managing Lebanon is Lebanese priority, not Israeli.
Not according to international law. You occupy, so you are in control and you are responsible.
What you suggest contradicts the entire concept of an occupation.
Israeli priority is to make sure that the occupied territory does not harbor terrorists with rockets and rocket launchers.
That was the responsibility of Lebanon upto the point of occupation (during the first occupation it was the PLO and not Hezbollah who sat there with their rockets and launchers and mortars and what not, not to mention Lebanon was rather involved in a civil war).
Now? It was definitely the responsibility of the Lebanese government to see to it that Hezbollah got disarmed. They failed for obvious reasons. Lets not forget that Israel found itself unable to do much about Hezbollah while they were occupying Southern Lebanon, and that in fact Hezbollah's effectiveness has been a factor in Israel ending that occupation. Expecting the Lebanese army to do the job instead is disregarding reality, even more so when realizing that this would certainly result in a continuation of the civil war.
Managing an occupied territory, that is very interesting idea. Let's ask the US how that is going in Iraq.
They have done pretty well in Germany and Japan. After that however there is also a long string of failures.
It might be very interesting to see why the first 2 worked, but that will be a bit too much to write in a simple post here.
Instead I'll point at the main reasons why the Iraq occupation does not seem to work very well..
Three issues come out on top:
1. Occupation force for Iraq is at least a factor 5 too small, and more likely a factor 10. You are not going to controll a country that used to have a large military busy with internal control, with a force approx 1/8th of the size of the local army.
2. As a consequence it failed to provide quick security and basic needs like food and shelter to the population
3. Disregard of the local situation in many aspects (ethnic, political, religious)
That said, the attempt in Iraq does have a chance tho it is unlikely to work out in the way the USA envisioned. And so did the initial occupation of South Lebanon by Israel.
One could even argue that the initial occupation of South Lebanon was very succesfull. In the end it managed to drive the PLO out of Lebanon, and in a military sense its goals were achieved completely.
The problem is that the consequences were worse then the problem it tried to address. The party in control there was Israel, and so the ones responsible for allowing those consequences are to be found in Israel, not Lebanon.
If Israel had treated the local population well (remember that that local population did at that moment support the Israeli invasion and occupation) and aligned themselves with the local people instead of bringing in the SLA, it is very likely that Hezbollah would never have gotten beyond a few isolated extremists.
This time around, the majority of people in South Lebanon don't want a militia there, but they have learned over the last quarter of a century that having a 'friendly' militia there is a lot better then having Israel there. At least Hezbollah provides for schooling, medical care and food where needed.
All this said, Hezbollah has made a habbit out of attacking civilians and for that simple reason have no legitimacy whatsoever. Israel is not responsible for Hezbollah's choices obviously.
It is so easy to protest something that is right in your face on TV, isn't it?
Obviously not, considering all the things you ignore in your post.
How about years and years of killing that have been going on in Israel by Hizballah and Hamas terrorist organizations?
About as many years as Israel has been occupying territory outside its borders while disregarding its responsibilities as occupying power. Read carefully, I am not saying that they occupied territory for no good reason, but that once they did, they did not manage it in a way that was anywhere helpfull in solving the situation, and in some cases in direct violation of international law and treaties that Israel is a party to.
Before that it was a bunch of Arab nations that thought to drive Israel into the sea (with said occupation as the result).
The issue here is that the people living in those territories got a war on their doorstep without asking for it, and have since suffered mostly from Israelian military actions and irresponsible administration of their territories. It is absolutely no wonder they support anyone who seems to be able to act against this (even if such action works against them in the longer term, living in a war zone makes you think about today and maybe tomorrow, but not much further, which is a tendency people have already anyway)
You may not remember this, but when Israel entered Southern Lebanon for the first time in the late 70s, they were hailed by the Shia population there as liberators because of them trying to get the PLO out. It only took a few years to reverse that situation however, not the least due to Israel refusing to control its proxy militia in South Lebanon (the South Lebanese Army). Israel did not create Hezbollah as such, but they are the ones responsible for it finding a lot of grassroots support among the South Lebanese people and having developed into what it is now.
How about all those rockets that were launched at Israel from Lebanon within the past two decades?
Many aimed at population centers with the aim to kill or wound civilians. Absolutely unacceptable.
But how about taking an action that you know to have virtually zero chance of success and actually a high likelyhood of worsening the problem (and with history telling a clear lesson about this) that risks the life of many civilians? This is what Israel is doing in Lebanon today, again.
Maybe a UN server should be hacked, after all after 2000 UN and Lebanon was responsible for keeping Hizballah from amassing rockets and other weapons. Do these activists care when during the 'peace times' Israeli kids and adults get blown up?
Actually, they do. Thank political games from various parties involved (including, but definitely not limited to Israel) for the situation on the ground.
If anything, these protestors should thank Israel for taking action now and preventing more carnage later. One cannot constantly procrastinate in this kind of a situation, because it is only getting worse.
Acting in a way that has repeatedly shown to worsen the situation however is stupid, and when it causes damage on the scale the current actions in Lebanon are doing, it also does not deserve support, no matter how justified you believe Israel is in defending itself.
Of course hacking NASA websites is not exactly a good way to make an opinion known, regardless of what the opinion is.
I think in this case it is because of an officer in a public office performing a public activity where the public also happens to have a right to check on the job being done...
I think you are right about syncing and having a backup of your data being the key feature of pdas.
I took it one step further and have a portable backup solution for my pda (sdcard with backup/restore app and enough space for a backup) so even when I am abroad, I can just get a replacement device and have my data back.
This in turn got me to use my pda as a backup device for my mobile phone.
The funny thing is that my now obsolete Palm Zire 71 does all those things fine with a better battery life then the Q1. Its smaller and lighter as well.
If the consequence of using a technically much better screen is reducing the battery life to an almost unusable level, then it is pretty relevant. Furthermore, in every round 2 biassed opinions are presented, so it is no surpise to find somewhat biassed language and reasoning there.
I found the comparison a funny read, and not one of which to take the 'facts' too serious. Rather, it seems to be trying to make a point about those xp based tablet pcs, their battery life makes them unusable as a portable organizer. Having used pdas and tablet pcs myself, I happen to agree with their point when it comes to a device for on the way. That said, tablet pcs have their place as soon as battery life is not a big issue while portability is a big issue, ie, as a much smaller and lighter replacement for a laptop when doing presentations.
think Israel rushed into this and took a gamble. When they decided to strike against Hezbollah they took the "Bush position". Either you're with us or against us. Either Lebanon would cooperate in rooting out criminals, or they sided with terrorists against Israel. If they threaten embargo right away, then they accuse and insinuate right off the bat that all of Lebanon was responsible. With this move, they gave Lebanon an opportunity to choose sides. However the window for that decision was awful small.
- Their past invasion of Lebanon is the exact thing that created Hezbollah. - The price of such an action has been proven to be unsustainable for Israel. - It completely ignores the situation within Lebanon.
Because of those things it is rather easy to foretell that the current action cannot solve the Hezbollah problem.
Given that Israel can easily know that this gamble will not work makes them imho responsible for the damage it does. Hezbollah definitely is at fault with their missile attacks and what not, but that in no way removes the responsibility of Israel for responding as they do.
These are the most controversial strikes by Israel is recent history. There have been a good number of civilian casualties.
That is only part of what makes them contoversial. Israel is very well able to enforce an air and sea embargo against Lebanon without bombing ports and airports for the simple reason that the Lebanese army is underequiped and powerless in comparison. There is no way they can take on the Israeli army with conventional military means, and very little they can do against the Israeli airforce or navy.
Hezbollah is indeed a part of the Lebanese government, but that does not mean that they acted on behalf or with the authority of that government. In my opinion the real problem there is that Hezbollah does not want to convert itself into a political organisation and give up military power. They also feel that their support would eb away in a prosperous and peacefull Lebanon. War against Israel is what created them, and while helping the population as a means to 'buy' support, they are not after improving the situation there. By provoking Israel into military action against Lebanon, they managed to revive their reason to exist, and that is the foremost reason why I believe the response of Israel is a serious mistake. Trying to solve the 'Hezbollah problem' is not easy, but basicly giving Lebanon a choice between destroying itself or being destroyed is not gonna solve anything for anyone. Refusing to feed the source from which Hezbollah gets its support might have a price, but at least it has a chance. Also, if Israel wants to get and keep the moral highground here, they should consider to respond to attacks on their civilians directly but proportionally. Seeing their current claims and pictures, I have a hard time believing they could not find the trucks from which missiles are launched and destroy them whenever they show up for example.
Accusing the other party of escalation for an act that they have commited themselves pretty often (capturing a foreign citizen and/or combatant outside their own borders) however makes my bs indicator go off quite loudly....
However, how reputable is the journalism in the area? When the Iraq war started, the Arab media was reporting that the US was intentionally targeting hospitals to kill injured and weak civilians, stating that civilians deaths were in the tens of thousands every day. How accurate did that turn out to be?
