25% is only about twice that of France or Germany's rate in recent years. Not bad for a country that was just invaded by the world's most destructive military force.
If you can understand the logic of kidnapping, blowing up, and beheading contractors working on reconstruction indiscriminately (the overwhelming majority of whom are not fixing US military hardware, but instead rebuilding power plants and other public infrastructure), then it must be easy for you to understand the logic of invading an entire country just to kill its leadership.
You are no better than Bush & Co.
Re:500 Million through Sub-contracting.
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 1
The problem with small businesses and government contracting is that the primary contracts deal with very large operations and have very strict requirements that must be met. A typical small business would not have nearly the manpower or logistical support to deal with the coordination of a large primary contract operation. Hence small businesses get subcontracts which deal with more specific problems within their domain of expertise and logistical capabilities. Further, to become a government contractor, a company must meet a number of very stringent restrictions. The US government is very demanding, and there is a huge amount of legalwork and paperwork that goes into submitting a bid in the first place, much less winning the bid. Again, small businesses have an exponentially harder time meeting these US government regulations (not unique to the Bush admin, these regulations have been around for a while). Again, this is why small businesses are largely relegated to sub-contractor roles. This has a lot less to do with the Bush/Cheney robber-barron conspiracy, and a lot more to do with the reality of working for a government engaged in nation-building.
Playing the good little isolationist and not getting involved in regional or religious disputes halfway around the world is another great idea. We tried that around the turn of the century, but didn't work too well when a little regional European dispute got out of hand. Then right after we got back, we went back to isolationism, and lo and behold, would you believe it, another little regional European dispute got out of hand, and we got pulled in again. We've been stuck with troops in Europe ever since! What a quagmire. Only serves to show you what engagement with the outside world will get you...
You are correct that Saddam was not a traditional military threat to the United States. His conventional army was obviously no match for US forces, as both the Gulf War and the Iraq War have demonstrated quite clearly.
This was not the concern of Cheney/Rumseld/Bush/Evil-Neo-Con-Cabal.
Not only were US intelligence operatives convinced that Iraq was attempting to secure or develop WMD, so were the Russian, French, British, German and Arab-state intelligence services. There was essentially no disagreement about this in the international community. The disagreement was how to deal with the threat, not whether or not there was the threat to begin with. Clearly the nations other than the US and UK favored a non-aggressive approach, at odds with the US/UK invasion plan.
There are valid legal reasons for the invasion. In fact, during the run up to the invasion, I was in the Public International Law course of Queen's Council Christopher Greenwood (the same barrister who argued the Lockerbie Bombing case, and the Pinochet Extradition Case). The British legal argument ran as follows:
UNSCR 678 authorized coalition force to be used to secure international peace and security in the area (note that this is a broader mandate than simply repelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which is why it was valid for coalition forces to push into Iraq itself, and have the option of going after Saddam himself)
UNSCR 687 was the terms of the ceasefire between Iraq and the coalition. It specifically recalls UNSCR 678 as having force in case of a material breach of UNSCR 687
Over the next 12 years, almost a dozen UNSCRs are passed condemning various breaches of UNSCR 687
UNSCR 1441 gives Saddam one last chance to uphold the positive obligation placed upon him by UNSCR 687 and all the subsequent UNSCRs to make a full reporting of all his weapon activities. UNSCR 1441 specifically recalls UNSCR 678, using the same language as UNSCR 687, indicating that coalition force is still the penalty for material breach
Hans Blix returns a report indicating that Iraq remains in material breach of its obligations from UNSCRs 687 and 1441
The US and UK invade under the continuing authority of 678, since Iraq never complied with the terms of the ceasefire set forth in 687
It is also worth noting that Saddam did employ, support and maintain active relationships with extremists and terrorists. His special forces contracted agents to attempt the assassination of President Bush Sr. (an act of war). He paid Palestinian families of suicide bombers. And the 9/11 commission report goes over the many links and contacts he had with al-Qaeda (noting, however, that Iraq and al-Qaeda did not cooperate on the 9/11 attacks).
