Asp Forum - audit your gems (excellent blog post

Giles Bowkett

3/6/2007 2:36:00 AM

http://blog.evanweaver.com/articles/2007/03/04/audit...

In which Evan Weaver successfully changes his root password with a gem
called Malice.

--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesg...
http://gilesbowkett.bl...
http://giles.t...

13 Answers

Bob Hammer

12/11/2010 4:07:00 AM

In article
<0144809b-3daa-4f74-b924-7ac8a29f9086@c39g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
wy <wy_@myself.com> wrote:

> > ?wy <w...@myself.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > > For someone who can't even come up with the right Public Law, you're
> > > in no position to know anything about what you think you're talking
> > > about.
> >
> > You cited that law to show that the invasion was illegal.
> >
> > Now that's been shown that you were... confused about the wording of the
> > law, you have decided it's the "wrong law".
>
> Sorry, that's something's that's only happening in your own fractured
> universe of unreality. Everything works perfectly fine in mine.

FWIW, in your mind, the public law enabling the invasion specifically
forbade the action. Are we to take you seriously at this point?

> > Well, then, back to square one.
> >
> > Which law was broken?
>
> You figure it out, you're the broken record. I already got it figured
> out ages ago.

So basically, when you stated that the Iraq invasion was illegal, you
were just blowing smoke.

Alias

12/11/2010 8:51:00 AM

On 12/11/2010 01:25 AM, Bob Hammer wrote:
> In article<iduft4$pkj$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>
>> On 12/10/2010 11:04 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>> In article<idtnme$6bl$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/10/2010 06:12 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>>> In article<idtlkb$sa0$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:44 PM, The Big Dog wrote:
>>>>>>> In article<idtkf4$qu2$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:24 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
>>>>>>>>>>> stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Please cite the law they broke.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Are you serious?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Short list:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Murder
>>>>>>>> More murder
>>>>>>>> Mass murder
>>>>>>>> Genocide
>>>>>>>> Attacking a country unprovoked.
>>>>>>>> Even more murder.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Need more?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You are painfully out of your league.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Really? How so? Care to comment on the subject at hand or just hurl shit
>>>>>> like a deranged monkey?
>>>>>
>>>>> Please cite the laws the US broke, that's a start.
>>>>>
>>>>> Have fun.
>>>>
>>>> I did. Can't read?
>>>
>>> What is the enforcement agency for these "laws" you cite?
>>
>> It's called the International Court of Justice located in the Hague,
>> Netherlands. Got any more stupid questions?
>
> Who hauls the actors to court, UN Police?

Interpol, who else?

--
Alias

Alias

12/11/2010 8:53:00 AM

On 12/11/2010 03:32 AM, George Kerby wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/10/10 11:23 AM, in article idtnme$6bl$1@news.eternal-september.org,
> "Alias"<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>
>> On 12/10/2010 06:12 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>> In article<idtlkb$sa0$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:44 PM, The Big Dog wrote:
>>>>> In article<idtkf4$qu2$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:24 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>>>>>> The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
>>>>>>>>> stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Please cite the law they broke.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Are you serious?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Short list:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Murder
>>>>>> More murder
>>>>>> Mass murder
>>>>>> Genocide
>>>>>> Attacking a country unprovoked.
>>>>>> Even more murder.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Need more?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> You are painfully out of your league.
>>>>
>>>> Really? How so? Care to comment on the subject at hand or just hurl shit
>>>> like a deranged monkey?
>>>
>>> Please cite the laws the US broke, that's a start.
>>>
>>> Have fun.
>>
>> I did. Can't read?
>
> No you didn't.

No, you can't read. Murder, mass murder, genocide and attacking a
country without provocation is illegal internationally.

> You posted hearsay.

No, I didn't.

>
> Fuck off and die.
>

Charming.

--
Alias

Alias

12/11/2010 8:54:00 AM

On 12/11/2010 03:29 AM, George Kerby wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/10/10 10:28 AM, in article idtkf4$qu2$1@news.eternal-september.org,
> "Alias"<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>
>> On 12/10/2010 05:24 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>> The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
>>>>> stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
>>>
>>> Please cite the law they broke.
>>
>> Are you serious?
>>
>> Short list:
>>
>> Murder
>> More murder
>> Mass murder
>> Genocide
>> Attacking a country unprovoked.
>> Even more murder.
>>
>> Need more?
>
> You don't have nothing, moron.

Another one who hasn't a clue.

>
> War is WAR!

War crimes are war crimes.

>
> Fuck off and die.
>

No.

--
Alias

Joe Irvin

12/11/2010 4:17:00 PM

"wy" <wy_@myself.com> wrote in message
news:5249bc7d-a244-4dd4-98c2-7ef62ea67ee1@fu15g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 10, 5:11 pm, "Joe Irvin" <ji3...@sccoast.net> wrote:
>> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:039a9302-da32-4d32-b431-cd327353f363@h22g2000vbr.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Dec 10, 1:30 pm, "Joe Irvin" <ji3...@sccoast.net> wrote:
>> >> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message
>>
>> >>news:8e2b22c6-5972-4ab0-ac61-0290d0b2bed1@k22g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> >> > On Dec 10, 3:26 am, "DogDiesel" <nos...@nospam.none> wrote:
>> >> >> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message
>>
>> >> >>news:c17e5103-e4a1-4d58-8874-a04114549d2a@p38g2000vbn.googlegroups.com...
>> >> >> On Dec 9, 8:08 pm, Tracey12 <tracey12em...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> >> > On Dec 9, 7:05 pm, wy <w...@myself.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> >> > > On Dec 9, 8:01 pm, Tracey12 <tracey12em...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> >> > > > On Dec 9, 6:57 pm, wy <w...@myself.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> >> > > > > On Dec 9, 7:40 pm, Tracey12 <tracey12em...@gmail.com>
>> >> >> > > > > wrote:
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > Julian Assange releases several hundred thousand
>> >> >> > > > > > documents.
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > Obama's FCC pushes massive new controls on the Internet.
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > Obama says little or nothing about Julian and most
>> >> >> > > > > > importantly,
>> >> >> > > > > > the
>> >> >> > > > > > military person who stole the files, one PFC Bradley
>> >> >> > > > > > Manning.
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > See a correlation?
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > Is there any chance that Obama, Julian and Bradley are
>> >> >> > > > > > all
>> >> >> > > > > > working
>> >> >> > > > > > for
>> >> >> > > > > > the same objective?
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > We know that Obama's policies are destabilizing to the US
>> >> >> > > > > > economy,
>> >> >> > > > > > and
>> >> >> > > > > > Bradley's theft of files and subsequent release have
>> >> >> > > > > > caused
>> >> >> > > > > > an
>> >> >> > > > > > additional loss of faith in the federal government.
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > London's problems may well come here. In England,
>> >> >> > > > > > communists
>> >> >> > > > > > radicals
>> >> >> > > > > > are pushing upset students and additional leftists to
>> >> >> > > > > > riot.
>>
>> >> >> > > > > > If leftist radicals push street riots in America, will
>> >> >> > > > > > you
>> >> >> > > > > > join
>> >> >> > > > > > in
>> >> >> > > > > > the
>> >> >> > > > > > revolution?
>>
>> >> >> > > > > America is well overdue for some good old-fashioned rioting
>> >> >> > > > > in
>> >> >> > > > > the
>> >> >> > > > > streets. It's gotten too fat from complacency since the 60s
>> >> >> > > > > and
>> >> >> > > > > political stagnation and economic ruin is what it's all
>> >> >> > > > > come
>> >> >> > > > > down
>> >> >> > > > > to.
>> >> >> > > > > Time to shake things up again - Big Time.
>>
>> >> >> > > > Thats what the commie revolutionaries hope for.
>>
>> >> >> > > You mean 1776 was all about commie revolutionaries?
>>
>> >> >> > We now have a system of justice in place to convict and punish
>> >> >> > members
>> >> >> > of the government who break the law. Let's not follow the nutty
>> >> >> > left
>> >> >> > over the cliff just because they want a revolution.
>>
>> >> >> So how come Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are still free?
>>
>> >> >> Because they complied with the UN resolution to invade Iraq. They
>> >> >> didnt
>> >> >> do
>> >> >> anything illegal.
>>
>> >> > UN Resolution 1441 didn't allow the US to invade Iraq. Whenever a
>> >> > resolution ends with "Decides to remain seized of the matter" it
>> >> > means
>> >> > no further action is to be taken until the next resolution.
>>
>> >> Come on Mr Wy ... everyone knew this was the final straw. The UN had
>> >> been
>> >> negotiating/talking with Saddam for over a decade. They already had
>> >> the
>> >> authority to invade Iraq if they failed to live up to the cease-fire
>> >> agreement. UN Res 1441 was a final resolution (there had been about
>> >> 14
>> >> or
>> >> 15 previous UN resolutions) The last part of UN Res 1441 said:
>> >> "Recalls,
>> >> in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it
>> >> will
>> >> face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of
>> >> its
>> >> obligations;" What do you think 'serious consequences' meant? keep
>> >> negotiating? ... It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War
>> >> resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since he
>> >> had
>> >> kicked out the weapons inspectors, 6 months since I had issued my
>> >> ultimatum
>> >> at the Un, 4 months since UN Res 1441 and give Saddam his 'final
>> >> opportunity,' and 3 month past the deadline to fully disclose his
>> >> WMD's."
>> >> Decision Points, G Bush. When Saddam was debriefed by the FBI he told
>> >> them
>> >> "He never thought the US would follow through on our promises to
>> >> disarm
>> >> him
>> >> by force." Decision Point Do you think maybe the negotiating were
>> >> moving
>> >> to
>> >> fast?, in had been only about 12 years of talks and his continued
>> >> breading
>> >> of the cease-fire agreement.
>>
>> >> I think a good lesson has been relearned here ... if one keeps on
>> >> appeasing
>> >> nothing will change.
>>
>> > "Decides to remain seized of the matter" - As long as a resolution
>> > ends with that, it means that the UN is still involved in seeing to it
>> > that a peaceful solution is arrived at, especially when no state has
>> > been attacked by Iraq.
>>
>> Saddam was shooting at coalition air craft in the no-fly zone. With the
>> cease-fire agreement there are two sides ... Saddam could continue to
>> ignore
>> the agreement with no consequences except more UN Resolutions?? What
>> purpose does a cease-fire agreement serve if one party continues to
>> ignore
>> it? ... this had been going on for over a decade. The UN may be involved
>> in
>> 'seeing to it that a peaceful solution is arrived at', but you don't see
>> this as a stall tactic? ... only about 12 years had passed since the
>> agreement. How long do you think there should have been negotiations?
>> As I
>> said above the FBI was told by Saddam that he thought the US WOULD'NT
>> attack
>> ... if this is true what do you think would make Saddam negotiate? North
>> Korea had a truce/cease-fire about 50 years ago ... how did the
>> negotiating
>> work there ... N. Korea has nuclear weapons and missiles. I'm asking
>> you;
>> is there every a time when we should stop talking and use force?
>>
>> It's a fine point in the language that seems
>>
>> > to go over your head, with you probably thinking, and rather
>> > arrogantly so as Americans tend to do in such matters, that American
>> > law somehow trumps UN law within the framework of UN functions.
>>
>> It not that US law trumps anything ... a nation will ignore the UN when
>> it
>> feels it vital interests are at stake.
>>
>> > American law only trumps it if the US decides to go against what the
>> > UN concludes, which in itself becomes an illegal action within the
>> > international body of the UN charter members. And even then, what's
>> > the American law that allows the US to attack a nation when the US
>> > itself has never been attacked by that nation?
>>
>> Granada for one ... the US was ready to invade/bomb Cuba if Russian
>> missiles
>> had not been removed. You don't count Saddam shooting at coalition air
>> craft in the no fly zone. What if a US pilot had been shoot down, what
>> does
>> the US do then ... negotiate for another decade? There comes a time when
>> one has to realize the UN is going to do nothing. Saddam came to that
>> conclusion early. He had corrupted the Oil for Food program and the
>> quarantines weren't working, France, Germany, and Russia were ignoring
>> them.
>> Let me hear you solution. Appeasement doesn't work, or do you not see
>> this
>> as appeasement?
>
> The No-Fly Zones themselves were illegal, not sanctioned by the UN.
> They were created to protect the Kurds in the north and the religious
> minority (I can't remember which one was the minority) in the south
> from attacks by Saddam. It's funny that the no-fly zones only applied
> to the Iraqis and not to coalition forces, especially Americans.
> Saddam, being Saddam, likely viewed coalition forces as trespassers on
> his own land and thought he had every right to try to shoot down their
> planes, especially since the UN said the no-fly zones were illegal.
> And he did that pretty much the same way America would react if
> illegal no-fly zones were established on its terrain by the Chinese.
> This was clearly a tactical move on the part of the US to goad Iraq
> into acting more and more like a rogue state when, in fact, it was
> only doing what any state would do against aggressors acting illegally
> on its land.

