f13.net

Blair says that the WMD were definitely there, but may never be found. (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/06/iraq.main/index.html)

Well thats convenient.  I was wondering how the Hawks would reconcile their pre-war assertions to the post-invasion reality.  He's even willing to accept that they may have been destroyed.  Now the invasion was OK because "the plain fact is that he was in breach of United Nations resolutions"

Hmm, I guess I would have thought that the UN would have decided whether or not to take action against a UN violation.   Oh, thats right, they decided not to.

The true situation can be surmised thus:

No one gives a crap about WMDs.

Possible Outcome 1 : Iraq becomes a relatively stable democracy, or at least has an arrangement less evil than the surrounding and previous arrangements. Blair and Bush win.

Possible Outcome 2 : The above does not happen. Blair and Bush lose.

No one gives a crap about WMDs.

Wildly inaccurate.  Lots of people care.  It was the primary justification for war.  He was going to attack us, remember?  The invasion was a pre-emptive action.

Just to add more confusion:

This article states we've found at least some WMD. Sure they may be from '91 but they still exist and were not declared:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5568967


The you have the Tony Blair saying nothing was found articles that don't even pay lip service to the WMD that were found:

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/188/world/Blair_says_Iraqi_WMD_may_never:.shtml

Hmm...didn't Putin advise Bush of a potential Iraqi terrorist plot against the US? Indeed, he did....at least that's what the AP reported on 6/18/04.



I pulled the text of the article here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1155802/posts), but originally read it on CNN.com....though I can't seem to find it there now. Here is a link to it on abcnews.com (http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040618_325.html) though.

This, IMO, indicates that the President was led to believe there was a real threat to national security and the American people. Especially given the games Hussein was playing with weapons inspectors, and the intel being provided about WMDs, I can't say I blame him for making the push for a pre-emptive strike.

With one breath people criticize him for not doing enough to prevent 9/11, and with the next they criticize the pre-emptive strike against Iraq as war-mongering. And to top it all off, the implication is always that Bush had these nefarious ulterior motives for doing so....dismissing completely that the guy may have been trying to do the right thing.

Until people can even acknowledge the possibility that the administration acted with good intentions based on the info they had, this debate is silly.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

Wrong. I do, because as an American citizen, I was told repeatedly that we had to dismantle the Iraqi regime BECAUSE he had WMD's and was planning to use them on us.

He didn't have them. Whether he was planning to use them on us or not, he could not have used what he did not have. One major part of the argument made to justify going to war was patently false, and there is enough evidence to suggest that not only was it false, members of our administration KNEW it was false or at least had many reasons to doubt the validity of the intelligence. Which means the American public was deliberately misled.

The Bush administration DID one something right in regards to the "War on Terror," they dismantled the Taliban in Afghanistan, and did so with the full backing of most nations in the world. THAT was a good thing.

Then they immediately fucked it all up by attacking Iraq for dubious reasons, a move that almost everyone who is not a Bush apologist perceives as an imperialist act of aggression as opposed to a defensive necessity. Meanwhile, we've mostly ignored the problems in Afghanistan in favor of tossing money down the pit that is Iraq.

If the administration acted with good intentions in Iraq, I DO NOT SEE IT. I see a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of blame shifting, but I do not see anyone in the administration taking the piss for the things they did wrong. And now that we've gotten ourselves immersed in Iraq, we have no choice but to stay and pour more money and lives down that hole simply to fix the fuckup.

I really don't blame Bush for 9/11.   I'm gonna go ahead and give him that one.  I'll assume that the warnings about Al Queda were buried in a sea of similar, equally credible Presidential concerns and that he was ill-served by the intelligence agencies in place.

I do blame him for starting the Iraq side-show.  The man who killed 3,000+ Americans is still out there hiding, and we have 11,000 troops looking for him while insurgents run back and forth out of Afghanistan at will.  Having another, say, 130,000 troops to help out would be great, but they're in Iraq getting shot at to find Weapons of Mass...err, find intent to make WM...err...promote Democra...uhhh..well lets get them some running water and call it a campaign.

For clarification, I don't blame Bush for 9/11, I blame the fucking Immigration Department for issuing visas to people on the "DO NOT ISSUE VISAS TO THESE RAGHEADED SUICIDE BOMBERS" list.

INS sucks ass.  Well, the did.  They don't really exist anymore.  Prior to 9/11 they were basically rubber stamping everything.  Now that they are supposed to look more closely they can't really function.  My wife has been in immigration limbo for over 3 years now.  No estimated date at all.  And in the meantime she cannot leave the country.  Making her miss her sisters wedding and her son's graduation.  It sucks.  I am not taking it out on Bush though unless the other guy has something to say that indicates he has a plan to fix it.  And I have not heard a peep about it.  INS as a service to would be citizens is currently broken.  Everyone in it is now working on homeland security related tasks.

As far as WMD's, I have heard all sorts of things.  I have even heard a story that supposedly came from AP about yellowcake being found inside pipes in a syrian garbage dump.  The shipments apparently came from Iraq a few months before the war.  I have not found any information at all about the story even from the supposed source.   I heard it on an FM news short where they were listing brief world news.  Not some republican station, but one of the two 'crappy rock' stations we have in orlando.  The source of that information is still a mystery to me, but it was reported as news.  I can't believe it until I find out more about it (probably never).

The sheer volume of news being shoved around now invalidates most of it.  It is so easy to bury stories or make non-stories prominent on little or no evidence.  Every page of the papers is essentially editorial now.  Both in what they choose to say and where (front page vs buried in the back) and in how they say it.  Television broadcasts are worse.

OK, I'm willing to go as far as, nobody is going to change their vote on the basis of WMD.

Because how the hell do you make running out of WMD if democracy in Iraq appears to be working.

And guess what, by the time Blair has to face an election (which could be as late as 2006), we'll have a pretty good idea which way iraq is going to go.



I agree with you here, but the important hemming and hawwing and so on which most independent observers give a crap about all applies to the effort to turn iraq into a functional country.

If Bush/Blair fuck up the country good and proper they will lose a lot of capital. They won't lose jack for *only* turning a nutjob totalitarian state that did not have WMD into a democracy.

I'm certainly no Bush or Blair apologist, and I'll vote against both at every opportunity (though who the hell I'd vote *for* if I was an American has me beat). But  if I were to judge them on this, it would only be on the grounds of whether they've come out with a better iraq than they went in with.

And so far. They're up on the day.

<3

For Bush alone, that's $128 BILLION and counting.

Mesozoic, your post doesn't make any sense.  As you know, some WMD and WMD programs *were* found, the UN *did* vote that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions and that serious consequences would result (they just didn't vote again to lead a UN-authorized invasion because France at the time wouldn't go for it), and after the war the UN voted *again* this June affirming the presence of US troops in Iraq and legitimizing the new government.

Bruce

The UN voted as they did for very obvious reasons. Bush invaded without their approval and faced little international repurcussions beyond hand wringing. The UN voted to make it all legit to save face. Pure and simple.

The blunt truth is that American and Britains were lied to about Iraq. You can make whatever claims you want but we were. I'll be sickened if Bush is reelected becuase it will only confirm my fears that the American people are a bunch of sheep these days.

This much is true.  They voted against any action against IRAQ because France was getting mad cash from exploiting the Oil For Food program, several other countries were buying oil from Iraq under the table, and many of the rest are tinpot dictators just like Saddam who were afraid of being next in line if intervention became the 'in' thing to do.

