I’ve an extremely limited faith in the wisdom of the Israeli governement, but still I don’t think they would use nukes in a pre-emptive strike.
>> They’re developing nuclear weapons
That should be they may be developing nuclear weapons. But even if they are, so what? Many other countries including Israel, have developed nuclear weapons and only one country has used them in war and it ain’t Iraq. Iraq is not a serious threat to the US even if it did have nuclear waepons. It would be a much serious threat to its neighbors and notice how said neighbors are dead set against US agression.
>> They’re belligerant.
Seems to me the only one being belligerent now is the US. The one starting an unprovoked war is the US
>> They have shown a willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, having gassed many of their own people.
Certainly a very bad thing to do. Except when Iraq was at war with Iran the US shared intelligence with Iraq which the US knew would be used by Iraq to use chemical weapons on the Iranians. In Afghanistan the US forces stood by as hundreds of Taliban were locked in containers to die by suffocation by the Northern Alliance. The US is supporting Saudi Arabia which is one of the most represive regimes in the world. The hands of the US are not totally clean by any means.
>> Their leader has demonstrated dishonesty, cruelty, and a willingness to kill any number of people without compunction.
Dishonesty: there is plenty supply to go around, even in the US. Cruelty: Not as bad as Iraq but the illegal holding of people in the US seem pretty cruel to me. In any case, dishonesty and cruelty and killing political opponents is done by plenty of regimes in the world and that is not recognised internationally as a reason to declare war on a country. Why single out Iraq?
>>Their anti-American rhetoric suggests a risk that they might choose to attack us or to help al Qaeda attack us.
It suggests nothing of the sort unless you are delusional or paranoid. If you go by rhetoric, Castro is a much bigger rhetorical threat and no one is talking of attcking Cuba.
>> Their leader’s pasts actions suggest a lack of judgment (or perhaps a lack of sanity.)
And this is a reason to invade since when? The US has had some presidents who showed lack of judgement. Would this be a justification for a foreign invasion?
>> Saddam Hussein tried to kill the elder President Bush.
If this is true, at that time the US would have been very justified in taking retaliatory action. What you cannot do is hold the ace up your sleeve until you feel like using it.
The entire world, including those countries who would be most directly threatened, are against this war saying it is unprovoked and the threats not real. When they all agree the threat is real, then I’ll say we have something. In the meanwhile I’ll say the US is the agressor and causing problems for everybody in that region and around the world.
On June 27, 1993, the USA fired Tomahawk missiles on Baghdad, and the justification given was the alleged “Iraqi assassinate Bush plot” which was never proven, never substantiated, never backed up with any fact. The death plot was a ruse and was never confirmed by any named source. Sheer innuendo.
Innocent citizens died: Iraq’s leading artist Layla al-‘Attar, the director of the national Art Museum, and her husband were killed. She was one of those painters of nudes, a powerful force for gaining recognition of women artists, a highly respected artist who focused on the inner world of women in her paintings. Why did the United States have to kill her? For what?
Keep Layla al-‘Attar’s memory alive. Think about what it means to destroy part of a nation’s culture. For what? A phony pretext.
Sailor, why is it whenever I see your name, I assume that I am not going to agree with you?
Once again, you’ve surprised me by saying everything I would have said if you hadn’t have gotten there first. So far our plans for Iraq appear to be an unprovoked offensive acto of agression- and it seems that the rest of the world thinks that, too.
I keep waiting for the American public to stop saying “Let’s kill the camel f*cker” and ask “Why, and what will the results be?” It seems to be happening, but slowly. They better give us a good reason for this war, and quickly.
You simply can’t go around toppling governments because you don’t like them. No matter how much we try to sanitize it with words like “change of regime”, it is still destroying the government of a country (and probably killing quite a few people in the process) that does not pose a direct threat (or even much of an indirect threat- what would Iraq gain from attacking America directly?) to us.
Wow, you should go back to school and retake “Survival 101” if you believe it’s okey-dokey to let totalitarian regimes casually pursue nuclear weapons programs.
Make sure your desk has plenty of space underneath for “duck and cover” drills.
Even if Iraq had a nuke or two it still poses little or no threat to the US. It would pose more threat to its neighbors and they ain’t worrying so much so to me that means things are not as bad as the US government is making them seem.
In any case, Saddam knows very well thet if he uses a nuke he’s toast. And the guy may be mean but he ain’t stupid.
Just answering the first post of December and taking the last sentence from original OP and making it vise versa.
This means that I am not quoting anyone! Just putting everything vise versa:
In a nutshell, do you think the Iraq has the moral right to forcibly remove Bush from power?
USA has the winning combination:
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They have nuclear weapons.
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They’re belligerent. They have started unprovoked wars against a dozen of countries.
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They have used weapons of mass destruction.
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Their leader has demonstrated dishonesty, cruelty, and a willingness to kill any number of people without compunction.