US, and the UK had an obligation to protect minorities in Iraq after the war
since Saddam wasn't taken out. They interpreted UN Res 688 as to give the
coalition forces the authority to protect the minority Iraqis. Since the
coalition was fighting the war they used their interpretation of UN Res 688.
The UN has no military and depends on the US and coalitions forces to fight
the war. The US and coalitions forces are not dependent on the UN to
micromanage the war. Do you think Saddam should be free to do with the
minorities what he pleased knowing his murderous attitude toward dissenters.

> The point of the matter is not whether Saddam was evil or not. We
> know he was. And yet, the US still sided with him in the 80s in
> Iraq's war with Iran, even supplying him with WMDs - the same chemical
> weapons that the US then sought to destroy in the 90s and 2000s.

Foreign policy is fluid, enemies can become allies and allies can become
enemies. Russia become a foe after WWII yet we supported Russia in WWII.
Iran was also an ally at one time. Just because the US supported Iraq
previously doesn't mean anything except foreign policy changes. The point
IS whether Saddam was evil and some DON'T know that he was, at least some of
us know that he was. Its as if the left wants to be lied to. The left
continually accepted what Saddam said as the truth ... his actions are never
questioned, only Bush's and the coalition actions are questioned. Everyone
but the left knew Saddam was stalling and had no intention of abiding by the
treaty, but when the US/coalition forces make a move they are the ones that
are wrong. Over a decade of negotiating means nothing to the left.

Now,
> there's this guy in Iran and that other guy in North Korea. Both are
> much further ahead with WMDs - real WMDs, not the pretend variety -
> than Iraq ever was, and Iraq never even had any nukes or was anywhere
> near getting them.

That is Monday morning quarterbacking ... most intelligences services in the
coalition thought he had WMD's. Two Congressional investigations found that
there was no pressure to come to any agreement to falsify or change intell.
It was an intelligence screw up.

So you have to ask yourself, if it was clear that
> Iran and North Korea were about to get nukes, how come the US didn't
> turn the screws on them just as much as it did on Iraq and even start
> a war with them?

My point was appeasement doesn't solve any problems at all. Saddam was
using his stall tactics to do what he wanted. I've pointed out that Saddam
didn't sweat the UN/US at all. N. Korea used the same tactics of
negotiations ... we are still negotiating today and will continue unless N.
Korea decides to invade or attack. That is exactly what was happening in
Iraq ... keep negotiating and restart the nuclear program and then we end up
with Iraq with a nuclear weapon in the middle east. The WikiLeaks show that
middle eastern countries wants the US make sure that Iran doesn't get
nuclear weapons. I'm sure they thought the same about Saddam.

Why just pick on lowly Iraq when it didn't even have
> any WMDs - real WMDs? If the US can ignore the UN by running over any
> country it likes, what's stopping the US from protecting the whole
> world from the armaggedon likes of Iran and North Korea, which now
> pose a much greater threat than Iraq ever was to America's national
> security?

Again we didn't know that Iraq didn't have WMD's so that is no argument.
We went on intelligence that we thought accurate but was not accurate ... it
wasn't the US 'running over any country it likes.' The US didn't act in
haste, it waited for 10+ years and many UN resolutions before it acted.
We've seen by the FBI's debriefing of Saddam that he thought the US would
not invade. How can there be any negotiating if one sides believes the
other side will not act?

That should be a good enough reason to attack Iran and
> North Korea now that they have nukes, just as it was a good enough
> reason to go after Iraq which only had just puny little chemical
> weapons instead. So why isn't the US acting on it the way it did with
> Iraq?

The US has no reason to attack N. Korea ... still in negotiations from the
Korean War ... that train left the station a long time ago, but you see how
negotiations work with N. Korea.

I don't know why we haven't acted on Iraq and even if we will ... That is up
to our Congress .. the US doesn't have unlimited resources.

Isn't it all about principle?

What about the principle of abiding by the cease-fire agreement? I've
noticed you've never said anything about Saddam ignoring the ceasefire
agreement, but point out anytime you thought the US may have acted
illegally. The principle seems to be no matter what the US does it wrong or
illegal.

And what was the greater
> principle in going after Iraq that just isn't there for the US to go
> after Iran and North Korea in the same way?

What is the principle that the US should be the only nation on the planet
that goes after rogue countries?

And why do it illegally
> for Iraq and not even consider it for Iran and North Korea?

How do you know it hasn't been considered for the above?

I've noticed you haven't answered some of my questions. We had negotiated
with Saddam for going on 12 years, how long do you think we should have
negotiated? Do you think Saddam was negotiating in good faith? If not what
should have been done?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> >> >http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/uns...
>>
>> >> > The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
>> >> > stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
>

wy

12/11/2010 5:58:00 PM

On Dec 11, 11:16 am, "Joe Irvin" <ji3...@sccoast.net> wrote:
> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message

>
> >> >> > UN Resolution 1441 didn't allow the US to invade Iraq. Whenever a
> >> >> > resolution ends with "Decides to remain seized of the matter" it
> >> >> > means
> >> >> > no further action is to be taken until the next resolution.
>
> >> >> Come on Mr Wy ... everyone knew this was the final straw. The UN had
> >> >> been
> >> >> negotiating/talking with Saddam for over a decade. They already had
> >> >> the
> >> >> authority to invade Iraq if they failed to live up to the cease-fire
> >> >> agreement. UN Res 1441 was a final resolution (there had been about
> >> >> 14
> >> >> or
> >> >> 15 previous UN resolutions) The last part of UN Res 1441 said:
> >> >> "Recalls,
> >> >> in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it
> >> >> will
> >> >> face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of
> >> >> its
> >> >> obligations;" What do you think 'serious consequences' meant? keep
> >> >> negotiating? ... It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War
> >> >> resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since he
> >> >> had
> >> >> kicked out the weapons inspectors, 6 months since I had issued my
> >> >> ultimatum
> >> >> at the Un, 4 months since UN Res 1441 and give Saddam his 'final
> >> >> opportunity,' and 3 month past the deadline to fully disclose his
> >> >> WMD's."
> >> >> Decision Points, G Bush. When Saddam was debriefed by the FBI he told
> >> >> them
> >> >> "He never thought the US would follow through on our promises to
> >> >> disarm
> >> >> him
> >> >> by force." Decision Point Do you think maybe the negotiating were
> >> >> moving
> >> >> to
> >> >> fast?, in had been only about 12 years of talks and his continued
> >> >> breading
> >> >> of the cease-fire agreement.
>
> >> >> I think a good lesson has been relearned here ... if one keeps on
> >> >> appeasing
> >> >> nothing will change.
>
> >> > "Decides to remain seized of the matter" - As long as a resolution
> >> > ends with that, it means that the UN is still involved in seeing to it
> >> > that a peaceful solution is arrived at, especially when no state has
> >> > been attacked by Iraq.
>
> >> Saddam was shooting at coalition air craft in the no-fly zone. With the
> >> cease-fire agreement there are two sides ... Saddam could continue to
> >> ignore
> >> the agreement with no consequences except more UN Resolutions?? What
> >> purpose does a cease-fire agreement serve if one party continues to
> >> ignore
> >> it? ... this had been going on for over a decade. The UN may be involved
> >> in
> >> 'seeing to it that a peaceful solution is arrived at', but you don't see
> >> this as a stall tactic? ... only about 12 years had passed since the
> >> agreement. How long do you think there should have been negotiations?
> >> As I
> >> said above the FBI was told by Saddam that he thought the US WOULD'NT
> >> attack
> >> ... if this is true what do you think would make Saddam negotiate? North
> >> Korea had a truce/cease-fire about 50 years ago ... how did the
> >> negotiating
> >> work there ... N. Korea has nuclear weapons and missiles. I'm asking
> >> you;
> >> is there every a time when we should stop talking and use force?
>
> >> It's a fine point in the language that seems
>
> >> > to go over your head, with you probably thinking, and rather
> >> > arrogantly so as Americans tend to do in such matters, that American
> >> > law somehow trumps UN law within the framework of UN functions.
>
> >> It not that US law trumps anything ... a nation will ignore the UN when
> >> it
> >> feels it vital interests are at stake.
>
> >> > American law only trumps it if the US decides to go against what the
> >> > UN concludes, which in itself becomes an illegal action within the
> >> > international body of the UN charter members. And even then, what's
> >> > the American law that allows the US to attack a nation when the US
> >> > itself has never been attacked by that nation?
>
> >> Granada for one ... the US was ready to invade/bomb Cuba if Russian
> >> missiles
> >> had not been removed. You don't count Saddam shooting at coalition air
> >> craft in the no fly zone. What if a US pilot had been shoot down, what
> >> does
> >> the US do then ... negotiate for another decade? There comes a time when
> >> one has to realize the UN is going to do nothing. Saddam came to that
> >> conclusion early. He had corrupted the Oil for Food program and the
> >> quarantines weren't working, France, Germany, and Russia were ignoring
> >> them.
> >> Let me hear you solution. Appeasement doesn't work, or do you not see
> >> this
> >> as appeasement?
>
> > The No-Fly Zones themselves were illegal, not sanctioned by the UN.
> > They were created to protect the Kurds in the north and the religious
> > minority (I can't remember which one was the minority) in the south
> > from attacks by Saddam. It's funny that the no-fly zones only applied
> > to the Iraqis and not to coalition forces, especially Americans.
> > Saddam, being Saddam, likely viewed coalition forces as trespassers on
> > his own land and thought he had every right to try to shoot down their
> > planes, especially since the UN said the no-fly zones were illegal.
> > And he did that pretty much the same way America would react if
> > illegal no-fly zones were established on its terrain by the Chinese.
> > This was clearly a tactical move on the part of the US to goad Iraq
> > into acting more and more like a rogue state when, in fact, it was
> > only doing what any state would do against aggressors acting illegally
> > on its land.
>
> US, and the UK had an obligation to protect minorities in Iraq after the war
> since Saddam wasn't taken out.

Where was the US's obligation to protect Iraq's minorities when Saddam
was gassing them with the very chemical weapons that the US sold him
back in the 80s? See, that's the hypocrisy of the US, which the
WikiLeaks cables are only highlighting and substantiating what's been
known all along, that it only becomes the US's "obligation" to protect
others only when it sees itself threatened, whether imagined or real.
Aside from that, there is no obligation and wasn't any up until the US
attacked in 2003. And the only reason why it became its "obligation"
to do so was because Congress wrote it in Public Law No. 107-243 in
October of 2002 which instructed that Bush be "obligated" to protect
the minorities, along with be "obligated" to reconstruct the whole
country after he totally destroyed it. If you have to put it in
writing, then you know that even Congress didn't believe Bush would do
the right thing.

> They interpreted UN Res 688 as to give the
> coalition forces the authority to protect the minority Iraqis. Since the
> coalition was fighting the war they used their interpretation of UN Res 688.
> The UN has no military and depends on the US and coalitions forces to fight
> the war. The US and coalitions forces are not dependent on the UN to
> micromanage the war. Do you think Saddam should be free to do with the
> minorities what he pleased knowing his murderous attitude toward dissenters.

He did so with the US's help in the 80s. And it's funny that the US
would abide by the authority given to it by the UN to protect the
minority, but wouldn't abide by not being given any authority by the
UN to go ahead and invade. That kind of selective approach to what
authority the US will and won't abide by only fuels the arrogant image
the US projects to the world, which again is backed up the WikiLeaks
cables.

