RE: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
From: John D. Giorgis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] By the way - of the recent developments in the nuclear programs of the DPRK, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq over the past 15 years - how many occurred with the knowledge of US intelligence sources? I'll give you a hint - the answer is a very round number so I wouldnt count on being able to know when a successful test is imminent if that is your plan. Wait a minute. In another thread, you said to me that the United States would be able to stop every country that wanted to develop nuclear and biological weapons for the next 100 years. Yet here you admit that we have done a miserable job of determining that. And, in fact, we probably can't stop every rogue country from developing these weapons. So which one is it? - jmh ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
John D. Giorgis wrote: As for your argument that liberation of Afghanistan would not have been justified on September 10th, 2001 - well I find it most peculiar to hear the logic of retribution coming from you.The liberation of Afghanistan was justified because it made the Afghan people better off, end story. But wasn't the liberation of the Afghans planned after Mullah Omar refused to hand over Bin Laden to the US? Ritu ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
From: John D. Giorgis [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 03:14 PM 7/27/2003 -0600 Michael Harney wrote: The war on Iraq wasn't about liberating Iraq, it wasn't about weapons of mass destruction or terrorism. It was entirely politically motivated. The republicans saw their approval failing after Osama Bin Laden evaded capture, and, wanting some sort of evil figurehead detained or killed as a trophy that people in the US can applaud, they chose to attack our most recent war enemy Saddam Hussain (sp?). This is nonsense, Michael. President Bush declared that Iraq was a member of the axis of evil in January of 2002 when his approval ratings were sky-high. Try another theory. Unneccesary, many countries were named in the axis of evil. It was the choice to go to war with them that was politically motivated. (and by golly, the military took every shot they could when they even just had questionable evidence that he was at a given location... at least three attempts to kill him using missle strikes, at least one of those on a civilian target, all missed killing the intended person). So, the US should not have tried to kill Saddam and using missile strikes to try and do so was wrong? Are you serious Firing on a civilian target when your intelligence is as sketchy as someone thinking they heard someone over a phone who sounded like Saddam. Yes, bad thing. He obviously wasn't there, and civilians were killed in the attack. Didn't the intelligence also say his two sons were there too? That was (obviously) wrong as well. They committed a very criminal act that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and retribution was called for. Do you really believe that the liberation of Afghanistan was justified solely by retribution?I mean, I don't even consider retribution to be in the Top Ten of reasons for the US to liberate Afghanistan and indeed, I'm not sure that it is a reason at all. I never said *solely* by retribution now did I? Give me the Letterman top ten. Tell me that September 11th isn't one of the reasons people in this country said go kick Al Quida's butt. Your living in a dream world if you think it wasn't reason Number 1. For sure, there were other reasons, but those reasons weren't adequate before the September 11th attacks. What did Iraq do though? Nothing. They had no proven ties to the attacks of September 11th. Should we wait for them to attack us or one of our allies before we attack them? Damn right we should. Otherwise it is we who are the terrorists, it is we who are the criminals. Actually, on 2 August 1990 Iraq suddenly attacked Kuwait.In early 1991, Iraq signed a cease-fire with the United States, a cease-fire whose terms they have never abided by. Case closed. Hardly, the U.S. broke proper channels when it acted outside the U.N. Other countries would have liked a stronger inspection regime before invading Iraq, and really, Saddam was less of a threat to us then than he was in 1991 after the cease fire. What damage would it have done to wait another 4 months, or, if as you might argue, the summer weather would be prohibitive, a year? You yourself said we never had a majority of the security council support, France's veto be damned, we didn't even have the majority. If this war really was about weapons of mass destruction, why aren't we going to war against Isreal and North Korea for their illegal nuclear weapons programs? Case and point: it simply isn't about that, it is all about politics. Disgusting. What's disgusting Michael is your inability to comprehend that an attack on a country that already has a nuclear weapon would very likely result in the incineration of hundreds of thousands of people - to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of civillians that would die in Seoul thanks to DPRK artillery shells. Once Iraq gets a nuclear weapon, Michael its game over - unless of course you advocate direct confrontations between nuclear powers. Let's consider for a moment what might have happened had Iraq waited to attack Kuwait until 2 August 1992. We now know that Saddam Hussein would likely have shocked the world by successfully testing a nuclear weapon at this time. Thus a nuclear-armed Saddam rolls into Kuwait and begins pushing on into Saudi Arabia - and he declares that if the US sends troops to Saudi Arabia that he will lob a couple nuclear weapons into Tel Aviv and Haifa.