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White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
An anonymous reader writes "This New York Times article reports that in 2002, the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts. Specifically, aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges." In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges.
"Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States."
So where are those tubes now Dick?
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I keep reading stories like this, hoping the American public will finally "get it". But it never happens. Richard Clarke, the 9/11 commision, Abu Ghraib, whatever. If it's not there kid in Iraq, they don't care. We just need to face it: about 45% of this country is going to support Bush no matter what. I'm not saying people should switch to Kerry, but if you still support Bush at this point, you must have constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in your head.
The saddest part is that there is a very high chance you guys will have this team back in business (?) again for the next four years. I read the transcript of that debate last week and it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason. Damn shame.
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Weren't some of the news channels telling us that before hand or am I the only person that remembers history? I feel like we're living in the world of 1984.
I intentionally gave party members syphilis, et all.
I don't get it... How is this news for nerds? In light of all the other political blather going around, it isn't news that matters, either. Can we stop the political BS and just get back to the nerdy stuff?
Slashdot, let's not try to be a site you're not. Let's leave the political discourse to the other sites and leave it out of here. Please!!
If y'all would tone down the rhetoric, you would have Bush out of office, but instead you use inflammatory terms like the headline here. You wind up turning off the undecideds/moderates out there with the over-the-top Bush bashing.
What concerns me most is the ability of this administration (or the potential of any future ones) to pull a veil over the collective US public to go to war against an enemy that was a perceived threat, not a real one. What worries me most is that this could very well happen again, if we let this one slide. That in the future, a Republican or democrat white house could choose to shift its focus on a nation that it deems to be evil and take its own young men and women in to a hail of bullets and ill will.
Bush was brilliant or clueless enough to have his administration divert the public's gaze from Afghanistan or Iraq, forcibly or otherwise and even the critics in the media remained largely silent over the unjust war the country was being dragged in to. The esteemed Bob woodward said it himself that he finds himself guilty of ignoring stories that were of relevance, that could have proven to the public time and again that this war was being fought in the name of lies, that this was an unjust war. But men, who shirked their duties when their country asked of them to fight, chose to send young men and women in to harms way.
It were a crime then to question the legality of this war, it was unpatriotic to do so, it was simply wrong to doubt on the ability of our Commander in Chief, who chose to surround himself with yes men instead of criticism, like a clueless King who was fed what he needed to know by his courtiers, and never the truth.
It happened once, and it will happen again. And its a shame that it does, in this age when media remains omnipotent, the public has access to information of any nature, that a group of men and women could pull a veil over our collective judgement and lead many a mother's kid in to a nation in peril and a war that never end.
Rapid Nirvana
You COULD be a terrorist. I think we should lock you up just in case. We'll let you out when the War on Terror is over.
Or not...
The failure of Congress to voice even token dissent on every foreign policy decision since 9/11 is the biggest failure of the entire system in my view. Every Congresscritter should be voted out of office and barred from even running for town dogcatcher for the rest of their miserable lives.
Half the country knows George Bush and Co. are a bunch of half-wits with their own agendas, but we deserve better from Congress. That they chose to goosestep to the White House's tune with nary a word of protest is unforgiveable.
And yet people still want to vote for W. I just don't get it.
The statement, if true, doesn't scream bias. It sounds like a fact, which like most fact seems either refutable, or true.
Feel free to refute it and show how it's false, but on the fact of it, just because a fact helps one side more than another doesn't mean that it's automatically bias.
Oh wait, presidents can only be impeached for lying about their personal life, not for something that actually affects the American people.
And when the plan entails thousands of US casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties, do you call that "caution?"
I've heard this said many, many times, and while it may be technically true, that doesn't mean we were justified to go to WAR because of it.
War is a failure, it's not a success. It's not something we should be looking for excuses to get into, it's something we should be looking for excuses NOT to get into.
War is what you do when all other options have been exhausted, and we clearly hadn't exhausted all of our options.
Regardless of whether you think it is right or wrong to go to war, ie whether or not we had a casus bella against him that would stand up in a court of law, it is, in my oppinion, bad policy to risk so many of your own lives, and kill so many of their people, just because you are legally allowed to and pretty fed up. If your experts aren't giving you real data that says yes, in all likelihood this country is producing weapons of mass destruction, and is likely to use it, it's just not worth it. It is particularly not worth it if all the experts are saying the likely result is chaos which is not beneficial to U.S. interests. The problem with the Bush administration's approach is that they basically were looking, from day 1, for a way to justify attacking Iraq. What they then did was latch on to any flimsy excuse. The result isn't that pretty, but regardless of the result, it was wrong to risk U.S. lives, and Iraqi lives, on flimsy evidence that you knew to be flimsy and probably inaccurate. They payoff that was expected to off-balance those risks has yet to come, and it looks like it probably won't.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
If by "Flip-Flop" you mean "Being able to change his opinions based on new information", sure.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Easy to say when it's not your country that was invaded. Easy to say when it's thousands of non-American civilians that are paying the price.
Why don't you prove that YOU don't have weapons. Let us know how that goes. Good luck!
BTW, if you can prove a negative, please let the world know. It will be a great advance.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
Even if that gives us the right to invade Iraq, the question is, was it in our best interest?
when we let Saddam off the hook in '91, one of the conditions was that he would have to prove that he had no weapons.
How do you prove that something doesn't exist?
You can't take the sky from me...
First of all, since only about 50% of the population will vote, it's only about half of that 45% who will be voting for Bush. Basically, one-quarter of the country falls into this category, and one-quarter into the Kerry camp, and one-half in the Who Knows? category. OK, with that out of the way, let's play devil's advocate and speculate on why those people will vote for Bush despite what you say:
Liberal Attacks: "Yeah sure, figures it's in the New York Times, that bastion of liberal thought. Let me check Fox News to get the real story. Heh, just as I thought, they don't even mention it, must not be true. Just more liberal lies."
Patterns of Birth: "I was born Republican, my pappy was Republican, his pappy was too, and I'm gonna die Republican."
One-Issue Paramount: "I wish Bush would be more forthcoming about these things, but hey, he's going to (fight abortion / put conservatives on the Supreme Court / fight for school prayer / put tax money in my pocket / keep them liberals away from my wallet / keep America safe)."
Shared Beliefs: "We got ourselves a born-again Christian in the White House, and by God, we've got to keep him there!"
Shared Geography: "He's from Texas! Not like them panty-waists from Taxachusetts."
Rambo Syndrome: "He got tough with them terrorists, and he's gonna keep getting tough, and that's the way I like it!"
How do you reason with such persons? Basically, you don't. If they want to microfocus on one particular issue, ain't nothing you can say to negate it. Just remember, it's really only 25% of the country.
I think the point is that this is another indication of this administration's willful disregard for advice and information from the scientific community if it conflicts with their agenda. If that isn't news for nerds (or news that should worry nerds) then I don't know what is.
Iraq, North Korea, China, India, Wales, etc, actually any country, has a right and a duty to defend itself. If the US and other countries have nukes, then every sovereign nation on the planet has the duty to defend itself with similar force.
GWB can rebut any statement by just saying the same simplistic catch phrases that cite only the successes in Iraq. For better or worse, Bush really knows his constituency. People can take "Saddam is in jail" to the polls, but not the three-paragraph (well reasoned or not) statements Kerry makes about why he thought Saddam was a threat but would have relied on inspectors using war as a last resort with a larger coalition of nations, etc.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
-FL
Is this all that you can come up with? Could you point to something to refute what was said?
Actually, does that even matter? They are responsible for knowing this if the CIA knew this. They said what they said while the knowledge existed in their little club. Whether or not the president was personally aware of the fact is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned.
It's called responsibility.
It has been proven many times: The American people don't mind violence, even extreme violence, but the moment you do something sexual, the American public will call for your head on a pike. Same concept here, really.
Face it, Bush was going to war because he wanted to go to war, period. When the UN voted against invasion, he basically gave them the finger and went in anyway. (What would happen if a country other than the US did the same thing? That country would probably be a giant hole in the ground right now.) Now look at the mess we have. We haven't accomplished a damned thing over there other than making the Arab popluation hate us even more.
It really hit home last week during the debate. Kerry said something along the lines of "what we decide to do has to pass the 'global test,'" which I thought is indeed very true. As soon as he said that, Bush got pissed. It just highlighted the fact that Bush & co. couldn't give a shit less about what the rest of the world thinks. They are gonna do what they want to do and no one is going to get in their way.
It's time to get real, guys. Every decsion you make has a global impact and you better damn well think about how the rest of the world is going to react to your decisions if you are truely concerned with making the world a better place in the long run.
I wouldn't count on Bush being tried in a court of law unless he personally killed someone, in cold blood, with 10 witnesses, and was caught grinning into the camera.
And for impersonally killing thousands of people, in cold blood, with millions of witnesses, and being caught grinning into the camera, he may well be re-elected. Superb.
> You're being sarcastic, but what I don't understand is how they straight-up lied about WMDs and whatnot (and knew about it), yet not a damned thing is happening about it. Clinton gets a BJ, and everyone starts screaming "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!?"
That's our "liberal media" at work...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well since I'm a citizen of the United States, I'm only able to hold my own government accountable directly. When our vice president says "There is no doubt that Iraq has reconsitituted it's nuclear weapons program", he has made a very strong statement.
