they're just learning from the bush administrations...
THIS was rated "Insightful"?!? You've GOT to be kidding me. This was Troll/Offtopic, if anything.
"Insightful" is more like claiming that left-wing extremists like MoveOn.org are right in connecting Bush with Hitler. The tie here would be that Hitler was quoted as saying (something to the effect of) "If you say it loud enough, long enough, and often enough, the people will believe it." Granted, it's still (kinda) offtopic, but at least it makes the connection with NewSCO's habit of proclaiming lies ad nauseum, hoping that people with think there's some truth to what they're whining about.
Grow up, people. Leave the political bantering on the political posts, and keep it off of the legal crap (unless there's a direct provable tie).
Ummm... How, exactly, do they innovate? Last time I checked, their tactic-of-choice is "embrace and extend", which is hardly innovation.
The best things to hit the market with the M$ name on it was made by someone else, and M$ either bought the product or got an exclusive license to it.
Based on my experience with M$ mice and M$ games, if their OS crew were as effective at their work, M$ wouldn't have the problems they do in putting out stable operating systems.
I haven't yet read the article (I will in a day or so, when things reach some level of normalcy there, and I stand a better chance of seeing it), but I have a comment for the poster.
When atomic testing was being done, the people involved really had no idea what they were getting into. They didn't really know that the fallout would have the effect it did, for as long as it did. It was mostly guesswork, since nobody had split the atom before all this, and they were (mostly) trying to figure out the limits. Sure, they knew what they WANTED to see, but there were still reservations as to the extent that things would happen.
I'm not going to get into an argument on who knew what and when; I think that history has already played that deck of cards.
My employer reimburses us for our Internet, up to $50/mo. For me, that means Broadband (cable modem service) is paid for.:D
I believe the actual policy is that it's proportional to the number of days in the month that we use the Internet to do "work", but considering that the SysAdmins (me, the Sr SA, and our boss) have odd hours, where we often do work from home practically every day, that means that it's covered.
This is the first place I've worked at that would pay for the Internet service, so I won't complain.
Sounds a bit like Michael Moore's "Vote Ficus" campaign.
Actually, it was an independent write-in for Governor of Maine, about ten or fifteen years ago. It was bad enough that his political party wasn't "recognized" in Maine, but it would have been if this guy got something like 5% of the vote. Many people from the Democratic and Republican parties didn't want this to happen, so they would nit-pick every little detail, so that votes for him would be disqualified.
You can often gauge someone's age by their reaction to a war, due simply to selective service.
Yes, although it's not always accurate. I was born in the late sixties, but I have many men in my family that have served (various branches), and were unfortunate enough to have been active participants in wars (WWII, Korea, Viet Nam). From them I have first-hand knowledge how ugly war can get. I served active Navy just before Desert Storm, and I served in the Navy Reserve until just recently.
Those who risk nothing by supporting the war are, of course, it's strongest supporters.
Last time I checked, I was still attached to the military; my contract isn't up for another year. In the mean time, I'm IRR. You DID notice that the Armed Forces are recalling about 6500 people from retirement and the IRR, right? I cannot speak for the military, but as a civilian, I am a strong supporter of what the president is accomplishing in Iraq. I have as much to risk as anyone. There goes your theory, I think. I find that those who are least likely to have joined the military at all are those that are most vocal against it, and usually the same people that parrot the liberal chant that we didn't send enough to Afghanistan.
However, I think I know what you meant, in that those that are most willing to condemn (to a war) are those who will not lose anything to it. I would submit that if the politicians that support military action think about it, a war needs to be worth fighting for, else they DO have something to lose: their career. It's not anything near as heavy a price to pay as those that fought in the war, and that's a shame. Would that the risk(s) could be as great for those that authorize a war as it is for those that have to fight it.
It's been my personal experience that it doesn't matter what party the dolt is that does the fraud... One has to be able to trust the people counting the votes to make an accurate count. (I've seen my voting district, whose vote counters were [by law] made of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, report that a gubernatorial candidate got NO VOTES, when I know for a FACT that he got at least four. The case was contested, since it apparently happened in other districts too, but the Powers That Be didn't allow a recount. Yeah... Yeah.)
Well, you did "go into it" and managed to weaken your position by betraying a highly partisan opinion (e.g. "All I can do is guess why Clinton didn't try" - gee, maybe he was getting a blow job, or busy being the victim of a Republican witch hunt, or just an evil, Godless man. Your "subtle" inference is blindingly clear).
There was nothing subtle intended nor implied. I wasn't there when Clinton made the decision not to do anything in Rwanda, and even if I were, I can't read people's minds. Because of those two reasons alone, I could only guess why he didn't do anything.
I brought up Rwanda and Sudan to support the fact that there exists no clear precedent for declaring war based on the prevention of human rights abuses.
So what? Precedence has to start somewhere. The US Supreme Court had absolutely no precedence when they decided that prayer didn't belong in school in 1963 (in fact, for a hundred years, the Supremes were on record stating that the Bible should be taught in school). Just because there's no precedence for something doesn't mean it's not right to do it.
The human rights issues you continue to cite as justification are not the case that was presented to the American people and the world and never have been the primary justification for any U.S. or U.N. military action.
You asked how -I- justify Bush's actions. It doesn't really matter what Bush said to justify his actions, since you don't believe him anyway. If I were to get a book from Dub-yuh explaining the whole line of reasoning he had in invading Iraq and present it to you with a pretty ribbon on it, I seriously doubt that you'd look at it as anything more than fire fodder. It's kind of like the way I see Moore's movie: it's just a movie, and as such, it shouldn't be taken very seriously. The boy cried wolf too many times in the past. Why should I believe him now?
What about China?
Think about what you're suggesting. China has enough soldiers in their army so that if the world were to try to go against her, they could surrender and STILL have people left over to fight, if one assumes one soldier could guard 500 prisoners of war. Trying anything (conventional) against China, for any reason, is folly.
I wasn't aware that Palestinian suicide bombers were a threat to the U.S., directly or indirectly
There are US citizens in Israel all the time. When the suicide bombers kill (or "just" injure) innocents, sometimes some of the victims are American. That makes it a threat to the US. Violence does not need to occur directly on American soil to be deemed a threat to our security.
It's not left-wing spin to point out the fact that almost all of the Al-Queda terrorists were Saudi and none of them were Iraqi.
This just came out on Yahoo!/UK, and I thought it was interesting (albeit marginally relevant to the point). As for the tie I was referring to, I set out to get a name (I'm thinking about someone that was about four levels down on the chain of command). I didn't find that name, unfortunately, but I did find this, which I think you might appreciate. It's got a lot of information that seems to support what you've been telling me, and I'm going to read through this. It may not shift me completely to your side, but (judging from what I've glossed over) it might bring me a bit closer.
I supported the idea of threatening Hussein with military action to get the inspections program back on track.
So what's the problem? Saddam balked on his responsibilities to his people with regard to the terms of the end of Desert Storm. The threat was there, and the UN was sitting around doing nothing. A few members of the UN (US, UK, Australia, to name a few) decided to do something about
First, allow me to thank you for the time you took to reply to my post.
