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#77 Jan 21 2005 at 8:05 PM Rating: Good

gbaji

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35,568 posts

Palpitus wrote:

gbaji wrote:

Get it? Bush is being proactive. He's taking action to prevent the next attack, not just punish those responsible for the last one. That's the change in policy that came about after 9/11. That's why 9/11 adds justification to invading Iraq. Why is this so hard to grasp?

Probably because a) Iraq has never attacked the United States or any US territory, b) Iraq has never (AFAIK) given a single firearm to "terrorists", much less any WMD, and c) Iraq is a secular nation and Saddam a secularist, and has frequently been anathema to the fundamentalist terrorist mindset.

Eh? Iraqi forces fired upon US and other coalition forces nearly every single day during the 11 year cease fire period. An attack does not require that it be against US soil. A secular ruler can certainly make use of whatever methods are available to him. If anything, being secular made the option of using terrorists as delivery systems more likely, not less. Religious fanatics do things for their own religious reasons. They don't always make any sense. Secular leaders to things for very logical reasons. If you are a secular leader in a region full of religious fundamentalists, it might very well behoove you to make a deal with one. Perhaps a deal that includes you providing them with weapons and training and cover in return for not bothering your own forces, and maybe taking a shot at a common enemy.

It's a *very* logical move from a secular leaders point of view. Using a terrorist group as a delivery system gives you a significant amount of plausible deniability (or did before the WoT changed policy). And just because you don't know if Saddam ever gave anyweapons to any terrorists does not mean he didn't or that he never would.

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Add in that there are much better cases for attacking Pakistan or Iran, or even Saudi Arabia for a "worry of threat", and attacking Iraq as a self-defensive measure seems pretty ludicrous.

We've gone over this a dozen times. We were not currently at a state of cease fire with any of those nations. They were not currently under US sanctions for their WMD programs. We could not legally attack them for that reason.

In politics, it's not always about what you'd like to do, or what would be the "best" thing to do, but what gets the job done that you "can" do. We could attack Iraq legally based on past actions, precident, and international law. We could not attack any of the other nations you mention.

You say "there are much better cases for attacking <list of nations>", and frankly I'm sick of hearing people say that when they don't actually bother to actually make a better case for attacking those other nations. Please list off for me the reasons why we should have attacked Pakistan instead of Iraq. In that list, include past military actions between Pakistan and the US, past resolutions in the US congress defining Pakistan as a threat to the US, and past UN resolutions doing the same.

You can't? Then stop arguing that those were better cases. They aren't. You say that because someone said it and you heard it, and it sounded really neato, so you keep repeating it. It has never been a true statement. Stop saying it.

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You honestly think Iraq would've given WMD to terrorist to attack the US with? What have they done in the past to indicate they would do this? What did Saddam do in the past to indicate this?

Oh I don't know... Having his intelligence agency sneak into a foreign country and work with "disidents" (terrorists given the area, but that's not been confirmed) to hatch a plan to assassinate GH Bush.

Yes. I do honestly think that Iraq would have done that if they'd gotten the opportunity to. Why on earth not? A method to hurt the US that, if done correctly, can't easily be traced back to them? That's pretty much the holy grail of what Iraq would have liked to do to us.

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It is an absolute certainty that Saddam's goals were to build as many WMD as he could get away with.

Which was: None.

Only so long as sanctions were enforced and remained effective. Do you really think the UN would have kept them going forever? You don't know history very well do you? It was pretty obvious that the UN as a body was moving towards lifting sanctions, and they'd likely have been removed in effect if not in actual fact within another 5 years. Heck. Oil for Food was already doing a great job of working around them. You think that was accidental? Put another way. Why do you think Iraq was willing to pay off the people running that project to allow him to funnel money and imports around in ways he wasn't supposed to? You don't do that unless you get something back. It was literally just a matter of time before Saddam was able to start rebuilding his WMD. We could see that. The UK could see that. France, Germany, and Russia could see that but didn't care since they were the one's making money and "making nice" with Saddam. Probably the greatest lie told in the last decade to the world population was that the sanctions against Iraq were actually working and would continue to work. Everyone involved with Iraq knew otherwise. They just couldn't for political reasons actually say it directly.

That's why the Blix report is so obtuse in how it reports stuff. He'll rattle off a bunch of violations, and stuff that he's found that shouldn't have been there, but then say "Sanctions are working, but maybe just need a little adjustment". He'll rattle off examples where his team was delayed or blocked from talking to people they wanted to talk to or see places they wanted to see, but then say "Iraq is cooperating with the inspection process". It's obvious to anyone who actually reads the report that he felt an obligation to both tell the truth and reach the conclusions his handlers wanted him to reach. It's an amazing work of doublespeach really.

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The fact that we've found out after the fact that he wasn't able to get away with anything while under active sanctions does not change that. And it most definately does not mean that the sanctions were "working". At best, they were holding him at bay. Nothing else.

If holding at bay is not working, what is? Is there some kind of "negative WMD development profile" that's better, sort of like a black hole or quantum singularity?

The objective of the sanctions was to punish Saddam for not complying with the cease fire terms, and to encourage him to comply with those terms. The terms required that he "abandon all current and future development and production of WMD" (I'm paraphrasing here). That's why "Holding at bay" is not working. Working would be Iraq changing its policy towards WMD. Working would be Iraq volunteering information about their WMD plans, and offering up weapons to be tagged and destroyed, and opening their files to us freely.