> > The point of the matter is not whether Saddam was evil or not. We
> > know he was. And yet, the US still sided with him in the 80s in
> > Iraq's war with Iran, even supplying him with WMDs - the same chemical
> > weapons that the US then sought to destroy in the 90s and 2000s.
>
> Foreign policy is fluid, enemies can become allies and allies can become
> enemies. Russia become a foe after WWII yet we supported Russia in WWII.
> Iran was also an ally at one time. Just because the US supported Iraq
> previously doesn't mean anything except foreign policy changes. The point
> IS whether Saddam was evil and some DON'T know that he was, at least some of
> us know that he was. Its as if the left wants to be lied to. The left
> continually accepted what Saddam said as the truth ... his actions are never
> questioned, only Bush's and the coalition actions are questioned. Everyone
> but the left knew Saddam was stalling and had no intention of abiding by the
> treaty, but when the US/coalition forces make a move they are the ones that
> are wrong. Over a decade of negotiating means nothing to the left.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that Saddam was ever considered to
be a saint. As soon as he took power back in the late 70s, everyone
knew he was a creep. But that's never stopped the US from aligning
itself with creeps to gain whatever advantage it perceives it can gain
against other creeps. The problem with that is that it usually tends
to backfire against the US. The whole bin Laden thing is a perfect
example of that. The US wanted to use Saudi bases from which to
attack Saddam back in the first war in '91, after having supported him
before, and this angered bin Laden, planting the seed of his own war
against the US, which now actually has him winning because of the
daily fear he has instilled in you right down to feeling up little
caucasian kids at airports just to make sure they don't have A-bombs
attached to themselves. It's as if bin Laden has single-handedly
turned the ideals of American democracy into a ludicrous mockery of
itself. He's winning in the psychological warfare department, and all
because the US believes itself to be the sole authority on the planet
and can ignore any other authority on a whim and for no real good
reason.

> Now,
>
> > there's this guy in Iran and that other guy in North Korea. Both are
> > much further ahead with WMDs - real WMDs, not the pretend variety -
> > than Iraq ever was, and Iraq never even had any nukes or was anywhere
> > near getting them.
>
> That is Monday morning quarterbacking ... most intelligences services in the
> coalition thought he had WMD's. Two Congressional investigations found that
> there was no pressure to come to any agreement to falsify or change intell.
> It was an intelligence screw up.

I guess you got easily duped by Operation: Mass Appeal, huh?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article...

>
> So you have to ask yourself, if it was clear that
>
> > Iran and North Korea were about to get nukes, how come the US didn't
> > turn the screws on them just as much as it did on Iraq and even start
> > a war with them?
>
> My point was appeasement doesn't solve any problems at all. Saddam was
> using his stall tactics to do what he wanted. I've pointed out that Saddam
> didn't sweat the UN/US at all.

He didn't sweat it because he knew they had nothing on him, because he
didn't have WMDs, at least not the nuke variety. What he probably
didn't know was how the US and Britain were conspiring to ensure they
could fabricate something passably credible so as to gain approval to
attack him.

> N. Korea used the same tactics of
> negotiations ... we are still negotiating today and will continue unless N.
> Korea decides to invade or attack. That is exactly what was happening in
> Iraq ... keep negotiating and restart the nuclear program and then we end up
> with Iraq with a nuclear weapon in the middle east. The WikiLeaks show that
> middle eastern countries wants the US make sure that Iran doesn't get
> nuclear weapons. I'm sure they thought the same about Saddam.

And you would think that both the US and Britain would think twice
before entering a costly, lengthy war when this was received 10 days
earlier:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6652310/Iraq-inquiry-Tony-Blair-told-days-before-invasion-WMD-had-been-disma...

>
> Why just pick on lowly Iraq when it didn't even have
>
> > any WMDs - real WMDs? If the US can ignore the UN by running over any
> > country it likes, what's stopping the US from protecting the whole
> > world from the armaggedon likes of Iran and North Korea, which now
> > pose a much greater threat than Iraq ever was to America's national
> > security?
>
> Again we didn't know that Iraq didn't have WMD's so that is no argument.

You didn't know it because Bush fooled you into believing it and your
media supported the war call. If you lived in Canada, like I do, you
would've known that Bush had no case because of all the skepticism
about the flimsiest of so-called evidence. We were so skeptical about
it that we didn't think it was worth the time, energy, money and lives
to get involved in it with you. Not only that, but you having gone
into Iraq hasn't even made you safer at all, you're more clamped down
by excessive security than you ever were before. And while you
swatted a fly with no WMDs, you let a couple of hornets get away with
pursuing and acquiring real WMDs.

> We went on intelligence that we thought accurate but was not accurate ...

Right. It was fabricated intelligence that only seemed to fool
America, Britain and Australia. Look at the list of the coalition
countries that joined the Iraq war - it's embarrassing when the best
you could get after Britain and Australia is Albania, Moldova,
Lithuania, Kazakhstan, a lot of former Eastern bloc countries, and all
of them only sending maybe a couple of hundred or fewer support
troops. Only the US, Britain and Australia sent in assault troops.

> it wasn't the US 'running over any country it likes.' The US didn't act in
> haste, it waited for 10+ years and many UN resolutions before it acted.

And until it was absolutely definitive that Iraq had nukes, it
should've waited another 10 years. Besides, it was already definitive
that they didn't have any by the above reports, it was definitive in
the 90s, before the war and now. Bush and Blair simply refused to
believe it.

> We've seen by the FBI's debriefing of Saddam that he thought the US would
> not invade. How can there be any negotiating if one sides believes the
> other side will not act?

You don't attack just because the other side doesn't believe you
won't, you attack because you have irrefutable concrete proof that
there's a reason to do so and if it takes another 20 years to get it,
you wait. But hey, this is what the rush to war has gotten you. A
trillion more dollars in debt with hundreds of billions more yet to be
piled on by still being in Iraq, and Afghanistan as well, and a less
secure America on top of all that. Don't you find it alarming that
it's gotten to a point now where the US government suspects every one
of its own citizens as a potential threat, not just "Middle Eastern
types"? That's what all this has come down to. The amBushing of
America by fear and lies, and that's why bin Laden is winning. You
can stay in Iraq and Afghanistan as long as you want, but nothing is
going to change there, you're just going to further aggravate your own
situation. Leave the Middle East for the Middle Eastern types to deal
with. It's more their problem than yours.

>
> That should be a good enough reason to attack Iran and
>
> > North Korea now that they have nukes, just as it was a good enough
> > reason to go after Iraq which only had just puny little chemical
> > weapons instead. So why isn't the US acting on it the way it did with
> > Iraq?
>
> The US has no reason to attack N. Korea ... still in negotiations from the
> Korean War ... that train left the station a long time ago, but you see how
> negotiations work with N. Korea.

Oh, I see. Saddam had no nukes, so let's attack him, but North Korea
has nukes, so let's lay off, give them another 50 years of talk, talk,
talk. You see how you make no sense to anybody outside of the US and
why you only bring problems onto yourself?

> I don't know why we haven't acted on Iraq and even if we will ... That is up
> to our Congress .. the US doesn't have unlimited resources.

You mean Iran. Well, probably the reason why you can't touch Iran is
because of the deal Reagan signed with them to secure the hostages
back before he became president, which included the stipulation that
the US can't interfere with Iran politically or militarily. You can
look up the Algiers Accords of 1981, but this article reveals exactly
what happened:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/0...

>
> Isn't it all about principle?
>
> What about the principle of abiding by the cease-fire agreement? I've
> noticed you've never said anything about Saddam ignoring the ceasefire
> agreement, but point out anytime you thought the US may have acted
> illegally. The principle seems to be no matter what the US does it wrong or
> illegal.

The onus was on the US to make a case, not on Iraq. If Iraq didn't
want to abide by the UN resolutions, then they would've had to deal
with sanctions and other constrictive approaches to get him to agree.
Eventually Saddam would've relented. You know, sometimes, or maybe
often, it becomes difficult to accept a foregone conclusion. The
foregone conclusion was that he had no WMDs (nukes) - fact. But after
spending so much time trying to prove that he must have them and still
unable to unearth anything, the US couldn't seem to just let it go.
They always need to have to prove a point, even if it's a false or
erroneous point. It's always all about chest-beating to the world and
letting everybody know who's right. Well, only it didn't work with
Saddam. You were proven wrong, you're still stuck there, the area
still is unstable, you're still talking about it, you're still paying
for it monetarily and with lives, you're still allowing yourself to be
imprisoned by increasing fear due to the domino effect of terrorists
who were never aligned with Iraq setting their sights on you, you keep
creating your own hell. Just the other day I watched CNN bring up the
news item about 190,000 planes being unregistered or something like
that in the US, and what was the subliminal message slapped across the
screen in big print? Terror Threat. Everything is a terror threat to
you guys now. Snap out of it already.

>
> And what was the greater
>
> > principle in going after Iraq that just isn't there for the US to go
> > after Iran and North Korea in the same way?
>
> What is the principle that the US should be the only nation on the planet
> that goes after rogue countries?

There is no principle, other than whatever the US defines for itself
is its own role in the world. But what it deems is its role in the
world is not necessarily what others believe. That's like your next
door neighbor saying I can come into your house anytime I want if I
have a suspicion that something is going on in there, without saying
what, because I'd be protecting the whole neighborhood that way - just
in case.

>
> And why do it illegally
>
> > for Iraq and not even consider it for Iran and North Korea?
>
> How do you know it hasn't been considered for the above?

Whatever consideration there is, it's now restricted by the nuke
problem, so don't expect anything to happen unless one of them overtly
attacks someone using a nuke.

>
> I've noticed you haven't answered some of my questions. We had negotiated
> with Saddam for going on 12 years, how long do you think we should have
> negotiated? Do you think Saddam was negotiating in good faith? If not what
> should have been done?

How much would it have cost the US to keep negotiating compared to
having gone to war? It sure would've been a hell of a lot cheaper on
your wallet and with over 4,000 US troop lives saved too, never mind
the tens of thousands of others who ended up maimed and
psychologically scarred for life. The only time going to war is the
answer is when there actually is a war that's started. And even then
the US was in no rush to enter World War 2, having waited over 2 years
before it actually stepped into it, and that was a bigger problem than
Iraq ever was.

> >> >> >http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/uns...
>
> >> >> > The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
> >> >> > stormtrooped its way into Iraq.

Bob Hammer

12/11/2010 8:15:00 PM

In article <idve2b$sft$4@news.eternal-september.org>,
Alias <aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:

> On 12/11/2010 01:25 AM, Bob Hammer wrote:
> > In article<iduft4$pkj$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
> > Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
> >
> >> On 12/10/2010 11:04 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
> >>> In article<idtnme$6bl$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
> >>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 12/10/2010 06:12 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
> >>>>> In article<idtlkb$sa0$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
> >>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:44 PM, The Big Dog wrote:
> >>>>>>> In article<idtkf4$qu2$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
> >>>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:24 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
> >>>>>>>>>>> stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Please cite the law they broke.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Are you serious?
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Short list:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Murder
> >>>>>>>> More murder
> >>>>>>>> Mass murder
> >>>>>>>> Genocide
> >>>>>>>> Attacking a country unprovoked.
> >>>>>>>> Even more murder.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Need more?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> You are painfully out of your league.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Really? How so? Care to comment on the subject at hand or just hurl
> >>>>>> shit
> >>>>>> like a deranged monkey?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Please cite the laws the US broke, that's a start.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Have fun.
> >>>>
> >>>> I did. Can't read?
> >>>
> >>> What is the enforcement agency for these "laws" you cite?
> >>
> >> It's called the International Court of Justice located in the Hague,
> >> Netherlands. Got any more stupid questions?
> >
> > Who hauls the actors to court, UN Police?
>
> Interpol, who else?

So... where the hell are they, laws have been broken!

Alias

12/11/2010 9:17:00 PM

On 12/11/2010 09:15 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
> In article<idve2b$sft$4@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>
>> On 12/11/2010 01:25 AM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>> In article<iduft4$pkj$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/10/2010 11:04 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>>> In article<idtnme$6bl$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 06:12 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>>>>> In article<idtlkb$sa0$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:44 PM, The Big Dog wrote:
>>>>>>>>> In article<idtkf4$qu2$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
>>>>>>>>> Alias<aka@anonymousandmasked.com.invalidate> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 12/10/2010 05:24 PM, Bob Hammer wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and illegally
>>>>>>>>>>>>> stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Please cite the law they broke.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Are you serious?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Short list:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Murder
>>>>>>>>>> More murder
>>>>>>>>>> Mass murder
>>>>>>>>>> Genocide
>>>>>>>>>> Attacking a country unprovoked.
>>>>>>>>>> Even more murder.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Need more?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> You are painfully out of your league.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Really? How so? Care to comment on the subject at hand or just hurl
>>>>>>>> shit
>>>>>>>> like a deranged monkey?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Please cite the laws the US broke, that's a start.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Have fun.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I did. Can't read?
>>>>>
>>>>> What is the enforcement agency for these "laws" you cite?
>>>>
>>>> It's called the International Court of Justice located in the Hague,
>>>> Netherlands. Got any more stupid questions?
>>>
>>> Who hauls the actors to court, UN Police?
>>
>> Interpol, who else?
>
> So... where the hell are they, laws have been broken!