As energetic about this issue as I (and others) get, I don't think I am biased enough to refuse any reasonable information. I will certainly take your posts into consideration. (By the way... You do notice the date lines on your sources before you post them, right? I noticed just now that one link of yours to USA Today is from March, before the UN found anything in Jordan. Although this does not necessarily discredit this information, it may have been superceeded by other information. Of course, having read it, I wonder: if Iraq did not have WMDs, what did they do with their work into the matter? Surely, one doesn't spend the time and money into researching this sort of weaponry, just to stop and say, "Yeah. That was interesting. What's next on our plate?")
You asked about Rwanda. All I can say is that this happened under Bill Clinton, and (according to one of your articles that I am reading now) he realized his mistake. Should something have been done? Certainly. All I can do is guess why Clinton didn't try, so I won't go into that here.
For Sudan, I think that the UN needs to get off their duff and do something about the problem there, before it's too late. From the article at the SundayTimes (that you quoted):
There is reluctance by all powers to utter the word genocide because most, including the US, are signatories to the UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which requires drastic responses by the signatories.
Personally, the thing that makes the UN seem like such a joke to me is that they like to TALK about working together, promoting world peace, but when it comes time to actually ENFORCE the treaties that the signatories have signed, they all hum and haw about who's going to do anything, and when. By the time they finally decide to do anything, it's too late; events have already played themselves out, leaving the UN able to do nothing but "clean-up".
If you "don't have that kind of time," then I hope you'll excuse me if I interpret that statement to mean that you can't *think of*, much less support, any "other reasons" for invading Iraq.
Here are a couple things that I think justify the invasion of Iraq (in no particular order):
Genocide. Saddam used chemical weapons on the Kurds in the north. He re-routed rivers to punish villages that spawned political enemies.
Weapons inspections. Saddam stalled UN weapons inspectors for much of the last 12 years. If he had nothing to hide, then there was no reason to stall. Iraqi sovereignty is not an issue here, since the inspections were required as a condition of the end of Desert Storm. It is arguable that the allied invasion was a means of enforcing the requirements put in place by the United Nations. Because the UN security council was sitting on their thumbs (Germany, France, and Russia, if I remember correctly, refused to sanction going into Iraq, while the rest of the security council either supported the action or abstained.), the US and Britain (and several other nations) took it upon themselves to act. Was this the proper thing for them to do? That's up to the UN to decide. As I recall, they didn't condemn the action. This is, by the way, the strongest reason I can think of in support of the invasion. I am not a big fan of the UN, and I think that if we didn't have to deal with them, we wouldn't be in the position we are in now.
Support of known terrorists. Saddam made no secret of paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers for their "sacrifice". I read about one such ceremony where checks were handed out about two months before the US and her allies invaded Iraq. Ties to al Quaeda, if they exist, seem to be made a couple levels below Saddam himself, but that does not mean that the Iraqi government sanctioned it. (If you don't think suicide bombers are terrorists,
Huh? Are you trying to claim that it's financially and politically cheaper to invade and occupy a country a propos of absolutely nothing than to park a satellite over it?
That's only PART of the problem. I really love the way you liberal anti-Bush folk love to over-simplify.
If we tried to park a satellite over a country we wanted to watch, it would last about as long as it took for that country to (1) realize it was there and (2) shoot the thing out of the sky. That would be a tremendous waste of time and resources, and it really doesn't solve anything.
Instead, we have satellites that orbit the earth, and we have enough control over their orbit where we can have then going over certain areas. UNFORTUNATELY, there's a tremendous amount of time where the satellite isn't where we would like it to be, and even when it is, we can only see what isn't hidden. When someone knows that satellites are going over their land, it doesn't take much to figure out how often it will be able to see things and how long it will be able to see anything. Given that information, it isn't really hard to hide things from the sky. (Ever hear of "camouflage"?)
Please... If you are going to offer a solution to war, at least think it out. Satellites are nifty bling, but they are easy-to-fool bling.
Why would you feel that when his history has never included attacking America?
Remind me never to trust my safety to your hands. The only thing you seem to care about is your own skin. Who would have stepped up for the people of Iraq (who are sovereign again, thank you for noticing...), if WE didn't? The United Nations? The UN is the biggest joke of the last 100 years!
Why would you feel that when his history has never included attacking America?
Over-simplification. Again. Read through your history books FIRST, then we'll talk. Oh, wait. They don't TEACH much history in school anymore, DO they?
We went there because some people really wanted to and they were hubristic (and "pumped") enough to believe it would be a cake walk.
Pure speculation. Doesn't prove anything except that you've got a vivid imagination. Evidence, please....
Either Sadam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden would have to say that like each other, wanted to work together, and had planned a 9/11 scale attack on American soil slated for the summer of 2003.
Perhaps you need to pay more attention to the world around you, instead of that "we can solve the world's ills using only peaceful means" fantasy land... bin Laden is on record stating that he will not stop until the United States is DESTROYED. What part of "destroy" do you not comprehend? Let me explain a little bit, to make it personal: If you met bin Laden on the street, he (or, more likely, his cronies) would kill you. He would kill your family. He would kill your friends. That's what "destroy" means. He and his followers are convinced that the United States (and, by proxy, its citizens) are the devil incarnate. He will not stop until he's dead, and then someone else will step into his shoes. Hate does that to you. (An interesting thought just came into my head. Left-wingers, like Moore and Al Gore, get really animated because of their hate for Bush. Good thing they aren't armed.......or ARE they? [shudder])
This plan would have to be unstoppable in every respect (including the capture of Bin Laden) unless we overthrew Iraq's dictator, physically occupied the country,
...in other words, NOTHING will change your mind. Sounds to me like you would refuse to pay any attention to the evidence unless you found it yourself, and since you aren't GOING to look for it, you're not going to find it. Yeah.... Yeah.
and shoved flashlights up the asses of some of its citizens.
Heh. You're a pervert.
You make it sound like "spin" is needed to make this misadventure look worse than it
WMD was the reason. This administration claimed that Iraq was reconstituting it's nuclear program and possessed stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
Let's assume for the moment that the US intelligence believed that WMDs existed. There would be three possible reasons for this:
1. Iraq really had WMDs.
2. Saddam was surrounded by "Yes Men" who didn't have the slightest idea how to make WMDs, but rather than incur the wrath of their Fearless Leader, they told him whatever he wanted to believe, just to cover their hides, and this is what the US intelligence people heard, not knowing the other half of the story
3. It was all a conspiracy, headed off by the unlikly partnership of the Hassad and Hollywood. The Israelis would therefore punish Saddam for lobbing SCUDs at them 13 years ago, and Hollywood (Moore, specifically) would get rich in the process. The Democrats would benefit on the side because the Bush would be discredited and voted out of office.
Personally, I think it's #1. If no WMDs are ever found (and I do not think this to be the case; read my previous post), then #2 is likely. #3 is just something I made up, but the way things are playing out, I'm beginning to wonder.
The House of Saud has one concern, it's own power. Don't forget that.
Tell me something I don't know. I posted something about this a while ago.
Please don't be so naive that you would leave the future up to trusting Haliburton or any other corporate interest. Corporations may be good and providing a return to investors, but they will look for any government subsidy to increase this return, including lax envrionmental regulation.