That never happened. That's what was supposed to happen. Thus, sanctions never worked. Those who claim sanction were working simply changed the definition of what "working" was. They decided that as long as the short term goal of at least preventing him from building WMD was reached that the sanctions were doing their job. But that was *never* the intended purpose for the sanctions. It simply became that when it became obvious that Saddam would never actually comply with the terms, and the UN as a body was unwilling to force him so they just lowered the bar of expectations.

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#78 Jan 21 2005 at 9:20 PM Rating: Decent

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gbaji wrote:

Palpitus wrote:

Eh? Iraqi forces fired upon US and other coalition forces nearly every single day during the 11 year cease fire period.

First, you're exaggerating. Second, we expanded the no-fly zones, not in accordance with any cease-fire or UN resolutions AFAIK. Third, we changed our operating procedure from defense to offense, something which prompted France to withdraw from patrolling duties out of protest. The no-fly attacks are pretty nonconsequential either way IMO. They are very small beans.

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An attack does not require that it be against US soil. A secular ruler can certainly make use of whatever methods are available to him. If anything, being secular made the option of using terrorists as delivery systems more likely, not less. Religious fanatics do things for their own religious reasons. They don't always make any sense. Secular leaders to things for very logical reasons. If you are a secular leader in a region full of religious fundamentalists, it might very well behoove you to make a deal with one. Perhaps a deal that includes you providing them with weapons and training and cover in return for not bothering your own forces, and maybe taking a shot at a common enemy.

It's a *very* logical move from a secular leaders point of view. Using a terrorist group as a delivery system gives you a significant amount of plausible deniability (or did before the WoT changed policy). And just because you don't know if Saddam ever gave anyweapons to any terrorists does not mean he didn't or that he never would.

So why didn't he use terrorists to launch conventional attacks on US soil or property? Where's the pattern? Was he just waiting to get some "WMD" (Which as far as bio/chem weapons go, generally are not much more devastating than a healthy conventional attack) before he started doing this? You're arguing as if he had an agenda to attack the US. He did very little to indicate this was an agenda of his.

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We've gone over this a dozen times. We were not currently at a state of cease fire with any of those nations. They were not currently under US sanctions for their WMD programs. We could not legally attack them for that reason.

In politics, it's not always about what you'd like to do, or what would be the "best" thing to do, but what gets the job done that you "can" do. We could attack Iraq legally based on past actions, precident, and international law. We could not attack any of the other nations you mention.

You say "there are much better cases for attacking <list of nations>", and frankly I'm sick of hearing people say that when they don't actually bother to actually make a better case for attacking those other nations. Please list off for me the reasons why we should have attacked Pakistan instead of Iraq. In that list, include past military actions between Pakistan and the US, past resolutions in the US congress defining Pakistan as a threat to the US, and past UN resolutions doing the same.

Pakistan:
*We've twice sanctioned them in the last 20 years. Once for WMDs, the other time I can't remember what for. These sanctions were approved by Congress AFAIK.
*They're involved in a border dispute with the largest democracy in the world, and our supposed ally.
*They've occasionally played the escalation game with India, involving nuclear weapons.
*UN resolutions? None as far as I know. No UN resolution called for an invasion of Iraq either, though.
*They were selling nuclear secrets to dangerous states. (No, we didn't know about this before Iraq. We do know now. They've supposedly found the "culprit".
*They're a military dictatorship.
*They're very likely harboring Osama bin Laden--that alone was enough reason to go to war with Afghanistan, and rightfully so.
*They've a history of harboring legitimately anti-US terrorists.
*They were one of the few states who recognized the Taliban as the rightful rulers of Afghanistan when they were in power.
*They have nuclear weapons and are definitely not a stable country or regime.

Now...please list past Iraq military actions against the US as you specify in your list--aside from Kuwait, which Iraq attacked believing the US would not respond.

Please list resolutions in Congress declaring Iraq a threat to the US--not just unstable, or dangerous, but a threat to the US. Maybe the War Act in '02 specified that, I can't remember.

Please list the UN resolution that declares "Iraq is a threat to the US", as you claim. I can't remember any such resolution.

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You can't? Then stop arguing that those were better cases. They aren't. You say that because someone said it and you heard it, and it sounded really neato, so you keep repeating it. It has never been a true statement. Stop saying it.

I say it because I've paid attention to which states in the Middle East are truly dangerous to our country or have a very high likelihood of the same. My estimation is that Pakistan was, is, and unfortunately will be, more dangerous to the US than Iraq was or could be. It's called an opinion. I base it on quite a number of facts.

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Oh I don't know... Having his intelligence agency sneak into a foreign country and work with "disidents" (terrorists given the area, but that's not been confirmed) to hatch a plan to assassinate GH Bush.

Good point.

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Yes. I do honestly think that Iraq would have done that if they'd gotten the opportunity to. Why on earth not? A method to hurt the US that, if done correctly, can't easily be traced back to them? That's pretty much the holy grail of what Iraq would have liked to do to us.

Guess we just disagree then, I see very little in their history (aside from the GW plot) to indicate they held any real desire to attack the US.

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It is an absolute certainty that Saddam's goals were to build as many WMD as he could get away with.

[quote]Only so long as sanctions were enforced and remained effective. Do you really think the UN would have kept them going forever? You don't know history very well do you? It was pretty obvious that the UN as a body was moving towards lifting sanctions, and they'd likely have been removed in effect if not in actual fact within another 5 years. Heck. Oil for Food was already doing a great job of working around them. You think that was accidental? Put another way. Why do you think Iraq was willing to pay off the people running that project to allow him to funnel money and imports around in ways he wasn't supposed to? You don't do that unless you get something back. It was literally just a matter of time before Saddam was able to start rebuilding his WMD. We could see that. The UK could see that. France, Germany, and Russia could see that but didn't care since they were the one's making money and "making nice" with Saddam. Probably the greatest lie told in the last decade to the world population was that the sanctions against Iraq were actually working and would continue to work. Everyone involved with Iraq knew otherwise. They just couldn't for political reasons actually say it directly.