You would do well to consider that the UN Security Council made no decision on Iraq one way or the other. No resolution was adopted against war in Iraq, and no resolution was adopted authorizing war in Iraq. Legally, no decision != a decision against. The closest legal equivalent would be the UN returning a stare decisis, basically saying that previous decisions are all that apply. And the US/UK/Coalition invaded, saying that they had continuing authority on the basis of resolution 678 and material breach of resolutions 687 and 1441. Others disputed that these resolutions and their breach constituted enough to grant continuing authority to "secure international peace and security in the area."
And, at the end of the day, all UN enforcement action is taken by member states, not UN forces. There never has been UN enforcement action taken by UN forces, only peacekeeping operations. So, it was not, as you said, entirely a matter for the UN and not the US/UK/Coalition. If UN enforcement action were specifically mandated by a post-1441 resolution, it is essentially a given that the vast majority of forces involved would be US/UK.
Re:Why not? Simple answer
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Although I'm not sure what an "invation" is, if the US wanted petrol from Iraq we could have acceded to the French pressure in the Security Council several years ago to lift the restrictions on Iraq's sale of oil on the international market. But you're probably right, the only easy way to get it was to invade the whole country.
It doesn't cut both ways genius. Saudi Arabia does have the most proven oil, but Iraq has the second most. Under your four-word explanation of the entire history of US Middle East foreign policy the US should have been sucking up to both Saudi Arabia and Iraq, while abusing the other less well-oil-endowed states in the region. But let's not sweat the details shall we?
Yeah, tell me about it. We really suck at this imperialism thing. Anyone else, anyone--the Brits, the Soviets, the Mongols, whatever--they would have every damn Iraqi signing up for their fresh copy of Windows Eternal Lock-In 2004 if they were in our shoes. Frankly it's embarrassing. How will historians ever give us any respect next to the other empires when they're writing the history books a couple hundred years from now? We're just going to be weak sauce compared to everyone else!
The problem with hiring Iraqis and Iraqi firms is twofold: regulations and security. Getting a government contract is not an easy task. There are literally thousands of restrictions on who can get a government contract, based on requirements set by US statutory law. The US government legally cannot give out contracts to certain companies if they do not or cannot meet the standards. If a majority of US and European firms are having trouble with the contracting process, you can be sure that Saddam's crony industries operating with obsolete infrastructure and standards will have an even harder time trying to compete for the contracts.
A further risk is one of security. On crucial, high-value tasks, like reconstruction of oil fields and energy plants, security takes an extremely important role. These are sectors targeted regularly by insurgents, and the CPA doesn't want to have easy access granted to these sites. An Iraqi firm's vetting process for the unemployed people it hires can't be controlled or properly confirmed by the CPA, and the risk is that insurgents would gain access to critical sites and potentially destroy or cripple them.
Finally, it's untrue that all the money assigned to Halliburton or Bechtel goes only to those companies when they receive a contract. After primary contracts are awarded, the contracted company awards subcontracts for different elements of the work that must be fulfilled. A very substantial number of these go to local Iraqi firms, as well as French, German and other firms that might have been excluded from bidding for primary contracts. So while a Halliburton may still get quite a significant tranche of money, it's not by any means keeping it all for itself.
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 1
The problem with opening bids up to wide competition is that the bidding process takes a long time. Rebuilding is already going too slowly, so no-bid contracts significantly speed up the process of getting people out on the ground patching things up. Under ideal circumstances I would agree that competition is the way to go to ensure the best products at the best prices, but things work differently in a country with an active insurgency intent on blowing up anything related to reconstruction.
All the Sim* games started out on Macintosh. Where would we be without Sim City (and its rather random cousins, Sim Earth, Sim Ant (which was awesome), Sim Tower, etc)?
As a side note: the US government (federal and state) spends about $650 billion a year on education, whereas it spends about $435 billion a year on defense. The school system is not exactly being gobbled up by the defense budget.
Yeah, that, and keeping at least some hope alive for the Solidarity movement in Poland, which was trying to gain what little freedom possible behind the Iron Curtain at the time. But that doesn't matter does it?
