Originally posted by orionthehunter
Please remember back just over a year ago. The president, congress, and the American public believed Iraq and Sadam Hussein represented a growing
threat that we would have to deal with sooner or later. The president and congress voted to do something then instead of later. After 9-11 the
president must have thought it was better to act now rather than wait and see if something bad happens if we don't do anything. I guess he had some
false information on that decision though. I don't believe Sadam would have nuclear missles and bombs and chemical or bioligical weapons for at
least a few years maybe eight. Then he would want to build up his armies for war purposes and prepare for conquering nearby nations. All that takes
time and that's the way Sadam would have it. He wouldn't want any puny invasion but the mother of all wars. I don't believe the war was for alien
weapons.
Truly incredible!
I thought this Forum was to
Deny Ignorance, obviously not, it seems that every other post just trumpets the Neocon Lie.
Iraq was hardly in a position to fight it's way out of a "wet paper bag" let alone conquere fellow nations
What precipitated the Iran-Iraq War in 1980?
Probably one of the largest IMO & fundimental causes of the out break of the war was dispute over rights to access and control of, the Shatt-al-Arab
waterway,not only did this war result in hundreds of thousands of casualties and a tremedous loss of oil revenues for both countries, Iraq in
particular relies primarily on oil exports to generate foreign exchange earnings,The Iraqi losses alone are estimated to have been in the region of at
least $100 billion This was due not only to the massive expenditures required to finance the war, but damage to oil export facilities.Both sides
specifically targeted these facilities in an attempt to reduce the others ability to wage war. The war eventually ended in 1988 but anomosities have
persisted. While the causes of the conflict were numerous and varied, Control of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway and its use as a border have been a
source of contention between various states since The Peace Treaty of 1639. Ambiguities in this agreement (between the Persians and the Ottoman
Empire) led to continual disputes that have not been resolved to this day.In regards to the river today the economic impact is immense,this is because
the river and the accompaning small stretch of land is the Iraqi's only outlet to the Persian Gulf and thus the shipping lanes needed to exports it
primary resource of oil to the rest of the world
without having to pay a third party shipping rights.
Iran and Iraq have a number of longstanding enmities that actually precede the formation of either country. The first of these is Iran is the
inheritor of the Persian empire while Iraq is the inheritor of the Babylonian Empire. This is significant if for no other reason than it means
Iranians identify themselves as Persians while Iraqis identify themselves as Arabs. Consequently the majority of Iranians speak Persian dialects while
the vast majority of the Iraqi population speaks Arabic. These differences are further highlighted when one examines differences in religion.
While both countries are Islamic, the government of Iran is of the Shi'a sect while Iraq is of the Sunni. Furthermore the Iraqi ruling party, the
Ba'th regime, is secular while the Iranian government is fundamentalist. This is further complicated by the fact that although the Iraqi government
is Sunni, the population is from 60%-65% Shi'a.
The Iranians attempted to capitalize on this fact by embarking on a campaign designed to
enflame the Shi'a population of Iraq and subvert the Iraqi government in 1979-80. The Iraqi's responded by increasing their military
readiness posture thus starting an Arms race & conflict spiral that eventually resulted in the outbreak of the 1980-88 war
As for what caused Iraq to invade Kuwait, I'll keep that simple.
Most of the other OPEC nations had
finacially backed Iraq in it's war against the
Persian Iranians to the icredible sum of $30
Billion in war loans,while all the other OPEC nations led by Saudi Arabia had written off the debt, the Kuwaitis on the other hand continued to make
noise demanding repayment of it's war loans,little able to repay those loans because of the economic state Iraq found itself in the post war economic
collapse the Kuwaitis resorted to
Slant Drilling into Iraq Oil fields bordering Iraq/Kuwait, in other words
Stealing
Iraq's Oil, they'd managed to remove $6 Billion by the time the Iraq Government found out, which of coarse led to the first Gulf War.
Deny Ignorance!