Unverifiable 'facts' make for good propaganda and bad news. When looking beyond the number of civilian casualties and seeing what gets destroyed tells its own story however.
The motivation for this? What I understand from Israeli politicians this is to 'put pressure on the Lebanese government'.
When we did the debate I did manage to take a fairly absolute position which polarizes people.
That always gives interesting insights, and is also why I appreciate this debate. There is little to learn from people who say the same thing as yourself.
People often don't recall (or don't know) that bin Laden had attacked the US several times prior to 9/11.
I am quite aware of that however. I am no history major but I believe I have a relatively good knowledge of history of the USA, Europe and much of Asia, at least a lot more then many people around me it seems.
You may notice that I left out Bin Laden and his group from my previous argument. There are similarities between his methods and those of other groups, but his goal and ideology makes him unique, and one of my big issues with the 'war on terror' is how that imho very relevant difference is ignored.
What motivated me to join the Marine Corps was a buddy of mine that did E-Lint (or Electronic Intelligence) at STRATCOM here in Omaha, NE. We discussed foreign politics all the time. I argued that China was this huge threat.
They are, but in a way that can be dealt with by being strong enough that they cannot survive such a war. This is a well known mode of operation from the cold war. On one level you try to deal with eachother, you simply have to as a result of living on the same planet, on the other side you maintain a threat to eachother that makes the price of war too high.
They were willing to use force, they outnumbered us, and with the economy blooming, they could develop technology to rival us.
China is a large power, and by that simple token it is a potential threat, but not perse an actual one.
He kept arguing it was the little guys we had to worry about. He talked a great length about bin Laden years before he was famous.
This does not surprise me. The USA has dealt with Bin Laden before he decided to attack the USA, in that time he was an ally against the Soviet Union. Knowing what his kind of people can do to a modern army and state was not difficult to see when looking at how the Afghan war quite helped the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But back then he only attacked military targets, and the world ignored him. Honestly, I don't really have a problem with this. He disliked the US government, and he attacked the US government. I can't fault the guy, even though his tactics were still what you would associate with a terrorist.
The problem with him is what he stands for.
But then he went and murdered thousands of innocent civilians. I draw a line there.
That is only the second problem I have with him, but it definitely crosses the line on its own.
The Oklahoma City terrorists (who originally planned to bomb the federal building in my home town of Omaha) hit a government building, but largely killed civilians, including small children in a nursery. That was their big mistake.
Without a valid goal, no means are valid. That does not imply however that goal justifies the means in all cases.
There are people who truly believe the US and Israel to be villians for whatever reason. And if their attacks were on our governments, I could understand them.
I believe the USA is making mistakes in its self appointed task as global police, and there is nothing to keep them in check there. I also believe that wherever there is power, there is corruption.
I do not believe the USA are the vilians, but I do believe the government of that country is as a matter of fact a substantial danger to world peace.
Israel is taken to task (as is the US) for civilian casualties. We are both constantly accused (I believe falsely) for specifically targeting civilians. Individuals have specifically slaughtered civilians, which is most unfortunate, and they are usually prosecuted for those actions. But I do not believe it is policy for either government to go out of their way to kill civilian
First of all, I rather appreciate this discussion.
Are you suggesting that terrorism is a reasonable response to an uneven distribution of wealth?
The problem with this question is that it rather depends on what you call terrorism.
I will split the question into a few different ones to give you an idea of where I stand in this.
Is the intentional killing of civilians a reasonable response to anything? I believe not, regardless of this being done by a state or a group of individuals, regardless of if those who commit it are called terrorist or not.
Is a militia or 'underground army' a reasonable response to oppression? I believe it is, regardless of if those people are called terrorist. The founding fathers were considered terrorists by their opponents, so were members of the French resistance, so were many red army soldiers for which no uniform was available during the second world war, and so were many soldiers of the 'peoples army' in Germany at the end of the second world war. So were the resistance fighters in Algeria and so were the rebels that fought independence from the Netherlands for Indonesia. This list goes on and on and on.
The idea that militia can be a valid response to oppression was clearly believed in by those who founded the USA.
The problem with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas is that they are both. They do fight oppression and they do deliberately target civilians. I can not agree with the later, but I do believe that ending the oppression that they also fight is a very substantial part of the solution for getting rid of their violence. If people can get medical care, food in times of need, and other forms of support for their basic needs then they simply have far less reason to turn to groups like those, and are also far less likely to go blow themselves up in busy places for example. When people do not feel oppressed, they rather live their life instead of supporting 'terrorists'. This won't solve the problem of the fringe of extremists, but that is a small group which will then find itself in an unsupportive environment.
I'm not sure where you're going. My senior year of high school we had a debate topic in our state that I loved. It was "be it resolved that violent revolution is a just response to an oppressive government." It was pretty hard to nail anyone to an absolute view on that topic.
That is exactly why I answered your question as I did. There are no absolutes, but there are some clear lines one can draw still. I also found that in such debates, people find it very difficult to seperate the validity of the goals and means from eachother.
In theory members of society are forced to obey laws for the betterment of everyone in society. In a global society, we'd have a world government to force nations to play nice with each other, as well as their own people. Too bad we don't have such a government. I love the concept of the UN. And while the world criticizes the US for playing global police force (or not playing global police force often enough) I think someone needs to do it.
This I can fully agree with. I do however see a few problems with the US in that role as it is now. First of all, there is a good reason why in most places police don't make the law, nor can they dictate how it should be enforced. Also, they are responsible to their government and their activities should be verifiable. Without those conditions the concept of police as law enforcement simply stops working and has a high risk of turning into something that disrespects the law. You cannot effectively enforce what you disrespect.
The USA however does not want to be responsible to anyone for its actions, and that simply makes them unsuitable for being the global police.
The first link compares two events. The first event was England and France taking out a leader to gain control over an asset they needed. Many draw that parallel to Iraq and I can understand why. Most immediately say, Iraq has oil and the US needs it! This must be cut and dry!
Indeed, but you are right that that is simplistic and contradicts at least most of the facts.. That does not mean there isn't a similar motivation however. The issue here is the US trade deflict and the fear of inflation. Inflation is currently not a big issue because demand for dollars is on a similar level to what is being printed. This would change substantially when oil producing countries stop using dollars for their trade, which Iraq threatened (just like Iran for that matter).
When why has Bush said since day 1 that his top priority is to remove our dependence on oil?
It may be his top priority, but that doesn't make it reality today or even in the near future. As it is, the USA depends on oil. However, ensuring free access to oil trade is enough for that. As argued above, there is another economic motivation here.
He has threatened oil companies with price-fixing suits,
He supports a free market? good to hear... sadly it contradicts some of his other actions, but I'll for now assume that in the end he does want that free market.
given tax breaks to hybrid owners, demanded car companies make more efficient engines, pumped money into fuel cell research etc. These don't seem like the actions of a man hellbent on controlling oil.
All those actions actually help ensuring the continuation of the dependency on oil companies because all of those depend on a distribution network that the oil companies have in place already. It is not about oil, it is about money.
Nope. However, he did promise that Iraq's government would be their own, and that we wouldn't attempt to run it as a puppet government. He also said we wouldn't take one drop of their oil. It belonged to the Iraqi people.
Yes, and for political reasons (he would lose a lot more support still if he didn't promise those things), but as argued above, ensuring access is enough.
Iraq is selling oil today, but one can't really say we invaded Iraq for monetary gain. It has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. We didn't get anything out of it. The parallel when you investigate the matter doesn't really hold up. So why then do people draw it?
See above, there are no direct monetary gains maybe, but it protects an otherwise unsustainable monetary policy.
Hamas controls Palestine
Today? they control part of it. Palestine is the name of the area which Israel is part of. But that is not the issue. Before Hamas, Fatah controlled the Palestinian territories. They recognize Israel, yet they were effectively prevented from doing their work as government, thereby creating the vacuum in which Hamas got its chance.
and Hezbollah represents 30% of the Lebonese government.
Please go read something more about the last 4 decades of Lebanese history and try to understand why exactly people there support Hezbollah, and how it got to be to begin with. For that matter, do the same for Hamas. I dare to say that if Israel had actually forfilled its duties as occupying party with regards to civilians (which means providing healthcare, ensuring there is food, and generally, taking care of their living conditions) and had protected civilians from the SLA during their occupation of Lebanon, support for both Hezbollah and Hamas would not have been what it is now.
You may not like Hezbollah, and nor do I, but their reason for existing has been a legitimate one, and their current legitimacy is at least debatable. Not so their attacks on civilians in Israel, that is beyond any debate whatsoever, but taking military prisoners to exchange with people held in Israel is definitely a legitimate military tactic.
