Reply #40: Some of this is flat out wrong [View All]

[knowledgeispower]

What little debate there might have been over the UN’s attempt to lift economic sanctions on Iraq in exchange for a resumption of inspections evaporated as it became clear that Saddam would not consider allowing UN inspectors to return.

I am sure Senator Kerry knows full well that the reason why inspectors had to *return* in the first place was due to the Desert Fox operation of '98. Clinton pulled out the inspectors because they were going to bomb the hell out of Iraq. Then when the bombing was over Hussein would not let them back in because they believed the United States had used the weapons inspectors to get information for the boming campaign. This has been substantiated by Scott Ritter and others who were weapons inspectors at the time. Thus, Kerry's statement is intentionally misleading in its simplicity.

{i]In the absence of international inspections, it is vital that tight sanctions remain in place on exports of military goods and dual-use technologies to contain Iraq’s ability to threaten its neighbors.

So here he is condoning the sanctions. Maybe this is where we differ (as you being a Kerry supporter and I not being one). I think the sanctions were wrong. Here is what Kerry states earlier, in the VERY SAME SPEACH:

Each newspaper story about commercial flights from Moscow or Paris into Baghdad International Airport further discredits the sanctions regime. Meanwhile, the people of Iraq continue to suffer terribly, as Saddam profits from the sanctions, using them as a tool for maintaining his reign of terror.

So he is acknowledging that the Iraqi people "suffered terribly" from the sanctions, yet he thinks that it is "vital" to maintain them. I will give him credit for this: he is awfully unique in American politics to actually CARE that the Iraqi people were suffering under the sanctions. But to know this and advocate the continuation of them is unthinkable in my mind. But I always was an idealist.