The shocks caused by a significant entry by the Soviet Union and its glut of oil supply would have extinguished any chances that the Polish labor movement could gain enough leverage economically to wrest power from the Soviet puppet government that had been oppressing them for decades. Not to mention that the increased revenues from dominating the European energy market would go toward increasing funding for the USSR's war machine in Afghanistan.
Oh! The poor pipeline!
You're right. Screw freedom for the Polish or Afghanis. American action against the innocent pipeline was unjust!
Yep. As odious as it may seem, the French have been great partners throughout the post-WWII era when it comes to intelligence. While they don't have the technology or manpower that the US has devoted to intelligence through the CIA and NSA, what intelligence and old colonial links they have to various governments around the world they use quite well. Regardless of most political posturing done by heads of state (De Gaulle and Chirac come to mind), the French have been a solid ally when it comes to intelligence. In fact, throughout their opposition to the War in Iraq and what they see as overbearing US hegemony, the French have supplied a substantial amount of key intelligence in the War on Terror without any hesitation really.
As for the rest of your sarcastic post, it just seems funny to me that every time the US government does something, all the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork to claim that the CIA/DoD/NSA/etc were secretly behind it. But when the intelligence community claims a covert success everyone suddenly becomes a realist sceptic.
Personally, I would have suspected user error or home-grown sabotage first. But that's probably why I don't work for the KGB.... Something blows up in the wilderness and they suspect stolen US technology was the culprit.
Yeah, that's exactly right: you don't work for the KGB, and have little idea what the paranoia of the Cold War was like, especially among the intelligence community. In any case, what do you think the KGB could say to their bosses? Yeah, we screwed up, and our own billion dollar pipeline created the largest non-nuclear explosion in history, OR those damn capitalist bourgeois pig Americans are responsible!!!! Which explanation will let you keep your life and your job?
Yeah, actually I read the memoirs of the American ambassador to Paris at the time of this Soviet Oil Crisis. his name was Evan G. Galbraith (no relation to the economist Galbraith). In any case, the fear at the time was that the Soviets would simply subsidize a massive flow of oil into Europe at something well below market price (something a communist command-economy could easily do by fiat). While the Europeans would benefit in the short term from extremely cheap oil, the European oil companies in Britain and France mostly would go out of business. Needless to say, any American firms operating in Europe would also require massive subsidization from the government in order to compete at all. If all Western oil competition was removed from Europe, then the Soviets could effectively blackmail Europe through threatening to raise oil prices (not unlike how OPEC operates). This was seen by both the US government and the Western European governments as a poor situation to be faced with.
Also of note, was that this proposed construction was occurring around the same time as the Solidarity movement in Poland was gaining momentum. Increased Soviet influence over Europe could have hamstrung the Solidarity movement which lead to the eventual loosening of Soviet grip over Poland, and its subsequent freedom from status as a mere puppet state of the USSR. Further, the Soviets had recently invaded Afghanistan, an act which shocked most of the world, and which we strongly opposed. As you may well know, Afghanistan is a key pipeline route, and control of that in addition to the construction of a pipeline to Europe would give the USSR a geostrategic edge over the whole Eurasian landmass.
Galbraith was commissioned by Secretary of State Alexander Haig to examine possible alternative sources of oil, in view of this Soviet threat of predatory pricing (think Microsoft). Galbraith outlined possibilities in the North Sea and Dutch reserves in a cable that was subsequently leaked to the press and widely reported.
An embargo of parts necessary to build the pipeline was in existence for a while, but Reagan and Shultz (Sec. of State that succeeded Haig) dropped it under some pressure from the Europeans, whose companies wanted to sell the parts they had licensed from GE to the Soviets (typical). So the pipeline was delayed but eventually built. The delay caused Soviet costs to rise, while at the same time the demand for oil in Western Europe fell, putting the Soviets in a much less predatory position, as their revenues couldn't catch up with their costs. Additionally, the development of the North Sea and Dutch reserves helped lower the costs of British, French and American oil companies.
