first draft finished: Topic: Iraq War
Purpose: persuade my audience/readers that the war in Iraq was completely materialized by the U.S.
Thesis (speech version): Today I will persuade my audience that the war in Iraq is only beneficial to government and corporate interests and that we entered the war because of lies these agencies put forth as truth.
Thesis (blog version): After much research I have found that the war in Iraq is only beneficial to government and corporate interests and that we entered the war because of lies these agencies put forth as truth.
I. Introduction: In 1959 the U.S. Government funded efforts to assassinate a foreign ruler. His name was Qassim. These efforts were unsuccessful, but in a coup a few years later Qassim was overthrown. The party that took over, the Baath Party, was fully funded by the U.S., giving the U.S. government the ability to put in power their own leader. After several years of Baath domination, in 1979, a man who is well-known in the public eye made his emergence as the dictatorial leader he was known to have been up until his recent execution. The country was Iraq. The man chosen by the U.S. was Saddam Hussein. Over the last several months I have been studying politics extensively and the Iraq War has been a topic for which I have been particularly fond. It is a topic that has sparked the interests of many Americans and even people clear across the globe.
II. Body of speech/blog
A. Since his emergence in politics, the U.S. has assisted Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party to achieve the power that made the atrocities that they have committed possible.
1. One example of assistance that we have given to the Baath Party is the Iraq-gate scandal. According to the Information Clearinghouse, over ten years ago a reporter for Financial Times named Alan Friedman reported that “President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker had committed billions of taxpayer dollars to assist Saddam Hussein.” He went on to say that “Bush and Baker allowed the export of U.S. technology that would directly help Baghdad build a massive arsenal of chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. The arms were given to help Iraq fight Iran.” Friedman’s book Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq went into greater detail about the Bush Administration’s illegal funding of Iraq prior to our conflict with them. [1] Additionally, according to the late Congressman Henry Gonzalez of Texas, “The Bush administration [has] sent U.S. technology to the Iraqi military and to many Iraqi military factories, despite over-whelming evidence showing that Iraq intended to use the technology in its clandestine nuclear, chemical, biological, and long-range missile programs.” [2] These claims were made in 1992. The images you see here are actual documentation of our weapons trade with Iraq. [queue images]
2. The Oil for Food Programme was erected in 1995 by the U.N. so that Iraq could trade oil for food, medicine and other humanitarian necessities. Two companies that participated in the Oil for Food Programme were Alcon, a Swiss Global medical company specializing in eye care products with American headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, and a stock company called Fenar. According to John Fawcett, while speaking before the U.S. House of Representatives, “Alcon and Fenar did nearly $2.5 billion worth of business under the program, of which some $400 million was done in the last few months of Saddam’s reign.” Furthermore, Fawcett stated that “[it is likely that] this money is funding the car bombs that are tearing apart men, women and children in Iraq on a daily basis.” This program has also been involved in quite a bit of corruption. An example of this that Fawcett uses is baby formula. “It normally sold for about $2000 per ton, but a corrupt supplier would charge the UN on behalf of Iraq, $2500. The difference was again split with the Iraqi officials. While the UN and others mounted public campaigns decrying the suffering and deaths of Iraqi children, price gouging was taking place on the very product that could help these children.” Mr. Fawcett continued by explaining that “[a] reason why international officials would agree to a system that profited Saddam Hussein is that they also stood to gain financially.” [3] Subsequently, in 2003, Oil for Food was shut down, just in time for the war to start. An article one of my colleagues found from around the same time written by CNN correspondent David Ensor claimed that the once classified documents that the current Bush administration used to lead us into war had recently been declassified and were found to be forgeries. These documents contained the apparent “strong evidence” that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. The documents claimed that Iraq had tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger but were obvious fakes. [4] It is no coincidence that the news of these documents being forgeries went widely unheard.
B. One possible solution is that we leave Iraq and focus on domestic policy rather than foreign imperialism.
1. The United States, along with most other nations around the world, is going through a severe economic recession that is said to soon become a depression. Much of the current problem has been caused by our continued involvement in a war that has now outlasted both world wars, costing us heavy prices in casualties, resources and money. Should we bring our troops home in a quick, unorganized fashion, however, we run the risk of leaving Iraq in turmoil leading to the possible reign of another egomaniacal, dictatorial leader like Saddam, putting our homeland at risk once again. This is, unfortunately, the bind we are in due to the unjust war in which we are currently engaged.
2. For this reason, I feel that the best solution at this time is for the U.N. to redeploy troops in a slow, sequenced manner. Under president-elect Barack Obama’s said policies, this is precisely what our government will do, while simultaneously strengthening the war efforts in Afghanistan, the country which we should have invaded to begin with.
so what are some possible solutions to the problem here?