Haliburton could declare bankruptcy or burn to the ground, and I really couldn't care less. I don't put any corporation on a pedastal. PACs should be made illegal. Period. Term limits should be made LAW. I've had it with politicians (on both sides of the aisle!) taking handouts from groups and Rich People, thus robbing us (the Common People) of the satisfaction that the congressmen are there, looking for our best interests. Instead, they are there looking out for themselves.
Moore's views aren't extremist.
Heh. I haven't had a good laugh like that in a while. Thanks.:)
52% of the US believes that the Iraq war was a mistake
When I was in high school, I learned an important fact about polls: the results you get are dependant on several factors. Among them: HOW the question is phrased, WHO you ask, and WHERE you ask them.
HOW the question is phrased can cause the person being polled to answer the same basic question in different ways. If one were asked on paper or verbally also plays a factor (voice inflection could play a subtle part in what sort of answer the questioner is looking for), and the words used can make or break a poll.
WHO you ask and WHERE you ask are also important, because if you went into the middle of a city to ask the people their opinion about something that (for example) farmers would know better, you're asking the wrong crowd. If you walk into the middle of a Kerry-for-President rally and asked the people their opinion on President Bush's foreign affairs policy, what sort of answer would you expect to get? A fair one? ROTFLOL!
If you haven't guessed already, I don't put a lot of trust in public polls. They really aren't reliable for anything except shaping public opinion.
If I have to put up with Ben Stein's gloating after the 2002 election, claiming that the right was marginalizing the left, then you can put up with Mr. Moore stating his view.
Quite right. By the same token, I don't have to listen to a buch of people taking Moore's opinion as gospel without some sort of temperance, either. The media tend to make so much noise out of a non-issue like Moore's movie that oposing views are all but drowned out. Couple that with the an
The U.S.'s own weapons inspectors don't agree with you and insisted that not only could no WMD be found, but that all evidence indicated that no WMD had existed in the first place.
RTFA. The opening paragraph alone, it states:
"If you're reading this, you probably already knew that the U.S. justification for the war on Iraq was a hoax. President Bush invented the fictitious weapons of mass destruction (WMD), nuclear materials from Nigeria, and other elements in order to sell the war effort to the American people (who, by and large, bought it hook, line and sinker)."
It tells me that the site is heavily biased (they even describe themselves as "opinionated", and that they "tell you what we really think and believe about what's happening in the world"), and therefore NOT "news". (Yes, by this standard, I would also probably discount FoxNews.) Do you have other sources, or is this the best you can come up with?
You refer to the actions of a "Head of State", meaning Saddam Hussein, as justification for the war on Iraq.
For starters, it's not "as justification", because it's not that simple. As one of many reasons, yes.
Specifically, which actions are you talking about?
Where shall I begin? How about allowing his sons to torture Iraqi citizens? How about re-routing rivers, to punish villages that spawned political enemies? How about using chemical weapons on Kurdish people in the north? If you think for a moment that allowing such actions to go on unchecked is none of our business, then you're more of an animal than the worst Bush-basher thinks of Bush and the rest of his administration. There are, of course, other reasons involved, but if you need me to tell you what they are, then you haven't bothered to pay attention for the last ten years, and I don't have that kind of time.
I would like to believe that our boys (one of whom is my recently enlisted nephew) are not dying in vain.
Don't you think that people joining the military over the last year have a clue what the risks are, or do you think it's something that's forced on them? I would hope that your nephew is a smart man, quite able to reason through the risks of joining a military at war, before he signs the contracts and raises his right hand. For you (or anyone else for that matter) to imply otherwise is insulting to him, to me, and to anyone else that has served in the US Armed Forces.
Everyone going into the military knows that they may be called to put their life on the line whenever their commander-in-chief calls them to do so. People that don't understand that fact shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a recruiting station. Hearing people whine so much about that reminds me of my days in the US Navy, when some people complained about not wanting to be stationed on a ship. Puh-leeez! If they wanted to stay on land, they should have joined the Army.
... If you can provide some kind of precedent or professional opinion which supports your narrow definition of "documentary" as a work that must provide a counterpoint in addition to a point, I invite you to do so.
Point taken. Perhaps I have lived a sheltered life, as far as "documentaries" go; I have thought of them as non-fictional, attempting (to some extent) to give both sides to an issue, and it is from that perspective I disputed the status of Moore's film. I would have taken the same approach, if the film were so zealosly in favor of Bush. I have no idea who this Morris guy is you speak of.
Come on, we've been torturing Saddam Hussein for like 6 months now,
OBJECTION! That assumes facts not in evidence...
don't you think he would have given up the locations by now? Obviously he would be the one to know.
Have you ever heard of the term "plausible deniability"?
Moore doesn't like Kerry either,
Yeah... I can tell. I've seen all those "I hate Kerry so much that I'm besides myself in fury" clips that the press have been keen to distribute like candy to preschoolers....
The fact that inspectors found parts actually reinforces Saddam's (evil mad psycho guy) assertions that they dismantled all their long-range missiles.
If that were the case, I would agree. However, I understood from the articles that these may have escaped the watchful eye of the UN weapons inspectors, who were supposed to verify the destruction of these weapons.
This begs a question though: do you actually know what goes into a satisfactory destruction, the removal of a missile from use? It means taking it apart and rendering the parts completely unusable for their intended purpose. The missile parts that were found in the scrap heap were still usable, and therefore were not "destroyed". THAT is in violation of the UN resolutions and agreements that brought an end to Gulf War I.
I wish I knew what was going to be written. At this point it's almost a guessing game.
I agree... They say, though, that the history books are written by the winners.
Thousands of people would have to have at least have some clue where the thing is; you've had unfettered access to these people for more than a year. And you've had 100,000 people looking for it using spy satellites and the most advanced technology we have for more than a year as well. If the weapons really do exist they must have been hidden so well that they themselves didn't know where it was.
Then why does it seem such a shock to learn that buildings flagged by the UN for inspection (and tagged appropriately) show up in a Jordanian scrap heap? Why do people seem surprised when terrorists manage to move almost invisibly? There is a simple answer: as much as one might like to think that satellites are "always watching", the fact is they're not. The cost of setting up geosynchronous satellites over a country the size of Iraq (so that we could watch every move anyone made) would be astounding. On top of this, one would have to understand that cameras are useless unless someone is watching them, and you can probably understand the financial problems with this approach. Consider, too, the fact that nobody (no other nation) would put up with it, since it would mean that it would be possible to do that to any country, and you can probably imagine why this is not a good idea from a political standpoint.
Is there ever going to be a point where you are going to change your mind on this? Say, five years from now, will you still be holding onto this line?
At the rate things are going, it does not look likely that I will change my mind; nobody seems able to come up with some real tangible proof that there was not a presence of WMDs. I'm not saying there WERE any, but I haven't seen any evidence that there WEREN'T, either. Given the history of Saddam, I'd be safer to assume that they DID exist.
What's the threshold here?
That's a good question. Unfortunately, I think the threshold is extremely subjective. I don't think that this has a simple answer.