It is our governments job to guide the country. When they are guiding the country into an unpopular direction, they need to justify this. I think it is irresponsable to make statements like the one above when there is in fact much doubt.
Lied is a bit strong, but I believe misled is an understatement. It's only right to hold our leadership accountable.
-- john
Unless there was some reason to believe that he did have weapons, there was no reason not to simply continue with the inspections. Anyone with any sense knew this at the time -- why do you think Powell tried so hard to convince the UN that Saddam really did have WMD?
Even if you feel that at some point something had to be done, why that particular point, if there was no evidence of WMD? And why this particular action -- even if something had to be done, why did that "something" have to be invading and taking over the country?
More importantly, this is no excuse to lie to the American people. If the war was justified regardless of whether Saddam was building nukes, why not just say that? Why lie to us about it?
The answer, of course, is that the American people would never have accepted going to war unless they felt threatened. So basically, Bush tricked us into going to war, and now he wants us to be OK with that because he thinks the war was justified anyway. That just doesn't work for me, and I think a lot of the American people feel the same way.
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Because Republicans control the Legislative branch (Congress/House). Since these are the folks that would be the ones to start the investigation it's not going to happen. It's not about the law, it's about the politics.
Clinton's BJ got investigated (along with impeachment) because the Republicans controlling the legislature had a chance to embarrass the Democrats (Clinton).
[TANGENT]
A fascinating amendment would be that no person with a felony conviction would be allowed to hold public office. That would never happen. The thought of every candidate having to pass the equivalent of a DOD/DOE Secret background screening makes me laugh.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
I hope you get to attend a university someday. You might learn to do some research and have informed opinions. (OK, I think you do not have the ability to think critically; I hope I am wrong.)
We forced the inspectors to leave. We (i.e. Bush) decided that the inspectors' mission had failed and offered as evidence a pack of lies.
"we tried that for OVER A DECADE and it wasn't working"
Did we find any WMDs? NO! This sounds like success to me. How to justify this comment ("it wasn't working") of yours?
Is there even one honest bone in your body? Are you just a political hack?
How do I prove I don't have something? Especially if you are convinced that I do? It is easy to prove I have something, I can show it to you. But to prove I don't have it I... show you nothing? But then you say it is over there. So I show you there is nothing over here and you say that I moved it over there. Of course, by the time we are able to check, you say I've moved it somewhere else.
However, getting away from the philosophical and theoretical prove, I am pretty sure that was never a condition to begin with. He had to agree not to develop weapons of mass destruction and allow inspectors to look around to verify that he wasn't. While we can't prove somebody doesn't have WMD, we can be reasonably certain they don't because the development of all them leaves chemical traces behind that can be detected long after they've left. Which is why an inspection regime can work.
The ball was in Saddam's court.
No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere. We gave them the locations of where we thought they were producing WMDs and they all turned out completely wrong. We kicked the weapons inspectors out so that we could bomb Iraq.
The problem with this whole post is this: Just because I disagree with Bush out of doesn't mean that I like the Democrats. I dislike both parties. They're both up to their ears in risky foreign policy that earns us the hate of the rest of the world. How many dictators (including Saddam) have the Democrats and Republicans installed over the years? Remind me why they supported (or orchestrated) the destruction of several democratic governments in the Americas alone?
It's time to get rid of both of our main parties.
If I were President, on September 12, 2001 I would have announced two new programs:
To my mind, the best way to lower the threat level of the Middle East is to stop giving it our money. Let Europe buy their oil and become entangled in their affairs. We don't need it.
Of course, I have a libertarian view of foreign policy: Peaceful co-existance without any of the turn-the-other-cheek stuff. Don't fight unless you have to, but be sure that when you do fight, you minimize the probability of your adversary attacking you again.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
OK, so Jayson Blair pulled the wool over their eyes, and they took a credibility hit. But with regard to the Bush White House, the only thing the NYT admitted to doing wrong is saying that they didn't question the Administration enough before going to war.
That's right. They retracted agreeing with the President.
Oops.
Enough with this "The NYT and Washington Post are dirty liberal rags that print 'news' that is actually lies!" BS.
-jdm
The way I interperted "global test" was more along the lines of carefully thinking out our actions and basically putting ourselves in the rest of the world's shoes. "How will the Arab world react if we do X? What if we do Y? And what about the Chinese?" The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules. Sure, for things that don't require immediate action, we should most definately get the input of foreign leaders.
And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.
It has everything to do with LYING. That's what we're talking about in this thread. The metal tubes are now just Exhibit A in Bush's lies about Iraq. We have to live with this Medicare scam for the rest of our lives, if people don't punish these betrayals by Bush with replacing him next month. And if you don't care about Medicare, there's plenty more where that came from.
--
make install -not war
"...according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity."
Oh yeah, there's credibility just oozing from this story. We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine? On conditions of anominity??? Oh, and it just happens to be election year! What a coincidence!
And while we're on the subject of amazing coincidences, where was this scandal coverage in 2002? I mean, you supposively had top CIA officals who knew, you had the Department of Energy who knew, America's leading nuclear scientists who knew as well as any number of intelligence experts and Martha Stewart who knew. No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?
Are we stretching the bounds of credibility yet? No? Then it's a good thing for the NYT that investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. I mean, you'd almost think this administration acted without cause...
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And before you start typing your rebutal to my comment, let me add that I think it was stupid of the legislative branch to vote in favor of providing an option for the executive branch to make war....
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Bush and company called the evidence conclusive and worthy of going to war; it was used as justification to both US citizens and the international community. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, kill a thousand plus US troops, trash carefully crafted diplomatic relations...THEN sell all that as a "success" AND the reason you should be elected- you goddamn well better have your I's dotted and your t's crossed.
It was publicly reported that at best the evidence was inconclusive, and now we see that it was quite positively false, and further that they KNEW it wasn't conclusive. Fact is, to date, not a single fucking piece of evidence has been uncovered to support any of Bush's claims that Iraq had any "weapons of mass destruction", and certainly not the claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat to national security.
That fits my definition of "lying" pretty well, thanks.
Please help metamoderate.
So, a president lying under oath about sex is worse, in your mind, than, say, a president lying to our soldiers, their parents, and the American people about why he's risking their lives, why he's risking the credibility and prestige of the United States, not to mention why he's risking all of the other potentially negative consequences of going to war?
Now, granted, Bush, Cheney, and Co. were not technically under oath to tell the truth when they made all of their assorted 'statements of fact' to all of us, but I submit that for men in their positions, telling the truth about such matters ought to be for them a matter of honor, a matter of doing what's right and far more important than whether or not they're under oath at the time.
If the president lying about such things is not an 'impeachable offense', it certainly ought to be, and I can't help but wonder what would be going on right now if Congress were controlled by the other party.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
As I recall, Clinton made the same "lies" about Iraq in front of Congress... or did you not know that??
When? Clinton never EVER testified before Congress, so right there you show you don't know what you're talking about. Sitting presidents don't.
And Senator Kerry has been on television several times, as far back as 1995 in fact, stating the same "lies".
When? When did John Kerry know that aluminum tubes were not capable of being used in nuclear weaponsmaking, but claimed they were so capable anyway, and did so in front of Congress? Do tell.
How can something be inflamatory anyways when these people actually made those statements? In this country, that's what we call telling the truth.
They were stating what they believed. When the Bush admin officials testified in front of Congress, they were intentionally LYING. Big difference. They had information beforehand that contradicted what they were saying, and can be proven to have known it.
But its obvious you've got the blind ideology stick shoved up your bum, so I don't think this post will make a bit of difference.
Shyah? Conservatives alwas find it so easy to find a hole to crawl into when the rhetoric fails to be convincing.
"We train our children to drop fire on people, but we won't let them write 'fuck' on the sides of their airplanes, because it's obscene." -- Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I know... it's not like Clinton lied under oath or... oh, wait. That would be (a) lying, and (b) perjury. Not the same at all. Clinton's forgiven.
Right, because when G.W. was put under oath he only told the truth about Iraq. Oh, wait a second....he refused to be put under oath...what a complete surprise.
So... The president can be questioned under oath about the whereabouts of his pecker on a particular day, but not questioned under oath about his reasons for invading another country. Go figure.
and i fear it's tehran, here we come, and a draft, in 2005. because i don't know about you, but i don't trust those mullahs with nukes, and i know for certain the neocons, or even the dems, don't either.
... but "Brand USA" is looking pretty busted right now. The US already imports far more than it exports. As the US gets more "on the nose" because of its unilateral foreign policy - people who buy US products around the world are going to shop elsewhere.
Do you really think that after all of this, the rest of the world trusts the US with nukes?
This is the main problem - the US, which was basically trusted by most of the world to "do the right thing" is now seen as consistently doing "the wrong thing".
Now there isn't much that the "rest of the world" can do about it
The US once was percieved as a "beacon of freedom" in the way that no other nation has been in history. Your current President has managed to flush that reputation down the toilet. It would take 20 years of great Presidents really making positive contributions to the world (as the US did for the most part last century) to undo the damage the current one has done. If the current one gets re-elected, I'm pretty sure that in four years time Americans abroad will be about as popular as white South Africans abroad during the 1980's.
