Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rictor on November 04, 2006, 09:48:50 pm
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http://sev.prnewswire.com/government/20061031/NYM22430102006-1.html
TORONTO, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A former political adviser to Saddam Hussein's son said today that Saddam was willing to yield to all American demands before the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- but that the Bush administration refused his offers.
The disclosure was made by Hossam Shaltout, a Canadian aerospace engineer, former American pilot, and founder of the peace organization Rights and Freedom International (http://www.rightsandfreedom.com/), who said that war could have been averted, but Bush aides blocked his efforts to announce Saddam's decision.
"Saddam was willing to yield to all American demands, announced and unannounced, to reach peaceful resolution," said Shaltout, "but the Bush administration, including Elizabeth Cheney, undersecretary of State, David Welch, the U.S. ambassador in Egypt, and Gene Cretz, his political attache, did not respond to his offers."
Now clearly this has a very high probability of being a political ploy, especially since the source is a former advisor to Saddam's sons, but if there is even a grain of truth to this it makes the US look even more evil tha it already does. So not only did they lie about their being no WMD, use 9/11 to establish a non-existant link to Iraq but on the eve of a war that was to claim hundreds of thousand of lives Saddam apparently capitulated and no one gave a damn.
Double-you tea eff?!
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was true; the US wanted war with Iraq, period.
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Yeah, I don't think so.
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Same thing happened to Japan. When they knew the bomb was coming, they wanted to surrender, of course. But the bomb needed a live testing stage on humans and general urban environment so they dropped two, to establish scientific certainties.
This was just a smaller scale colonial move. After all, Saddam was the US' puppet for many years, if not all of them.
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Yeah, that's also an unproven view. I actually wrote a paper about that.
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@BlackDove: Db is right. That's not how the story goes.
@Rictor: If it would turn out to be true, I wouldn't be that surprised. But somehow that just sounds too good to be true. I'll wait some more gossip about this before I start believing in it.
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My country makes me
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b319/Mistah_Kurtz/lmao-real.jpg)
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Actually, it won't matter much if it's actually true or not.
In terms of logic:
A proposition P is made. It has "historical boolean" value, which means that it either happened or didn't happen. Proposition P makes government G and one or more of their actions (G1, G2, ... GN) look bad and wrong.
Person A likes government G. He is not happy about what proposition P means, so he doesn't want to believe it. And guess what, he or she doesn't believe it until someone can prove without smallest doubt that its historical boolean really is "true", and even then it's possible that he or she will simply rationalize the government G's actions with some kind of illogicism that so much appeal to so many people.
Person B hates government G, and especially one of governments actions. So he or she is eager to accept the proposition P as "true", much regardless of it's actual, historical boolean value. So, he or she readily believes the proposition.
Person C is a rational being and doesn't "believe" in things, but rather only accepts proven facts as truth. This kind of people are nonexistant, obviously.
So, regardless of historical boolean value, this kind of news will have the following effect even before it's confirmed to be either true or false:
-people who want to believe it, will believe it to some degree
-people who don't want to believe it will deny it to some degree.
The degree of acceptance or denial varies from person to another, depending on their ability to think rationally and the strength of emotion that the matter invokes in them.
If the thing is found out to be historically true or false and proof of it is presented to everyone, there will still be few hardcore non-believers who will believe what they want. These people are the conspiracy theorists. Eventually, the historical truth will be the most common view, but until unambiguous proof is given on behalf or against the proposition, people will believe what they want to be.
Considering that there will be congressional elections in two days, I wouldn't be surprized if this news was released to further make the elections a question of Iraq war and stir the waters even more... It may not even be democrats' doings at all, it may be true or false and released by someone independend of both parties. What is certain is that if this kind of news spreads widely, it will in short notice strengthen the views of those who have a lot of "Person B" in them.
I myself would say that I consist some 60-80% of "Person C" and the rest in this matter would be "Person B". Which means that I am suspicious of this kind of news, but I wouldn't be too surprized if it proved to be true in the end.
I'll keep an eye on this, but most likely there won't be any trustworthy news about the subject until the elections are over and the results defined.
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yeah, don't trust any shocking turn of events even remotely related to US politics for the next few days.
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This isn't anything new, I do recall something about this way back - can't find details though. It wouldn't surprise me - especially given the way Iraq supports the US economy.
What am I talking about? Well I mean the fact that the defence industry has had a huge boom since 9/11, and that ammo and equipment had to go somewhere lest it's value drop and the defence contractors get shafted. Queue large war to get rid of said weapons and equipment.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a war economy. And we all know how those end...
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was true; the USBush wanted war with Iraq, period. He even lied to america to get it
fixed
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Yeah, that's also an unproven view. I actually wrote a paper about that.
(http://www.awolbush.com/rumsfeld_saddam.jpg)
yeah.. it's not like we gave him those chemical weapons that he gassed his own people with or anything...
oh wait... we did
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I think DB meant the Japs.
