Dude. England, Poland, Australia, Italy, etc.
Are those pop warner teams, too? We’re talking about thousands of soldiers from some of the best armed forces in the world.
If that’s pop warner, then your neighborhood games must have been much better than mine.
Since when are Poland and Italy major military powers? High school, tops.
All you’re left with is Britain (minus Canada). Two powers does not an international community make.
Let’s go down the list.
United Kingdom/Australia - OK, got us here. The Brits do have a modern, well equipped military.
Italy - Can’t even defend against their own student protesters.
Poland - Ah, Poland, the great buffer zone of Europe.
Ukraine - OK, I guess Ukraine constitutes something resembling a fighting force.
Netherlands - Too stoned to shoot straight
Japan - Japan has a military?
Romania - I can’t think of anything at all to say about Romania, other than, “hm, Romania still exists?”
South Korea - Yes, South Korea is a totally unbiased and willing partner in the Coalition. There are no circumstances or pressure on South Korea to participate. Just like Japan.
First…
You might not like this answer, but, IIRC, it comes from the GWBTeam.
We didn’t take out Zarqawi when we had a chance because they were afraid it would hurt their case for invading Iraq. That’s right, we had a chance to take out Zarqawi in the run up to the war but it was declined because having him in Iraq was essential to the pro-war pitch for the invasion of Iraq.
Second…
Ansar al-Islam actively opposed the Baathists and Hussein’s regime.
Hussein wasn’t as powerful as he was before he had his ass handed to him over Kuwait and before his civilians and his military capability languished under years of sanctions.
You say that it’s likely that he could’ve done something about Mr Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq. I say that given the reputation of Mr. Hussein’s previous interactions with armed Iraqi groups who opposed his rule, it’s likely that if Mr. Hussein could’ve wiped out armed Iraqi opposition groups like Ansar al Islam he would’ve. He does have quite the record for the use of deadly force against his Iraqi opposition.
[hijack]
Isn’t interesting that Mr. Zarqawi had two legs, then he had one leg, then he was captured by US forces, then he got two legs again just in time for the shooting of the Nick Berg video? Do think that the Us forces that captured him let him shoot that video in his cell?
He’s not the only ‘terrorist leader’ who’s been killed and subsequently captured, or captured and subsequently commit more heinous deeds, or captured multiple times after being killed multiple times and then still have enough in them to go on to even more dastardly deeds.
It’s interesting to me anyway.
[/hijack]
Well, this really depnds on how one defines ‘operational contacts’. If by ‘operational contacts’ you mean that operatives had contacts then I’d agree that it shows that they had operational contacts. If by ‘operational contacts’ you’re trying to say that this shows that Hussein and al Qaeda worked together, then I’d have to say, “No, it does not show that Hussein had operational contacts with al Qaeda. It is an example where they did not work together.”
[hijack]
Coincidentally, Hussein did have some very extensive contacts with international terrorist groups. The most extensive and well documented of these relationships is not often brought up by the pro-Bush pro-war discussants. This is his relationship with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq.
Oddly enough, a member of GWBTeam helped this terrorist group raise funds in January 2004. The same member of GWBTeam who passed classified national security information to agents of a foreign government.
This same fellow, The Prince of Darkness, is one of GWB’s hand picked foreign policy advisors, The Vulcans. GWB picked these fellows to help him “find Kosovo on a map.”
Imagine that, a member of GWBTeam supporting the exact same terrorist group that Hussein supported. Ah just forget about it. Nothing to see here. Move along. FNORD.
Incidentally, one of the other Vulcans was previously convicted of lying to Congress about national security matters.
Character still counts.
Bush just chose some folks of very, very bad character to be his advisors, and the nation’s paying the price.
[hijack]
Again, there’s still no argument from me that Hussein supported international terrorists.
Where dispute arises is as to whether or not Hussein’s support for these terrorists represented a threat to the US. An examination of Hussein’s involvement with international terrorism mostly consists of attacks on Iraqis living in Iraq and abroad, and on Iran.