Because I believe the decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam was not based on any one single factor, I think that the tendency of some to oversimplify the problem by pegging it to "blood for oil" or a need of Bush-the-Younger to somehow avenge Bush-the-Elder's failure to "finish the job" from Gulf War I is a mistake. I'm not going to beat a dead horse and explain why.
I think I'll turn the tables here, and ask YOU: What would change YOUR mind about this whole mess? What would it take to convince you that maybe, just maybe, the US took the best approach to the problem, given the information that we had at the time?
Everyone seems keen on making people believe that going there to do what we did was "wrong", but nobody seems willing to consider the other-way-around. I'm not trying to suggest that it IS the best thing, but it's an alternative to consider, and nobody wants to consider it.
Those missile parts were from SCUDs. This has already been covered in depth by people paid much more than you or I to research this.
so what? even if that is true, most of their missles have been SCUDs. The US has bases in many places in the region, as well as several ships (in the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea). All of that is within striking distance of a SCUD, and if that were armed with some sort of chemical or biological agent, it would not be fun.
If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority.
Like...? I don't recall this ever being the sole purpose in going to Iraq.
If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now.
(1) There is a lot of sand in Iraq, which means a lot of hiding places. If you have ever lost anything in something as small as a beach, imagine the scale involved with a "beach" that is 167,924 square miles. (2) Saddam was not above "hiding" weapons (of any sort) in cemetaries and hospitals, so the number of places that one could expect to find anything pretty-much jumped to every square inch of the region. (3) Fox News and an ABC affiliate report on the fact that the United Nations found missile engines and other parts that were suited for the purpose of making WMDs in a scrap heap in Jordan. The source of all this metal? IRAQ.
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.
That's flawed reasoning. One should not condemn a nation based on the nationality of a criminal. Acting on a nation based on the actions of its Head of State is something quite different.
If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now...
No, we'd be doing something to shut the mouths of people against drilling in the protected lands within the US. I agree that we should protect the land, so that environmental damage is minimized as much as possible, so don't think for a second that I'm in favor of drilling. By the same token, when the entire world is quite capable of watching the corporate goings-on (especially with regard to oil), I would hope that companies (like Haliburton) have the smarts to avoid doing something so blatently stupid. We all know, however, that not everyone thinks things through before acting...
Having said all this, I think that Moore has every right to think what he wants to think, and to make films based on these if that's how he wants to spend his time, even if it means people paying him for his extremist views. HOWEVER, for a pompous self-rightous man like him to put something like "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the same realm as a documentary when it offers absolutely no counter point is foolish and irrisponsible.
At least one person who should know agrees(*). If Moore was really so anxious about telling the truth (as he wants us to believe), I would like to see his take on the military prowress of Kerry, especially as it relates to Iraq.
* Link to http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/ doesn't seem to work through the preview...
I just got interested in Adium becuase I use AIM for work and i have friends on both AIM and Y!. Today, I find that it cannot connect to the Y! server. I tried the Y! client I used before I found Adium, and it connected first-try!
For what it's worth, at this writing, my system has Adium version 0.60.1 and Y! IM version 2.5.3 (build 1062). SOMETHING is going on, and I am not inclined to think that it is just "protocol upgrades".
1) Saudi-arabia is a dictatorship. Not even a very benevolent one. Torture and random assassination of political enemies is commonplace there.
The interesting thing about Saudi Arabia is that there is a constant battle between the House of Saud and the religious leaders. Saud rules, but they know that they'd get overthrown quick if they tell the Islamic leaders to back off.
Shouldn't that make you more critical of current US policies in Iraq and the middle east in general, given that they are creating a fresh generation of terrorists hellbent on attacking america?
Why? Just because the Liberal Left hates Bush with a passion doesn't mean that they are CORRECT. Actually, I find their bias completely laughable. The end result of their ranting gives us such things as an animatedAl Gore, a group of folk that take movies at face value (let's check our laws of Physics at the door, shall we?), and a religious fervor against war that hasn't been seen since the Viet Nam era. Here's a shock for you: I'm an IT Geek, and I actually support our purpose for being in Iraq! <gasp!>
So, no, before Gulf War II there was no credible indication of cooperation between Saddam and Bin Laden. If there was, they would have found it already.
I blame the bush administration for lack of planning and lack of insight into Iraq. They screwed it up, they should pay the price, not the people on the ground giving their lives trying to help people.
Hm. So Bush and Company didn't take into consideration that a loon like Saddam would have his army melt into the general population and resort to guerilla warfare and terrorism, and you want to blame him? Please.
Like the way Bush uses God to excuse his policies is an insult to christians the world over?
No, like the Democrats claiming that they are looking out for the Little Guy, when they are making a complete ass of them. (look how things are happening in Boston, with respect to the Democratic National Convention. That's one complete fuck-up if i ever saw one. It's already $10M over budget. They can't get their heads out of their ass for a peaceful conference like this, and they want us to believe that they can run a war?!? Whoever writes their game plan should get into comedy. they'd make a killing.
By dehumanizing al qaeda you make it ok to treat whoever you believe to be a part of it as non-human or sub-human. We've seen the pictures of what that kind of attitude leads to. If you want the moral high ground, you've got to stick to the facts, and not let your emotions and hate get in the way.
That is exactly why I do not advocate a blanket "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" attitude. The majority of the local people there aren't looking for trouble; they are just living day-to-day. The general population should not be punished for the extreme actions of a (relative) few.
Yea, right grabbing people in the streets, putting them into random hidden prison facilities and then making funny pictures?
(1) the idiot that authorized that kind of treatment should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. (2) those prisoners, although embarrassed, lived. they'll get over it. the two men that lost their heads to a group of soulless barbarians will never recover from the torment they received.
Or using apache helicopters to blast wedding parties?
Go find someone that's been to Viet Nam, and ask them if they had an easy time telling who the Enemy was. In Iraq, most of the people are friendly enough. The few that are the problem cannot be picked out of a crowd based on their appearance. Any time weapons are fired, they get nervous. Given the nature of the environment, I'm actually more surprised that the people at this wedding party didn't have the sense to find another way to make noise, if they wanted to celebrate.
Sure, it was only a few misguided sheep, just like the few misguided sheeps in the white house.
....or the misguided sheep at your end of the 'Net. I'll grant you that the RESPONSIBILITY ultimately falls on Bush (more on that in a second), but that does NOT mean that it was his call to do it.
When I served in the Navy, they taught us an important rule of leadership: You can delegate Authority, but you cannot delegate Responsibility. I think that speaks for itself.
I am sad that there are people that so hate President Bush that they are willing to blame him for every thing possible, all the while being completely blind to the facts at hand.
Huh? And what precisely do the al-Quaeda fanatics have to do with Iraq?
Well, depending on who you chose to believe, they may have been a factor in the invasion of Iraq last year.
Either way, al Quaeda doesn't want us in Saudi Arabia (never mind that we are there with the permission of the Saudi government, and that we would have to leave whenever they tell us to).
Unless all of our western intelligence agencies have failed miserably, al-Quaeda people only began moving in Iraq as a direct result of Gulf War 2...
Check your facts, friend. bin Laden has been linked directly with the bombing of the US embassies in the African continent (Kenya and Tanzania) in 1998, and there may be connections with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2001.