With France being on the security council, with the ability to just say 'No' to anything, nothing to interrupt the flow of cash to France was gonna happen from the UN's point.  Once Baghdad had fallen, and Saddam captured, there was no reason to fight for the big players, as the 'agreements' they were getting money from were not going to be upheld under the new government, in all likelyhood.

--
Alkiera

You overestimate the influence of France over the UN by a wide margin...

I agree that it might have been the reason the french voted against it, though.

But Bush didn't NEED their approval, and he already had it in the first place, to boot.  And they voted it legit retroactively, so... stop saying the UN didn't support it, eh?



Yeah, we don't want citizens to be sheep to their country's leaders!  We want the country's leaders to be sheep to the UN!

Bruce

Well, don't know about you but I want neither of those two Bruce. What has politicians lying to their citizens to do with the UN anyway? Care to elaborate?

Two possible wrongs making one right?

Iraq was supposed to be able to attack us.  With what?  A handful of decrepit chemical shells from pre-Desert Storm?  Clearly the massive facilities actively manufacturing WMDs  - the ones that Powell showed the UN - did not exist.  

The UN agreed that Iraq was in violation, but they didn't vote to invade.   The difference between the UN and Bush is that the UN said Iraq was in violation for not permitting inspections, while Bush said that they actually had the weapons and planned to us them, on us, in the near future.  Wildly different positions.  The UN inspectors, remember, said that they didn't think there were any WMD to be found.

Bush wanted them to invade, but they wouldn't.   So he did it himself, and now its perfectly clear that Iraq was in no position to attack the US, and on top of all this we're responsible for this huge insurgency / humanitarian problem.  

A problem that Bush now wants the UN to help with.  Now how is the UN going to do that?  By declaring the new government "stupid'?  Of course not.  They call it good so that they can move in and save Bush's ass and hopefully stabilize this thing.  And now you're going to hold that against them?  Classy.

Where did I say politicians lying to their citizens had anything to do with the UN in this context?  Sorry, if you want me to elaborate, you have to be more specific.  I don't see what the general issue of politicians lying has to do with this, but it certainly happens in the UN as well as other places.  Anyway, we were talking about people acting like sheep before you interjected; feel free to comment on that if you like.

Bruce

All true, but it's equally reasonable to suggest that the West is also responsible for Hussien being there in the first place.

And at a current score somewhere north of eleven million dead people, it's somewhat difficult to play a moral responsibility card in favour of not doing something about it.

If you want to lay into the US and UK government for the manner of the invasion and the possibly cack handed aftermath, then be my guest (so long as you have an alternative). But the fact of the intervention I don't see any moral/humanitarian downside to. A small number of middle class english speakers in Baghdad being blown up as opposed to a larger number of kurds and other rural poor people being killed certainly isn't ideal, and certainly should leave us open to alternative strategies. But the only alternative so far proposed, that of 'doing fuck all' doesn't have any moral advantage that I see.

Er, Iraq was attacking us nearly every day in the no-fly zones, and had they been able to get ahold of something that they could have attacked our mainland with, they would have.  Not to mention Israel.  And they were funding terrorists.  And trying to assassinate our political leaders... er, what more do you want?  Aside from hiding weapons from us, regardless of "decrepit" age, and not documenting their destruction, as required as part of the cease fire agreements?



International lawyers disagree with your interpretation of UN resolutions, specifically 1441.  You can dance around this issue all you like.  Whether or not the UN "voted to invade" is a red herring... we don't require their vote to invade anyway, 1441 or not.  The UN legitimized the action post-invasion.



This statement simply is false both ways.  Previous UN reports said indeed that it thought Iraq HAD such weapons, and current reports could not verify their current status.  Bush's case for war was never exclusively that they HAD such weapons and were about to use them, but rather that the fact they were trying to get such weapons and were WILLING to use them against us was sufficient alone.



Actually, Bush wanted UN approval to invade, and thought he got it with 1441.  It was Tony Blair, not the US, which urged an attempt to get yet another resolution afterwards, and when Frace said they would veto it, it fell apart.  So Bush did it with the UK and a dozen+ other nations, and on top of all this we made the world safer and liberated a lot of people from a brutal dictatorship, which is all the reason we really needed to invade in the first place.
 


Who is holding that against them?  Not me.  You're the one holding their previous non-vote against them as somehow a sign that the US invasion was illegitimate in the eyes of the UN, when in fact they have since voted that it is, indeed, legitimate.

All of which is another red herring anyway.  By trying to say the UN didn't support it, one is trying to imply that the US didn't have international support for its actions, when in fact it did.  It just didn't have unanimous international support for its actions, and that's hardly surprising.

Bruce

If that context was not one you wanted to create, I'm fine with that and of course I wouldn't ask you to elaborate then. But I am certain you understand how that connection could have been made.

Usually politicians in international politics don't act like sheep. They have their own agendas, and search for temporal allies to further those agendas. They may further the agendas of others if that can give them advantages for future goals.

The "Common People" on the other hand (regardless of country) are more easily swayed to act like sheep. Here we have a word for those people, the uneducated masses that are more easily swayed by populism than by arguments. "Stimmvieh", which roughly would translate as "Voting Animals".

But THEY DIDN'T HAVE THEM.  Thank you.  And...gosh, a country that hates us?  Is that the criteria now?  I'm starting to hate us.

And post-invasion approval of an invasion is simply paperwork.  I don't know if you've noticed, but we're the 800 lb gorilla here and the UN knows that.  Our invasion has made the US, and by extension the whole of the First World, responsible for every Iraqi without running water or electricity.  Now people get to blame the "Crusader Christians" for all their ills.  So now the UN is going to try to dig us out of this hole, in the common interest of everyone.  To do that they have to address the whole "illegitimate invasion" problem.  

And when they do, you point to that as evidence that the whole thing was justified.  I guess the UN opinion counts when they agree with us.

Bush only knows one tool.  The hammer.   He has confused every other option as a half-measure.  

And please...terrorism?  Find either bin Laden or WMD first pls kthx.  We said Iraq was a threat.  Others disagreed.  We invaded anyway.  Now we see no evidence of a threat, and we want those who didn't want an invasion to help us.  How sad for us.  And how sad for those of us still unable to grasp the magnitude of the mistake.

How about the off the shelf missile program they were purchasing from Kim Jong Il. Maybe you would have preferred if we waited until the missiles were in the air and on the way?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60813F93B5E0C728CDDAB0994DB404482

Who disagreed? I'm pretty sure everyone saw Iraq as a threat. Even the French pres said Saddam was a threat to the US. The issue with the UN was that those voting against invasion had ulterior motives as was mentioned above...

Edit: I was mistaken it wasn't the french pres but this guy:

Here's the exact quote for you:

A threat worth invading?  No.  Clearly the French disagreed.  As did the Germans.  No one wanted to invite Saddam to their kid's birthday party, but that doesn't mean that smashing him was the answer.  You're making the same mistake Bush did.  Its all or nothing for some reason.  