The questions as to the essential character of the links between al Qaeda and Iraq are only pertinent in that they have direct bearing on the dispute over the nature of threat from Iraq to the US.
While it is a good start, showing that Hussein had a connection to international terrorisms is not tantamount to demonstrating that Iraq was a grave threat to the US. A grave threat from Iraq to the US that must be counteracted posthaste would be an example of war being within the just interests of the US. As a matter of fact, if there were such a threat, there would’ve been no need to alter the description of what constitutes imminent threat as the NSS does. There wouldn’t’ve even been the need for a pretense of a UNSC vote if there was A grave threat from Iraq to the US that must be counteracted posthaste, (before there’s a ‘mushroom cloud’ over a major US city with ‘300,000 dead Americans’) would’ve immensely simplified the entire affair. However…
While it is a good start, showing that Hussein had a connection to international terrorisms is also insufficient to demonstrate that it was in the US’s best interests to invade Iraq, (esp in the manner in which we did).
The first link, to the Hou Chron story,
“Brooks gave sketchy details of what convinced the U.S. forces they had uncovered a terrorist camp, referring only the work being done by those captured and “inferences to the type of training they received.”
He said some tanks, a small number of personnel carriers plus buildings used for command, control, morale and welfare were all destroyed at the camp.”
One has to wonder which of the over one hundred ‘offcial’ USG definitions Gen brooks was referencing was using.
The second link, to the sptimes, (St Paul Times?), doesn’t work.
The third link, doesn’t verify the story about the foreign trainees, it’s a repeat of the story. It’s still sourced to the Iraqi defectors. There’re lieterally thousands of stories out there that are sourced to these same Iraqi defectors. This doesn’t do anything to verify the story. It’s only repetition.
Almost lastly, at least according to The Prince of Darkness, the Salman Pak story came from defectors that were supplied by the Iraqi National Congress’s discredited Intelligence Collection Program that was run by an Iranian intelligence operative.
Lastly, I’m still not disputing Iraq’s ties to some sort of terrorism.
Now play fair. I never said that it was false. I just pointed out that despite all these things that this story has going for it no one of import has gotten behind it. While there may be some very good reason for this, (such as the GWBTeam hasn’t read it), it certainly seems that if this were what it is supposed to be, it would alleviate a lot of the Admin’s headaches re Iraq, and cause the CIA and other members of the Intellilgence Community to reverse their judgements about the relationship between aQ and Hussein.
So while it’s not proof that the story doesn’t hold enough water to suit the WH, it is certainly worthy of note that the WH et al have’t taken the story any farther in the past year.
While this is very true, your citation as to the " numerous, credible contacts between Iraq and terrorists" was very well refuted by what I posted and you responded to with the above.
[quote]
I suppose that I should’ve been more specific. I didn’t mean deterrability from just any old thing. I meant the ability to deter attacks from Hussein on the US.
So, Mr. Gore’s quote, charming as it may be, deals with an entirely diffeent issue than deterring Hussein from attacking the US.
When you use th epithet ‘madman’ are you making any reference to the ability of ‘national obliteration’ to deter Hussein from attacking the US?
FYI. This is related to the different definitions of ‘deterrance’ being used here. Generally, in this context, deterrance referrs to the ability to deter attacks, not the ability to deter weapons research.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, teh threat of ‘resounding silence’ in the Iraqi desert deterred Hussein from launching unconventional weapons against the US in the first Gulf War.
Hussein already had something like 550 tons of yellow cake.
He’d still have to get a hold of 10,000 plus centrifuges to go with the part of one that some guy stashed under his rose bush to even start to think abut refining enough of the yellow cake to make a nuke.
That’s what.
So what?
‘Adequate’ doesn’t cut it against the World’s Best Ever. Hussein’d still be a punk.
Again, 'I do not think that word means what you think it means," in this context.
Hussein was clearly deterred from ‘initiating’ attacks against the US. The NIE held that the probability of Hussein ‘initiating’ an attack, (directly or by proxy), against the US, was “low.”