As you can read there, the legality and esp. the 'self defense' argument for the invasion of Iraq is seriously disputed. Also, the effectiveness of the Israeli policy is quite disputed and putting both into a historical light makes them extremely doubtfull if not huge mistakes bound to fail.
The last one is a somewhat sad case that shows how difficult it is for Israel to target the right things, despite knowing extremely well what they are targetting by 'mistake'.
How often has land changed hands since the UN was formed? How often has the UN objected?
Which is a nice strawman. Not to mention that two wrongs don't make a right. As a sidenote, I only brought up Israel to point out the futility of pointing at other situations that are also wrong.
Wait, they only object 30 years after the fact,
Oh? I think you argued earlier that this was in response to the 3 days war. I seem to recall the first of those resolutions dating back to that time also, not 30 years after the fact.
and only in the case of one country. Hell when the UN was formed, people argued that the Soviet Union was entitled to take over Eastern Europe as a buffer because of the lives they lost. Apparently the same can't be said of Israel.
First of all, that agreement dated from before the founding of the UN, second, not everyone agreed, esp. Churchil and with him many Europeans did not agree. That they were uncapable of doing anything about it doesn't change that.
With the current situation with Israel, the UN is up in arms that Israel has attacked a "sovereign" nation. But no one cares that the same "sovereign" nation's government's is 30% controlled by a terrorist organization, that the government funds.
Maybe you want to restart the civil war in Lebanon?
When England was attacked by terrorists, they told the world they weren't going to play around. They would do everything in their power to protect themselves, even if it meant rolling back on civil rights.
Read up about IRA, the responses of the UK, the way the legal system has dealt with the excesses that did happen on Brittish side and so on. You are completely wrong in your assesment when keeping the actual facts in mind. Ireland was not bombed by the UK, despite there being a substantial number of IRA supporters there, despite funding for IRA comming from there (and from the USA for that matter), and despite their political arm having strong links with some politicians in Ireland that have been involved in government. In other words, the UK is a good example for why the Israeli response in Lebanon is absurd, disproportional and ineffective. For that matter, 40+ years of the current kind of policy did not solve any problem for Israel.
Russia rolled back 50 years on civil rights in the wake of one major terrorist attack.
50 years ago there was no Russia, sorry, I call bullshit.
The US has been greatly affected by one major terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks only work because of how people respond. The more you let it affect you, the more effective it becomes.
Powell spent years trying to make sure we didn't go to war with Iraq. He always argued for peace. So I don't buy him lying to create a war that he was always against.
Later there were some questions into the validity of the intel that Powell presented, but I can't see the motivation for him to lie.
I think his departure answers this quite well.
The photos he showed however where specific hazmat units that traveled with the chemical weapons. They demonstrated specific movements of chemical weapons. And it was Powell again who said he believed those weapons left the country.
The photos he has shown have been dismissed as being entirely different things by many.
Now no one knows for sure.
Indeed, and not knowing for sure makes for bad evidence.
If Iraq wasn't making new WMD, then where did the training documents come from? Why issue orders on how to use the weapons on invading American troops if they never had them?
Why didn't they use them? Where were they? according to the Bush government an attack with chemical weapons was imminent during the invasion, yet no chemical weapon was fired. Its not like Iraq's government had problems using them when they were available, as they have demonstrated repeatedly in the past.
Why refuse to cooperate with weapon inspectors? They kept blocking them entrance to the country.
I trust the words of the weapons inspectors on this situation. They repeatedly argued they needed more time and that they had no evidence of any new weapons developments. Why ignore them?
The few times they did "cooperate" they said, "you can only search on days we tell you, and only in these places." How is that remotely valid? Why place the security of your nation at risk if you have nothing to hide? Why did the UN Security Council find Iraq in violation 75 times?
Because they were in violation in details.
btw, how would you feel about your country giving up its souvereinity like that? would you think it would go easy even if it was objectively justified? You forget things like national pride.
And Israel is a seperate issue that would involve a lengthy debate. That is quite silly frankly that the UN would claim Israel "illegally" obtained land and demand that it give it up. Most of those resolutions stem from the 3-day war. Israel was attacked by hostile forces, and as a result, the hostile forces lost the land they attacked from. Israel was not the aggressor. The UN at the time said that Israel had a right to keep the land, and 30 years later the UN says Israel had no right to keep the land. Why flip-flop? Because various militant groups insist there might be peace if Israel makes this concession, and then this concession, etc. But for 30 years Israel has been making concessions, and the violence doesn't end. I don't understand why the world says you should not negotiate or give into terrorists, but that is exactly what the world insists of Israel.
Israel is a member of the UN. Did you ever read the founding charters of the UN? Annexation of territority for whatever reason is not allowed EVER. I repeat, EVER. Israel signed that, so they can not ever argue that the occupation turning into annexation is legal, period. There exists no such thing as legally conquering territory for those who are a member of the UN.
I know civilians have died on both sides. Civilians are dying as we speak in Lebanon and Israel. One side bombs malls and school-buses while the other is giving advance notice for civilians to evacuate before dropping bombs. There is a distinction between the tactics of the two sides.
And bombs the escape routes beforehand, and then attacks their cars when they try to flee.
The fact that one side acts criminally is no excuse whatsoever for the other side to do the same, esp. if they try to claim the moral highground.
1 - 75 unanimous security council resolutions finding Iraq in violation of the terms of their surrender. In 1991 the UN authorized military force against Iraq, and peace was dependent on their complete duplicity. They did not cooperate, and while many say that the US belitted the UN, in fact one could argue that if the US did nothing, the UN would become a joke. I don't understand why the UN will jump head first into an evolving situation they don't understand (like sending troops into Yugoslavia as it broke up) while completely ignoring genocides like Rwanda. The UN waves its finger, but rarely does anything about anything. How many times could they insist "comply or else" if "or else" meant nothing?
So why not also do something about the 60+ UN security council resolutions demanding Israel withdraws from occupied territories for decades? If you want to point at other situations that is.. I don't like that kind of argument, it is simply distracting from the issue at hand. Also, as you point out yourself, there were actions being taken against Iraq due to its non compliance before Bush ever got to power. They did not involve an invasion however. Also, it was simply not clear wether he complied or not, and the USA simply did not want to wait for clarity on that.
2 - WMD did exist. Saddam used them on his own people, and he currently stands on trial for that. This is not disputed by anyone.
Indeed, but it has been disputed that he had any such thing during or before the US invasion of Iraq.
We gave them plenty of advance warning before we went into the country, and we watched a huge caravan leave Iraq into Syria.
Heh, and that I'd like to see documented. The suggestion has been made repeatedly, but noone has shown any proof of this whatsoever for all I am aware.
At the time Powell suggested that those were the smoking guns we would now never find.
And that same Powell seems to have left the government somewhat early. Also, his presentation to the UN security council is highly disputed. Many of the things shown there turned out to be completely non WMD related.
But we did however find sarin gas,
From before the first gulf war and in an unusable state.
and illegal missiles.
Indeed, they had missiles that reached a little bit further then allowed.
He found storage facilities, and training manuals detailing how to use the WMD. So they did exist, and we found some of them. Why do people continue to insist they never existed and they we never found any?
No informed person can ignore what happened in the Iraq-Iran war (where he used those with support from the USA no less) or his actions against the Kurds. That however is a decade or more before the invasion of Iraq. He had WMDs for sure, but he had no usable WMDs when the invasion took place. Clinton and others saw to that.
Here is what I don't understand. Governments all around the world insisted they had WMD. Clinton bombed Iraq without consulting Congress or the UN, and no one questioned him. Kerry, Gore, Clinton and every Democratic leader insisted Iraq had WMD. They all voted to go to war. But after the fact, they all insist the Bush invented the situation and lied. How is that possible? This is why I hate partisan politics. Facts are obscured by trying to make the other party look bad.
Uh, I happen to live outside the USA, and here the large majority of people, wether in government or not had extreme doubts and were demanding actual proof. People who were actually on the ground in Iraq could not provide such proof, rather, they could show that most of what had been there was destroyed for sure, and could not locate some of what was known to be there.
Please inform yourself a bit better, in the first years after 9/11, virtually noone in the USA dared to make such arguments because it would inmediately be seen as 'pro terrorist'.
A comment made two years later isn't really made in the "context of 9/11". If you think every statement we make today is in direct relation to 9/11 then I don't know what to say.
No, not every statement is in direct relation to 9/11, but after that date, every time the argument 'terrorism' is used in the USA, it calls on the 9/11 experience.
Saddam had an open policy that he spoke of frequently where he promised the families of suicide bombers 10,000 if they ever attacked Israel or the US. Does that constitute funding terrorists in your book?
Fair enough, but I recall quite a list of people that have a price on their head from the USA, so it seems a pot/kettle argument. At any rate, you are right that that can be seen as promoting terrorism.
The only direct link Saddam had to 9/11 was when he issued a statement congratulating the terrorists for murdering innocent civilians, which I find pretty deplorable.
Yes, I agree completely.