That's why the Blix report is so obtuse in how it reports stuff. He'll rattle off a bunch of violations, and stuff that he's found that shouldn't have been there, but then say "Sanctions are working, but maybe just need a little adjustment". He'll rattle off examples where his team was delayed or blocked from talking to people they wanted to talk to or see places they wanted to see, but then say "Iraq is cooperating with the inspection process". It's obvious to anyone who actually reads the report that he felt an obligation to both tell the truth and reach the conclusions his handlers wanted him to reach. It's an amazing work of doublespeach really.

Generally he'll say phase A of your analysis early in the inspection phase...then reach cooperation with Iraq and say phase B--they are now cooperating. That's how I read his reports.

[quote]The objective of the sanctions was to punish Saddam for not complying with the cease fire terms, and to encourage him to comply with those terms. The terms required that he "abandon all current and future development and production of WMD" (I'm paraphrasing here). That's why "Holding at bay" is not working. Working would be Iraq changing its policy towards WMD. Working would be Iraq volunteering information about their WMD plans, and offering up weapons to be tagged and destroyed, and opening their files to us freely.

That never happened. That's what was supposed to happen. Thus, sanctions never worked. Those who claim sanction were working simply changed the definition of what "working" was. They decided that as long as the short term goal of at least preventing him from building WMD was reached that the sanctions were doing their job. But that was *never* the intended purpose for the sanctions. It simply became that when it became obvious that Saddam would never actually comply with the terms, and the UN as a body was unwilling to force him so they just lowered the bar of expectations.

Yes, that's one of my definitions of "working"--that Saddam had no WMD capability and no WMDs. My other definition is that the inspectors believed it was working. They did by and large, from Blix to David Kay to that other guy (forget the name, I have a bad memory). The US prompted Iraq to better comply with inspections--HURRAH! They used the proper UN route to do this--another hurrah. What should have happened next is the continuance of inspections, because they WERE working and Iraq WAS complying.

Yes, threat without action is a hollow threat. But action wasn't needed, or at least certainly not so soon after Iraq began to comply. The inspectors wanted more time, the UN wanted more time. Most of the world wanted more time. The US didn't, and didn't base its invasion on UN violations, not really, or they would've gone back to the UN as they falsely promised they would. They based on what they supposedly "knew" about current capabilities. On past actions of Saddam from a decade or more ago. They f[b][/b]ucked up, they jumped the gun. They were wrong. Plain and simple.

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#79 Jan 21 2005 at 10:42 PM Rating: Good

gbaji

Encyclopedia

35,568 posts

Palpitus wrote:

gbaji wrote:

Eh? Iraqi forces fired upon US and other coalition forces nearly every single day during the 11 year cease fire period.

First, you're exaggerating. Second, we expanded the no-fly zones, not in accordance with any cease-fire or UN resolutions AFAIK. Third, we changed our operating procedure from defense to offense, something which prompted France to withdraw from patrolling duties out of protest. The no-fly attacks are pretty nonconsequential either way IMO. They are very small beans.

Um. No. I'm not exagerating

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Last year, the Pentagon recorded 366 violations or provocations by the Iraqis in the two no-fly zones -- 221 in the south and 145 in the north.

Lots more on that as well. The media hasn't reported it much, but the fact is that our forces were aimed at and/or fired upon almost daily for 11 years in Iraq. Just becuase you choose not to believe it does not make it any less true.

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So why didn't he use terrorists to launch conventional attacks on US soil or property? Where's the pattern? Was he just waiting to get some "WMD" (Which as far as bio/chem weapons go, generally are not much more devastating than a healthy conventional attack) before he started doing this? You're arguing as if he had an agenda to attack the US. He did very little to indicate this was an agenda of his.

You don't get timing at all do you? First off, while sanctions and inspections are in effect, it's the most difficult for him to do something like that. Secondly, if Iraq did, and it was traced back to them, they'd have to pony up for it.

The smart move is to lay low, retain as much capability as possible, and wait for the UN to get tired of imposing sanctions on you. Once they're gone, you are free to build anything you want, and free to use those weapons as you wish.

Find me a single analysis of Iraq's WMD programs that concluded that the only thing stopping Iraq from building them was the sanctions. Clearly, if sanctions are ever lifted (which they'd have to be someday), Iraq would rebuild those weapons. It's not a guess. It's as close to a factual statement as you can come.

It's kinda like if you passed a law requireing all citizens to give up religion. You might have to enforce that law by putting "sanctions" in place that punished people who attended church, right? You might have to confiscate bibles and other religious materials. You might have to send inspectors around to see if they could find those materials sitting around. Well, after awhile it might become obvious that the only thing preventing people from printing more bibles and rebuilding and attending their churches are the active sanctions against them. Take them away, and clearly people will start doing what they were doing before again.

Would you conclude then that your anti-religion laws were "working"? Not at all. Clearly, they were not getting people to abandon religion. All they were doing was making people hide their stuff and wait until you stopped actively watching them. It's a no-brainer that that approach wont work.