The World tribune has the citations about how there have entire suspect WMD related sites literally stripped to their foundations since the US took control of Iraq. WMD ‘components’ have turned up in scrap markets throughout the world.
The sensitive items went from being guarded to being unguarded as direct result of the Us invasion. Furthermroe, we knew where these sites were beforehand, and we knew that they contained these sensitive items, yet we failed, (despite expert advice from generals such as Shinseki), to invade in such a way that we could quickly and adequately secure the sites.
I assumed that he had at least some sort of biological or chemical weapons.
But yes, I agree with the esteemed Dr. Rice’s position, that, among other things, the threat of national obliteration was a suffcient deterrent to keep Hussein from attacking the US. The threat of obliteration has a long successful history as a deterrant.
NK received help from Pakistan.
What’s with this Pakistan being everywhere you turn when it comes to the illicit proliferation of nuclear weapons technology?
I can’t begin to tell you how great it feels to hear a voice of reason from the opposite side.
Granted, war is bad deal all round. The big question is, is there a strong potential for good things to come out of Iraq invasion? I think there is. We all stand to benefit enormously if and when a free democratic Iraq will be able to stand on its own. If we can agree on this, we can put minds together and think, might there have been a better way to achieve this? Was there a peaceful way to take out Saddam?
Because simply containing Saddam didn’t do any good for Iraq and the whole ME now or in future. Just like blockading Cuba for 40 years didn’t do any good to Cubans or Americans. Bush Sr. and many others hoped that Saddam would fall on his own 12 years ago. Their hopes proved futile. We need to think long and hard to come up with a “non-invasive” way to do what US army has done in Iraq swiftly and decisively.
And beyond raining death upon thousands and thousands of civilians – who never asked for your interference and want you out yesterday – and plummeting that nation into utter chaos, please, pray tell, what has the “US arny done so swiftly and decisively” that couldn’t have waited for the “non-invasive” way? And beyond that, who, exactly appointed, the good US of A, and more precisely, Sherriff Dubya&Co, policemen of the world? Besides themselves of course.
Arguments to the future do little to assuage the bloody reality on the ground.
AQA:
Here, to me, is the crux of the debate, taken from your post # 73:
I disagree on both counts: states are limited to attacking only those who attack them first (with the special exception of preemption, see below), and they absolutely should be. One could say this was the primary lesson of WWII and the reason behind the formation of the United Nations.
Regarding the first point, the US is constrained in its use of military force by its membership in the UN, and specifically by the UN Charter. The claim that the US, as a signatory to the Charter, isn’t limited in its application of force is simply incorrect. The UN Charter clearly removes the option of force or threat of force from individual member states and places it firmly within the Security Council.
There are of course some gray areas, such as the use of preemptive force, as noted by Simon X above. Preemptive military actions are not allowable under a very strict reading of the charter, but a long tradition, and large body of legal opinion (along with simple common sense), exist to support the policy of preemption.
To state that the US shouldn’t be limited to attacking those who attack us first is to basically repudiate US membership in the UN. The principle you espouse above flatly contradicts both the letter and the spirit of the UN Charter. It would grant the US a much broader range in the use of military force than it currently has (technically speaking, anyway), and, in my opinion, it also would open up a real Pandora’s Box.
This has, to my mind, been what much of the debate has really centered on. One can outline two broad views: 1) the threshold for the use of force in international relations should be set relatively high, or 2) it should be set relatively low. The dividing line here is not between the left and the right as it is traditionally viewed in the US, but rather between a “conservative” and a “liberal” view on the use of force in the world beyond America’s borders. Simon and I have otherwise significantly different political philosophies, but when it comes to this issue we are united in that we promote something closer to a “conservative” view: the threshold for force should be set high (i.e., that we should be conservative in our use of force). Bush, on the other, and many other proponents of the war, support a more “liberal” view: the threshold should be set low (i.e., that we should be liberal in our use of force).
