[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Scupper *
The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. I haven’t seen any evidence that Iraq had any weapons that substantially violated what they were allowed to have. Do they? Possibly, but why is it so outrageous to ask for proof of that before we start killing people?
SH had eight years to do as he pleased with no one watching. Do you think he was twiddling his thumbs during this time? How many people had SH killed already?
I’m sorry, but I just don’t accept Bush’s unsworn words as gospel without a shred of evidence to back them up. Did Saddam cooperate with the cease-fire? No, not fully. Did he ignore the terms of it entirely? Clearly not. Tons and tons of material were destroyed by weapons inspectors in that time and we have yet to provide any hard proof that Iraq maintained a covert program of any kind.
I see, he must have been destroying all those WMD during those eight years instead of making more and hiding them somewhere in the dessert where they’ll never be found.
The blanket statement “The Muslim world all hate us anyway … BFD” is the kind of “with us or against us” simplification that the Administration uses to justify what they do.
I’ve never heard the administration use that term.
You’re wrong. I’ve heard and read many “man on the street” interviews with Egyptian and Jordanian citizens that boiled down to "Why are you doing this? You are making us hate you. We hate you now."
Now who is saying they all hate us?
Not at all, but if you know the names of any of the co-conspirators, you might want to give John Ashcroft a call.
I thought that was a rather simplistic statement.
Again, where is the evidence behind the rhetoric? Is this as black-and-white a picture as Bush likes to paint it, where we find one batch of empty, forgotten chemical artillery shells marked for destruction but forgotten by the weapons inspectors, and decide that thousands of Iraqis deserve to die for it?
Sorry I didn’t realize SH was actually destroying his weapons during those eight years.
According to the administration, yes. According to common sense, no. If we are enforcing the will of the UN, why are we doing it over the UN members’ objections? If we’re enacting a penalty against Iraq for violating the WOMAD restrictions, why can’t we provide any proof that they have?
He was not in compliance for eight years. Everyone knows that. As I said before he had more than enough time to do as he pleased and I’m sure he wasn’t twiddling his thumbs. He is a known mass murderer if nothing else. Do you seriously think he wasn’t making more or at the least hiding his WMD. So because a couple nations objected to the invasion we are supposed to sit back and wait for them to show up on our front door. Sure, it’s no skin off the French or Russians asses is it? Hell no, there is no disagreement with them and Iraq is there?
What proof, specifically, made it obvious to you? Forged documents claiming Saddam was trying to buy uranium? Statistics and data pulled directly from a 10 year old report written by a grad student? Pictures of trucks that might have something to do with weapon production? Transcripts of conversations between Iraqi officers that vaguely hint they might be afraid of weapons inspectors finding something? Something they forgot and don’t want to get killed for?
Nobody has killed more Iraqis then Saddam. In fact I’d wager that even when this is over Saddam will still be the #1 killer of Iraqis. What do you think he was doing for eight years while over 400,000 Iraqi children died of malnutrition during those eight years of sanctions? It must have been something pretty fucking important to him to sacrifice that many children alone don’t you think?
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/irakids.htm
Check this if you don’t believe me.
I’m sorry, but it takes a hell of a lot more evidence than that to make me comfortable with dropping bombs on markets.
So was that cite better?
(Yes, I know those were accidental, but everyone knew we couldn’t hit 100% military targets when we started this, and we still bear the responsibility of it.)
We still won’t top Saddams body count.
Maybe if the Republicans hadn’t occupied half of Clinton’s presidency with idiotic mud-slinging we wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybes don’t make it so. If Iraq was such a dire threat, why didn’t GWB do anything about it in his first eight months in office? Or for eight months after that? The fact is, containment of Saddam was a precedent established by the previous administration, a policy Clinton continued.
Oh yeah, you’re right. The Democrats would never have done anything like that.
The only reason it has “come to this” is because the administration used 9/11 as an icebreaker to get the American public to okay any attacks on anyone they want. The French, Russians, Germans, et al can see that, even if most of us are too blind to.
I’m sorry, I can’t phathom the kind of logic used to come to that conclusion. The French, Russians, and Germans have nothing to lose. I didn’t see any Islamic fundamentalist radicals flying jets into their buildings. This however does not mean that I think SH had anything to do with 9/11. I don’t know and don’t really care. He does have terrorist connections though and if you think he couldn’t supply other terroists with WMD either directly or by providing the capability or knowledge to produce them themselves, you are living in a fantasy world.
I guess you don’t know much about the history of WWII. Germany invaded France in 1938. We entered the war in 1941. We never negotiated anything with Hitler, we simply declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy after Pearl Harbor.
That was my point, maybe we should have just negotiated with Hitler. He would have probably seen the error of his ways and pulled out.
Um, maybe because they’ve completely botched it?
That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. Glad I don’t share it though.
I think you misunderstand my point. I mean the diplomatic process of getting our allies on board with an invasion of Iraq.
I certainly would have liked to see them all onboard as well. I would have felt much better about it. However, I’m not terribly upset over it.
That’s a bizarre statement. No evidence of Iraq’s non-compliance was needed to justify our invasion? That’s both wrong and contrary to the administration’s attempts. In any event, they claimed to have evidence, but when asked to produce it, could not do so. I am uncomfortable with any policy that uses deceit to justify itself.
What I meant was he was out of compliance for 8 years. There is no argueing that point. It’s general knowledge.
What? My point is that we told everyone “we will attack even if the UN says not to, so nyah!” Not exactly diplomatic.
No it wasn’t exactly diplomatic. But it also showed them we were not going to settle on this issue. We meant business.
How about to justify a war? To justify American soldiers dying? To justify Iraqi children dying?
Again, check out the cite above if you want to see how many Iraqi children died in those eight years. We can’t possibly kill that many.
**Name one. **
Hmm, that’s a toughy, wait, what is Kuwait?