Iraq used to have this singular face, Saddam.  He had conventional forces.  He could be dealt with through no-fly zones and conventional attacks.  He hated us but could only sit and brood over it.  He never did attack the US, and we now know that he wasn't close to developing the ability to do so.  Others tried to tell us this, but we had to charge in and find out for ourselves.  Now there is no Iraq.  Theres just 10,000 "militias" roving around with vengeance on their minds.  And oh, look.  130,000 men and women to focus that rage on.   Now the enemy wears civilian clothes and mixes with the locals and attacks you when you're trying to get the electricity up.  Much better, right?  Remember that your attackers are terrorists but the casualties are not the result of terrorism.  Its a White House bookkeeping thing, don't ask.

Meanwhile bin Laden is somewhere hiding.  I HOPE that the forces there looking for him are enough to keep him off-balance and running.  I'm not sure.  I know that another 100,000+ troops sure would help, but they're not available.  They're busy making more terrorists in Iraq, and instituting an Iraqi government that the people hate by definition, because we made it.  

Meanwhile North Korea is tossing WMD around and doing everything they can to prove that they have it.   Yes, we see that you're a crazy motherfucker with the ability to create nuclear weapons, Kim.   We know that you starve your own people and throw them in death/work camps and blame us for everything.  Keep rattling the saber.  Maybe threaten Japan.  Until Bush develops a personal hatred for you we can't really promise anything, but maybe we can set something up for late 2005 or 06.  That might be too late, but we have this time-consuming middle-eastern hobby going on.

Meanwhile the raping and the pillaging goes on in the Sudan and elsewhere.  Thats so far down the list of priorities, FOX could produce a Sudanese Reality Show of hacked-off arms and genocide without rousing Bush from sleep.

If this isn't failure, then I have to wonder just what Republicans think failure looks like.

This has been fun, but its time for me to get to work now.

I'm just curious on why you seem to think that French and German approval is a neccessary requirement to an action?

He doesn't.  Germany and France come up when talking about whether or not Iraq was a threat that required force to deal with.  Germany and France didn't think it was, we did.  Of course they had major business dealings with the old Iraqi regime.  It's just horrible when business dealings dictate political direction.

More correctly, "nothing" or "14 years of starving Saddams opponents followed by all".

If other options that weren't either 'do nothing' or 'starve more iraqi children to death' were on the table....

If anyone can summon the military and political resources to do something about Sudan, they'd get my support.

Problem is, the world has shown pretty conclusively over iraq, that not many nations are much interested in actually doing something about any such problems when they could be scoring cheap points.

I think the events of the last hundred years have proven that people don't care about genocide, just as long as it's not happening to them.  And no one has ever given a rat's ass about Africa.

The thing that really burns me up about the African genocides is how little it would take to stop them.  No one cares though.  Shit, Sudan has oil and no one cares.  Probably because the people doing the killing are the ones pumping the oil.

Huh? Maybe he never attacked the US mainland but he certainly attacked the US. His soldiers regulary fired on US/UN aircraft that patrolled the no fly zone. He also harbored and funded terrorists resonsible for killing American citizens.

I'm really not sure what you consider an attack. Maybe because he never tossed a grenade into YOUR living room? Why don't you pull your head outside of the insular little shell you call your asshole and actually use it.

Early lunch! w00t.

Are you sure there was nothing inbetween "sit on ass" and "take over country"?  Like airstrikes on military targets?  Expansion of the no-fly zone?  Special forces raids?  Arming, training, and support of the Kurds?  Military humanitarian missions to the oppressed inside Iraq?  Propaganda campaigns against Saddam?  



Good job then, because now they've killed almost 900 US troops, wounded around 5,000 more, and the whole country is an active recruiting ground for terrorists and a perfect example of "evil American imperialism" for all other terrorists around the world.   Also, we've lost huge amounts of stock with The Rest Of The World, which might have been nice to have during the execution of an actual War on Terrorism.  Lets give the new gov't about six months to set up some military targets and then re-invade, perhaps.

At any rate the point of this post was that Blair's statement is yet another step towards getting people to forget about the WMDs that were supposed to be the reason for the invasion in the first place.  That way the reason for war can be re-cast after the fact as some other justification.  Probably something abstract like "freedom."  That way they can tell some human interest piece about a happy Iraqi they found somewhere, and call anti-war people and governments unfeeling.

Tried. Did nothing.



Tried, did nothing, except various dictatorships and presumably France bitched about how it was unfair at the UN.



Well, I guess they tried, though I imagine such things stay secret.



Tried. And to be fair, had some success turning Kurdish iraq into a nicer place.



Saddam had largely banned them. Though the less American looking ones were still getting in - didn't seem to achieving much except treading water.



Like the one in 1991? The one where we rather embarrassingly didn't follow through and thousands upon thousands of Saddam's opponents got massacred?

I remember exactly zero alternative suggestions being offered before the war. My point was really that if there was some obvious coaliation of opinion around some muddled third way, it must have passed me by completely.

AND WE GOT THEM BEFORE WE DID!  THANK YOU!  Now you may actually have a clue as to how we play this game.

Waiting until AFTER they have a nuclear weapon they can deliver to New York is TOO LATE.



Ahh yes, France was motivated by great moral principles to STOP the war, but now they view it as simply paperwork?  If that's the case then I don't think their objection was serious in the first place.

And need I bring up that the "final solution" was simply paperwork?



But we did find WMD, and a lot of us do see evidence of a threat.  It's just not evidence YOU think is sufficient for a threat.  But then, a lot of Americans didn't think Germany and Japan were a threat before WW2.  How sad for them, and how sad for you for making the same mistake.

Bruce

By that line of reasoning, we could be invading any country.  Whatever happened to clear and present danger?

Let's please not forget that Syria and Russia are on the Security Council and ALSO voted against taking military action in Iraq. You expect Syria to, since they run the Jihad Hotel for all the fashionable monkeyfuckcrazy bombers. Russia just happened to be making the mad cash from the Oil for Food as well.

Do we really know that to be true?  Before we went to war with iraq we didn't have those 100,000 men looking for bin laden.  The general doing the search (name escapes me) has stated multiple times that more military manpower would not help the search.  Our intelligence service is needed to catch bin laden.  The military force needed to do it once we find him is tiny.

Besides, what will catching or killing bin laden do?  How hard is it to plan a terrorist attack?  It aint rocket science folks.  If we catch or kill him the terrorist activities don't magically stop.  Capture him and the kidnappings and beheading get worse as they all try for his release.  Great excuse for it.  Kill him and you have a martyr.  We are probably better off with him alive and on the run.  As long as he is actually on the run.  I don't know if he is or not.

Quite a selective memory you have there. To refresh your memory here is a link to Bush's speech outlining his case:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html

Seems he made a few points. All of which you are now ignoring. Want to try and refute some other points?

1.) Repression and human rights violations
2.) Return prisoners of war from Kuwait
3.) Renounce all involvement with terrorism and not allow terrorist cells to operate in Iraq.
4.) Destroy existing WMD
5.) Stop development of WMD
6.) Abandon attempts to acquire WMD
7.) Oil sanctions lifted for food only
8.) Provide inspectors unrestricted access


Your entire argument is baseless and I've shown it time and again with actual facts to back up my arguements. Do you want to continue?

If I ran a country, and some other, bigger country banned the flying of military aircraft in my own country, I'd take every opportunity to take shots at them that I thought I could get away with, too.  Not saying the no-fly zone was inappropriate, but you won't find many sovereign leaders who like being told what to do.



