Hmmm? I’m engaged in mockery of NotfooledbyW, something you yourself have done, and in reponse to his own earlier posts in this thread and others in which he implied (in various forms) that his ideas were not getting traction because he was an individual thinker and this board rejected him on that basis.
I refer you to his posts 24, 47, 58, 71 (where he said you personally do not approve of original questions), 274… plus a few scattered witch hunt references.
In fact, on review, the post you are moderating is near-identical in premise to my own post 35, which indicates, to me at least, the utter lack of progress in this thread.
Basically, I don’t know what “different poster” you think I’m pretending Notfooled to be - the mockery in the moderated post was exclusively directed at him. I’m somewhat baffled you could infer otherwise. Who, if not Notfooled, did you think I was attacking?
What XT has pointed out is a misunderstanding of what 1441 is and what it required of Iraq. I explained that in my previous post. 1441 was a final opportunity to comply and to be brought into full compliance. It was not a final opportunity to be in full compliance by any date certain or timeline. 1441 required cooperation on immediate access to sites as the key demand that was an issue in the past. And Blix stated he got that from the start.
1441 did not apply the term ‘cooperation on substance’ anywhere in its language. But everyone who sees violations by Iraq love to cite Blix on that. They are wrong mostly becsuse Iraq provided cooperation on substance over a month before the war was started.
I have cited facts about UNSC 1441, and unless you can dispute these facts I cannot accept your opinion that my point on this is a non-starter.
Bryan Ekers,
The language of your post appeared to be an attempt to link NotfooledbyW to marcmcroy. That would be a back-handed attempt to make an accusation of sock-puppetry.
You never accept any opinion that did not arise from your own views.
I pointed out the direct comparison and you want to go off on more hair-splitting and semantic sidetracks–as usual.
Must I accept opinions such as XTs that are not supported by facts. I have stated my facts which refute very explicitly what XT wrote and cited.
I will accept any opinion and change mine when facts are brought to the table or my facts can be refuted within a civil and legitimate dialogue.
On many issues I do not present my opinions without at least what I see as factual backup.
And in this case anyone states that Iraq was in violation of 1441 is not stating a fact.
XT argued essentially that Iraq was not in full compliance with all resolutions to back his argument against mine. I explained that UN Res 1441 did not require full compliance by any date whatsoever. Thus there can be no violation by Iraq on a timing issue. But that is your back up to your argument.
I cannot accept something as presented by your side that clearly is not true.
I really wish I could but I cannot. And I am truly sorry about that.
I’d like to see a direct rebuttal to my facts. Perhaps I have missed something in 1441 or read it wrong.
You know what’d be nice? If we had a thread where we could discuss things like whether Iraq was in violation of 1441, instead of it taking up space in this thread about the IRS and tax scandals.
[QUOTE=NotfooledbyW]
XT is reading something into his cite that is a reference to old resolutions on unresolved issues.
[/QUOTE]
No, I quoted directly from the Wiki page on the 1441 resolution.
And the fact is I never said any differently. Please, read for comprehension, don’t add things to peoples posts that aren’t there.
Do you understand the difference between being in violation of and not being in compliance with? This is a serious question.
Again, no, it’s not…and no I didn’t. I don’t know how else to explain this to you, since it’s fairly clear you don’t get it.
No, my argument was and remains that it’s irrelevant, since it had no bearing on our invasion. Bush had the power and the military and logistics in place to invade…that’s all that really mattered. 1441 was a smoke screen. I’ve explained this to you half a dozen times in multiple threads (this thread isn’t even about the fucking Iraqi war, yet you’ve again managed to hijack every discussion into a discussion about your misunderstanding of both the pre-war build up AND about what people are trying to tell you).
And, again, I didn’t say they were in violation. They were not in compliance, which is a different thing. That’s also a fact…they weren’t in compliance, as the parts of the Wiki cite about 1441 pretty clearly shows. Why this is so hard for you to grasp is beyond me, but clearly it is so I don’t think there is anything to be gained by everyone continuing to beat their heads against your granite intransigence.
Can anyone try to understand what I have been saying on this violation of 1441 issue by first accepting the fact that UN Res 1441 was meant to be a bridge. It was to get Iraq across the bridge from a status of non-compliance to the legal status of full compliance with all preceding UNSC resolutions on the books.
XT has asked me what he called a serious question whether I " understand the difference between being in violation of and not being in compliance with" which I can honestly say that I don’t know of the significance of the difference with regard to Iraq ‘not being in compliance with 1441’ or 'Iraq ‘being in violation of 1441’ so I look forward to any clarification on this from anyone who can explain it.
If anyone wishes to move back to the Bush Library thread I’d be glad to review this serious clarification of this terminology over there.
My overriding point still is that Iraq was in violation of international law when there was no 1441 but Iraq was not in violation of international law when Bush initiated a war of aggression against Iraq. That difference is a serious matter too.