While I generally agree with you, that statement assumes a situation like the Cold War, where both sides understand and want to avoid the result: complete annihilated by the other (mutually assured destruction). Does Kim Jong-Il care? Would Osama Bin Laden care if he had a nuclear arsenal? You don't start a nuclear bluffing match with a madman who has nothing to lose.
Obviously you're right, pure MAD only applies to situations such as that during the cold war, and any degree of asymmetry at all ruins it. However, having nuclear weapons is a great bargaining chip, or, more accurately, not having them renders you pretty much irrelevant.
I'd be willing to wager that a whole lot more Al-Q activity goes on in Pakistan than Iraq (Iraq as it stood before the invasion that is, obviously it's seething with hardline islamist nut-jobs now). However, Pakistan has the bomb, and therefore doesn't have to be pushed around, similarly to Nth Korea - no US administration is going to attack them if they can nuke even Japan in retaliation, let alone land one in California.
This has been the big give-away from the start. If Saddam had nukes (or even plenty of chem- or bio- weapons), the neo-cons would never have invaded. Why would you put thousands of troops in a position where they would likely be nuked? If you still don't get it: Iraq was invaded because it DIDN'T have WMD. It was a soft target*, with oil, and invading it no doubt served many other political purposes, but it clearly didn't have WMD, that much was fairly transparent before the invasion began.
* for invasion, evidently occupation is a different story.
Well, it depends.
If you're stomping down on a former colony, that's just fine.
If you're an African nation comitting genocide, that's okay too.
If you're trying to wipe out Israel, that's alright.
The list goes on and on...
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Face it, Bush was going to war because he wanted to go to war, period.
Future sessions of Congress will probably be more hesitant to give the President authority to declare a war. Even counting successes in Iraq, are there any indications that it _won't_ be another Vietnam? Technically, the US has been there for more than 13 years with a few more years coming, meaning it really could stretch out to be as long as the US presence in Vietnam. Considering the inspectors, the recently installed government, scheduled elections, the long history of conflict in the region, and what some call a guerilla warfare situation, the historical parallels are not few and far between.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Social services have been shown to increase the flow of money because people in good health are more productive. There are all kinds of psychological and physical advantages to having these programs. Why do you think that even the most money driven corporations usually force their employees at taking a huge part of their salary in benefices? It is because they know those healthy employees are productive employees. If the government provided a greater part of these things to its citizens it would increase productivity and quality of life in general. You have to increase taxes so that it is viable but the tax increase to corporations isn't as high as it looks. It won't drive companies away because they also save a lot. They don't need to provide as much benefices to their employees since the government provides it instead. The companies benefit from workers that have profited from social services all their life and are therefore more qualified, more psychologically balanced and are able to compete better in the global economy. Therefore, the number of jobs increases, specially the good ones that need higher education and that have good pay.
True, there are cheaters in the system. And there are probably lots of them. But I believe you should not go out of your way to punish them, that's just punishing yourself. You should try to do everything you can that dissuade the cheating by tailoring the system so that it is not advantageous to cheat, but only if it doesn't impair your lifestyle to do so. Cutting social services impairs your lifestyle and raises the cost of living. I know humans have an instinct against freeloaders, there's a bell that rings in our head at the thought of the possibility of being exploited. Basic instincts can help us lots of times, but we have the advantage over animals that we are intellectual beings. Don't let that basic instinct get to you when your intellect can tell you that you are better off if you just ignore the freeloaders sometimes. Be proud of your legacy to society and to America. Don't be scared it will just benefit the freeloaders. Be glad that you made a better place to live for the other hard workers which are doing the same for you. Yes if you look at it directly I can see how it can seem to benefit mostly others, but it is as much for your benefit, the benefit of the economy and of corporations. You have to look at the big picture. It will be very beneficial for you that everyone around you is competent and sane. There are high costs associated with the opposite situation. You're right taking your hard earned money and forcing you to give it to others for no reason is bad. But this is for your benefit. It also acts as a kind of insurance to you. If ever you or a member of your family gets really sick or you loose your house and everything you own in a disaster, you will have government help to fall on.
I firmly believe capitalism (or profit maximization) is the only way for countries to work well. It is a form of economic survival of the fittest where the better, easier, cheaper alternative is the one that thrives. It is the most natural way to efficient life. But I still think you have to be intelligent about it and not view only the direct obvious causality link (my money goes to the poor), but the big picture where the sum of all direct and indirect advantages are accounted for.
One argument towards taxing the rich is that, you can rarely "hard work" your way into making a salary of $1000000 a year. If you do make that salary it's probably that you inherited money, you manipulated the market (possibly illegally), or you were just plain lucky (you put your money at the right place at the right time). You may have worked hard. But the hard work usually doesn't account for that high a salary. I think people who have acquired their wealth through, manipulation, luck, or inheritance, should be the first ones to be taxed a lot because they haven't worked for their money.
Also assuming we keep the incentive to be productive constant, there is a fixed amou
Second of all, Clinton shouldn't have been on trial for impeachment for getting a blow job in the first place. That he was should be far more worthy of outcry and riot than his lying about it.
And thirdly, while Clinton may very well have believed there were WMDs in Iraq, Bush had no evidence to that effect whatsoever, lied to the American people about it (and continues to do so to this very day), and proceeded to murder thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians for no other reason than to get some more of that tasty oil. And oh yeah, he got rid of a "brutal dictator" in the process... one that posed no credible threat to the U.S., and one of very many "brutal dictators" on this planet -- but the only one with so much delicious oil in his back yard.
The UN believed Iraq had WMDs? Did their weapons inspectors tell them that? Did they find a problem in the thousands of pages that Iraq submitted presenting their evidence that WMDs were destroyed?
You weren't the only one who knew. The whole frikkin' world knew. That's why Bush refused to take this to the UN. Calling the rest of the world cowardly whiny bastards who always beg the US for help then put it down was a lovely little smokescreen, designed to get right-leaning people salivating even more. These days, it's especially dangerous to have an independent mind. "Bush is bad? You must be a terrorist. America made a mistake in Iraq? Well why don't you go back to your own country, you 4th generation immigrant!" It was obvious to the world that Iraq was NO THREAT whatsoever to anybody (except the poor Iraqis who got tortured). If you notice, nobody was gainst the war in afghanistan - why is that? It's basically it was again obvious to the universe that Afghanistan was full of savage bastards who treated women like dogs, destroyed a 1500 year old monument, and exported terror, not just to America, but India, Russia and China too. That's why everybody supported the war against Afghnaistan. Because Afghanistan was directly related to worldwide terrorism. Saddam Hussein was a bastard no argument. But how do u make a case to attack him, and not China? Or North Korea? Or Zimbabwe? Or Sudan? Or Pakistan? Or Iran? Or Suadi Arabia? All these countries have regimes or a general populace which hates Americans. They abuse Human Rights like crazy. They have no clue what democracy is all about. Two of them already HAVE WMDS, you don't have to go hunting for them, for fuck's sake. Of course, you may like to point out that I'm being naive, and many of these countries are important to American interests. And that's fine with me, I'm simply attacking the justification for invading Iraq. Let's call a spade a spade. Iraq really was a diversion, and maybe just a family vendetta even. Bush knew he couldn't catch Bin Laden, so let's just give the public another evil asshole instead - one which it would be easy to get rid of. Everbody knew Iraq had no army, no money nothing to defend itself. Bush went after Iraq because he was a coward. If he had real balls he would have tackled other countries, If "democracy" and "the saftey of the world" and "human rights" are his cause.
My Favourite Meme
Lost my Job in 2002 spent 6 months getting new one at lower pay.
My health care premiums have risen every year.
The first Tax break was really a loan to be repaid the next year. Funny I had to pay it while I was on my unemployment.
My friends are now fighting a war and have emailed me several times to never believe what their superiors have said. Believe the News.
No WMD's and I'm sure Saddam is still laughing inside about it.
Our freedom is threatened by the Patriot Act.
Bush wants to amend the constitution a document that has historically given rights to individuals. This time he wants to take away individual rights.
Cuts money to the police while at the same time allowing the assault weapon ban to expire.
Oh despite a 87billion dollar boost in money soldiers (I was one) are still getting raises that are lower than inflation and many make much less than poverty level with housing and food considered.
That second tax break amounted to 15 dollars a month for me and I make 60k a year. However I'm paying more than 40 dollars extra a month in Gas for my veichle and nearly 50 dollars extra in energy costs for my house.
Oil prices are high reguardless that there's no shortage and in fact Saudi Arabia has consistently said consumption is far below supply. Yet nobody is doing anything to stop the price runup's.
Also I've learned something. Americans need to pay attention to who they're voting for. That senator or govenor you're voting in may have more ambitions than just helping your state or their constituents. Cheny is a grand example of who we may not of had to put up with if they didnt vote him into congress years ago. In fact he may never of joined up with any of the Bushes and Gore could be president today.