Funny how ununiformed solders on the enemy side are termed terrorists, and those on our side are termed black ops or similar.  In the late 18th century, people like that in the soon-to-be US were called revolutionaries, and are our present-day heros.  Look, calling people you don't like terrorists is spin; great for politicians to toss around, but gets you nowhere when talking realism.  Until about 30 years ago, civilians were still marginally acceptable military targets for the west.  Illegal, but we still did it.  Prior to that, civillian targets were fair game for... about all of human existance.  

Again, if I were running a country and another, bigger country moved in and told me what I could and couldn't do, I'd be looking for every opportunity to get them out.  The US is democratic; targetting public oppinion is a fantastic way to change policy (but be careful - public oppinion is a fickle beast).  If getting some stupidiots to take out civiies will do the job, fine.

Not that I approve, but that's how war and power work; it's an ugly world, and we play it just as much as they do.

Roac:

You do realize that Iraq lost a war and were subject to UN sanctions right? What you are really saying is that the UN is a crock of shit and every country in the world should tell the UN to go fuck itself and shove it's rules and sanctions up its' ass.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, I wasn't referring to the general Iraqi soldier as a terrorist. I was referring to people such as the members of Al Qaeda and Abdul Rahman Yasin who helped with the '93 World Trade Center attack as terrorists. Again correct me if you still feel that they are not terrorists and then maybe we can discuss what a terrorist actually is.

Exactly.  Who would have offered those other options?  Probably the Chief Executive - its not like Daschle was going to step up and set foreign policy.  But Bush's response was simply "kill."  It was his call and he wasn't exactly open to other ideas.  For their part, the Dems weakly succumbed to the pressure.  

A more even-handed Administration would have entertained such options, assuming that such a government even felt that Iraq posed such an imminent threat.  More likey, a government not fixated on Iraq would have deployed more troops to Afghanistan, fostered further cooperation with all of our allies against terrorism, stood ready to counter North Korea if necessary, and spent more time and effort on securing our borders and dealing with domestic issues.

Bush said they had them.  Not intent, not hope, not rusting 15-year old shells in the desert.  The means and the motive to attack America.  


But now the WMD are not there, and its still OK?  Wow.  ANY military action is OK by your reasoning.  CANADA could be plotting.

1) happening across large portions of Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere.  
2) a joke
3) Iraq's involvement with terrorism was laughable compared to others in the ME.  Secular country.  S-e-c-u-l-a-r.
4) he didnt have them
5) theres no evidence off WMD production
6) if that was happening he was failing.  Compare this to North Korea.
7)  say again?  is this related to #1?
8) Access to what?  We have TROOPS standing around all over the country.  The inspectors said they didn't have total access but didn't think there were WMD to be found.  THe 130,000 troops havent found anything except - again - 15-year old shells in the desert, certainly not ready to be deployed against anything.

Mesozoic:

Seriously, you do realize this is a thread right? My last post had relation to previous posts. If you can't keep up let me know and I'll summarize. Or if you are picking and choosing posts to reply to because you are incapable of replying to certain of my posts let me know that as well.

Finally did you actually go into the speech and read the detail of each of my points or are you replying to my abbreviated list first?

I could read 100 speeches and it wouldn't put WMD in Iraq.  And since I'm actually trying to work today, I only have the time to respond to your most egregious errors.  By all rights I should have stopped replying to you after you resorted to personal attacks in page 1 rather than play "political discussion" with the adults.

Gotcha, so I'm sitting here providing facts that you are conveniently ignoring.... For times sake.

Talk about pissing into the wind...

I'm done with you.

oh, and when my point was about recent comments by Blair, you responded with a Bush speech from 2002.  Whoops.  

EDIT:  The speech is a good example of the implied Al Queda-Iraq connection tho.

Ahh political threads, how they do get angsty. I think everyone needs to see a picture of my new kitten:


(http://www.u.arizona.edu/~thomase/Ivan%202.JPG)

You just made my point. Yes, they made it legit retroactively. They did so so they'd appear to still be useful to the modern world. They were in danger of becoming obsolete and they knew it.



Well, no good has ever come of the citizens of a country being sheep to their leaders. I won't use historical examples, but they are out there. It tends to be a sign that a civilization is in decline.

There are kittens in Iraq, you know.  With sarin-laced knives.  They are the enemies of freedom, and those who oppose their destruction will reap hell at an unspecified, future time.

Wow... That's a stretch.

Your post was recent comments from Blair and the "Hawks" and "their" supposedly changing  justification of  the war on Iraq. The 2002 speech was Bush's justification for the war on Iraq.

How can you have an argument about someone changing their story if you don't know what the original story was? Fuck!


Edit: To clarify the "Fuck!" was just a general declaration of frustration and not me calling you a Fuck. After re-reading my post I felt it could have gone either way.

Because the Bush speech did not say "He has thiese things, but we will never find them, lets attack anyway."

This from the guy who already stated he didn't have time to even bother reading the Bush speech?

I humor you, and you complain?  :)

We SHOULD be invading any country that:

1. Hates us
2. Is actively trying to obtain or develop weapons of mass destruction
3. Engages in diplomacy and rhetoric that makes us think they want to attack us
4. (added) That we can actually defeat militarily without dragging the world into WW III.

So, no, this doesn't apply to ANY country.  UK and Canada, for example, are safe.  Iran and Iraq are not.  France, well, they are borderline.  North Korea, well, they are a pickle, because they already have a few nukes, and we aren't willing to risk an invasion yet because of the possible repercussions if they use them.

In addition, Iraq was:

1. Attacking us regularly in violation of previous cease-fire agreements.
2. In violation of UN resolutions requiring documentation of disarmament and so on.
3. Funding and harboring terrorism.
4. Run by a brutal dictator with a very poor human rights record.

All of thes are just icing on the cake.

Bruce

Technically, by your earlier statement, this would include any country that we even suspect of trying to obtain WMDs (which really need to be defined BTW).  Since you can't prove a negative, this would probably involve a major invasion fest of many countries around the world.

And you forgot to mention Syria as a potential nuke posessing target.

Sadly, your four points make a basic sort of sense, the problem is that America is unpopular right now, so everyone hates us, WMD programs are hard to prove/disprove, talking shit about America a popular sport these days, and our military is having enough problems dealing with the two bumblefuck countries that we have invaded.  Other than that it's all good.

I've got a picture of one of the cats you're talking about.



(http://www.f13.net/schild/argh.jpg)

That's the only one that's important. If we can beat the living shit out of them, we should. Because they're not us, so they're a threat. That goes for any political party that's not "us" either. Fuck other opinions.



Jolly decent of you, old chap, eh.



Too bad that we're run by a brutal oligarch who is appointed by a democratically elected college of his peers, and who has a very poor human rights record. Too bad that we support dictatorships who kiss our ring, such as those ruling Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Haiti, Nepal and Uzbekistan.

What this thread comes down to is whether we had cause under article 51 of the UN Charter to attack and invade Iraq. However that only applies to countries whose territories have been attacked by a sovereign power. There have been lenient interpretations of the rule applied as per Webster's words: "It will be for that Government to show a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." Unfortunately for the apologists, even the most liberal interpretation of Article 51 does not afford our attack, and rarely has international law allowed for the removal of a head of state.