That is in quotations and it is not what I wrote. Oh what lengths they go>
Now that has been transformed by Bryan Ekers into “you people are sheeple!”
Except in context I was asking Mace if he thinks this IRS mistake is a scandal based upon his own personal judgment of the evidence and if not why he agrees with the herd mentality if he does not have any evidence.
In context I was referring to the ‘herd’ mentality because John Mace wrote, "So yeah, if enough people think something is a scandal, then it is.
Is it scandal related to power guy elites at the top of the chain of command in Washington DC vs the common people or is it common people working at the IRS where the law was ambiguous who made a mistake?
It’s not in a quote tag, which is the standard on this message board. I feel satisfied in my paraphrasing and can further justify it if someone’s willing to pay me to go through your posting history.
Definitely not the second and no evidence for the first as of yet. However, here is why it’s more than you say. First, employees don’t get fired for bureaucratic mistakes. That kind of thing happens every day in every department of every government. It’s normal practice for a bureaucracy to screw up. They were fired for targeting conservative groups. Second, since the initial story of it just being a couple of rogue employees in Cincinnati turned out to be completely false, that raises questions about what exactly did happen. What we know is that at least five managers in DC were a big part of this. What we don’t know yet is who gave the order. THe IRS does know who gave the order(Shulman said that in his testimony), but for some reason they haven’t seen fit to let us know.
So as of right now, the scandal is the cover up. The only question is whether it stops at the middle levels of the IRS, or it goes up higher.
Let’s not concern ourselves right now with your opinion about the October vote when at that time there were no UN inspectors inside Iraq and UN Res 1441 had not been passed. I’ll remind you that was the Resolution that by the way was passed unanimously by the UNSC which did in fact include the US and UK in approving the specific language that did not have a deadline for Iraq to achieve full compliance with its UNSC disarmament obligations.
I want to be clear on this:
Am I reading your answer correctly that it is ‘yes’ that a random deadline set by Bush and Blair outside of the legal binding document that they both agreed to, and an impractical deadline that was not written into UN Res 1441 to achieve full compliance, means that Iraq was **in violation **of Bush and Blair’s deadline?
Are you using that non-binding irrelevant deadline as an argument that Iraq was in violation of 1441 because of it?
Yes, let’s not, I’ve already discussed that at length with you and nothing has changed since then.
Correct, there was no deadline as such in the resolution, beyond sections 9 and 12-13:
Yes. What else could it mean? If I decide you have 5 minutes to reply to this post, and you don’t, you are in violation of my deadline.
If George Bush decided that Iraq had until March 20 to take whatever action would have satisfied him, and they failed to do so, then Iraq was in violation of Bush’s deadline. That’s the nature of deadlines.
Now, the value or legal force, of a given deadline is a totally different question.
My argument is that, in Bush and Blair’s opinion, they were. This is in opposition to your radical notion that it’s a factual error and not an opinion.
You are therefore arguing that Bush and Blair set an arbitrary non-binding deadline to Iraq that was not in the language of 1441 and that Bush and Blair arrived to an opinion that was** not based upon the facts or the language of Res 1441 **that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1441.
And therefore you advise me based upon such faulty reasoning and arrival at an opinion, it is an error for me to state the opposite fact that Iraq was not in violation of UN Res 1441.
You need to explain that one.
What is the ‘it’ in “it’s a factual error” I don’t know what ‘radical notion’ you are attributing to me. Could you clear that up?
I’m sure it was based, at least in part, on the facts as they understood them and the language of 1441 as they interpreted it. (As well as the previous resolution authorizing the use of force in the event of non-compliance with inspections. 1441 should have specifically rescinded those, but it did not. As always, the UN is somewhere between incompetent and barely competent).
No, it’s not an error for you to state that Iraq wasn’t in violation. That’s your opinion, and I think it’s the correct one, more or less (though we know things now that the people at the time didn’t, though perhaps they should have, such as the fact that Curveball’s intelligence was garbage).
Nor is it an error for you to state that the UNSC never voted to declare Iraq to be in violation of 1441. That’s a fact, and it’s a fact that supports your opinion.
Your error is to classify differing opinions as factual errors.
A related, but distinct, error is to wield the above fact of “UNSC never found Iraq to be in violation” like a club to address any and all opinions that Iraq was in violation, regardless of the evidence used to support the opinion.
The opinion that Iraq was in violation of 1441.
Ah, the sinking feeling that comes from realizing that nothing I’ve written here has sunk in, at all.
The radical notion that statements of opinion are actually statements of fact, at least when it comes to Iraq. Remember this?
That’s more than a little radical, as it classifies an entire range of opinions as “false and untrue statement[s]”.
Now we’re arguing about the UN resolution again? I think the OP has a couple of other threads open for that purpose. This one is closed for redundancy.