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Hussein almost certainly did offer a peaceful resolution, but he'd've just waited like a month, then started giving them **** again.
And in that month he'd be fortifying his military positions.
Personally, I think he'd've pretty much caved on most of the **** they were demanding, then stalled on the rest. But the US just got sick of ****ing around with him and wanted his oil.
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Kaz, he was talking about the "the Japanese wanted to surrender, but we wouldn't let them until we dropped a few bombs on them first, because we wanted to see how well it worked" thing.
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Hussein almost certainly did offer a peaceful resolution, but he'd've just waited like a month, then started giving them **** again.
And in that month he'd be fortifying his military positions.
Personally, I think he'd've pretty much caved on most of the **** they were demanding, then stalled on the rest. But the US just got sick of ****ing around with him and wanted his oil.
Part of the conditions Rictor refers to were that Saddam and his family abdicate power and leave Iraq.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was true; the USBush wanted war with Iraq, period. He even lied to america to get it
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296-133 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq) in favour of war. Sorry Kazan, but the American people (via their elected deputies) made it clear that theywanted the war.
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and it was like 70% in favor at the time.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was true; the USBush wanted war with Iraq, period. He even lied to america to get it
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296-133 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq) in favour of war. Sorry Kazan, but the American people (via their elected deputies) made it clear that theywanted the war.
I don't think so. Aforementioned elected deputies can vote any way they choose, even if it goes against what every single one of their constituency wants.
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but that wasn't the case here thought was it?
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Don't you mean "any way they're paid off to choose"?
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I wouldn't be surprised if it was true; the USBush wanted war with Iraq, period. He even lied to america to get it
fixed
296-133 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq) in favour of war. Sorry Kazan, but the American people (via their elected deputies) made it clear that theywanted the war.
I don't think so. Aforementioned elected deputies can vote any way they choose, even if it goes against what every single one of their constituency wants.
Thus the reason Bobboau brought up the 70%.
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Same thing happened to Japan. When they knew the bomb was coming, they wanted to surrender, of course. But the bomb needed a live testing stage on humans and general urban environment so they dropped two, to establish scientific certainties.
This was just a smaller scale colonial move. After all, Saddam was the US' puppet for many years, if not all of them.
I've heard that point of view expressed but its been mostly quashed. The Japanese leadership had voices of dissent from 1944 onwards...some in power were expressing the desire to seek an end to the hostilities. American firebombing did far more damage to Japan's cities than either atomic bomb did. The first atomic bomb was basically the straw that broke the camels back in the Japanese leadership...but it took time to make the changes. By the time of the second atomic bomb the Emperor stepped in and that was the end. Its been said that conventional firebombs would probably have done the same thing...but those were just as devastating if not moreso. So it was a catch 22 really. Everyone talks about the two atomic bombs when the firebomb raids were far more costly in lives overall.
Anyways, slightly off topic...I'm not surprised about this little revelation although I don't think it specifically changes anything. Its generally not the greatest of ideas to capitulate at the very last second as the gears of war are already in motion. If the situation had truly been that Saddam had WMD and that the invasion needed to be carried out in a timely fashion...then such a capitulation would be seen as stalling for more time...and when you're ready to go like that, the worst thing you can do is stand down.
On the other hand...given that the situation on the inside was more of a agenda based thing...its something of an outrage that efforts could not be made. Basically I think they decided that Iraq was a threat that needed to be taken out, war on terror or not, and the war on terror just gave an added bonus in forming the language that shaped the move towards war. I still think they could have ignored Iraq (with its obvious lack of WMD) and really focused on rebuilding Afganistan and getting Osama.
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The Japanese were making noises about surrender, but unless they could obtain a promise to retain the Emperor (unconditional surrender may not have given them that) they intended to fight to the last. The retention of the Imperial throne was a very big deal; at that time it was understood that one's loyalty to the Emperor was directly linked to one's very claim to be Japanese. To some extent that's still true.
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Bobboau: oh
296-133 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq) in favour of war. Sorry Kazan, but the American people (via their elected deputies) made it clear that theywanted the war.
that doesn't contradict what i said - that is the RESULTANT of what i said. The entire "bush lied" thing.. you know where he presented CIA reports that were doctored - kept the half that said "so-and-so thinks saddam has X" and removed the half that says "but we don't think so becauze of a,b,c"
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There was something out at the time that indicated he was making some noises about acquiescing to the US deamnds. It was widely regarded as a ploy to stave off the invasion. Kinda like his turning over some million pages of documents to respond to the UN request. So, as the world comes to an end, I agree with an0n's assessment.
The guy was a ****nut. The only thing good to come out of this disaster is he gets the short rope.
Anywho, nothing new, just now (more) confirmed. Curious as to why this is being seen as a revelation. I'd rather talk about how we were lied to about the intelligence, that has meat on it. This doesn't.
Vote tomorrow.