And the "No ****, Sherlock" award goes to....Follow

Nicely put

Missed you big guy

Gah! Are you seriously that dumb?

Past tense. Past tense. Past tense.


That statement is saying that back in 1991, when the initial weapons inspections began those inspectors found that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons, a large scale biological weapons program, and were much closer to developing nuclear weapons then anyone thought prior to the war. (for completion, this statement presumably encompasses a period between about 1991 and 1996, but still well prior to the actual decision to invade).

Get it? This is about things back in 1991. This statement in no way states or implies that there are any WMDs in Iraq at the moment the document was written.

Even after I explain this 3 times, you still don't get this?


Let me go really slow:


1. The primary anti-war argument is that "Iraq didn't have WMDs" (with the implication that we went to war because Iraq did have WMDs), and so the actual invasion of Iraq was unjustified and illegal.

2. I stated that the document in which our justification for invasion was legally defined does not contain a single statement claiming that Iraq possesses (present tense) actual WMDs. Lots of statements about what it did have. Lots of stuff about Iraq's history of lying about what it did have. Lots of statements about what it has the capability to do. Lots of statements about what it's *trying* to do. But not one statement of fact claiming that Iraq actually possesses those weapons.


3. Several people then proceeded to dig up statements that didn't say anything about current WMDs existing in Iraq, but maybe mentioned WMDs as some sort of proof of something. And frankly, I can never tell if you guys just can't read very well, or if you can but keep hoping if you just repeat the quote enough times other people (who can't read very well) will think it's relevant.


Stop quoting that statement. It does not support your claim at all.

Edited, Aug 29th 2007 5:57pm by gbaji

Edited, Aug 29th 2007 5:58pm by gbaji

Yes, we know Iraq didn't have WMDs in 2002. Therefore they were no immediate threat. The UN weapons inspection team could not find any sign of an operational weapons development or production program. Upon invasion we didn't find anything either. So, no weapons, no way to make weapons. Why even mention it?

God, your a thick cnut!



Just because you have shifted your mental goalposts so far that they're stickin outta your ears, to internally explain Bush's shortcomings to yourself, doesn't mean its 'true'.

As I already said, people objected to the war, because it was going to cause all of the misery that it has caused. Your attemts to blame the liberal media conspiracy for actually encouraging the drive to war by banging on about WMD's not existing, when they didnt exist and therefore making people believe that the weapons that didnt exist are the reason to not go to war....or something. .. is tinfoil bonnet land.




Yeah, that, and the fact that it was painfully obvious to everyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size that BushCo's threats of war, had nothing whatsoever to do with WMD's, human rights, democracy or ****. You, of course, being a thick cnut were busily agreeing that slaughter on a massive scale was going to be the one thing that 'the muzzies who attacked the fatherland' would understand.

The war was illegal. All wars of aggression are illegal. Rightly so. Just 'cos you like to dress yur wars up in the finery of 'noble causes and heroic actions to bring freedom and democracy to the untermensch', doesnt change the fact that the most powerful military in the world has fucked over a country of 22 million people (who nevr threatened the US. And dont give me that bollox about no-fly zones) who never asked to be 'liberated' or to have 'freedom' imposed on them. The people who started the war and the ones who have prosecuted it are war criminals. How can you possibly see it otherwise? (unless youre a thick cnut o' course).



No. They persistantly stated categorically that they knew for a fact that the WMD's existed, to wit....as I stated above....

Quote:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

Richard Cheney August 26, 2002



Quote:
We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

Ari Fleischer January 9, 2003



Quote:
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

George Bush March 18, 2003



Quote:
We know where they (WMD's)are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.

Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 200

. There were many more.

The rest of your ramblings are more of the same old "Us on the right know something you lefties don't or wont understand", " blame the CIA', "it was the media wot dunnit", and more evidence of your total lack of understanding of historical geo-politics of the world outside of your own backyard in a similar vein that GWB exhibited recently in his speech invoking Vietnam and WWII.

Your faith in the good intentions of the people who have led your country into its present predicament could be quite sweet. Like that of a dog, who having been beaten by its owner, still wags its tail in the hope that this time it will be patted, rather than kicked. Except that you are capable of reason and in possesion of an anylitical mind. I have in the past wondered why you refuse to use it...but I think I've sussed you out.

Your an thick cnut.





Edited, Aug 30th 2007 1:14am by paulsol

Gbaji, I feel kinda sorry that you're alone defending the Iraq war. It feels like you're getting picked on, and that's wrong.

Having said that.



Sorry, but what does this refer to? How is this linked to the war in Iraq? There were no threatening "radical militarized political terrorists" in Iraq before we invaded.

People are not pissed off at this administration for trying to solve some of the ME's problems, they are pissed off because they attacked the wrong problem, with the wrong tools, for the wrong reasons. Not only that, but they deliberately misleading and machiavelic in the way they went about it.

Why did 70% of US citizens think the Saddam was personally linked to 9/11 before the invasion? Because US citizens are inherently incapable of understanding interntional politics? Or because the adminsitration and its media outlets were doing everything they could to convince them that this was the case?

The only serious argument I've heard from you that justifies the Iraq war is this "US troops in SA". We might disagree about how high this was on the grieviances of Islamic terrorists, but even if it were the highest, there were alternatives. The troops could've been moved elsewhere. You can't justify a full-scale invasion of a sovereign country on the basis that it is required for the movement and stationing of troops.



Sometime, being the key word. Sometime, and somewhere. Unfortunately, Iraq was not the place, and this was not the time. This war was unecessary. The cost is completely disproportional to the benefits. In fact, so much so that it's hard to even think of the "benefits" this invasion has brought.



That is quite a statement.

Please explain how New-Zealand has lost anything because of the Iraq war.

