this seems more suited to tongodeon's investigative style

[waider]

Iyad Allawi, ex-Prime Minister of Iraq, says, "[human rights] abuses are as bad today as they were under Saddam Hussein". Now, it's not that I'd doubt the word of a tried-and-failed politician making a pitch in the run-up to elections, but you know how these things work. If he's actually right, though, it kinda messes up the argument that right or wrong, the invasion of Iraq was ultimately good for its people.

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

Something tells me that the human-scale paper shredder is just no longer in use. I'd be the last to say that everything in Iraq is hunky-dory, but even I'd say that there have been some improvements. Sounds like electioneering hyperbole to me.

[tritone.livejournal.com]

Luckily the testicle-fryer is still working. Wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it.

[dr-strych9.livejournal.com]

The human-scale paper shredder was a fiction (probably supplied by the Rendon Group). It never existed. It and several of the other particularly grisly atrocity stories have never been confirmed.

No, I'm not saying the Hussein regime didn't torture— they did. I'm just saying the most lurid stories that went around are not particularly credible. That particular one was never any more credible than the bullshit claim that Saddam had drone airplanes loaded with anthrax ready to wax London with only twenty minutes notice from Iraqi Army field commanders.

Oh, and don't get too smug about our side not having any monsters on the payroll...

p1. Our dear friend, Islam Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan has been known to boil people alive (http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/us-and-uz.htm) in our names.

p2. Our new friends in Iraq, are every bit the monsters (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-abuse18nov18,0,1511136.story) they were when they did their monstrous deeds for Saddam instead of for Uncle Sam and John Bull.

[merde.livejournal.com]

it kinda messes up the argument that right or wrong, the invasion of Iraq was ultimately good for its people.

did anyone actually ever believe that in the first place? i mean, other than Republizombies.

[candice.livejournal.com]

Dunno, but it makes a better argument than imaginary weapons of mass destruction.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Someone I spoke to some months ago said it to me in the face of the "invading iraq was the wrong thing" argument. Something along the lines of "sure, it broke international law, but the people of Iraq are better off now than they were before Saddam!"