I have a good friend of mine that re-enlisted in the National Guard this past January, knowing full-well that he might get called to go. He's been in "an undisclosed location" (aka Baghdad) for about a month now. He believes he's there to help the Iraqi people, and I think he is, too.
To see the way that these al Quaeda zealots work against people who are trying to help others is completely disgusting. They have no respect for human life whatsoever, and to perform their tricks in the name of their god is (i think) an insult to Muslims the world over.
If I weren't a bit on the "old side", I'd go in a heart-beat. I've served in the Navy, so the idea of being in the military is not foreign to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you meant Kim Jong-Il...
THIS was rated "Insightful"?!? You've GOT to be kidding me. This was Troll/Offtopic, if anything.
"Insightful" is more like claiming that left-wing extremists like MoveOn.org are right in connecting Bush with Hitler. The tie here would be that Hitler was quoted as saying (something to the effect of) "If you say it loud enough, long enough, and often enough, the people will believe it." Granted, it's still (kinda) offtopic, but at least it makes the connection with NewSCO's habit of proclaiming lies ad nauseum, hoping that people with think there's some truth to what they're whining about.
Grow up, people. Leave the political bantering on the political posts, and keep it off of the legal crap (unless there's a direct provable tie).
Ummm... How, exactly, do they innovate? Last time I checked, their tactic-of-choice is "embrace and extend", which is hardly innovation.
The best things to hit the market with the M$ name on it was made by someone else, and M$ either bought the product or got an exclusive license to it.
Based on my experience with M$ mice and M$ games, if their OS crew were as effective at their work, M$ wouldn't have the problems they do in putting out stable operating systems.
I haven't yet read the article (I will in a day or so, when things reach some level of normalcy there, and I stand a better chance of seeing it), but I have a comment for the poster.
When atomic testing was being done, the people involved really had no idea what they were getting into. They didn't really know that the fallout would have the effect it did, for as long as it did. It was mostly guesswork, since nobody had split the atom before all this, and they were (mostly) trying to figure out the limits. Sure, they knew what they WANTED to see, but there were still reservations as to the extent that things would happen.
I'm not going to get into an argument on who knew what and when; I think that history has already played that deck of cards.
My employer reimburses us for our Internet, up to $50/mo. For me, that means Broadband (cable modem service) is paid for. :D
I believe the actual policy is that it's proportional to the number of days in the month that we use the Internet to do "work", but considering that the SysAdmins (me, the Sr SA, and our boss) have odd hours, where we often do work from home practically every day, that means that it's covered.
This is the first place I've worked at that would pay for the Internet service, so I won't complain.
Actually, it was an independent write-in for Governor of Maine, about ten or fifteen years ago. It was bad enough that his political party wasn't "recognized" in Maine, but it would have been if this guy got something like 5% of the vote. Many people from the Democratic and Republican parties didn't want this to happen, so they would nit-pick every little detail, so that votes for him would be disqualified.
Yes, although it's not always accurate. I was born in the late sixties, but I have many men in my family that have served (various branches), and were unfortunate enough to have been active participants in wars (WWII, Korea, Viet Nam). From them I have first-hand knowledge how ugly war can get. I served active Navy just before Desert Storm, and I served in the Navy Reserve until just recently.
Last time I checked, I was still attached to the military; my contract isn't up for another year. In the mean time, I'm IRR. You DID notice that the Armed Forces are recalling about 6500 people from retirement and the IRR, right? I cannot speak for the military, but as a civilian, I am a strong supporter of what the president is accomplishing in Iraq. I have as much to risk as anyone. There goes your theory, I think. I find that those who are least likely to have joined the military at all are those that are most vocal against it, and usually the same people that parrot the liberal chant that we didn't send enough to Afghanistan.
However, I think I know what you meant, in that those that are most willing to condemn (to a war) are those who will not lose anything to it. I would submit that if the politicians that support military action think about it, a war needs to be worth fighting for, else they DO have something to lose: their career. It's not anything near as heavy a price to pay as those that fought in the war, and that's a shame. Would that the risk(s) could be as great for those that authorize a war as it is for those that have to fight it.
It's been my personal experience that it doesn't matter what party the dolt is that does the fraud... One has to be able to trust the people counting the votes to make an accurate count. (I've seen my voting district, whose vote counters were [by law] made of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, report that a gubernatorial candidate got NO VOTES, when I know for a FACT that he got at least four. The case was contested, since it apparently happened in other districts too, but the Powers That Be didn't allow a recount. Yeah... Yeah.)
Crooks come in all politcal persuasions.
Well, you did "go into it" and managed to weaken your position by betraying a highly partisan opinion (e.g. "All I can do is guess why Clinton didn't try" - gee, maybe he was getting a blow job, or busy being the victim of a Republican witch hunt, or just an evil, Godless man. Your "subtle" inference is blindingly clear).
There was nothing subtle intended nor implied. I wasn't there when Clinton made the decision not to do anything in Rwanda, and even if I were, I can't read people's minds. Because of those two reasons alone, I could only guess why he didn't do anything.
I brought up Rwanda and Sudan to support the fact that there exists no clear precedent for declaring war based on the prevention of human rights abuses.
So what? Precedence has to start somewhere. The US Supreme Court had absolutely no precedence when they decided that prayer didn't belong in school in 1963 (in fact, for a hundred years, the Supremes were on record stating that the Bible should be taught in school). Just because there's no precedence for something doesn't mean it's not right to do it.
The human rights issues you continue to cite as justification are not the case that was presented to the American people and the world and never have been the primary justification for any U.S. or U.N. military action.
You asked how -I- justify Bush's actions. It doesn't really matter what Bush said to justify his actions, since you don't believe him anyway. If I were to get a book from Dub-yuh explaining the whole line of reasoning he had in invading Iraq and present it to you with a pretty ribbon on it, I seriously doubt that you'd look at it as anything more than fire fodder. It's kind of like the way I see Moore's movie: it's just a movie, and as such, it shouldn't be taken very seriously. The boy cried wolf too many times in the past. Why should I believe him now?
What about China?
Think about what you're suggesting. China has enough soldiers in their army so that if the world were to try to go against her, they could surrender and STILL have people left over to fight, if one assumes one soldier could guard 500 prisoners of war. Trying anything (conventional) against China, for any reason, is folly.
I wasn't aware that Palestinian suicide bombers were a threat to the U.S., directly or indirectly
There are US citizens in Israel all the time. When the suicide bombers kill (or "just" injure) innocents, sometimes some of the victims are American. That makes it a threat to the US. Violence does not need to occur directly on American soil to be deemed a threat to our security.
It's not left-wing spin to point out the fact that almost all of the Al-Queda terrorists were Saudi and none of them were Iraqi.
This just came out on Yahoo!/UK, and I thought it was interesting (albeit marginally relevant to the point). As for the tie I was referring to, I set out to get a name (I'm thinking about someone that was about four levels down on the chain of command). I didn't find that name, unfortunately, but I did find this, which I think you might appreciate. It's got a lot of information that seems to support what you've been telling me, and I'm going to read through this. It may not shift me completely to your side, but (judging from what I've glossed over) it might bring me a bit closer.