I'm sure bush didn't "lie" about it. as far as he knew that's what the intell said. BUT... it speaks much of his character that he's been a "texas gunslinger" right from the start. That's what I've always been mad about. The French and German allies wanted to do more inspections...work thru the channels. Sure, they had their own tracks to cover [maybe?] but let's face it, any ONE of the countries arguing for a peacful solution could have knocked over Iraq on their own. Bush has been very much a "let them eat cake" type president...he's got no touch at all with real americans... it's apparent he's just a PHB [straight out of dilbert] who hides behind his radical cabinet's decisions instead of being responsible for them and putting cabinet members in their place. Look at his choice of VP...it's still Cheney! even though that guy is nearly impeachable for his part in the energy "crisis". He doesn't belong there...he's got no chance in hell of being president. If he looks like a puppet and acts like a puppet...
To sum it up... Bush has the words of great men like Reagan...but not a lick of the wisdom that made them great. [What truely made Regan great wasn't the military buildup, but his willingness to invite the soviet leaders over here to talk...and treat our biggest rivals with respect, eliminating their fears, even as we were "defeating" them economically. That is something Bush can never, ever do.] His choice of cabinet, VP, and words in public all smack of the typical egotistical american executives we all hate...who are rude, sloppy & ineffectual.
If you had read the article, all 10K+ words of it, you would have seen that there was bipartisan support for the attacking of Iraq. In Bush's rhetoric, he has repeatedly pushed the issue that Kerry supported the war. Democrats and Republicans crossed the lines in both directions during the votes, mostly based on their understanding of the data. Intelligence is a fragile art. The Clinton administration could have done more to help prevent 9/11. The Bush administration is certainly not helping matters by creating an environment in which communication is purposefully confounded so as to make the facts look different from what they are generally agreed to be.
Examples from the article.
Even when the pre invasion inspection found the tubes were used for conventional rockets. Even when we found not WMD. Even when every shred of credible evidence seems to point that there is not WMD program. The president still believes his story.
The problem is not the republicans or the democrats. The problem is that we have a set of people who have no sense of logic. No sense of shame. No sense that the truth is something that is not set in stone. Just because I believe that I am the greatest guy in the world does not make it so. I am just going to say this. Bush is a truly stupid person. He drove drunk into his thirties. That was truly stupid. He lied about his arrests. That is truly stupid. The republicans are in t
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Can we please, just for a few minutes, remove our tinfoil bodysuits and think??
So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies. At first glance, this sounds plausible. That's how you can explain the president's willingness to wage a war in Iraq - it's close to afghanistan, right? And those terrorists were arabs. He thinks that should be enough to convice the average shmuck american. Then when you consider that we know we could crush the Iraqi army easly, he can spew a bunch of feel-good rhetoric: we're ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant and liberating the iraqi people. As an added bonus, he can give the contracts for getting all of that iraqi oil to his corporate buddies. It sounds like a decent plan.
Now, please, think critically about that for a second. The hypothesis is that bush's desire for going to war was based on purely political (and perhaps montary) reasons - so that he could get a boost in the poll numbers. A few big questions should present themselves:
My blog
And as we all know, the reporters are the ones who have the most influences over what goes into the final finished product that you see on the screen.
The roll of all those production managers, producers, directors, and lets not forget overwhelmingly rich and powerful media moguls is to sit around and whittle their dicks.
You can't seriously think that just because the majority of journalists are liberals that the media has a liberal bias. That's like saying that because the majority of workers in the automotive industry are democrats that the industry as a whole supports the democrats. The evidence would be against you in that one.
You can't tell me that with ultra conservative individuals like Rupert Murdoch behind the scenes issuing direct memoranda to the lowest levels of his media empire directing stations on what to run and not to run that conservatives are powerless and unrepresented in the media.
He who has the money makes the rules. The having of money is one of the strongest predictors of political affiliation and the people at the top have a lot of money.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
"Where are your hidden weapons labs?" "We have none!" "Well, show us." "Show you what?" "Your weapons labs." "But we have none." "Well, prove it." "All right. Where would you like to look?" "You tell us." "But if we have no weapons labs, we have nowhere to tell you about." "Ah, so, then, you refuse to be cooperative."
At the last, when the inspectors were still in there, just before they were pulled out, the Iraqis were cooperating to the fullest extent of their abilities. There were some major paperwork problems, apparently generated because when they destroyed some of their weapons they didn't document them sufficiently. But they were even being allowed to inspect within all the places that had previously been off-limits, and in fact were even allowed unannounced visits with no warning time.
Strangely, the rest of the world thought they were doing fine. Given that, one must either assume that every single other country with the exception of England* is bone stupid, or that we are warmongers who above all else didn't WANT the inspections to work.
Makes you feel good to be an American, don't it?
-fred
* - (Yes, we had other allies eventually. But at that point we still hadn't scraped them together, so it was just GWB and GB)
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
How is this news for nerds?
Nerds have strong opinions about many things, even things that are political. Software Patents are a political issue, for example, as is Linux vs. Windows, to a large extent. GPL vs. BSD licensing has had its share of politically-motivated discussion. So has pretty much anything regarding Sun Microsystems or HPaq or IBM, lately.
Adding in election politics, at least until November, doesn't seem entirely out of line, given that the Presidential election is weighing more on many minds than whether Java 5 supports syntactic sugar for type casting.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
"many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's."
That's because most people are complete idiots. All the evidence points to the contrary. The amount of soldiers killed in Iraq went UP after saddam was captured. Actually the amount of total violence in Iraq went up.
evil is as evil does
Apparently they didn't teach you in school that Opinion Pieces (i.e. the Op-Ed piece you linked to above) are the opinion of the author of the piece and usually have a loose license to the truth. While on the other hand the article in the actual story is reporting which comes with a much higher burden of proof for facts.
m ocraticunderground.org/c om/ (remember the Kerry Intern story he broke, and turned out to be a pile of...
Don't use Op-Ed pieces as source for 'facts', also don't use an extremist site to get 'facts'. Examples of sites that do not qualify as reliable on facts are:
http://www.freerepublic.org/
http://www.de
http://www.drudgereport.
http://www.commondreams.org/
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
I'd have to agree with you here. For a long time I was a Democrat, then I started looking at their record, and their goals and I just couldn't support them anymore. The problem I have now is that there really isn't a single party that comes close to representing my views. I'm nominally an Anarchist, but if you ever bring that up in conversation people instantly dismiss your views.
Not that most people have the slightest idea of what Anarchism is. And no I've never thrown a bomb or broken a window.
The American people really need to start looking at alternative politicaal structures, because our is pretty screwed up at this point.
A blog about stuff.
It's bad enough that the Dems and Reps are pretty much the same party at this point. But it's even worse that the Reps are trying to take over every branch of government. This completely breaks the system of checks and balances, as if it weren't broken enough already.
We need to go in the opposite direction as fast as possible. That starts with getting a Democratic president now, so that we'll have some sort of check on the Republican Congress.
In the long term, this means we need to move beyond the one-party-two-names system and develop some real alternatives. But we have to take that one step at a time, and the first step is to break the Republican stranglehold on power.
That said, I agree completely that congress failed miserably in this regard. Sen. Byrd stood up at the time and waved a copy of the Constitution, saying "our job is not to rubber-stamp the president's resolution, our job is to protect the text of the Constitution!" Nobody listened. Kerry is as accountable for that as anyone. But at least he no acknowledges that going into Iraq was a mistake. That's a start, and right now, it's good enough for me.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
You're building up a case to go to war.
You're assembling the evidence for that case.
You find that some of the evidence wasn't substantiated.
You find that some of the evidence was false.
You find that some of the evidence is in dispute.
You find that some of the evidence is hearsay.
At what point do you STOP and have ALL the evidence re-examined?
Rather, what we saw was a continuing onslaught of new "evidence" and fear.
All since proven false.
Now, how is it possible to get ALL of the "evidence" wrong? Not part of it. Not some of it. But all of the "evidence".
Bush and Co. lied to get us into this mess.
Ok, keep in mind I'm a jaded, paranoid conspiracy nut... and a Canadian to make it worst. But the reality of the war was to gain resources in particular oil.
Oil is fungable, the us has nothing to gain by invading Iraq. Simply lifting sancations (like France and Germany wanted) would reduce the cost of Oil as much (in fact more than) direct "control" over Iraq will..
If you want to know what this war really is about look at who profits http://www.halliburton.com/index.jsp
So I guess when Clinton gave Halliburton all kinds of contracts in Kosovo, and Yugoslavia that was all about padding corporate america's pockets right?
Look getting someone to do reconstruction in a war zone is not like hiring someone to seal your driveway, there are very few who do it and Halliburton just happens to be one of the bigger better companies..
Mod me down if you want, but this has to be said.
The rest of the world knew that Iraq had no WMDs. Everyone knew it was a "war to boost the economy". Nobody did anything. Why didn't America know? Ask your media that question and ask yourselves how much international news you actually listen to? Ask yourselves why.
Then you'll see why it isn't surprising. It is always easier for a government to go in for the wrong reasons and explain later, just like it's easier for us to do something we've set our minds on and explain later.
Look at the U.S's foreign policy from the outside (try some independent and known-to-be-unbiased news agencies for a change) and you'll see the difference.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Yeah, it amazes me how many people have apparently forgotten all but two words of that debate answer. To help them, I'll include it here:It's not clear to me why this is controversial. America's true authority in the world isn't military, it's moral. If neither our citizens nor our allies trust our government to act wisely, our ability to influence the world is much diminished. We can hardly persuade people to act against truly dangerous rogue nations like North Korea if they think we might be a dangerous rogue nation ourselves.