Read some history before you make sarcastic comments. The CIA came up with a very inventive technical solution that avoided direct economic or political conflict. It even avoided loss of life, something economic embargoes and sanctions are not very good at. The Europeans were on America's side on this one, even the French, despite their reservations about Reagan's embargo. This is not easily pigeonholed into some sort of Marxism 101 dependency-theory analysis if you've actually read what was going on in the world during that time.
Well you can take up your complaint about the definition of a war crime with the growing body of international lawyers. I didn't define it.
Any perceived moral equivalency between Hirohito and Bush doesn't really strengthen your claim that Bush is a war criminal. Although I don't know the history of the claim against Hirohito myself, but my guess would be that his war crimes were in the conduct of war, not the simple fact of beginning wars.
I would like to direct you to the first modern definition of war crimes (modern being WWII forward). Note that they are differentiated from Crimes Against the Peace. Crimes Against Peace include invasion and agression. War Crimes deal with conduct falling outside the laws of war (some of which fall under Customary International Law, some of which have been codified in treaties like the Geneva Conventions).
You also say that the war begun by Bush was unjust. This doesn't help your argument either, as the justice of war has nothing to do with whether or not it is legal. I think most people agreed at the time that the US war in Kosovo was legitimate and just (even Kofi Annan said as much), but under the UN Charter it certainly wasn't legal.
Before you start making such bold claims you really ought to do some very basic research. If you want to say that Bush has committed crimes against the peace you'll at least make some sort of sense.
You can't be tried for war crimes simply by going to war. Under international law, War Crimes are crimes committed in the prosecution of the war itself (purposefully killing civilians or POWs for example). Going to war is not a War Crime, although going to war may be against the UN Charter's relevant articles. It's a technicaly difference, but still quite important, as Bush cannot be tried as an individual for violation of the UN Charter, whereas if he had authorized or turned a blind eye to committing war crimes he could be tried as an individual. As it is, only the state of America can be sanctioned if a violation of the UN Charter is determined by the ICJ or Security Council.
I really like the toned-down brushed metal windows in place of the Playskool XP Theme. These are the kinds of innovations that are going to keep Windows ahead of the game in the long-run.
If only that were true. I'd rather like to see them suing one another, but it's much more likely that the lawyers will team up and just keep suing the rest of us.
It wasn't our government necessarily that made us paranoid about privacy. It was originally the British who treated us colonies poorly. It was out of that political environment that we wrote up all the protections against the government in our Constitution, as well as the separation of powers. Every kid in the US gets taught the bill of rights and why they're all important, so most (outside of ashcroft) maintain that spirit of suspicion toward the government. That being said, our government has since done plenty of things to warrant our suspicion, but then, whose hasn't on some level or another?
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25% is only about twice that of France or Germany's rate in recent years. Not bad for a country that was just invaded by the world's most destructive military force.
If you can understand the logic of kidnapping, blowing up, and beheading contractors working on reconstruction indiscriminately (the overwhelming majority of whom are not fixing US military hardware, but instead rebuilding power plants and other public infrastructure), then it must be easy for you to understand the logic of invading an entire country just to kill its leadership.
You are no better than Bush & Co.
The problem with small businesses and government contracting is that the primary contracts deal with very large operations and have very strict requirements that must be met. A typical small business would not have nearly the manpower or logistical support to deal with the coordination of a large primary contract operation. Hence small businesses get subcontracts which deal with more specific problems within their domain of expertise and logistical capabilities. Further, to become a government contractor, a company must meet a number of very stringent restrictions. The US government is very demanding, and there is a huge amount of legalwork and paperwork that goes into submitting a bid in the first place, much less winning the bid. Again, small businesses have an exponentially harder time meeting these US government regulations (not unique to the Bush admin, these regulations have been around for a while). Again, this is why small businesses are largely relegated to sub-contractor roles. This has a lot less to do with the Bush/Cheney robber-barron conspiracy, and a lot more to do with the reality of working for a government engaged in nation-building.
