Erm...The US was supporting Britain big time aside land lease, to a degree they even joined convoy duty attacking german subs in the process long before any war decleration. Not that I can't sympahizse with this descision, but technically the US was far away from a "neutral" country that got a war decleration just so out of the blue. Hollywood does not really live up to this, just in case that is your source of information.

But, back to topic. To all the propaganda nonsense thrown around here, Goering hat a little bit to say to that.

“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the
leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a
simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country.”
--- Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Reich Marshall, at the Nuremberg
Trials after World War II.

What has WWII to do with the British retreat in Iraq until summer next year?

Judging by the dominance and stubborness by which WWII and Nazi Germany enters most discussions on very different themes, I must conclude that some people have not yet learned that the war is long since over and that the Federal Republic is no Fourth Reich.

The SAS operation referred to in some postings, by all what I could find and also remembered, was no arbitrary terror strike. These two SAS members were no trigger-happy Blackwater mercenaries going lose in manhunter's paradise. In fact the Brits tried to relieve a situation around the prison from unacceptable conditions. It went wrong and later they had to use open force, paying with a negative PR score therefore. If there were alternatives for a more promising way of solving the situation in that prison, none of us can judge.

Perhaps not, but you dont need to be Hitler to be a genocidal twat.

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/int...am_hussein.htm

Unfortunately the media has turned the word "genocide" into a meaningless buzzword now. The word now has no meaning. Look at the title of your piece "war crimes". Yes Saddam was a dirtbag but calling his actions genocidal has just turned the word into a cliche. They should have used the word genocide more sparingly in the media because now the word has no meaning and they just want us to notice.

We didn't invade Iraq because Saddam was a meanie though. US actions post invasion towards the Iraqi and Kurdish people show we couldn't care less about the locals welfare, they are just an annoyance. I personally hate when the locals build their crappy lives on top of natural resources. The Iraqis ironically had a better life under Saddam.

When Saddam gassed the Kurds it was while he was friendly with the US. Also a little while ago when Turkey started attacking the Kurds I notice the US didn't do anything about it. Imagine that.

Who will the west invade next to liberate? There are dictators all over the world, who are we going to "save" next? Operation Congo Freedom? Operation North Korea Freedom? Operation Saudia Arabia Freedom? There are countless dictators out there, why did we only want to "liberate" the ones sitting on the largest oil supply on the planet. Hmmmm...

I am far from excusing the US attack on Iraq, but I am also far from excusing the crimes of Saddam. The word genocide is strictly defined in the anti genocide convention by the UN, where it has the meaning of massmurder against members of a given ethnic or racial or cultural origin and supression of cultural traditions and ways of living in an attempt to systematically destroy the longterm survivability and thus: future existence of this ethnic, racial or cultural group in it'S old, historical environment, and making them/it dissolving in a greater cultural or ethnic context/system, or to wipe them/it out as a separate entity or being. Of course, this oimplies the conflict taking place in the natural envrionment of the victim - you cannot claim to be victim of genocide if aggressively moving into another people'S land, and then seing them trying to fight you off in a case of self-defense, your claim of genocide is not valid if you are the agressor and being resisted to by those you assaulted and who dol not wish to fall back in the face oif your aggression.

the exact formulation of the anti-genocide convention, and the later appendices and comments on it, can easily be found via internet, and I have repeatedly linked to that over the past 6-7 years.

All this is the meaning of the word "genocide", and Saddam sure as hell is guilty of that, as is for example Turkey guilty of genocide regarding the Kurdish people and their cultural identity it tries to wipe out, or the massacres and supression of the Armenians, or is the Rwanda massacres in the 90s or the Sudanese Jandjaweed assaulting of civilian villages a "genocide". the Chinese commit genocide in Tibet because they try to delete the culture, and Stalin committed genocide when moving around whole peoples in the southern parts of the USSR in order to make them rootless and easier to control by trying to delete their cultural identity.

as far as i do nknow, English knos only the word "genocide", but in German, we have to words which have identical meaning, "Genozid" and "Völkermord". The latter is much more revealing for the nature of "genocide", meaning in word-by word translation "murdering a people", also meaning "murdering a culture"