What the fuck? Are you seriously invoking the Chewbacca defence to a post on Slashdot?
How is pointing out Saddam's current living situation irrelevant in a discussion about whether or not Bush did the right thing in ousting his government? Sound more like you are invoking the Chewbacca defense.
By your reasoning, they should never rely on disputed intelligence. How often do you think that there is zero dispute on any given piece of intelligence? There is likely going to be a level of dispute on any given piece of intelligence. Following your logic, we should ignore all of that disputed evidence since it's not black and white.
The only people really pushing the idea that the aluminum tubes were for a centrifuge was the CIA.
And herein lies the heart of my point. Here are all these people, damning the Bush administration for acting on CIA intelligence. Previously, these same people damned the Bush administration for not acting on CIA intelligence prior to 9/11.
Bush did not take intelligence too seriously. He created a fact pattern to suit his personal goals.
You mean they didn't pick your preferred interpretation of the evidence. Where is the manual that tells the US administration which intelligence agency to listen to on any given matter? And on what page does it say that they picked the wrong one in this case?
That would be a true statement only if you ignored the fact that UNSCOM reported that they could not ascertain whether or not Iraq had any WMDs because the Iraqi government refused to fully comply with the inspectors.
The problem is that he's taking the intelligence, which says the tubes are not the right stuff for nuclear WMDs, and telling we the people that they are for WMDs.
Sounds like what you are really saying is that they interpreted the intelligence differently from the way you'd have liked them to. Intelligence doesn't always say anything factual. It often consists only of evidence that must be interpreted. Such was the case with these aluminum tubes.
And if the US had not forcibly disarmed Iraq, and Iraq had later detonated a nuclear weapon in a neighboring country, someone would have dug up the old CIA memo and said, "Look here! The Bush administration KNEW that Iraq had materials for building a centrifuge! It says so right here in this memo! And they didn't do anything about it!" Just like what happened with the Democratic response to pre-9/11 intelligence gathering.
Inventing a headline about Bush lying that is not at all supported by the article itself, goes well beyond Michael's fiduciary responsibility to represent the facts. As hard as it may be to believe, most Slashdot readers probably do have an expectation that the editors' opinions will not be construed as fact. Note that the headline did not read, "Slashdot thinks Bush lied..."
Do you even understand the meaning of the figure of speech, "To have your cake and eat it too"? I don't think you do. When did the Republicans blast Clinton for not doing enough to protect the African embassies that were bombed? They didn't. That's just having your cake. Not eating it.
If he's been lying about it, then so too has everyone in Congress who authorized the use of force in Iraq (including, of course, your beloved John Kerry). And the Clinton administration also must have lied when they authorized Operation Desert Fox in 1998. And the UNSCOM must have lied.... the list goes on and on and on...
No, what's really hilarious is that here we have "another" brainless Democrat with zero reading comprehension skill. In which paragraph was an Iraq-9/11 connection implied? The subject is not 9/11, but intelligence. Of which you lack any, obviously.
On the one hand, the Bush administration has been roasted by the Democrats for not taking pre-9/11 intelligence seriously enough.
On the other hand, the Bush administration is getting roasted by the Democrats for taking post-9/11 intelligence too seriously.
It sure is nice to have your cake and eat it too, eh Democrats?
Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.
Anyone else want to boycott Slashdot subscriptions?
One significant difference between phone-tapping and Internet tapping that comes to my mind is that over a phone, a voice is usually going to be identifiable. Bits on a wire, however, are a lot less identifiable.
If the FBI records a murder-for-hire plot over a telephone, and the voice they record is clearly not mine, then it is hard to pin that crime on me.
Over the Internet, there is no voice to provide that fingerprint. IP addresses are no good, because, even if the IP address belongs to me, how can they prove that I was the one actually operating the computer?
Almost forgot... I didn't bring up World War II, you did:
Does this not sound familiar to anyone else in history... Remember those people who put their own 'self-interest' above everyone...They also invaded and conquered country's in the name of 'self interest'....