I'm curious what terrorist organizations we fund in Iraq? We put Saddam in power because he had a US education and the CIA thought they could trust him as an ally against Iran.
Uh no. When Saddam got to power in Iraq, Iran was still ruled by the rather USA friendly Sjah. You are forgetting this thing called 'cold war' which was the main motivation here. Helping and funding him might help against increased soviet influence. Also, at the time it was well known that he was a murderer for the pan-arabic Baath party (spelling?). Arguing that the CIA thought he was anywhere trustworthy back then is arguing the CIA was absurdly badly informed.
It only showed how little the US knew about foreign policy in the Middle East. It also goes to show those people who insist that the US is an empire, and that we have all these puppet governments, that just because he help put someone in power, that doesn't mean we necessarily have any influence with that government.
The USA makes that mistake over and over again and usually it serves the short term interests of the USA at the cost of oppression of people in the country involved. On the long term the result is pretty unpredictable.
Does your government ever learn anything whatsoever?
My original point is that the media, and the world declares Bush as being a hate-monger.
Yes.
They say he hates all Arabs, or hates all Muslims.
Not by definition, but he dislikes anything non Christian.
This is clearly not the case as I was demonstrating. I'll agree he is a poor public speaker, but we shouldn't propagate a lie that he a is a war-monger
So why was he in Iraq again? WMDs that have never been found? or revenge for Saddam's attack to kill his father maybe? Whatever reasons were presented have turned out to be either excuses or lies or both.
, or wants to see all Arabs dead. It only adds fuel to the fire of every person who wants an excuse to hate Americans. And I just don't like propagating lies in the first place.
Be critical of what you hear, from any side.
Earlier you defended yourself saying you are a 'liberal'. I don't care what 'party' you belong to, or if you are a friend or foe. I care about wether you make valid and verifiable arguments. I think you didn't do too well in that at least with regards to the 'why Saddam came to power and was supported by the CIA'.
I will skip on the contra scandal years before, but read up on it, it really shows how short sighted and hate inspiring the foreign policy of the USA is, and it would help you understand wht in fact Bush does make things way worse then they need to be.
Please find me a single quote where he directly linked Iraq to 9/11. It doesn't exist. He said the war in Iraq is part of the war against terror, because Saddam openly funded terrorists.
Please find us any proof that Saddam openly funded 'terrorists'. Actually, find us an objective definition of terrorist to begin with. The USA directly funded 'terrorists' operating in Iraq.
If the public can't understand the distinction, that didn't mean that he lied or intentionally misled people. It means they can't understand the distinction. And for the record, I'm very much a liberal. I just hate seeing a guy get beat up over media lies rather than his actual policies.
Making a suggestive comment like that in the context of the 9/11 attacks is definitely misleading and most likely on purpose. Bush may not be the most intelligent man on the planet, but he has advisors and speech writers around whom should be very well aware of the suggestion being made.
As far as the "crusade" quote goes, I'm actively Googling for it now. I see a direct crusade quote on three liberal blogs, but not a single actual news service yet. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if he made the remark however. Despite somehow pulling down a Master's from Yale, he isn't a very savvy speaker. Bush is also known to routinely stick his foot in his mouth.
He made the remark for all I know, I saw and heard the speech in which he did so. It was a stupid comment, most likely made in the heat of the moment. He has 'made up' for it with lots of calls for tolerance, but really, things like 'You are either with us or against us' do not speak of tolerance at all (it basicly invalidates every point of view other then those identical to his), so arguing that his calls for tolerance are more then a face saving attempt requires some proof in the form of action on his side. One very good start would be to stop supporting Israel without question and have some direct support for the Palestinian cause (not for Hamas or Hezbollah or such, but for the people who live there). This is seen by many muslims as a crusade by proxy and as reconfirmation of the 'crusade quote'.
At any rate, I'd go talk to people from arab origin living in the USA and see how 9/11 changed their lives and why. Words do not make tolerance, but they can easily destroy it.
but the actual FACTS of the matter is that immediately after 9/11 he preached peace, diplomacy and tolerance. He asked the American people not to judge all Muslims on the acts of a few terrorists. He urged the American public not to push for war.
So why did people get outraged about his call for a 'crusade' during that same time?
Arguably if he went into Iraq right after 9/11 the world would have supported it more, though for entirely the wrong reasons. People accuse him of linking Iraq and 9/11, when in fact he has publicly spoken multiple times to distance the two.
And has spoken publicly multiple times to link the 2 as well, not to mention that other members of his government for which he is responsible are still making such claims.
So, according to you, each and every time there is an arrest, it is on fully trumped up charges, and no one ever has actually done anything illegal. Right.
Ya know...sometimes the arrested party IS actually guilty of whatever it is they were arrested for. Not saying that is the case here. I am merely saying that we don't know enough yet.
Sometimes they are indeed, and sometimes the reason for arrest has nothing to do with this alltogether.
You are correct of course in that we don't know enough about this case, but the presumption that the arrested person is not guilty and that the reason for arrest is not correct untill PROVEN otherwise, are pretty important for a working legal system, and are indeed the correct starting point in any such a case.
Sorry - I am much more willing to associate "fruitcake" and "fool" with someone who is keen to presume an extreme behavior.
1. Distrust of government and presuming your rights are being denied on a regular basis is a very healthy attitude. 2. Repeated extreme behavior in the past gives reason to expect extreme behavior now and in the future.
State sponsored health care kills thousands if not millions of people every year. Try releasing a much needed experimental drug to people who are willing to try it -- you'd go to jail. Try charging less to a poor patient than you charge the State -- you'll go to jail (the US government has an entire office dedicated to finding doctors that charge less than they charge Medicare). Try bringing more doctors to the market than the AMA/US wants -- it is illegal.
Interesting how one majorly flawed implementation can make you come to such a conclusion. Do you always base your ideas on so little information?
I'm not even going to counter your argument, because your argument only points out known flaws in the US implementation of state sponsored health care, and not in the concept as such.
Try providing alternative water or electricity in your neighborhood -- you'll go to jail. In my previous town I spoke with various neighbors about uniting together to get a large generator installed on our block (this was pre-Y2K, and some people were concerned). We received various competing bids but were told that the local town wouldn't allow it. When we asked for a variance we were told we couldn't do it, and when we tried to do it anyway we were threatened with fines. When we asked what would happen if we didn't pay the fines we were threatened with court and jail time. True story.
Ah, you ran into the state imposed monopoly on running cables and such. You may want to go take a look in a typical southeast asian city for a clue why that is in fact a very good idea.
Breaking the law gets you fined and not paying fines gets you in jail? the horror!
But then.. buying a generator because of y2k? I guess that tells it all.
Sure. But who moves windows about very often, or for extended periods of time? Does it really matter if your computationally intensive task takes 1200 minutes or 1200 minutes and ten seconds?
No it does not, but you are misinterpreting the issue.
Considering that part of desktop use is things like playign video and audio, doing voice over ip communications and such, having less things in the way of good realtime performance makes those things work instead of break intermittently. It makes performance more predictable and it makes it easier to guarantee responsiveness.
If your DVD burner is running so close to underflow that moving a big window turns your DVD into a coaster, then your major problem is not with the graphics driver.
While that is true, it in no way counters the argument that removing a component that can get in the way makes for a better situation.
3D acceleration has its place, but its not whats stopping Linux on the desktop
Not on its own, no. It is one of the factors.
, because the needs 99.99% of desktop users are perfectly well served by generic X drivers.
That in no way changes that having accelerated drivers makes for a substantially better experience, better responsiveness while generating lower overhead, and makes more things work in nice and predictable ways.
OK: Time to mention the elephant in the room. When people say Desktop Linux needs better 3D performane, the vast majority of them are talking about gaming. That's fine, and a genuine concern for gamer. But lets not pretend that Linux Gaming and Desktop Linux are synonymous terms.
The fact that you believe (as you already stated anyway) that 3D acceleration is not highly desirable for desktop use doesn't make it so. Go read the opengraphics mailinglist if you want to get a clue about why exactly 3D acceleration is really really important for generic desktop use.
If you don't see the advantages for your own typical use, that is fine, maybe there are none in your SPECIFIC case.
The question still remains: does anyone actually find that unaccelerated desktop windows are slowing them down? I don't know about you, but I think faster than I type, and my editor displays the characters I type faster than either.
Moving a window on an unaccelerated desktop uses quite a bit of cpu time, thereby reducing what is available to other programs. An accelerated desktop makes it a lot easier for your machine to actually keep burning that DVD at full speed even when you are switching between windows, rearranging them or such things.
In other words, a desktop that makes good use of hardware acceleration can not only do things in a visually nicer way, it also stays out of the way for cpu intensive operations.
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managing Lebanon is Lebanese priority, not Israeli.
Not according to international law. You occupy, so you are in control and you are responsible.
What you suggest contradicts the entire concept of an occupation.
