You have given me something to think about as far as the worth and meaning of a sovereign state.
While in essence I agree that Saddam should be removed from power, I think it should be a process managed by Iraq itself, I realise this would be very difficult in pre-war Iraq, but nonetheless I still feel it is an internal issue. I hold exception with the U.S appointing itself sherriff, at a very basic level this is because judge, jury and executioner come from one interest, and by nature it could not be impartial. While the U.N isn't the most effective organisation, it does represent more than one interest and therefore have a more moderated opinion of events and actions that it recommends.
You say that Iraq has enjoyed "twelve years of flouting the guidelines set by other nations" this is another reason I hold exception with the U.S playing the global policeman, the U.S has consistantly flouted, hindered and sought to display the United Nations as impotent. An example would be US UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan stating on the Indonesian invasion of East Timor " The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success"
I appreciate that the U.S would like to remain master of it's own destiny, but where is the line between self-determination and sabotage of international government? An example would be the U.S using the U.N when convenient to national interest, legitimising it when it would like to veto a resolution, but at the same time refusing to pay money it owes in back dues, and consitantly stating to the world community that it is not bound by international law, (when referring to "unlawful" use of force)
A statement by Secretary of Defense William Cohen, probably gives me the most grave concerns about the motives of the United States in Iraq, he declared that the U.S is committed to "unilateral use of military power" to defend vital interests, which included "ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and stategic resources,". I am not stating that this is the case with Iraq, but it does make me question the real motives. I realise that France, Russia and China have more likely than not been supplying Iraq with the ingredients needed to make long range surface to surface missles, and that they are therefore not impartial in the situation either, rather they are quite happy with the pre-war status quo, but this only strengthens the argument for AN international governing body.
Which brings us back to the U.N security council, and while it is a limping form of government, (especially with permanent member vetoes) I feel it is the best process we have for dealing with these situations and that it would be actually quite effective if member nations had more interest in supporting it.
I hope I have given you the more genuine response that you were seeking =)
I still don't think it has been proven that Iraq still posseses "Weapons of Mass destruction" . Maybe in the next few days I will be proven wrong, but I don't believe it has been proven yet. While I agree that Saddam Hussein is a bad pasty, it is not the right of one nation to overthrow a sovereign state*.
As for "The butcher of Baghdad" label... as far as I am aware when Saddam gassed the Kurds, the U.S was fully aware and continued to support the Iraqi regime, it wasn't until Iraq thought it could annex Kuwait securing more natural resources (and public pressure) that the U.S acted. It is therefore dishonest for the U.S government to be using these events as evidence of Saddams sick and evil regime when at the the time it was looking the other way because it was in the nations interest to keep good relations with Baghdad.
I believe that the U.S is still all bloody eyed because someone (read NOT Iraq) attacked it on it's own soil, and feels like it should eliminate all possible sources of possible security threats to it's "Interests" regardless of whether it is legal or not. Two wrongs still don't make a right, and it takes maturity (of people and nations) to behave rationally in times like this. I don't see this currently happening... examples include what sounds like a general gag order for ANY opposition to government policy under the banner of un-patriotic. Land of the Free? maybe once but the U.S population is becoming increasingly censored and monitored.
Also if you are looking for reasons, for Sept 11, I really do beleive you should look at U.S foreign policy for the last 50 or so years and think about how the people on the receiving end of these policies would feel. Please don't mistake this for support (in any way) of the events, I am just trying to establish a motive.
I think the most important thing to remember out of all of this is that everybody has vested interests in what YOU know, emotional knee jerk responses is one of the aims of propaganda, my recommendation is to read a bit more and yell a bit less, (it's hard, I knee-jerk all the time, but it's a matter of trying)
*While there are 3 major and many minor players in the "Alliance" forces, I don't beleive this war would be happening if the U.S hadn't pressured it's allies for support.
Another good one from MS that i got hit by the other day was with Office XP activation and Volume Licensing.
I was making an image for about 150 laptops, installed eveything, took the image, handed it our HW suppier to put on the laptops before delivery...sweet.
I build the image on a machine with an internal wireless card and 384MB RAM. When the laptops arrived they arrived without internal wireless cards and 256MB RAM, shouldn't be a problem because we had a VL key so there shouldn't be any activation. Fired up the first one, due to the HDD and DVD drive serial numbers, WinXP re-discovered them as new devices, coupled with the missing wireless acrds and less RAM, when we went to open office it has noticed "A signifigant change" in the machines HW and asked to reactivate.... I thought we had a Volume License? this wasn't supposed to happen to us? Nearly every corporation in the world uses ghost... how could they get away with this?
Turns out that I had forgotten to put the Service packs on Office... not good I realise, pretty bloody shoddy actually, but and this is the crux, MS shipped a product without testing it's own activation! MS Rep: "Heres the brand new Office XP... I know you may have heard about overly restrictive product activation on these new products but don't fear, it only applies to Joe Average, those with Volume licenses are exempt... unless of course we messed up...."
I'm not sure how long after Office XP was shipped they released SP1 but it would have been a complete nightmare for quite a few people until they did.
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The difference may be in that Redhat have created an engineers certificate that takes more than verbatum regurgitation and multiple guessing to pass.
I would think that the Redhat people had what happened to the MCSE qualification in mind when they created the RHCE.
