Your faulty assumption is that the Administration knew that Saddam had no weapons and force fed us lies to push forward the invasion. However, the logic doesn't hold up. If the democrats felt that we shouldn't invade on the chance that Iraq had WMDs then the best course of lying would be to say that they did in fact not have any WMDs and we were invading in response to the ethnic cleansing and other breaches of the cease-fire reached at the end of the Gulf War. The Administration, the Congress, and the entire world community held the view pre-Iraq invasion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we invaded anyways. My point, which you so brilliantly missed was that we would have invaded if Iraq had WMDs or not. Everyone, at the time of the invasion, thought that he did and it wasn't until several weeks later that questions were starting to be raised about where they were.
Actually, it is worth pointing out that even Saddam thought he had these illegal weapons. Several reports were recovered in his palace in which his scientists claims their developments were moving right along in several weapons programs. The scientists were, as we know now, over stating their claims. But the arguement that nukes or WMDs is the only way to be 'safe' from invasion is faulty.
"If there had been even the remotest chance that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, do you think we'd have invaded Iraq?"
Actually if you go back and read the reports of the debates in congress leading up to the invasion one thing that the opposition was constantly saying is that we shouldn't invade because Saddam would use his weapons of mass distruction against us and our allies. Revisionist history bothers me when either side engages in it, however, regarding the Iraq war and that whole affair the Democrats and the leftist media have engaged in far more revision than the Republican party or the right wing movement.
On the topic of Korea's nuclear test. It is indeed a bad thing for the world if another nation has nukes. I was secretly hoping that Korea would screw themselves over somehow and nuke a large segment of their own population. However, the UN sanctions and other nations providing sanctions is going to bring about change eventually. The people in Korea are starving and as it continues discent with the government will rise. Even China, Korea's one supposed friend in the whole area, is not happy with them anymore. They are painting themselves into a corner and it will eventually bite them on their ass.
People fail to see how much government funding has led to revolutions in all technical fields. Nuclear Power, Submarines, many forms of safety equipment, all came into being under military funding. Research is a great thing, and the naysayers to this article merely have an axe against the current administration to grind. It is sad for me to see people slandering technical achievement to score a few points for their sophmoreic political views.
If you read the article you'd know that it uses Gasoline, not electricity, which can easily be supplied via airlift. It also is not subject to predator attack, it doesn't tire like a mule does, and despite what you says mules usually need to carry their own food and water.
Yeah, the flip flopping on every issue under the sun didn't help either. First he goes to Vietnam, then he comes home and testifies he committed war crimes, then he claims he was proud of his service and trots out his war buddies in the election year. However, it does prove a valid point. The political handlers wouldn't be concerned about an antiwar stance if there wasn't support for the war (as other posters here have claimed). If this was such an 'unfavorable war' with the population as a whole then why is it political suicide to take an antiwar stance?
Apparently you missed the election where every candidate who stood a chance came out in favor of the war. Kerry said he disagreed going there (even though he voted for it) but that he now supported it. As did Lieberman, Edwards, and all the rest.
There were a number of reasons for attacking Iraq on a political basis. Unlike Pakistan who has allies in the free world, Iraq doesn't. If you noticed not a single country ran to the aid of Iraq when we invaded, they shook their fingers, but they didn't lift them. If we had tried to go against Pakistan we most likely would have drawn far more heat from the world community. Additionaly, we had a sound legal reason to go to war in Iraq, they had violated the ceasefire agreement that was drawn up post Desert Storm.
Some of my friends who I went to college lost friends and family in the WTC center attacks. I myself feared for my sisters safety because she works and lives in the city. I am not saying that I don't care about 'getting the guy who did it' and it is still a high priority. But should we put all funding to that one endevour? My point in my post is that diverting the scientists from this project isn't going to help us catch Osama any faster.
Additionally, your statements as to why we should capture Osama don't hold water.
We are fighting militant jihadists. They won't care that we capture the leader. They will still hate us and still attack us. That addresses points 1 through 3. Point 4, that we could extract information from Osama, this too does not hold water. Perhaps you aren't familiar with how a terrorist cell operates, but it is based on the idea of minimal contact and minimal knowledge of any other cell. A recon cell might be told 'take pictures of security around these buildings' and construction cell might be told 'make three bombs with remote activated fuses cable of damaging a high rise super structure. You catch the recon you just know possible targets but not what type of attack. You catch the contruction cell and you end up with bombs, but no idea what is going to be bombed. And even if you catch one construction cell there are usually two or more. The only chance is to catch someone who stands in the middle talking between these cells, but that is usually one person who is devoted enough to swallow a bullet before he tells what he knows.
