Mark Hickey <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<
[email protected]>...
>
[email protected] (Spider) wrote:
>
> >Mark Hickey <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> In this world the "enemy" is spread throughout your own population and will use the most deadly
> >> weapons it can get its hands on. They'll strike without warning and without remorse. I firmly
> >> believe we have to make every effort to prevent WMD from proliferating to keep them out of the
> >> hands of those who would use them on civilian populations in the US and other countries.
> >
> >Well, that's a lovely attitude. Let's just kick ass on everyone who might have reason to use WMD
> >on the U.S., or anyone connected to them. Sounds like we're gonna need to scale back that tax cut
> >so we can wage war on a global scale.
>
> Either we try to control the development and proliferation of WMD by making it politically
> unprofitable to produce them, or we resign ourselves to a world when every fringe group in the
> world can make a statement at a horrific cost in human life.
More false choices. I never get tired of conservatives creating these sorts of "either/or"
comparisons, and ignoring any other possible solutions. Frankly, we have stamped our "okey-dokey" on
Pakistan's WMD programs. While consistency might be the hobgoblin of the narrow mind, when you start
talking about "moral duty," consistency is paramount. Especially if morality is absolute.
> But I'm open to suggestion... what would YOU do to control the spread of WMD?
Why should I have to supply a solution? My solution against the U.S. being attacked would be to try
and be even-handed and consistent in our actions around the globe. While it may cost us more in the
short term, that's the high price of occupying the moral high ground. There ain't no free lunch.
> >> I also wish it weren't so, and that we had the luxury of waiting for an impending attack (or
> >> more accurately, another attack).
> >
> >We do have that luxury. It's the price of occupying the moral high ground. Part of the price we
> >pay for being agents of freedom in this world. Freedom isn't free, Mark.
>
> Maybe you would rather wait for a VX attack on LA or anthrax in Chicago or a dirty bomb in the
> financial district of NYC. I vote that we don't.
How about we do a better job of policing our borders? If we work hard to prevent things at home, we
won't have to go abroad to smack down all the dictatorships that may or may not support terrorists.
Or have oil. Or have "unfinished business" with members of whatever Aministration official.
> >> I won't be awfully surprised if we don't find a lot of direct linkages in the clean up. Saddam
> >> is linked closely enough with terrorism via the payments to families of suicide bombers to
> >> satisfy the "can't be trusted with WMD" test in my book, even if nothing else is turned up.
> >
> >That's a huge stretch to connect the dots. Those payments could be to curry favor amongst other
> >islamic nations - Saddam is not well-liked, you know. In any case, he's not directly supporting
> >terror that way.
>
> I think trying to say Saddam isn't directly supporting suicide bombers by sending huge amounts of
> money to their families is the "stretch".
He isn't. Training? Nope. Explosives? Nope. Personnel? Nope. That about covers direct support.
In any case, those folks aren't blowing up American targets.
> I guess we agree to disagree on that one.
You see what you want to, which is nice, but doesn't shed light on the truth of the matter.
> >> >But that's not what Bush and Co. are trying to sell. They try as hard as possible to link the
> >> >two.
> >>
> >> I don't deny that there are some intimations to that effect.
> >
> >Nice spin. They have been pushing it hard, no "intimations" about it.
>
> I disagree - but don't deny that's how a lot of people are interpreting it.
That "interpretation" plays right into the Administration's hands. Gosh, how convenient. In
addition, they are calling this an additional front on the "war on terror." I guess the Marines will
land in the West Bank soon to clean up that nasty terrorist mess, hmmm?
> >> True enough. Other polls indicated that a good number of that 71% would have preferred to wait
> >> at least a while longer.
> >
> >I would have liked to have seen a careful discussion of the trade-offs of pissing off our allies
> >and possibly fanning the flames of fundementalism. But the only way Dubya could have gotten
> >Congressional authorization is to do it when he did. Nice bit of politicking, that.
>
> Again, I disagree. A lot of Democrats are firmly behind the effort.
I guess you have to be a super-genius to see that if you *don't* support the war, you will be cast
as a traitor by conservatives.
If George would have gone back after the election to ask for a war declaration, I wonder if he would
have gotten anywhere near the votes...
Speculation, pure and simple.
> >> Thing is, no matter what happened, it was going to take a war to disarm Saddam, and I think
> >> most people knew that and though they might choose to wait a bit, they're anxious to just get
> >> on with it once it starts.
