It's really not that difficult to understand, honestly try reading the transcript it might make it clearer.
Yet another blunder for Kerry. Why would he even utter 'global test.' That's just stupid. It plays against him with all the middle of the roadish voters. Why not just say 'we'd be more rigorous in our evaluation before we put troops in.' As for France and bribes, its disingenous to claim thier contracts had no affect on their decision to block action. The four main opponents to action were the four main creditors of Saddam's regime. Coincidence?
had bush not gone to the un the same people who are currently "dishing" him for not listening to france would have been dishing him for not going to the UN. the article's make clear that the french opposition to the war in iraq has everything to do with france's interests there, interests that were bought w/ oli-for-palaces money. why does this not trouble you? you're favored candidate seems intent on forcing the US back to september 10 mindset, with US foreign policy held hostage to governments that take bribes from murderous, genocidal dictators. yet, you find this unremarkable. i submit that the real reason so may on the left oppose the war in iRaq is that it was started by george bush, not on it's merits. as the "liberal case for bush" thread makes clear, the iraq war fits nicely within the main stream of classic liberal foreign policy.
The sanctions could not have been lifted without US approval and the infrastructure for making weapons had DETERIORATED over the 13 years that Iraq had not been producing weapons. The UN would have been looking over Saddam's shoulder for decades to come and would have been able to keep him disarmed. At any rate, Saddam was planning to use any future WMDs as a deterrent, to keep Iran and others from invading him. He had the opportunity to use his WMDs against the US in '91 and did not use them because he knew that he would have been evicerated by everyone, including his allies. Saddam would not have attacked the US (or Israel for that matter) with any future WMDs for the same reason: he knew he would have lost ALL support from everyone, including his closest allies.
Not true. France toward the end of the sanction program had not been voting to extend the sanctions. Had France vote against the sanctions, that would have been a veto that killed the sanctions. The non-UNSC sanctioned, international law breaking No-Fly Zones (tm) are another story.
Looks like things haven't changed much in the past month. The same song by the same players. In the spirit of non-change, I will ask a question that has never been answered here: Basso, others who have made French involvement in the oil for food affair a rallying cry for deceit and moral turpitude: Do the CEO's of the corporate entities whose French subsidiaries participated in this program and who enrich themselves and their shareholders indirectly with Saddam's blood money -- tell me, are they deserving of condemnation along with the other participants in this program? Or are they absolved of blame? If the answer is the affirmative, then why does this eager participant in the Oil for food program, whose French subsidiaries were the beneficiaries of these bribes, continually earn your bowed head and bended knee adulation? Please answer. Thanks.
Oh...the dishers would dish...and the apologists would rationalize...but it's doubtful it would be as pronounced as it is now. Both Regan and Clinton had their little tiffs with other nations and didn't say mother-may-i to the UN before firing up the tanks. Yet neither was so overwhelmingly and globally panned. Setting aside the whole issue as to whether the war was just...you just have to admit the process could not have been more screwed up from a diplomatic level. A pre-emptive war was a pretty big policy change. ANd basing it on info that wasn't iron-clad was risky. It just seems if that was the path you were determined to take...a lot more effort should have been spent lining up your friends. And in knowing in which venues you can win, versus which ones you should avoid. Clinton and Regan did this. Bush did not. I'm not totally sold on Kerry. If the man can't run a better campaign with all that Bush has given him, makes one wonder how he'll convince the leaders of other countries to sing his song. But i do pin the blame on Bush for shaping the process to create the impression that UN approval was the measure of credibility. And now the efforts to cry about the game being fixed, i just find weak.
I know, it shocks even me! It was awesome, truly awesome. If anybody here wants to go to Tibet, my advice is see it now, because the Chinese are changing it, fast! But that's another D&D topic altogether....
i'm not sure bush felt he needed the UN to give the war legitimacy, but powell, a hold over from bush 1, convinced him to go. powell believed he had french support, and in fact had received private assurances of such support from de villepin. i thin powell was stunned by the subsequent french betrayal. personally, i think it was always a mistake to go to the UN. but you can bet if bush hadn't, john kerry would be crucifying for it now.
so if you're going to state that bribing is generally a wrong thing to do, you're going to have to admit that a lot of policies that we do have with other countries, specifically China, Saudia Arabia, North Korea and Iran, are also wrong. Its a two way street. Your inability to recognize that your standards on people you dislike can hurt us if applied to our own system shows clear ignorance. I'm assuming your inability to answer the issues I raised earlier is indicative that you either can't answer them, or that you are allergic to being wrong.
Cool! Glad you're back. A B-Bob sighting and a SamFisher sighting on the same day. Now, if we saw rimrocker, RM95, treeman, and MacBeth around here, along with folks I've forgotten at the moment, things would really liven up. HayesStreet in poking around. I've been wondering if everyone went to Tibet. You make a great point about US subsidiaries, based in France, and possibly dealing with Saddam. That could get a bit stinky, if it is true. Keep D&D Civil!!
Well, that's the perhaps the most annoying part of it all. This whole thing was common knowledge and merited little other than a story in the Financial Times from a while back that got almost no play other than a quick blurb confirming the same thing in the WSJ earlier this year. It's remarkable to me that people like Bush, CHeney, and their supporters have the gall, no pun intended, to rail and rail about the UN oil for food scandal when Cheney was one of the ones on the take and it's not even disputed.
An interesting side note that I saw last night... According to the Iraq Survey Group report it was going to name companies that did business with Iraq. French, German, Russian and American. Interestingly enough though, all American companies would be "blacked" out from the report in the interest of "national security reasons."
on the face of it, i'd agree, there ought to be some further explication and examination fo what's here. a few points, however. note how, once again, most of the business is funneled through france. also, there's a big difference between selling iRaq equipment for oil exploration, which Halliburton was, and abusing the oil-for-palaces program. lastly, if there's really something sinister there, and i'm not saying there isn't, just reserving judgement, wouldn't senator breck have brought it up as he was spraying "halliburton" all over the debate on tuesday?
basso Please forgive an illiterate fool. I don't understand the "breck" reference. Je ne comprends pas
http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84727 "Breck" is the brand name of a shampoo Jaclyn Smith used to pimp...the reference is to Edward's hair, and cheney's lack of it.
I think he was calling Cheney an ogre (Shrek) and saying that Edwards only cares about the appearance of his hair (Breck was once a hair-care product...might still be FAIK).
