WAIT..let's be fair. not be able to account for weapons we know they once possessed is more than a mere technicality. we know they HAD those weapons at one point...there is no disputing that. the only question is, where are they now?
Yawn. You're boring me. My analysis is hardly childish. I'm pointing out that (a) Europe announced more cooperation specifically to help mend our relations - something NoWorries claimed wouldn't happen, (b) his standard - as revised - is an unrealistic gauge of what 'greater cooperation would look like. The EU is not, in any possible scenario, just going to 360 and pay for half the war, or send a bunch of troops. What they might do realistically, is extend a hand in the spirit of greater cooperation with the US on the Iraq issue. That is what they've done. (c) YOUR standard of you will know it when you see it is......stupid. Thank you and goodnight.
This is a change of subject but... The technicality that I speak of is that Sadaam didn't allow UN inspectors to freely search Iraq. Inspectors were there, however. So Bush waged war on a sovergn (sp?) nation based on this technicality of unfettered inspections. Unfortunately for Bush, this didn't turn out well for him. Since possession is 9/10ths of the law, if we never found them, then any conclusion you reach is an assumption. And you know what they say about assumptions. I can't beleive you actually want to argue about this. Talk about fighting for a losing cause. Even the Whitehouse doesn't even bother with this anymore. They don't admit any mistakes but they sure don't talk about WMD anymore. Now it is about freedom.
No, Thank you...for proving my point. Can your dad beat up my dad too? Seriously. Technically, your right. I already said that. But that isn't the point. Sorry if a legitimate discussion about the issue that does not involve rhetoric is boring to you. I guess that would put you in that 51% majority of this country.
What they have done is token at best. This is a PR stunt. Nothing more. Nothing less. You feel for the PR. Admit it! What is interetsing is that Europe will feel the effects of an Iraq gone bad while we will not necessarily. Europe should be super motivated to significantly help out Iraq. To do so would be in their own best interest. The fact they have not goes to show what a bang up job The Great Uniter has done.
9/10 of the law? the "law" is the guy had to be able to account for weapons already inventoried. he couldn't. one side wanted to hold him to it. the other side didn't seem to care much. i don't know where those weapons are now. but by their own inventory, we know they had them. it wasn't merely that inspectors weren't allowed free access..that was certainly a problem though when he couldn't account for the weapons.
Actually, to be technical, the inspectors were supposed to be there and be allowed to search freely as part of a case-fire agreement after the Gulf War that allowed Saddam to stay in office in exchange for certian conditions. To say that Iraq was a sovergn (sp?) nation that we went to war with on a technicality is technically wrong. People seem to forget that fact. We were in our rights with regards to sanctions, no fly zones, etc... because Saddam agreed to those things in exchange for being allowed to remain in power. If he hadn't agreed to those things we would probably have gone into Bagdad back then (as we probably should have instead of allowing the UN to pull the reigns on the war).
Actually, it is quite ingenious. What it allows is for a constantly shifting standard that the Bush administration is never allowed to meet. If a standard was set, there is a chance that a) the Bush admin could meet it, or b) people could realize that the standard is much too harsh. If you can say that whatever happens doesn't pass the know it when I see it standard, then you are golden.
Iran would rather reach some agreement with Europe than the US. If that should happen, Iran and Europe would have the higher up in diplomatic status than the US. Though Iran appreciates a saber rattling US to discredit pro-western reform, it would be crazy if they relished the thought of the US pointing its barrel at them. European ambivalence to Bush's overtures have mostly been a concerted effort to stain the world's opinion of America's influence, but when push comes to shove they will fall in line with the occasional exceptions in Iraq (election year politics). Neither Europe nor Iran posess a trump card that can change the status quo.
I cannot disagree with you about our "rights." I guess it comes down to a personal opinion as to whether defaulting on some promises about the existence of WMD...that we never found...really constitutes a just war. My opinion...if you are going to start a war because one dude doesn't keep up a promise about inspecting a non-existent weapon, then that isn't singularly enough to kill thousands of people and destabalize a country. Me...I call it a technicallity. If we knew the weapons existed...that isn't a technicallity. We didn't know.
