I guess her answer stands either way, but the idea that sanctions killed half a million children is Hussein’s phony propaganda, and subsequent research has shown no increase in child mortality during the time of the sanctions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/04...

"We have investigated ourselves and found we have done nothing wrong" is the takeaway here.

Rather than deferring to Liz Sly from WaPo, why doesn't the U.S government submit itself and the administrations of the 90s to The Hague so this can be confirmed?

I’m not deferring to WaPo, but rather two academics at the London School of Economics. Their paper is linked in the WaPo article. I don’t believe either is affiliated with the US government, or even an American citizen, so I don’t see how their article could be called “investigating ourselves.”

> This is from a 1996 interview with this woman [1] about the Iraq invasion.

Actually in regards to the sanctions against Iraq during the Clinton admin.

> Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of swamp creatures lauding what a trailblazer she was over the next few days.

> sanctions against Iraq during the Clinton admin

Which administration were the sanctions imposed under?

It seems really weird to make a partisan jab over that.

George H. W. Bush sanctioned Saddam to death instead of toppling his government. From the end of the Persian Gulf war until it was "liberated" it was basically impossible to do business in Iraq.

Both parties carried this out.

Neocons from both parties

Both parties didn't want a full scale invasion during the 90s, so sanctioning was seen as an alternative.

Important question.

Looks like GHWBush after the Kuwait invasion[1]

That said, presidents have the power to adjust sanctions if they affect too many innocents.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq

> It seems really weird to make a partisan jab over that.

What’s more weird is implicating partisanship where there is none.

Maybe you think of things in this frame. Not everyone else does.

I re-read the thread and you're right, you were just providing relevant context. My apologies.

"Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to take."

-Lord Farquaad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm2x6CVIXiE

This is the first thing I thought of when I saw her name.

But I have to wonder what info she had that made her believe this? How many Iranians does in the 1980s in the war against Iraq? How many Kurds died to the government in Baghdad?

I have started to question whether those in power actually have perverted value systems (as is a common meme) or whether they are privy to different facts.

Not trying to apologize for this woman’s statement, just genuinely curious.

They don’t even need to be privy to different facts for things like this to make some sense without resorting to assuming they have perverse values. You cited some possibilities yourself, data like that isn’t and wasn’t classified information.

Most internet commentary and discussion on any matters of significance is hopelessly warped by an inability to understand context and scale. Some of that inability is bad faith argument, the rest is a mess of laziness, naivety, and shallow displays of superiority.

The point of my comment wasn’t to ignore your very plausible explanations. I expect there are many people that suffer from those.

The point was to point out that epistemology works best when you make a good faith effort to understand how other people arrived at their conclusions.

I have spent a lot of time recently trying to understand why many people are convinced about things like New World Order / Global Cabal / QAnon / Soros, Stop the Steal, various vaccine/COVID topics, multiple religious beliefs, and even why Putin believed he should “protect” Ukraine (assuming good faith). It’s far easier to bridge misunderstandings if you understand their motives, intent, desires, and the chain of facts that inform their worldview.

It's an important question to ask.

Well, you have to applaud her honesty.

Yes, most politicians would adamantly deny the the facts, or that they were making a tradeoff at all. So, credit where credit is due (what little it might be).

I don't understand this video. If it was 1996, then is wasn't about the Iraqi invasion because it hadn't occurred yet. The 1993 action was not an invasion of Iraq. The caption says something about Iran, but I can't imagine what the US did to cause 1/2 million deaths of children in Iran. So what was this video actually about?

The invasion of Iraq, or at least the one you are alluding to, happened in 2002, six years after that quote and a few years after Albright was making those decisions.

And what is it you are objecting to, exactly? Saddam was a sadist who gassed his own citizen. People demanded someone go in and stop him back then, like they are now asking for a no-flight-zone in Ukraine. Sometimes, there are no good choices.

At the time, embargoes were seen as effective because they had just brought down South Africa’s regime of Apartheid, and (to some degree) the Soviet Union. The alternative in US politics was not non-interventionism. It was outright invasion, something that had to wait for an administration without Clinton and Albright. The “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iraq” party came in and that likely killed an order of magnitude more people, especially if you consider that it caused the collapse in Syria, as well.

The first invasion of Iraq was in 1991

Some context here. This was because Saddam and Iraq launched scud missiles at and invaded Kuwait. US coalition forces freed Kuwait from Iraq's invasion, then pushed into the border of Iraqi territory to destroy the scud missile launchers and then promptly secured a ceasefire and left, leaving Saddam's regime.

Yes, and it took what? 6 months? And guess who was not Secretary of State at the time?

And in a different (VERY different) administration.

The US is newly sanctioning Russia as well as long term sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Cuba. Are they worth it?

As an America I say:

Russia: Right now, worth it.

North Korea: Who knows if it's worth it.

Cuba: Not worth it. We're still upset that they kicked out our dictator.

Iran: Not worth it. We're still upset that they kicked out our dictator.