Are you stating you are angry because we tried to fight more then one battle at the same time?
I think when we mean dealing with other problems.. we don't mean bombing the shit out of them.. just an idea where we are coming from.
You'll hear that one of the major problems we are having with countries like North Korea is that we completely ignored them diplomaticly (during the early Bush years) while we were also threatening to take out any country that was not a democracy. So they took that as a threat.
Are you stating you are angry because we tried to fight more then one battle at the same time?
I think when we mean dealing with other problems.. we don't mean bombing the shit out of them.. just an idea where we are coming from.
You'll hear that one of the major problems we are having with countries like North Korea is that we completely ignored them diplomaticly (during the early Bush years) while we were also threatening to take out any country that was not a democracy. So they took that as a threat.
The same North Korea that nudge, nudge, wink, wink, agreed not to develop nukes during those same years?
As for tuttles argument... We can only go after so many problem areas at once.
Oh you mean like finishing the war in Afghanistan before you start a new one in Iraq?
OK...
Are you stating you are angry because we tried to fight more then one battle at the same time?
Because earlier you stated that there are so many other areas that need our attention and now you complain because we were trying to attend to more then one thing at the same time?
That was my point! I pointed out several other countries who had repeatedly ignored or lied to the UN and other organisations and have been committing flagrant human rights abuses. You countered by saying that we could only get involved in one thing at a time. But we aren't involved in one thing at a time. Australia recently had to send troops back into East Timor because we didn't finish what we started there, supply more troops to Afghanistan because the country is slowly going to the shit while maintaining a force in Iraq and the Solomon Islands, plus having troops on stand-by in case there is a coup it Fiji! Don't pretend that the US and its allies went to war in Iraq because they ignored the UN. If that was the criteria we would have invaded the Sudan or China.
If the argument against intervening in other places is that we're already at war then why didn't we use that excuse for Iraq?
"Don't pretend that the US and its allies went to war in Iraq because they ignored the UN. If that was the criteria we would have invaded the Sudan or China."
And other countries would have license to invade us as well, by that standard. In July of this year, the UN Human Rights Committee just examined Human Rights violations in the United States against women, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the US ratified in 1992. And that's just against women! I'm sure we have hundreds of other HR violations.
The US can't maintain this "holier-than-thou" attitude towards other UN member countries who violate Human Rights treaties, because we fucking do it ourselves. We can't invade other countries for not complying, because we do not comply. And HMTK Steve's argument that the UN should be the United States' penis extension because we are the "power behind it" is ridiculous and a slap in the face to every other member country.
Relations between the US and North Korea have been deteriorating since President George W Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" in January 2002.
Tensions really started escalating the following October, when the US accused North Korea of developing a secret, uranium-based nuclear weapons program.
Washington is not only concerned about the development of such weapons in North Korea, but also wants to curb Pyongyang's capacity to export missile and nuclear technology to other states or organizations.
Since the October 2002 confrontation, North Korea has restarted a mothballed nuclear power station, thrown out inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and pulled out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
It has also upped its frequently doom-laden rhetoric, warning of the risk of nuclear war.
It is often very difficult to tell what lies behind North Korea's moves. Pyongyang and its mercurial leader Kim Jong-il act in erratic and contradictory ways.
But it seems possible that North Korea has been trying to use the nuclear issue as a hard-line ploy to negotiate a non-aggression pact and improved economic aid from the US. "
Now... you can argue how we were wrong, and I would agree. But... any good government takesallinformation into account, including the behavior of Iraq as it relates to the United Nations. Using your logic, we should have just ignored Hitler's invasion of Poland, France, etc. After all, that was just a European issue.
Godwin!
Give me a freaking break. We are debating global politics as it pertains to war, and I refer to the biggest war of the last century. Forget the geek stuff for a minute, and remember the topic.
OK, I'm doing better now. Went to the Doc on Saturday and got some medicine but I have to go back in on Tuesday for a follow-up. Either I have Mono or it's time to get the tonsils out...
I assume that we are still counting Mustard and Sarin gasses as WMDs. There's a declassified report from the US House.
And if 500 specific munitions were not enough, what is enough? I can tell you though, we did find some WMDs.