I supported the idea of threatening Hussein with military action to get the inspections program back on track.
So what's the problem? Saddam balked on his responsibilities to his people with regard to the terms of the end of Desert Storm. The threat was there, and the UN was sitting around doing nothing. A few members of the UN (US, UK, Australia, to name a few) decided to do something about
As energetic about this issue as I (and others) get, I don't think I am biased enough to refuse any reasonable information. I will certainly take your posts into consideration. (By the way... You do notice the date lines on your sources before you post them, right? I noticed just now that one link of yours to USA Today is from March, before the UN found anything in Jordan. Although this does not necessarily discredit this information, it may have been superceeded by other information. Of course, having read it, I wonder: if Iraq did not have WMDs, what did they do with their work into the matter? Surely, one doesn't spend the time and money into researching this sort of weaponry, just to stop and say, "Yeah. That was interesting. What's next on our plate?")
You asked about Rwanda. All I can say is that this happened under Bill Clinton, and (according to one of your articles that I am reading now) he realized his mistake. Should something have been done? Certainly. All I can do is guess why Clinton didn't try, so I won't go into that here.
For Sudan, I think that the UN needs to get off their duff and do something about the problem there, before it's too late. From the article at the SundayTimes (that you quoted):
Personally, the thing that makes the UN seem like such a joke to me is that they like to TALK about working together, promoting world peace, but when it comes time to actually ENFORCE the treaties that the signatories have signed, they all hum and haw about who's going to do anything, and when. By the time they finally decide to do anything, it's too late; events have already played themselves out, leaving the UN able to do nothing but "clean-up".
If you "don't have that kind of time," then I hope you'll excuse me if I interpret that statement to mean that you can't *think of*, much less support, any "other reasons" for invading Iraq.
Here are a couple things that I think justify the invasion of Iraq (in no particular order):
Huh? Are you trying to claim that it's financially and politically cheaper to invade and occupy a country a propos of absolutely nothing than to park a satellite over it?
...or ARE they? [shudder])
...in other words, NOTHING will change your mind. Sounds to me like you would refuse to pay any attention to the evidence unless you found it yourself, and since you aren't GOING to look for it, you're not going to find it. Yeah.... Yeah.
That's only PART of the problem. I really love the way you liberal anti-Bush folk love to over-simplify.
If we tried to park a satellite over a country we wanted to watch, it would last about as long as it took for that country to (1) realize it was there and (2) shoot the thing out of the sky. That would be a tremendous waste of time and resources, and it really doesn't solve anything.
Instead, we have satellites that orbit the earth, and we have enough control over their orbit where we can have then going over certain areas. UNFORTUNATELY, there's a tremendous amount of time where the satellite isn't where we would like it to be, and even when it is, we can only see what isn't hidden. When someone knows that satellites are going over their land, it doesn't take much to figure out how often it will be able to see things and how long it will be able to see anything. Given that information, it isn't really hard to hide things from the sky. (Ever hear of "camouflage"?)
Please... If you are going to offer a solution to war, at least think it out. Satellites are nifty bling, but they are easy-to-fool bling.
Why would you feel that when his history has never included attacking America?
Remind me never to trust my safety to your hands. The only thing you seem to care about is your own skin. Who would have stepped up for the people of Iraq (who are sovereign again, thank you for noticing...), if WE didn't? The United Nations? The UN is the biggest joke of the last 100 years!
Why would you feel that when his history has never included attacking America?
Over-simplification. Again. Read through your history books FIRST, then we'll talk. Oh, wait. They don't TEACH much history in school anymore, DO they?
We went there because some people really wanted to and they were hubristic (and "pumped") enough to believe it would be a cake walk.
Pure speculation. Doesn't prove anything except that you've got a vivid imagination. Evidence, please....
Either Sadam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden would have to say that like each other, wanted to work together, and had planned a 9/11 scale attack on American soil slated for the summer of 2003.
Perhaps you need to pay more attention to the world around you, instead of that "we can solve the world's ills using only peaceful means" fantasy land... bin Laden is on record stating that he will not stop until the United States is DESTROYED. What part of "destroy" do you not comprehend? Let me explain a little bit, to make it personal: If you met bin Laden on the street, he (or, more likely, his cronies) would kill you. He would kill your family. He would kill your friends. That's what "destroy" means. He and his followers are convinced that the United States (and, by proxy, its citizens) are the devil incarnate. He will not stop until he's dead, and then someone else will step into his shoes. Hate does that to you. (An interesting thought just came into my head. Left-wingers, like Moore and Al Gore, get really animated because of their hate for Bush. Good thing they aren't armed....
This plan would have to be unstoppable in every respect (including the capture of Bin Laden) unless we overthrew Iraq's dictator, physically occupied the country,
and shoved flashlights up the asses of some of its citizens.
Heh. You're a pervert.
You make it sound like "spin" is needed to make this misadventure look worse than it
As an ex-Navy Submariner, It jack my jaws that all these people who were too good to goddam serve their country can slam someone who did.
I served four years active Navy, and 12 years in the Navy Reserve, thank you for asking. I don't like Kerry for many reasons. I don't have to.
At least -I- have a perspective, instead of some of these people who have never served, and still piss on those who have. Grrrrrr....
If you HAVE served and still like Kerry, that's fine. You have the same right to your opinions as I do.
Come on, the guy is quoting fox news, he's beyond hope already. No need to try and bring him to reality.
...and I also quoted from Kerry's site. What's your point-- people that look for facts from both sides of an issue are living in a fantasy land?
You're funny. You shold see about a job with Comedy Central.
WMD was the reason. This administration claimed that Iraq was reconstituting it's nuclear program and possessed stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
:)
Let's assume for the moment that the US intelligence believed that WMDs existed. There would be three possible reasons for this:
1. Iraq really had WMDs.
2. Saddam was surrounded by "Yes Men" who didn't have the slightest idea how to make WMDs, but rather than incur the wrath of their Fearless Leader, they told him whatever he wanted to believe, just to cover their hides, and this is what the US intelligence people heard, not knowing the other half of the story
3. It was all a conspiracy, headed off by the unlikly partnership of the Hassad and Hollywood. The Israelis would therefore punish Saddam for lobbing SCUDs at them 13 years ago, and Hollywood (Moore, specifically) would get rich in the process. The Democrats would benefit on the side because the Bush would be discredited and voted out of office.
Personally, I think it's #1. If no WMDs are ever found (and I do not think this to be the case; read my previous post), then #2 is likely. #3 is just something I made up, but the way things are playing out, I'm beginning to wonder.
The House of Saud has one concern, it's own power. Don't forget that.
Tell me something I don't know. I posted something about this a while ago.
Please don't be so naive that you would leave the future up to trusting Haliburton or any other corporate interest. Corporations may be good and providing a return to investors, but they will look for any government subsidy to increase this return, including lax envrionmental regulation.
Haliburton could declare bankruptcy or burn to the ground, and I really couldn't care less. I don't put any corporation on a pedastal. PACs should be made illegal. Period. Term limits should be made LAW. I've had it with politicians (on both sides of the aisle!) taking handouts from groups and Rich People, thus robbing us (the Common People) of the satisfaction that the congressmen are there, looking for our best interests. Instead, they are there looking out for themselves.