With regard to Pandora’s Box: the “liberal” view poses a number of serious problems, problems that the UN, however ineffectively, was originally designed to solve. To begin with, without the traditional standards of self-defense and preemptive self-defense as a guideline to the use of force, where, exactly, should the “force threshold” be drawn? I think there is a significant risk here, one that Iraq clearly exemplifies: the risk that the bar can be set far too low, too low even for a rational liberal view. We were told that Iraq possessed “WMDs,” and that they were therefore a threat, and that this threat justified an otherwise unprovoked invasion. Yet Iraq, apparently, did not possess “WMDs,” and thus was not the threat Bush made it out to be. That much is clear. So: how much of threat must a state be before we are justified in starting an unprovoked war against it? This is a hang-up for many of us who opposed the war, and the lack of “WMDs” in Iraq has led many, not without reason, to classify the invasion as a “preventative war of choice” rather than an absolutely necessary military action, as the Bush administration claimed. In other words, if we abandon the standard of self-defense we open the door to the possibility of military adventurism on a scale that makes one’s head swim.
In addition, the US must acknowledge that, if it wishes to be consistent in international relations, it must grant to other states those rights it assumes for itself. If the US is no longer required abide by the constraints of the UN Charter in it’s exercise of international force, neither are other states. In other words, if we accept this principle, a foreign state’s use of force cannot be reasonably limited to self-defense, either. All states must also be granted an internationally recognized right to act “preventatively,” and to defend their strategic interests in precisely the same manner as the US.
Let us say that China suddenly claims that it views Taiwan as a threat to its national security and strategic interests. Using your standard, China would have an internationally recognized right to invade Taiwan and install a government more favorable to its interests in precisely the same way that you grant the US a right to invade Iraq. In fact, using that standard, Iraq’s own invasion of Kuwait would have been a justifiable use of force within the international arena.
You may remember that the US relied upon Article 51 of the UN Charter, which forbids the use of force in international relations, as a justification for its military response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This invasion has frequently been used as a justification for the current war by the pro-war side, yet they would appear to grant to the US a right that they condemn without question when it was exercised by Iraq.
In short, I think your advocacy of military force in international relations is far too casual, and risks becoming an argument of American “exceptionalism,” based on the hypocrisy that the US does not have to abide by the rules of law it demands of other members of the international community.
I was going to give a response to you about my view of the proper war policy for the US but Mr. Svinlesha just about summed it up in the above post very well. I would place less importance on UN law specifically and just say that any act of war sets a precedent for every nation in the future. I tend to be less optimistic about the role of the UN and international law in keeping world peace, but the spirit or philosophy of Mr. Svinlesha’s post is absolutly on the mark in my opinion.
This is the simple summation of the conservative viewpoint concerning this issue. And in direct answer to your question: there may not have been a peaceful way to take out Saddam and establish a democracy in Iraq. However, by approving the liberal use of force we have have made Iraq a better place at the expense of endangering the world in the near future, and at the expense of our own credibility in dealing with truly dangerous international situations that may arise in the near future.
I hope this (and Mr. Svinlesha’s awesome post) elucidates what I believe is a very non-partisan, rational explanation of the anti Iraq argument - I think that’s what you were looking to find.
Either you don’t follow the news very well, or you have some definition of “better place” that isn’t particularly obvious.
And this just in, regarding that “better place”…
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/16/1089694568757.html?oneclick=true
Meet the new Boss!
Troubling, but many will regard this with gruff approval, serves 'em right, a bit of rough justice, a firm hand, that’s what the situation calls for. Would the Bushviks cozy up to a “strongman”, if he would ensure stability, if his tactics, however harsh, could ensure that the troops could be home in time for the Re-Elect our Heroes and Support Our President Rally?
Is the bear Catholic, does the Pope shit in the woods?