And for UD_Delt, it is not those objecting to the outrageous "crusade" (as Bush himself styled it) that are calling the UN a crock of shit, but the parties behind the invasion. This is in fact very much a parallel to the actions that led to the collapse of the League of Nations and the start of the second world war.

Many countries, yes, but we're talking 6 - 12, not 100.  And invasion is only the option you want to resort to when other methods don't appear to be working.  As always, this is a judgement call... there are those who argue Iraq needed to be given more time, or that it was working with them.



I wasn't trying to create a complete list of possible rogue states.  I'm quite sure Syria is trying to get WMD, and not just nukes.



Yes, international diplomacy is quite a tricky thing.  I certainly don't advocate immediately attacking all the countries in question.  But you do what you can, and you pick your battles.  I don't expect event a second term Bush administration to go after Syria or Iran militarily.  Somalia is a possibility.  The real wild card is North Korea, which we might have to go to war with if THEY try to start something.  And until we have missile defense up and running, I have plans to fleethe west coast if tensions on the Korean peninsula appear to be building rapidly.

Bruce

Didn't we already retreat from Somalia?  Anyway, Somalia barely has functioning dirt, I can't see them being a threat to the United States.  A breeding ground for those who are, but not a place where you can really organize anything, it's just too damn chaotic.

I don't believe you really beleive this.  If you do, you should flee the country and start funding a military opposition.  This is not to say you can't attempt, of course, change via the democratic process... but if you can do so so easily, well, it probably isn't as bad as you say.

If things WERE that bad, I'd WANT the UK, France, etc. to come in, liberate us, and let the government get back to where it was before... don't you?  Even if the UN didn't agree.



We advocate democratic reforms in those countries.  Invading every little country that's a dicatorship isn't feasible at the moment.  Our "support" of them is more or less proportional to their record.  You also have to except the fact we did otherwise during the Cold War, since that's the way it was fought; we are slowly moving away from that to a more ENLIGHTENED political reality.  Don't be too critical just because the government can't turn on a dime and correct past mistakes overnight.



Er, no, that's not true.  Have you even read Article 51?  IANAL, but:
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Nothing there about the attack having to be on a member's own territories.

I also don't think that's the claim we're making; e.g.  "We are a UN nation, who was attacked, so we have a right under the UN to defend ourselves in absence of specific UN resolutions, under UN law."

Rather, I think we are saying that, "1441 and preceeding resolutions are plenty enough to constitute UN authorization of force to punish Iraq for those countries who want to do so, per Article 48."  And in any case, UN has approved it after the fact, so it is a moot point.

Bruce

Yes, a previous chickenhawk administration did retreat from Somalia.  (Cheap shot, I know.)

You don't seem to understand that by a country that's "against us" we also mean countries that are a breeding ground for that sort of thing, if they aren't doing enough to stop it.  The whole harboring terrorists thing.  So to say we'd be invading Somalia wouldn't be so much because the national army is trying to attack us as that they've got a bunch of terrorists there who are trying to attack us that they aren't stopping.  Yes, I know this could also apply to other countries too, like Saudi Arabia, and I certainly don't think Saudi Arabia should be left off the hook.  But invading Suadi Arabia is probably not necessary at this stage, and would be even more politically costly than our invasion of Iraq.  We can give them 10-40 years to reform and then revisit the issue if they're still breeding terrorists like rabbits.

Bruce

Somalia has a national army?  They've improved.

The problem I have with your view on world security is that it could lead to the use of military force against a huge number of countries, and our military is having troubles enough with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shit, there aren't more than ten countries in Africa who have enough control over their internal space that they could prevent terrorists from setting up some sort of training camps (that's assuming that a decent proportion of terrorists are stupid enough to think that camps are necessary).  Your position overestimates the capabilities of the US military and, worse, holds that terrorism is a problem that can be solved with military force.

I feel that terrorism is best dealt with as a policing problem.

Bruce would it not be simplier just to make a list of countires you don't want to invade?  Am I missing a joke somewhere and you aren't really being serious, is this all a WWIIOL expansion pack?  

Invading Iraq will probably cost Blair his job, he said there was WMD that could strike the UK in 45 mins, there aren't and weren't except for the ones we sold them in the past, there is zero chance of the UK invading anywhere else anytime soon unless something really drastic happens.

Rot.

Invading Iraq will cost Blair a couple of seats to the lib dems, and probably an amount of political capital required with his own backbenchers to do anything useful in terms of public sector reform.

If that.

The demographics don't support anything other than a Labour victory (short of the Conservatives hitting 43%, which is more than Labour scored in '97 - oh, and they supported and still support the war) at the next election, and there is no realistic prospect of Blair being forced from office by his own party on the basis of iraq alone. The Labour party just doesn't dump leaders mid stream, and certainly not without evidence that simply doesn't exist of the leader being a liability.

Plus the fact that the majority of britons polled supported the war at the time, and the majority only started thinking it was 'a mistake' about a year after the fact. It remains to be seen if the majority will stay so configured if the transfer of power is successful.

Blair will eventually lose his job for wasting assloads of money on non-functional public services which employ more people than the fricking red army but somehow fail to provide services as effectively as a soviet bloc state.

Iraq, is, in electoral terms, a far off country about whose people we know little.

I am just scanning through looking for more kitten pictures.  Please continue to supply them.  Thank you.

I never said it would be the sole reason for him resigning, I also never said labour would not win the next election, lets face it who else is electable?

He is in trouble though.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1253929,00.html

http://www.epolitix.com/EN/News/200407/9c163422-fbd0-4add-b275-981fcdc05445.htm

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1240693,00.html



http://www.politics.co.uk/1/domesticpolicy/chancellor_downplays_imminent_leadership_bid_6014535.htm

I realize I'm an America-hating terrorist-loving bastard for actually disagreeing with what our President has said, but this is plain wrong.

There has NEVER BEEN any CONCLUSIVE evidence that Saddam Hussein funded OR harbored the terrorists who have attacked us directly. NEVER. The closest thing to funding terrorism that could ever be pinned on Hussein was his payment to the families of PALESTINIAN suicide bombers, who have never attacked American possessions directly. I am in no way condoning the Palestinian suicde bomber fucknuts, but get your fucking facts straight.

Secondly, in regards to #2, Saddam's own people who would have been in charge of developing said WMD's have ALL stated that there WAS no chemical weapons program in place in Iraq after 1996, except for the one Saddam imagined in his head. Hussein was being actively misled by his people, and again, there was and is no conclusive evidence that such a weapons program EVER had anything approachable actionable materials after 1996.

No, not at all.  I've told you already, my position isn't that we should invade such countries immediately, or even that we'd have to.  Obviously if our military is stretched too thin, we couldn't meet the fourth condition.  So yeah, the fact we're busy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Korea right now pretty much means no more invasions for a few years.  But that doesn't mean we can't bring other efforts to bear on such countries.



You and John Kerry agree.  Yakuza is first on your list, then? :)

Bruce

Sounds like you just want to play a semantics game with this sentence. What constitutes proof? Who is us? What is directly?

But you're right, there is no proof that Saddam ever funded anyone to assassinate me and I'm pretty sure there's no proof that he payed anyone to assisinate you either. Other than maybe one or two people, that probably applies to everyone who posts on this board.


