've read in recent times. And yet you posted it, I assume, in the belief that it was correct. Being in the United States (and able to thus put our half formed preconceptions right) gave you no intrinsicly better understanding or knowledge of that sorry incident. Fox, America's most watched news network,I would offer has no better understanding (and I'm understating but you may well disagree) of global issues than either The BBC or Al Jazeera. The shell you may or may not be in, and I'm sorry but your posts lead as often as not to assume you are in one: you read what you want and dismiss or ignore anything that doesn't fit your world view, did not help. Being in the USA as such offered you no advantage.
We are not living in 1990 anymore, we all have access to all sorts of information now.
Your post, IMO, makes no real sense.
And I'm not in New Zealand.
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James, I am aware that it was Novak...that was my point. Heresay from Novak (and yes I know his role in the Plame affair) against sworn testimony from the head of the agency concerned, plus the determination of the judge...its a non starter.
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And while that dividing line might be somewhat gray, that honor killings, the cultural acceptance of wife beatings etc are over that line? This seems perfectly reasonable to me, or is that just neo Nazi neocon thinking?
And yet James I live in a country, 86% Muslim which has an almost negligible rate of domestic abuse. Indonesia, based on human rights NGO reports (if you read Indonesian I can forward you the link, but here is a Jakarta Post summary) had, last year some 22,000 reported cases of domestic violence. Now, there would be, in a nation such as this (and indeed most counties) a very heavy under reporting..so lets say 1 in 20 is reported, which is the UN rule of thumb (and bearing in mind that each village has a person whose job is to report such things to the Police). Then compare that to US figures (Indonesia has a population of about 230m, the US some 300 m) some of which are found here "Physical violence is estimated to occur in 4 to 6 million intimate relationships each year in the United States."
Which nation seems more accepting of violence against women
In the largely matriarchal Javanese and Sumatran societies violence against women is a major taboo. And indeed, on a day to day basis violence in general is less prevalent, both on an anecdotal and statistical level. Interpol figures (which I had but can't find again as their site is now behind a Police only firewall) show that you are some 230 times more likely to be assaulted, even allowing for underreporting, in the US, than in Muslim Indonesia. We have no road rage (which is a good thing on our roads) and the violence that does occur, especially the likes of the Bali bombs and terrible inter community fighting in Ambon tend to be aberrations and imported. The Bali bombers were turned in, in disgust, by local, (Muslim) communities.
I know I feel a damn sight safer walking the Muslim streets of Jakarta.as does my wife, than much of the Western Christian world
It's really the tribalism that's to blame for there being more trouble overall with Muslims than Christians, not the religion as such.
absolutely...hence the on/off simmering mess in Poso, so often referenced.
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As someone said a year or two back, getting a lecture on war from Cheney is like getting dating advice from Michael Jackson
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A bit unfair, the US didn't see, but should have and planned for, the insurgency coming
That's a little unfair too...at least one person saw it coming...
But in his 1992 remarks in Seattle, Cheney foreshadowed a future in Iraq that is remarkably close to conditions found there today, suggesting that it would be difficult to bring the country's various political factions together and that U.S. troops would be vulnerable to insurrection and guerrilla attacks.
"Now what kind of government are you going to establish? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shi'ia government, or a Sunni government, or maybe a government based on the old Baathist Party, or some mixture thereof? You will have, I think by that time, lost the support of the Arab coalition that was so crucial to our operations over there," he said.
The end result, Cheney said in 1992, would be a messy, dangerous situation requiring a long-term presence by U.S. forces.
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today, we'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home," Cheney said, 18 months after the war ended.
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I do like it when Danielle posts!
James,
You have not addressed the issue of the CIA confirming Plame's identiy to a journalist. It rather gets to the heart of the whole Plame circus; either she wasn't covert, or the CIA blew her cover.
If that journalist was Novak, I think it's been adequately dealt with, if not Novak, link please.....I've given you the judge, and the head of the CIA in sworn testimony, and you offer a journalist who might have made a phone call...you need to offer a little more to make an reasonable argument of it.
I think Novak's piece in the Wapo goes somewhat beyond that...it goes to two things...firstly there is the obvious need for the Republican party, coming into 2008, to absolutely distance themselves from an administration that is an absolute political liability and perceived as such by the enfranchised mass (Bush's approval average approval rating over his terms is now almost exactly half Clinton's average over his terms); and secondly a belief in the Senate, as expressed via Novak, that Bush is, to put it simply, utterly, and irredeemably incompetent.
I think he lives in America.
Adding to Darryl's point. I work and socialise with Americans everyday (and not just from the big cities....Arizona, rural New Mexico as well as CA and NY) and I suspect they too, based on our conversations, would profoundly disagree with most of your opinions and positions. I would suggest that whilst your opinions are held by a sizable minority, that is all it is, and most Americans I encounter seem eager for their nation to pass out of the darkness of the past years
Stephen,
Glenn Greenwald on Salon is very good on the scandal as well. He takes few prisoners....