I think I went too far and raised an issue that deserves a separate debate (which I’m in no hurry to start, for as you said before, we had 1000s of such debates already). So I’d like to drop it and come back to the OP: what makes Iraq unique? AQA gave many geopolitical reasons for uniqueness of Iraq situation, while I was trying to concentrate on the history of US-Iraq conflict. To sum, no country in the Middle East was so hostile to US as a matter of state policy as Saddam’s Iraq was, all the way to going to war against US. I think it makes Iraq extremely unique. Doesn’t mean it had to be invaded or not, just was it or not unique?
Perhaps if we can come to some sort of agreement on this issue, it will facilitate future debates on more divisive subjects.
Um, holy shiat? Is that true?
Err, ummm, Iran? Which regularly, as state policy, defines the USA as the Great Satan, and exhorts its citizens to prepare for imminent invasion by same? Does this make Iraq “extremely unique” or just “exceptionally ordinary”?
(e. checks chain, to see if its being yanked upon. Apparently not, no evidence of leg being pulled, either. How very odd…)
Actually, the US went to war against Iraq, remeber the chain of events, Iraq invades Kuwait, the US jumps into the fight; Saddam did not attack the US, ever.
So, what your saying here is that it is important for the United States to control that oil, right?
After invasion of Kuwait Saddam was given ultimatum to withdraw. He decided to stay and fight, thus going to war against UN-approved international coalition, led by US.
e, which part of “going to war” you can’t understand? Did Iran ever went to war against US? Did the state of Iran invade anybody for the last few hundred years?
Or, at least, be controlled by a government that’s friendly to the US (puppet or otherwise).
I suggest that there are better ways to influence US gov’t policy on Sudan, than express your opinions on SDMB. Right now all prominent black US politicians are holding protest demonstrations by Sudan embassy in DC, commiting acts of civil disobedience and getting arrested, to express their outrage against Sudan gov’t. I imagine there are quite a few people present there all the time, besides those politicians. May be that’s a place for you to be, if you feel really strongly about that issue.
Perhaps this is a start of building a case for future invasion into Sudan, whether by UN or US, if Bashir would prove to be as big megalomaniac as Saddam was. And here is the crux: every invasion requires a history. There was a history to Kosovo operation, based on ethnic crimes perpetrated by Serb militias in Bosnia. There was no ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, but we knew there could be. There was even longer history to Iraq invasion, based on Saddam insane abuses of power. It was much less dangerous Saddam in 2003, but we knew he could be very dangerous.
It is only if you refuse to see that history, you can say that US is engaging in sudden and unprovoked acts of agression, that makes your head “swim”.
It’s not so much a matter of discovering secrets. It is getting the materials (with means both the uranium and the centrifuges necessary to make weapons-grade material). Much easier in N. Korea’s case since they do have nuclear reactors producing energy.
And, by the way, you are repeating a commonly-stated but incorrect view in implying that we know that N. Korea has nuclear weapons. What we in fact know is that North Korea claims to have nuclear weapons. Since aspects of this claim seem fishy and since there are good reasons why N. Korea might want to claim they already have nuclear weapons when they in fact don’t (at least not yet), this claim has to be regarded with some suspicion. Here and here is what physicist Robert Park has to say about the claim (and about how far along Libya’s nuclear program was):
We now have quite a bit of evidence that we were lucky as hell that Saddam did not have WMD. I.e., we did such a poor job securing sites that could have contained WMD that these sites were apparently looted and some non-WMD things have found their way to other countries.
And, while the intelligence analysts who were paid to understand this stuff knew that it was extremely unlikely that a dictator used to absolute control like Saddam Hussein would cede that control to anyone…let alone someone as fanatical (and with as strong a history of turning against former friends) as Bin Laden, it seems much less unlikely that Joe Looter would be unwilling to sell some WMDs to some terrorist who wants them.
Of course, another point that I haven’t seen brought up is that the Iraq war has also likely served as an amazing recruitment tool for Al Qaeda. Bin Laden probably doesn’t even have a billion dollars to spend on recruitment. Fortunately for him, Bush has a few hundred billion to spend on it. And, unfortunately, he has spent it quite effectively in that regard.