Using attack helicopters and missiles and soldiers aren’t terrorist tactics, they’re military tactics. You don’t have to condone them, but you don’t get to declare them acts of terrorism.
A terrorist is someone who uses terror. Scaring people makes one a terrorist. Got it. Banging down doors in the night and dragging citizens away is using terror. I’ve seen American soldiers doing exactly this. By your definition, American soldiers are guilty of engaging in terrorism.
Fucked up my coding.
Then by your logic it isn’t a great logical leap to assume that since he didn’t use bigger weapons he didn’t possess them.
You’re behind in the program, dude.
Everyone knows that Hussein didn’t have those bigger guns/WMDs. The only reason anyone thought he did was because of Clinton and Kerry.
-Joe
Ah, my bad.
Nooooooooooooooooo-body expects the Spanish-American War! TYM, just what are you implying about my age, huh? HUH??? :dubious:
Ahem. cosmosdan, I was referring to the Vietnam War as the one I originally believed was justified. Shit, was I ever wrong! But it started when I was in high school and quite naive.
Thanks.
One thing I remember from that era. We were in the car with the radio on listening to the news about Vietnam. I was preadolescent. I casually remarked that I might have to go there and fight some day and the car errupted in laughter. “HAHAHAHAH, don’t be silly. Of course not. It will be over long before then.” We pulled out of Vietnam my senior year of High school.
I couldn’t give less of a shit. Jesus, I want us to go after mass murderers and you want to talk about unpaid traffic tickets. Saddam’s pathetic military posturing was no threat whatsoever to the U.S. or its citizens. Occasionally pointing obsolete AA equipment at our jets and having it immediately blown up is not exactly a serious and immediate danger to the country. And speculating about what he would have done if he magically had a powerful military is beyond irrelevant.
Going after actual terrorists is much, much harder and less prone to the quick, dramatic results politicians like. On the other hand, it’s the only way we’re going to actually prevent future attacks, so the sooner we demand that our leaders stop pretending the easy, stupid solutions will do anything other than make things worse, the better off we’ll be.
Look, I’m not backtracking so much as others in this thread are playing ridiculous word games and arguing semantics. Frankly, it’s childish, disingenuous, and getting a little old.
I agree that there is no clear evidence of cooperation between al Qaeda and Iraq, but lack of evidence does not necessarily imply innocence. As stated earlier, there is evidence that Hussein did support suicide bombings which despite anything else makes him a valid target of the war on terror. Not to mention the fact that Iraq was in violation of sanctions, and he was widely thought to have WMDs by EVERYBODY.
Keep playing semantic word games if it makes you happy. “Scaring people makes one a terrorist” is your invention.
First, Hussein was a mass murderer, so you got your wish. Second, being in violation of UN resolutions can hardly be compared to unpaid traffic tickets. At least, no honest comparison can be made to that effect.
So, Psycho Pirate, you’d back an invasion of Israel due to their flagrant violation of many UN resolutions, right, since you think that such a criterion warrants military action?
Don’t be dense. In terms of being a threat to the U.S. and its citizens, Hussein was nothing. Going after him when al Qaeda has publicly vowed to follow 9/11 with even more devastating attacks against our civilians is the equivalent to pulling police officers away from hunting a serial killer to give out traffic tickets. Doesn’t mean breaking traffic laws isn’t bad, m’kay? In the same way, no one disputes that Hussein was bad. However, he should have been infinitely lower priority than al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11. All the international cooperation and goodwill, military resources, soldiers lives and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in Iraq would have been far better spent fighting terrorism.
Now that you mention it, that’s not such a bad idea. And while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and take on Syria. After all, they deserve it, and it’ll give us a continuous area of occupation from Tel-Aviv to Basra. And we’ll get Turkey to stay on board by telling them we’re re-uniting the Ottoman Empire.
Well I’m not playing word games. Don’t you think your qualifier is a huge distinction, and changes the way we deal with things in a major way?
In the case of WMD it certainly did. Besides, the onus is on us, the people invading, to make sure the reasons for doing so are concrete. We failed in that capacity, we should at least own up to it.
By our broad definition yes. It might be nice if it was pointed out that he supported Palestinian terrorists and not AQ. If this was known, we might then be able to weight the importance of which terrorists he’s dealing with. AQ who has struck us on our own turf, or Hamas, who can’t even afford a plane ticket to get anywhere near here.
We really need to put these things in context and allocate our resources and political capital where they will best serve us.
