I asked this before when people wanted to have Bush and Blair taken to the Haig for war crimes. Where is the enforcement arm of the ICC? More plainly, who’s going to go get the offenders? Having a court with no police force is almost as bad as having a police force with no court.
I was addressing
Even if Iraq was linked to terrorism (which we agree, it wasn’t), it was a 2-3 year delay before action took place. So, as an example of your sudden lashing out, if fails.
I must have missed the part in my post where I compared 9/11 victims to nazi’s. Would you care to quote that part for me Brutus? And if you believe the 9/11 terrorist attack occured within a vacuum, then I urge you to leave the country for a little while and get some perspective. Also, I am in no way supporting these terrorist actions. Osama is a complete moron and if he wanted to be left alone worshipping sky pixies, attacking the U.S. was probably not a wise choice.
That’s kinda the point. Iraq was never successfully linked to terrorism but the attempt was made - and was largely prompted by 9/11.
True, but the build up to war was evident by late 2002 - a little more than a year after the attack.
True; I agree that it’s the wrong phrase. But it’s hard to deny that Iraq was in part a reaction to 9/11; allusions to it were made fairly often in the case for war. So although it took quite some time to start firing missiles, I would say the war was an act of lashing out.
The Bush Administration had its eye on Iraq before 9/11. They used 9/11 only peripherally to advance the Iraq war. Remember we had WMD, UN sanctions, No Fly zones, mass graves, inducing Arab democracy and let’s not forget Saddam himself. The terrorism innuendo was used but no more than any other justification for war.
We could argue that 9/11 allowed for the creation of an atmosphere conducive to allowing an administration to wage war on poor evidence.
Ok, I’m really going off on a tangent here, so this is the last I’ll defend my little remark…
That’s true… but I suppose we’ll have to disagree here.
It’s just that the majority of the other reasons were tangential to the argument for a war right now. Saddam wasn’t doing much and was well contained, it seemed; democracy is a noble cause in some sense, but whether it requires soldiers on the ground immediately is highly questionable; mass murder occurs all over the world; and so on.
The real kicker, it seems to me, was that Iraq supposedly had WMDs. Now, there’s no way Saddam could strike us from just about half a world away - a weapon would have to be brought here discreetly and be set off…
In other words, terrorism.
That’s what my little analysis of the case for war boiled down to, at least. 9/11 was still fresh in our minds; it would be easy to point out that Saddam could strike under the veil of terrorism, and naturally the initial reaction would be terrorism = bad = let’s strike out.
YMMV. 
I’d definitely argue this to be true and something to be weary of - as I believe SM is arguing.
You get the feeling we’re describing the same elephant?
Terrorism is only the newest means to whip up a population. Look at the war of Jenkins ear, Tonkin Gulf etc. I must haved misunderstood the amount of Sad9/11dam linking you ran into in the US.
I have resurrected this thread just to comment that I stand by what I said, despite the bomb occurring in the city I was actually in yesterday.
I consider many of the “responses” I see being touted to be simple non sequiturs.