Another one bites the dust, I guess. This isn’t looking good.
…I’d feel alone but I’m not being addressed…
I’d missed this gem before. Couple of points beyond the responses already given.
1-Did you not read the part of my analogy where I mentioned that the vast amount of financial and structural resources available to Floridians? To give you but one example, my son lives in Boca and was ordered to leave the area along with his mom.
Now, let’s see what they had available and what they were offered to do so:
A-Transportation. They have a car. Had they not, alternate means of transportation would have been provided for them. At no charge.
B-Shelter. They were given a number of safe locations to report to. From schools to hospitals to gymnasiums, all ready to take them in and provide shelter. At no charge.
C-Food. Available at all the aforementioned shelters. Need I mention, free of charge.
D-First Aid. Same as B and C.
You can read all the detailed plans **here**
Compare and contrast to what was offered to the citizens of Falluja. Leave or die. We don’t care how you do it and how you survive is not our business either.
Who left? Anyone and everyone of means.
Who stayed? Everyone else. They had no other choice. Many of them are dead today. And many more are probably dying as I type this. Beginning to see a bit of a difference between the two evacuations?
Secondly, by announcing the invasion so far in advance, what do you think the odds are that the high-profile insurgents they were ostensibly after, actually stayed? Because you don’t really think these guys are lacking in funds, do you?
So tell me again, what’s the point of this clusterfuck? Sure, they’re killing a few fanatics that decided to make a stand…along with any number of locals that had nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, Samarra is under attack by the very insurgents that were ‘subdued’ barely two moths ago. Ramadi is up in flames. Baghdad, car-bombed and mortared to hell. Iraq’s under martial law. Civilian deaths keep skyrocketing, as, understandably, does the anti-American sentiment. You’re woefully undermanned to bring any semblance of peace – never mind rebuild the infrastructure you’ve so thoroughly destroyed. Iraq, mostly privatized for the benefit of foreign companies that still there do business there. Goods and services scarce, unemployment rates through the roof, a hostile population, utterly disconnected from their invaders by any reasonable measure – language alone is a huge handicap, never mind that culturally, you’re literally worlds apart.
And yet you keep dropping WMD after WMD on them – 'cause no one is going to tell me that a 1,000+ lb bomb is not a WMD. Much less to the thousands of the relatives and friends of those that were butchered by them.
That’s Pax Americana in action – nothing like the neocons’ PNAC wet dream. Is it any wonder Iraqis want no part of it? Not that any of you cheerleaders would bother to ask them.
Note to self: self, do you realize the futility of trying to reason with True Believers? Did you not just say that you were beyond dialogue with them? That you’ll never get the past twenty minutes of your life back?
Fuck. Too late. :smack:
:::::sigh::::::
An understandable misunderstanding.
“Weapons of mass destruction,” is a term of art in diplomacy and US foreign policy. In fact, a 1,000 pound conventional explosive bomb is NOT a weapon of mass destruction.
Consider yourself informed.
This “term of art” has tear-gas alongside hydrogen bombs as weapons of mass destruction, though, doesn’t it? Very useful term of art, that one.
Yup, nerve gas too, which Iraq possessed at the time of the invasion, (and which the Dulfer report said Iraq could have produced more of in a few months. And biological agents - much the same conclusion. And nuclear weapons, in the production of which centrifuge parts, nuclear plans, and nuclear scientists all are useful).
Of course, since we can never convince RedFury that high explosives are not WMD, and Iraq unquestionably had lots of high explosives, I guess he would have to admit that Iraq really had WMD, and withdraw his accusations against Bush and apologize. If he wanted to be consistent, that is.
Regards,
Shodan
No, it doesn’t.
United States policy defines weapons of mass destruction as those “…capable of causing death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people using chemicals, a disease organism, radiation or radioactivity.”
Wow. Demostylus, getting a question fact wrong? It must be a day that ends with a ‘Y’.
When was that definition last amended?
No, wait. Let me guess.
No, go ahead.
The following is a partial list of countries that can do precisely the same thing: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Bahrain, Belize, Bolivia…
What’s your guess? That George W. Bush (CEO Bushco) amended it to serve his nefarious purposes?
Yeah. He got in his time machine and went back in time to 1991, when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 687 and used the phrase as generally defined above.
Unfortunately, he messed up the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, but he got to play Johnny B Goode before returning.
Gotta love bureaucratic jargonese. Did they get around to defining “significant,” or should we simply assume that significance is in the eyes of the beholder, thus it’s only relevant when the other guys do it? 'cause the way I see it, dead’s dead, pal. And when you drop hundreds of conventional explosives in the middle of a city, you can bet your sweet potatoes that there’s going to be “death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people.” Of course, I fully expect you to lecture me about some of the other lovely euphemisms your side loves to bandy around such as “collateral damage, precision weapons,” and my personal favorite, “smart bombs.”
Here, *see for yourself** just how goddamn smart they are. Obviously, the dumb ones are the innocent civilians that stood underneath and tried catching them on their heads.
What do you tell these people? “Don’t worry, you’re not really dead, because we didn’t mean to kill you”?
*Graphic images of war. Not for those who prefer to create their own reality. Like our very own, and extremely consistent, Shodan
Nearly the entire post above consists of strawman argumentation. Not once did I mention smart bombs. Yet RedFury devotes time to explaining how foolish I am for supporting smart bombs. That’s a win for RedFury, I suppose, if I had actually been arguing smartbombs.