Moore's views aren't extremist.
Heh. I haven't had a good laugh like that in a while. Thanks.
52% of the US believes that the Iraq war was a mistake
When I was in high school, I learned an important fact about polls: the results you get are dependant on several factors. Among them: HOW the question is phrased, WHO you ask, and WHERE you ask them.
HOW the question is phrased can cause the person being polled to answer the same basic question in different ways. If one were asked on paper or verbally also plays a factor (voice inflection could play a subtle part in what sort of answer the questioner is looking for), and the words used can make or break a poll.
WHO you ask and WHERE you ask are also important, because if you went into the middle of a city to ask the people their opinion about something that (for example) farmers would know better, you're asking the wrong crowd. If you walk into the middle of a Kerry-for-President rally and asked the people their opinion on President Bush's foreign affairs policy, what sort of answer would you expect to get? A fair one? ROTFLOL!
If you haven't guessed already, I don't put a lot of trust in public polls. They really aren't reliable for anything except shaping public opinion.
If I have to put up with Ben Stein's gloating after the 2002 election, claiming that the right was marginalizing the left, then you can put up with Mr. Moore stating his view.
Quite right. By the same token, I don't have to listen to a buch of people taking Moore's opinion as gospel without some sort of temperance, either. The media tend to make so much noise out of a non-issue like Moore's movie that oposing views are all but drowned out. Couple that with the an
When do we invade America then?
You going to fix Washington?
Just remember: Canada is the only country in the world who has successfully invaded the United States and burned its capitol to the ground.
RTFA. The opening paragraph alone, it states: It tells me that the site is heavily biased (they even describe themselves as "opinionated", and that they "tell you what we really think and believe about what's happening in the world"), and therefore NOT "news". (Yes, by this standard, I would also probably discount FoxNews.) Do you have other sources, or is this the best you can come up with?
You refer to the actions of a "Head of State", meaning Saddam Hussein, as justification for the war on Iraq.
For starters, it's not "as justification", because it's not that simple. As one of many reasons, yes.
Specifically, which actions are you talking about?
Where shall I begin? How about allowing his sons to torture Iraqi citizens? How about re-routing rivers, to punish villages that spawned political enemies? How about using chemical weapons on Kurdish people in the north? If you think for a moment that allowing such actions to go on unchecked is none of our business, then you're more of an animal than the worst Bush-basher thinks of Bush and the rest of his administration. There are, of course, other reasons involved, but if you need me to tell you what they are, then you haven't bothered to pay attention for the last ten years, and I don't have that kind of time.
I would like to believe that our boys (one of whom is my recently enlisted nephew) are not dying in vain.
Don't you think that people joining the military over the last year have a clue what the risks are, or do you think it's something that's forced on them? I would hope that your nephew is a smart man, quite able to reason through the risks of joining a military at war, before he signs the contracts and raises his right hand. For you (or anyone else for that matter) to imply otherwise is insulting to him, to me, and to anyone else that has served in the US Armed Forces.
Everyone going into the military knows that they may be called to put their life on the line whenever their commander-in-chief calls them to do so. People that don't understand that fact shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a recruiting station. Hearing people whine so much about that reminds me of my days in the US Navy, when some people complained about not wanting to be stationed on a ship. Puh-leeez! If they wanted to stay on land, they should have joined the Army.
Point taken. Perhaps I have lived a sheltered life, as far as "documentaries" go; I have thought of them as non-fictional, attempting (to some extent) to give both sides to an issue, and it is from that perspective I disputed the status of Moore's film. I would have taken the same approach, if the film were so zealosly in favor of Bush. I have no idea who this Morris guy is you speak of.
Come on, we've been torturing Saddam Hussein for like 6 months now,
...and that should encourage me, why?
OBJECTION! That assumes facts not in evidence...
don't you think he would have given up the locations by now? Obviously he would be the one to know.
Have you ever heard of the term "plausible deniability"?
Moore doesn't like Kerry either,
Yeah... I can tell. I've seen all those "I hate Kerry so much that I'm besides myself in fury" clips that the press have been keen to distribute like candy to preschoolers....
Moore is a green party member.
The fact that inspectors found parts actually reinforces Saddam's (evil mad psycho guy) assertions that they dismantled all their long-range missiles.
If that were the case, I would agree. However, I understood from the articles that these may have escaped the watchful eye of the UN weapons inspectors, who were supposed to verify the destruction of these weapons.
This begs a question though: do you actually know what goes into a satisfactory destruction, the removal of a missile from use? It means taking it apart and rendering the parts completely unusable for their intended purpose. The missile parts that were found in the scrap heap were still usable, and therefore were not "destroyed". THAT is in violation of the UN resolutions and agreements that brought an end to Gulf War I.
I wish I knew what was going to be written. At this point it's almost a guessing game.
I agree... They say, though, that the history books are written by the winners.
This analogy is silly.
Why? The scale is about right...
Thousands of people would have to have at least have some clue where the thing is; you've had unfettered access to these people for more than a year. And you've had 100,000 people looking for it using spy satellites and the most advanced technology we have for more than a year as well. If the weapons really do exist they must have been hidden so well that they themselves didn't know where it was.
Then why does it seem such a shock to learn that buildings flagged by the UN for inspection (and tagged appropriately) show up in a Jordanian scrap heap? Why do people seem surprised when terrorists manage to move almost invisibly? There is a simple answer: as much as one might like to think that satellites are "always watching", the fact is they're not. The cost of setting up geosynchronous satellites over a country the size of Iraq (so that we could watch every move anyone made) would be astounding. On top of this, one would have to understand that cameras are useless unless someone is watching them, and you can probably understand the financial problems with this approach. Consider, too, the fact that nobody (no other nation) would put up with it, since it would mean that it would be possible to do that to any country, and you can probably imagine why this is not a good idea from a political standpoint.
Is there ever going to be a point where you are going to change your mind on this? Say, five years from now, will you still be holding onto this line?
At the rate things are going, it does not look likely that I will change my mind; nobody seems able to come up with some real tangible proof that there was not a presence of WMDs. I'm not saying there WERE any, but I haven't seen any evidence that there WEREN'T, either. Given the history of Saddam, I'd be safer to assume that they DID exist.
What's the threshold here?
That's a good question. Unfortunately, I think the threshold is extremely subjective. I don't think that this has a simple answer.
Because I believe the decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam was not based on any one single factor, I think that the tendency of some to oversimplify the problem by pegging it to "blood for oil" or a need of Bush-the-Younger to somehow avenge Bush-the-Elder's failure to "finish the job" from Gulf War I is a mistake. I'm not going to beat a dead horse and explain why.
I think I'll turn the tables here, and ask YOU: What would change YOUR mind about this whole mess? What would it take to convince you that maybe, just maybe, the US took the best approach to the problem, given the information that we had at the time?
Everyone seems keen on making people believe that going there to do what we did was "wrong", but nobody seems willing to consider the other-way-around. I'm not trying to suggest that it IS the best thing, but it's an alternative to consider, and nobody wants to consider it.