Cheney can't leave the USA for many countries and the list is getting
shorter. Same holds true for a lot of his buddies. Obama should have
prosecuted them but he's too much of a wimp to carry it through.

--
Alias

Joe Irvin

12/11/2010 10:00:00 PM

"wy" <wy_@myself.com> wrote in message
news:0f4f586b-6844-4a75-8203-ef03b5147cbd@i18g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 11, 11:16 am, "Joe Irvin" <ji3...@sccoast.net> wrote:
>> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message
>
>>
>> >> >> > UN Resolution 1441 didn't allow the US to invade Iraq. Whenever
>> >> >> > a
>> >> >> > resolution ends with "Decides to remain seized of the matter" it
>> >> >> > means
>> >> >> > no further action is to be taken until the next resolution.
>>
>> >> >> Come on Mr Wy ... everyone knew this was the final straw. The UN
>> >> >> had
>> >> >> been
>> >> >> negotiating/talking with Saddam for over a decade. They already
>> >> >> had
>> >> >> the
>> >> >> authority to invade Iraq if they failed to live up to the
>> >> >> cease-fire
>> >> >> agreement. UN Res 1441 was a final resolution (there had been
>> >> >> about
>> >> >> 14
>> >> >> or
>> >> >> 15 previous UN resolutions) The last part of UN Res 1441 said:
>> >> >> "Recalls,
>> >> >> in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that
>> >> >> it
>> >> >> will
>> >> >> face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations
>> >> >> of
>> >> >> its
>> >> >> obligations;" What do you think 'serious consequences' meant? keep
>> >> >> negotiating? ... It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War
>> >> >> resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since
>> >> >> he
>> >> >> had
>> >> >> kicked out the weapons inspectors, 6 months since I had issued my
>> >> >> ultimatum
>> >> >> at the Un, 4 months since UN Res 1441 and give Saddam his 'final
>> >> >> opportunity,' and 3 month past the deadline to fully disclose his
>> >> >> WMD's."
>> >> >> Decision Points, G Bush. When Saddam was debriefed by the FBI he
>> >> >> told
>> >> >> them
>> >> >> "He never thought the US would follow through on our promises to
>> >> >> disarm
>> >> >> him
>> >> >> by force." Decision Point Do you think maybe the negotiating were
>> >> >> moving
>> >> >> to
>> >> >> fast?, in had been only about 12 years of talks and his continued
>> >> >> breading
>> >> >> of the cease-fire agreement.
>>
>> >> >> I think a good lesson has been relearned here ... if one keeps on
>> >> >> appeasing
>> >> >> nothing will change.
>>
>> >> > "Decides to remain seized of the matter" - As long as a resolution
>> >> > ends with that, it means that the UN is still involved in seeing to
>> >> > it
>> >> > that a peaceful solution is arrived at, especially when no state has
>> >> > been attacked by Iraq.
>>
>> >> Saddam was shooting at coalition air craft in the no-fly zone. With
>> >> the
>> >> cease-fire agreement there are two sides ... Saddam could continue to
>> >> ignore
>> >> the agreement with no consequences except more UN Resolutions?? What
>> >> purpose does a cease-fire agreement serve if one party continues to
>> >> ignore
>> >> it? ... this had been going on for over a decade. The UN may be
>> >> involved
>> >> in
>> >> 'seeing to it that a peaceful solution is arrived at', but you don't
>> >> see
>> >> this as a stall tactic? ... only about 12 years had passed since the
>> >> agreement. How long do you think there should have been negotiations?
>> >> As I
>> >> said above the FBI was told by Saddam that he thought the US WOULD'NT
>> >> attack
>> >> ... if this is true what do you think would make Saddam negotiate?
>> >> North
>> >> Korea had a truce/cease-fire about 50 years ago ... how did the
>> >> negotiating
>> >> work there ... N. Korea has nuclear weapons and missiles. I'm asking
>> >> you;
>> >> is there every a time when we should stop talking and use force?
>>
>> >> It's a fine point in the language that seems
>>
>> >> > to go over your head, with you probably thinking, and rather
>> >> > arrogantly so as Americans tend to do in such matters, that American
>> >> > law somehow trumps UN law within the framework of UN functions.
>>
>> >> It not that US law trumps anything ... a nation will ignore the UN
>> >> when
>> >> it
>> >> feels it vital interests are at stake.
>>
>> >> > American law only trumps it if the US decides to go against what the
>> >> > UN concludes, which in itself becomes an illegal action within the
>> >> > international body of the UN charter members. And even then, what's
>> >> > the American law that allows the US to attack a nation when the US
>> >> > itself has never been attacked by that nation?
>>
>> >> Granada for one ... the US was ready to invade/bomb Cuba if Russian
>> >> missiles
>> >> had not been removed. You don't count Saddam shooting at coalition
>> >> air
>> >> craft in the no fly zone. What if a US pilot had been shoot down,
>> >> what
>> >> does
>> >> the US do then ... negotiate for another decade? There comes a time
>> >> when
>> >> one has to realize the UN is going to do nothing. Saddam came to that
>> >> conclusion early. He had corrupted the Oil for Food program and the
>> >> quarantines weren't working, France, Germany, and Russia were ignoring
>> >> them.
>> >> Let me hear you solution. Appeasement doesn't work, or do you not see
>> >> this
>> >> as appeasement?
>>
>> > The No-Fly Zones themselves were illegal, not sanctioned by the UN.
>> > They were created to protect the Kurds in the north and the religious
>> > minority (I can't remember which one was the minority) in the south
>> > from attacks by Saddam. It's funny that the no-fly zones only applied
>> > to the Iraqis and not to coalition forces, especially Americans.
>> > Saddam, being Saddam, likely viewed coalition forces as trespassers on
>> > his own land and thought he had every right to try to shoot down their
>> > planes, especially since the UN said the no-fly zones were illegal.
>> > And he did that pretty much the same way America would react if
>> > illegal no-fly zones were established on its terrain by the Chinese.
>> > This was clearly a tactical move on the part of the US to goad Iraq
>> > into acting more and more like a rogue state when, in fact, it was
>> > only doing what any state would do against aggressors acting illegally
>> > on its land.
>>
>> US, and the UK had an obligation to protect minorities in Iraq after the
>> war
>> since Saddam wasn't taken out.
>
> Where was the US's obligation to protect Iraq's minorities when Saddam
> was gassing them with the very chemical weapons that the US sold him
> back in the 80s?

The US wasn't at war with Iraq then. Where was the UN?

See, that's the hypocrisy of the US, which the
> WikiLeaks cables are only highlighting and substantiating what's been
> known all along, that it only becomes the US's "obligation" to protect
> others only when it sees itself threatened, whether imagined or real.
> Aside from that, there is no obligation and wasn't any up until the US
> attacked in 2003. And the only reason why it became its "obligation"
> to do so was because Congress wrote it in Public Law No. 107-243 in
> October of 2002 which instructed that Bush be "obligated" to protect
> the minorities, along with be "obligated" to reconstruct the whole
> country after he totally destroyed it. If you have to put it in
> writing, then you know that even Congress didn't believe Bush would do
> the right thing.

So you are mad at Bush ... because he thought the minorities in Iraq should
be protected after the war???

>> They interpreted UN Res 688 as to give the
>> coalition forces the authority to protect the minority Iraqis. Since the
>> coalition was fighting the war they used their interpretation of UN Res
>> 688.
>> The UN has no military and depends on the US and coalitions forces to
>> fight
>> the war. The US and coalitions forces are not dependent on the UN to
>> micromanage the war. Do you think Saddam should be free to do with the
>> minorities what he pleased knowing his murderous attitude toward
>> dissenters.
>
> He did so with the US's help in the 80s.

What was the US obligation in the 80's based on?

And it's funny that the US
> would abide by the authority given to it by the UN to protect the
> minority, but wouldn't abide by not being given any authority by the
> UN to go ahead and invade. That kind of selective approach to what
> authority the US will and won't abide by only fuels the arrogant image
> the US projects to the world, which again is backed up the WikiLeaks
> cables.

No, everyone knew that UN Res. 1441 was the last straw. The UN with its
leftist/dictator countries would never give written permission to invade a
fellow dictator even if they were not abiding by the cease-fire agreement.

>> > The point of the matter is not whether Saddam was evil or not. We
>> > know he was. And yet, the US still sided with him in the 80s in
>> > Iraq's war with Iran, even supplying him with WMDs - the same chemical
>> > weapons that the US then sought to destroy in the 90s and 2000s.
>>
>> Foreign policy is fluid, enemies can become allies and allies can become
>> enemies. Russia become a foe after WWII yet we supported Russia in
>> WWII.
>> Iran was also an ally at one time. Just because the US supported Iraq
>> previously doesn't mean anything except foreign policy changes. The
>> point
>> IS whether Saddam was evil and some DON'T know that he was, at least some
>> of
>> us know that he was. Its as if the left wants to be lied to. The left
>> continually accepted what Saddam said as the truth ... his actions are
>> never
>> questioned, only Bush's and the coalition actions are questioned.
>> Everyone
>> but the left knew Saddam was stalling and had no intention of abiding by
>> the
>> treaty, but when the US/coalition forces make a move they are the ones
>> that
>> are wrong. Over a decade of negotiating means nothing to the left.
>
> Don't fool yourself into thinking that Saddam was ever considered to
> be a saint. As soon as he took power back in the late 70s, everyone
> knew he was a creep.

I'm not the one being fooled ... it's the left that is being fooled and
supported Saddam against the UN always saying the US lied to get into a war
with Saddam. Saddam lets the inspectors in and there is no war ... its that
simple.

But that's never stopped the US from aligning
> itself with creeps to gain whatever advantage it perceives it can gain
> against other creeps.

This is true and its also true of every other great power ... why do you
expect anything different from the US ... nation/states act in their own
self interest ... why should the US be different

The problem with that is that it usually tends
> to backfire against the US. The whole bin Laden thing is a perfect
> example of that. The US wanted to use Saudi bases from which to
> attack Saddam back in the first war in '91, after having supported him
> before, and this angered bin Laden, planting the seed of his own war
> against the US, which now actually has him winning because of the
> daily fear he has instilled in you right down to feeling up little
> caucasian kids at airports just to make sure they don't have A-bombs
> attached to themselves. It's as if bin Laden has single-handedly
> turned the ideals of American democracy into a ludicrous mockery of
> itself. He's winning in the psychological warfare department, and all
> because the US believes itself to be the sole authority on the planet
> and can ignore any other authority on a whim and for no real good
> reason.

Don't pretend that the terrorist problem just happened with bin Laden ...
the US had trouble with Muslim terrorist at least since the bombing of the
Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. So we should not have angered bin
Laden??? ... is that what one should base their foreign policy on? ... fear.
The hell with Kuwait, let Saddam run wild in the middle east because we
don't want to upset bin Laden. What other persons should the US have
listened to?
>
>> Now,
>>
>> > there's this guy in Iran and that other guy in North Korea. Both are
>> > much further ahead with WMDs - real WMDs, not the pretend variety -
>> > than Iraq ever was, and Iraq never even had any nukes or was anywhere
>> > near getting them.
>>
>> That is Monday morning quarterbacking ... most intelligences services in
>> the
>> coalition thought he had WMD's. Two Congressional investigations found
>> that
>> there was no pressure to come to any agreement to falsify or change
>> intell.
>> It was an intelligence screw up.
>
> I guess you got easily duped by Operation: Mass Appeal, huh?
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article...

The Butler Report found no one was duped ... UK intell suffered the same
problems US intell did, but there was no lying or changing intell in order
to get the UK involved with the coalition.
Tony Blair today welcomed the Butler report saying it showed the Government
and intelligence services acted in "good faith". Tony Blair today welcomed
the Butler report saying it showed the Government and intelligence services
acted in "good faith". The Prime Minister told MPs the report showed errors
were made in drawing up the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons.
But Mr Blair said: "No-one lied. No-one made up the intelligence. No-one
inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence
services. "Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the
country in circumstances of acute difficulty."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/noone-lied-noone-made-up-intelligence-says-blair-5...

Where was operation Mass Appeal before the invasion? It seems to be your
opinion that no matter how much or how many times Saddam lied or violated
the treaty it was the coalition forces that were always at fault.

>> So you have to ask yourself, if it was clear that
>>
>> > Iran and North Korea were about to get nukes, how come the US didn't
>> > turn the screws on them just as much as it did on Iraq and even start
>> > a war with them?
>>
>> My point was appeasement doesn't solve any problems at all. Saddam was
>> using his stall tactics to do what he wanted. I've pointed out that
>> Saddam
>> didn't sweat the UN/US at all.
>
> He didn't sweat it because he knew they had nothing on him, because he
> didn't have WMDs, at least not the nuke variety. What he probably
> didn't know was how the US and Britain were conspiring to ensure they
> could fabricate something passably credible so as to gain approval to
> attack him.

