If you had bothered to read further, you would have noted that I condemned Bush’s dishonesty in starting the war under false pretenses. ’
Your post, however, is utter lefty wank. Sanctions only served to enrich Saddam and impoverish his people. All you would accomplish is to starve innocent people. I think Bush jumped to war way too soon and based it on deceitful premises, but that’s not to say that getting rid of Saddam was wrong. If the war had been conducted wisely, with proper attention paid to the realities of the region and an exit strategy in mind, I’d think differently about Dubya.
So you think that murdering someone is not wrong and the mass murderers are not wrong, that invading and occupying sovereign nations is not wrong.
Nice to know, but what puzzles me is why you nevertheless think you have reason to find Hussein “wrong”.
So you do not think that murdering thousands of innocent people is wrong if done “wisely” = when the murderers can run away safely after the killing is done.
Nice to see it so clearly spelled out.
I wonder if you would reason the same if the same happened to your nation, its leadership, its citizens while your family got killed and was denigrating considered to be neglectable “colateral damage”.
Point conceded, with caveats. There is little doubt that the general perception, among the world community, was that Saddam Hussein was, to some degree, in non-compliance with the arms restrictions imposed by the 1991 cease-fire agreement. Exactly how far his non-compliance extended, and how much of a threat this made him, was a point of contention. And, yes, the U.S. and the U.K. got it wronger, both materially, and in terms of the appropriate response, than just about anybody else.
[QUOTE=Aldebaran]
So you think that murdering someone is not wrong and the mass murderers are not wrong, that invading and occupying sovereign nations is not wrong.
Nice to know, but what puzzles me is why you nevertheless think you have reason to find Hussein “wrong”.
And why do you find him right? **Aldeberan, I don’t pay much attention to you because, frankly, you’re an idiot. But I’m dying to know how you equate military action with the insanity of Iraq’s erstwhile dictator.
The US has not “murdered thousands”–war is horrible, but sometimes it’s necessary. And war isn;t murder–you asct ias if the intent of the Uinvasion wwas to kill as many people as we could. But your blindness to context and nuance is why you are a fool.
And again you dishonestly use loaded rhetoric. Did I justify “collateral damage”? No. The killing of innocents? No.
You are a liar as well as a contemptible fool.
If Bush were a dictator who built palaces whilke his people starved, if his daughters ran all of the profitable businesses in the US and committed rape and murder with impunity, if speaking one’s mind were punishable by death, I’d pray for Canada to invade us and overthrow Dubya.
What I wouldn’t want would be a clueless, incompetent army who treate every American as an enemy, who arrested innocent Americans and torutured them in a notorious prison, who overthrew all our institutions but refised to act as police and instill law and order, who installed a puppet government of collaborators and weasels.
America’s occupation of Iraq has been a horrible failure, but getting rid of Saddam, by itself, was good. Was it worth the tremendous damage done to Iraq?
An issue that is the heart of the invasion’s self-defense motif that to this day receives play is the assessment of the likelihood of Hussein initiating an attack (directly or by proxy) with these banned weapons. That Hussein had some banned weapons did not in itself justify the “quickly before it’s too late” aspect assigned to the invasion. The best estimates were that the threat of ‘national obliteration’ among other things was sufficient to keep the probability of Hussein launching such an attack low for the foreseeable future. This is all covered in this from DCI Tenet:
Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States.
** Senator Levin**: . . . If (Saddam) didn’t feel threatened, did not feel threatened, is it likely that he would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction? Senior Intelligence Witness: . . . My judgment would be that the probability of him initiating an attack–let me put a time frame on it–in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low. Senator Levin: Now if he did initiate an attack you’ve . . . indicated he would probably attempt clandestine attacks against us . . .
“One thing is clear: the United States must approach regimes like North Korea resolutely and decisively. The Clinton administration has failed here, sometimes threatening to use force and then backing down, as it often has with Iraq. These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence --** if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration.**”
–Dr. Condoleeza Rice
That’s a question that I’m afraid won’t be answerable any time soon… ask again in maybe 50 years. I hope and pray that the answer is “yes” but it depends entirely on how the US leaves Iraq. If we just cut and run, the answer will probably be “no”. If we are successful in establishing a real, and lasting, democracy in Iraq, then IMO the answer will be “yes”.
As an aside:
gobear, you and I differ on some basic issues, but I gotta say that you sure have a knack for cutting through the bullshit and objectively getting to the heart of the matter. Kudos to you! I wish more posters could divorce their hatred for Bush from their logic; of course, the Pit would be ever so much less interesting to read!
Again acting as if the war was a foregone conclusion. The war never needed to be started at all, regardless of the pretenses used.
Open up sweetcheeks, here comes some more of it.
