Sen. Fitzgerald: Bush talked about killing Saddam

Ari Fleisher said this at a press conference one day: "I can only say the cost of a one-way ticket is substantially less than that. The cost of one bullet, the Iraqi people taking it (on) themselves, is substantially less than that, the cost of war is more than that."
Ari Blows the top off

And a new Pentagon reports says that an Iraq war would cost $95 billion or MORE! $95 billion war


So my question is: Would you support the return of assassination?

Sounds better on paper than in reality, in my opinion.

Assassination sounds great as long as we can assume the next guy will be better. Unfortunately, this ignores the premise that most people are the product of their environments.

Secondly, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If we don't like 'em, we shoot 'em.

Goes both ways.

My vote: Bad idea.

I do not think the world will be a good place if the method to solve problems is killing the leadership of other countries. It is up to the people of a region to select their leaders. Other regions should not be "vetoing" those choices no matter what they think of the selection process or the quality of those leaders.

but what if a people CAN'T choose their leader? like in Iraq. assasination should be legal, but only under certain circumstances. like if the people ask for us to do it. if someone has obviously violated human rights, snipe them. many, many more leaders would think twice before killing hundreds of thousands of a certain race, or what not.

You are used to a democratic (ability to vote) country. There are other forms of government. I, too, do not think the "selection process" for the leaders in non-democratic states are good ones. Still, it is up to the region to determine their form of government and their method to select a leader. I do not want any country coming to the Unitied States and telling us we are "doing it all wrong" and "fixing it" nor killing our leaders if they do not like them. Neither should we be doing so to other countries.

To me, if we go to war, i believe that ,that may even be possible, it will limit casualitys of war and it will be able to oust saddam hussein in a real cheaop type of military action

The same could be said of military invasion without proper follow-through, except that invasion would also destroy civic infrastructure that will be sorely needed by survivors and successors. Comparing assassination without follow-through to military invasion with follow-through strikes me as slightly disingenuous.

BTW, small irony here: are people aware of where the term "assassin" comes from? Look it up.

I have a question for goamerica. You asked, "Should we bring assassination back?" Back? Was it EVER our policy?

Asked to choose between the assassination of Saddam Hussein against the deaths of a few hundreds or thousands of Iraqi's in order to topple Saddam Hussein certainly does put the moral implications of assassination up to scrutiny.

Perhaps it should be considered as a legitimate act of declared war. So for example, the USA could declare war on Saddam Hussein alone... That way, the Iraqi's would not have to die to defend him.

It probably wouldn't work though. Most likely such a rule would be misused at sóme point. Perhaps such matters should be left to interpol and the UN... isn't that why they were created?

Once war is declared, or hostilities commence, commanders of enemy forces are legitimate targets.

The prohibition on assassination is Executive Order 12333 of Dec. 4, 1981.

The most cogent argument against assassination does not present it as an alternative to war, because in that comparison assassination will always look good. Rather, the argument goes, we should consider assassination as a potential cause of war. If we fail to treat assassination as a heinous act, it becomes more likely to occur. Loss of a leader is more likely to reduce stability, and increase desire for revenge, leading to war. Therefore, the choice is not between assassination and war, but between peace and assassination followed by war.

OK, so how about a thought experiment? Has anyone here read Dune? The society depicted there did not condemn assassination. It condemned general war as a response to assassination; the accepted response to assassination was assassination itself. This "rule" was enforced multilaterally, through fear that starting an actual war would bring upon oneself the combined might and wrath of all the other political entities in the system. I've often wondered whether such a system could ever work in the real world. Instead of ruling out heads of state as targets for attack, make them the only targets for attack. Maybe they'd be less likely to swagger about and engage in stupid alpha-male dominance displays, risking other people's lives to salve their own egos.

Or maybe not. It's certainly worth thinking about, though.

It was our policy until Ford signed an Executive Order prohibiting assassinting Foreign Leaders

It is in the article link that i posted: Paragraph #3


Sen. Fitzgerald: Bush talked about killing Saddam


Platypus Posted on Feb 27 2003, 12:48 PM


In Saddam's case, the people of Iraq would celebrate in the streets when they find out he was killed by a CIA sniper

It was never official policy, just covert practice.

My question for goamerica would be "These are the options?"

To answer his question: Frankly, if the only reason we're about to embark on this war is to effect "regime change", it would clearly be way cheaper to just employ yet another assassin. However, that would not accomplish the real agenda of the War Party. It won't happen (and, if it did, it would only forestall our eventual military aggression in the region - unless, of course, we have our own regime change in the meantime).