He knew he didn't have WMD's but the rest of the world did not. He was
obligated under the cease-fire agreement to account for these weapons ...
but you see nothing wrong with him not having to account for the weapons?
He accounts for the weapons or lack of them and there is no invasion. "He
told agents (FBI) that he was more worried about looking weak to Iran than
being removed by the coalition. He never though the US would follow through
on our promises to disarm him by force." ... "On Jan 27, Hans Blix gave a
formal report to the UN. His inspections there had discovered warheads that
Saddam had failed to declare or destroy, indications of the highly toxic VX
nerve agent, and precursor chemicals for mustard gas. In addition, the
Iraqi government was defying the inspections process. ... 'Iraq appears
not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament
that was demanded of it, Blix said.'" Decisions, G Bush. Was this, by Mr
Blix a fabrication by the coalition forces? How far are you willing to bend
over to protect Saddam? ... to you it is all the US and the coalition
forces that are doing wrong, "conspiring" If he abides by the cease-fire
treaty there is no reason to attack Iraq. Explain how the US and Britian
would attack Iraq if Saddam abided by the cease-fire agreement ... they had
waited over a decade before attacking.
>
>
>> N. Korea used the same tactics of
>> negotiations ... we are still negotiating today and will continue unless
>> N.
>> Korea decides to invade or attack. That is exactly what was happening in
>> Iraq ... keep negotiating and restart the nuclear program and then we end
>> up
>> with Iraq with a nuclear weapon in the middle east. The WikiLeaks show
>> that
>> middle eastern countries wants the US make sure that Iran doesn't get
>> nuclear weapons. I'm sure they thought the same about Saddam.
>
> And you would think that both the US and Britain would think twice
> before entering a costly, lengthy war when this was received 10 days
> earlier:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6652310/Iraq-inquiry-Tony-Blair-told-days-before-invasion-WMD-had-been-disma...

They had been doing this same kind of stunts for over 10 years, last minute
intell. or Saddam would give in. They had years of intelligence that Saddam
had WMD's ... he accounts for them and there is no war. Obviously he did
have some weapons that were in violation of the treaty because they found
after the invasion. This could have all been avoided by Saddam, true or
false?
>
>
>>
>> Why just pick on lowly Iraq when it didn't even have
>>
>> > any WMDs - real WMDs? If the US can ignore the UN by running over any
>> > country it likes, what's stopping the US from protecting the whole
>> > world from the armaggedon likes of Iran and North Korea, which now
>> > pose a much greater threat than Iraq ever was to America's national
>> > security?
>>
>> Again we didn't know that Iraq didn't have WMD's so that is no argument.
>
> You didn't know it because Bush fooled you into believing it and your
> media supported the war call. If you lived in Canada, like I do, you
> would've known that Bush had no case because of all the skepticism
> about the flimsiest of so-called evidence. We were so skeptical about
> it that we didn't think it was worth the time, energy, money and lives
> to get involved in it with you. Not only that, but you having gone
> into Iraq hasn't even made you safer at all, you're more clamped down
> by excessive security than you ever were before. And while you
> swatted a fly with no WMDs, you let a couple of hornets get away with
> pursuing and acquiring real WMDs.

So it was Bush who 'fooled' everyone? How about other countries like
France, Russia and the UK that also though Iraq had WMD's? The US 'let a
couple of hornets get away with pursuing and acquiring real WMD's???? Why
is it the responsibility of the US ... what did Canada do to stop couple of
hornets acquiring WMD's. Then how do you account for this: "Prime
Minister Paul Martin says he believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction and they've fallen into terrorists' hands. Martin said the
threat of terrorism is even greater now than it was following the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, because terrorists have acquired nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons from the toppled Iraqi leader."
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/05/11/4...

>> We went on intelligence that we thought accurate but was not accurate ...
>
> Right. It was fabricated intelligence that only seemed to fool
> America, Britain and Australia. Look at the list of the coalition
> countries that joined the Iraq war - it's embarrassing when the best
> you could get after Britain and Australia is Albania, Moldova,
> Lithuania, Kazakhstan, a lot of former Eastern bloc countries, and all
> of them only sending maybe a couple of hundred or fewer support
> troops. Only the US, Britain and Australia sent in assault troops.

"The intelligence not being accurate doesn't mean that it was fabricated.
In 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee said, in a report adopted
unanimously by both Republican and Democratic members:

Senate Intelligence Committee: The Committee did not find any evidence
that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political
pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with
Administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or
pressure analysts to do so. When asked whether analysts were pressured in
any way to alter their assessments or make their judgments conform with
Administration policies on Iraq's WMD programs, not a single analyst
answered "yes." (p273) and "Silberman-Robb Report: These (intelligence)
errors stem from poor tradecraft and poor management. The Commission found
no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's
pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in
the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no instance
did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical
judgments. We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor
analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the
inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments." FactCheck. The number of
allies the coalition had has nothing to do with the intelligence.

>> it wasn't the US 'running over any country it likes.' The US didn't act
>> in
>> haste, it waited for 10+ years and many UN resolutions before it acted.
>
> And until it was absolutely definitive that Iraq had nukes, it
> should've waited another 10 years. Besides, it was already definitive
> that they didn't have any by the above reports, it was definitive in
> the 90s, before the war and now. Bush and Blair simply refused to
> believe it.

No, it was definite that Iraq didn't have WMD's ... there was a way of
proving that Iraq didn't have WMDs, that was he account for them or the lack
there off. Why don't you have any problem with Saddam not accounting for
his wMDs?
>
>
>> We've seen by the FBI's debriefing of Saddam that he thought the US would
>> not invade. How can there be any negotiating if one sides believes the
>> other side will not act?
>
> You don't attack just because the other side doesn't believe you
> won't, you attack because you have irrefutable concrete proof that
> there's a reason to do so and if it takes another 20 years to get it,
> you wait.

Intelligence isn't always 'irrefutable concrete proof' ... you have to go on
your best intelligence estimate ... intell isn't like a math formula. What
if Saddam did have WMD's and he smuggled one into Canada and killed lots of
Canadians ... You would be the first on to say Bush should have gone into
Iraq ... You've tried to put Bush in a no win situation.

But hey, this is what the rush to war has gotten you.

How can you say a rush to war ... it was almost 12 years after Gulf War one
was over ... a real break neck rush.

A
> trillion more dollars in debt with hundreds of billions more yet to be
> piled on by still being in Iraq, and Afghanistan as well, and a less
> secure America on top of all that. Don't you find it alarming that
> it's gotten to a point now where the US government suspects every one
> of its own citizens as a potential threat, not just "Middle Eastern
> types"? That's what all this has come down to. The amBushing of
> America by fear and lies, and that's why bin Laden is winning. You
> can stay in Iraq and Afghanistan as long as you want, but nothing is
> going to change there, you're just going to further aggravate your own
> situation. Leave the Middle East for the Middle Eastern types to deal
> with. It's more their problem than yours.

So your answer is to let evil prevail because trying to stop it may cost to
much.

>> That should be a good enough reason to attack Iran and
>>
>> > North Korea now that they have nukes, just as it was a good enough
>> > reason to go after Iraq which only had just puny little chemical
>> > weapons instead. So why isn't the US acting on it the way it did with
>> > Iraq?
>>
>> The US has no reason to attack N. Korea ... still in negotiations from
>> the
>> Korean War ... that train left the station a long time ago, but you see
>> how
>> negotiations work with N. Korea.
>
> Oh, I see. Saddam had no nukes, so let's attack him, but North Korea
> has nukes, so let's lay off, give them another 50 years of talk, talk,
> talk. You see how you make no sense to anybody outside of the US and
> why you only bring problems onto yourself?

No, I'm showing you how your form of diplomacy (appeasement) works ...
appeasement makes the world a more dangerous place. If France and the UK
had went after Hitler in the beginning there would have been no WWII.
"Peace in our Time" didn't work did it?

>> I don't know why we haven't acted on Iraq and even if we will ... That is
>> up
>> to our Congress .. the US doesn't have unlimited resources.
>
> You mean Iran.

Yes.

Well, probably the reason why you can't touch Iran is
> because of the deal Reagan signed with them to secure the hostages
> back before he became president, which included the stipulation that
> the US can't interfere with Iran politically or militarily. You can
> look up the Algiers Accords of 1981, but this article reveals exactly
> what happened:
>
> http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/0...

This may or may not have happened, but the President/his State dept are the
only one by law who can negotiate with a foreign power. It seems strange
that ex-President Carter has never written about this. This would be at
least book worthy. Its crazy to think that if this did happen it would tie
the hands of other Presidents, especially for something that wasn't
negotiated.

>> Isn't it all about principle?
>>
>> What about the principle of abiding by the cease-fire agreement? I've
>> noticed you've never said anything about Saddam ignoring the ceasefire
>> agreement, but point out anytime you thought the US may have acted
>> illegally. The principle seems to be no matter what the US does it wrong
>> or
>> illegal.
>
> The onus was on the US to make a case, not on Iraq. If Iraq didn't
> want to abide by the UN resolutions, then they would've had to deal
> with sanctions and other constrictive approaches to get him to agree.

So the many UN resolutions that Saddam ignored plus the cease-fire agreement
had nothing to do with it? I think maybe that is your opinion.

> Eventually Saddam would've relented.

And you know this how? How do you know he would have relented? He said he
wasn't worried about invasion ... he had corrupted the UN Oil for food
program and he was getting money ... the sanctions had broken down. What
would have made Saddam relent? Most of all I want to know how you know he
would have relented and the rest of the world didn't?

You know, sometimes, or maybe
> often, it becomes difficult to accept a foregone conclusion. The
> foregone conclusion was that he had no WMDs (nukes) - fact.

Fact, true, be a fact we only know in hindsight ... so that is no argument.

But after
> spending so much time trying to prove that he must have them and still
> unable to unearth anything, the US couldn't seem to just let it go.

Wait the US and coalition forces thought, in error, that they had made a
case ... this is in good faith ... it was no lie, but a mistake. True or
false?

> They always need to have to prove a point, even if it's a false or
> erroneous point.

How do you know its false or erroneous ... the coalition forces and the US
and the world was working off bad intelligence. They didn't know it was
false or erroneous until after the invasion.

It's always all about chest-beating to the world and
> letting everybody know who's right. Well, only it didn't work with
> Saddam.

If it was about 'chest-beating' the US could have overthrown Saddam in the
first Gulf war. Bush II could have went after Saddam the first time Saddam
kicked/limited the UN inspectors ... it wasn't about chest-beating.

You were proven wrong, you're still stuck there, the area
> still is unstable, you're still talking about it, you're still paying
> for it monetarily and with lives, you're still allowing yourself to be
> imprisoned by increasing fear due to the domino effect of terrorists
> who were never aligned with Iraq setting their sights on you, you keep
> creating your own hell.

It may have been a mistake, we don't know that yet ... eventually Iraq could
have a stable govt. Terrorist were a problem with the US long before the
Iraq war.

Just the other day I watched CNN bring up the
> news item about 190,000 planes being unregistered or something like
> that in the US, and what was the subliminal message slapped across the
> screen in big print? Terror Threat. Everything is a terror threat to
> you guys now. Snap out of it already.

There is a terrorist threat in the world, not just the US but all over the
world. One could bury their head and ignore, which the US did for years.
>
>>
>> And what was the greater
>>
>> > principle in going after Iraq that just isn't there for the US to go
>> > after Iran and North Korea in the same way?
>>
>> What is the principle that the US should be the only nation on the planet
>> that goes after rogue countries?
>
> There is no principle, other than whatever the US defines for itself
> is its own role in the world.

Yes there is ... since the WWII the US has been tied to Europe by having
troops stationed there. Weren't the Balkans a European problem, who did
Europe turn to? ... but that's typical, the US sucks until some heavy
lifting has to be done. Why didn't they call on Canada?

But what it deems is its role in the
> world is not necessarily what others believe. That's like your next
> door neighbor saying I can come into your house anytime I want if I
> have a suspicion that something is going on in there, without saying
> what, because I'd be protecting the whole neighborhood that way - just
> in case.

The US has never been like that, but I know that's how the left views us.
Do you think there is any country in Europe that can defend itself, except
maybe the UK?