Edit:

To add some substance:








All quotes borrowed from http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm

Speaking of getting facts straight, where did I say he funded or harbored terrorists who attacked us directly?  I listed that under "in addition" and never said it was terrorism against us.  Your words are carefully picked to ignore other activities such as the assassination attempt against former President Bush, or Iraq letting out of a Kuwaiti prison in 1990 17 terrorists who were convicted of helping with the bombing the US Embassy and other targets in Kuwait in 1983, or Iraq's funding and harboring of PLF, ANO, and MEK.



Even if good scientists were preventing him from obtaining them, he was still TRYING to obtain them.  And you are the one declaring the materials after 1996 not "actionable", which is an opinion, not a fact.  Heck, even Clinton doesn't agree with you there.

Bruce

Just speculation on my part, but I believe he joined the choir invisible in Tora Bora.  Failing that, he's probably in Pakistan.

But no, the most likely thing is that he's gone on to meet his 72 virgins.

What a coinkidink, France just shot down the US and UK's attempt to place sanctions on Sudan to get the killings to stop.



It would appear that France has never really had a problem with blood for oil, non?  But you just keep on promoting France's approval as the be-all, end-all of political legitimacy when in reality their policies are venal to the fucking core.

You focus on France as if they are the only ones who opposed US action in Iraq. They aren't. There's also Germany, Russia, China, and others. That includes Syria, but they shouldn't count since they have harbored more terrorists than Yasser Arafat and Iraq combined.

Actually, no, I focused on France in that instance because they've vetoed our attempt to sanction SUDAN, not Iraq.  Coincidentally, France also appears to have substantially lucrative contracts with the Arab Muslims whom are currently butchering the black Christians and animists to the south.  Kind of like how they had lucrative deals going with the Hussein regime.  Connect the dots, beeyotch.

Are you telling me that you don't see any connection between France, Russia, and Germany making a metric ton of cash out of Oil for Food and their obstructionist stances?

Oh sure, I see the connection. My god, it's not like it isn't written in fucking neon letters on the walls of the UN.

But them making votes in their own self-interest is different from the US... how exactly? Because their self-interest doesn't dovetail with ours?

You make it seem as though we only vote to enrich ourselves, which is definitely not the case.  We throw away more money than any other country on earth in foreign aid to countries that actively hate us.  Besides which, if all we gave a fuck about was making money why would we have invaded Iraq in '91?  If the bottom line was all we were watching then why would we have attacked?  Shit, Saddam would have been quite content to sell us oil all day long.

Likewise, why did we get involved in the Balkans?  Unlike the EU, we had no national interest in that clusterfuck of a region, it was a purely humanitarian mission.  Somalia?  Why'd we get involved there?

We have our problems, and we definitely act on self-interest quite often, but on the filthy lucre whore scale, we don't even come close to touching France.

I just wish France were the only country that made that trade.

The Sudan is a situation that would be helped by the addition of US troops.  Specifically, US troops guarding the Chad border in order to smack the shit out of any militias that cross over for some raping and pillaging.

And totally out of all relevant context.  People who are happy with Saddam being gone, or whose goal is to support the outsting of that dictator and our invasion, will find enough argument to back up their view, especially when that view is bogged down in the legalese minded view of "break rule, get punnished".  

The situation in the Middle East is a far cry from what it is in the west; failure to take that into account will lead to bad decisions, at least if you're trying to decide what the "best" decision is.  To logically decide upon any best course of action, you have to take into account all factors available.

The first one to come to mind is the rule of hospitality; it is very, very important to that society.  Ever read the Bible?  The sins of Soddom and Gomorrah were violations of hospitality, not sexuality - if they had clubbed people for fun instead of raping them the outcome would've been the same.  It's hard for westerners to grasp how important this rule is; to be inhospitable to someone in the desert is likely to sentence them to death, leaving the sin of inhospitality not far off from murder.  The Saudis got in trouble with the west over this one a few months back.

Another one is the social climate.  Much as we bemoan it, there is only so much a government can do; a lot of the people support anti-American activities, violent or otherwise.  These governments are suck.  If they crack down on American violence (or its attitude), then they are being dictatorial (our own government has been supporting French anger, and although not on the same level, neither are we so innocent), not to mention putting their own lives in danger.  Indeed, much conventional wisdom is that the west (US in particular) has corrupted the government and taken (or is taking) their ideals away from fundamental Islamic tenants.  Siding with anything American is a risky business to be in.  

For that matter, so is moving against fundamental Islam in almost any respect.  Government officials who would like to crack down on terrorists must tread lightly, because these groups hide behind the mask of religion.  While a minority of Middle Easterners are the whacko-Jihaddists we have come to hate, a vast majority support Islam.  Moving against the Jihaddists risks the popular view that you are also moving against Islam (and a conneciton that Bin Ladin and kin are trying very, very hard to create in the public mind).  

In short, you've got a bunch of governments sitting on a powder keg, and they're not about to light it under their own feet.  The US can threaten all it likes, but they know that the threat of capture at the hands of pissed off terrorists is much more real, and much more horrible than anything the US might do.  They'd rather we be pissed off at them than the locals.  Paying attention to what happened in Iraq after the US took over?  That's the keg gone off - something other governments are taking great pains to prevent on their own turf.  

None of this is to excuse what goes on, but it needs to be kept in perspective.  There's a limit to what can be done.  What's worse, a lot of that limit is our own doing - we have been meddling in governments over there, and propping up people who have oppressed the people (to include Saddam), which is one of the things that's pissed them off against us to start with.  They typical, short sighted, and extremely stupid / uneducated stance for a westerner is to threaten, and then bomb them until they comply without any respect for their situation.  It's like reading a history book in high school, where "conflict breaks out" every few pages without ever giving cause (God forbid we might be the cause).  It's expected that "conflict breaks out" and then "we clean it up", usually with force, and people are left scratching their head when stuff isn't fixed.  That's about when we pull out due to souring public oppinion.

As for Saddam trying to kill Bush:  good for him.  Bush is a valid military target, and we've attempted the same a few times, and conspired about it quite a few more.  Americans need to pull their heads out of the clouds - war is hell.  People die, seeing as that's generally why you go to war to start with (to kill people).  High value targets are, well, high value - that's why you target them.  Bush and Saddam are just the King for each side in the chess game.  Of course you want to take them out.  Stop with the Special Pleading for moral justification already.

How is attempting to murder an ex-president (and yes, he was ex at the time) valid targetting?  Clinton sure as shit didn't think it was...  But hey, if it's fair game then why don't we have death squads gunning for Gorbachev, or digging up the remains of DeGaulle for a bit of "piss on the corpse"?

You then go on to tell Americans to take their heads out of the clouds.  Physician, heal thyself.

Actually, point of order, on a proportion of GDP measure (which most would argue is the only reasonable measure) this is a real long fucking way from being true. Japan, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, are about the only nations who can claim to be near the UN agreed goal of 0.7%.

In 2001 (the only figures I can rustle up without expending actual effort) the US spent $39 per capita on foreign aid. Denmark spent $302, Norway $299 Sweden $177, UK $78, France $72.

It's also worth considering that the biggest recipient *by far* of US aid is Israel. And they certainly don't hate the US.

Also, the US (and the UK) have historically been just as good as the French at being small minded and self interested when it comes to UN votes.

I'm not talking about UN money (Even in that case, I'd tell the rest of the world to suck it down, we're the UN's army.  You start fielding a military that can function as something besides an adjunct to US forces and then we can talk), I'm talking just about money we throw to governments around the world regardless of the UN; the 2 billion a year we give to Egypt, etc.

