Saddam Era Iraq was a "stable society". (more looney tunes at Salem-News)

In the comments about how America is to blame for all the evil in the world, Daniel Johnson posted this little gem...

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Daniel Johnson July 16, 2009 4:15 pm (Pacific time)

The reason democracy is so difficult, is because it is a "top down" processs. It is not something the "people" want, but something that the intellectuals of society *think* that people should have. Think Iraq. They weren't doing "fine" before W invaded, but they had a stable society.

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I responded to his claim...
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PNWCC.INFO July 16, 2009 11:25 pm (Pacific time)

Iraq was a "stable society"? What on earth are you on? Saddam killed millions over the years, and Iraq had unemployment of about 80%, and was ruled by a network of thugs and informants and secret police, whose favorite activity was torture and killing to extract information to determine who next to shred.

Editor: I don't know what planet you live on pal, but even the biggest false propaganda spreaders don't suggest that Saddam killed millions.

Me: So, you've not counted up the dead from the gassings, the Iran-Iraq war, the secret police "vanishings", the military campaigns against citizens, the deaths due to illness and disease and malnutrition, etc, from Saddam's hoarding food and medicine, etc? No, didn't think so.

Let's see, George Bush senior encouraged the Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein. They did, we abandoned them, and left them to die after encouraging their revolt. You think the U.S. gets to wash its hands of responsibility for that?

But no guilt for Saddam, huh. Figures.

Google Answers published this early in the war, "So, that line of reasoning goes, the U.S. is actually culpable for most of the deaths of innocent Iraqis. (Some have said, it is responsible for ALL of them.) And apart from putting down the rebellion, Saddam has NOT in fact been killing hundreds of thousands of people. So, removing Saddam's regime will NOT actually save hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives."

Amazing. We're reduced to quoting Google Answers for political propaganda. That's the most idiotic response you could possibly come up with. Quoting illogical tripe makes it...Illogical tripe, sorry.

I asked people all over Iraq to tell me how their country was before the U.S. invasion and they all told me that the invasion did not help their lives in any way, shape or form. Iraq was a peaceful, functioning country when we attacked it. It is not a matter of theory. 'W' knew they had nothing to do with any acts of aggression toward us and yet he made our military attack the country anyway. It is true that if an Iraqi crossed Saddam Hussein he would pay, but that was mostly political opponents.

Sure you did. And Iraq was "peaceful, functioning country" like pigs have wings. If Iraq was your definition of a good country, and America's a bad country, I can't imagine what kind of hell you'd call a "good country".

Yes, they had the infamous meat grinder in Baghdad, yes his one son was a horrible pervert, but overall they were mostly just hassling their own, how does killing a load of people and destablizing their infrastructure help? Under SH, some people were victimized and savaged and murdered, but most weren't.

So, a "peaceful, functioning country" is one defined as where at least 1 person more than half of all the population survives the murderous tyrant's whims. Not even the most absurd black comedity writer would come up with this sheer idiocy.

I have been to a town called Al Dujayl where there was an organized attempt to assassinate Hussein in 1984 or so. Very interesting stuff. Everyone there was either killed or jailed, but that is to be expected in a failed assassination attempt I think.

After we invaded, women in labor at night could not reach hospitals, we totally and completely disrupted their life, killed up to a million people or more, losing thousands of our own in the process. What about Burma? What about North Korea? I guess real threats aren't interesting unless they have oil.

So, "peaceful, functioning countries" are places where the dictator kills and tortures entire towns, decimates health care, starves people to death, and closes down medical facilities... Destroys the largest area of agricultural production in the whole nation, poisons people with soviet era chemical weapons, where one out of 13 people is on the payroll or is blackmailed into "outing" people as subversives or spying on neighbors and families. Got it. You claim Salem-News is a great news site? No, it's a looney bin.

You can't bring yourself to claim that Iraq wasn't functional, but claim that it was destroyed by temporary military curfews that may have kept pregnant women from getting to the hospital at night. Nothing about Saddam's hired rapists could you criticize, though, or even claim that any society ruled by a government with professional rapists and a massive torture network used against it's own citizens could be "disfunctional". Nope, it was "peaceful".