Yeah, unlikely that Europe moves on agreement w/ Iran w/o the US. Why? Because they don't want to be the one's holding the bag if/when Iran breaks the agreement.
Judges often make interpretations of the law based on the "spirit" of how the law was created. The spirit of the UN sanctions were to prevent Sadaam from attacking his neighbors. He was no immediate threat to his neighbors and he was definately no threat to America. So yes, Sadaam wasn't a nice man and he wasn't following all the UN rules...but it wasn't enough to wage war against him. Sorry, I didn't mean to rehash this and hijack this thread. I thought it was generally accepted at this point that our justification for war was weak. Yea, we gotta finish what we started but we shouldn't have started it in the first place.
krosfyah, I was talking about what constitutes greater cooperation from Europe, and I never mentioned justification for war. I happen to think that the Liberation of an oppressed people is all the justification necessary for war, but that has nothing to do with what I was commenting on. As for judges interpreting the law, they are invested with that power by the people and constitution of the United States. No one has given the Liberal Left the authority to decide what constitutes greater cooperation from Europe, nor what constitutes a legitimate justification for war, since you wanted to take that tack.
Actually there is a moving standard. For StupidMoniker and Hayes. Unless the diplomats of Europe say ****you in the clearest terms then all is normal and good between Europe and the US. Now as No Worries says giving the US a little something is PR or standard diplomatese and can be spun by the US and those who want to pretend everything is normal. France for instance has donated ONE SECURITY GUY to the effort, according to a news report I heard on the radio. Oh my Gosh they're cooperating!!. **********
Why Europe Ignores Bush Iraq has telegraphed limits on U.S. power, allowing others to say no to Washington Monday, Feb. 21, 2005 Machiavelli's advice to political leaders was that it's more important to be feared than to be loved. That's no help for President Bush on his European tour; in spite of the warm words he's exchanging with European leaders, the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community — increasingly, it is simply being ignored. New evidence of this trend, which has developed in the wake of the war in Iraq, emerges every week: Last Friday, Russia's President Vladimir Putin pooh-poohed the U.S. claim that Iran seeks nuclear weapons, and Moscow agreed to move ahead with delivering the nuclear fuel for Tehran's reactors despite Washington's opposition. And in case you missed the message, Russia has also agreed to supply advanced surface-to-air missiles to Syria, the latest focus of U.S. ire in the Middle East — again in defiance of Washington's stated wishes. ... Nor is Putin alone in shrugging off U.S. calls to abandon trade deals that threaten Washington's strategic interests.The European Union is going ahead with its plans to lift the arms embargo imposed on China after Tiananmen Square, despite urgings by the Bush administration to avoid selling weapons to Beijing. In their efforts to put a bright face on the administration's diminishing strategic influence, the Bush administration is accentuating the positive — the Europeans have agreed, they point out, to help train Iraqi security forces. Sure, they've agreed to train 1,000 Iraqis a year at a location outside of Iraq. To put that in perspective, the current U.S. goal is to train a further 200,000 Iraqis by October 1 — in other words, the NATO contribution will amount to 0.5 percent of the total. That's a little like the geopolitical equivalent of a Hallmark good-luck greeting card. Iraq, of course, is where the problem began in earnest, even before the war. By pressing ahead to war two years ago without the evidence to back its case and without waiting for UN inspectors to complete their work, the Bush administration inadvertently created a rupture in the international system of alliances that has proved disastrous. It created a situation where longtime U.S. allies found themselves with no choice but to say no to Washington on a strategic priority — and then not only to face no negative consequences, but to see the U.S. struggle under the weight of its occupation mission and then return to Europe calling for fences to be mended without the Europeans having changed their position. Well, not quite true: a number of European countries have changed their positions — they've pulled their troops out of Iraq....