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Their anti-Iraqian rhetoric suggests a risk that they might choose to attack us or to help al Queda attack us. (Bombing innocent people breeds new terrorists.)
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Their leader’s pasts actions suggest a lack of judgment (or perhaps a lack of sanity.)
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They do not have(?) biological weapons, so there’s still time to disarm them without a biological threat to us or to some other country.
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US has tried to kill heads of foreign countries.
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US did train bin-Laden and his gang in the Afghanistan war against Soviet.
No other country matches the entire list. Forcibly removing Bush is the least risky course. Nobody really knows what he would do, and I’d rather not find out.
And when am I allowed to check the US nukes, upcoming biological and chemical etc. mass-killing weapons?
This above could be Saddam’s list, (if there is a December in Iraq giving some piece of advise to him), when he is thinking what he should do…
I hope Saddam has more brains than to look at the records of history, and begin to bomb USA!
Yes, there probably* is* a december in Iraq doing just that. So, the US needs to take action before Iraq has the weapons to carry out udai december’s advice.
December!
Whatever people say, or more correctly writes about You, I like You.
You have humor & consequence even in a hard situation.
Btw. I can not figure out why people in some posts does not seem to like the fact that You also should have The Freedom of Speech? Whatever You say, You are concequent.
You really seem to be an interesting personality. Can You E-mail sometime to me about Your life, what You are doing as profession etc.?
I wish You a nice weekend!
Excuse me for side-stepping here.
No, Iraqi neighbor and American ally Israel isn’t worried about Iraq’s nuclear capability, they’re not threatened, nope.
Israel is still not part of the US and I am not sure it qualifies as a neigbor of Iraq but I’ll give you they may be concerned. Of course they are also much more immediately concerned with the Palestinians and the US does not declare war on the Palestinians.
The rest of the neighbors of Iraq who supposedly should feel threatened according to the US, have all categorically opposed any US agression against Iraq as have pretty much all other countries in the entire world except for Blair, and even he does not have much support at home.
If the evidence is so damning why don’t other countries recognise it as such? The US was a founder of the UN where countries were supposed to resolve their differences. If the evidence is so damning why doesn’t the US go to the UN and get a mandate like it did last time? I have nothing against the US enforcing a UN mandate and I have everything against the US acting unilaterally against the views of the rest of the world. Not to mention that doing that will cost the US immensely in foreign support in its international policies, including the “war on terrorism”.
Again and again I keep hearing the “America is the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon in wartime”. Am I the only person who was in tenth grade history the day that we discussed the motivations for that decision? It was a no-win island by island war in which probably far more people would have died (including my mother-in-law, incidentally, who had been sent by her father along with her mother and sisters to commit suicide at the first presence of American troops on her island- interesting story about why they didn’t, but I digress) on both sides than were killed by a bomb that, while rendering the entire population of a mid-sized city like Macon, GA, or Montgomery, AL, dead, was a minute fraction as powerful as the weaponry of today. In addition, this was two generations ago, and I don’t see how it is relevant to American foreign policy today or can reasonably be used to vilify the U.S…
Another irritant is (hawk mask on, but it’s a friendly hawk mask) the media and the doves lamenting that “this is a war about keeping gas cheap- that’s all it is”. Suppose that were true: am I the only person who thinks that keeping gas cheap is actually a good reason to go to war? Every war in human history has had an economic motive- forget ideology, theology, etc.- people fight when A has something B wants or needs. (Revenge is also an incentive, but usually it’s revenge for acts committed in a war undertaken for economic motivation.)
If I were the driver of a 9 mpg SUV and was urging Washington to nuke Baghdad because I didn’t want to pay $2.50 per gallon and that’s where it ended, then I’d be a bloodthirsty and selfish bastid. But consider the big picture if the price of oil is allowed to skyrocket: families that are currently on the borderline between making-it and not-so-much will be affected hard and fast. Salaries will either not rise to cover the costs of gasoline, which would be a bad thing, or they will rise accordingly and inflation will ensue, another bad thing. The batteries, stirrup pants, cucumbers, Cher CDs, and heart medicine sold at the local Super Wal-Mart, none of them spun from straw by the night staff, will costs a lot more to truck than they did before and the Walton Family is not likely to swallow that cost themself- it will be passed onto the already burdened consumer. The produce we export to the rest of the world (including that given in foreign aid to starving countries) will cost much more to send, resulting in greater expenditure of foreign funds (requiring massive program cuts) or cessation of the aid. Europeans already paying $5 per gallon will now be paying $10 per gallon. The entire economy of the world, rightly or wrongly, is incredibly dependent upon the price of petroleum, and until we design a car that runs on electricity or solar cells or cold fusion, whatever, it will remain that way. I don’t understand how people can act as if “a few more dollars for a gallon of petrol” isn’t a very real concern.
I’ll stand back peacefully now and watch as you tear me apart. Please close the door on your way out and don’t forget to let the cat in.