Not all goverments operate in a similar fashion to U.S governments...
If enough systems are infected, it affects us all in the slow down of the network as a whole.
You have given me something to think about as far as the worth and meaning of a sovereign state.
While in essence I agree that Saddam should be removed from power, I think it should be a process managed by Iraq itself, I realise this would be very difficult in pre-war Iraq, but nonetheless I still feel it is an internal issue. I hold exception with the U.S appointing itself sherriff, at a very basic level this is because judge, jury and executioner come from one interest, and by nature it could not be impartial. While the U.N isn't the most effective organisation, it does represent more than one interest and therefore have a more moderated opinion of events and actions that it recommends.
You say that Iraq has enjoyed "twelve years of flouting the guidelines set by other nations" this is another reason I hold exception with the U.S playing the global policeman, the U.S has consistantly flouted, hindered and sought to display the United Nations as impotent. An example would be US UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan stating on the Indonesian invasion of East Timor " The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success"
I appreciate that the U.S would like to remain master of it's own destiny, but where is the line between self-determination and sabotage of international government? An example would be the U.S using the U.N when convenient to national interest, legitimising it when it would like to veto a resolution, but at the same time refusing to pay money it owes in back dues, and consitantly stating to the world community that it is not bound by international law, (when referring to "unlawful" use of force)
A statement by Secretary of Defense William Cohen, probably gives me the most grave concerns about the motives of the United States in Iraq, he declared that the U.S is committed to "unilateral use of military power" to defend vital interests, which included "ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and stategic resources,". I am not stating that this is the case with Iraq, but it does make me question the real motives. I realise that France, Russia and China have more likely than not been supplying Iraq with the ingredients needed to make long range surface to surface missles, and that they are therefore not impartial in the situation either, rather they are quite happy with the pre-war status quo, but this only strengthens the argument for AN international governing body.
Which brings us back to the U.N security council, and while it is a limping form of government, (especially with permanent member vetoes) I feel it is the best process we have for dealing with these situations and that it would be actually quite effective if member nations had more interest in supporting it.
I hope I have given you the more genuine response that you were seeking =)
I still don't think it has been proven that Iraq still posseses "Weapons of Mass destruction" . Maybe in the next few days I will be proven wrong, but I don't believe it has been proven yet. While I agree that Saddam Hussein is a bad pasty, it is not the right of one nation to overthrow a sovereign state*.
As for "The butcher of Baghdad" label... as far as I am aware when Saddam gassed the Kurds, the U.S was fully aware and continued to support the Iraqi regime, it wasn't until Iraq thought it could annex Kuwait securing more natural resources (and public pressure) that the U.S acted. It is therefore dishonest for the U.S government to be using these events as evidence of Saddams sick and evil regime when at the the time it was looking the other way because it was in the nations interest to keep good relations with Baghdad.
I believe that the U.S is still all bloody eyed because someone (read NOT Iraq) attacked it on it's own soil, and feels like it should eliminate all possible sources of possible security threats to it's "Interests" regardless of whether it is legal or not. Two wrongs still don't make a right, and it takes maturity (of people and nations) to behave rationally in times like this. I don't see this currently happening... examples include what sounds like a general gag order for ANY opposition to government policy under the banner of un-patriotic. Land of the Free? maybe once but the U.S population is becoming increasingly censored and monitored.
Also if you are looking for reasons, for Sept 11, I really do beleive you should look at U.S foreign policy for the last 50 or so years and think about how the people on the receiving end of these policies would feel. Please don't mistake this for support (in any way) of the events, I am just trying to establish a motive.
I think the most important thing to remember out of all of this is that everybody has vested interests in what YOU know, emotional knee jerk responses is one of the aims of propaganda, my recommendation is to read a bit more and yell a bit less, (it's hard, I knee-jerk all the time, but it's a matter of trying)
*While there are 3 major and many minor players in the "Alliance" forces, I don't beleive this war would be happening if the U.S hadn't pressured it's allies for support.
Another good one from MS that i got hit by the other day was with Office XP activation and Volume Licensing.
I was making an image for about 150 laptops, installed eveything, took the image, handed it our HW suppier to put on the laptops before delivery...sweet.
I build the image on a machine with an internal wireless card and 384MB RAM. When the laptops arrived they arrived without internal wireless cards and 256MB RAM, shouldn't be a problem because we had a VL key so there shouldn't be any activation. Fired up the first one, due to the HDD and DVD drive serial numbers, WinXP re-discovered them as new devices, coupled with the missing wireless acrds and less RAM, when we went to open office it has noticed "A signifigant change" in the machines HW and asked to reactivate.... I thought we had a Volume License? this wasn't supposed to happen to us? Nearly every corporation in the world uses ghost... how could they get away with this?
Turns out that I had forgotten to put the Service packs on Office... not good I realise, pretty bloody shoddy actually, but and this is the crux, MS shipped a product without testing it's own activation! MS Rep: "Heres the brand new Office XP... I know you may have heard about overly restrictive product activation on these new products but don't fear, it only applies to Joe Average, those with Volume licenses are exempt... unless of course we messed up...."
I'm not sure how long after Office XP was shipped they released SP1 but it would have been a complete nightmare for quite a few people until they did.