It's total ********* His "system" is your "system" is my "system". In the Western world, we're pretty much all in the same "system". And none of us lost anything when the US invaded. Even France, who was accused of not wanting to go to war because of economic reasons, hasn't lost anything since the invasion. In fact, it's been quite helpful economically since we've sold more nuclear power than usual.

Would the US have invaded if there had been no oil in Iraq? What do you think people assume when the only Ministry to be protected after the invasion was the Ministry for Oil? What do you think ordinary Muslim think when they see all the looting going on, while soldiers watch and protect only the Ministry? What do you think they feel when they hear that the companies involved in the reconstruction process have ex-directors who are part of this administration? Or when they see that CPA prioritised building a Baghdad Stock Exchange over restoring pre-war level of electricity or running water?

They all have TV, and they're all watching. Everyone is. And your PR sucks.



Iraq was not a remedy to Islamic terrorism.



Of course. But how does invading a country, flushed with oil change, does anything to alter that perception?



A huge amount. There is no doubt that colonisation, and de-colonisation, gave birth to most of these artificial states. I was talking to some Professor at Sussex University, and he was telling me that the Brits created unstable countries in the ME on purpose. That they knew very well that a multi-ethnic Iraq would be unstable and weak, and that it would be easier to bully a weak and unstable country in order to buy Oil from them.

I don't know if that's true or not. But there is no doubt that a lot of the problems in the Arab world originate from Europe, and the (de)colonisation.



Totally untrue.

When Clinton tried to settle the ISrael/Palestine process through the Oslo accord, no one comlpained. In fact, everyone was happy that someone was taking a real interest in the problem. When the first Gulf War happened, no one complained. In fact, most countries joined in. Same for kosovo.

You simplify things too much. The "bad rep" of the US is not homogenic. The US's rep in the ME is radically different to the US's rep in the EU. The reasons for that rep are also different.

In the ME, they see the US a neo-colonialist power intent on controlling the region, and grabbing its oil in the process. They see Israel as the proxy of the US, a puppet state that stole the land of the Palestinian in order to promote US hegemony in the region. They see the US's support of the Saudi Kings, of Mubarak, of the Shah before that, as proof of this desire to control, to spread the economic and military empire.

In the EU, most see the US as a George in Of Mice and Men. Deep-down a good guy, well-intentionned, but so strong and awkward he can be dangerous. But, as in Of Mice and Men, it's like brotherhood. Yeah, we ***** and complain and call you names, but it's not serious. Even in France, we know what we owe the US.

Which makes it even more frustrating when the US recklessly "sticks in neck out".

What pisses off Europeans the most, I think, is that there is an international system to deal with these problems. No one wants the US to be the "sheriff" of the world. The leader, sure. But within the system. Within the interntional community. Bush's gung-ho approach, the confrontational attitude, the "with us or against us", all of that is extremely alienating to Europeans.

Now, you can argue that this is because european countries have an inferiority complex, that they pine for their past greateness, and that they can't bear to see the US being so dominant and nonchalant about it's allies. And, for sure, there is some element of truth in this.

But none of this changes the fact that, at the end of the day, you have to work within the system. And that if the system is inadequate, then you work to change it, to better it. The idea that the US can, on its own, solve the world's problems is laughable. We're in it together, and I don't just mean the US and the EU. It's an integrated world, and it requires an integrated solution. Today it's Islamic Terrorism, tomorrow it'll be China or Russia.

But well, I've gone quite off-topic, so I'll stop here.

Well. I guess re-inventing history after the fact is alive and well...

You all prove it in fact. So insistent that the version of events that you have been convinced is "true" that you're unwilling to even examine the actual facts and historical documents.

Instead, you pull single quotes out of context. Did I *ever* say that no one in the Bush administration though that Iraq had WMDs and made statements to that effect?

No. I didn't. What I did say is that in the US the Bush administration was not the *only* group saying this. Everyone was saying it. On all political sides.


I also said that it was irrelevant, since those statements were *not* used as a legal justification for the invasion of Iraq.


Why is that so hard for you guys to get? We keep going around in circles. You claim that Bush led us to war on a lie. I say he didn't lie. You say that he said that Iraq had WMDs. I say that it wasn't a lie (he thought they did), that lots of other people thought the same, and that we didn't actually go to war for that reason anyway. You then switch tactics to trying to argue that the anti-war argument doesn't rely on proving that we went to war because Iraq possessed WMDs. You then spout about how the war is "illegal" and "unjustified". I then list off the legal justifications and ask you to point to the ones that are incorrect. You proceed to point at the ones that mention WMDs, misread them to make them sound like they're saying that WMDs were physically in Iraq, then argue that those were wrong.

And then we're right back to you arguing that the war is "wrong" because there were no WMDs in Iraq....


Funny. I see the pattern. You guys apparently don't (or do and don't care). How many more times do we have to go around the same loop of logic before you'll realize that the *entire* argument against the war rests on incredibly faultly and easily debunked assumptions? I've debunked that argument repeatedly, but you guys just keep dancing around the issue.


If it's not about Iraq "possessing" (present tense) WMDs, then why do you keep returning your argument to that point? And if it's something else, then why can't you ever seem to support your "other reasons" without inevitably returning to the issue of WMDs?

Seriously. Stop and look at your own argument. It's ridiculous and circular.


Oh. And I love how apparently the Europeans on this board don't even want to see their own flaws and faults. Good job hiding the truth guys.

Edited, Aug 30th 2007 6:21pm by gbaji

The only part of the joint resolution that has any truth to it is



The rest is bunk.

Is this war really just about saving the Kurds?

Change 'Iraq' to 'Iran' and that would be a whole lot more topical.

'Cos you know, the Iranians are the threat to the Israelis'war president' now.