Those missile parts were from SCUDs. This has already been covered in depth by people paid much more than you or I to research this.
so what? even if that is true, most of their missles have been SCUDs. The US has bases in many places in the region, as well as several ships (in the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea). All of that is within striking distance of a SCUD, and if that were armed with some sort of chemical or biological agent, it would not be fun.
If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority.
Like...? I don't recall this ever being the sole purpose in going to Iraq.
If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now.
(1) There is a lot of sand in Iraq, which means a lot of hiding places. If you have ever lost anything in something as small as a beach, imagine the scale involved with a "beach" that is 167,924 square miles. (2) Saddam was not above "hiding" weapons (of any sort) in cemetaries and hospitals, so the number of places that one could expect to find anything pretty-much jumped to every square inch of the region. (3) Fox News and an ABC affiliate report on the fact that the United Nations found missile engines and other parts that were suited for the purpose of making WMDs in a scrap heap in Jordan. The source of all this metal? IRAQ.
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.
That's flawed reasoning. One should not condemn a nation based on the nationality of a criminal. Acting on a nation based on the actions of its Head of State is something quite different.
If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now...
No, we'd be doing something to shut the mouths of people against drilling in the protected lands within the US. I agree that we should protect the land, so that environmental damage is minimized as much as possible, so don't think for a second that I'm in favor of drilling. By the same token, when the entire world is quite capable of watching the corporate goings-on (especially with regard to oil), I would hope that companies (like Haliburton) have the smarts to avoid doing something so blatently stupid. We all know, however, that not everyone thinks things through before acting...
Having said all this, I think that Moore has every right to think what he wants to think, and to make films based on these if that's how he wants to spend his time, even if it means people paying him for his extremist views. HOWEVER, for a pompous self-rightous man like him to put something like "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the same realm as a documentary when it offers absolutely no counter point is foolish and irrisponsible.
At least one person who should know agrees(*). If Moore was really so anxious about telling the truth (as he wants us to believe), I would like to see his take on the military prowress of Kerry, especially as it relates to Iraq.
* Link to http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/ doesn't seem to work through the preview...
I just got interested in Adium becuase I use AIM for work and i have friends on both AIM and Y!. Today, I find that it cannot connect to the Y! server. I tried the Y! client I used before I found Adium, and it connected first-try!
For what it's worth, at this writing, my system has Adium version 0.60.1 and Y! IM version 2.5.3 (build 1062). SOMETHING is going on, and I am not inclined to think that it is just "protocol upgrades".
1) Saudi-arabia is a dictatorship. Not even a very benevolent one. Torture and random assassination of political enemies is commonplace there.
The interesting thing about Saudi Arabia is that there is a constant battle between the House of Saud and the religious leaders. Saud rules, but they know that they'd get overthrown quick if they tell the Islamic leaders to back off.
Shouldn't that make you more critical of current US policies in Iraq and the middle east in general, given that they are creating a fresh generation of terrorists hellbent on attacking america?
Why? Just because the Liberal Left hates Bush with a passion doesn't mean that they are CORRECT. Actually, I find their bias completely laughable. The end result of their ranting gives us such things as an animatedAl Gore, a group of folk that take movies at face value (let's check our laws of Physics at the door, shall we?), and a religious fervor against war that hasn't been seen since the Viet Nam era. Here's a shock for you: I'm an IT Geek, and I actually support our purpose for being in Iraq! <gasp!>
So, no, before Gulf War II there was no credible indication of cooperation between Saddam and Bin Laden. If there was, they would have found it already.
Well, if Russia is to be believed....
I blame the bush administration for lack of planning and lack of insight into Iraq. They screwed it up, they should pay the price, not the people on the ground giving their lives trying to help people.
Hm. So Bush and Company didn't take into consideration that a loon like Saddam would have his army melt into the general population and resort to guerilla warfare and terrorism, and you want to blame him? Please.
Like the way Bush uses God to excuse his policies is an insult to christians the world over?
No, like the Democrats claiming that they are looking out for the Little Guy, when they are making a complete ass of them. (look how things are happening in Boston, with respect to the Democratic National Convention. That's one complete fuck-up if i ever saw one. It's already $10M over budget. They can't get their heads out of their ass for a peaceful conference like this, and they want us to believe that they can run a war?!? Whoever writes their game plan should get into comedy. they'd make a killing.
By dehumanizing al qaeda you make it ok to treat whoever you believe to be a part of it as non-human or sub-human. We've seen the pictures of what that kind of attitude leads to. If you want the moral high ground, you've got to stick to the facts, and not let your emotions and hate get in the way.
That is exactly why I do not advocate a blanket "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" attitude. The majority of the local people there aren't looking for trouble; they are just living day-to-day. The general population should not be punished for the extreme actions of a (relative) few.
Yea, right grabbing people in the streets, putting them into random hidden prison facilities and then making funny pictures?
....or the misguided sheep at your end of the 'Net. I'll grant you that the RESPONSIBILITY ultimately falls on Bush (more on that in a second), but that does NOT mean that it was his call to do it.
(1) the idiot that authorized that kind of treatment should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. (2) those prisoners, although embarrassed, lived. they'll get over it. the two men that lost their heads to a group of soulless barbarians will never recover from the torment they received.
Or using apache helicopters to blast wedding parties?
Go find someone that's been to Viet Nam, and ask them if they had an easy time telling who the Enemy was. In Iraq, most of the people are friendly enough. The few that are the problem cannot be picked out of a crowd based on their appearance. Any time weapons are fired, they get nervous. Given the nature of the environment, I'm actually more surprised that the people at this wedding party didn't have the sense to find another way to make noise, if they wanted to celebrate.
Sure, it was only a few misguided sheep, just like the few misguided sheeps in the white house.
When I served in the Navy, they taught us an important rule of leadership: You can delegate Authority, but you cannot delegate Responsibility. I think that speaks for itself.
I am sad that there are people that so hate President Bush that they are willing to blame him for every thing possible, all the while being completely blind to the facts at hand.
Huh? And what precisely do the al-Quaeda fanatics have to do with Iraq?
Well, depending on who you chose to believe, they may have been a factor in the invasion of Iraq last year.
Either way, al Quaeda doesn't want us in Saudi Arabia (never mind that we are there with the permission of the Saudi government, and that we would have to leave whenever they tell us to).
Unless all of our western intelligence agencies have failed miserably, al-Quaeda people only began moving in Iraq as a direct result of Gulf War 2...
Check your facts, friend. bin Laden has been linked directly with the bombing of the US embassies in the African continent (Kenya and Tanzania) in 1998, and there may be connections with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2001.
I have a good friend of mine that re-enlisted in the National Guard this past January, knowing full-well that he might get called to go. He's been in "an undisclosed location" (aka Baghdad) for about a month now. He believes he's there to help the Iraqi people, and I think he is, too.
To see the way that these al Quaeda zealots work against people who are trying to help others is completely disgusting. They have no respect for human life whatsoever, and to perform their tricks in the name of their god is (i think) an insult to Muslims the world over.
If I weren't a bit on the "old side", I'd go in a heart-beat. I've served in the Navy, so the idea of being in the military is not foreign to me.