Why assume it would work with Iraq's WMD. They showed exactly the same indications that they were not going to give them up. They hid them early on. They lied about them. When caught, they insisted every time that that was "all we have". At some point, you have to realize that they're going to tell you what you want to hear until you go away. You have to realize also that the second you can't watch them anymore, they'll go right back to what they were doing before. I honestly don't understand how you can't see this.

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Pakistan:
*We've twice sanctioned them in the last 20 years. Once for WMDs, the other time I can't remember what for. These sanctions were approved by Congress AFAIK.

Ok. We had like 10 times as many against Iraq.

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*They're involved in a border dispute with the largest democracy in the world, and our supposed ally.

Ok. Lots of countries have border disputes. When was the last time that Pakistan invaded India? Do we have a legitimate cause for war with them? No.

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*They've occasionally played the escalation game with India, involving nuclear weapons.
*UN resolutions? None as far as I know. No UN resolution called for an invasion of Iraq either, though.
*They were selling nuclear secrets to dangerous states. (No, we didn't know about this before Iraq. We do know now. They've supposedly found the "culprit".
*They're a military dictatorship.
*They're very likely harboring Osama bin Laden--that alone was enough reason to go to war with Afghanistan, and rightfully so.
*They've a history of harboring legitimately anti-US terrorists.
*They were one of the few states who recognized the Taliban as the rightful rulers of Afghanistan when they were in power.
*They have nuclear weapons and are definitely not a stable country or regime.

Lumping the rest together for sanities sake. None of that is "illegal" in international parlance. They were not the government harboring Al-queda. They also aided us significantly during the Afghanistan conflict. Kinda hard to turn around and attack the country that allowed you to stage a war out of their country, isn't it? That really doesn't fly on the international stage at all...

Pakistan is certianly not the posterchild of international peace and brotherhood. However, they've done nothing specifically to the US, and more importantly gave us significant amounts of help after 9/11, when most Muslim countries were stopping just short of cheering. Nothing they've done has justified a state of war.

In Iraq we were already at a state of war. We merely had a cease fire agreement. Once which had been violated on plenty of occasions by Iraq. Legally, we could invade for just that reason. You can't just invade a country because you don't like them. You have to show legitimate cause. In Iraq, we'd already done that. It was just a matter of showing that that cause justified an attack rather then just more sanctions (which brings us to that earlier argument). The only other country in the same status is N. Korea. They're a completely different animal though.

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Now...please list past Iraq military actions against the US as you specify in your list--aside from Kuwait, which Iraq attacked believing the US would not respond.

Heh. Funny you mention that in that exact way, but don't see how it applies to the sanctions as well. Change "attacked Kuwait" with "failed to comply with resolutions", and you have the exact same situation. It's a pattern. Iraq took actions that it thought it could get away with. We figured out what they were up to this time and took action against them *before* they got away with something instead of after. How many times do you have to see the same pattern before you learn something from it?

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Please list resolutions in Congress declaring Iraq a threat to the US--not just unstable, or dangerous, but a threat to the US. Maybe the War Act in '02 specified that, I can't remember.

Sigh. Been there. Done that. Got the shirt

Read it. I see at least a few: Public Law 105-235, Public Law 102-1, Public Law 105-338, Public Law 107-40.

I don't feel like reading through them to figure out the exact wording. I'm also sure there are more. Those are just the ones referenced in the resolution for war against Iraq that congress signed in 2002. And that's not counting that resolution itself, which also concludes Iraq to be a "continuing threat" to US security.

You and I don't get to just decide who's a threat. Congress does. In this case, they decided that Iraq was a threat (on several occasions), but not specifically Pakistan. Sucks for arguing your position, but that's the world we live in...

Please list the UN resolution that declares "Iraq is a threat to the US", as you claim. I can't remember any such resolution.

There are a whole lot of resolutions listed in there. Um. I did miswrite that. The "US" resolutions were about Iraq being a threat to the US. The "UN" resolutions presumably took a more global view of the threat and likely did not mention the US specifically.

That's kind of a silly semantic point to get into and you know it.

I say it because I've paid attention to which states in the Middle East are truly dangerous to our country or have a very high likelihood of the same. My estimation is that Pakistan was, is, and unfortunately will be, more dangerous to the US than Iraq was or could be. It's called an opinion. I base it on quite a number of facts.

Yes. Opinions are like ********. Everyone's got one. However, in every way that matters, the opinions of the office of the President and the Congress of the US matter a lot more then yours do. I'll take their assessment as to which country is a "threat" over yours if you don't mind.

Guess we just disagree then, I see very little in their history (aside from the GW plot) to indicate they held any real desire to attack the US.

I'm sure they didn't have a huge desire to do so either. But that's not the point. After 9/11, lots of terrorist organizations not only had the desire, but now saw opportunity. The issue would not come about purely from Iraq. It would be a matter of trade. Iraq is a secular state. It needs to deal with terrorist groups. At a minimum, it needs to work with them to ensure that they don't become the targets of terrorism. The sale of WMD, and assistance in training and sovereign cover in exchange for hitting targets that Iraq doesn't care about (or ones it would specifically like the terrorists to hit) would seem like a really obvious deal for a state like Iraq to get into.

Iraq wouldn't pay some terrorists to attack us. They'd work out a deal with them first, and along the way if they needed help getting passports or transportation to other countries (including the US), well that could be arranged, right? A WMD attack on the US would not be seen by Iraq as a goal of it's agreements with terrorists but rather a fringe benefit. It would essentially cost them nothing.

And that's exactly why a future ability to produce and provide WMD to terrorist groups constitutes such a threat. Other countries would make sure their stuff only gets used for their own purposes. Iraq, being a secular state, would almost certainly have to bargain some WMD away as part of any deal to keep terrorists off their own backs. And some of those WMD would end up targeting US citizens.

