Fahrenheit 9-11 opened the other day (notice I didn’t link to it - on purpose).

While advertised as a documentary, I’ve seen it called in many quarters more of an oped-entary since it is less based in fact and more the opinion of it’s autuer.

I liked Bowling for Columbine and also really liked Roger and Me but, Michael Moore is a man of double standards, the ones he applies to himself and another set for himself (truthfully, I wouldn’t mind seeing someone point their lens Moore’s way and see how he fares under the scrutiny).

Which brings me to my true topic: Americans believe we went to war in Iraq in spring of 2003.

Unfortunately, the truth is we’ve been at war for over ten years. Ever since the first Gulf War, Americans have been involved in one way or another in military action in Iraq.

Americans have been flying patrols, launching cruise missiles and basically making the people of Iraq pay for our mistakes since the first Gulf War.

During his first term, Clinton had been challenged by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on a number of occasions. In June 1993, following an abortive Iraqi attempt to assassinate former U.S. President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait, the U.S. bombed an intelligence center in Baghdad. In October 1994, Saddam Hussein moved his army toward Kuwait and the U.S. responded by airlifting military forces to Kuwait and warning Iraq not to invade, a threat that achieved its purpose. The U.S. was less successful in August 1996, however, when Iraqi troops, in cooperation with the KDP (the Masud Barzani faction of the Kurdish opposition), attacked the rival PUK faction of Jallal Talabani which had been aided by Iran, and drove it from Irbil, thus severely damaging U.S. efforts to force a united opposition against the Iraqi regime. The U.S. responded by expanding its “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq to the 33rd parallel, and by bombarding Iraqi air defense installations. France, which had hitherto cooperated with the U.S. in maintaining the “no-fly” zone, did not cooperate in the newly extended part of the zone. Furthermore, the Arab world viewed the limited U.S. cruise missile attacks as worse than useless, stirring up Arab popular anger while not threatening the bases of Saddam Hussein’s power.

How can this be? Where was everyone when all this was going on? Were we asleep? I seem to remember these events, does anyone else?

The “No-Fly Zone War” pitted the air and naval forces of the United States and the United Kingdom (also referred to as “Great Britain”), against the air defenses of Iraq. This conflict proved to be largely ignored by the media and the public in both the U.S. and in the U.K., though it impacted the military and the citizens of Iraq on an almost weekly basis, especially since the intense “Desert Fox” bombing campaign of 1998.

Mmmmmm... I’m trying to remember who our president was?

Let me see... mmmmmm.

You see, the point I’m trying to make is for all the demonstrations in this country prior to the actual invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, no one seemed to want to cotton to what our country had been doing for the last ten years. We probably should have done more to support the Shia and Kurdish uprising after the first Gulf War but, GW’s father (and the pundits at the time) were too afraid of the destabilizing effect it would have had on the region.

Now, I’ve been making my way though the Woodword book and I don’t like the administration’s linkage (or lack thereof) to Al Qeada as a justification for the invasion but, I do think in some ways it might not have been such a bad thing to do what we did.

Don’t necessarily take my word for it though, I came across this blog (via Salam Pax’s blog) by an Iraqi doctor which speaks far more eloquently to the situation than I can.

...These are the same people that continue to pour in from the borders of our ‘friendly neighbours’ to wage their 7th century Jihad on Iraqi soil, they are the same people that pack vehicles with tons of explosives to relieve thousands of Iraqis of their existence, they are -I believe- the same people who continue to assassinate hundreds of Iraqi professionals and ‘collaborators,’ they are the same people that run the Taliban style Emirate of Fallujah, they are the same people who the Arab media insists are heroic ‘resistance fighters.’ Yet all we hear after such grisly scenes is... (croak)... (croak)... a maddening silence, and then a few obligatory half hearted ‘This is not the real Islam, you know,’ ‘Noooo, it’s really a religion of peace, you don’t understand.’ However, I don’t think people are buying these lines any more.

What the media fails to realise, is that the logic of these groups can actually be turned against them. They claim they are here to drive the foreigners who have been killing Iraqis out of Iraq. Ironically, those Mujahideen are also foreigners who have been slaughtering thousands of Iraqis over the last year. I’m not sure we are going to see any of them beheaded on tv though.