Israeli priority is to make sure that the occupied territory does not harbor terrorists with rockets and rocket launchers.
That was the responsibility of Lebanon upto the point of occupation (during the first occupation it was the PLO and not Hezbollah who sat there with their rockets and launchers and mortars and what not, not to mention Lebanon was rather involved in a civil war).
Now? It was definitely the responsibility of the Lebanese government to see to it that Hezbollah got disarmed. They failed for obvious reasons. Lets not forget that Israel found itself unable to do much about Hezbollah while they were occupying Southern Lebanon, and that in fact Hezbollah's effectiveness has been a factor in Israel ending that occupation. Expecting the Lebanese army to do the job instead is disregarding reality, even more so when realizing that this would certainly result in a continuation of the civil war.
Managing an occupied territory, that is very interesting idea. Let's ask the US how that is going in Iraq.
They have done pretty well in Germany and Japan. After that however there is also a long string of failures.
It might be very interesting to see why the first 2 worked, but that will be a bit too much to write in a simple post here.
Instead I'll point at the main reasons why the Iraq occupation does not seem to work very well..
Three issues come out on top:
1. Occupation force for Iraq is at least a factor 5 too small, and more likely a factor 10. You are not going to controll a country that used to have a large military busy with internal control, with a force approx 1/8th of the size of the local army.
2. As a consequence it failed to provide quick security and basic needs like food and shelter to the population
3. Disregard of the local situation in many aspects (ethnic, political, religious)
That said, the attempt in Iraq does have a chance tho it is unlikely to work out in the way the USA envisioned.
And so did the initial occupation of South Lebanon by Israel.
One could even argue that the initial occupation of South Lebanon was very succesfull. In the end it managed to drive the PLO out of Lebanon, and in a military sense its goals were achieved completely.
The problem is that the consequences were worse then the problem it tried to address. The party in control there was Israel, and so the ones responsible for allowing those consequences are to be found in Israel, not Lebanon.
If Israel had treated the local population well (remember that that local population did at that moment support the Israeli invasion and occupation) and aligned themselves with the local people instead of bringing in the SLA, it is very likely that Hezbollah would never have gotten beyond a few isolated extremists.
This time around, the majority of people in South Lebanon don't want a militia there, but they have learned over the last quarter of a century that having a 'friendly' militia there is a lot better then having Israel there. At least Hezbollah provides for schooling, medical care and food where needed.
All this said, Hezbollah has made a habbit out of attacking civilians and for that simple reason have no legitimacy whatsoever. Israel is not responsible for Hezbollah's choices obviously.
It is so easy to protest something that is right in your face on TV, isn't it?
Obviously not, considering all the things you ignore in your post.
How about years and years of killing that have been going on in Israel by Hizballah and Hamas terrorist organizations?
About as many years as Israel has been occupying territory outside its borders while disregarding its responsibilities as occupying power. Read carefully, I am not saying that they occupied territory for no good reason, but that once they did, they did not manage it in a way that was anywhere helpfull in solving the situation, and in some cases in direct violation of international law and treaties that Israel is a party to.
Before that it was a bunch of Arab nations that thought to drive Israel into the sea (with said occupation as the result).
The issue here is that the people living in those territories got a war on their doorstep without asking for it, and have since suffered mostly from Israelian military actions and irresponsible administration of their territories. It is absolutely no wonder they support anyone who seems to be able to act against this (even if such action works against them in the longer term, living in a war zone makes you think about today and maybe tomorrow, but not much further, which is a tendency people have already anyway)
You may not remember this, but when Israel entered Southern Lebanon for the first time in the late 70s, they were hailed by the Shia population there as liberators because of them trying to get the PLO out. It only took a few years to reverse that situation however, not the least due to Israel refusing to control its proxy militia in South Lebanon (the South Lebanese Army). Israel did not create Hezbollah as such, but they are the ones responsible for it finding a lot of grassroots support among the South Lebanese people and having developed into what it is now.
How about all those rockets that were launched at Israel from Lebanon within the past two decades?
Many aimed at population centers with the aim to kill or wound civilians. Absolutely unacceptable.
But how about taking an action that you know to have virtually zero chance of success and actually a high likelyhood of worsening the problem (and with history telling a clear lesson about this) that risks the life of many civilians? This is what Israel is doing in Lebanon today, again.
Maybe a UN server should be hacked, after all after 2000 UN and Lebanon was responsible for keeping Hizballah from amassing rockets and other weapons. Do these activists care when during the 'peace times' Israeli kids and adults get blown up?
Actually, they do. Thank political games from various parties involved (including, but definitely not limited to Israel) for the situation on the ground.
If anything, these protestors should thank Israel for taking action now and preventing more carnage later. One cannot constantly procrastinate in this kind of a situation, because it is only getting worse.
Acting in a way that has repeatedly shown to worsen the situation however is stupid, and when it causes damage on the scale the current actions in Lebanon are doing, it also does not deserve support, no matter how justified you believe Israel is in defending itself.
Of course hacking NASA websites is not exactly a good way to make an opinion known, regardless of what the opinion is.
I think in this case it is because of an officer in a public office performing a public activity where the public also happens to have a right to check on the job being done...
I think you are right about syncing and having a backup of your data being the key feature of pdas.
I took it one step further and have a portable backup solution for my pda (sdcard with backup/restore app and enough space for a backup) so even when I am abroad, I can just get a replacement device and have my data back.
This in turn got me to use my pda as a backup device for my mobile phone.
The funny thing is that my now obsolete Palm Zire 71 does all those things fine with a better battery life then the Q1. Its smaller and lighter as well.
If the consequence of using a technically much better screen is reducing the battery life to an almost unusable level, then it is pretty relevant. Furthermore, in every round 2 biassed opinions are presented, so it is no surpise to find somewhat biassed language and reasoning there.
I found the comparison a funny read, and not one of which to take the 'facts' too serious. Rather, it seems to be trying to make a point about those xp based tablet pcs, their battery life makes them unusable as a portable organizer. Having used pdas and tablet pcs myself, I happen to agree with their point when it comes to a device for on the way. That said, tablet pcs have their place as soon as battery life is not a big issue while portability is a big issue, ie, as a much smaller and lighter replacement for a laptop when doing presentations.
think Israel rushed into this and took a gamble. When they decided to strike against Hezbollah they took the "Bush position". Either you're with us or against us. Either Lebanon would cooperate in rooting out criminals, or they sided with terrorists against Israel. If they threaten embargo right away, then they accuse and insinuate right off the bat that all of Lebanon was responsible. With this move, they gave Lebanon an opportunity to choose sides. However the window for that decision was awful small.
- Their past invasion of Lebanon is the exact thing that created Hezbollah.
- The price of such an action has been proven to be unsustainable for Israel.
- It completely ignores the situation within Lebanon.
Because of those things it is rather easy to foretell that the current action cannot solve the Hezbollah problem.
Given that Israel can easily know that this gamble will not work makes them imho responsible for the damage it does. Hezbollah definitely is at fault with their missile attacks and what not, but that in no way removes the responsibility of Israel for responding as they do.
These are the most controversial strikes by Israel is recent history. There have been a good number of civilian casualties.
That is only part of what makes them contoversial. Israel is very well able to enforce an air and sea embargo against Lebanon without bombing ports and airports for the simple reason that the Lebanese army is underequiped and powerless in comparison. There is no way they can take on the Israeli army with conventional military means, and very little they can do against the Israeli airforce or navy.
Hezbollah is indeed a part of the Lebanese government, but that does not mean that they acted on behalf or with the authority of that government. In my opinion the real problem there is that Hezbollah does not want to convert itself into a political organisation and give up military power. They also feel that their support would eb away in a prosperous and peacefull Lebanon. War against Israel is what created them, and while helping the population as a means to 'buy' support, they are not after improving the situation there. By provoking Israel into military action against Lebanon, they managed to revive their reason to exist, and that is the foremost reason why I believe the response of Israel is a serious mistake. Trying to solve the 'Hezbollah problem' is not easy, but basicly giving Lebanon a choice between destroying itself or being destroyed is not gonna solve anything for anyone. Refusing to feed the source from which Hezbollah gets its support might have a price, but at least it has a chance. Also, if Israel wants to get and keep the moral highground here, they should consider to respond to attacks on their civilians directly but proportionally. Seeing their current claims and pictures, I have a hard time believing they could not find the trucks from which missiles are launched and destroy them whenever they show up for example.
Accusing the other party of escalation for an act that they have commited themselves pretty often (capturing a foreign citizen and/or combatant outside their own borders) however makes my bs indicator go off quite loudly....
However, how reputable is the journalism in the area? When the Iraq war started, the Arab media was reporting that the US was intentionally targeting hospitals to kill injured and weak civilians, stating that civilians deaths were in the tens of thousands every day. How accurate did that turn out to be?
