Sanctions take goods and wealth away from the country. If the country is dictatorial, the ruler will horde what goods are left for himself, thereby depriving the common people of all necessities. The king is always the last one affected by sanctions.

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An' it harm none, do as ye' will.


Never argue with an idiot. He'll just drag you down to his level of intelligence and beat you with experience.

The boundaries of Iraq were determined by the British after WWI. Everyone needs to go back and watch Lawrence of Arabia, specifically the part when Lawrence and his allies captured Baghdad and they were in a government room yelling, screaming and threatening each other as tribal conflict took over. Shiek Faisal took over power in Iraq. And that was the problem. If the boundaries had not been set up in this manner, we would still have tribal regions becoming their own nations. Iraq wouldn't have been operating on the age old model that the strongest warlord rules. Whether it was Faisal or Saddam, might made right.

I don't support sanctions either. And in case you haven't noticed, we have gone from starving children, to providing them with unexploded ordinance and mines all over the place so they can blow themselves up. Unexploded cluster bombs are the nastiest. The kids see a bright yellow plastic container that kind of looks like a toy, not an oversize shotgun shell ready to blow up in their hands.

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National Debt =

The biblical Herod has a terrible reputation for "The Slaughter of Innocents" ...the infants of Bethlehem. Even Jesus recommends suicide in preference to harming a child. I wonder how Jesus feels about half a million....