Those were WMDs that we gave to Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war. We knew all about them long ago. When we found the leftovers in Iraq a few years ago they were all rotted and useless or spent. Iraq was not developing any WMDs of its own.
It's not a "weapon of mass destruction" if it doesn't have mass-destruction capabilities. All of those munitions, small in number as they were, were degraded. They were about as dangerous as any other industrial or medical waste, and posed no significant threat, let alone a military one.
Old and unusable weapons left to rot in a warehouse or in the desert are not exactly evidence of an active weapons program.
Wait.. Did Mr. Period just correct something I grabbed from a Newstory ^_^ LOL!
And what's more, he appears to have "corrected" non-mistakes.
As would be expected in a quotation from a BBC article, the spellings in the original are from the UK (and most of the rest of the world) variety of English. Labelling is a perfectly legitimate third person past tense conjugation of the verb to label; Programme and organisation are legitimate spellings that greater writers than any of us have and continue to use.
Mr. Period encourages writing skills, something great. Surely he would not want to combine that laudable goal with the parochial attitude the these (international, presumably) forums require the use of the American variety of English.
ObOnTopic: Murtha would be a poor choice for Majority Leader.
Cheers,
Hank "an American, but also a serious Anglophile" Alme
I would have to say those 500 WMDs would still count as WMDs as you don't know if they are any good or not until after you have found them.
Sort of like pulling cans out of a flood and taking the gamble on whether they are full of peaches or full of prunes since the labels have all peeled off!
I would have to say those 500 WMDs would still count as WMDs as you don't know if they are any good or not until after you have found them.
Sort of like pulling cans out of a flood and taking the gamble on whether they are full of peaches or full of prunes since the labels have all peeled off!
Rym already pointed out they weren't WMDs even if they were as good as new. Also, they are weapons the US gave to them years ago. Iraq wasn't developing shit.
I would have to say those 500 WMDs would still count as WMDs as you don't know if they are any good or not until after you have found them.
Sort of like pulling cans out of a flood and taking the gamble on whether they are full of peaches or full of prunes since the labels have all peeled off!
Now, there is some logic! Poor analogy. You can eat either of them. It would be more like pulling cans out of the flood and wondering if they are past their expiration date! Either way if we are going to start going to war over the fact that might have leftover weapons from a past war that are expired we have a lot of other people to get rid of.
Great.. Now we are going to War over expired Fruits!
What then qualifies as a weapon of mass destruction? Must it only be capable of killing hundreds of thousands instead of merely thousands? And further in the document it brings up unaccounted for munitions.
I'm not saying it was a good reason to go to war. I think going into Iraq was a mistake when the war in Afghanistan - a just cause - is still unfinished. I'm just tired of the "there were no WMDs." There are WMDs. Not to the extent promised by a misinformed administration bent on selling a war to the populous, but they do exist.
If I say, "Is that a bottle of cream behind your back," and you reply "no" while shaking it vigorously...
Eventually that cream will turn to butter and you can then say, "It wasn't a bottle of cream, it was a bottle of butter!"
Does that make me a liar for insisting you had cream before you turned it into butter?
Same goes for WMD. When we said, "He's got them," he had them. Just because we did not get out hands on them until after they were no longer "good" does not mean they did not exist.
Strawfuckingman! The point is everyone knew Iraq probably had leftover WMD's from the Iran/Iraq war and everyone knew they would be expired. So what they were really looking for was evidence of weapon programs that were ongoing as we went in. We were looking for evidence of a WMD program in Iraq and we didn't find proof of that. So when you say we found WMD's that were expired and said that's the reason we went in. That's utter bullshit.
In all honesty, it does not matter if the WMDs found are inert or otherwise "expired." Under the terms of the weapons inspections Saddam had to provide proof of all munitions being destroyed. The existence of even one puts him in breach of that agreement.
"But Saddam made a last-minute bid to avert war, admitting that Iraq had once possessed weapons of mass destruction to defend itself from Iran and Israel - but insisting that it no longer has them."
Kilarney, just because Saddam was stupid and didn't allow inspections does not mean you should assume he has WMDs, especially when there is plenty of evidence to show that he didn't have usable weapons or the capability to make them.