Unverifiable 'facts' make for good propaganda and bad news. When looking beyond the number of civilian casualties and seeing what gets destroyed tells its own story however.
The motivation for this? What I understand from Israeli politicians this is to 'put pressure on the Lebanese government'.
When we did the debate I did manage to take a fairly absolute position which polarizes people.
That always gives interesting insights, and is also why I appreciate this debate. There is little to learn from people who say the same thing as yourself.
People often don't recall (or don't know) that bin Laden had attacked the US several times prior to 9/11.
I am quite aware of that however. I am no history major but I believe I have a relatively good knowledge of history of the USA, Europe and much of Asia, at least a lot more then many people around me it seems.
You may notice that I left out Bin Laden and his group from my previous argument. There are similarities between his methods and those of other groups, but his goal and ideology makes him unique, and one of my big issues with the 'war on terror' is how that imho very relevant difference is ignored.
What motivated me to join the Marine Corps was a buddy of mine that did E-Lint (or Electronic Intelligence) at STRATCOM here in Omaha, NE. We discussed foreign politics all the time. I argued that China was this huge threat.
They are, but in a way that can be dealt with by being strong enough that they cannot survive such a war. This is a well known mode of operation from the cold war. On one level you try to deal with eachother, you simply have to as a result of living on the same planet, on the other side you maintain a threat to eachother that makes the price of war too high.
They were willing to use force, they outnumbered us, and with the economy blooming, they could develop technology to rival us.
China is a large power, and by that simple token it is a potential threat, but not perse an actual one.
He kept arguing it was the little guys we had to worry about. He talked a great length about bin Laden years before he was famous.
This does not surprise me. The USA has dealt with Bin Laden before he decided to attack the USA, in that time he was an ally against the Soviet Union. Knowing what his kind of people can do to a modern army and state was not difficult to see when looking at how the Afghan war quite helped the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But back then he only attacked military targets, and the world ignored him. Honestly, I don't really have a problem with this. He disliked the US government, and he attacked the US government. I can't fault the guy, even though his tactics were still what you would associate with a terrorist.
The problem with him is what he stands for.
But then he went and murdered thousands of innocent civilians. I draw a line there.
That is only the second problem I have with him, but it definitely crosses the line on its own.
The Oklahoma City terrorists (who originally planned to bomb the federal building in my home town of Omaha) hit a government building, but largely killed civilians, including small children in a nursery. That was their big mistake.
Without a valid goal, no means are valid. That does not imply however that goal justifies the means in all cases.
There are people who truly believe the US and Israel to be villians for whatever reason. And if their attacks were on our governments, I could understand them.
I believe the USA is making mistakes in its self appointed task as global police, and there is nothing to keep them in check there. I also believe that wherever there is power, there is corruption.
I do not believe the USA are the vilians, but I do believe the government of that country is as a matter of fact a substantial danger to world peace.
Israel is taken to task (as is the US) for civilian casualties. We are both constantly accused (I believe falsely) for specifically targeting civilians. Individuals have specifically slaughtered civilians, which is most unfortunate, and they are usually prosecuted for those actions. But I do not believe it is policy for either government to go out of their way to kill civilian
First of all, I rather appreciate this discussion.
Are you suggesting that terrorism is a reasonable response to an uneven distribution of wealth?
The problem with this question is that it rather depends on what you call terrorism.
I will split the question into a few different ones to give you an idea of where I stand in this.
Is the intentional killing of civilians a reasonable response to anything? I believe not, regardless of this being done by a state or a group of individuals, regardless of if those who commit it are called terrorist or not.
Is a militia or 'underground army' a reasonable response to oppression? I believe it is, regardless of if those people are called terrorist. The founding fathers were considered terrorists by their opponents, so were members of the French resistance, so were many red army soldiers for which no uniform was available during the second world war, and so were many soldiers of the 'peoples army' in Germany at the end of the second world war. So were the resistance fighters in Algeria and so were the rebels that fought independence from the Netherlands for Indonesia. This list goes on and on and on.
The idea that militia can be a valid response to oppression was clearly believed in by those who founded the USA.
The problem with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas is that they are both. They do fight oppression and they do deliberately target civilians. I can not agree with the later, but I do believe that ending the oppression that they also fight is a very substantial part of the solution for getting rid of their violence. If people can get medical care, food in times of need, and other forms of support for their basic needs then they simply have far less reason to turn to groups like those, and are also far less likely to go blow themselves up in busy places for example. When people do not feel oppressed, they rather live their life instead of supporting 'terrorists'. This won't solve the problem of the fringe of extremists, but that is a small group which will then find itself in an unsupportive environment.
I'm not sure where you're going. My senior year of high school we had a debate topic in our state that I loved. It was "be it resolved that violent revolution is a just response to an oppressive government." It was pretty hard to nail anyone to an absolute view on that topic.
That is exactly why I answered your question as I did. There are no absolutes, but there are some clear lines one can draw still. I also found that in such debates, people find it very difficult to seperate the validity of the goals and means from eachother.
In theory members of society are forced to obey laws for the betterment of everyone in society. In a global society, we'd have a world government to force nations to play nice with each other, as well as their own people. Too bad we don't have such a government. I love the concept of the UN. And while the world criticizes the US for playing global police force (or not playing global police force often enough) I think someone needs to do it.
This I can fully agree with. I do however see a few problems with the US in that role as it is now. First of all, there is a good reason why in most places police don't make the law, nor can they dictate how it should be enforced. Also, they are responsible to their government and their activities should be verifiable. Without those conditions the concept of police as law enforcement simply stops working and has a high risk of turning into something that disrespects the law. You cannot effectively enforce what you disrespect.
The USA however does not want to be responsible to anyone for its actions, and that simply makes them unsuitable for being the global police.
The first link compares two events. The first event was England and France taking out a leader to gain control over an asset they needed. Many draw that parallel to Iraq and I can understand why. Most immediately say, Iraq has oil and the US needs it! This must be cut and dry!
Indeed, but you are right that that is simplistic and contradicts at least most of the facts.. That does not mean there isn't a similar motivation however. The issue here is the US trade deflict and the fear of inflation. Inflation is currently not a big issue because demand for dollars is on a similar level to what is being printed. This would change substantially when oil producing countries stop using dollars for their trade, which Iraq threatened (just like Iran for that matter).
When why has Bush said since day 1 that his top priority is to remove our dependence on oil?
It may be his top priority, but that doesn't make it reality today or even in the near future. As it is, the USA depends on oil. However, ensuring free access to oil trade is enough for that. As argued above, there is another economic motivation here.
He has threatened oil companies with price-fixing suits,
He supports a free market? good to hear... sadly it contradicts some of his other actions, but I'll for now assume that in the end he does want that free market.
given tax breaks to hybrid owners, demanded car companies make more efficient engines, pumped money into fuel cell research etc. These don't seem like the actions of a man hellbent on controlling oil.
All those actions actually help ensuring the continuation of the dependency on oil companies because all of those depend on a distribution network that the oil companies have in place already. It is not about oil, it is about money.
Nope. However, he did promise that Iraq's government would be their own, and that we wouldn't attempt to run it as a puppet government. He also said we wouldn't take one drop of their oil. It belonged to the Iraqi people.
Yes, and for political reasons (he would lose a lot more support still if he didn't promise those things), but as argued above, ensuring access is enough.
Iraq is selling oil today, but one can't really say we invaded Iraq for monetary gain. It has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. We didn't get anything out of it. The parallel when you investigate the matter doesn't really hold up. So why then do people draw it?
See above, there are no direct monetary gains maybe, but it protects an otherwise unsustainable monetary policy.
Hamas controls Palestine
Today? they control part of it. Palestine is the name of the area which Israel is part of. But that is not the issue. Before Hamas, Fatah controlled the Palestinian territories. They recognize Israel, yet they were effectively prevented from doing their work as government, thereby creating the vacuum in which Hamas got its chance.
and Hezbollah represents 30% of the Lebonese government.
Please go read something more about the last 4 decades of Lebanese history and try to understand why exactly people there support Hezbollah, and how it got to be to begin with. For that matter, do the same for Hamas. I dare to say that if Israel had actually forfilled its duties as occupying party with regards to civilians (which means providing healthcare, ensuring there is food, and generally, taking care of their living conditions) and had protected civilians from the SLA during their occupation of Lebanon, support for both Hezbollah and Hamas would not have been what it is now.
You may not like Hezbollah, and nor do I, but their reason for existing has been a legitimate one, and their current legitimacy is at least debatable. Not so their attacks on civilians in Israel, that is beyond any debate whatsoever, but taking military prisoners to exchange with people held in Israel is definitely a legitimate military tactic.
Neither government has any intention of s
How strange that the BBC remembers the same as me..
A few things you might want to read with regards to the discussions we had:
m m m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5212448.st
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5204346.st
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5217176.st
As you can read there, the legality and esp. the 'self defense' argument for the invasion of Iraq is seriously disputed. Also, the effectiveness of the Israeli policy is quite disputed and putting both into a historical light makes them extremely doubtfull if not huge mistakes bound to fail.