And to your stupid little comment about your tax dollars subsidizing my state expenditures: I live in the richest state with one of the highest income taxes. So you don't subsidize shit to my state so go sit on it and spin. And my ancestors came here long after the conflicts with the natives, in fact I'm part indeginous myself on my mothers side, so spin on it double fast. Moron.
Saddam Hussein in another matter. He was the head of a despotic nation. He was known to have killed thousands in ethnic cleansing, had a history of agression against his neighbors, and was actively seeking to create weapons to kill millions more.
By bringing him down we helped free a nation that had suffered greatly under his rule. Notice I didn't object us going into Afghanistan and kicking out the Taliban. That had many more benefits than merely finding another figurehead and taking him out.
We have brought democracy to two nations in the middle east, and hopefully they will do as well as the democracy we brought to Japan following WWII. If they do succeed it makes several steps forward towards a lasting peace in the region. Until Saddam was caught and arrested he was a greater danger just because he would have been harbored by another nation and then make claims that he was still the legitimate leader of the country living in exile.
Lets compare the benefits and costs of these endevours.
Keeping in mind this project was probably long under development before 9/11 even happened; I give you a choice of two tasks:
1. Find one single person in the entire world who has an extensive network of people determined to keep him from showing up on the radar. 2. Build a robot that is able to carry a large amount of cargo over rough terrain and is rather self sufficient.
Benefits from Task 1: 1. Head of an organization brought down. However, since it is a cell based organization and much information indicates his role is no longer chief commander it will do little to help stop terrorism.
2. Umm... yeah, nevermind that's it.
Benefits from Task 2: 1. Easier transport and access to rocky terrain and remote locations (such as the ones in which Osama might be hiding. 2. Possible application in further space exploration, similar to the Mars Rover. 3. Advancement in gyrostabilization, automation of basic AI tasks, and other advanced in robotics. 4. Possible construction and civil applications.
Now, I don't know about you, but I would rather have my tax dollars go to Task 2, but that is just me I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
Your faulty assumption is that the Administration knew that Saddam had no weapons and force fed us lies to push forward the invasion. However, the logic doesn't hold up. If the democrats felt that we shouldn't invade on the chance that Iraq had WMDs then the best course of lying would be to say that they did in fact not have any WMDs and we were invading in response to the ethnic cleansing and other breaches of the cease-fire reached at the end of the Gulf War. The Administration, the Congress, and the entire world community held the view pre-Iraq invasion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we invaded anyways. My point, which you so brilliantly missed was that we would have invaded if Iraq had WMDs or not. Everyone, at the time of the invasion, thought that he did and it wasn't until several weeks later that questions were starting to be raised about where they were. Actually, it is worth pointing out that even Saddam thought he had these illegal weapons. Several reports were recovered in his palace in which his scientists claims their developments were moving right along in several weapons programs. The scientists were, as we know now, over stating their claims. But the arguement that nukes or WMDs is the only way to be 'safe' from invasion is faulty.
"If there had been even the remotest chance that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, do you think we'd have invaded Iraq?"
Actually if you go back and read the reports of the debates in congress leading up to the invasion one thing that the opposition was constantly saying is that we shouldn't invade because Saddam would use his weapons of mass distruction against us and our allies. Revisionist history bothers me when either side engages in it, however, regarding the Iraq war and that whole affair the Democrats and the leftist media have engaged in far more revision than the Republican party or the right wing movement.
On the topic of Korea's nuclear test. It is indeed a bad thing for the world if another nation has nukes. I was secretly hoping that Korea would screw themselves over somehow and nuke a large segment of their own population. However, the UN sanctions and other nations providing sanctions is going to bring about change eventually. The people in Korea are starving and as it continues discent with the government will rise. Even China, Korea's one supposed friend in the whole area, is not happy with them anymore. They are painting themselves into a corner and it will eventually bite them on their ass.
People fail to see how much government funding has led to revolutions in all technical fields. Nuclear Power, Submarines, many forms of safety equipment, all came into being under military funding. Research is a great thing, and the naysayers to this article merely have an axe against the current administration to grind. It is sad for me to see people slandering technical achievement to score a few points for their sophmoreic political views.
