Time for your nap.
Gotta wonder, Frank. Given your assertion of telepathic power, the ability to peer into another’s mind and inventory the contents, the ability to distinguish real motive from pretense…
Are we putting forth what we think are reasonable arguments, but aren’t, because we are too stupid and blind with rage to know the difference? Or do we know the arguments are bogus, but so full of rabid fury at Bush, we don’t care, we’re just trying to pull a slow one and fool people?
How do you define innocent? Bombs and rockets kill innocents. We call them collateral damage. Our actions will surely kill women and children.
From Gadaffy’s viewpoint ,a bunch of rebels threatened to overtake his legal government. They took over a large part of the country. Then his brave soldiers and citizen backers retook most of it.
We are screwed now. We can not permit Gadaffy to stay in power. He has oil money and has supported terrorism in the past. What do you think he would do now, if he stayed in command?
Much of Khadafy’s military has already defected to the rebel side, although the “rebel military” still is a bit lacking in organization and coherence. But the rebels are a little better armed than you give them credit for. Remember that putting on a uniform does not make one less a human or less devoted to making one’s country a better place (OK, sometimes it works in reverse).
Or that they have a real chance of getting killed in the hopeless defense of a guy they never really liked anyway. Uniforms are easy to take off, too.
In this NYT story a rebel spokesman claims NATO airstrikes are now hitting government soldiers in their barracks.
If true, IMO this is another serious and poorly thought out escalation. It’s one thing to hit mobile columns that have deployed against the opposition, with the message being, “If you step out with your weapons, you will suffer the consequences”. But if the barracks are being hit, well, shit, they may as well go out and climb into their tanks and armored vehicles, which at the least are better protected. If there is no place they can consider a haven, and opt out of the fighting by staying home, then the whole fucking military will involve itself.
Just at the brink of time !
According to Wiki, around 2,500 people have died so far in this civil war, estimated by external organisations ( 1000 according to the UN ), and about 500 were Gaddafiites.
Which includes there, ‘Also, on the same day, 50 African mercenaries, mostly from Chad, were executed by the protesters in al-Baida. Some of them were killed when protestors burned down the police station in which they locked them up and at least 15 were lynched in front of the courthouse in al-Baida. The bodies of some of them were put on display and caught on video.’
Which means they’re kinda verified. What would we do without cell-phones ? It’s a great time to be alive !
Still, the old fuck is probably losing his magic touch if he couldn’t even carry off a minor massacre of hundreds of thousands, at least in his imagination.
Thank God for the US standing firm against massacres by crazed dictators everywhere. As this heavily Bushite Right-Wing Counterpoint article suggests:
Most humans do appear to be programmed by nature to cheer in situations where there is a clear bad guy and a good guy going after him. That is why blockbuster Hollywood movies and professional wrestling generate billions of dollars in revenue by repeating endlessly the same simple plot with only changes of costume. But world affairs are never so simple.
…
They attempted to kill one of the major local warlords with special planes equipped with modern Gatling guns, circling the sky and spraying large-calibre shells in built-up areas, at the rate of thousands per minute, much of that indiscriminate firepower killing innocent people and destroying property in a poor region. Hundreds of Somalis were killed by the American efforts, and some reports put the number at 10,000.
…
In the case of Indonesia, following the downfall of President Sukarno in 1967, about half a million people had their throats slashed and their bodies dumped into rivers because they were, or were suspected of being, communists. The entire nation was turned temporarily into an abattoir for humans, and where was the United States, defender of freedom, during the horror? Rather than any effort to stop the terror, it had employees of the State Department on phones around the clock feeding the names of people they’d like to see included in the extermination.
'Course, they didn’t have cell-phones back then…
Those are odd questions.
Have I not I made it clear that I believe that your (the plural your, as opposed to some insulting construction that also includes Shayna, ElvisL1ves, etc.) support is partisan? It’s really simple, elucidator. I believe that you are supporting the president’s actions because he is a Democrat, a support identical in degree and kind to posters who supported Bush’s actions because he was a Republican. I find it impossible to believe that someone who had actually thought about it could not either oppose both or support both.
I’ll admit to some uncertainty as to what rage and fury have to do it.
Let’s see, in relation to Iraq II, if Bush II:
[ul]
[li]Had not lied so transparently about why military action was needed,[/li][li]Had a current UN resolution to act, confirming his reasoning was sound,[/li][li]Had nearly unanimous consent of the Arab League,[/li][li]Had the support of our allies, which included participation from Arab nations,[/li][li]Had committed to air and missile strikes only with a promise of no ground troop deployment,[/li][li]Had committed to weeks, not months (let alone years),[/li][li]Had turned over control of the operations to NATO in just over a week’s time,[/li][li]And bombed only those targets he and his liar SOS pretended to “know” were bunkers hiding WMDs?[/li][/ul]
I would have supported that action just like I supported Bush I’s actions in Iraq I. But since you seem to think you know my mind and heart better than I know them myself, I’m sure you’ll find a way to call me a liar anyway. Be my guest. Just know that you’ll look like arrogant pond scum to anyone with the brains G-d gave a gnat.
Damn. I think you bisected every angel that was dancing on the head of the pin.
So the distinctions she raises are insignificant, then? Mere hair-splitting, sopthistry, semantic trickery? OK, lets just take the first one.
“Had not lied so transparently about why military action was needed”
Have we a debate as to whether or not GeeDubya conducted a campaign of misinformation and/or disinformation?