I'm not talking about UN money either.

I'm talking about actual money you have, that you give, to other nations.

Last I checked there are UN soldiers from many countries, of course those are police troops and not full fledged invasion forces. Its your preferred pasttime to invade other countries to get your way, not theirs. Add to that that most US development money aims to prepare those countries to buy US goods, your help is self-serving at best. Funneling government money abroad to help your own economy. Or, keeping stratetically important military partners in company line (How about that military base we want in your country, need a credit?).

Which is acceptable, its your money after all. But don't try to mount the high horse then, that looks ridiculous knowing the facts.

The UK is not the power it once was due to American requirements for lend-lease in WWII, bringing the British Empire to an end was part of the deal.  Despite that, there have been times when the UK has acted without direct US support, but the success of those largely depends on if the US wants to interfere (because they want to pay 2 billion a year) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/britain/post_suez.shtml) or not (http://guest.xinet.com/ignacio/polsi342/falklands.html).

There's an interesting viewpoint on the so called special relationship between the USA and UK here (http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=104&id=561082004)

So we either have closer ties with a French-German influenced Europe or the US, I personally prefer the US even considering with the occasional charming "Suck it down" comment.

Europe knows GB prefers that, with telling our encryption secrets to your US buddies and all that....

hijack4tehwin!

But the US-UK thing is overplayed.

The US and UK just happen to agree a fuck of a lot. If we didn't the UK would just sit around and sulk like the French the whole time.

And that mostly comes from Anglo-Saxon culture, and lack of community memory of what getting invaded is like, as a result neither are espeicially afraid of wars.

Anglo-Saxon culture has always centred around getting on and getting shit done on an immeadite and individual level. This compares with Franco-Germanic culture where the academic elegance of the solution and the political respect of all parties gets more of an airing. I'm simplifying and generalising horribly, but it's what Napoleon meant when he called the British a nation of shopkeepers, and it's the reason in EU matters the French have always seen economic matters as mundane (why their political elite saw the single currency as relatively trivial matter) and issues of grand political gesture like foreign ministers and presidents being much more critical (the British go the other way).

Vive la difference.

I didn't include the UK in my sweeping generalization.  You guys still pretty much have a global reach and can still deploy your own people without too much US aid (Hi, Canada!).  I fully understand that nations that aren't as large as the US can't field equivalent militaries to the US.  The UK pulls it's weight, unlike a lot of other NATO members (Hi, Canada!).

And I'll echo Eldeac's sentiments; we're just more individualistic than Europeans.  I don't believe government is the solution, and I do not want to abdicate the choice of how I conduct my affairs to a body of bureaucrats.  I tend to think that the slide to statism is inevitable, with the UK sadly going faster than we are, but we're on our way too.

I'm sorry, maybe we should have installed our early warning radar systems in fucking Minnesota then.

What a weird comment.  What are you basing this on?  Remember that the Canadian population is around 32 million, compared to the USA's 293 million.

I imagine their close connections to France and the friendly fire incident (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3871949.stm) in Afghanistan have a lot to do with their current level of involvement.

You display deep ignorance of the internal workings of the Labour Party.  He has already lost his job.  He may, or may not, get his Lordship, but one way or another Gordon is going to take over for the next election.

And this, specifically, has been over the war.

It is already happening.

Yes, we were lied to, but not by Bush:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
(reg required, I'll post some juicy bits)





The bi-partisan report was also highly critical of the CIA.

And I'm certain all that Uranium they recently pulled from Iraq was merely a DU round cleanup operation, instead of removing poscribed material under 1441

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/7/6/230805.shtml

An amusing quote from the article:


Yep. Everything was fine and dandy in Iraq land. President Hussein was abiding by the cease fire nicely. It's all the evil BushHitler's fault.

Bah that's only TWO TONS of uranium. That's nothing, barely even enough to make one bomb and have a bunch left over for some dirty bombs. Sheesh, call us when you find some real WMD like extended range ballistic missiles or ... hmm wait we already found those too.

There is a difference between two tons of uranium that's good enough for reactor fuel, and highly enriched uranium that can be used as a weapon.  Did we find any 'Made in Pakistan' centrifuges?

So, has this information hit any real news sites?

I take it you didn't purchase the Reagan silver proof?

Newsmax Pundit-

(http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/images/Falwell.jpg)

Any place that considers that fucking jackass as anything other than a wart on the anus of society has exactly zero credibility.

Oh No! My random link from Google isn't respected enough! And it has a picture of Regan on it! I have failed the WayAbvPar at al Appeal To Authority test! I must randomly google other links!

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/07/iraq.nuclear/
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_world_story_skin/434859%3fformat=html
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=070704123434
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_9-7-2004_pg4_8
http://www.geo.tv/main_files/world.aspx?id=28443
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=86354&Sn=WORL&IssueID=27111
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32195-2004Jul6.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-07-iraq-uranium_x.htm
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/003200407071858.htm

Way to fixate on a totally meaningless tanget. A winner is you.

Deep breath there, chief. First of all, that is Jerry Falwell, not Donald Regan. 2nd- you posted the link, not I. I just happened to follow the link and investigate the site, and found their list of pundits. I saw Fallwell's name and picture and thought it would good for a laugh.

What offends me is that (a) we were told there was an immediate pressing danger within the US shores unless we invaded Iraq immediately, and (b) we didn't prosecute the war with full commitment.

All the other points are in my mind complete red herrings.  Mainly those red herring points seem to exist solely (herring? sole? ;) ) to fuel partisanship rather than objectively evaluate events.

Anyway, I haven't seen the Bush administration take responsibility for either point.

(B) is so demonstrably true that it alone is reason enough to discount the current administration's credentials as a protector of America's global interests.  I fail to see how a Kerry administration would be worse and given how the Bush election campaign has co-opted Kerry's stated platform (slim as it is) over the last four months I've grown firm in this conviction.

(A) came at a terrible opportunity cost.  There is so much we could have been doing that truly would have facilitated a better future.  Not that it was the wrong *thing* to do, but this was the wrong *time* to invade Iraq.  We'd have been far better off to curtail and contain other countries as we had Iraq.  Yes it was often humiliating and always frustrating when we had Iraq contained.  But by definition of Opportunity Cost the resources we had vested were a bargain and would have left us free to focus on the clearly more pressing dangers.

As angry as I have been that we never finished GW1 (even as I accept why), as sickened as I was by Hussein's brutality, as willing as I would have been at any future point to invade and clean up....  it is this miscalculation by the Bush/Blair administration and the incompetent way they prosecuted the war that I find unacceptable.

Who told you there was an immediate, pressing danger?  Because the President was telling you there wasn't an iminent danger, but a growing danger, one that we had to deal with BEFORE they could facilitate or launch WMD attacks against us.  Of course, you could ask why Iraq first and not Iran or North Korea.  The answer is because there was already plenty of other things Iraq was doing and world opinion was already against them.  Iran and North Korea have been showing some progress on the diplomatic fronts, so their ultimate end has yet to be played out.  Also, North Korea already has nukes, and South Korea is in the way.

Now, if Iran continues with its nuclear program, and if North Korea walks away from negotiations, they may be up next.