(Bush) hosts a dinner for President Chirac — a European leader he plainly detests, and who has not given an inch in his opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. France won't even consent to U.S. pressure to make the relatively meaningless gesture of putting Hezbollah on a terrorist list. The net effect of Operation Iraqi Freedom has not been to make U.S. enemies tremble in the face of American power. Instead, it has made them more aware of the limits of that power. A two-year occupation by 150,000 U.S. troops has failed to subdue an insurgency by a Sunni Muslim force that U.S. officials insist numbers no more than 12,000. Today, U.S. officials concede that the insurgency can't be defeated militarily, and it has long been evident to the Europeans and others that Washington's military resources are badly overstretched by the mission in Iraq — and that Washington's bean-counters are not amused by the $5 billion monthly bill for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran may be sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's not acting as if it believes it's in any danger of being invaded. And in light of the difficulties it has faced in Iraq, it's hard to imagine the U.S. managing to invade and occupy a country three times as large and as populous as Iraq, and unlikely to be any more welcoming of American troops than the Iraqis have been. ... The U.S. and Europe certainly agree that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a bad idea, but their ways of dealing with the problem remain poles apart. The Europeans are trying to negotiate a deal that takes account of what they deem Tehran's legitimate security concerns — i.e. fear of being attacked and toppled — and offers Iran guarantees and incentives to stay off the nuclear path. Fine, says the Bush administration. We hope that works, but don't expect us to be part of it. But the U.S. is, rightly or wrongly, the very personification of Iran's security concerns, and any deal offered to Tehran is meaningless without Washington's involvement. Administration hawks may think they're cleverly lining up support for tougher action on Iran by letting diplomacy run its course and fail. If so, they could be in for a nasty surprise. The Europeans will almost certainly blame the U.S. refusal to come to the table for the failure of diplomacy. And they're unlikely to see a nuclear-armed Iran as a reason to start yet another war in the Middle East. Don't worry says Bush, Iran is different from Iraq — Saddam violated 16 UN resolutions, while the Iran matter hasn't even gone to the UN yet. The operative word, of course, is “yet.” Rice made clear that the U.S. intends to take the matter there, and has been lobbying to unseat IAEA chief Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei to help ease the path to refer Tehran to the Security Council. ElBaradei has refused to endorse Washington's charge that Iran is covertly running a weapons program, despite demanding more transparency and cooperation from Tehran. But the Europeans are opposing Bush administration efforts to unseat him, perhaps more mindful than the Bushies are of just how much credibility the U.S. lost in international eyes by the total collapse in the face of reality of the case for war against Iraq it presented to the UN two years ago. And even if Washington did manage to get the Iran matter onto the Security Council agenda, its chances of getting the Council to pass the sort of resolution Washington wants are negligible. President Putin has signaled Russia is in Tehran's corner on this one, and China's $30 billion investment in Iran's oil and natural gas fields make it a relative certainty that Beijing would veto any resolution designed to impose sanctions or otherwise isolate Tehran. The rift between the U.S. and Europe is evident on issues as diverse as the Kyoto treaty and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. But it's likely to be felt most acutely in the strategic realm, in which the Europeans plainly no longer see themselves as hitched to the U.S. on matters of global conflict and security. The Europeans will make their own policy on Iraq, building their own relationships with its new government independently of the U.S. And presumably, so will others — as power shifts toward a government dominated by groups historically closer to Iran than they are to the U.S., don't be surprised to see China step forward with aid and investment. All over the world, new bonds of trade and strategic cooperation are being forged around the U.S. China has not only begun to displace the U.S. as the dominant player in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC), it is fast emerging as the major trading partner to some of Latin America's largest economies. The European decision to lift its arms embargo may reflect an awareness of the strategic significance of Beijing's emergence as an economic power — a dynamic that will dwarf the U.S. war with al-Qaeda in terms of its impact on the global strategic balance . And as China emerges alongside other new players such as India and Brazil, the U.S. will find itself forced to engage with a growing share of the international community that no longer deems it necessary to subordinate their own interests to Washington's, nor to assume that the two are one and the same. French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of “multipolarity” in a post-Cold War world, i.e. the preference for many different, competing power centers rather than the “unipolarity” of the U.S. as a single hyper-power. Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality. [URL=http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,10299