Firstly, sanctions crippled Saddam’s ability to produce actual weapons of mass destruction. Or have you not heard of the Duefler report? Seondly, it is disengenous to say sanctions “only served to enrich Saddam”. I say that because I generally respect your ability to think and you have shown yourself to be reasonably well informed, so the normal conclusion that you were ignorant of the situation probably doesn’t apply. This leaves me with “disengenous” as a descriptor of your behavior. Distribution of the resources allowed in through the sanctions being skewed by Saddam and the Sunni minority was a human rights issue. If it is your contention that this issue required aggressive war to resolve then you are at odds with Amnesty International who wrote in September of 2002
And now for some more liberal wanking! Hope you saved some room.
Except the method used for “getting rid of Saddam” happens to have had at least 13,296 bodies worth of overkill so far. One can believe that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing and the war(which has done far more than “get rid of Saddam”) is still a net evil. Much like one can reasonably believe that leaving Saddam and re-working the sanctions, inspections, and Oil for Food program could have the evil consequence of leaving Saddam in power but be a net good when everything is taken in context.
If the war had not been conducted, I would think differently about Dubya. There was no aspect of the realities of the region which justified even a well-planned, conducted, and wise war. “Wise war”, that’s gotta be an oxymoron.
As to the only response directed toward me, I most certainly do not support an intelligence test for voting. (Note, however, that in this case, the problem is likely ignorance, not stupidity, despite the slight misnomer in my thread title.)
The problem lies at the other end: educating people on both critical thinking and on substantive issues. Any effort in this direction will be massive, starting from elementary schools up through viewers demanding that news stations show more on world affairs and less on the Scott Peterson trial. I have no particular suggestions at this point, just massive despair and disappointment at the millions of people who will cast their votes in two weeks based on rampant misinformation.
I’m not a Bush-hater. I, however, don’t happen to be a Bush supporter. There’s a nuance you’re missing here. At any rate, deflecting the issue onto Clinton, as seems to be the standard Republican response to most arguments, doesn’t satisfy because we’re not discussing Clinton. I don’t give a crap whether Clinton was wrong, stupid, lying, or acting with deliberate malice in an attempt to destroy the nation, because he’s not running for president. Stop trying to trap me into defending Clinton. He wasn’t a particularly good president, and he’s not a particularly good person. So the fuck what? Get over it, moron. That was four fucking years ago.
And yeah, even if Bush made an honest mistake, I don’t understand how it excuses it. Think of it this way: he made a statement, it ended up being incorrect, and that statement had a profound impact on the nation. He bet his presidency on finding WMDs, in my opinion, and he shouldn’t get another term because he bet wrong. It’s a natural consequence at most jobs that if you profoundly fuck up, you get canned, no matter how innocent the mistake was. Bush should have to face the music.
And for future reference, tu quoque is the term used to describe a particular logical fallacy - which means a wrong form of argument - that involves, essentially, responding “so did you!” You can chant Clinton’s name all night, but it still doesn’t address the fact that Bush told the nation, falsely, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and used that falsehood to inspire the nation to war. If you lead a nation to war, you make damn sure you’re right about it, and if you’re wrong, you’re out of the job. Simple as that. If you can come up with a reasonable response (i.e. one that doesn’t mention Bill Clinton, or make vague personal attacks on John Kerry’s character or ketchup fortune) then awesome. Otherwise, well, I can’t claim to be surprised when Bush supporters can’t come up with reason and logic to support their vote, but it still is a little disappointing.
I know it was said many times before, but apparently it bears repeating: the uproar about Iraq invasion is NOT about sex, but about deceiving the Public.
On a related note, how many Democrats continue to believe that Clinton didn’t break the law when he lied under oath?
Even though the Republicans were completely outraged over the Gennifer Flowers, and the other one with the big nose that got plastic surgery, and even before Clinton went on the stand about Monica Lewinsky they were outraged over it.
No, it was about sex. Have to feed the religious right, y’know.
I’m sure he did. Just not a grave enough crime to remove him from office. As the Senate agreed.
It’s the difference between a sad accident, manslaughter, and murder. If Bush had “good” information that a reasonable person would interpret as proving Saddam had WMD programs, then Iraq is a sad accident. If Bush (or his team) recklessly overinterpreted lousy information, then you’re talking manslaughter (or something along those lines). If Bush knew for a fact that Saddam had no WMD and sent tens of thousands of people to their deaths in a war over nothing, then he’s the equivalent of a mass murderer, and should spend the rest of his life in prison.
That is the difference between being “wrong” and being a “liar”.
Neurotik, you may want to reread the post you were responding to–either you just got royally whooshed, or we just saw a lovely Freudian slip on Iskander’s part :D.
Oh, and Clinton matters not because he’s “Clinton” but because he was the last president that had to deal with Saddam. His impression of the situation should give us insight into what the US intelligence community thought. If Clinton also thought there were WMD, it would suggest that it was a conclusion with some data and history behind it and not just the whimsical invention of Bush.
You sound like a high spirited, lofty well informed young man. Is it true that if I vote for John Kerry I will be eaten by wolves? I had planned on voting for the democrat, but this wolf business has got me more than a little worried. What’s the Straight Dope on Kerry’s plan to open America’s borders to ravening carnivores?