Whether or not one truly cares what the other 95% of the planet thinks, there's a lot of pragmatic value in working with allies to achieve our goals.
Bush uses CIA (bad) intelligence when it suits him and ignores it (assessment of Iraq in the next five years) when it doesn't. Remember, the uraninum and aluminum tube intelligence came after 9/11 and the entire intelligence community was sharply rebuked for not doing its job. How can they NOT double check all the intelligence after 9/11? especially when making the case to go to war? Bush says 9/11 changed the way we look at the world and nowhere is this more obvious than with intelligence. The intelligence community needs a new outlook with lots of scrutiny after 9/11. The question is did he give the intelligence for going to war in Iraq the 9/11 scrutiny or the 9/10 scrutiny?
They only answer can be that the buck doesn't stop with George Bush. He's not looking to take responsiblity but rather he's looking to get his way. He wanted to invade Iraq and he found intelligence that agreed with him and he wasn't concerned with due dilligence of having it doubled checked.
Of course now he doubts the intelligence about the bleak outlook for Iraq.
He's only using intelligence as propoganda to get his way. It is transparently obvious.
Like you, I wish (at least in hindsight) that Congress should have checked Bush. And I agree that Congress has that role and responsibility.
But let's be realistic about what happened. A) There *was* token dissent. The problem was that it didn't go beyond being token. B) Congress can't be trusted with highly secret info because they leak it to satisfy their own political agendas or due to their own incompetence. It's happened over and over. C) Because of B, both citizens and Congress presume that the Executive branch has info they do not release to Congress. D) Because of C, when there is a really critical, intelligence-driven decision to be made, the US citizens and the Congress will tend to trust the president due to the additional information available to him but not to us. Plus for a congressperson there is the following pragmatic logic. For a congressperson to buck the tide, they risk a career-ending looking-foolish moment if the intel turns out to prove the Executive correct. And if the congressperson goes along with the ride, the worst they suffer is having to claim the Executive duped them and they run on the issue in the next election.
This is a structural problem with Congress. While you might claim its a moral or ethical failure of many many congresspeople, it's tough to argue they are not acting in a perfectly rational way.
The solution for this problem it to vote out your local duped congresspeople, Republican or Democrat. If they face getting voted out in either case, maybe they'll start taking responsibility for knowing what's going on and they'll start taking keeping confidential info secret more seriously.
--LP
That's not enough actually. You can't just picture yourself in another country's shoes, as this is the same as doing something without asking, and may actually be considered more insulting. You can't as an American president, presume to know how a certain country would feel about U.S. military action anywhere. You have to go before the rest of the world, put forth a resolution, and tell them that this is what you want to do. At least that's the procedure that is currently in place.
And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.
The current administration tried to take the rest of the world seriously. They tried to play by the rules and Colin Powell went before the U.N. to try to convince them to support our resolution for action in Iraq. Multiple times, we tried to get the U.N. security council to back us unconditionally. Furthermore, many U.S. citizens desired U.N. support before taking military action in Iraq, so it was important for the administration to try to achieve this. They did not take the rest of the world lightly in this case.
However, as we all know, these attempts to gain support failed, and at this point maybe that's when the "global test" should have failed. This is when Colin Powell started his tour to find supportive nations, and when he had 49, the "global test" passed for the administration. That is where the controversy lies. There were supportive nations, but the fact that none of them were France, Germany, and Russia was a major issue. Probably the largest sticking point, was the fact that the U.N. Security Council did not back our actions, and we did not have support of all the permanent members.
That being said, the administration felt that it had enough global support to pass its definition of "global test", and made its decision to attack.
The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules.
And therein lies the problem, and why Bush appeared upset. Bush and Kerry have very different interpretations of what constitutes a "global test". The administration feels that they had enough support globally, but Kerry feels that this was not enough.
So what constitutes a global test? Is it enought to have N number of nations supporting your actions? Is it enought to have only the U.N. Security Council supporting your actions? Do you need more than this? It's a very slippery slope.
It appears, though, that no matter what we do, at least some of the rest of the world will not support us. If, for instance, Canada suddenly just bombed Detroit, I would find it had to believe, even in this case, that we would get overwhemling support in the U.N. to retaliate. Canada would most certainly be condemned by the U.N. for attacking the U.S., but it is doubtful whether the U.N. would support a U.S. attack on Canada. Furthermore, we wouldn't have the support of all the U.N. Security Council in this case. Most of Europe would probably not support action. So now what do we do? Retaliate, or just ignore the attacks?
You cannot take the opinion of the world upon any of your actions lightly, and this is why we went before the U.N., and why it was necessary to consult congress first before any action was taken.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
The 'disappointing' part of it was the lack of sexual shock. I watched the Superbowl in a dorm room with 8 other college-aged guys, a fairly sexually charged group of people. Half of the people in the room didn't even *notice* that it was happening, and those that actually saw anything didn't really think anything of it. Christ, it's like whining about seeing a woman breastfeeding her baby in a public park. It might be giggle-inducing for those under 16, but it's hardly harmful or "disappointing."
Your portrayal of sexuality (and how it is/should be viewed) as one of two extremes is a little unfortunate. The 'sex-fest' that is MTV (an informed observation on your part, I'm sure) is certainly not realistic nor necessarily beneficial when teaching children about sex, but it is no more skewed and inaccurate than the wildly conservative views touted as family friendly.
If you feel the need to actually adjust your television viewing habits due to the sexual content on a public network, you could probably stand to do a little better in educating those whom you seem to be a role model or some sort of parental figure for. If the MTVesque view is something you don't want perpetuated, censoring it exactly what not to do. Religious affiliation and the fact they're involved in a church group aside, they're still regular kids. Most of them will have more meaningful sexual information provided to them by their peers. Being honest and open in your dealings with these teens when it comes to sex will be more effective.
As long, of course, as you're willing to accept the fact that they may develop opinions slightly more liberal than your own.
LegendMUD
Global test Question 1: County has done nothing wrong, but has billions in oil. Do you. a) Destroy it, and have your friends make billions re building their infrastructure, along with putting other friends in charge of the oil. b) Work with the UN to take care of any problems we personally have with this country. c) Let them continue to run as a country and wait for them to do something that would give any type of real reason to attack. I think the USA scored a big fat F on this test.
TruePunk | Games
The WMD fiasco is nothing but a sideshow to keep you from seeing the real underlying issues here.
Ever since Vietnam the Presidents have totally pissed on the Constitution they swore to uphold. The President has NEVER had power to declare war, that was granted to the Congress. I don't recall Congress declaring war against Iraq, for whatever reason.
The Congress does not want the political heat of declaring war. So they attempt to push that over to Bush by signing a letter of "support for our troops". They can then blame the President for whatever goes wrong, or take credit for whatever goes right. This way, they keep their offices relatively unspotted in the view of the people. Offices which in reality consist largely of shoveling money towards corporate interests.
All this reeks of the same corruption that occurred when the Senators of the Roman Republic shoveled all their power over to Octavian... making him Caesar. Those Senators did not want to risk alienating the people by taking stands on issues, they would rather let Augustus do it, and then blame him when things went sour. Thus, those Senators could hide their incompetency and accountability from the people, while continuing their corrupt business dealings.
We read in Article I Section 8 that Congress has power...:
Article I Section 8 (Powers granted to Congress):
"...To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;...."
In Section 1 or Article II we read: Article II Section 1 (Executive branch, office of President):
"...Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now that Congress has no gumption and represents corporations instead of the people-- the President does whatever he wants. So we go to war at his say so, over whatever he wants us to fight and die for. The leaders of our country swore to uphold the Constitution, yet they piss on the balance of power that was built into it for their own political and personal gain.
And these people are going to bring "freedom" to Iraq. Physicians... heal thy selves.
"I'll liberate you peoples' fate
Spoke the Burnin' Bush
But the song of beasts
Growl with oil soaked teeth
Their dollar is mighty and true
Now the eagle soars the sky
Over refugee and child
And to all there is no end
Another day in perfect Hell"-- Flogging Molly
Ummm, didn't you forget something? The reports that Iraq submitted did not show that they destroyed all the weapons they were known to have. Quite the contrary.
The UN did agree that there were unaccounted for weapons and chemicals. Why do you think there were 17 resolutions? The UN however, wanted to wait for the inspectors to find the weapons that were unaccounted for, while the US did not want to wait for 17 more resolutions.
Whether or not you support the war, please get the facts straight. Saddam failed to comply with any of the resolutions. The thousands of pages of reports further proved the UN's, not just the US's , assertions that Iraq had not proven through documentation that they had in fact destroyed all the weapons the UN knew they had from prior inspections.
I remember reading this story when it was happening more that 2 years ago. At that time it was reported that experts were highly doubtful that the tubes were for nuclear refinement.
Why does it seem that nobody listens to what anybody else says if the president claims something contrary. Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's -- even if they are experts on the issue?
Grow up, Americans! It's time you got over your infantile fixation on hero figures and giving them divine, infallable status.
