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The fact is that containment has collapsed - undermined most by those currently most vocal in arguing against military intervention. The sanctions regime is now a joke, riddled with holes - many of them of Russia�s and France�s making, the rest made by Iraq�s neighbours, which have become willing accomplices in sanctions-breaking. The Security Council has never had the stomach to enforce the sanctions on the border with Jordan, through which a huge trade in illegal Iraqi oil exports have seeped from day one of the sanctions, filling Saddam�s coffers in the process. Nor has it done much to stop illicit trade cross the Turkish and Syrian borders or interfered with the clapped-out tankers smuggling Iraqi oil through the Gulf (they sail through Iranian waters, where Tehran�s Revolutionary Guards exact a toll to finance their own black arts, en route to Qatar and the UAE.)

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Indeed, the illicit oil trade has grown so big that Saddam is siphoning off oil from the legitimate UN-backed oil-for-food programme to supply it. Those who witter on about containment should confront the fact that revenues from Iraq�s legal oil trade - meant to pay for food and medicine for the impoverished Iraqi people - fell from $17 billion in 2000 to only $11 billion in 2001 (and continue to fall) while its smuggled revenues increased from around $600 million three years ago to $3 billion today. That means less food and medicine for Iraqi people, more money for Saddam�s WMD. So much for containment working.

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The Americans and the British are getting no credit for it now, but the world will come to be grateful that Washington and London are made of sterner stuff.

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Besides the fact that it's a "flawed foreign policy."

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posted October 19, 2001 06:54 PM

America's actions in regards to Afghanistan have been criticized for a LONG time. You missed the protests about Vietnam? Both symptoms of the flawed foreign policy of "Containment" ...

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posted October 19, 2001 09:40 PM

'Containment', which got us messed up in this tiny little Asian country called 'Vietnam' as well. As some of you who actually have a passing familiarity with history may be aware, Vietnam and Containment policy were protested long and hard in the 60's.

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Containment is war: a slow, grinding war in which the only certainty is that hundreds of thousands of civilians will die.

The Gulf War killed somewhere between 21,000 and 35,000 Iraqis, of whom between 1,000 and 5,000 were civilians.

Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every month, or 60,000 per year. Other estimates are lower, but by any reasonable estimate containment kills about as many people every year as the Gulf War -- and almost all the victims of containment are civilian, and two-thirds are children under 5.

Each year of containment is a new Gulf War.

Saddam Hussein is 65; containing him for another 10 years condemns at least another 360,000 Iraqis to death. Of these, 240,000 will be children under 5.

Those are the low-end estimates. Believe UNICEF and 10 more years kills 600,000 Iraqi babies and altogether almost 1 million Iraqis

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The slaughter of innocents is the worst cost of containment, but it is not the only cost of containment.

Containment allows Saddam Hussein to control the political climate of the Middle East. If it serves his interest to provoke a crisis, he can shoot at U.S. planes. He can mobilize his troops near Kuwait. He can support terrorists and destabilize his neighbors. The United States must respond to these provocations.

Worse, containment forces the United States to keep large conventional forces in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region. That costs much more than money.

The existence of al Qaeda, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are part of the price the United States has paid to contain Saddam Hussein.

The link is clear and direct. Since 1991 the United States has had forces in Saudi Arabia. Those forces are there for one purpose only: to defend the kingdom (and its neighbors) from Iraqi attack. If Saddam Hussein had either fallen from power in 1991 or fulfilled the terms of his cease-fire agreement and disarmed, U.S. forces would have left Saudi Arabia.

But Iraqi defiance forced the United States to stay, and one consequence was dire and direct. Osama bin Laden founded al Qaeda because U.S. forces stayed in Saudi Arabia.

This is the link between Saddam Hussein's defiance of international law and the events of Sept. 11; it is clear and compelling. No Iraqi violations, no Sept. 11.

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We've bought the right of a dictator to suppress his own people, disturb the peace of the region and make the world darker and more dangerous for the American people.

We've bought the continuing presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, causing a profound religious offense to a billion Muslims around the world, and accelerating the alarming drift of Saudi religious and political leaders toward ever more extreme forms of anti-Americanism.

What we can't buy is protection from Hussein's development of weapons of mass destruction. Too many companies and too many states will sell him anything he wants, and Russia and France will continue to sabotage any inspections and sanctions regime.

Morally, politically, financially, containing Iraq is one of the costliest failures in the history of American foreign policy. Containment can be tweaked -- made a little less murderous, a little less dangerous, a little less futile -- but the basic equations don't change. Containing Hussein delivers civilians into the hands of a murderous psychopath, destabilizes the whole Middle East and foments anti-American terror -- with no end in sight.

This is disaster, not policy.

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Originally posted by CaptainMike:
its funny how, even though we've had Saddam bent over a chair for ten years, just waiting for closure, the Bush administration's actions have signle handedly divided decades old alliances, basically shattering international harmony between the Asias, the Americas and Europe.

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Saddam is a greater threat now that Bush's actions have guaranteed that an international coalition will no longer be able to agree on a course of action..

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