The last one is a somewhat sad case that shows how difficult it is for Israel to target the right things, despite knowing extremely well what they are targetting by 'mistake'.
Just some food for thought.
How often has land changed hands since the UN was formed? How often has the UN objected?
Which is a nice strawman. Not to mention that two wrongs don't make a right.
As a sidenote, I only brought up Israel to point out the futility of pointing at other situations that are also wrong.
Wait, they only object 30 years after the fact,
Oh? I think you argued earlier that this was in response to the 3 days war. I seem to recall the first of those resolutions dating back to that time also, not 30 years after the fact.
and only in the case of one country. Hell when the UN was formed, people argued that the Soviet Union was entitled to take over Eastern Europe as a buffer because of the lives they lost. Apparently the same can't be said of Israel.
First of all, that agreement dated from before the founding of the UN, second, not everyone agreed, esp. Churchil and with him many Europeans did not agree. That they were uncapable of doing anything about it doesn't change that.
With the current situation with Israel, the UN is up in arms that Israel has attacked a "sovereign" nation. But no one cares that the same "sovereign" nation's government's is 30% controlled by a terrorist organization, that the government funds.
Maybe you want to restart the civil war in Lebanon?
When England was attacked by terrorists, they told the world they weren't going to play around. They would do everything in their power to protect themselves, even if it meant rolling back on civil rights.
Read up about IRA, the responses of the UK, the way the legal system has dealt with the excesses that did happen on Brittish side and so on. You are completely wrong in your assesment when keeping the actual facts in mind. Ireland was not bombed by the UK, despite there being a substantial number of IRA supporters there, despite funding for IRA comming from there (and from the USA for that matter), and despite their political arm having strong links with some politicians in Ireland that have been involved in government. In other words, the UK is a good example for why the Israeli response in Lebanon is absurd, disproportional and ineffective. For that matter, 40+ years of the current kind of policy did not solve any problem for Israel.
Russia rolled back 50 years on civil rights in the wake of one major terrorist attack.
50 years ago there was no Russia, sorry, I call bullshit.
The US has been greatly affected by one major terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks only work because of how people respond. The more you let it affect you, the more effective it becomes.
Powell spent years trying to make sure we didn't go to war with Iraq. He always argued for peace. So I don't buy him lying to create a war that he was always against.
Later there were some questions into the validity of the intel that Powell presented, but I can't see the motivation for him to lie.
I think his departure answers this quite well.
The photos he showed however where specific hazmat units that traveled with the chemical weapons. They demonstrated specific movements of chemical weapons. And it was Powell again who said he believed those weapons left the country.
The photos he has shown have been dismissed as being entirely different things by many.
Now no one knows for sure.
Indeed, and not knowing for sure makes for bad evidence.
If Iraq wasn't making new WMD, then where did the training documents come from? Why issue orders on how to use the weapons on invading American troops if they never had them?
Why didn't they use them? Where were they? according to the Bush government an attack with chemical weapons was imminent during the invasion, yet no chemical weapon was fired. Its not like Iraq's government had problems using them when they were available, as they have demonstrated repeatedly in the past.
Why refuse to cooperate with weapon inspectors? They kept blocking them entrance to the country.
I trust the words of the weapons inspectors on this situation. They repeatedly argued they needed more time and that they had no evidence of any new weapons developments. Why ignore them?
The few times they did "cooperate" they said, "you can only search on days we tell you, and only in these places." How is that remotely valid? Why place the security of your nation at risk if you have nothing to hide? Why did the UN Security Council find Iraq in violation 75 times?
Because they were in violation in details.
btw, how would you feel about your country giving up its souvereinity like that? would you think it would go easy even if it was objectively justified? You forget things like national pride.
And Israel is a seperate issue that would involve a lengthy debate. That is quite silly frankly that the UN would claim Israel "illegally" obtained land and demand that it give it up. Most of those resolutions stem from the 3-day war. Israel was attacked by hostile forces, and as a result, the hostile forces lost the land they attacked from. Israel was not the aggressor. The UN at the time said that Israel had a right to keep the land, and 30 years later the UN says Israel had no right to keep the land. Why flip-flop? Because various militant groups insist there might be peace if Israel makes this concession, and then this concession, etc. But for 30 years Israel has been making concessions, and the violence doesn't end. I don't understand why the world says you should not negotiate or give into terrorists, but that is exactly what the world insists of Israel.
Israel is a member of the UN. Did you ever read the founding charters of the UN? Annexation of territority for whatever reason is not allowed EVER. I repeat, EVER. Israel signed that, so they can not ever argue that the occupation turning into annexation is legal, period. There exists no such thing as legally conquering territory for those who are a member of the UN.
I know civilians have died on both sides. Civilians are dying as we speak in Lebanon and Israel. One side bombs malls and school-buses while the other is giving advance notice for civilians to evacuate before dropping bombs. There is a distinction between the tactics of the two sides.
And bombs the escape routes beforehand, and then attacks their cars when they try to flee.
The fact that one side acts criminally is no excuse whatsoever for the other side to do the same, esp. if they try to claim the moral highground.
1 - 75 unanimous security council resolutions finding Iraq in violation of the terms of their surrender. In 1991 the UN authorized military force against Iraq, and peace was dependent on their complete duplicity. They did not cooperate, and while many say that the US belitted the UN, in fact one could argue that if the US did nothing, the UN would become a joke. I don't understand why the UN will jump head first into an evolving situation they don't understand (like sending troops into Yugoslavia as it broke up) while completely ignoring genocides like Rwanda. The UN waves its finger, but rarely does anything about anything. How many times could they insist "comply or else" if "or else" meant nothing?
So why not also do something about the 60+ UN security council resolutions demanding Israel withdraws from occupied territories for decades? If you want to point at other situations that is.. I don't like that kind of argument, it is simply distracting from the issue at hand. Also, as you point out yourself, there were actions being taken against Iraq due to its non compliance before Bush ever got to power. They did not involve an invasion however. Also, it was simply not clear wether he complied or not, and the USA simply did not want to wait for clarity on that.
2 - WMD did exist. Saddam used them on his own people, and he currently stands on trial for that. This is not disputed by anyone.
Indeed, but it has been disputed that he had any such thing during or before the US invasion of Iraq.
We gave them plenty of advance warning before we went into the country, and we watched a huge caravan leave Iraq into Syria.
Heh, and that I'd like to see documented. The suggestion has been made repeatedly, but noone has shown any proof of this whatsoever for all I am aware.
At the time Powell suggested that those were the smoking guns we would now never find.
And that same Powell seems to have left the government somewhat early. Also, his presentation to the UN security council is highly disputed. Many of the things shown there turned out to be completely non WMD related.
But we did however find sarin gas,
From before the first gulf war and in an unusable state.
and illegal missiles.
Indeed, they had missiles that reached a little bit further then allowed.
He found storage facilities, and training manuals detailing how to use the WMD. So they did exist, and we found some of them. Why do people continue to insist they never existed and they we never found any?
No informed person can ignore what happened in the Iraq-Iran war (where he used those with support from the USA no less) or his actions against the Kurds. That however is a decade or more before the invasion of Iraq. He had WMDs for sure, but he had no usable WMDs when the invasion took place. Clinton and others saw to that.
Here is what I don't understand. Governments all around the world insisted they had WMD. Clinton bombed Iraq without consulting Congress or the UN, and no one questioned him. Kerry, Gore, Clinton and every Democratic leader insisted Iraq had WMD. They all voted to go to war. But after the fact, they all insist the Bush invented the situation and lied. How is that possible? This is why I hate partisan politics. Facts are obscured by trying to make the other party look bad.
Uh, I happen to live outside the USA, and here the large majority of people, wether in government or not had extreme doubts and were demanding actual proof. People who were actually on the ground in Iraq could not provide such proof, rather, they could show that most of what had been there was destroyed for sure, and could not locate some of what was known to be there.
Please inform yourself a bit better, in the first years after 9/11, virtually noone in the USA dared to make such arguments because it would inmediately be seen as 'pro terrorist'.
A comment made two years later isn't really made in the "context of 9/11". If you think every statement we make today is in direct relation to 9/11 then I don't know what to say.
No, not every statement is in direct relation to 9/11, but after that date, every time the argument 'terrorism' is used in the USA, it calls on the 9/11 experience.
Saddam had an open policy that he spoke of frequently where he promised the families of suicide bombers 10,000 if they ever attacked Israel or the US. Does that constitute funding terrorists in your book?
Fair enough, but I recall quite a list of people that have a price on their head from the USA, so it seems a pot/kettle argument. At any rate, you are right that that can be seen as promoting terrorism.
The only direct link Saddam had to 9/11 was when he issued a statement congratulating the terrorists for murdering innocent civilians, which I find pretty deplorable.