Bruce

If you can figure a way to take out either of those countries without losing Afghanistan or Iraq, I'd love to hear it.  That's probably the worst thing about the Iraq invasion, we're there for the long term, and while we're there, we don't have the resources available to easily deal with other threats.

Bruce I agree with you on your other points.  But on this...



The Bush administration told us and used those exact words.  Colin Powell's testimony to the UN is widely perceived as the event that most polarized American opinion to support the invasion.  It certainly is what pushed me from tepid opposition for invasion to full support.

Here is a quote from the transcript available on the White House's website:



http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html

It is of course tempting to fall back on the "but everyone thought it was so" argument.  But the problem is that we were given itemized lists of what was known to be stockpiled and even more detailed lists identifying specific delivery systems.

Most affirmatively:



It's also tempting to seize on Powell's qualification that the "real and present danger" was mainly to the region and more nebulously to the world.  But Powell, during this same presentation, builds a very elaborate scenario of Iraq's relationships with many terrorist groups (something since downgraded to "contacts and meetings").  He tells us this:



Emphasis mine.

Powell's speech was less speculative, but he reinforced information Bush told us several months before Powell's fateful presentation to the UN.




Again off the White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

Real and present danger, hard facts, detailing exactly what and exactly how, risk to our shores.  At a time when we were still sweeping debris off ground zero.

It was compelling argument to me.  And it was all wrong.  On every point.

That's fine, but Colin Powell never said what you think he said.



"Real and present danger" doesn't mean "immediate, pressing danger" the way you said.  A man with a gun to your head is an "immediate, pressing danger"; a man who wants to kill trying to break into your house who you think might have a weapon is a "real and present danger".  Note also that these phrases, legally speaking, apply only to what the person actually thought in their mind, not the actual facts; e.g. killing someone who is waving a toy gun at you which you think is real.



And much of what he said was.  Some of it wasn't.  But that is the fault of the intelligence services, not Mr. Powell intentionally lying.  But this is off-topic.



And... what's your point?  What does this have to do with whether or not you were told there was a an immediate, pressing danger?



Yes, I never denied that facts were given.  But again, there's nothing here about an immediate, pressing danger.  And I don't know how you would have concluded that, when much of the rest of the media at the time was filled with discussion of Bush's new doctrine of pre-emption, which was specifically about attacking countries who were menacing us BEFORE they were able to carry out an attack.  My guess is your mind has become colored in hindsight by your political ideology.



If that's your argument, then you have a different argument than the one you said before.  Now you're argument is not that you were told there was an immediate, pressing danger, but rather you were told there was a danger for reasons which turned out not to be true.  And that's a very valid point.  The good news here is that Congress has found that there was no intentional deception on the part of the administration, the CIA director responsible has resigned, and Iraq was liberated anyway for many other very good reasons, even if you didn't think those reasons were enough motive for war.

Bruce

So you support more spending on the military, then, at the expense of social programs?

Bruce

Jesus fucking Christ. Spare us the spin doctoring. Do you really believe the bullshit you are spouting, or is this all an intellectual masturbatory exercise in devil's advocacy?

At the expense of tax cuts actually, although shifting existing defense funding around will help some.  Operations like Iraq and the like require warm bodies, and right now we don't have many to spare.  I wasn't a supporter of the Iraq campaign, but now that we're there, we aren't leaving for at least two years (just a guess).  That's a lot of money down the drain, and we won't be able to make up for it by just cutting the ever so evil social programs.  Of course, raising taxes won't get us the cash either, but that is the situation that Bush & Co. have stuck us with; a huge ongoing expense, and not enough money to pay for it.  Don't even get me started on the bill from entitlements.

No spin doctoring here.  We take foreign policy doctrine very seriously... don't you?

I'm sorry Powell used words that were too big for you to understand.  Perhaps that's why he's in office and you're not.

Bruce

But you just said that taxes won't get us the cash either, so... what's your alternative?

And your logic is spurious.  A war with another country... the "other threats" as you said... would cost the same or possibly even more than our war in Iraq.

No, it sounds to be like you're just Bush-bashing.  Another war with another enemy still requires money.  So you can't lament the cost of this war, or claim some magical money solution in another war that's not available in this one.

Bruce

Sorry, that's just as much bullshit as arguing the definition of 'sex' or 'is' or whatever the fuck semantics 4 teh win Clinton did.  Just because it avoids the phrase "clear and present danger" doesn't mean that wasn't the message being conveyed.  I'm not a fan of a future where major policy decisions are defended on the basis of lawyerly hair splitting, are you?

The fact remains you got the wrong message.  There's no hair-splitting going on here.  Simply your confusion.

Bruce

The only thing I'm confused about is if you're head is in the sand or up your ass.

Bruce, you're wrong or at least very susceptible to spin.  "Real and present danger" means immediate.  In another context, it's the same thing as an assault in tort law.  At criminal law, assault = attempted battery.  In tort, assault = immediate apprehension of an offensive contact.  Real and present danger = immediate apprehension.  We had to go in because there was an immediate threat.  Hell, equate the administration's argument in support of the war to the affirmative defense of self-defense and you'll see how "real and present" = immediate.

Even if you try to re-spin the phrase, all of your spin doesn't change the fact that a likely majority of people who supported the war interpreted "real and present" as being immediate.  When you couple "real and present" with a time-is-of-the-essence scenario, you imply immediacy.  

Oh, also, since you like to point out logical fallacies when argumentitively convenient, your above statement also contains an appeal to authority and perhaps an appeal to ridicule.

You guys could save a lot of time and bullshit by simply pointing out that the administration had a sense of urgency regarding the war in Iraq. Which it did, otherwise we would have accepted further delays for weapons inspections, etc.

Some of this urgency was prompted by our own intelligence reports, others supported by intel reports provided by other countires....including a warning from Russia that Iraq may have been planning a terrorist attack on American soil.

There was a real and present danger based on the available information. John Kerry recently cited that his vote in support of the war was "the correct decision based on the information available to us at the time".

But keep going, blabbing on about the semantics of Colin Powell's comments to the UN.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

I'm sure that Putin is laughing his ass off at us as we speak.

Sorry CmdrSlack, but my lawyer says you're wrong.  Have you passed your bar exam yet?



The fact the majority of people supported the war for the wrong reason is irrelevant.  To me right and wrong depend on facts, not the opinion of the majority.



Yes, since I already had a sound logical argument, I deflect a fallacious attack with another fallacious attack.  I am quite comfortable with that, as it does nothing to detract from the real argument.

Bruce

That's a red herring.  Iraq had, after all, already been subject to multiple resolutions and years of "delays" while we attempted to solve the problem through other means.  By your logic, no one can ever do ANYTHING that's not a response to an immediate stimulus, which pretty much defeats the purpose of even having such a distinction in the first place.



Yes, I never denied there was believed to be a real and present danger.  I denied the President told him that there was an immediate, pressing danger.

Bruce

See, if right and wrong depended on facts, then your current government would be wrong. The best you can say is that you believe they erred in good faith because they didn't know all facts. Your opinion is they did the best they could. Others think they didn't. Those contrary opinions come from the same facts (filterted through your different perceptions of course).

At its core, politics is opinion, not much else. And in a democracy its the opinion of the majority. Right and wrong are no political absolutes, and they surely are not in diplomatic circles.

The worst person is the one who believes he is only influenced by facts. That is a person who doesn't even know how his own brain works. A dangerous bunch.