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Originally Posted by Tristan Lall
It seems like we're having a problem with the relative scale of things here.
For example, a SCUD with mustard gas is not a weapon of mass destruction--with a chemical payload, it's intended mainly as a tactical weapon (albeit a fantastically outdated and highly inaccurate one). With a nuclear payload, it could be used strategically, but that's moot, since nobody found an appropriate warhead, or even a SCUD rigged to accept such a warhead. In any case, the mere fact that a SCUD could carry a nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapon does not make it a weapon of mass destruction. In short, NBC ≠ WMD; with the NBC weapons Iraq is known to have possessed, there was no legitimate capability for mass destruction, rather, only localized carnage would have been possible. (They might have been able to kill or maim everyone in a 1 km radius with gas, but they couldn't have levelled the city like the Americans did Nagasaki.)
As for the prisoner abuse: It is indisputable that the number of American violations was not equal to the number of Iraqi violations. It's absurd to even suggest this--let's give Andy A. the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't trying to say something so positively ficticious. On the other hand, while the Americans aren't accused of killing their prisoners, their other alleged acts of torture are perfectly in keeping with some of the methods allegedly used by the Iraqis. The scale is different, the alleged atrocities are equally reprehensible as individual events.
I'd also like to point out that evidence of terrorist training camps in Iraq does not imply govermental co-operation with those "institutions". In America, there are criminal, even terroristic organizations that operate outside the law. Does this imply that the United States government is due to be overthrown? But I'll give Andy B. the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he feels that the Iraqis were casting a blind eye on these alleged terroristic activities (rather than actively supporting them, since there is insufficient evidence to prove governmental support). Maybe that's true, and therefore the old Iraqi government would not be without fault.
As for this supposed moral victory, need I point out that the electricity grid worked under Saddam (no worse than now, at any rate), the schools were in session (and they were even secularized and under governmental scrutiny, despite the blatant propaganda), and oil production in Iraq depends on the Kurds (who Saddam tried to kill). The major oil fields are centred not around the Gulf coast, like in other neigbouring states, but rather in he north, in territory that is predominantly Kurdish in ethnic makeup--they don't hate the U.S., and they are willing to permit oil production, rather than sabotaging the Hussein government's attempts to produce oil. Basically, that's not evidence of a moral victory--it's a combination of the pre-war status quo, and citizens who aren't as interested in blowing up American-sponsored oil facilities (yet?). Maybe a moral victory exists, but those examples do not demonstrate it.
So what do we have? No evidence for Iraqi support of terrorism (maybe they ignored it) and no evidence for weapons of mass destruction (they had tactical chemical weapons, and at one time had some interest in nuclear technology of all sorts).
It seems that the only one of the above things that we can actually pin on the Iraqis is that they killed, tortured and oppressed thousands (no small atrocity, granted). But that much was never in dispute, and didn't prompt the U.S. to go to war (they've known of this for around 20 years, now). Instead, it was the phantoms of terrorism and WMDs that sent America to war (and make no mistake--until such time as sufficient proof is freely presented to the world, Iraqi WMDs and state-sponsored terrorists are purely conjectural apparitions).
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