I don't know what it is like in other countries, but here in Canada, even people who generally like the Prime Minister will treat things he says with a measure of healthy scepticism. And if a bunch of experts line up saying the PM is full of shit, people will listen to the experts, not the PM.
When this was in the news 2 years ago, it was easy enough to conclude that the White House was off base in its assertions. Why is it just now that people are thinking "Hey! Maybe the experts were right and the president was wrong"?
Ideology is for ideots.
In Afghanistan, women were beaten and sometimes executed for showing even their naked ankles in public. Here is a website created by Afghan women where they describe the restrictions placed on them by the Taliban. So, probably those women were psychologically harmed by their fundamentalist abusers.
It is up to you to prove that naked breasts are detrimental to our society if you are going to advocate that women be restricted from baring their breasts in public. I submit that you oppose women baring their chests in public because you are uptight about a woman's body. If you disagree, then tell me how it's bad for a woman's breasts to be displayed.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Welcome to 2 years ago!
No, seriously, that's rather old news (out of the U.S. anyways) and the rest of the world always had strong doubts about the administration's claims. Powell's Powerpoint demo to the UN was fun too...
Come on, get over it: assholes rule the world.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
...most Americans don't give a shit...
Please dont confuse the decision makers of the US with "most Americans". Remember the decision makers of the US dont do what most americans want them to do. Also remember that most americans didn't vote for George Bush in the last election.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").
... for sexual purposes.
Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.
Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest
But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.
Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.
The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.
American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!
Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex. http://milkofhumankindness.org/
That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.
(Yes, I'm an American man too.)
I care, you better care, and so should anybody else who cares about the USA.
Clinton lied about getting blow jobs from Monica Lewinsky in the White House, evidently because he hadn't told his wife and daughter about it. In fact, Hilary and Chelsea Clinton were the only people truly injured by what he did; but conservatives in America freaked out about it, and a partisan majority in the House impeached him. Ann Coulter wondered whether he should be impeached or assassinated.
Bush, however, lied about the reasons to start a war, in which presumably tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over a thousand American soldiers have died, bereaving their families and making orphans of their children. Bush's dishonesty is a moral abomination that has caused an enormous amount of death and suffering, with no end in the foreseeable future.
If you see some kind of moral equivalency between Clinton's lies and Bush's, then I have no choice but to wonder if you comprehend the value of human life.
Interesting, Iraq under Saddam has often been called a brutal dictatorship, and Bush supporters like to cite that as an ex post facto justification for war, but the expression "genocide" has rarely been used.
Be that as it may, dictatorship or "genocide" were not given by Bush and Cheney as justifications for the war, and the American people were never given the opportunity to decide whether they would support a war on those grounds. They said it was because of WMD's and alleged connections to Al Qaeda, both of which have proven to be false. And what's worse, the Bush Adminisration may have been aware of the shakiness of their claims. Chances are, they realized that the American people would not have have supported a war to overthrow a dictator who was no threat to the US, so they decided to come up with something else, anything else, no matter how poorly supported by the facts.
If a "zero tolerance policy towards genocide" is the justification for war, then do you advocate US intervention in Sudan, which is widely regarded as a potential genocide in the making? Neither Bush nor Kerry support such a policy, as they both stated in the debate. I doubt that the American people would support such an action under present circumstances. Wouldn't you agree with Bush and Kerry that at applying other means of pressure in Sudan, such as enlisting the help of the Organization of African States, is a better way to start?
If overthrowing dictatorship is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of North Korea? In fact, North Korea is worse than Iraq by far on all of the reasons given for invading Iraq: It is widely agreed that they really do have WMD's (four to seven nuclear weapons); and North Korea is one of the cruelest dictatorships the world has ever seen, where the people are in constant danger of starvation.
If overthrowing tyranny is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of the People's Republic China? A communist dictatorship ruling a billion people?
If overthrowing dictators is the justification for war, the do you advocate war against almost all of South America, almost all of the Middle East, almost all of Africa, and almost all of Southeast Asia?
Are you aware that this world is filled almost to the brim with ruthless tyrannies? Indeed, we certainly should do whatever we can against it, but if the answer is that the US should go to war against any and every dictator in the world, then we would be at war with almost all of the world, almost all of the time.
And every time we go to war, assuming we succeed with the overthrow, in the aftermath we would be faced with just the sa
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Because America is going to get us all killed, and as i dont live in the US, i dont even get to vote against it.
Actually, thats a bit unfair.
George Bush, Dick Chaney and John Ashcroft are going to get us all killed.
I live in Europe. What surprises me is that news like this comes as a shock to US citizens. In Europe, we have known this for years, from the moment Iraq was invaded.
I had the same experience with Fahrenheit 911. I thought, "Nothing new here. Don't tell me the average American didn't know this?!"
Seriously, the world would be a much better place if the citizens of the US, arguably the most powerful country in the world, would be better informed about what's going on in their own country and in the rest of the world.
Since the US has so much influence on the world, I sometimes think it would be fair if every human being in the world was allowed to vote in the US elections (at least as far as foreign affairs are concerned). The republicans would be wiped out.
The UK didn't initiate the war in Iraq, although our elected representative (Tony B Liar) did blindly follow Bush and his oil-buddies into it which, in turn, has led to increased sympathy for the extreme factions of the Islamic faith from those were previously more moderate.
This, perhaps, is what the OP meant.
British politics is something of a wasteland too...
On one side we have The Liar and his bunch of hand-wringing, spineless toadies (and Blunkett, token hardliner), on the other we have the Tories who are so right-wing they fell off the bird. The Lib Dems are a nice idea in theory but are pretty useless in practice, yet I usually vote for them because I agree with more of their policies than those of the other two parties. The rest are a waste of time, most being single-issue parties.
Perhaps we should shovel your lot and our lot together and shoot them to Mars?
I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Not that I want to get embroiled in a flame war but...
If Israel wants to pull back to it's original borders, as mandated by the UN and defined at the time of its creation, close those borders, and build the biggest frickin wall in history, NO ONE WILL COMPLAIN. If they want to shoot any Palestians who try to cross that wall, that would probably be tolerable too. If they really want to, they can build a giant dome over the whole of Israel and not let anyone in or out. Fine, fine fine.
The problems are:
(a) Israel is building a big fuckoff wall *way outside* those borders, conveniently annexing large swathes of territory that do not belong to Israel with NO JUSTIFICATION
(b) Israel is pursuing a systematic policy of colonising a foreign territory with 'native' Israelis
(c) Israelis forces are performing violent operations against civilian, terrorist and militia forces alike with no real concern as to which is which, outside its own territory, with no international sanction and indeed against international law and consensus
(d) the Israeli government actually talks about maintaining the genetic purity of Israel (ah the irony) in the sense of making sure that at least 50% of Israelis are Jewish so that there can never be a 'democratic coup' inside Israel at election time
(e) Israel, unlike other nations, is completely ignored in all the hubbub from the west about nuclear proliferation despite possessing 100-200 nuclear warheads.
Most of these things are contrary to international law (which Bush and Blair now spit on but which still matters to most countries); some are contrary to domestic Israeli law; all are contrary to basic standards for ethical behaviour.
Incidentally, I genuinely like the Israeli people and I fully support their right to live free from the fear of suicide bombers or invasion by their neighbours. But the way Israel is going about its business at the moment is just atrociously bad.
Read Pynchon.
And yet, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Osama is a Saudi prince by birth. Saudi charities were funding terrorism. Saudi Arabia makes their women wear hoods, teach and endorse radical fundamentalist Islamic religion, and have no problem with slavery. Afghanistan was just a terrorist camp ground. By the time we got there, the terrorists were gone and the Taliban was left holding the bag.
So where did we go after Afghanistan? That's right, Iraq. Who's next? Iran maybe? We aren't going to win the war on terrorism, because we keep invading the wrong countries.
Yeah, but the UK doesnt seem to be able to make policy decisions without the US's say so.
The Majority of the UK wanted nothing to do with the Iraq war. That didnt stop Buttkiss Blair doing what his lord and masters in the white house and the oil business told him.
Admittedly this is more to do with our Elected representatives than the US's.
In some ways, i wish we had Thatcher back. Whatever her faults, she didnt take crap from anyone.
Unfortuntely in the UK we have the choice between an untrustworthy tosser, an idiot who is out to grab headlines, and someone who basicaly means well, but feels we should be run from Brussels.
Hmm, perhaps i should consider starting the ScouseMouse dictatorship party. Any takers?
The UN, and everybody else (save Britain) were screaming that there was no evidence, and that going to war is wrong.
Actually, here in the UK a huge chunk of the British public protested about the war and the government plain ignored public opinion (not for the first time in this government's history either (can you say "fuel protests"?)... unfortunately, come election time the voters seem to forget about this stuff).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Thank you for respecting my culture enough to accept that a bare breast may seem sexual. I hope you will also accept that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that a breast is an organ that is part of human sexual response and arousal. Now that we've dispensed with that petty argument, let's get on to your questions about harm, etc.
I do not claim any harm to the one or two kids who noticed a five-pixel breast on their TV screens for a period of under 1 second. My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point.
While I do not expect a rational skeptic such as you seem to be to adhere to that particular moral choice that we wish to make, I hope you will grant us the freedom to pursue our choices, and some respect for our desire to have a shared understanding of what is going to appear on the TV.
