No it isn't.
you said it's about "scale" . It was on a big scale with the training camps right across afganistan before 9/11.
You cannot possibly equate saddams killing of "opposition" with the attacks on the jihadists. He killed them because of who they were not because of what they intended to do FFs
thats a shocking opinion. Saddam gassed whole communities regardless. Drones against targeted aq operatives are nothing like the same thing.
If I were going to be honest Clive, i was hoping someone else might have picked this one up for me, as you've been told enoguh times previously.
In terms of scale there is a world of difference between a small group of about 300 holed up in the north of Iraq, and falling under the protection of John Major's no-fly-zones called Ansar-al-Islam, and the Islamic state, which numbers about 30,000 fighters. If you can't see which group is the bigger, and therefore operating on a larger scale, then frankly there really is no point. It's not just scale of numbers though, albeit that's pretty compelling in itself. It's scale of reach too, and where they're drawn from. I provided you a link a few pages back by country of origin (which it was curiously suggested was invalidated because it was 6 months old? - a remarkable conclusion, but one I couldn't be bothered to respond to) but it clearly points to fighters being drawn from all over the world, even if we'd accept that a majority of those fighting in Iraq are Saddamists. There's also an issue of capability which is also on amuch greater scale, helped in no small part by the dissolution of the Iraqi army that fled and abandoned their weapons. Saddam had radical under Islamists pretty well under control. Those he was permitted to get at by the west, (the Sadrists) had been killed - lets be honest about it, of course he killed them, that's what dictators do to people who would try and kill them in a power struggle. There's nothing pure and moral about a game of brutal survival.
This does of course lead onto the plight of Kurds and Halabjah which is often cited. The Peshmurga had basically assisted Iran in the war that Iraq had spent 8 years fighting with them. The KDP and PUK both supported and fought for Iran. The Iraqis egged on and financed by America, and supplied by France, Russia, and Germany, had made early gains, but slowly the Iranians reversed these to a point of stalemate. I don't think people realise how many people were killed in this conflict. A figure of 1 million is normally felt to fair.
Saddam, not unreasonably, had taken the Kurdish position as one of beligerent. Tell me? how else was he supposed to interpret it? They were fighting his troops, and engaged directly and indirectly in killing Iraqis. This is war Clive, bad things happen, real people get killed. With a truce agreed between to the two principal beligerents, Saddam then set about removing opposition, or Ali Hassan Al Majid did, albeit no one is going to argue that this didn't come without Saddam's complete blessing.
Saddam attacked Iran in the first place because he recognised the threat that radical islam posed to him. Dictators normally have an enhanced appreciation of threat! it's sometimes called paranoia, but he was probably right. This was a threat that needed a final solution in his eyes, and for the most part the west has been engaged ever since 9/11 in trying to achieve similar ends, albeit we haven't resorted to something as crude as gas attacks. I should point out incidentally that in September 1988 the Democrats passed two motions in both houses for sanctions to be issued against Iraq and Saddam only for President George H Bush to veto them and extend Saddam another round of credit. It was only when he invaded Kuwait, (with mixed messages from America, as he'd asked what their position would be ahead of doing so) that he became their bogeyman. He cemented this place when in 1996 the Secret Service broke up a plot to assasinate George H Bush visiting Kuwait accompnaied by his daughter in law, Laura (George W's wife). This is why I often think it's important to remember the extent to which a family feud was ultimately allowed to enter world politics resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the pursuit of personal revenge.
So to come back to your assertion that "He killed them because of who they were not because of what they intended to do FFS" you might hopefully start to realise that you're only half right. He killed them because of who they were? Yes. They were actively engaged in trying to overthrow and kill him. "Not because of what they intended to do". No. They were targetted because of what they had done already. In other words, by dint of deed. Saddam didn't have the advanced technology that we have today. He was broke and militarily degraded after an attritional war of 8 years with his neighbour. He was always going to struggle to send troops in to arrest and garrison these areas. He knew there was a clear and demonstrable threat to him (there always would be in such a badly cobbled together country) so resorted to a method that was brutal but effective. There is a similar argument/ justification (often debated of course) concerning America's use of nuclear wepaons on Japan. Saddam used the most potent weapon available to him against a demonstrable enemy with whom he hadn't made peace.
Just for context too, I don't accept that AQ training camps (most of which were aimed at dealing with the Northern Alliance) is anything on the same scale as IS and the spread of a global caliphate. To suggest they are is just plain wrong. These training camps were occasionally bombed by cruise missiles after the attack in Nairobi and Sudan (not that there was anyone in them) but you're over-stating their scale Clive.
