about 3.700 civilian deaths, thats acceptable collateral damage, I suppose.
Can’t remember those were actual arguments
Why aren’t you?
It’s not finished.
Still here!!
Was invasion the answer to destroying a terrorist organisation?
Was Al Qaeda destroyed?
Did you bring OBL to justice?
Did you install a flourishing democracy ala Germany and Japan?
Where are all the supporters now?
And they don’t (trust your government)
What you have to watch for, in 10-20 years or so, is how you have been lied to. What the real reasons were.
Sam, you are quibbling and missing the overall picture. And here, since you insist on avoiding any specifics that make it hard for you to obfuscate is only one of the relevant finds from the Times article:
“With major decisions of war and peace still pending, 59 percent of Americans said they believed the president should give the United Nations more time. Sixty-three percent said Washington should not act without the support of its allies, and 56 percent said Mr. Bush should wait for United Nations approval.”
I see. I’m ‘quibbling’. We hear repeated assertions on this board that ‘the American people do not support this war’. I point to a whole list of polls that show the American people DO support it (when asked that EXACT question - “Do you support the Administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq?”, a majority always respond ‘yes’).
What a coincidence, there just was a documentary on german TV about warcrimes in Afghanistan.
(apparently already back in august 2002, missed that)
Apparently a mass grave was discovered at Dasht-e-leili, estimated at 2000-3000 bodies. Unarmed POW’s, executed by Dostum’s militia, with US troops looking on.
Witnesses to the massacre are, according to the documentary, have been murdered and are being tortured.
Dostum is all for an investigation but, alas, he can not guarantee the safety of any investigators.
Oh, and WHERE am I ‘avoiding specifics’? Did I not just link to pages of results from polls asking all kinds of questions? Did I not quote from the relevant polls on all the questions asked in this forum?
On the other hand, you’re the one trying to build a ‘big picture’ by ignoring the fact that when asked SPECIFICALLY if they support the war, the American people say yes. Of course, you can always put together just the right kinds of questions to build up whatever ‘picture’ you are trying to draw. Take those last two, that you seem to think are indicative:
So what? Now ask them, “Even if the administration didn’t seek more time, would you still support it?”. The fact is, the majority of people support the war. YOU are the one quibbling over the details.
To quote Ronald Reagan, “There you go again.” I’ve already said, REPEATEDLY, that the American people do not support a war if there are no allies. But the Bush Administration already has them!. This repeated attempt to link ‘allies’ to ‘the U.N.’ is simply dishonest. As of today, the U.S. has lots of allies. So any questions about whether the U.S. should go to war without any of them is about as relevant as asking if the U.S. should go to war even if green space aliens with death rays come down to support Iraq.
Sure. depending on how the question was phrased, I might say yes to that as well. For instance, if you asked me, “Should the U.S. go to war today, or should it wait and attempt to get approval of the Security Council”, I might have said yes when this poll was taken. On the other hand, if you asked me, “If the U.S. can’t get Security Council approval, should it still go to war?” you’d get a different answer.
So let’s just look at the most basic questions. And if we do, you see clear majorities.
If you’ve spent any time as a journalist, then you’ll probably know that the media often rely on the police and other law-enforcement groups to estimate crowd size, along with rally organizers. And, while rally organizers do have a repution for over-stating the number of participants, official police sources tend to err on the conservative side when giving crowd figures.
Sure, the figures were not exact counts. The Guardian article linked to by SentientMeat said that figures were based on estimates from “organisers and police,” but also said that “most conceded there were too many people in too many places to count.” And even if the figures were “biased” or “vague” (i’m not sure how these two go together in your mind), it is worth noting that crowd estimates given by the Guardian (“Up to 30 million people demonstrated worldwide, including around 6 million in Europe”) would have to have inflated the actual numbers worldwide by a factor of at least 10, and probably 30, to validate your earlier comment, which was:
Surely even the most hard-headed, anti-war Bush supporter must consider it a stretch to assert that there were no more than a “coupla hundred G’s” marching, when even police sources put the figure in the millions. I haven’t even seen [b[Brutus** make that assertion. If you want to go on believing your interpretation, that’s your prerogative. Just don’t expect your other arguments to be taken very seriously when you make such leaps of faith.
So what seems clear enough is that the habit of shaping the questions to produce the “right” answers to support an agenda, the situation now is that when it comes to the publics opinion on the invasion we have a set of pollings saying one thing and a set off pollings saying the opposite.
In sweden, on the same day, there were two different pollings in to different newspapers - curiously with the same owner - one stating that public support for a UN-sanctioned intervention was over half of the population, the other one that 64 % was against.
What we need is obviously a new Noah’s flood, ridding us of pollsters?
No matter how you look at it, or who’s numbers you use, the protests were impressive. After all, what (small) percentage of anit-war people can be expected to show up for a protest. And this ain’t exactly spring, even in San Francisco.