That's fair. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that his refusal to cooperate was a piece of evidence that we should have considered along with all of the other evidence regarding WMDs or the lack thereof. Of course we can always argue how much weight that evidence should have been given, but I'll leave that one alone.
Comments
All along strategies have been changed in regards to Iraq. There is no lock-step strategy in Iraq, commanders do not wear blinders.
The only thing "lock-step" is the presidents commitment that we will not leave in defeat.
You'll hear that one of the major problems we are having with countries like North Korea is that we completely ignored them diplomaticly (during the early Bush years) while we were also threatening to take out any country that was not a democracy. So they took that as a threat.
If the argument against intervening in other places is that we're already at war then why didn't we use that excuse for Iraq?
And other countries would have license to invade us as well, by that standard. In July of this year, the UN Human Rights Committee just examined Human Rights violations in the United States against women, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the US ratified in 1992. And that's just against women! I'm sure we have hundreds of other HR violations.
The US can't maintain this "holier-than-thou" attitude towards other UN member countries who violate Human Rights treaties, because we fucking do it ourselves. We can't invade other countries for not complying, because we do not comply. And HMTK Steve's argument that the UN should be the United States' penis extension because we are the "power behind it" is ridiculous and a slap in the face to every other member country.
You mean "What is the background to the crisis?
Relations between the US and North Korea have been deteriorating since President George W Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" in January 2002.
Tensions really started escalating the following October, when the US accused North Korea of developing a secret, uranium-based nuclear weapons program.
Washington is not only concerned about the development of such weapons in North Korea, but also wants to curb Pyongyang's capacity to export missile and nuclear technology to other states or organizations.
Since the October 2002 confrontation, North Korea has restarted a mothballed nuclear power station, thrown out inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and pulled out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
It has also upped its frequently doom-laden rhetoric, warning of the risk of nuclear war.
It is often very difficult to tell what lies behind North Korea's moves. Pyongyang and its mercurial leader Kim Jong-il act in erratic and contradictory ways.
But it seems possible that North Korea has been trying to use the nuclear issue as a hard-line ploy to negotiate a non-aggression pact and improved economic aid from the US. "
I assume that we are still counting Mustard and Sarin gasses as WMDs. There's a declassified report from the US House.
And if 500 specific munitions were not enough, what is enough? I can tell you though, we did find some WMDs.
Old and unusable weapons left to rot in a warehouse or in the desert are not exactly evidence of an active weapons program.
As would be expected in a quotation from a BBC article, the spellings in the original are from the UK (and most of the rest of the world) variety of English. Labelling is a perfectly legitimate third person past tense conjugation of the verb to label; Programme and organisation are legitimate spellings that greater writers than any of us have and continue to use.
Mr. Period encourages writing skills, something great. Surely he would not want to combine that laudable goal with the parochial attitude the these (international, presumably) forums require the use of the American variety of English.
ObOnTopic: Murtha would be a poor choice for Majority Leader.
Cheers,
Hank "an American, but also a serious Anglophile" Alme
Sort of like pulling cans out of a flood and taking the gamble on whether they are full of peaches or full of prunes since the labels have all peeled off!
Great.. Now we are going to War over expired Fruits!
I'm not saying it was a good reason to go to war. I think going into Iraq was a mistake when the war in Afghanistan - a just cause - is still unfinished. I'm just tired of the "there were no WMDs." There are WMDs. Not to the extent promised by a misinformed administration bent on selling a war to the populous, but they do exist.
If I say, "Is that a bottle of cream behind your back," and you reply "no" while shaking it vigorously...
Eventually that cream will turn to butter and you can then say, "It wasn't a bottle of cream, it was a bottle of butter!"
Does that make me a liar for insisting you had cream before you turned it into butter?
Same goes for WMD. When we said, "He's got them," he had them. Just because we did not get out hands on them until after they were no longer "good" does not mean they did not exist.
Sorry ^_^ got a bit intense there.
"But Saddam made a last-minute bid to avert war, admitting that Iraq had once possessed weapons of mass destruction to defend itself from Iran and Israel - but insisting that it no longer has them."