Unless you consider the times that they bombed Iraq’s nuclear facilities (and were reprimanded by the U.S., incidentally, pre- Desert Storm). But there’s evidence that they actually made a wrong turn and were intending to bomb a New Kids on the Block Concert in Bangladesh.
Some of you people are in serious denial about the threat posed by Iraq. You act as if having an unstable dictatorship acquire nuclear weapons is no big deal. Hey, we’ve got them, right? Israel’s got them. Why not Iraq?
The fact is, every intelligence analyst knows that once Saddam has the bomb he’ll be waving it around like a big club to demand what he wants. He’ll be back in Kuwait in a flash, and this time he’ll threaten the total destruction of Israel if there is retaliation.
Nuclear Brinksmanship with an insane dictator is not something that would be good for humanity. There is near universal agreement on this everywhere but apparently the SDMB.
At least learn what the debate is about. It’s not about whether Iraq is dangerous if it has nuclear weapons. It is. It’s not whether or not Saddam is capable of harming his neighbors or U.S. servicemen in the Gulf. He is.
The debate revolves around the solution to what all serious people recognize as the problem - Saddam can NOT be allowed to get his hands on nuclear weapons. The big debate right now is between three camps: The first is the U.N. position, which is that U.N. inspectors can control the situation. But even Khofi Annan has said that for inspectors to work Iraq MUST allow them in without any condition whatsoever. And Saddam has already refused that position.
The second camp is typified by the ex-Bush I experts like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They believe that Bush II should do what Bush I did, and build an international coalition before going after Saddam. They don’t disagree with regime change - they disagree about the way to go about it. Call them the Internationalists.
The third camp is the Bush administration and Tony Blair, who believe that the evidence shows that Saddam has proceeded too far already, and must be toppled now. It’s prudent to remember that the people at this level have access to classified information that the ‘outside critics’ don’t have. That doesn’t make them right, but it’s a factor to consider before you throw their opinion away.
That’s about it. I don’t know of anyone other than some Arab states who are saying, “Leave Saddam alone.” And even the Arab states who are saying that publically may be privately siding with the U.S. - after all, Saddam is their biggest threat if left unchecked.
Sam Stone wrote:
“It’s prudent to remember that the people at this level have access to classified information that the ‘outside critics’ don’t have.”
And having looked at some of those classified documents on cnn.com, believe me- they’re pretty damning.
Sam Stone, I called you on your claim that Iraq plotted to kill Bush. Where’s your evidence? There isn’t any. So quit repeating it. That false accusation has already resulted in senseless tragedy.
>> Some of you people are in serious denial about the threat posed by Iraq.
Yes, if by “some of you people” you are referring to the entire world except for the US government. If and when the US government convinces the UN and/ or a large number of countries that SH is such a big threat, then I’ll believe it. When neither Russia, nor China, nor any Arab or European countries believe it I say the US is playing up the danger for its own ends.
I also think going against SH alone would be a big mistake. First the US may be getting into something bigger than it can handle. Second the backlash in the Arab and Muslim countries will be huge and third, it will lose great support from Europe and other countries in its fight against terrorism.
If the US has such damning evidence it should go to the UN and get a mandate. Acting like a bully is not a good thing.
Jomo Mojo:
Here are the essential facts:
I have never heard anyone seriously dispute these facts. The U.S. Department of State web site lists this as fact. So do all the major newspaper sites. I didn’t bother responding to your first demand for a cite because I honestly thought this was common knowledge and not in need of reiteration.
By the way, this was the conclusion of the Clinton White House, and Clinton has long been a supporter of ‘Regime Change’ in Iraq.
And you think that the rise of retail prices and the burden passed on the consummer would justify bombing cities, having people killed by thousands, etc…
Please, emigrate to some other planet…
So, Bryan, you suggest that Saddam is a threat to our very survival, huh? Not to our economy, our way of life, not even simply a future terror threat, but a true apocalyptic threat.
And that the US, unilaterally, should take on any totalitarian regime possessing nukes. So are we going to change the regime in North Korea as well?
Sleestak, perhaps you missed the OP. What has Iraq done to the US? If we went around taking out any government that came to power through violence, we would be taking out about half the world, after peacefully overthrowing our own government.
And since I brought up this point, I must object to your characterization that it was intended to vilify the US. I have no qualms about Truman’s decision to drop the bomb. It is relevent to US foreign policy with regards to how we are perceived abroad.
Sam, are the you same Sam Stone that posted this in the “Does Tony Blair know something we don’t?” thread? Because I agree with your sentiment there completely. But here, you seem to take a different position. Put me in the Internationalists camp. If Bush and Blair lay out there case, and the evidence demonstrates “clear and present danger”, I’ll support 'em. Until then, call me a skeptic.
Like most Americans (and sailor), I would like to see both congressional and UN support before we go plunging into war.