Bah. Enough for now. I've got to head off for diner.

Edited, Fri Jan 21 22:43:22 2005 by gbaji

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#80 Jan 21 2005 at 11:47 PM Rating: Decent

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gbaji wrote:

Eh? Iraqi forces fired upon US and other coalition forces nearly every single day during the 11 year cease fire period.

Um. No. I'm not exagerating

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Last year, the Pentagon recorded 366 violations or provocations by the Iraqis in the two no-fly zones -- 221 in the south and 145 in the north.

Lots more on that as well. The media hasn't reported it much, but the fact is that our forces were aimed at and/or fired upon almost daily for 11 years in Iraq. Just becuase you choose not to believe it does not make it any less true.

Fine, but you're still exaggerating. Your original post claims "Iraqi forces fired upon..." not "aimed at and/or fired upon". Which is it? As for these "provocations", from your article:

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Pentagon officials consider violations or provocations:

• Firing anti-aircraft missiles or guns at allied aircraft

• "Illuminating" or "locking-on" allied aircraft with anti-aircraft radar

• Flying military aircraft in the no-fly zone

• Moving or repositioning anti-aircraft weapons in a fashioned considered hostile

So, maybe Iraq "moved or respositioned anti-aircraft weapons in a fashioned [sic] considered hostile" "nearly every day". It does not say they fired on US or coalition aircraft nearly every day.

You don't like people spouting nonsense they can't back up, I don't like people exaggerating for effect. You can consider it a semantical dig if you want, it just irks me. But enough about that.

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You don't get timing at all do you? First off, while sanctions and inspections are in effect, it's the most difficult for him to do something like that. Secondly, if Iraq did, and it was traced back to them, they'd have to pony up for it.

The smart move is to lay low, retain as much capability as possible, and wait for the UN to get tired of imposing sanctions on you. Once they're gone, you are free to build anything you want, and free to use those weapons as you wish.

Find me a single analysis of Iraq's WMD programs that concluded that the only thing stopping Iraq from building them was the sanctions. Clearly, if sanctions are ever lifted (which they'd have to be someday), Iraq would rebuild those weapons. It's not a guess. It's as close to a factual statement as you can come.

I agree. When have I ever mentioned lifting sanctions? Clearly the only time this would happen is when/if Iraq is no longer considered a threat. Until that time, sanctions have/would likely continue to "work".

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It's kinda like if you passed a law requireing all citizens to give up religion. You might have to enforce that law by putting "sanctions" in place that punished people who attended church, right? You might have to confiscate bibles and other religious materials. You might have to send inspectors around to see if they could find those materials sitting around. Well, after awhile it might become obvious that the only thing preventing people from printing more bibles and rebuilding and attending their churches are the active sanctions against them. Take them away, and clearly people will start doing what they were doing before again.

Would you conclude then that your anti-religion laws were "working"? Not at all. Clearly, they were not getting people to abandon religion. All they were doing was making people hide their stuff and wait until you stopped actively watching them. It's a no-brainer that that approach wont work.

I most certainly would conclude the anti-religion laws were working. There would be no attending of church or reading bibles while the law was in play--that's the point of the law, not to convert them to atheists. And as long as I keep the sanctions on them and keep inspectors on them to keep them on their toes, the law would continue to work.

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Why assume it would work with Iraq's WMD. They showed exactly the same indications that they were not going to give them up. They hid them early on. They lied about them. When caught, they insisted every time that that was "all we have". At some point, you have to realize that they're going to tell you what you want to hear until you go away. You have to realize also that the second you can't watch them anymore, they'll go right back to what they were doing before. I honestly don't understand how you can't see this.

I do. I have never argued that sanctions should be lifted. ??? I'm arguing that inspections had worked, were working, had a lot more time to work, and the US jumped the gun. Yes, there were plenty of reasons to suspect Iraq had WMD. I thought they did as well pre-War. I did NOT think "suspicion" alone was enough to completely undermine the sanctions/inspection process.

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Ok. We had like 10 times as many against Iraq.

And how many did we have against Afghanistan that related to why we went to war with Afghanistan?

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Ok. Lots of countries have border disputes. When was the last time that Pakistan invaded India? Do we have a legitimate cause for war with them? No.

I should've phrased that "bloody" border disputes. Both countries mass troops along the border, both get into tussles with Kashmiri folks or occasionally the other nation. It is certainly a touchy situation there, with nuke threats aplenty from Pakistan and India. Cause for war? Not from your rather narrow three-prong list of reasons, but yes, along with other things it might be.

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Lumping the rest together for sanities sake. None of that is "illegal" in international parlance. They were not the government harboring Al-queda. They also aided us significantly during the Afghanistan conflict. Kinda hard to turn around and attack the country that allowed you to stage a war out of their country, isn't it? That really doesn't fly on the international stage at all...

Yes, which is why pre-war I believed we should stage from the former Soviet SSRs and not Pakistan. We're a bit too far gone to invade or even threaten Pakistan now, and I think it's a hell of a mistake.

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Pakistan is certianly not the posterchild of international peace and brotherhood. However, they've done nothing specifically to the US, and more importantly gave us significant amounts of help after 9/11, when most Muslim countries were stopping just short of cheering. Nothing they've done has justified a state of war.