> >
> >Assuming facts not in evidence. We really don't know what it would have taken to try and disarm
> >Iraq through peaceful means, because it was never seriously attempted.
>
> Oh, come on! 12 years and 14 UN resolutions isn't "seriously attempted"????
You keep trying to reinvent history here. UN resolutions carry very little weight. We both know it.
For the vast majority of those twelve years, it was just hide and seek, and the issue was completely
on the back burner. NOBODY CARED. Saying otherwise is a lie, and we both know it.
> Massing a quarter million troops around Iraq and asking that he FINALLY comply with the UN
> resolution to produce his WMD or evidence of their destruction, and THAT isn't enough?
That certainly helped things along. But there's a difference between posing a threat and actually
carrying it out. I will count 4 months of diplomacy and the rest of the time as "holding pattern."
> >> What I'm discerning is that those countries with lucrative commercial connections to Iraq (and
> >> in some cases, those who have been selling Iraq weapons) were the ones opposed to disarming
> >> Saddam with force. I think that's the true "cause and effect" that applies to the UN debate
> >> about Iraq.
> >
> >Maybe America's stance on the issue drove them to the hard line - you can't know. If the U.S.
> >would have guaranteed those contracts, then where would the problem be? It looks fishier by the
> >second. Oddly, it seems that Halliburton is going to get a big, fat rebuilding contract. Odd,
> >dontcha think?
>
> Not really. Halliburton has a long history of similar contracts for the government, dating back
> long before Chaney. It's what they do - no big surprise if they do manage to get some of the
> rebuilding work. I believe they're #2 in the country for that kind of work.
But first, you need to have a war. Cause and effect, again.
> >> There has been a lot of dancing around the weapons issues, and all the major players (US
> >> included) are dirty, selling weapons to countries that really shouldn't have them. We all play
> >> politics at the UN level though and pretend it's not happening. I'm hoping this will be a wake
> >> up call for the world to get it's collective act together and put a HARD ban on equipping
> >> knuckleheads like Saddam in any way. That would eliminate a lot of the politics at the Security
> >> Council level, since the major players (US, UK, France, China, Russia) wouldn't have so much
> >> skin in the game.
> >
> >Even more indictment of the way the U.S. has gone about things. Still, playing the Vandespam
> >card of picking your polling data is pretty amusing. You don't believe that AQ and Iraq had
> >many direct links, yet 40% of the U.S. does. You ignore that in order to trumpet the war
> >support polls.
>
> Remember that works both ways - a lot of people don't understand the history of UN findings and
> Iraqi admissions about how many WMD stores they possess. They don't understand the UN
> resolutions called for Iraq to give it all up - not just to allow a bunch of inspectors in on a
> scavenger hunt.
But they might, if the Administration had been straightforward from the beginning, and not tried to
hunt around for reasoning that happened to stick. You get people to agree with you because your
position is strong, not because you make a call, then hunt for reasons after the fact. That's the
price of leadership, and anyone who has been in a leadership position understands that.
> >I am glad that the Iraqi people will now be able to govern themselves, and that Saddam will no
> >longer kill for fun - that one fewer places on the planet will be a place where WMD are there for
> >the taking. Not that some general might see dollar signs and cashes in before the Army cashes him
> >out, of course. Pursuing the war in this way was a mistake, because the ends do not justify the
> >means. Never has it been thus, in a moral sense. *HOW* you go about a task makes all the
> >difference.
>
> If you have the choice, I agree.
The choice is always there. Sometimes the choice is hard, but it is always there. Taking the moral
road is never the easy road - you should know that.
> >Sadly, we will see what crop we reap from the seeds sown this Spring.
>
> I predict this will force action on the WMD issue though - truly a good outcome. When we find the
> WMD in Iraq and the world starts to understand the magnitude of the risk it's under (collectively,
> not just the US) I'm hoping citizens demand a more "Bush-like response" from their diplomats.
> Either we deal with the problem, or it's going to get VERY ugly.
Again, assuming (a huge assumption) that governments will just give up these expensive "toys" to
anyone who shows interest in deploying them. When you have big-boy toys, you don't give them to just
whomever, because then you are making the big-boy club bigger, and your own position smaller. This
tenuous reasoning is the foundation for the moral argument, and just plain sucks as a firm platform
to base war on. Completely unlike being attacked first.
Spider