*Now* what, Michael? Your scenario is flawwed. U.S. intelligence suggested that Saddam had enough anthrax, VX gas, and other agents to kill every person on the planet at least a couple of times. Of course that would require perfect dispersal, but it wouldn't have been a stretch to say that if U.S. intelligence was correct, Saddam could easily have killed millions in Iraq and neighboring nations with such an arsenal. Yet he didn't, and you contend that the weapons really were there, so why didn't it happen? And if
Re: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
--- John D. Giorgis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm glad you brought this up, Michael, because the answer is between 100,000 and 200,000.Meanwhile, according to UNICEF, Saddam Hussein was kiilling around 5,000 people a day. Of course, the Left only cares about people killed by Americans thus if you get killed in Zimbabwe, don't expect ANSWER to start rallying international support to stop the killing. JDG Where did those numbers come from? 200,000? Not a chance. There hasn't even been _time_ for that. Direct civilian casualties seem to have been on the order of 1000. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
At 06:24 PM 7/27/2003 -0700 Gautam Mukunda wrote: --- John D. Giorgis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm glad you brought this up, Michael, because the answer is between 100,000 and 200,000.Meanwhile, according to UNICEF, Saddam Hussein was kiilling around 5,000 people a day. Of course, the Left only cares about people killed by Americans thus if you get killed in Zimbabwe, don't expect ANSWER to start rallying international support to stop the killing. JDG Where did those numbers come from? 200,000? Not a chance. There hasn't even been _time_ for that. Direct civilian casualties seem to have been on the order of 1000. Didn't the Iraqi Information Minister say that the total number of casualties was 100,000?Given Michael's procliviites, I was using that as something of an upper bound. JDG ___ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. - George W. Bush 1/29/03 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John D. Giorgis Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 7:31 PM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words big snip Your suggestion that the left's inability to form an effective war plan against terror is a demonstration of bad leadership is not just wrong (as a war plan is entirely uncalled for IMNSHO), it disgusts me that you beleive that the republican style of the war on terror is neccessary. How many civilians has our war in Iraq killed? I'm glad you brought this up, Michael, because the answer is between 100,000 and 200,000.Meanwhile, according to UNICEF, Saddam Hussein was kiilling around 5,000 people a day. Of course, the Left only cares about people killed by Americans thus if you get killed in Zimbabwe, don't expect ANSWER to start rallying international support to stop the killing. John, do you have a cite for that statistic? According to Iraqometer, the number of civilians killed is 6105. I haven't seen anything that suggested more than 100,000 civilians have been killed. Jon Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John D. Giorgis Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:50 PM To: Killer Bs Discussion Subject: Re: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words At 06:24 PM 7/27/2003 -0700 Gautam Mukunda wrote: --- John D. Giorgis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm glad you brought this up, Michael, because the answer is between 100,000 and 200,000.Meanwhile, according to UNICEF, Saddam Hussein was kiilling around 5,000 people a day. Of course, the Left only cares about people killed by Americans thus if you get killed in Zimbabwe, don't expect ANSWER to start rallying international support to stop the killing. JDG Where did those numbers come from? 200,000? Not a chance. There hasn't even been _time_ for that. Direct civilian casualties seem to have been on the order of 1000. Didn't the Iraqi Information Minister say that the total number of casualties was 100,000? Hilarious! Should we expect your next 'unimpeachable' source to be the Jon Lovitz' Tommy the Liar character from SNL? :-D Jon I'm kidding Maru! Le Blog: http://zarq.livejournal.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