One weekend of protest will not deter Bush, but if this thing continues and grows, he’s gotta take notice. Especially if it does so domestically.
Just saw some news clips of the (I think) SF protest. The guys caught on film were waving banners with Che’s likeness on it. Maybe I need to retract my statement about Bush paying any attention to them…
Brutus and John: One consequence of the demonstrations being as impressive as they were is that they can hardly be waved off as loony commies on parade!
C’mon in a worldwide crowd of 10 millions+ sure you can find someone wanting North Corea to free the US of Capitalist dictatorship.
Just as you in a crowd of 10 mill pro-war (were there any) would find people vouching for KKK rule, turning arab middle east into a parking lot, and god knows what…
True about the whack-o minorities in any protest. Except that here in SF, the protests were ORGANIZED by the People’s Workers Party (I probably got the name wrong, but it was something like that, w/ a Marxist ideology).
well, of course, John, you cannot trust the People’s Workers Party who are entirely dominated by revisionist Menshevik cadres. Only the Trotskyist Ararcho-Syndicalist Party has the correct party line, but he doesn’t live in San Francisco.
As stated in another thread, about this subject, it all boils down to whether you believe that whether the people in the protests were actually showing their support for the PWP or if the PFP took a shot at capitilizing on the anti-war rally.
Eludicator: no trotskyist party line can ever be correct as followers our beloved father, Stalin, promptly stated with the help of an ice-pick back in the days.
And don’t even get me started on the damn Amish, with thier insufferable Pacifister-than-thou attitude! I mean, sure, horse apples are organic as all get out, but, still…
Yes Sam, you’re quibbling. Quibbling because I–very generously I thought --was allowing your out-of-date polling info to stand as equivalent to the more up to date poll I had posted. And my point was simply to ask you to acknowledge the fact these are issues of mass concern. While it seems only fair to say that in the United States the majority may move in one direction or another, in response to current events, the point I was trying to get you to acknowledge is that UN support is crucial to a majority, or, at the very least, a mass of Americans, and even moreso to people elsewhere. In other words, stop trying to marginalize criticism of the Bush administration by suggesting that such criticism stems from a minute population of people, most of whom are, in your view, cranks.
Now, as a matter of fact, the information you found on the web was entirely out of date. Here is more recent Gallup poll info that may be of some interest:
Here for a Gallup poll taken February 7-9–in other words, prior to recent UN report and the protests both of which seem likely to have made the public in American and elsewhere more cautious about the war:
The poll makes clear that while Americans do, by and large, support the Bush case for war they "remain unconvinced that Iraq represents an immediate threat to the United States, and only four in 10 are willing for the United States to invade Iraq without a new authorizing vote by the U.N. Security Council.
Now your information with regard to Canada seems to be even more out of date, since a 2/14 Gallup poll finds that majorities in Canada as well as Britain oppose military action in Iraq. (One can infer from the way the other polls are worded that this means with or without a UN resolution, but I can’t actually provide you with the details of the poll, since it requires you to subscribe. On the bottom of this page, however, you can see for yourself what I’m talking about.)
According to an article in the Nation, not available in the Web, in Britain as of January 26 (long prior to the UN debate and protests, and just after a key Blair speech) a London Times and Guardian poll found that 2/3 of viewers weren’t convinced by Blair’s case and that without a UN resolution support for military action drops to only 10% of Britons.
Appearances to the contrary I’m not trying to hammer you with these poll results; I myself often hold an opinion that a majority of people in the US, Britain and elsewhere don’t hold. So I’m not a slave to opinion polls by any means; nor am I asking you to be.
I’m simply trying to see if there’s any way to get you to acknowledge what the polls, if not the protests, ought to make patently obvious. There is mass resistance to this war even within the US’s closet ally Britain. A majority of your own fellow citizens oppose military action in Iraq. And, as of 2/7-9, a mjaority of Americans oppose it without a UN resolution.. Under those circumstances it simply makes no sense to attempt to marginalize and demonize opposition. I don’t ask you to agree with the majority; you are entitled to your own opinion; I merely ask to you to recognize majority/mass opinion for what it is: non-marginal.
Brutus, babes! Does someone need a back-rub? C’mon now, weren’t we just saying the lovable nuts who hate all dem arabs, at the CPAC weren’t representative of the whole group?
Did your arguments lose their flavor on the bedpost overnight?
--was allowing your out-of-date polling info to stand as equivalent to the more up to date poll I had posted. And my point was simply to ask you to acknowledge the fact these are issues of mass concern. While it seems only fair to say that in the United States the majority may move in one direction or another, in response to current events, the point I was trying to get you to acknowledge is that UN support is crucial to a majority, or, at the very least, a mass of Americans, and even moreso to people elsewhere. In other words, stop trying to marginalize criticism of the Bush administration by suggesting that such criticism stems from a minute population of people, most of whom are, in your view, cranks.