In Iraq we were already at a state of war. We merely had a cease fire agreement. Once which had been violated on plenty of occasions by Iraq. Legally, we could invade for just that reason. You can't just invade a country because you don't like them. You have to show legitimate cause. In Iraq, we'd already done that. It was just a matter of showing that that cause justified an attack rather then just more sanctions (which brings us to that earlier argument). The only other country in the same status is N. Korea. They're a completely different animal though.

Well, we disagree. I don't think we have legitimate cause to invade Pakistan. (If we'd not allied them and Osama had fled there, we could've used the same give-him-up-or-else threat we'd used against Afghanistan though and we would've had decent cause. Mistake.)

But I don't think we had cause to invade Iraq either. The war the cease-fire was over was only ancillarily between the US and Iraq. It was launched entirely as a reaction to Kuwait messing with Iraq's oil, and yes, we defended a "new" ally after that. But despite any infractions of the cease-fire (which we violated too on a couple occassions), renewing war was a very, very serious decision. Not one to be made over a few airstrikes on our planes or a "suspicion" of WMD.

In many senses NK is not a completely different animal than Iraq, as far as legitimacy to invade--->actually invading goes.

Quote:

Heh. Funny you mention that in that exact way, but don't see how it applies to the sanctions as well. Change "attacked Kuwait" with "failed to comply with resolutions", and you have the exact same situation. It's a pattern. Iraq took actions that it thought it could get away with. We figured out what they were up to this time and took action against them *before* they got away with something instead of after. How many times do you have to see the same pattern before you learn something from it?

We didn't figure out what they were up to--they were up to nothing. How many times do you have to read about no WMD being discovered for it to sink in?

I agree Iraq thought they could get away with Kuwait--our April Glaspie inferred that they could. The sanctions are a different story--they were stalling, misinforming us, etc., but they certainly didn't think they could get away with producing more WMD, else they would have. They underestimated our jumpiness, nothing more.

Quote:

Sigh. Been there. Done that. Got the shirt

Read it. I see at least a few: Public Law 105-235, Public Law 102-1, Public Law 105-338, Public Law 107-40.

I don't feel like reading through them to figure out the exact wording. I'm also sure there are more. Those are just the ones referenced in the resolution for war against Iraq that congress signed in 2002. And that's not counting that resolution itself, which also concludes Iraq to be a "continuing threat" to US security.

You and I don't get to just decide who's a threat. Congress does. In this case, they decided that Iraq was a threat (on several occasions), but not specifically Pakistan. Sucks for arguing your position, but that's the world we live in...

Thank you, I stand corrected.

[quote]There are a whole lot of resolutions listed in there. Um. I did miswrite that. The "US" resolutions were about Iraq being a threat to the US. The "UN" resolutions presumably took a more global view of the threat and likely did not mention the US specifically.

That's kind of a silly semantic point to get into and you know it.[/quote]

Misstatements need to be clarified, that hardly qualifies as a semantic dig. Besides which, I don't know you--perhaps you really did think the UN resolutions declared Iraq a threat to the US. But okay, I see your new reason for war. Based on UN resolutions...except the missing resolution for war.

[quote]Yes. Opinions are like ********. Everyone's got one. However, in every way that matters, the opinions of the office of the President and the Congress of the US matter a lot more then yours do. I'll take their assessment as to which country is a "threat" over yours if you don't mind.[/quote]

Okay, here's a few over the years on Pakistan:

General attitude towards Pakistan over the years:

http://www.clw.org/control/indopaksanctions.html

A random sampling of a US Congressman's take: Link

Both Pakistan and Iraq were on-again off-again allies, revolving around the communisth threat. Why did we take action against Iraq and not Pakistan? I do agree that there was less obvious legal recourse, but in terms of "threat", which is what I was originally arguing about, I'd say Pakistan certainly qualifies as on par if not greatly more of a threat than Iraq. Pakistan DOES have WMD. Apparently luckily for them, they got them up and working before 9/11.

[quote]I'm sure they didn't have a huge desire to do so either. But that's not the point. After 9/11, lots of terrorist organizations not only had the desire, but now saw opportunity. The issue would not come about purely from Iraq. It would be a matter of trade. Iraq is a secular state. It needs to deal with terrorist groups. At a minimum, it needs to work with them to ensure that they don't become the targets of terrorism. The sale of WMD, and assistance in training and sovereign cover in exchange for hitting targets that Iraq doesn't care about (or ones it would specifically like the terrorists to hit) would seem like a really obvious deal for a state like Iraq to get into.

Iraq wouldn't pay some terrorists to attack us. They'd work out a deal with them first, and along the way if they needed help getting passports or transportation to other countries (including the US), well that could be arranged, right? A WMD attack on the US would not be seen by Iraq as a goal of it's agreements with terrorists but rather a fringe benefit. It would essentially cost them nothing.

And that's exactly why a future ability to produce and provide WMD to terrorist groups constitutes such a threat. Other countries would make sure their stuff only gets used for their own purposes. Iraq, being a secular state, would almost certainly have to bargain some WMD away as part of any deal to keep terrorists off their own backs. And some of those WMD would end up targeting US citizens.[/quote]

All good points.

This leads me to a tangential situation--proliferation in general. We already have ten states with nukes (Israel, Pakistan, France, UK, Russia, China, US, NK, Britian, India), and nukes are getting easier to make (with ex-soviet scientists sharing knowledge), and increasingly important to make (with NK's relative safety net of having nukes.)

In my opinion no matter how many sanctions we place on countries, more and more will develop nukes. We got lucky that Libya desired money more than nukes, or it could be about where Iran is now. Clearly there's a lot of apprehension here about Iran having nukes. Personally I think such fears are not warranted. If Pakistan and NK can have nukes, there's plenty of threat there for terrorists getting their hands on them, or them attacking neighbors.