>> And why do it illegally
>>
>> > for Iraq and not even consider it for Iran and North Korea?
>>
>> How do you know it hasn't been considered for the above?
>
> Whatever consideration there is, it's now restricted by the nuke
> problem, so don't expect anything to happen unless one of them overtly
> attacks someone using a nuke.
>
>>
>> I've noticed you haven't answered some of my questions. We had
>> negotiated
>> with Saddam for going on 12 years, how long do you think we should have
>> negotiated? Do you think Saddam was negotiating in good faith? If not
>> what
>> should have been done?
>
> How much would it have cost the US to keep negotiating compared to
> having gone to war?

Maybe Saddam getting a nuclear weapon. Do you think Iraq or Iran in the
middle east getting a nuclear weapon will change anything? How much did it
cost Europe by negotiating with Hitler for 'peace in our time'? Do you
think it was worth it? Sometimes its better to fight.

It sure would've been a hell of a lot cheaper on
> your wallet and with over 4,000 US troop lives saved too, never mind
> the tens of thousands of others who ended up maimed and
> psychologically scarred for life. The only time going to war is the
> answer is when there actually is a war that's started. And even then
> the US was in no rush to enter World War 2, having waited over 2 years
> before it actually stepped into it, and that was a bigger problem than
> Iraq ever was.

Maybe cheaper in the short run, but what if Saddam had gotten a nuclear
weapon ... he could control the price of oil in the world. So the US should
just sit back an wait for a dirty bomb or nuclear device to go off in the US
and then decide if it should go to war, or start going off all over the
world. I think we had been doing that until Bush ... Pan Am bombing, Khobar
towers bombing, Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, 2 US embassies in Africa
bombed, USS Cole bombed, just to name a few. Should the US just sit back
and just react, never go on the offensive? Do you see Muslim jihadist as a
"real" problem in the world or just an annoyance.? ... a door mat to the
Muslim jihadist. Nothing would make the left happier than to see the US
fail in the world. The flip side of that is the rest of the world would
have to make their peace with the Muslim jihadists ... the loss of western
freedoms. What country could credible go on the offensive against the
Muslim jihad?
>
>
>> >> >> >http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/uns...
>>
>> >> >> > The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and
>> >> >> > illegally
>> >> >> > stormtrooped its way into Iraq.
>

wy

12/11/2010 11:44:00 PM

On Dec 11, 4:59 pm, "Joe Irvin" <ji3...@sccoast.net> wrote:
> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message
>
> news:0f4f586b-6844-4a75-8203-ef03b5147cbd@i18g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Dec 11, 11:16 am, "Joe Irvin" <ji3...@sccoast.net> wrote:
> >> "wy" <w...@myself.com> wrote in message
>
> >> >> >> > UN Resolution 1441 didn't allow the US to invade Iraq. Whenever
> >> >> >> > a
> >> >> >> > resolution ends with "Decides to remain seized of the matter" it
> >> >> >> > means
> >> >> >> > no further action is to be taken until the next resolution.
>
> >> >> >> Come on Mr Wy ... everyone knew this was the final straw. The UN
> >> >> >> had
> >> >> >> been
> >> >> >> negotiating/talking with Saddam for over a decade. They already
> >> >> >> had
> >> >> >> the
> >> >> >> authority to invade Iraq if they failed to live up to the
> >> >> >> cease-fire
> >> >> >> agreement. UN Res 1441 was a final resolution (there had been
> >> >> >> about
> >> >> >> 14
> >> >> >> or
> >> >> >> 15 previous UN resolutions) The last part of UN Res 1441 said:
> >> >> >> "Recalls,
> >> >> >> in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that
> >> >> >> it
> >> >> >> will
> >> >> >> face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations
> >> >> >> of
> >> >> >> its
> >> >> >> obligations;" What do you think 'serious consequences' meant? keep
> >> >> >> negotiating? ... It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War
> >> >> >> resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since
> >> >> >> he
> >> >> >> had
> >> >> >> kicked out the weapons inspectors, 6 months since I had issued my
> >> >> >> ultimatum
> >> >> >> at the Un, 4 months since UN Res 1441 and give Saddam his 'final
> >> >> >> opportunity,' and 3 month past the deadline to fully disclose his
> >> >> >> WMD's."
> >> >> >> Decision Points, G Bush. When Saddam was debriefed by the FBI he
> >> >> >> told
> >> >> >> them
> >> >> >> "He never thought the US would follow through on our promises to
> >> >> >> disarm
> >> >> >> him
> >> >> >> by force." Decision Point Do you think maybe the negotiating were
> >> >> >> moving
> >> >> >> to
> >> >> >> fast?, in had been only about 12 years of talks and his continued
> >> >> >> breading
> >> >> >> of the cease-fire agreement.
>
> >> >> >> I think a good lesson has been relearned here ... if one keeps on
> >> >> >> appeasing
> >> >> >> nothing will change.
>
> >> >> > "Decides to remain seized of the matter" - As long as a resolution
> >> >> > ends with that, it means that the UN is still involved in seeing to
> >> >> > it
> >> >> > that a peaceful solution is arrived at, especially when no state has
> >> >> > been attacked by Iraq.
>
> >> >> Saddam was shooting at coalition air craft in the no-fly zone. With
> >> >> the
> >> >> cease-fire agreement there are two sides ... Saddam could continue to
> >> >> ignore
> >> >> the agreement with no consequences except more UN Resolutions?? What
> >> >> purpose does a cease-fire agreement serve if one party continues to
> >> >> ignore
> >> >> it? ... this had been going on for over a decade. The UN may be
> >> >> involved
> >> >> in
> >> >> 'seeing to it that a peaceful solution is arrived at', but you don't
> >> >> see
> >> >> this as a stall tactic? ... only about 12 years had passed since the
> >> >> agreement. How long do you think there should have been negotiations?
> >> >> As I
> >> >> said above the FBI was told by Saddam that he thought the US WOULD'NT
> >> >> attack
> >> >> ... if this is true what do you think would make Saddam negotiate?
> >> >> North
> >> >> Korea had a truce/cease-fire about 50 years ago ... how did the
> >> >> negotiating
> >> >> work there ... N. Korea has nuclear weapons and missiles. I'm asking
> >> >> you;
> >> >> is there every a time when we should stop talking and use force?
>
> >> >> It's a fine point in the language that seems
>
> >> >> > to go over your head, with you probably thinking, and rather
> >> >> > arrogantly so as Americans tend to do in such matters, that American
> >> >> > law somehow trumps UN law within the framework of UN functions.
>
> >> >> It not that US law trumps anything ... a nation will ignore the UN
> >> >> when
> >> >> it
> >> >> feels it vital interests are at stake.
>
> >> >> > American law only trumps it if the US decides to go against what the
> >> >> > UN concludes, which in itself becomes an illegal action within the
> >> >> > international body of the UN charter members. And even then, what's
> >> >> > the American law that allows the US to attack a nation when the US
> >> >> > itself has never been attacked by that nation?
>
> >> >> Granada for one ... the US was ready to invade/bomb Cuba if Russian
> >> >> missiles
> >> >> had not been removed. You don't count Saddam shooting at coalition
> >> >> air
> >> >> craft in the no fly zone. What if a US pilot had been shoot down,
> >> >> what
> >> >> does
> >> >> the US do then ... negotiate for another decade? There comes a time
> >> >> when
> >> >> one has to realize the UN is going to do nothing. Saddam came to that
> >> >> conclusion early. He had corrupted the Oil for Food program and the
> >> >> quarantines weren't working, France, Germany, and Russia were ignoring
> >> >> them.
> >> >> Let me hear you solution. Appeasement doesn't work, or do you not see
> >> >> this
> >> >> as appeasement?
>
> >> > The No-Fly Zones themselves were illegal, not sanctioned by the UN.
> >> > They were created to protect the Kurds in the north and the religious
> >> > minority (I can't remember which one was the minority) in the south
> >> > from attacks by Saddam. It's funny that the no-fly zones only applied
> >> > to the Iraqis and not to coalition forces, especially Americans.
> >> > Saddam, being Saddam, likely viewed coalition forces as trespassers on
> >> > his own land and thought he had every right to try to shoot down their
> >> > planes, especially since the UN said the no-fly zones were illegal.
> >> > And he did that pretty much the same way America would react if
> >> > illegal no-fly zones were established on its terrain by the Chinese.
> >> > This was clearly a tactical move on the part of the US to goad Iraq
> >> > into acting more and more like a rogue state when, in fact, it was
> >> > only doing what any state would do against aggressors acting illegally
> >> > on its land.
>
> >> US, and the UK had an obligation to protect minorities in Iraq after the
> >> war
> >> since Saddam wasn't taken out.
>
> > Where was the US's obligation to protect Iraq's minorities when Saddam
> > was gassing them with the very chemical weapons that the US sold him
> > back in the 80s?
>
> The US wasn't at war with Iraq then. Where was the UN?

Who brings up complaints to the UN? Its member states. Who is one of
its permanent member states? The US. Why didn't the US bring up a
complaint to the UN about Iraq in the 80s? Because Iraq was already
at war with Iran and it was in the US's interest, for whatever bizarre
reason Reagan was thinking at the time, to side with Saddam in that
war with Iran. So if it just so happened that the population suffered
under Saddam at the time, tough. The US certainly wasn't going to do
anything about it. In fact, they helped Saddam in the suffering of
his own people by selling him the chemical weapons he would use on
them.

> See, that's the hypocrisy of the US, which the
>
> > WikiLeaks cables are only highlighting and substantiating what's been
> > known all along, that it only becomes the US's "obligation" to protect
> > others only when it sees itself threatened, whether imagined or real.
> > Aside from that, there is no obligation and wasn't any up until the US
> > attacked in 2003. And the only reason why it became its "obligation"
> > to do so was because Congress wrote it in Public Law No. 107-243 in
> > October of 2002 which instructed that Bush be "obligated" to protect
> > the minorities, along with be "obligated" to reconstruct the whole
> > country after he totally destroyed it. If you have to put it in
> > writing, then you know that even Congress didn't believe Bush would do
> > the right thing.
>
> So you are mad at Bush ... because he thought the minorities in Iraq should
> be protected after the war???

He didn't think that. Congress directed him to think that. It's in
the Public Law they wrote up that led to the war.

>
> >> They interpreted UN Res 688 as to give the
> >> coalition forces the authority to protect the minority Iraqis. Since the
> >> coalition was fighting the war they used their interpretation of UN Res
> >> 688.
> >> The UN has no military and depends on the US and coalitions forces to
> >> fight
> >> the war. The US and coalitions forces are not dependent on the UN to
> >> micromanage the war. Do you think Saddam should be free to do with the
> >> minorities what he pleased knowing his murderous attitude toward
> >> dissenters.
>
> > He did so with the US's help in the 80s.
>
> What was the US obligation in the 80's based on?

In reference to what?

>
> And it's funny that the US
>
> > would abide by the authority given to it by the UN to protect the
> > minority, but wouldn't abide by not being given any authority by the
> > UN to go ahead and invade. That kind of selective approach to what
> > authority the US will and won't abide by only fuels the arrogant image
> > the US projects to the world, which again is backed up the WikiLeaks
> > cables.
>
> No, everyone knew that UN Res. 1441 was the last straw. The UN with its
> leftist/dictator countries would never give written permission to invade a
> fellow dictator even if they were not abiding by the cease-fire agreement.

1441 wasn't the last straw. So long as a UN resolution ends with
"Decides to remain seized of the matter," as 1441 did, then it wasn't
the last straw.

>
> >> > The point of the matter is not whether Saddam was evil or not. We
> >> > know he was. And yet, the US still sided with him in the 80s in
> >> > Iraq's war with Iran, even supplying him with WMDs - the same chemical
> >> > weapons that the US then sought to destroy in the 90s and 2000s.
>
> >> Foreign policy is fluid, enemies can become allies and allies can become
> >> enemies. Russia become a foe after WWII yet we supported Russia in
> >> WWII.
> >> Iran was also an ally at one time. Just because the US supported Iraq
> >> previously doesn't mean anything except foreign policy changes. The
> >> point
> >> IS whether Saddam was evil and some DON'T know that he was, at least some
> >> of
> >> us know that he was. Its as if the left wants to be lied to. The left
> >> continually accepted what Saddam said as the truth ... his actions are
> >> never
> >> questioned, only Bush's and the coalition actions are questioned.
> >> Everyone
> >> but the left knew Saddam was stalling and had no intention of abiding by
> >> the
> >> treaty, but when the US/coalition forces make a move they are the ones
> >> that
> >> are wrong. Over a decade of negotiating means nothing to the left.
>
> > Don't fool yourself into thinking that Saddam was ever considered to
> > be a saint. As soon as he took power back in the late 70s, everyone
> > knew he was a creep.
>
> I'm not the one being fooled ... it's the left that is being fooled and
> supported Saddam against the UN always saying the US lied to get into a war
> with Saddam. Saddam lets the inspectors in and there is no war ... its that
> simple.