Playing the good little isolationist and not getting involved in regional or religious disputes halfway around the world is another great idea. We tried that around the turn of the century, but didn't work too well when a little regional European dispute got out of hand. Then right after we got back, we went back to isolationism, and lo and behold, would you believe it, another little regional European dispute got out of hand, and we got pulled in again. We've been stuck with troops in Europe ever since! What a quagmire. Only serves to show you what engagement with the outside world will get you...
This was not the concern of Cheney/Rumseld/Bush/Evil-Neo-Con-Cabal.
Not only were US intelligence operatives convinced that Iraq was attempting to secure or develop WMD, so were the Russian, French, British, German and Arab-state intelligence services. There was essentially no disagreement about this in the international community. The disagreement was how to deal with the threat, not whether or not there was the threat to begin with. Clearly the nations other than the US and UK favored a non-aggressive approach, at odds with the US/UK invasion plan.
There are valid legal reasons for the invasion. In fact, during the run up to the invasion, I was in the Public International Law course of Queen's Council Christopher Greenwood (the same barrister who argued the Lockerbie Bombing case, and the Pinochet Extradition Case). The British legal argument ran as follows:
It is also worth noting that Saddam did employ, support and maintain active relationships with extremists and terrorists. His special forces contracted agents to attempt the assassination of President Bush Sr. (an act of war). He paid Palestinian families of suicide bombers. And the 9/11 commission report goes over the many links and contacts he had with al-Qaeda (noting, however, that Iraq and al-Qaeda did not cooperate on the 9/11 attacks).
You would do well to consider that the UN Security Council made no decision on Iraq one way or the other. No resolution was adopted against war in Iraq, and no resolution was adopted authorizing war in Iraq. Legally, no decision != a decision against. The closest legal equivalent would be the UN returning a stare decisis, basically saying that previous decisions are all that apply. And the US/UK/Coalition invaded, saying that they had continuing authority on the basis of resolution 678 and material breach of resolutions 687 and 1441. Others disputed that these resolutions and their breach constituted enough to grant continuing authority to "secure international peace and security in the area."
And, at the end of the day, all UN enforcement action is taken by member states, not UN forces. There never has been UN enforcement action taken by UN forces, only peacekeeping operations. So, it was not, as you said, entirely a matter for the UN and not the US/UK/Coalition. If UN enforcement action were specifically mandated by a post-1441 resolution, it is essentially a given that the vast majority of forces involved would be US/UK.
Although I'm not sure what an "invation" is, if the US wanted petrol from Iraq we could have acceded to the French pressure in the Security Council several years ago to lift the restrictions on Iraq's sale of oil on the international market. But you're probably right, the only easy way to get it was to invade the whole country.
It doesn't cut both ways genius. Saudi Arabia does have the most proven oil, but Iraq has the second most. Under your four-word explanation of the entire history of US Middle East foreign policy the US should have been sucking up to both Saudi Arabia and Iraq, while abusing the other less well-oil-endowed states in the region. But let's not sweat the details shall we?
Yeah, tell me about it. We really suck at this imperialism thing. Anyone else, anyone--the Brits, the Soviets, the Mongols, whatever--they would have every damn Iraqi signing up for their fresh copy of Windows Eternal Lock-In 2004 if they were in our shoes. Frankly it's embarrassing. How will historians ever give us any respect next to the other empires when they're writing the history books a couple hundred years from now? We're just going to be weak sauce compared to everyone else!
The problem with hiring Iraqis and Iraqi firms is twofold: regulations and security. Getting a government contract is not an easy task. There are literally thousands of restrictions on who can get a government contract, based on requirements set by US statutory law. The US government legally cannot give out contracts to certain companies if they do not or cannot meet the standards. If a majority of US and European firms are having trouble with the contracting process, you can be sure that Saddam's crony industries operating with obsolete infrastructure and standards will have an even harder time trying to compete for the contracts.
A further risk is one of security. On crucial, high-value tasks, like reconstruction of oil fields and energy plants, security takes an extremely important role. These are sectors targeted regularly by insurgents, and the CPA doesn't want to have easy access granted to these sites. An Iraqi firm's vetting process for the unemployed people it hires can't be controlled or properly confirmed by the CPA, and the risk is that insurgents would gain access to critical sites and potentially destroy or cripple them.
