The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
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hi everyone, > It is perfectly clear that there is a degree of hypocrisy about the US's > stance (after all, there was no such enthusiasm for getting embroiled in > Bosnia) but I would ask people what the alternative is to sanctions or > military action. If we do not want either, then how are we to force > Saddam to comply with United Nations resolutions? > > Iraq may possess weapons of mass destruction capable of causing vast > suffering to the people of Israel and other countries in the area. hypocrisy is indeed the issue here. the problem many people, and especially arabs have with the concept of "we have to take military action to make iraq comly to the un resolutions to secure stability in the area" is that noone pays any attention to UN reesolutions at all when israel is concerned. israel (possessing nuclear weapons "of mass destruction") has declared openly that whatever stand the UN takes they will go on with eg their settlement policy, ie they don't respect UN decisions. the situation is of course completely different, but one wonders what factors determine when the compliance to UN resolutions is deemed vital for the future of the "free world" and when it isn't - ie noone would ever dream of even introducing slight economic sanctions against israel. or turkey for that matter who don't treat their kurds that much better than saddam hussein does... which brings me to a question which is slightly "off-topic": iraq got most of its weapons from "us", many of the suppied during the iran iraq war. now, does anyone know whether there were certain conditions attached to receiving those weapons (eg only shoot iranians but not kurds)? this might sound extreemly silly, but i know for a fact that germany exports tanks to turkey, with turkey's promis that they wont use them against the kurds (which is always a great source of embarassment when some stupid journalist films german tanks in the process of shooting at kurds...) samira