You right, 55 million. This is why i don't approve of war as the first solution. I'm democratic i don't have the arrogance to assume im right and everyone else is wrong. SO i don't see war as a democratic solution i see it as a failure of democracy.
Had anyone been willing to act preemptively, most of those 55 million lives would have been spared. And no, military action does not need to be the "first solution". Diplomacy should always come first, and with Iraq it did. Twelve years of it. That's a plain and simple fact.
I also don't see why most American's use World war II as their justifications.
I didn't bring it up as justification. I brought it up because it was a mistake that we all must learn from and because the U.N. was created for the sole purpose of preventing such a disaster from occurring again.
And while it was sitting out, USA was selling weapons and profiting from both sides.
This is irrelevant. I could dig up many facts to show that other coutries provided vehicles, weapons, and technology to Axis powers. Iraq obtained most of its weaponry exclusively from the Soviet Union. Does that make the Russian's responsible for the invasion of Kuwait?
No matter how much American's want to belive that you were the savior of the world from the Nazi's it's anything but the truth.
Where did I say that the United States saved the world? I didn't. I said that the USA (and others) failed to act prior to World War II. That was an error -- gross negligence -- and something that hopefully we all can learn from. Literally the opposite of the "savior of the world".
The main reason you are now the Super power of the world is because unlike the rest of the world that substained heavy damages due to fighting the war, you sat it out. So its soo ironic that you applaud your country as the great fighter for peace in this planet when you were the country that left it for the world to save your ass when it mattered.
And here you help me make my point that you do have a twisted perspective of history. I'd like to see you say that directly to the faces of the grandchildren of the 300,000 US soldiers that died fighting in Europe and the Pacific. This statement of yours only serves to show how ignorant you must be.
Iraq was supported by USA at the time, USA also supplied Saddam that evil SOB with weapons to commit genocide on the Kuwaites.
Iraq's army was almost solely supplied with Soviet weapons. The amount of military support provided to Iraq by the US is paltry to that supplied by the Soviets. Human beings make mistakes, and we cannot always predict the future.
Where is your facts mate. If you recall history he allowed weapons inspectors in. It was America that told them to piss off because they were going to bomb anyway.
Iraq expelled the weapons inspectors in 1996. Eventually in late 2002 they let them back in under extreme pressure from the U.N. Hans Blix eventually reported that the Iraqis were being evasive and that they were failing to comply with U.N. resolutions. Today, anti-Bushers like to pretend that the sole reason the US took military action was because of WMDs and connections to terrorists. This is nothing but political spinning and half truths. If Iraq had cooperated with Hans Blix's teams, then the whole world would have known there were no WMDs. Instead we had to forcefully enter the country to find out for ourselves. When Colin Powell addressed the U.N. prior to the start of military action he spent most of his time arguing that Iraq was disregarding U.N. mandates. He did mention the possibility that there may be WMDs. However, that was neve
It's interesting to see how twisted an interpretation of history some people have.
You probably think that World War II was a good thing because the Allies were victorious in the end, and democracy prospered in Europe in its wake. Wrong!
World War II was a complete and utter failure on the part of the international community (U.S.A. included)! Before the war broke out the majority in the international community simply wanted to leave things be. Everyone wanted to stay out of it. Nobody wanted to get involved. In the end, 55.5 million people were killed in World War II! 55.5 million!! Take a moment to ponder that. Really think about that! 55.5 million!
The United Nations' sole purpose in life is to prevent something like that from ever happening again. Prevention means stopping it before it even has a chance to start. We waited twelve years for Saddam to start complying with U.N. resolutions. How much longer should we have waited? Until he started another invasion, or committed some other heinous deed? That would defeat the purpose of the United Nations.