Taking that as a given, we are left to wonder how Obama could possibly have created a roughly equal amount of mendacity, given that Bush had better than a year head start. Obama has only had a month or so, he would have had to lie non-stop, without food or sleep, to accomplish that.
Or is it the violated purity? One lie is equal to a thousand, like the unjustly accused True Scotsman who only buggered one sheep, McDonald the Sheep-fucker? Obama screwed one, Bush rogered every wool-bearing creature from Liverpool to Loch Ness, his dick stll smells like lanolin… But still, one sheep and you’re just as much a sheep-fucker as the next guy. They are the same, then?
And what might that be? Lets just take the biggy, WMD. Lied his ass off, lied high wide and ugly for more than a year. Pretty good sized lie there, Frank, got some serious heft to it.
So, what has Obama done that compares? So close that any distinction is trivial and sophistic?
Bush is to WMD in Iraq, as Obama is to [blank] in Libya?
OK, why was U.S. military action needed in Libya?
There is somewhat of a similarity between Bush’s Iraq adventure and this latest action in Libya, but there are also substantive difference.
In both cases we seem to be going in to topple (or aid in toppling) an existing, repressive regime in a tribal country with no Democratic traditions. And we didn’t/don’t have a plan for ensuring that order is maintained while Democratic traditions are established. In both cases the majority of the population of these countries enthusiastically welcomed us as liberators (they did in Iraq for the first few weeks, until chaos erupted).
But having a real alliance and a vote from the UNSC makes a big difference. And since we’re not sending in ground troops, we won’t be seen as occupiers. In Libya there was at least the threat of an imminent humanitarian crisis, whereas Iraq was relatively stable.
It bugs the shit out of me that Obama didn’t get approval from Congress, but other than that, I think he followed a much better process in getting to where we are than Bush did.
We’ve taken sides in a civil war. You really think that the lack of ground troops (at the moment) makes a difference?
You, of all people, think that a vote from the UN to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation matters? I’m suprised.
I guess I learn something every day.
You mean outside of that resolution from the Senate you were at such pains to rub my nose in? That unanimous resolution, IIRC?
Because the rebels, the not-as-bad guys (since you recoil at the thought of their possibly actually being good guys, their attempts at establishing even temporary and fragile democracy notwithstanding) were going to lose and be massacred otherwise.
Duh. :rolleyes:
And the basis for your “belief” carrying any weight whatsoever, given your reason-free and juvenile conduct here, would be what exactly? I’m only asking for amusement’s sake, of course, but you don’t know the difference, so what the hell.
**John **, there’s a helluva lot more similarity between Obama’s no-fly zone in Libya and Bush 1’s and Clinton’s no-fly zone in Iraq than there is to anything Bush 2 did. Despite yours or Frank’s or anyone else’s desperate need to draw a false equivalence for the purpose of pointing out liberal hypocrisy once again, that is.
And here’s a well-earned :rolleyes: for you too.
I’ve been trying to decide, from a purely practical standpoint* whether an Act or resolution from Congress would help or hinder Obama’s ability to extract us from the operation at the most appropriate time. On the one hand, Congress could have spelled out clear parameters for our exit; on the other hand, based on history, they wouldn’t have been so explicit, and any Congressional orders would have added restrictions on the Commander in Chief’s freedom of action.
Admittedly, I’m prone to suspect Obama’s preference was to avoid roadblocks which would prevent or delay our disinvolvement, so I don’t see the lack of Congressional permission slip as a dangerous enabler of escalation. I’m prepared to become opposed to our involvement if that actually happens (not that my objection carries any more weight than Frank’s, of course).
*Because I don’t agree that the POTUS legally needs a Congressional vote to support UNSC resolutions
There’s two very good reasons we don’t have ground troops in Libya. One, we said we wouldn’t and numero two-o, we don’t have any, we’d have to send in a regiment of Camp Fire Girls. He said this right up front, and told our allies that this was the deal. Air support, high tech, but no boots, zero, zip, none, nada.
If the extent of our military commitment is to launch missiles and send warplanes, then our exit strategy is to stop launching missiles and sending warplanes. If they are coming from missile ships and aircraft carriers, everybody is already on the boats! Pretty complicated, might take hours.
Now, if tomorrow morning I hear that Obama is sending a couple of armored divisions to protect our embassy, or landing 50,000 marines on the beach, I’m heading straight to the barricades, cya there.
Another reason is to let this be the Libyan people’s own war of liberation and unification, one of the founding myths (in the best sense of the word) of their own nascent democracy. They and their future generations will cherish it more if they feel they did it themselves, and they can still be as generous with their thanks to the Northern powers as the Americans were to the French for their vital support in our own Revolution. If the conflict were to look like the imperialists vs. the dictator instead, the following tasks would be much harder and success would be much more doubtful.
If the Senate = Congress, you’d have a point. But it isn’t and so you don’t.
Frank: No, I don’t think the UNSC should be in the business of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. But if we’re going to use our military for purposes other those related to the security of the US, then I prefer we do so in accordance with the UNSC. Something Bush did not do.
So fucking what? The discussion was about similarities and differences between what GWB did and what BHO did. That’s what I was responding to. If you want to start a separate discussion comparing GHWB and BHO, that’s fine. And if anyone is interested in having that discussion with you, I’d be pretty surprised.
Now, if you disagree with any of the points I made, bring it.
Already brought it, you ignored it, because it doesn’t fit with your personal opinion. You’re a dishonest debater like ElvisL1ves.
Admittedly, you’re not as insane as kanicbird, but you’re not that far off.