And he did let them in and they found nothing, year after year after
year. And then Saddam just got fed up of their looking for no needle
in a haystack, so he kicked them out, which was his right, it was his
country. It's exactly what Obama would do if the same thing happened
to the US.

>
> But that's never stopped the US from aligning
>
> > itself with creeps to gain whatever advantage it perceives it can gain
> > against other creeps.
>
> This is true and its also true of every other great power ... why do you
> expect anything different from the US ... nation/states act in their own
> self interest ... why should the US be different

Because it professes to be different. It's not a Russia or a China.
Yet, it doesn't abide by its own supposed difference.

>
> The problem with that is that it usually tends
>
> > to backfire against the US. The whole bin Laden thing is a perfect
> > example of that. The US wanted to use Saudi bases from which to
> > attack Saddam back in the first war in '91, after having supported him
> > before, and this angered bin Laden, planting the seed of his own war
> > against the US, which now actually has him winning because of the
> > daily fear he has instilled in you right down to feeling up little
> > caucasian kids at airports just to make sure they don't have A-bombs
> > attached to themselves. It's as if bin Laden has single-handedly
> > turned the ideals of American democracy into a ludicrous mockery of
> > itself. He's winning in the psychological warfare department, and all
> > because the US believes itself to be the sole authority on the planet
> > and can ignore any other authority on a whim and for no real good
> > reason.
>
> Don't pretend that the terrorist problem just happened with bin Laden ...
> the US had trouble with Muslim terrorist at least since the bombing of the
> Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. So we should not have angered bin
> Laden??? ... is that what one should base their foreign policy on? ... fear.
> The hell with Kuwait, let Saddam run wild in the middle east because we
> don't want to upset bin Laden. What other persons should the US have
> listened to?

The problem with Muslims goes further back, to 1979 for sure with the
Iran hostage crisis, and probably even before that with the various
skyjackings that took place earlier in the decade, though the current
phase of it can be dated back to 1979. And why did that happen?
Because of the US's support of the Shah of Iran who they helped steal
power from the prime minister, who apparently was popular with the
people. That, of course, planted the seeds of future discontent in
Iran against the US, which finally came home to roost a generation
later. Stop messing around in other people's business, especially if
it's in the Middle East. You only have yourselves to blame for the
mess you're in now.

> >> Now,
>
> >> > there's this guy in Iran and that other guy in North Korea. Both are
> >> > much further ahead with WMDs - real WMDs, not the pretend variety -
> >> > than Iraq ever was, and Iraq never even had any nukes or was anywhere
> >> > near getting them.
>
> >> That is Monday morning quarterbacking ... most intelligences services in
> >> the
> >> coalition thought he had WMD's. Two Congressional investigations found
> >> that
> >> there was no pressure to come to any agreement to falsify or change
> >> intell.
> >> It was an intelligence screw up.
>
> > I guess you got easily duped by Operation: Mass Appeal, huh?
>
> >http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article...
>
> The Butler Report found no one was duped ...

Just read the book:

http://tinyurl.c...

UK intell suffered the same
> problems US intell did, but there was no lying or changing intell in order
> to get the UK involved with the coalition.
> Tony Blair today welcomed the Butler report saying it showed the Government
> and intelligence services acted in "good faith". Tony Blair today welcomed
> the Butler report saying it showed the Government and intelligence services
> acted in "good faith". The Prime Minister told MPs the report showed errors
> were made in drawing up the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons.
> But Mr Blair said: "No-one lied. No-one made up the intelligence. No-one
> inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence
> services. "Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the
> country in circumstances of acute difficulty."http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/noone-lied-no......
>
> Where was operation Mass Appeal before the invasion?

MI6 wasn't going to tell you where it was. They were engaged in it
behind the scenes for a decade leading up to the war. Try to read the
links I give you.

It seems to be your
> opinion that no matter how much or how many times Saddam lied or violated
> the treaty it was the coalition forces that were always at fault.
>
> >> So you have to ask yourself, if it was clear that
>
> >> > Iran and North Korea were about to get nukes, how come the US didn't
> >> > turn the screws on them just as much as it did on Iraq and even start
> >> > a war with them?
>
> >> My point was appeasement doesn't solve any problems at all. Saddam was
> >> using his stall tactics to do what he wanted. I've pointed out that
> >> Saddam
> >> didn't sweat the UN/US at all.
>
> > He didn't sweat it because he knew they had nothing on him, because he
> > didn't have WMDs, at least not the nuke variety. What he probably
> > didn't know was how the US and Britain were conspiring to ensure they
> > could fabricate something passably credible so as to gain approval to
> > attack him.
>
> He knew he didn't have WMD's but the rest of the world did not. He was
> obligated under the cease-fire agreement to account for these weapons ...
> but you see nothing wrong with him not having to account for the weapons?
> He accounts for the weapons or lack of them and there is no invasion. "He
> told agents (FBI) that he was more worried about looking weak to Iran than
> being removed by the coalition. He never though the US would follow through
> on our promises to disarm him by force." ... "On Jan 27, Hans Blix gave a
> formal report to the UN. His inspections there had discovered warheads that
> Saddam had failed to declare or destroy, indications of the highly toxic VX
> nerve agent, and precursor chemicals for mustard gas. In addition, the
> Iraqi government was defying the inspections process. ... 'Iraq appears
> not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament
> that was demanded of it, Blix said.'" Decisions, G Bush. Was this, by Mr
> Blix a fabrication by the coalition forces? How far are you willing to bend
> over to protect Saddam? ... to you it is all the US and the coalition
> forces that are doing wrong, "conspiring" If he abides by the cease-fire
> treaty there is no reason to attack Iraq. Explain how the US and Britian
> would attack Iraq if Saddam abided by the cease-fire agreement ... they had
> waited over a decade before attacking.

Just read the book:

http://tinyurl.c...

There are actually tons more books like it, too.

> >> N. Korea used the same tactics of
> >> negotiations ... we are still negotiating today and will continue unless
> >> N.
> >> Korea decides to invade or attack. That is exactly what was happening in
> >> Iraq ... keep negotiating and restart the nuclear program and then we end
> >> up
> >> with Iraq with a nuclear weapon in the middle east. The WikiLeaks show
> >> that
> >> middle eastern countries wants the US make sure that Iran doesn't get
> >> nuclear weapons. I'm sure they thought the same about Saddam.
>
> > And you would think that both the US and Britain would think twice
> > before entering a costly, lengthy war when this was received 10 days
> > earlier:
>
> >http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6......
>
> They had been doing this same kind of stunts for over 10 years, last minute
> intell. or Saddam would give in. They had years of intelligence that Saddam
> had WMD's ... he accounts for them and there is no war. Obviously he did
> have some weapons that were in violation of the treaty because they found
> after the invasion. This could have all been avoided by Saddam, true or
> false?

"Saddam confided to Piro why he had no weapons of mass destruction but
pretended he did. Saddam said that because of the war of attrition he
had with Iran, Iran always remained a threat to him. And if Iran
thought he had serious WMD, it would be reluctant to engage him
again. On the other hand, if he said he had them, Iran would never
listen. But if the U.S. said that he had WMD, Iran would believe it.
So every time inspectors came, Saddam gave them the runaround,
reinforcing for Iran’s consumption the notion that he had WMD. And
that explains why, if there were no WMD, he acted as if he did have
them."

http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/saddamhusseiniraqwmd/2010/09/07...

> >> Why just pick on lowly Iraq when it didn't even have
>
> >> > any WMDs - real WMDs? If the US can ignore the UN by running over any
> >> > country it likes, what's stopping the US from protecting the whole
> >> > world from the armaggedon likes of Iran and North Korea, which now
> >> > pose a much greater threat than Iraq ever was to America's national
> >> > security?
>
> >> Again we didn't know that Iraq didn't have WMD's so that is no argument.
>
> > You didn't know it because Bush fooled you into believing it and your
> > media supported the war call. If you lived in Canada, like I do, you
> > would've known that Bush had no case because of all the skepticism
> > about the flimsiest of so-called evidence. We were so skeptical about
> > it that we didn't think it was worth the time, energy, money and lives
> > to get involved in it with you. Not only that, but you having gone
> > into Iraq hasn't even made you safer at all, you're more clamped down
> > by excessive security than you ever were before. And while you
> > swatted a fly with no WMDs, you let a couple of hornets get away with
> > pursuing and acquiring real WMDs.
>
> So it was Bush who 'fooled' everyone?

You bet. So much so that you're still buying it after so much has
been written to dispute everything he said.

How about other countries like
> France, Russia and the UK that also though Iraq had WMD's?

France and Russia stayed out of the Iraq War.

The US 'let a
> couple of hornets get away with pursuing and acquiring real WMD's???? Why
> is it the responsibility of the US ... what did Canada do to stop couple of
> hornets acquiring WMD's. Then how do you account for this: "Prime
> Minister Paul Martin says he believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
> destruction and they've fallen into terrorists' hands. Martin said the
> threat of terrorism is even greater now than it was following the attacks of
> Sept. 11, 2001, because terrorists have acquired nuclear, chemical and
> biological weapons from the toppled Iraqi leader."http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/05/11/4...

Paul Martin didn't become prime minister until 9 months after the war
started. Fortunately. Otherwise, we would've been now in the mess
you're in.

>
> >> We went on intelligence that we thought accurate but was not accurate ....
>
> > Right. It was fabricated intelligence that only seemed to fool
> > America, Britain and Australia. Look at the list of the coalition
> > countries that joined the Iraq war - it's embarrassing when the best
> > you could get after Britain and Australia is Albania, Moldova,
> > Lithuania, Kazakhstan, a lot of former Eastern bloc countries, and all
> > of them only sending maybe a couple of hundred or fewer support
> > troops. Only the US, Britain and Australia sent in assault troops.
>
> "The intelligence not being accurate doesn't mean that it was fabricated.
> In 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee said, in a report adopted
> unanimously by both Republican and Democratic members:
>
> Senate Intelligence Committee: The Committee did not find any evidence
> that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political
> pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with
> Administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or
> pressure analysts to do so. When asked whether analysts were pressured in
> any way to alter their assessments or make their judgments conform with
> Administration policies on Iraq's WMD programs, not a single analyst
> answered "yes." (p273) and "Silberman-Robb Report: These (intelligence)
> errors stem from poor tradecraft and poor management. The Commission found
> no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's
> pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in
> the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no instance
> did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical
> judgments. We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor
> analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the
> inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments." FactCheck. The number of
> allies the coalition had has nothing to do with the intelligence.

Read the book:

http://tinyurl.c...

>
> >> it wasn't the US 'running over any country it likes.' The US didn't act
> >> in
> >> haste, it waited for 10+ years and many UN resolutions before it acted.
>
> > And until it was absolutely definitive that Iraq had nukes, it
> > should've waited another 10 years. Besides, it was already definitive
> > that they didn't have any by the above reports, it was definitive in
> > the 90s, before the war and now. Bush and Blair simply refused to
> > believe it.
>
> No, it was definite that Iraq didn't have WMD's ... there was a way of
> proving that Iraq didn't have WMDs, that was he account for them or the lack
> there off. Why don't you have any problem with Saddam not accounting for
> his wMDs?

Because he didn't have any and after 12 years they still couldn't find
any. Wrap your head around that once and for all.

> >> We've seen by the FBI's debriefing of Saddam that he thought the US would
> >> not invade. How can there be any negotiating if one sides believes the
> >> other side will not act?
>
> > You don't attack just because the other side doesn't believe you
> > won't, you attack because you have irrefutable concrete proof that
> > there's a reason to do so and if it takes another 20 years to get it,
> > you wait.
>
> Intelligence isn't always 'irrefutable concrete proof' ... you have to go on
> your best intelligence estimate ... intell isn't like a math formula. What
> if Saddam did have WMD's and he smuggled one into Canada and killed lots of
> Canadians ... You would be the first on to say Bush should have gone into
> Iraq ... You've tried to put Bush in a no win situation.

It didn't happen, it wouldn't've happened, because he didn't have
any. Period.

>
> But hey, this is what the rush to war has gotten you.
>
> How can you say a rush to war ... it was almost 12 years after Gulf War one
> was over ... a real break neck rush.

It's always a rush to war if you don't wait for definitive proof. Rad
the book:

http://tinyurl.c...