The issue is not “significant.” It’s “chemicals, a disease organism, radiation or radioactivity.”
Of course, dead is dead. If I were to fillet your next-door neighbor and your bowling partners with a fishing knife, then they’d be dead, 100% dead. Yet you do not argue that a fishing knife is a weapon of mass destruction, do you? The issue isn’t “dead,” nor is it the number of people that are killed. It is a specific reference to the mass killing capabilities inherent in chemicals, disease vector organisms, radiation or radioactivity.
Quite so. Of course, it ignores the adroit segue the Admin foisted upon us. Originally, they were talking nukes, nukes, nukes. Saddam was comin’ to get yo’ mamma with nukes! “Smoking gun as mushroom cloud”. As that position began to fall apart, they deftly shifted nukes into the category of “WMD”, and then expanded that category to include just about anything that they could think of. As we now know, even that fell apart like wet kleenex, whereupon the Admin and its lockstep supporters began contending that Saddam had “programs”, even if he didn’t have the actual things themselves. Then that fell apart, and they are reduced to contending, by way of clairovoyance, that Saddam had intentions to create programs to create the weapons he didn’t have.
I fully expect a damp cocktail napkin to surface, with the word “nukes” written on it in what might very well be Saddam’s handwriting.
That’s no longer “the” issue as it’s obvious to anyone but The Faithful that there were no weapons to fit said description.
So get with the times, dipshit, and stop framing the debate – ‘strawman’ my ass. What I am arguing, is that WMDs, as currently defined is a silly bureaucratic appellation devoid of any real world meaning. Because, as proven over and over again, “mass killing capabilities” are hardly restricted to “chemicals, disease vector organisms, radiation or radioactivity.” Forget 1000 lb bombs, you may want to include box-cutters in that defintion as well. As for nuclear weapons, I need not remind you of the only nation that’s ever used them in war. Twice.
Point being one of intent and willingness to use means of mass destruction for other than self-defense measures. And a real wrold definition of what “mass destruction” is, i.e. what, exactly, is the US doing in Iraq? Not “massive” enough for ya? Whether that’s nuclear capabilities, explosives, missiles, bullets, chemicals, or airplanes is rather moot – for it appears that we at least agree on dead being dead. In fact, with the current US foreign policy of naked aggression, I can’t say that I’d blame any government for trying to adquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent. As opposed to Saddam’s acquiescence to terms, refusal of same seems to have worked quite nicely for Kim Jong-il.
This is the part where you get to wave your pom-poms.
Nice going.
I can’t quite tell, RedFury - are you saying that high explosives are WMD, or that they aren’t?
Or are you saying that they are if the US has them, but not if Iraq has them?
Or have you realized that you lost the argument, and are trying to change the subject?
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry, on posting I now see that you are admitting that Iraq had WMD.
Fair enough.
Regards,
Shodan
As you can see, Red Fury, arguing with these bloodthirsty fucks with pictures of what their Maximum Leader has done, to people who had exactly nothing to do with 9/11 or any threat at all to the US, moves them not at all. They’re far more interested in having power in the hands of those who agree with them. Nothing else matters. That a few thousand, or ten thousand, or hundred thousand, have to be killed in order for them to get that power is, at best, inconvenient. Mostly, they take no notice at all.
Anyway, being as today is Veteran’s Day, I think we should take a moment to remember that among the dead are 1149, so far, with more than eight thousand wounded, the vast majority having been killed since Bush courageously played a fighter pilot on TV. The Iraqi body count is over 10000.
Not one of those deaths prevented a single terrorist attack anywhere in the world. Hell of a cost/benefit ratio, eh?
Here’s a napkin. Now proceed to wipe the drool off your chin and read carefully:
What I am s-a-y-i-n-g i-s t-h-a-t t-h-e t-e-r-m WMDs, a-s c-u-r-r-e-n-t-l-y d-e-f-i-n-e-d, l-a-c-k-s a-n-y r-e-a-l w-o-r-l-d m-e-a-n-i-n-g. F-o-r j-u-s-t a-b-o-u-t a-n-y n-a-t-i-o-n c-a-n b-e a-c-c-u-s-s-e-d o-f h-a-v-i-n-g (or being able to) s-a-m-e.
That ‘clear’ 'nuff for you, sweetcheeks?
Fuck. It’s exhausting to argue with morans!
Bingo! That’s what I find so fuckin’ infuriating. It’s like talking to a brick wall.
Needless to say, I share the sentiments expressed in the rest of your post.
Yes. Very infuriating, especially when they put annoying little hyphens between letters in their post.
Sure, any nation can have these programs. But Iraq had agreed to dismantle theirs as a condition of a cease fire. They were, therefore, specifically banned from having them.
Another condition, agreed to by them, was to submit to unfettered inspection. The Iraqis never lived up to this end of the bargain.
What should the consequences be for a regime that does so? Please don’t say sanctions. We’re finding out now how Hussein gamed this system as well, with the connivance of the UN.
Indeed. Especially if they can’t spell.
As for the rest, I will leave you to the tender mercies of Mr. Moto, who will be able to eviscerate your argument with equal facility and far more style than I.
Regards,
Shodan