Why are we mocking the French and the Germans again? Oh that’s right, because they’re a bunch of pussies trying to block us from going to war.
You said that **“a terrorist is someone who uses terror or terrorist tactics against their enemies.” ** If OBL says he’s going to “shock and awe” NYC, you wouldn’t consider this a terroristic threat? I certainly know Bush would.
I’m not playing semantic word games, I’m showing how your definition of terrorism is so broad as to be meaningless. You said that one who uses terror against his enemies is a terrorist, not me. American soldiers use terror against their enemies, wouldn’t you agree? We’ve all seen pictures of barely-restrained dogs shoved in the faces of Iraqi prisoners. Is that not using terror against the enemy? Doesn’t that mean American soldiers are terrorists?
Actually, it does.
True, since what makes a target valid is Bush’s declaration of something to be a target. What Saddam Hussein actually did doesn’t seem to enter into it, though. Convenient, that.
The UN, not the US, decides when and how to enforce its resolutions, and no, not everybody thought Iraq had WMDs. Canada, for instance, didn’t. At least, it’s official position doesn’t seem to reflect the statements made by the Bush Administration along the lines of “we know for a fact . . .” and “there can be no doubt . . .” and "we know where they are . . . " You seem to be under the impression that the US offered a convincing argument to support its claims when in fact it did not.
That’s pretty much the case, although I doubt Iraq responded with such flair as you describe. Nevertheless, overtures made by Al Qaeda were consistently rejected by Iraq. Not that it seems to matter to you. Merely breathing the same air as Al Qaeda members seems sufficient for you to decide Iraq’s fate. Lack of evidence of guilt doesn’t imply lack of guilt, after all. Not when Bush says otherwise.
I’m still waiting for us to take action against all the American mother@#$%ers who financed terrorism in Ireland.
hell - what about the groups that supported (at least verbally) Eric Rudolph? or the militias that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols belonged to? certainly if the criteria is as tenuous as “we know they met, therefore they’re a target”, there’s lots of home grown “targets” available. Think of how much we’ll save on travel expenses for the troops! why some of the National Guardsmen could probably use their own vehicles!
Ah yes, this little talking point. The Administration stated that it had evidence Hussein had WMDs. Many people in this country and abroad were skeptical and wanted evidence. Nothing credible was ever proffered. However, very few politicians on either side were willing to counter-assert that the potential threat did not exist. Politicians are pussies. The Democrats were complete pussies before the invasion. That fact does not automatically equate to universal consensus.
Incidentally, we’re incredibly lucky Iraq didn’t actually have WMDs or they’d probably be in the hands of terrorists right now, since we didn’t wait to gather any intel on where they were to secure them during the invasion. Instead, like the four tons of high explosives now in the hands of the insurgents, they probably would have been grabbed up in the chaos. Many of us pointed this out before the war and were ignored.
What are you, a Yankees fan trying to collateral-damage the Red Sox out of the pennant race?
Well, America keeps saying that it wants to export its values of democracy and justice to the world. And here in America, an absence of evidence is generally considered sufficient to establish someone’s innocence, because establishing guilt requires those making the allegations to prove their case.
You realise, i assume, that EVERYBODY thought he had WMDs because, for the most part, EVERYBODY believed the United States when it said that he had WMDs. What EVERYBODY did not realize was that the United States intelligence community would deliberately distort information, rely on unreliable witnesses, and generally fuck up the whole process by which the presence or absence of WMDs could be verified.
Isn’t that more properly phrased “the political hacks overseeing, or outflanking the intelligence community”?
So, when just about everyone can see that the ‘illegal’ invasion of Iraq wasn’t the smartest move in modern times, can we agree on that the French were right all the time?
Or have they been ridiculed so much now, that that would be a too big a freedom fry to swallow?
There was a French commander-in-chief in Vietnam who said, concerning their pulling out: “We would need half a million men to conquer Vietnam…” Then he added, thoughfully: “And still we wouldn’t win…” That was just before the Vietnam situation was handed over to the US, who, coincidentally, at most had half a million men there, and still didn’t win.
Perhaps one should pay attention to old nations who’ve been through revolutions, wars, triumph and humiliating defeat for two thousand years. They might have developed a bit of wisdom at last.
On the other hand, there’s Fox News, and their analysis of the global situation is probably much more accurate. And that Bush character, well he’s your regular Roosevelt, right?
/Wakinyan (not French, by the way, having some freedom fries)