I'm sick of hearing people pretend that the United States started this war. Iraq started this war when it invaded Kuwait. Iraq had twelve years to end the war and to start living in peace. They chose not to, and it was the United Nations' responsibility to take action. The United Nations nearly failed, because once again, nobody wanted to get involved. Finally, they at least promised "serious consequences". When Iraq continued to defy the U.N., the United States made good on that promise. You seem to be confusing taking initiative with "self-interest". This is not about invasion and conquest. This is not even about preventing terrorism. This is about making the U.N. serve its purpose. This is about actually fighting for democracy. It's funny that so many Europeans like to pound on the democracy drum these days, but are completely unwilling to take any risk when it comes to actually bringing democracy to those in the world who are still without it. Why are Germany, France, and Russia so afraid to take action? It is Europe's unwillingness to fight for democracy which causes so many Americans to say, "Fuck it! You know what? We don't give a shit what they think!" We'll continue to fight for democracy, even if we are alone in that fight.
And another thing I'm sick of hearing is that the United States has "invaded" Iraq. When Iraq actually did invade Kuwait, they had no intention of ever leaving. If you actually believe that the U.S. is "invading" Iraq (i.e. they never intend to leave) then your tinfoil hat must be defective.
What I'd like to add, and I think the parent would agree, is that, allowing Hitler to accumulate the amount of power that he did accumulate, and allowing him the time he had to move forward with his plans was a huge failure on the part of the international community (U.S.A. included).
How close do we want to get to that situation again? I for one am glad that Saddam does NOT compare 100% with Hitler. It means that this time around we acted on lessons learned some 60 years ago, and that we eliminated a credible threat BEFORE there was a chance for it to escalate to biblical proportions.
If you did even just a little fact-checking, you'd find out that the U.N. passed a number of resolutions just before the war in Iraq which repeatedly reprimanded the Iraqi government for refusing to comply with U.N. mandates (primarily weapons inspections). Eventually the U.N. promised "serious consequences" and the Iraqi government continued its defiance. And no, contrary to popular belief, George W. Bush does not have the authority to unilateraly pass U.N. resolutions. This was not a decision made by "one man". This was deliberated by the international community.
If you did even a little more fact-checing you'd have also learned that this had been going on for twelve years! How many more years should we have waited?
I suppose you'd have agreed with the rest of the world in the 1930s, too, and preferred to simply wait; to wait until it was too late to avoid a complete catastrophe -- the loss of millions of innocent lives -- to try to save a few thousand.
Poland: Well, you wouldn't think they'd go for invaders, but...
Or maybe Poland knows better than anyone else in the world what can happen when no country is willing to intervene preemptively when a dictatorial regime fails to comply with treaties they've signed, repeatedly breaks their promises, and ignores the demands of the international community.
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Slashdot Mirror
You mean they didn't pick your preferred interpretation of the evidence. Where is the manual that tells the US administration which intelligence agency to listen to on any given matter? And on what page does it say that they picked the wrong one in this case?
Sounds like what you are really saying is that they interpreted the intelligence differently from the way you'd have liked them to. Intelligence doesn't always say anything factual. It often consists only of evidence that must be interpreted. Such was the case with these aluminum tubes.
And if the US had not forcibly disarmed Iraq, and Iraq had later detonated a nuclear weapon in a neighboring country, someone would have dug up the old CIA memo and said, "Look here! The Bush administration KNEW that Iraq had materials for building a centrifuge! It says so right here in this memo! And they didn't do anything about it!" Just like what happened with the Democratic response to pre-9/11 intelligence gathering.
Inventing a headline about Bush lying that is not at all supported by the article itself, goes well beyond Michael's fiduciary responsibility to represent the facts. As hard as it may be to believe, most Slashdot readers probably do have an expectation that the editors' opinions will not be construed as fact. Note that the headline did not read, "Slashdot thinks Bush lied..."
That's fine. America will be more than happy to keep Bush. And anyone who will "never forgive" us for it can go right ahead and elect Saddam.
Ooops, I guess you can't elect Saddam because he's in prison. Gee, I wonder what "utterly stupid" man called the shots that put him there.