1. We were told WMD WMD WMD WMD as the primary justification for war. So if you are content with the President changing the game (ie justification for war) after he is proven wrong, then that is your right as an American. But quit lying to yourself and just admit that is what he did. He told us WMD and then later told us "freedom". Thats what angers me. What's the truth? 2. There are oppressed people all over the world. Why don't we attack them all? We can't? Why did we chose Iraq? 3. There have been more people killed in Iraq in the last 2 years than in the last 20. Do you call that freeing oppressed people? Time will tell if the end justifies the means...the jury is out on that one. Hopefully it turns out well for the Iraqis. I don't understand the point of this comment. I don't think there is some grand conspiracy by the Liberal Left trying to define "cooperation." It was merely a comment by No Worries that I happen to agree with. Look, when GWB is able to convince some of his EU naysayers to participate in Iraq in ways that make a notable impact and/or allows American to withdraw faster, then I'll start to believe the hype that GWB has the trust of the EU. I'm happy for you that you feel good about the token gestures that have been offered. For me, I only see it as an act of diplomacy to maintain positive political relations with America (ie. CYA) and nothing more. Besides, aren't these the same French that conservatives were disowning and pouring out wine and declaring "freedom fried?" Why do you suddenly care if the French are involved?
we knew they existed. he inventoried them with the UN after the first Gulf War. he couldn't account for them subsequently. he regularly ordered his military to fire on US and British planes patrolling the UN ordered no-fly zones. you can argue it was a wrong decision to go in with force. you can argue we should have given diplomacy more time. but you can't argue that the guy never had the weapons he wasn't supposed to have. we just don't know what happened to them...whether they were destroyed or hidden somewhere.
This is incorrect. Are you honestly arguing that there are still WMD programs and materials hidden in Iraq and we just don't know where to find them? Even the Duelfer report, which portrayed the situation in terms most favorable to the Bush Administration - is categorical in that it concludes there are neither secret caches of hidden wmds of any consequence and that Iraq has not had an active WMD program in years and that most of its stocks were voluntarily destroyed in 1991. There are likely still pre-Desert Storm stocks of leftover chemical shells from the 1980's that have been abandoned or forgotten about that are found every now and then - fortunately however many of these munitions have degraded to the point where the chemical agents have dissipated and are essentially harmless.
Saying "we didn't know" is disingenuoius as well. We thought we did know and Saddam did all he could to make the world think he had the weapons. Not to mention that pretty much everyone worldwide was pretty sure the weapons were there. My take is he wanted the world to think he had the weapons so Iran wouldn't attack him and he also felt that he bought off enough people at the UN to prevent the US from removing him from power. Actually the Deulfer Report makes it pretty clear that his main priorities were to get the sanctions removed (either via UN resolution or de-facto removed by bribing enough people to not follow them) and then to re-constitute his WMD program. It's not like he was harmless and if we let him go (even while watching him) it's clear (to me at least!) that via bribes, etc... he would have been back to his old tricks within a decade. Much better, IMO, to take him out when he didn't have the weapons (but a clear criminal history and clear intent to make more and with a UN resolution saying shape up or else ) then to attempt to do so after he had them. Also, with regard to killing "thousands of people"... remember Saddam was killing a ton of people regularly. You didn't see it on the news ('cause Saddam didn't allow it) but they've found plenty of mass graves. At least there is some hope that things will get better. Under Saddam, they never would. Now if you want to argue that U.S. soldiers shouldn't be dying that's another thing entirely... It's the people who took Saddam's bribes that ultimatly led to the invasion and his downfall. If the world had stood united in the sanctions and the UN resolutions it might have gone differently. But those wacky UN guys and Europeans just had to take those bribes.