Finally, it's untrue that all the money assigned to Halliburton or Bechtel goes only to those companies when they receive a contract. After primary contracts are awarded, the contracted company awards subcontracts for different elements of the work that must be fulfilled. A very substantial number of these go to local Iraqi firms, as well as French, German and other firms that might have been excluded from bidding for primary contracts. So while a Halliburton may still get quite a significant tranche of money, it's not by any means keeping it all for itself.
The problem with opening bids up to wide competition is that the bidding process takes a long time. Rebuilding is already going too slowly, so no-bid contracts significantly speed up the process of getting people out on the ground patching things up. Under ideal circumstances I would agree that competition is the way to go to ensure the best products at the best prices, but things work differently in a country with an active insurgency intent on blowing up anything related to reconstruction.
I don't trust secondhand reports of "evidence" from people who can't spell.
All the Sim* games started out on Macintosh. Where would we be without Sim City (and its rather random cousins, Sim Earth, Sim Ant (which was awesome), Sim Tower, etc)?
yes, a little 'waterpipe' action will make a lot of things seem magic
As a side note: the US government (federal and state) spends about $650 billion a year on education, whereas it spends about $435 billion a year on defense. The school system is not exactly being gobbled up by the defense budget.
Yeah, that, and keeping at least some hope alive for the Solidarity movement in Poland, which was trying to gain what little freedom possible behind the Iron Curtain at the time. But that doesn't matter does it?
The shocks caused by a significant entry by the Soviet Union and its glut of oil supply would have extinguished any chances that the Polish labor movement could gain enough leverage economically to wrest power from the Soviet puppet government that had been oppressing them for decades. Not to mention that the increased revenues from dominating the European energy market would go toward increasing funding for the USSR's war machine in Afghanistan.
Oh! The poor pipeline!
You're right. Screw freedom for the Polish or Afghanis. American action against the innocent pipeline was unjust!
Yep. As odious as it may seem, the French have been great partners throughout the post-WWII era when it comes to intelligence. While they don't have the technology or manpower that the US has devoted to intelligence through the CIA and NSA, what intelligence and old colonial links they have to various governments around the world they use quite well. Regardless of most political posturing done by heads of state (De Gaulle and Chirac come to mind), the French have been a solid ally when it comes to intelligence. In fact, throughout their opposition to the War in Iraq and what they see as overbearing US hegemony, the French have supplied a substantial amount of key intelligence in the War on Terror without any hesitation really.
As for the rest of your sarcastic post, it just seems funny to me that every time the US government does something, all the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork to claim that the CIA/DoD/NSA/etc were secretly behind it. But when the intelligence community claims a covert success everyone suddenly becomes a realist sceptic.
Yeah, that's exactly right: you don't work for the KGB, and have little idea what the paranoia of the Cold War was like, especially among the intelligence community. In any case, what do you think the KGB could say to their bosses? Yeah, we screwed up, and our own billion dollar pipeline created the largest non-nuclear explosion in history, OR those damn capitalist bourgeois pig Americans are responsible!!!! Which explanation will let you keep your life and your job?
Yeah, actually I read the memoirs of the American ambassador to Paris at the time of this Soviet Oil Crisis. his name was Evan G. Galbraith (no relation to the economist Galbraith). In any case, the fear at the time was that the Soviets would simply subsidize a massive flow of oil into Europe at something well below market price (something a communist command-economy could easily do by fiat). While the Europeans would benefit in the short term from extremely cheap oil, the European oil companies in Britain and France mostly would go out of business. Needless to say, any American firms operating in Europe would also require massive subsidization from the government in order to compete at all. If all Western oil competition was removed from Europe, then the Soviets could effectively blackmail Europe through threatening to raise oil prices (not unlike how OPEC operates). This was seen by both the US government and the Western European governments as a poor situation to be faced with.