So, ignoring all our previous disagreement, how do you think we should deal with a potentially exploding number of states getting nukes? Should we designate ourselves the world's policeman for hindering this? Does our current mix-up against terrorism force us and us alone to shoulder this responsibility? Can we even afford to do so, given our relatively limited military resources?

I see a breaking point coming in the next several decades, where we'll be unable to stop more "rogue" states or states with terror ties from getting nukes. At that point the only option for our safety will be to "re-brand" ourselves towards the rest of the world, through not f[/b]ucking with other regions. But I'm interested in your take on this--is it inevitable that we'll be vulnerable to states with nukes that have terror allies, and if so how should we approach this in order to ensure our safety? And lesser so, how responsible should we be as a world power? Should we delegate responsibility more to region than we're currently doing so?

[quote]Bah. Enough for now. I've got to head off for diner.[/quote]

Have a good one.

EDIT: Holy bolds and /qoutes!

EDIT: Goddamnit, these quotes are f[b]ucking up. Will try to fix.

EDIT: One more try, then ***** it. SCRW IT@!!

Edited, Fri Jan 21 23:55:28 2005 by Palpitus

Edited, Fri Jan 21 23:57:32 2005 by Palpitus

Edited, Sat Jan 22 00:03:25 2005 by Palpitus

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#81 Jan 22 2005 at 12:43 AM Rating: Decent

Kelvyquayo

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16,112 posts

sweet lord, could that be any fu[b][/b]cking longer?

Bottom line. Wehn ever you resort to violence to solve anything, you have failed at life.

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#82 Jan 22 2005 at 3:53 AM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591781944352

90 posts

Palpitus....DAMN, I think you'd spank me silly if I ever had to debate against you. Kudos, man.

Gbaji, your arguments are good, you only falter when you jump ahead 5, 10, 20 yrs and say thus and so WOULD HAVE HAPPENED, no doubt about it! You can't predict the future like that unless you have something to base it on.

Supposedly, the oil-for-food program was so corrupt that Saddam had raked in billions personally....yet he knew we were coming, knew which direction we were coming from, and all he could manage was to hide in a hole. Umm, yah. I've got billions of dollars, I can guarantee you that I could pay somebody/somebodies enough that they'd hide me up Cindy Crawford's bunghole if I wanted. But, let's say you're right (I know, you never said Saddam had billions, but you did mention the oil-for-food program and how it wasn't working and how that pointed to a general deterioration of the effectiveness of the sanctions, yes?), Saddam's got billions. Wouldn't this money be enough for him to at least start some sort of WMD production line? Wouldn't we have found evidence of it somewhere by now?

I'm going to take your lead and make a huge jump. Because Saddam had billions and had not formed any sort nor any startup of a WMD production line, the sanctions were having their desired effect (in your mind). He no longer even wanted to produce WMD's.

See? I take A and B and I jump to G. Hard to argue against it, right?

Plus, you still haven't rebutted my rebuttal of your rebuttal of my....oh, hell, I'm lost at this point. I said if we were afraid of WMD's, why mass our troops for an invasion. You said we didn't mass and besides we air assaulted ahead of time so nothing could be fired at us, I cited where you're wrong on both counts, and, by damned, you never got back to me. C'MON! That's 8 mins of googling I'll never get back, man.

Look, ma...no quotes!

New York state....where it's so cold, your nipples have nipples. Sheesh.

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#83 Jan 22 2005 at 5:33 AM Rating: Good

gbaji

Encyclopedia

35,568 posts

Heh. Palpitus. The forum only allows a small number of quotes per post. Yeah. It'st he bane of all that is good in the world... :)

You both bring up valid points. Certainly, our policy and actions towards Iraq came about based a certain amount on "guessing" what would happen if we didn't act. I'm not denying that at all. I'm also not trying to claim 100% that this was the "right choice".

The truth is that no one can know for sure, and we'll never know for sure. Once a course of action is taken, you don't have the luxury to go back and try something else. As I stated earlier, the only way we'd know for 100% certain if Iraq was going to choose to restart its WMD programs and use them against us at some point in the future would have been to take no action to prevent it and see what happened. Some will argue (and do) that it's not our right to make a choice to force them to do what we want them to do. On some levels, that's correct. However, not making a choice (or in this case, not taking an action) is still a choice (or course of action).

No matter how much some will try to simplify the issue down to "invade Iraq" and "not invade Iraq", that's not really accurate. The choice really was "invade Iraq as our method to prevent them from building WMD", or "take some other course of action as our method to prevent them from building WMD". Presumably, that second course would lie with trying to use sanctions to prevent the undesired result.

Our government made the determination that sanctions alone would not be sufficient to ensure that Iraq would never build and distribute WMD that would be used against us at some future date. That was the basis for their decision to invade. We can argue the probabilities of one course versus the other, and that's entirely vaid. What I don't agree with is blanket statements that the invasion was unjustified purely becuase Iraq may or may not have possessed WMD (present tense). Our government's job is not just to proect us today, but tomorrow as well. Clearly, if you invade Iraq before it can build WMD and distribute them, then you can with a high degree of success, succeed at the stated goal. If you go with sanctions, your probablility of success arguably is lower. How much lower is certainly a matter of debate, but it clearly *must* be lower.