That's not the point. The point is not what happens in the two days after Saddam's removal, whether it's by assassination or by full-scale war. It's not even what happens in the years of civil war between Kurds and "swamp Moslems" and other minorities and remnants of Saddam's regime and factions within the civilian Sunni majority - again, either way. The point I was trying to make was about what happens when resorting to assassination "because it's so easy" precipitates a major regional conflict, not necessarily in Iraq but maybe somewhere else in the Middle East or Africa or southeast Asia.

Let's not forget that World War One - the "war to end all wars" - was precipitated by assassination. Anybody who believes that assassination can be an alternative to war, without considering assassination's role in 1914-1918, is IMO being just a tad naive.

What do you mean?


Platypus Posted on Feb 27 2003, 05:14 PM


Killing Saddam won't cause World War III! It might cause a huge civil war between Kurdish Factions but it won't cause a World War. The assassination that caused World War I was over 2 countries' borders.

Does that make it acceptable?



How is that different from what people are suggesting in Iraq?

[quote=Platypus,Feb 27 2003, 07:14 PM] [QUOTE]Killing Saddam...might cause a huge civil war between Kurdish Factions but it won't cause a World War.[/QUOTE]

Does that make it acceptable? [/quote]
No. But the Kurds shouldn't be taking over parts of Turkey because they will have all of Iraq to live in when we kick Saddam out or they could claim the Northern part of Iraq as their own little country

[QUOTE][QUOTE]The assassination that caused World War I was over 2 countries' borders.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]How is that different from what people are suggesting in Iraq?[/QUOTE]


By killing Saddam, we will be preventing a nuclear exchange with him when & if he gets nukes

GoAmerica



How do you know that?

How do you know that a sudden power vaccum in the middle east, or an armed American presence will not set an escalation of violence in motion where by Israel gets dragged in, or Turkey is attacked or Iraq uses a nuclear weapon no one knew they had...

You seem to be offering only two alternatives: an illegal, full-scale war in order to oust Hussein or the illegal assassination of Hussein. What about other options? Effective containment, effective defense, the exploration of diplomatic solutions, supporting the enforcement of UN resolutions? In fact, as Iraq has never posed a threat to the US, does not support our most dangerous enemy (al-Qaeda), and there's no substantial evidence to suggest that he has any weaponry capable of threatening the US, why even consider those options? Why not just let the UN deal with him as they see fit, providing whatever input we feel we must as a member of the Security Council?

Saddam is a dictator who let's his people starve. Why should we let him stay in power? Diplomatic solutions have been used...The talk of him going into exile with little or without any money, UN sanctions are being used but he violates those, UN resolutions with inspectors to make sure he is disarming or disarmed can be manipulated by hiding weapons anywhere underground (when do inspectors plan to check in underground areas?)



because the UN can't even tie it's shoe without U.S. help. They never bothered to fight against Milocevic in Kosovo when he was slaughtering un-armed civilians or the same in Rawanda & Bosnia

The UN needs to be spoon-fed or nothing will get done

If we are ready to assassanate a world leader that means we must have hostility toward him. Hostility leads to war, why go to war and kill thousands of Americans when we can kill the leader who we are hostile towards?

CP

Just to set the record straight since a leftist spin has once again been put on the facts.

The Gulf war never ended, there was a truce. Iraq has continued to violate the conditions of that truce so the war may resume at any time.

That is what defines the 'legality' of this war.

The problem with state sponsored leader assassination is it evens the playing field. Anybody can play that game. Reagan was nearly killed by a lone nut case.

I'll go with Wertz' thoughtful approach. A lot of people on this board seem to casually play fast and loose with other people's lives. Whether its war or assassination, the ramifications just don't seem to be thought through.

Still I wish SH would be taken out by his own people or just leave. But wishes are wishes. For now let's stick with inspections and containment. It's working about as well as any other BA policy that I can think of.

Reading what Dingo just said here made me think (hush y'all )

Bush Sr. was nearly killed in Kuwait(?) in 1993 by Saddam & Clinton only retaliated by bombing Iraq a few hours.

So, since Saddam tried to assassinate one of our leaders, isn't it only fair we try to pop him off?



Bahrain, UAE & i believe Kuwait has insisted he resigned but he just flipped them off. And if his own people tried to take him out, there would be a mass genocide that would make Rawanda & Kosovo put together look like a small incident because Saddam would have them blown away, International Community opinion be damned

A death for a death? That is truly a horrifying thought. IR theory is a lot more complicated than this sort of "he did it first" approach. If starving populations and disobeying Human Rights were the standard for assassination there are probably about 30 countries all over the globe that would NEED their leaders assassinated.