I call it "truth in advertising" or "good product labeling." I recognize a concerned more liberal friend would caution me that labeling content leads to censorship, and being a good reader of 1984 I am not ignorant of those perils, although I think they are overblown if applied in this case. More information about the content, more metadata is good. It's really a matter of courtesy and good expectation-setting within any medium.
Let me explain this in a slashdot metaphor. Just as I do not want to see the goatse guy without adequate warning, despite the fact that I do not find it particularly titilating, sexual or "deeply offensive", I'd just rather not see it while in the middle of reading slashdot without a little warning first.
So it is with tits at the superbowl at church parties.
I am asking for courtesy, not for the world to adopt my sexual ethics.
--LP, who has also lived in Austin btw
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's
A significant number of people in the US think GWB was placed into his current position by "God" himself. So that's at least one large chunk of the group who blindly follows whatever he says.
I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.
You hit the nail right on the head!
I remember images of GWB standing at a press conference with the bible in his hand offering it as a guidebook for everyday life and politics. And there's the executive order to launch the faith-based charity initiatives, slashing through your first constitutional amendment - the same constitution he swore to protect as the President of the United States. Following 9/11 and the war on terror, there's the "good vs. evil" and the "crusade" references.
How about the previous (?) presedential debate where he said he viewed Jesus as his inspiration? When he was asked to elaborate he said that people wouldn't understand unless they'd experienced - I guess - his touch? I can't remember his exact words, but in any case he said he had had a religious experience that changed his life.
This is a guy who must believe he was chosen by his own god to be the President of the US. He openly discussed his religious motives during the presedential campaign, and it must surely have played a huge part in him getting elected - that makes him practically a religious leader.
All this is very disturbing to me! When you view the bigger picture, it turns out that the war on terror, etc. is basically a holy war wagered on both sides. It's truly saddening that the human race hasn't evolved beyond religion. We're still very much primitive in this regard.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Yet? It's been a year, give it up. The US has been living there for a year, if they didn't find it they won't by now.
The Iraqi government doesn't make IEDs. Not only that, but there was no proof that it was WMDs anyway. You are referring to the case when an IED went off, and there were traces of Sarin at the scene. The experts say that it's likely someone took an empty shell left over from the Iran-Iraq war and turned it into an IED, not knowing that there was some leftover Sarin inside it. There are thousands of those shells lying near the border, an unexpected break on their part. Ever notice how the White House gave up trying to say there were WMDs?
Iraq Body count lists between 12976-15033 innocent civilian deaths.
If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority. I mean, the US has allied with Uzbekistan, a country with a horrendus human rights record (which boiled one of its dissidents alive). If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now. If the war in Iraq was about "ties to al-qaeda", then we should've hit the Saudis first, 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9-11 were Saudis. Shouldn't we have mopped up Afghanistan first? It looks really bad if the US withdrew its Special forces from the mountains of Afghanistan in order to put them to work hunting Saddam Hussein. We gave Bin Laden Months to get a lead. If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now... hey.. (this paragraph copied from an earlier /. post some time ago)
Yes. That is normally my first thought too when I run into a Harvard MBA/fighter pilot/Governor/POTUS. LUSER.
He got into Harvard because he's a bush. He got into pilot training because he's a bush. He got the governorship and the presidency because he's a bush. Everything he has gotten in life he owes to his daddy and his name. He has earned nothing on his own abilities.
Look at his real achievements, his grades in school, his test results when he joined the national guard, the financial results from the businesses he ran, the results in the education, health care and economic statistics from his policies. Really, go do that. And then ask yourself: has this man ever earned his position in life? Is he really competent at anything?
There are a number of things I'd like to say about this article in the NYT, the American Public(TM) and GWB's policies.
/. where the same old emotional debate between faithful right and cynical left rages. In short, I think it will have a serious impact on GW's reelection chances, but that's possibly a good thing.
Firstly, what amazes me, truly, on a website meant for above average technically interested people is that almost no comments have been made on the actual technical contents of the NYT article itself as regards the Aluminium tubes and their suitability for use as Uranium centrifuges. The NYT went out of its way to explain to the layman (along with a very good graphic) how the tubes fit the use of small tactical rockets and were totally unsuitable, without extra manufacturing, for the use as centrifuges. I mean, come one, 60 000 tubes for centrifuges! Even the USA, the world's largest nuclear power, doesn't have or need that many centrifuges! It would be nice if people noticed this fact and then took note of how almost the whole American establishment basically went along with the analysis of ONE man (The guy called Joe), ignoring the majority's dissenting voices!
Secondly, this NYT article may well have been timed to be a political time bomb, since it appeared now, after the TV debate, but the NYT, to give it some credit (which the right does not do), explains very well in the same article that it itself was as guilty as almost everyone else in ignoring the evidence available during the highly emotional bullshit campaign that Bush and Co. conducted in the run up to the war. The NYT, for all its failings and left leaning political bias, has explained in a number of editorials that it made a mistake. How often does the favourite of the right, Fox news, do that?
Thirdly, I've seen a number of comments here about what the real motivations were for going to war, be they oil, control of the middle east, liberating Iraq, bring democracy to the middle east, furthering an agenda in wake of the 9/11 attacks. etc. My answer would be the Falklands War in 1982, when the right wing military Junta in Argentina used the issue of the Falklands, by invading them, to bring the nation behind them in the rush of patriotism in wartime, when they were politically starting to lose support. I think that the main reason for this war was a domestic political agenda in the USA, used by the very intelligent people behind Bush, such as Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld etc, in order to bring the American people in line with their way of thinking by starting a war. I feel most sorry for Collin Powell, who despite his actual opinion, suffered the consequences for being true to his President. I hope he gets a decent job in the future where he is repsected and not treated as the house nigger.
Fourthly, despite all the nuances of the aluminium tubes, such as the fact that this was not unknown in 2002 and the faked yellow cake uranium from Niger, none of which stopped anyone from believing the most astounding things about Iraq at the time, such as Iraqs supposed ICBMs capable of threatening the USA, I think that this article will be treaed by the American Public as being new and novel. I seriously doubt the ability of the public to distinguish the facts, and I am buoyed in this opinion by the comments here on
1. They are highly placed politicians. When our parents were getting killed in Vietnam, these guys got themselves tanned in Air National Guard.
2. This is the not the first time a US prez. has lied to goto War. Check our chequered history and you will find many such men.
3.As long as we act like stupid GI Joe guys, put our heads into sand and refuse to think the World is a bigger place than USA, and as long as we refuse to listen to true world news instead of the Fox news crap about Peterson trial/Jacko Whacko trial, we will continue to have presidents and heads of state who will send our young men/women to their deaths without reason.
Amen.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Please explain what the point is in having the UN if a single rogue nation (the US) can ignore the consensus of all the other members of the UN and blow the crap out of another country? Especially since in the end it turned out that there were no grounds for war.
I'd also love to know why it's ok for the US to hold WMDs (especially given the US's record regarding wars) but it's not ok for another nation to hold them?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
You wonder why some Israeli Jews are agressive now? They did unto Arabs as Arabs did unto them.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Kerry is a practicing Catholic...
... practicing what, cognitive dissonance?
who is pro-choice. That is a very strong indicator that he is a man of his own mind and doesn't support a particular position just because his church says so. I find that very reassuring.
I always find this line of thought bizarre. It's actually much harder to hold yourself to an external standard, and requires much more thought and discipline. It's easy to just say you do ("why, I'm a practicing Catholic ...") and then just adjust your actual actions and beliefs to whatever is comfortable or expedient.
Does that mean they had WMD's? Is shoddy bookkeeping good enough reason to go to war?
Before the war the inspections were being carried out like they should. the inspectors were happy on how they were progressing.
And, acoording to the inspectors: Iraq war wasn't justified.
And, according to the inspectors, it was USA that was "not cooperating":
How many thousands died because of the embargo?
Well, US openly supports terrorism, should they be invaded as well? Or how about removing democratic leaders and replacing them with military dictators? Or doing business with dictators that replaced democratic government in a coup?
Why was Iraqi administration "evil", whereas US administration is not?
Since USA has been involved in armed conflicts more often than any other country during this century, I think they are not the ones who should be preacing about "world peace"
Ah, I see. Since they MIGHT at some point in the future potentially threaten USA, they must be invaded now? I guess Finland could at some point in the future potentially threaten the USA somehow, should Finland be invaded as well?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The difference between repeating false information and lying is intent. If the UN really thought there were no WMD or other violations in Iraq, they wouldn't have continued sending inspectors to look for them. Oh wait, they DID find banned weapons which Iraq was destroying (or not since they apparently had SOME that were ready to fire at us when the invasion began).
They were more than likely hiding something; be it plans for a renewed weapons programs in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or leftover samples for use in those revived programs. I don't think anyone truely believed that Iraq was clean. We found out later that they weren't.
Even John Kerry won't stand up and say Bush is a liar. He simply states that Bush "misled" America. Misled is a neutral term applicable to either a liar or someone that mistakenly leads another astray. Blair might very well be in the same situation. He said Iraq had weapons that could be fired within 45 minutes. Considering Iraq's attempts to actually make people think their units had the weapons and would use them against invaders (they were apparently issuing orders on the use of imaginary WMD), I don't see why we should think Blair lied. He probably just didn't know he was feeding the UK incorrect information.