If he's been lying about it, then so too has everyone in Congress who authorized the use of force in Iraq (including, of course, your beloved John Kerry). And the Clinton administration also must have lied when they authorized Operation Desert Fox in 1998. And the UNSCOM must have lied.... the list goes on and on and on...
No, what's really hilarious is that here we have "another" brainless Democrat with zero reading comprehension skill. In which paragraph was an Iraq-9/11 connection implied? The subject is not 9/11, but intelligence. Of which you lack any, obviously.
On the one hand, the Bush administration has been roasted by the Democrats for not taking pre-9/11 intelligence seriously enough.
On the other hand, the Bush administration is getting roasted by the Democrats for taking post-9/11 intelligence too seriously.
It sure is nice to have your cake and eat it too, eh Democrats?
Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.
Anyone else want to boycott Slashdot subscriptions?
It is different from phone tapping.
One significant difference between phone-tapping and Internet tapping that comes to my mind is that over a phone, a voice is usually going to be identifiable. Bits on a wire, however, are a lot less identifiable.
If the FBI records a murder-for-hire plot over a telephone, and the voice they record is clearly not mine, then it is hard to pin that crime on me.
Over the Internet, there is no voice to provide that fingerprint. IP addresses are no good, because, even if the IP address belongs to me, how can they prove that I was the one actually operating the computer?
....there's nothing to see here.
Since when did Slashdot start providing technical support to any lame anonymous noob that asks for it?
The noob obviously is using DVI, and it's the video card that is the problem.
Stupid. Just plain stupid.
Had anyone been willing to act preemptively, most of those 55 million lives would have been spared. And no, military action does not need to be the "first solution". Diplomacy should always come first, and with Iraq it did. Twelve years of it. That's a plain and simple fact.
I didn't bring it up as justification. I brought it up because it was a mistake that we all must learn from and because the U.N. was created for the sole purpose of preventing such a disaster from occurring again.
This is irrelevant. I could dig up many facts to show that other coutries provided vehicles, weapons, and technology to Axis powers. Iraq obtained most of its weaponry exclusively from the Soviet Union. Does that make the Russian's responsible for the invasion of Kuwait?
Where did I say that the United States saved the world? I didn't. I said that the USA (and others) failed to act prior to World War II. That was an error -- gross negligence -- and something that hopefully we all can learn from. Literally the opposite of the "savior of the world".
And here you help me make my point that you do have a twisted perspective of history. I'd like to see you say that directly to the faces of the grandchildren of the 300,000 US soldiers that died fighting in Europe and the Pacific. This statement of yours only serves to show how ignorant you must be.
Iraq's army was almost solely supplied with Soviet weapons. The amount of military support provided to Iraq by the US is paltry to that supplied by the Soviets. Human beings make mistakes, and we cannot always predict the future.
Iraq expelled the weapons inspectors in 1996. Eventually in late 2002 they let them back in under extreme pressure from the U.N. Hans Blix eventually reported that the Iraqis were being evasive and that they were failing to comply with U.N. resolutions. Today, anti-Bushers like to pretend that the sole reason the US took military action was because of WMDs and connections to terrorists. This is nothing but political spinning and half truths. If Iraq had cooperated with Hans Blix's teams, then the whole world would have known there were no WMDs. Instead we had to forcefully enter the country to find out for ourselves. When Colin Powell addressed the U.N. prior to the start of military action he spent most of his time arguing that Iraq was disregarding U.N. mandates. He did mention the possibility that there may be WMDs. However, that was neve
Riiiiight. Because taking action to enforce U.N. resolutions was not a good enough reason for Bush and Blair. No, they needed a better reason.
Puhleeeze. Your tinfoil hat needs some tweaking.
The absence of any kind of preemption strategy, or in other words, a policy of inaction, was the failure that allowed World War II to break out.
55.5 million people were killed as a result (see this acticle).
According to anti-Bush propaganda, at most some 14,000 people have died since the campaign to remove Saddam began.