Yes, I agree completely.
I'm curious what terrorist organizations we fund in Iraq? We put Saddam in power because he had a US education and the CIA thought they could trust him as an ally against Iran.
Uh no. When Saddam got to power in Iraq, Iran was still ruled by the rather USA friendly Sjah. You are forgetting this thing called 'cold war' which was the main motivation here. Helping and funding him might help against increased soviet influence. Also, at the time it was well known that he was a murderer for the pan-arabic Baath party (spelling?). Arguing that the CIA thought he was anywhere trustworthy back then is arguing the CIA was absurdly badly informed.
It only showed how little the US knew about foreign policy in the Middle East. It also goes to show those people who insist that the US is an empire, and that we have all these puppet governments, that just because he help put someone in power, that doesn't mean we necessarily have any influence with that government.
The USA makes that mistake over and over again and usually it serves the short term interests of the USA at the cost of oppression of people in the country involved. On the long term the result is pretty unpredictable.
Does your government ever learn anything whatsoever?
My original point is that the media, and the world declares Bush as being a hate-monger.
Yes.
They say he hates all Arabs, or hates all Muslims.
Not by definition, but he dislikes anything non Christian.
This is clearly not the case as I was demonstrating. I'll agree he is a poor public speaker, but we shouldn't propagate a lie that he a is a war-monger
So why was he in Iraq again? WMDs that have never been found? or revenge for Saddam's attack to kill his father maybe? Whatever reasons were presented have turned out to be either excuses or lies or both.
, or wants to see all Arabs dead. It only adds fuel to the fire of every person who wants an excuse to hate Americans. And I just don't like propagating lies in the first place.
Be critical of what you hear, from any side.
Earlier you defended yourself saying you are a 'liberal'. I don't care what 'party' you belong to, or if you are a friend or foe. I care about wether you make valid and verifiable arguments. I think you didn't do too well in that at least with regards to the 'why Saddam came to power and was supported by the CIA'.
I will skip on the contra scandal years before, but read up on it, it really shows how short sighted and hate inspiring the foreign policy of the USA is, and it would help you understand wht in fact Bush does make things way worse then they need to be.
Please find me a single quote where he directly linked Iraq to 9/11. It doesn't exist. He said the war in Iraq is part of the war against terror, because Saddam openly funded terrorists.
Please find us any proof that Saddam openly funded 'terrorists'. Actually, find us an objective definition of terrorist to begin with. The USA directly funded 'terrorists' operating in Iraq.
If the public can't understand the distinction, that didn't mean that he lied or intentionally misled people. It means they can't understand the distinction. And for the record, I'm very much a liberal. I just hate seeing a guy get beat up over media lies rather than his actual policies.
Making a suggestive comment like that in the context of the 9/11 attacks is definitely misleading and most likely on purpose. Bush may not be the most intelligent man on the planet, but he has advisors and speech writers around whom should be very well aware of the suggestion being made.
As far as the "crusade" quote goes, I'm actively Googling for it now. I see a direct crusade quote on three liberal blogs, but not a single actual news service yet. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if he made the remark however. Despite somehow pulling down a Master's from Yale, he isn't a very savvy speaker. Bush is also known to routinely stick his foot in his mouth.
He made the remark for all I know, I saw and heard the speech in which he did so. It was a stupid comment, most likely made in the heat of the moment. He has 'made up' for it with lots of calls for tolerance, but really, things like 'You are either with us or against us' do not speak of tolerance at all (it basicly invalidates every point of view other then those identical to his), so arguing that his calls for tolerance are more then a face saving attempt requires some proof in the form of action on his side. One very good start would be to stop supporting Israel without question and have some direct support for the Palestinian cause (not for Hamas or Hezbollah or such, but for the people who live there). This is seen by many muslims as a crusade by proxy and as reconfirmation of the 'crusade quote'.
At any rate, I'd go talk to people from arab origin living in the USA and see how 9/11 changed their lives and why. Words do not make tolerance, but they can easily destroy it.
but the actual FACTS of the matter is that immediately after 9/11 he preached peace, diplomacy and tolerance. He asked the American people not to judge all Muslims on the acts of a few terrorists. He urged the American public not to push for war.
So why did people get outraged about his call for a 'crusade' during that same time?
Arguably if he went into Iraq right after 9/11 the world would have supported it more, though for entirely the wrong reasons. People accuse him of linking Iraq and 9/11, when in fact he has publicly spoken multiple times to distance the two.
And has spoken publicly multiple times to link the 2 as well, not to mention that other members of his government for which he is responsible are still making such claims.
They say our country has similar rights to oppressive and fascist states.
No, they say that your current government has tendencies very compatible with those of a fascist government.
So, according to you, each and every time there is an arrest, it is on fully trumped up charges, and no one ever has actually done anything illegal. Right.
Ya know...sometimes the arrested party IS actually guilty of whatever it is they were arrested for. Not saying that is the case here. I am merely saying that we don't know enough yet.
Sometimes they are indeed, and sometimes the reason for arrest has nothing to do with this alltogether.
You are correct of course in that we don't know enough about this case, but the presumption that the arrested person is not guilty and that the reason for arrest is not correct untill PROVEN otherwise, are pretty important for a working legal system, and are indeed the correct starting point in any such a case.
Sorry - I am much more willing to associate "fruitcake" and "fool" with someone who is keen to presume an extreme behavior.
1. Distrust of government and presuming your rights are being denied on a regular basis is a very healthy attitude.
2. Repeated extreme behavior in the past gives reason to expect extreme behavior now and in the future.
State sponsored health care kills thousands if not millions of people every year. Try releasing a much needed experimental drug to people who are willing to try it -- you'd go to jail. Try charging less to a poor patient than you charge the State -- you'll go to jail (the US government has an entire office dedicated to finding doctors that charge less than they charge Medicare). Try bringing more doctors to the market than the AMA/US wants -- it is illegal.
Interesting how one majorly flawed implementation can make you come to such a conclusion. Do you always base your ideas on so little information?
I'm not even going to counter your argument, because your argument only points out known flaws in the US implementation of state sponsored health care, and not in the concept as such.
Try providing alternative water or electricity in your neighborhood -- you'll go to jail. In my previous town I spoke with various neighbors about uniting together to get a large generator installed on our block (this was pre-Y2K, and some people were concerned). We received various competing bids but were told that the local town wouldn't allow it. When we asked for a variance we were told we couldn't do it, and when we tried to do it anyway we were threatened with fines. When we asked what would happen if we didn't pay the fines we were threatened with court and jail time. True story.
Ah, you ran into the state imposed monopoly on running cables and such. You may want to go take a look in a typical southeast asian city for a clue why that is in fact a very good idea.
Breaking the law gets you fined and not paying fines gets you in jail? the horror!
But then.. buying a generator because of y2k? I guess that tells it all.
Sure. But who moves windows about very often, or for extended periods of time?
Does it really matter if your computationally intensive task takes 1200 minutes or 1200 minutes and ten seconds?
No it does not, but you are misinterpreting the issue.
Considering that part of desktop use is things like playign video and audio, doing voice over ip communications and such, having less things in the way of good realtime performance makes those things work instead of break intermittently. It makes performance more predictable and it makes it easier to guarantee responsiveness.
If your DVD burner is running so close to underflow that moving a big window turns your DVD into a coaster, then your major problem is not with the graphics driver.
While that is true, it in no way counters the argument that removing a component that can get in the way makes for a better situation.
3D acceleration has its place, but its not whats stopping Linux on the desktop
Not on its own, no. It is one of the factors.
, because the needs 99.99% of desktop users are perfectly well served by generic X drivers.
That in no way changes that having accelerated drivers makes for a substantially better experience, better responsiveness while generating lower overhead, and makes more things work in nice and predictable ways.
OK: Time to mention the elephant in the room.
When people say Desktop Linux needs better 3D performane, the vast majority of them are talking about gaming. That's fine, and a genuine concern for gamer. But lets not pretend that Linux Gaming and Desktop Linux are synonymous terms.
The fact that you believe (as you already stated anyway) that 3D acceleration is not highly desirable for desktop use doesn't make it so. Go read the opengraphics mailinglist if you want to get a clue about why exactly 3D acceleration is really really important for generic desktop use.
If you don't see the advantages for your own typical use, that is fine, maybe there are none in your SPECIFIC case.
The question still remains: does anyone actually find that unaccelerated desktop windows are slowing them down? I don't know about you, but I think faster than I type, and my editor displays the characters I type faster than either.
Moving a window on an unaccelerated desktop uses quite a bit of cpu time, thereby reducing what is available to other programs. An accelerated desktop makes it a lot easier for your machine to actually keep burning that DVD at full speed even when you are switching between windows, rearranging them or such things.
In other words, a desktop that makes good use of hardware acceleration can not only do things in a visually nicer way, it also stays out of the way for cpu intensive operations.