Our government decided that probability was too low to take the risk. They also decided that the costs of invasion were justified in order to reduce that risk. I happen to agree. You can't just look at one aspect of a political situation, you have to look at the whole picture. It's remakably easy to simplify your disagreement to "They didn't have WMD", or "we had just as much reason to attack <country X>", or the really popular "war is wrong", or the amazingly stupid "war never solved anything" (despite the fact that historically virtually everything has been decided by war). A realistic assessment of our actions must involve an accounting of the risks and rewards of each possible course of action. IMHO, when you look at Iraq in that light, the course we took was certainly justified, and so far (also IMO) shows every sign of reducing the very risks it sought to reduce (and gaining us a few other things), while not costing us more then those things are worth.

But that's just my opinion.

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#84 Jan 22 2005 at 6:15 AM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591781944352

90 posts

Gbaji wrote

Quote:

Our government's job is not just to proect us today, but tomorrow as well. Clearly, if you invade Iraq before it can build WMD and distribute them, then you can with a high degree of success, succeed at the stated goal. If you go with sanctions, your probablility of success arguably is lower. How much lower is certainly a matter of debate, but it clearly *must* be lower.

And that's why they call it a slippery slope...ever see "Minority Report?" Tom Cruise movie, unfortunately, but if you can ignore him it does show a world in which your contention, attack them before they can attack us (or, in Iraq's case, have even the ability to attack us), is extrapolated to the nth degree. Upshot is, sooner or later, no matter your good intentions or how many people you save, you're going to make a mistake.

Like it or not, the litmus test has (when declaring war, anyway) has been, "Are they a known threat?" or, Afghanistan's case, harboring a known threat.

Iraq didn't pass the test....we attacked anyway, first for the 'imminent threat' of WMD's, now (since that's been debunked) because we HAD to respond to their supposed non-compliance with a UN resolution...the same UN that this administration hacked on (although not so much lately) for not backing our war declaration.

If nothing else, though, Gbaji, I respect your dedication to your cause. I hope it doesn't end up biting you in the ***.

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#85 Jan 23 2005 at 12:08 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591814706327

2,847 posts

we did not attack Iraq because of any perceived threat. immenant danger is the vehical this addministraition used to get justification for their agenda, because without it, they had no legal recourse to enter Iraq.

Iraq is pivitol to our national security, and there were many reasons to invade that country as opposed to others.

1. Israel. Iraq, and especially Hussin, is a proclaimed enemy of Israel, and a supporter of actions against that country...along with every other country in the middle east.

2. oil. we have seen the effects of opec pumping up production or lowering it. even though only 20 percent of our oil comes from the middle east, they can effectively create skyrocketing prices that affect almost every industry here in the U.S., or plummit the prices to where american oil companys are screaming for sanctions just to keep in the green.

3. isolation. Hussin effectively isloated himself from every other country in the middle east. Iraq would not get the support from other governments if they were attacked as say, Saudi Arabia would, or Jordan for that matter.

4. military presence in the middle east. we were attacked on 9-11 becuase of our military basses in Saudi Arabia. our continued presence in that country was undermining the security there to the point the majority of people in SA were opposed to the curent government. our continued presence there was leading to a civil war in the only country in the middle east we could buy off their leaders.

we are out of SA now. and, as Cheney pointed out, Iraq is centraly located in the middle east, a perfect place to stage a military operation in jus about any direction we choose. not to mention assisting Israel against assults from Jordan, or any other large Muslim assult for that matter, and effectivly cutting off the armies of half of the middle east from Israel.

5. reprocussions. no one liked Hussin. not even his own people. taking him out would hardly cause a ripple in the international community. even the U.N., while not agreeing to help us, didnt level any war crime charges or sanction the hell out of us for doing it. not a peep from the rest of the world. some name calling, and grandstanding, but pretty much hands off.

sooo, you have a perfectly centrally located stageing ground for military action in the middle east, opec can go ***** themselves now, Israel is safer, and you have big brother standing in their midst with an IRON HAMMER, ready to strike out at any percepted threat against this country.

Haliburton has contracts ot build 14 PERMANENT basses in Iraq. we are not leaving. we will withdraw from the cities some day, but we have no intention of leaving Iraq at all. we tried to do the same thing with S.Korea, in getting a foot hold on the China pensula. we have done th same thing in various latin american countries also. africa to.

it is a sound stragic decision to "protect" this country from a percieved danger, be it terrorism, or an energy crises that could bring this country ot its knees economically. wars have been fought for a hell of a lot less.
----------------------------------------------------------------

that said, this action is totally lacking in any morals or legal justification.

it also shows a complete lack of faith in the american people. we are survivors. we will adapt and overcome any obstical. shut off the oil today, by next year we will be driving vehicals that dont use it. invade our country, and we will redifine "holy war". we do not need big brother destroying potential threats out of FEAR.

this addministraition, unlike any since we got our pee pee slapped in vietnam, has chosen to use force to mold a world more to our likeing. where previous addmninistraitions chose containment, and treaties to form a tenious peace that resulted in the fall of communism in russia, this one chooses WAR.

in the name of God of coarse. and supported by the MORAL majority of coarse.

you decide if the world being nudered for our self intrest alone is right or wrong, moraly just or unjust.

you decide if war is the ONLY path to this end, or if moderation could come from another path. history will tell us eventually weather the hundreds of thousands of people we butcher out of fear was necessary or not.

i like to have a little faith in humanity myself, and believe not only is there another path, but the majority of people WANT another path.

if you dont, then jump on the fear mongering bandwagon of this addministraition and "on with the blood letting".

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#86 Jan 23 2005 at 12:13 PM Rating: Decent

KingJohn

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1,701 posts

Didn't you say you were going to church?

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