Michael, The NY Times reports that the US was considering Iraq as early as 9/13/01. You seem to somehow imagine that Bush including Iraq in the axis of evil in January somehow was not a clear signal that the US intended to effect regime change in Iraq. Yet, by Presidents Day 2002, again while Bush's aproval ratings were still high, the Washington Post reporter, albeit incorrectly, that the Administration had made the decision to attack Iraq in May of 2002. Although this report was inaccurate, the fact that the decision was well enough under discussion for the Post to speculate on the timing of the attack shows that this decision was not made under short-orders due to a termporary down-turn in the polls as you suggest. As for your contention that the only usable intelligence is intelligence that we know is 100% true - well, that contention simply does not comport with reality. Life is full of judgement calls due to imperfect data, Michael, sometimes you're right, sometimes your wrong - but almost nothing in life is 100% certain. Ralph Nader doesn't wait until he has 100% data to speak out against consumer defects, and the President simply cannot wait until he has 100% data before deciding to act either. As for your argument that liberation of Afghanistan would not have been justified on September 10th, 2001 - well I find it most peculiar to hear the logic of retribution coming from you.The liberation of Afghanistan was justified because it made the Afghan people better off, end story. The liberation of Afghanistan was justified because it prevented Afghanistan from being used as a based of operations for attacks upon us, end story. To argue that the liberation of Afghanistan was justified because the killing of more than 2000 Americans justified killing a large number of Al Qaeda members is a logic that frankly I find disturbing - and let this be clear that this is what you are arguing when you say that retribution is a _necessary_ argument for liberating Afghanistan, without which the others fail. In Iraq, the US had standing authorization by the UNSC from 1990 to use, 'all necessary means to enforce all previous and subsequent resolutions regarding the situation in Iraq.' Iraq signed an agreement wit the US at the end of the 1990-1 Gulf War, which it never ever upheld. Additionally. it is worth noting that UNSC resolution 1441 was passed unanimously by the UNSC in the fall of 2002, and was brought up under the same agenda item as the 'all necessary means' resolution, and indeed, resolution 1441 specifically 'recalled' the 'all necessary means' resolution in its preamble. The harm done in waiting for 4 months-to-a-year is that inspections only resumed after US troops were sent back to the Gulf, and it would have been exceptionally cost prohibitive for the US to leave one out of every 1,000 Americans in the Persian Gulf for that period of time, especially since they would be vulnerable there to terrorist attacks. The US had the legal justification - especially since Iraq never complied with the inspections, so it made the call go in and end the long national nightmare of 38 million Iraqis. I think that it is clear to anyone that nuclear weapons are far more effective killers than biological or chemical weapons. We have protections against biological and chemical weapons - which I might add were distributed to every Israeli citizen. We have no such defense against a nuclear blast. If Iraq developed a nuke, its game over. You claim that there was no intelligence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program - yet somehow the DPRK managed to build nuclear weapons right underneath our noses, Iran made vast strides in their nuclear program without us ever knowing it, the US was completely surprised by India's and Paksitan's nuclear tests (see any opinion piece calling on George Tenet to resign for evidence), and Iraq came within a year of building a nuclear weapon in 1991 without us knowing it. Sorry Michael, but the absence of evidence is not the absence of evidence.. MOREOVER, the United Nations Security Council agreed unanimously in resolution 1441 that the burden of proof was upon Iraq to demonstrate the dismantling of its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs - and that the burden was not upon the US to demonstrate that those programs still existed. Now, you are free to disagree with the UNSC's unanimously (including Syria I might add) assigning the burden in this case uon Iraq - but you'd be taking a rather extreme position in that case. Sorry Michael, but nuclear weapons are NOT easy to detect. In fact, it is believed that some of them can be made as small as a brief case and of course, once they reach a US harbor it is already too late to prevent the incineration of hundreds of thousands. We had EVERY reason to believe that Hussein would try to acquire a nuclear weapon the first chance that he got. To deny that is to deny reality.
RE: Justifying the War Re: Seth Finkelstein on 16 words
At 11:26 PM 7/27/2003 -0400 Jon Gabriel wrote: Didn't the Iraqi Information Minister say that the total number of casualties was 100,000? Hilarious! Should we expect your next 'unimpeachable' source to be the Jon Lovitz' Tommy the Liar character from SNL? If nothing else, I figured that Michael could not have argued that his estimate was too low! Anyhow, I stand corrected - the number of casualties for civilians of all ages was below 10,000 - or less than the number of children the UN thinks that Saddam killed every two months by refusing to trade oil for food and medicine under UN auspices. JDG ___ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. - George W. Bush 1/29/03 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