If you read the article you'd know that it uses Gasoline, not electricity, which can easily be supplied via airlift. It also is not subject to predator attack, it doesn't tire like a mule does, and despite what you says mules usually need to carry their own food and water.
Yeah, the flip flopping on every issue under the sun didn't help either. First he goes to Vietnam, then he comes home and testifies he committed war crimes, then he claims he was proud of his service and trots out his war buddies in the election year. However, it does prove a valid point. The political handlers wouldn't be concerned about an antiwar stance if there wasn't support for the war (as other posters here have claimed). If this was such an 'unfavorable war' with the population as a whole then why is it political suicide to take an antiwar stance?
Apparently you missed the election where every candidate who stood a chance came out in favor of the war. Kerry said he disagreed going there (even though he voted for it) but that he now supported it. As did Lieberman, Edwards, and all the rest.
There were a number of reasons for attacking Iraq on a political basis. Unlike Pakistan who has allies in the free world, Iraq doesn't. If you noticed not a single country ran to the aid of Iraq when we invaded, they shook their fingers, but they didn't lift them. If we had tried to go against Pakistan we most likely would have drawn far more heat from the world community. Additionaly, we had a sound legal reason to go to war in Iraq, they had violated the ceasefire agreement that was drawn up post Desert Storm.
Some of my friends who I went to college lost friends and family in the WTC center attacks. I myself feared for my sisters safety because she works and lives in the city. I am not saying that I don't care about 'getting the guy who did it' and it is still a high priority. But should we put all funding to that one endevour? My point in my post is that diverting the scientists from this project isn't going to help us catch Osama any faster. Additionally, your statements as to why we should capture Osama don't hold water. We are fighting militant jihadists. They won't care that we capture the leader. They will still hate us and still attack us. That addresses points 1 through 3. Point 4, that we could extract information from Osama, this too does not hold water. Perhaps you aren't familiar with how a terrorist cell operates, but it is based on the idea of minimal contact and minimal knowledge of any other cell. A recon cell might be told 'take pictures of security around these buildings' and construction cell might be told 'make three bombs with remote activated fuses cable of damaging a high rise super structure. You catch the recon you just know possible targets but not what type of attack. You catch the contruction cell and you end up with bombs, but no idea what is going to be bombed. And even if you catch one construction cell there are usually two or more. The only chance is to catch someone who stands in the middle talking between these cells, but that is usually one person who is devoted enough to swallow a bullet before he tells what he knows. And to your stupid little comment about your tax dollars subsidizing my state expenditures: I live in the richest state with one of the highest income taxes. So you don't subsidize shit to my state so go sit on it and spin. And my ancestors came here long after the conflicts with the natives, in fact I'm part indeginous myself on my mothers side, so spin on it double fast. Moron.
Saddam Hussein in another matter. He was the head of a despotic nation. He was known to have killed thousands in ethnic cleansing, had a history of agression against his neighbors, and was actively seeking to create weapons to kill millions more. By bringing him down we helped free a nation that had suffered greatly under his rule. Notice I didn't object us going into Afghanistan and kicking out the Taliban. That had many more benefits than merely finding another figurehead and taking him out. We have brought democracy to two nations in the middle east, and hopefully they will do as well as the democracy we brought to Japan following WWII. If they do succeed it makes several steps forward towards a lasting peace in the region. Until Saddam was caught and arrested he was a greater danger just because he would have been harbored by another nation and then make claims that he was still the legitimate leader of the country living in exile.
Lets compare the benefits and costs of these endevours.
Keeping in mind this project was probably long under development before 9/11 even happened; I give you a choice of two tasks:
1. Find one single person in the entire world who has an extensive network of people determined to keep him from showing up on the radar.
2. Build a robot that is able to carry a large amount of cargo over rough terrain and is rather self sufficient.
Benefits from Task 1:
1. Head of an organization brought down. However, since it is a cell based organization and much information indicates his role is no longer chief commander it will do little to help stop terrorism.
2. Umm... yeah, nevermind that's it.
Benefits from Task 2:
1. Easier transport and access to rocky terrain and remote locations (such as the ones in which Osama might be hiding.
2. Possible application in further space exploration, similar to the Mars Rover.
3. Advancement in gyrostabilization, automation of basic AI tasks, and other advanced in robotics.
4. Possible construction and civil applications.
Now, I don't know about you, but I would rather have my tax dollars go to Task 2, but that is just me I suppose.