oj, the Left has no shame and is only interested in scoring debating points by changing the subject. This article is case in point. Leading the article, and clearly providing the real "interest" here is whether there were US firms involved. It matters little the scale in which they were involved relative to the usual suspects in France, Russia, Germany, etc. It matters less that the issue is that sanction program was corrupt and corrupting, regardless of who participated.

MG:

It does matter though that American business was involved. Libertarians (the economic Right generally) opposed the war and would condone doing business with anyone. To change Lenin (?) only slightly: they'd gladly sell the rope with which the Islamicists hang their own people.

I see your point, but in the grand scheme of things, it matters as much as Abu Ghraib matters -- as a reprehensible, but statistically unrepresentative distraction, from more important pursuits. And, very likely, a very different degree of involvement and conspiracy to defraud than the people/organizations that we should be after.

The idea that supporting sanctions over war makes one "objectively" pro-Saddam is like saying Churchill was objective pro-Stalin during World War II. It was a matter of choosing between the better of bad choices.

Nobody said the sanctions were perfect and no one endorsed corruption. What was said is that the system in 2003, for all its flaws, was better than going to war. It was better than getting nearly 800 Americans killed. It was better than getting 10 to 15 thousand Iraqi civilians killed. It was better than potentially turning Iraq into either another Shiite theocracy or a larger version of 1980s Lebanon. It was better than the laughable situation we have now where our chief IGC puppet gets turned into hamburger meat and we're having to raid the house of the very guy we intended to put in charge of the country one year ago.

All-in-all, even 4.4 billion dollars looks pretty measely when compared to these costs, which are still rising astronomically. Indeed, considering the fact that real Islamists (which Saddam was not) now have real access to loose chemical weapons and have a great recruiting tool in Abu Ghraib, we could use your logic and say that you, Orrin, and the other war-birds are objectively pro-Islamofascist. Osama couldn't be happier with you.

Derek:

Churchill and FDR were explicitly pro-Stalin--he's the third guy in the photos at Tehran and Yalta. It was a disatrous policy and rendered the war pretty nearly pointless.

I note you're trotting out some more of your theories about how al Qaeda and its actions are our own fault It meshes with the Zionist conspiracy theories that reflect your psychological fears of situations beyond your control, but it's delusional.

If you're saying Winston Churchill, anti-Communist extraordinaire, was "pro-Stalin," then I'll let that stand without rebuttal. It speaks volumes on it own. It certainly puts your charges of my being delusional (which are based on grossly mistatements fo my position) in the "Pot v. Kettle" category.

That last parenthetical should read "gross mistatements of my position." My apologies for the typos.

Here's just one of innumerable examples of how Churchill curried favor with his Bolshevik ally at the expense of peoples freedoms:

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=90

Derek --

Your portrayal of Iraqi life under Hussein and sanctions, not surprisingly, understates all the obvious and well known suffering and underachievement. Your portrayal of the situation today, also not surprisingly, 180 degrees around -- every current element of instability is magnified, every ten facts showing progress is left unmentioned. (Even the NY Times can manage to publish facts that show that in one single and challenging year, the broad situaton on the ground is objectively better.) But we know your claims/opinions on this matter; and you have access to all the same resources we have to assess the other claims.

So I am more curious about this -- what will and what if analysis. You already seem to preclude any chance that Iraq, or portions thereof, will make any more progress, econmically, political, socially, and strategically than that made (or not made) as of May 2004, T + 1 year. In fact, everything is going to go down to hell. What we want to know is: No war in 2003, then what? What happens to sanctions? What happens to Hussein and the Baath's party's power? His sons? WMD programs present or past? Lybya, Syria, and Iran?

Another example of how the Left has become so good at hindsight blame and so adverse to any sort of program of their own. They've become Reactionaries in every perjorative sense of the term back when they used it as the ultimate insult. The best they seem to offer is "put us in total power, and things may not go to Hell quite so fast, and when it does, it'll be other people's fault (like yours) because we weren't given enough power."

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