We know now that Saddam likely didn't give a rat's ass whether sanctions were lifted in his lifetime since the Oil for Food program was a corrupt assortment of bribe takers that would let him do whatever he wanted with the money anyway.
I saw in some pro-Bush advertisement a picture of U.S. soldiers standing in front of crates full of what looked like shoulder fired missiles. The large caption said something like "And some say Iraq had no weapons"
My jaw hit the floor. They were a soverign nation, with an army. Of fucking COURSE they are going to have weapons! Hell, we probably sold them those rockets. The Bush supporters have gone from twisting the truth to twisting lies!
I remember when we invaded Iraq, because my wife and I had already had a weeklong trip planned for Paris. We had to decide whether we wanted to go or not, because the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Thursday, and we left for Paris on Sunday. We had to question whether it would be safe. It was of course, and we received zero ill treatment there. I got 10x worse treatment here at home, in O'hare airport. One NASCAR following, Bush-loving idiot at work asked me when I got back if I asked for any "Freedom Fries" while I was there, and I just stared blankly at him. He also asked if I got enough to eat, because the French eat just tiny little portions. (another blank stare)
But I digress... I remember, and some people seem to forget, that Saddam DID let weapons inspectors into Iraq. Yes, for years he dodged them, but when the threat was made by the U.S., he let them in. They didn't find anything, and before the inspectors could finalize their work and come out and officially say "Iraq has no WMD", Bush decided to invade. I remember specifically, he said the inspectors should leave because we were going in. And now the Bush supporters somehow forgot all of that and like to say that Saddam wasn't cooperating with UN weapons inspectors.
I just don't get it. Even after something like 9/11 (which again, has NOTHING to do with Iraq - even GW said so after 9/11) doesn't wake up the American people to the fact that we are not invulnerable. We can't go pushing around other countries without reprocussions. Bush had nothing to do with what caused 9/11, but he is setting us up for the next one. He is making sure that we are hated throughout the world, and that makes me nervous.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Complaining about a dictator is easy.
Yep, that's right.
Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.
Yep, that's right.
But it isn't applicable in this case because that wasn't how the war was sold to the US citizens.
We didn't go in to remove a dictator.
We went in because a dictator with terrorist connections was hiding "WMD's" and preparing to use them against the US.
Telling so many lies (and continuing to tell them) to sell your war does NOT show "moral character, will, and resolve".
Rather it shows the opposite. Too bad for your side.
It's not clear to me why this is controversial.
That's because you use logic and care about America's standing among the nations and peoples of the world.
The whole 'global test' controversy grows from the right's fear of a global government. They are making, in my view, a tactical error when they try to use this right wing nut job argument at this stage of the race, where the only votes up for grabs are the hardcore undecideds.
Clinton was a master of this game, shoring up the base with some good liberal talk during the early going, then concentrating on middle of the road and even conservative issues once the race was down to the wire.
Anyone who thinks that the UN is an anti-American force for evil is already in Bush's corner. The debates everything else from Oct 1 on should be aimed at getting the undecideds, independents, and moderates of the opposing party. You cannot win without the middle.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
The Bush administration has been gunning for Iraq since before they were elected. Proof of this exists here in their mission statement dated 1997.
You speak of resolutions, but what about the ~60 resolutions that Israel has violated during the past 50 years? Quite the double standard, don't you think?
The truth is, we have found no weapons. The one or two that we have found were 14 year old batches of Sarin, which has a shelf-life of maybe 2 or 3 years (pre-gulf war 1). We have pissed a lot of people off. We have created more terrorists instead of less and our allies would rather brandish their middle finger than lend us a helping hand.
Asside from the number of dead bodies we've either had to bury or fly back home in pine boxes, I'd still say we did a pretty shitty job. You tell us to "get the facts straight" and that "Saddam failed to comply with any of the resolutions". The fact that not a single WMD nor tangible program to develop them has been discovered tells me that you need to get your facts straight.
You should read "The Sampson Option" by Seymour Hersh. In the book he describes how people within the Israeli national defense system have confirmed that Israel is willing to use its nuclear arsenal on its own territory should their backs be against the wall.
This was, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons to go to war...the inspectors weren't being allowed to DO their jobs. They weren't allowed to talk to Iraqi scientists and weren't given the information they needed. They had been kicked out of the country before without completing their job, ergo the question became what was Saddam hiding?
Partially false. In the past Iraq had kicked the inspectors out and had given the run-around. However, in the last attempt to fend off an invasion Iraq threw open its doors. The inspectors could go anywhere they wanted. In fact, when the inspectors kept coming up empty the US gave inspectors its own information on where "it knew" the weapons were. Guess what, the inspectors found nothing. It was at this point that the US pulled the rug out from beneath the inspectors and invaded to try and prove that Iraq had wmds. As we now know Iraq never had any weapons since the early 1990s despite all our "evidence" that they had tons (to use Rumsfelds own words) of the stuff hidden away.
As far as why Saddam would do his best to hide something which didn't exist, various people have surmised it came down to appearances. If you can keep your enemies guessing as to what you do or do not have then you can appear strong. If Saddam had come out and said that he had nothing (which he eventually did) then he would appear weak in the eyes of the arab world.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
By going to war against Iraq, the US stopped Saddam's ongoing war on the people of Iraq.
0 030319-1.html) to garner public support.
People sure do like to bring that up. The funny thing is, it is NOT the point. The point is, that's not why we were told we're going to war. It was that Iraq had massive amounts of WMDs (Big fucking deal) and it was stated by Bush that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/2
These were both LIES. That is the point. This current administration lied to all of us, and now its supporters want to go around and say "but that's ok, because there's other good reasons for the war". Yea, if these reasons are that good then why lie to us in the beginning? Maybe it's because this administrationg prefers to us fear to sway public opinion?
Slashdot :: Politics :: Republicans
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and
Slashdot :: Politics :: Democrats
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It's almost hilarious how obvious it is.
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
"it's a permanent reminder of democracy in it self not being inherently "good" and as such it can't be a moral justification for political change or a goal of militairy intervention; there is no guarantee whatsoever that a (newly installed) democracy will not turn into a dictatorship."
No, I think you got it wrong. It's not that democracy isn't inherently good. (Or rather better than the alternatives.)
It's just inherently very _unstable_.
It's like balancing a ball on a fingertip. One moment of not paying attention, and it falls. And in the case of democracy there's always someone actually having an interest in it falling.
Rights and civil liberties are like a gold bulion bar on the sidewalk. You guard them, or someone _will_ take them away from you.
Unfortunately, people eventually start taking it for granted. "Oh, surely noone would take away _our_ liberties. Surely... umm... someone else would fight against that. Just not me. And not now. We'll, uh, see what we can do at the next elections." Just eventually it's too late.
Or they see someone walking away with their rights and go thinking "oh, I'm sure he's a nice guy and will give them back." Yeah right. Some 12 years after the Reichstag, Hitler still had no intention of giving back the liberties to his people.
(Neither does Bush JR and the gang. You don't see them talking about giving back the liberties they took "just temporarily". No siree, bob. They keep inventing bogus threats to justify keeping them.)
And then democracy falls. All it takes is that: a belief that surely it can't possibly fail now.
Happens all the time, since the dawn of time. The Romans were so happy that they thwarted Caesar's plan to be King, and kept their precious republic... that they let Octavian become Emperor _and_ supreme general _and_ high priest _and_ tribune of the plebs _and_ a few other titles just in case. (FFS, a patrician as tribune of the plebs must be one of the biggest jokes in history.)
The French revolution eventually just degenerated into a tyranny darker than ever before.
And so on.
As I've said, that's the only problem with democracy: it's unstable. You take good care of it, or you lose it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point."
I can't understand your point.
You complain about a "strip show" yet, your church will condone the mass viewing of 22 men who hit each other so hard that they have to wear body armor, literally, beating each other bloody over a leather ball. Yet, your church condones said beating, interspersed with advertisements for drugs that give four hour erections? And you have the audacity to complain about a tit-flash?
Eat me.
Seriously.
And the sanctimonious horse you rode in on.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Clinton lied under oath about SEX! This is something the general public has NO business knowing about. I hate it, HATE IT when politicians are called out on this. It happens all the time to many people...in many countries...in many walks of life... But OMG, a president did it! *Gasp* Let's impeach him!!! Come on. It was immoral, and wrong, but it in no way impacts how well he leads.
Bushed lied to the UN. He lied to Congress. He lied to the American People. Worst of all, he had no reason to lie! The American public rallied behind him, the international community supported us. All we needed to do was carry out a just war on terror and none of this would be an issue today. Bush would be re-elected in a heartbeat and the world would be supporting him and the US all along the way.
But instead he lied. Destroyed our credibility and split the country in two. I don't think the US has ever been this bi-partisan. BAH!! How can anyone support such a man. On top of it all, he's about as intelligent as a 5th grader.
Now then, you blame Clinton for the 1000's of deaths? Too bad it was Bush who cut the anti-terrorism budget when he took office. It was one of his first acts before going on a 4 month vacation.
Get your facts straight and open your eyes. This was is no longer about protecting Americans...it is all about the pocketbook.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.