Also of note, was that this proposed construction was occurring around the same time as the Solidarity movement in Poland was gaining momentum. Increased Soviet influence over Europe could have hamstrung the Solidarity movement which lead to the eventual loosening of Soviet grip over Poland, and its subsequent freedom from status as a mere puppet state of the USSR. Further, the Soviets had recently invaded Afghanistan, an act which shocked most of the world, and which we strongly opposed. As you may well know, Afghanistan is a key pipeline route, and control of that in addition to the construction of a pipeline to Europe would give the USSR a geostrategic edge over the whole Eurasian landmass.
Galbraith was commissioned by Secretary of State Alexander Haig to examine possible alternative sources of oil, in view of this Soviet threat of predatory pricing (think Microsoft). Galbraith outlined possibilities in the North Sea and Dutch reserves in a cable that was subsequently leaked to the press and widely reported.
An embargo of parts necessary to build the pipeline was in existence for a while, but Reagan and Shultz (Sec. of State that succeeded Haig) dropped it under some pressure from the Europeans, whose companies wanted to sell the parts they had licensed from GE to the Soviets (typical). So the pipeline was delayed but eventually built. The delay caused Soviet costs to rise, while at the same time the demand for oil in Western Europe fell, putting the Soviets in a much less predatory position, as their revenues couldn't catch up with their costs. Additionally, the development of the North Sea and Dutch reserves helped lower the costs of British, French and American oil companies.
Read some history before you make sarcastic comments. The CIA came up with a very inventive technical solution that avoided direct economic or political conflict. It even avoided loss of life, something economic embargoes and sanctions are not very good at. The Europeans were on America's side on this one, even the French, despite their reservations about Reagan's embargo. This is not easily pigeonholed into some sort of Marxism 101 dependency-theory analysis if you've actually read what was going on in the world during that time.
Well you can take up your complaint about the definition of a war crime with the growing body of international lawyers. I didn't define it.
Any perceived moral equivalency between Hirohito and Bush doesn't really strengthen your claim that Bush is a war criminal. Although I don't know the history of the claim against Hirohito myself, but my guess would be that his war crimes were in the conduct of war, not the simple fact of beginning wars.
I would like to direct you to the first modern definition of war crimes (modern being WWII forward). Note that they are differentiated from Crimes Against the Peace. Crimes Against Peace include invasion and agression. War Crimes deal with conduct falling outside the laws of war (some of which fall under Customary International Law, some of which have been codified in treaties like the Geneva Conventions).
You also say that the war begun by Bush was unjust. This doesn't help your argument either, as the justice of war has nothing to do with whether or not it is legal. I think most people agreed at the time that the US war in Kosovo was legitimate and just (even Kofi Annan said as much), but under the UN Charter it certainly wasn't legal.
Before you start making such bold claims you really ought to do some very basic research. If you want to say that Bush has committed crimes against the peace you'll at least make some sort of sense.
You can't be tried for war crimes simply by going to war. Under international law, War Crimes are crimes committed in the prosecution of the war itself (purposefully killing civilians or POWs for example). Going to war is not a War Crime, although going to war may be against the UN Charter's relevant articles. It's a technicaly difference, but still quite important, as Bush cannot be tried as an individual for violation of the UN Charter, whereas if he had authorized or turned a blind eye to committing war crimes he could be tried as an individual. As it is, only the state of America can be sanctioned if a violation of the UN Charter is determined by the ICJ or Security Council.
Not that old in terms of Mac life-spans.
I really like the toned-down brushed metal windows in place of the Playskool XP Theme. These are the kinds of innovations that are going to keep Windows ahead of the game in the long-run.
We're going to be sued so badly when we manage to /. some poor AI construct. Yet another reason to hold off on getting a membership...
If only that were true. I'd rather like to see them suing one another, but it's much more likely that the lawyers will team up and just keep suing the rest of us.
It wasn't our government necessarily that made us paranoid about privacy. It was originally the British who treated us colonies poorly. It was out of that political environment that we wrote up all the protections against the government in our Constitution, as well as the separation of powers. Every kid in the US gets taught the bill of rights and why they're all important, so most (outside of ashcroft) maintain that spirit of suspicion toward the government. That being said, our government has since done plenty of things to warrant our suspicion, but then, whose hasn't on some level or another?