Iraq legal advice leaked - Update: More leaks!

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Orior

Shoot me if this is off topic but.....

In my opinion, more than half the British public were behind the government when they entered into confict with Iran. A lot of those gullible people now blame Tony Blair for taking them in. Well there's nothing you can do about it now. Labour will be in office for another 4 years. But that's nothing to the pain that has been heaped upon the Iraqi people. Their country is an absolute mess. How much better are the Iraqi people now as they were under Saddam?

I hope that the US and Brits have learned a big lesson here. If you take out a dictator who you dont like, first make sure you ask yourself "what will happen next?".

Well they no longer live in fear of a knock on the door in the night and then disapearing for voicing anti-saddam views.
The marshlands are recovering, letting wildlife return.
They now have the ability to vote for who's in charge without fear of death from whomever they didn't vote for.
Tens of thousands of shia men, women and children are no longer being lined up and shot simply for their religious beliefs.
Medical supplies and aid is now getting where it is needed, unlike under sanctions when it wasn't, which caused thousands to die.
There is now a thriving technology trade and comerce is booming.
The ailing infrastructure is being serviced and rebuilt, many towns now have constant electricity and fresh water which they didn't have under saddam.
So for the majority of iraqi's things are much better or soon will be better.

[BBKing]

Xaccers has clearly been reading US and UK military press briefings rather than anything particularly accurate. No point refuting each point individually, except to say they're mostly wrong, particularly the one about the fear of the knock at the door, given the level of political assassinations at the moment, often preceded by, er, a knock at the door, and the fact that several hundred people have died violently in Iraq since that posting. Obviously it's a different, better sort of corpse than under Saddam.

Anyway, I was reviving this thread because of Matt D's comments about Uzbekistan - people may have noticed the US and UK supported Stalinist dictatorship there is in a spot of trouble - troops on the street, violence, crackdowns, systematic human rights violations. When other countries in the area (Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Georgia) overthrow Soviet throwback *******s and seek a bit of freedom we support them (the Ukrainian revolution was a carefully stage-managed one using American money, then again, the election-rigging chap on the other side was backed with substantially more cash from Russia) and send our people over to congratulate them.

So how come when it's the much bloodier Uzbekistan situation we 'call for restraint from both sides'. In Ukraine the election was rigged - in Uzbekistan the opposition aren't even allowed to stand in elections and there's no free press and people get boiled alive to make them talk or just because their face doesn't fit.

So what I'm wondering is, if Saddam was so nasty that it's better to bomb his country to bacteria and start a civil war there what's so special about Uzbekistan that we support their government as a 'stable force' and ship terrorist detainees over there to be tortured on our behalf?

[Paddy1]

Originally Posted by BBKing

So what I'm wondering is, if Saddam was so nasty that it's better to bomb his country to bacteria and start a civil war there what's so special about Uzbekistan that we support their government as a 'stable force' and ship terrorist detainees over there to be tortured on our behalf?

No oil?

No strategic value?

Nah. Couldn't be anything like that

[BBKing]

Actually, being a boring sod, I looked up Iraq and Uzbekistan in the CIA factbook

Both about the same land area.
Both about the same population (26m).
Iraq produces 2.2m barrels of oil/day, Uzbekistan produces 146,000.

Comment column in the Grauniad today* asking how the hell you are supposed to move towards democracy by peaceful means in a country where the security services use torture, bullets and boiling alive, where the 'judicial system' has a 99% conviction rate (i.e. none of the people sprung from prison the other day were guilty in the sense we know, much less 'terrorists' as the US maintains) and all that lot is propped up by $80m of US money last year.

500 killed in Iraq by rebels and Condoleeza Rice visits
500 killed in Uzbekistan by the regime and it's dismissed with calls for restraint from both sides. How do you restrain yourself from getting shot, I wonder?

*Edit - by the former UK ambassador
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...484631,00.html