>
> A
>
> > trillion more dollars in debt with hundreds of billions more yet to be
> > piled on by still being in Iraq, and Afghanistan as well, and a less
> > secure America on top of all that. Don't you find it alarming that
> > it's gotten to a point now where the US government suspects every one
> > of its own citizens as a potential threat, not just "Middle Eastern
> > types"? That's what all this has come down to. The amBushing of
> > America by fear and lies, and that's why bin Laden is winning. You
> > can stay in Iraq and Afghanistan as long as you want, but nothing is
> > going to change there, you're just going to further aggravate your own
> > situation. Leave the Middle East for the Middle Eastern types to deal
> > with. It's more their problem than yours.
>
> So your answer is to let evil prevail because trying to stop it may cost to
> much.

It's the Middle East's business, not yours. You don't own the Middle
East, you don't run it, you don't even care much about it except for
the oil. You'd actually prefer to live without there ever being a
Middle East, so stay out of it. It's a completely different mindset
in that part of the world that is totally alien to Western democratic
ideals. Keep your distance from it, concern yourself with your own
domestic problems and get those fixed before piling on other people's
problems onto yours.

>
> >> That should be a good enough reason to attack Iran and
>
> >> > North Korea now that they have nukes, just as it was a good enough
> >> > reason to go after Iraq which only had just puny little chemical
> >> > weapons instead. So why isn't the US acting on it the way it did with
> >> > Iraq?
>
> >> The US has no reason to attack N. Korea ... still in negotiations from
> >> the
> >> Korean War ... that train left the station a long time ago, but you see
> >> how
> >> negotiations work with N. Korea.
>
> > Oh, I see. Saddam had no nukes, so let's attack him, but North Korea
> > has nukes, so let's lay off, give them another 50 years of talk, talk,
> > talk. You see how you make no sense to anybody outside of the US and
> > why you only bring problems onto yourself?
>
> No, I'm showing you how your form of diplomacy (appeasement) works ...
> appeasement makes the world a more dangerous place. If France and the UK
> had went after Hitler in the beginning there would have been no WWII.
> "Peace in our Time" didn't work did it?

Neither France nor the UK had the military might required to beat
Germany. That's why the US was called in, and even it didn't have
that might at the time, it had to gear up for it by
going into mass production literally overnight and it would take
another six months to year before it was a force of its own, and yet
it still took another 2 1/2 years before the Germans could be
defeated, that's how strong they were.

>
> >> I don't know why we haven't acted on Iraq and even if we will ... That is
> >> up
> >> to our Congress .. the US doesn't have unlimited resources.
>
> > You mean Iran.
>
> Yes.
>
> Well, probably the reason why you can't touch Iran is
>
> > because of the deal Reagan signed with them to secure the hostages
> > back before he became president, which included the stipulation that
> > the US can't interfere with Iran politically or militarily. You can
> > look up the Algiers Accords of 1981, but this article reveals exactly
> > what happened:
>
> >http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/0...
>
> This may or may not have happened, but the President/his State dept are the
> only one by law who can negotiate with a foreign power. It seems strange
> that ex-President Carter has never written about this. This would be at
> least book worthy. Its crazy to think that if this did happen it would tie
> the hands of other Presidents, especially for something that wasn't
> negotiated.

Of course it happened and it happened behind Carter's back. A simple
Google search would yield even more sources corroborating that fact.
One could argue that Reagan manipulated his way to the presidency,
illegally. What's with Repugnants and illegal tactics in trying to
snare the presidency anyway? Seriously, you don't find it hugely
coincidental that the Iranians would release the hostages only 20
minutes after Reagan got sworn in without Carter having known anything
about it? What do you think, that the Iranians would do that just out
of the goodness of their hearts after having kept them captive for
over a year and without getting anything in return for it? Think,
man, think.

>
> >> Isn't it all about principle?
>
> >> What about the principle of abiding by the cease-fire agreement? I've
> >> noticed you've never said anything about Saddam ignoring the ceasefire
> >> agreement, but point out anytime you thought the US may have acted
> >> illegally. The principle seems to be no matter what the US does it wrong
> >> or
> >> illegal.
>
> > The onus was on the US to make a case, not on Iraq. If Iraq didn't
> > want to abide by the UN resolutions, then they would've had to deal
> > with sanctions and other constrictive approaches to get him to agree.
>
> So the many UN resolutions that Saddam ignored plus the cease-fire agreement
> had nothing to do with it? I think maybe that is your opinion.

To do with what?

>
> > Eventually Saddam would've relented.
>
> And you know this how? How do you know he would have relented? He said he
> wasn't worried about invasion ... he had corrupted the UN Oil for food
> program and he was getting money ... the sanctions had broken down. What
> would have made Saddam relent? Most of all I want to know how you know he
> would have relented and the rest of the world didn't?

"The CIA, however, was wrong. Following the invasion, I served in two
separate occasions on the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which was tasked
with locating Saddam's WMDs. Despite the smuggled shipments of dual-
use goods, the ISG definitively established that Saddam, under
pressure from the combination of the U.S. sanctions, U.N. sanctions,
and U.N. weapons inspectors, had abandoned his WMD programs."

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/20/it_worked_on_saddam...

>
> You know, sometimes, or maybe
>
> > often, it becomes difficult to accept a foregone conclusion. The
> > foregone conclusion was that he had no WMDs (nukes) - fact.
>
> Fact, true, be a fact we only know in hindsight ... so that is no argument.

Unless the proof is irrefutable.

>
> But after
>
> > spending so much time trying to prove that he must have them and still
> > unable to unearth anything, the US couldn't seem to just let it go.
>
> Wait the US and coalition forces thought, in error, that they had made a
> case ... this is in good faith ... it was no lie, but a mistake. True or
> false?

There was no good faith. Read the book:

http://tinyurl.c...

>
> > They always need to have to prove a point, even if it's a false or
> > erroneous point.
>
> How do you know its false or erroneous ... the coalition forces and the US
> and the world was working off bad intelligence. They didn't know it was
> false or erroneous until after the invasion.

History has proven time and again that the US keeps getting itself
into one mess after another on false or erroneous points. That's why
the US is condemned to keep repeating it - it never learns from
history. Are you asleep? Are all Americans asleep? Do you not
absorb history, but merely sleepwalk your way through one disaster
after another?

>
> It's always all about chest-beating to the world and
>
> > letting everybody know who's right. Well, only it didn't work with
> > Saddam.
>
> If it was about 'chest-beating' the US could have overthrown Saddam in the
> first Gulf war. Bush II could have went after Saddam the first time Saddam
> kicked/limited the UN inspectors ... it wasn't about chest-beating.

Actually, Bush 1 had the smarts not to go into Iraq. He defined the
mission simply as securing Kuwait's independence and he well knew,
through his own extensive background in foreign policy and work with
the CIA, that to get mired down in Iraq would've been the worst thing
to do, as tempting as it might've been to go after Saddam. But he
wasn't willing to pay the high cost nor drive the US deeper into
debt. His mission was simple and straightforward and he got the full
backing of the UN on it, unlike dumber Baby Bush. Resolution 678 was
clearly unambiguous about letting states use "all necessary means" to
force Iraq out of Kuwait after the deadline. There was no "decision
remains seized of the matter."

>
> You were proven wrong, you're still stuck there, the area
>
> > still is unstable, you're still talking about it, you're still paying
> > for it monetarily and with lives, you're still allowing yourself to be
> > imprisoned by increasing fear due to the domino effect of terrorists
> > who were never aligned with Iraq setting their sights on you, you keep
> > creating your own hell.
>
> It may have been a mistake, we don't know that yet ... eventually Iraq could
> have a stable govt. Terrorist were a problem with the US long before the
> Iraq war.

Iraq will never have a stable government, get it through your head.
Iraq is not a democracy, it's nothing like the U.S., it's stuck in the
middle of a powder keg known as the Middle East, which itself is still
stuck mostly in the 19th century, it's always going to have migraines
with not only its neighbors but its own people who are split into
multiple religious factions who are always at each other's throats.
Stop thinking of that country and region in technicolor terms, there's
no happy ending there.

>
> Just the other day I watched CNN bring up the
>
> > news item about 190,000 planes being unregistered or something like
> > that in the US, and what was the subliminal message slapped across the
> > screen in big print? Terror Threat. Everything is a terror threat to
> > you guys now. Snap out of it already.
>
> There is a terrorist threat in the world, not just the US but all over the
> world. One could bury their head and ignore, which the US did for years.

Then bin Laden has already defeated you.

> >> And what was the greater
>
> >> > principle in going after Iraq that just isn't there for the US to go
> >> > after Iran and North Korea in the same way?
>
> >> What is the principle that the US should be the only nation on the planet
> >> that goes after rogue countries?
>
> > There is no principle, other than whatever the US defines for itself
> > is its own role in the world.
>
> Yes there is ... since the WWII the US has been tied to Europe by having
> troops stationed there. Weren't the Balkans a European problem, who did
> Europe turn to? ... but that's typical, the US sucks until some heavy
> lifting has to be done. Why didn't they call on Canada?

Canada is often called upon for peace missions, it's the first country
everybody calls, including the US. So you guys are the bullies who
make a mess of things, then we have to step in and make sure sanity is
restored after you guys leave.

>
> But what it deems is its role in the
>
> > world is not necessarily what others believe. That's like your next
> > door neighbor saying I can come into your house anytime I want if I
> > have a suspicion that something is going on in there, without saying
> > what, because I'd be protecting the whole neighborhood that way - just
> > in case.
>
> The US has never been like that, but I know that's how the left views us.
> Do you think there is any country in Europe that can defend itself, except
> maybe the UK?

Well, considering that the US's military budget is 97% of the total
world military budget, I guess not. Personally, I think that's
obscene.

>
> >> And why do it illegally
>
> >> > for Iraq and not even consider it for Iran and North Korea?
>
> >> How do you know it hasn't been considered for the above?
>
> > Whatever consideration there is, it's now restricted by the nuke
> > problem, so don't expect anything to happen unless one of them overtly
> > attacks someone using a nuke.
>
> >> I've noticed you haven't answered some of my questions. We had
> >> negotiated
> >> with Saddam for going on 12 years, how long do you think we should have
> >> negotiated? Do you think Saddam was negotiating in good faith? If not
> >> what
> >> should have been done?
>
> > How much would it have cost the US to keep negotiating compared to
> > having gone to war?
>
> Maybe Saddam getting a nuclear weapon. Do you think Iraq or Iran in the
> middle east getting a nuclear weapon will change anything? How much did it
> cost Europe by negotiating with Hitler for 'peace in our time'? Do you
> think it was worth it? Sometimes its better to fight.

Yeah, do that to some total stranger on the street just because you
"think" he could be carrying a knife.

>
> It sure would've been a hell of a lot cheaper on
>
> > your wallet and with over 4,000 US troop lives saved too, never mind
> > the tens of thousands of others who ended up maimed and
> > psychologically scarred for life. The only time going to war is the
> > answer is when there actually is a war that's started. And even then
> > the US was in no rush to enter World War 2, having waited over 2 years
> > before it actually stepped into it, and that was a bigger problem than
> > Iraq ever was.
>
> Maybe cheaper in the short run, but what if Saddam had gotten a nuclear
> weapon ... he could control the price of oil in the world. So the US should
> just sit back an wait for a dirty bomb or nuclear device to go off in the US
> and then decide if it should go to war, or start going off all over the
> world. I think we had been doing that until Bush ... Pan Am bombing, Khobar
> towers bombing, Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, 2 US embassies in Africa
> bombed, USS Cole bombed, just to name a few. Should the US just sit back
> and just react, never go on the offensive? Do you see Muslim jihadist as a
> "real" problem in the world or just an annoyance.? ... a door mat to the
> Muslim jihadist. Nothing would make the left happier than to see the US
> fail in the world. The flip side of that is the rest of the world would
> have to make their peace with the Muslim jihadists ... the loss of western
> freedoms. What country could credible go on the offensive against the
> Muslim jihad?

It's the Middle East's problem. Let them deal with it, they have to
face it every day, it's in their own backyard, the US is half a world
away. And when it comes to security at home, just profile people,
don't automatically assume every American is guilty as it's doing now.

>
> >> >> >> >http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/uns...
>
> >> >> >> > The US didn't bother waiting for the next resolution and
> >> >> >> > illegally
> >> >> >> > stormtrooped its way into Iraq.

comp.lang.ruby

audit your gems (excellent blog post

Giles Bowkett

Bob Hammer

Alias

Alias

Alias

Joe Irvin

wy

Bob Hammer

Alias

Joe Irvin

wy

x Login to ForumsZone