Now, I sincerely believe that any loss of life at all is a tragedy, but which strategy shows the most promise?
It's interesting to see how twisted an interpretation of history some people have.
You probably think that World War II was a good thing because the Allies were victorious in the end, and democracy prospered in Europe in its wake. Wrong!
World War II was a complete and utter failure on the part of the international community (U.S.A. included)! Before the war broke out the majority in the international community simply wanted to leave things be. Everyone wanted to stay out of it. Nobody wanted to get involved. In the end, 55.5 million people were killed in World War II! 55.5 million!! Take a moment to ponder that. Really think about that! 55.5 million!
The United Nations' sole purpose in life is to prevent something like that from ever happening again. Prevention means stopping it before it even has a chance to start. We waited twelve years for Saddam to start complying with U.N. resolutions. How much longer should we have waited? Until he started another invasion, or committed some other heinous deed? That would defeat the purpose of the United Nations.
I'm sick of hearing people pretend that the United States started this war. Iraq started this war when it invaded Kuwait. Iraq had twelve years to end the war and to start living in peace. They chose not to, and it was the United Nations' responsibility to take action. The United Nations nearly failed, because once again, nobody wanted to get involved. Finally, they at least promised "serious consequences". When Iraq continued to defy the U.N., the United States made good on that promise. You seem to be confusing taking initiative with "self-interest". This is not about invasion and conquest. This is not even about preventing terrorism. This is about making the U.N. serve its purpose. This is about actually fighting for democracy. It's funny that so many Europeans like to pound on the democracy drum these days, but are completely unwilling to take any risk when it comes to actually bringing democracy to those in the world who are still without it. Why are Germany, France, and Russia so afraid to take action? It is Europe's unwillingness to fight for democracy which causes so many Americans to say, "Fuck it! You know what? We don't give a shit what they think!" We'll continue to fight for democracy, even if we are alone in that fight.
And another thing I'm sick of hearing is that the United States has "invaded" Iraq. When Iraq actually did invade Kuwait, they had no intention of ever leaving. If you actually believe that the U.S. is "invading" Iraq (i.e. they never intend to leave) then your tinfoil hat must be defective.
Hitler wasn't born a mass-murderer. He had to acheive that status. The international community failed to prevent him from reaching his goals.
Saddam has failed. Any chance he had of becoming a Hitler has been eliminated. That is a Good Thing.
Had we waited until Poland (and everyone else) realized that Saddam was a Hitler, we'd have made the same mistakes all over again.
I personally agree 100% with what you just said.
What I'd like to add, and I think the parent would agree, is that, allowing Hitler to accumulate the amount of power that he did accumulate, and allowing him the time he had to move forward with his plans was a huge failure on the part of the international community (U.S.A. included).
How close do we want to get to that situation again? I for one am glad that Saddam does NOT compare 100% with Hitler. It means that this time around we acted on lessons learned some 60 years ago, and that we eliminated a credible threat BEFORE there was a chance for it to escalate to biblical proportions.
If you did even just a little fact-checking, you'd find out that the U.N. passed a number of resolutions just before the war in Iraq which repeatedly reprimanded the Iraqi government for refusing to comply with U.N. mandates (primarily weapons inspections). Eventually the U.N. promised "serious consequences" and the Iraqi government continued its defiance. And no, contrary to popular belief, George W. Bush does not have the authority to unilateraly pass U.N. resolutions. This was not a decision made by "one man". This was deliberated by the international community.
If you did even a little more fact-checing you'd have also learned that this had been going on for twelve years! How many more years should we have waited?
I suppose you'd have agreed with the rest of the world in the 1930s, too, and preferred to simply wait; to wait until it was too late to avoid a complete catastrophe -- the loss of millions of innocent lives -- to try to save a few thousand.
God bless America!
That's funny... you heard Yoda, but I heard a nerdy little Japanese guy.
Damn it! When I went to search for my pr0n today, Google sent me to /. when all I was searching for was head, bush, and dick!
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