i think there’s come government supported village, somewhere down in africa, in a poor 3rd world country w/ little to no current economic value, and in this gov’t supported village, they hate the white man, bring back a corpse of the white man, get a head of cattle, we need to take them out ASAP, that gov’t has to go, terrorist supporting bastards, hell, I’m gonna call Dubya now and get this sorted out, with that extra $50bil the military just asked for i’m sure they can send a few troops down that way…
hell, if we’re talking about nations that have supported terrorists in the past, America would be on that list too, but thats just a pointless discussion in itself. Some people refuse to see us as anything but the most noble country on earth. Doesn’t matter though, different topic altogether.
How is Iraq different from Vietnam?
George Bush has been to Iraq!!!
I’m all for whacking evil dictators and overthrowing tyranical regimes, when do we go to war with China?
For the right wing Iraq isn’t about WMDs, it’s about throwing out Saddam. Unless they find WMDs, then it will be about those and they were right and they told us so.
But, if Al Gore was president and did everything W has done all the lefties would support regime change and WMDs wouldn’t matter, it would be a matter of basic human rights. Unless they found WMDs then they’d be right and they would have told us so.
Everybody is an apologist for their side. Break the chains of partisian (spelling) politics.
dylan,
Well said!
I never said Bush had less money than Kerry. Bush’s money is legal and has been done so under the guidelines of the McCain Feingold bill. i.e No Donor is allowed to donate more than 2,000 per primary campaign and no more than 2,000 for the general election. Kerry is subverting McCain Feingold by taking 527 money, which is completely unregulated and by all accounts a loophole in the law. These organizations allow mega billionaires, Read Hollywood moguls, and people like George Soros to donate 10-20 million each to Kerry’s relection. Lets see. Bush has more money, and has done so in increments of 2,000 whereas Kerry has less money and has done it by getting the uber wealthy to donate illegally at millions at a time.
Also, I believe the term you were looking for was preemptive, no preeminient. And our attack on Iraq was not preemptive. He had repeteadly violated hundreds or UN regulations. Just because the UN is too much of a paper tiger to enforce their resolutions, does not mean that the United States should stand by idly and wait for threats to build. Its just not something we can afford to do, and therefore we are well within our right to take action. There are remarkable similiarities between the League of Nations of the 1930’s and the weakness of the United Nations. We all know how well that turned out.
An ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure. Act now or wait for the problem and potential for action to exacerbate. The choice is simple.
Hmm, your thinking would allow the police to arrest every citizen in the country… get em now before they commit a crime. It’s a new way of doing things that is for sure.
Wow, you really are paranoid. Fortunately in the United States we have a bill of rights which protects citizens. There is no such thing in international relations. You do what is the best interest of your country.
Oh, so you are the reason the US likes to act like it owns the entire world?
You are a bit slow arent you? Its ok.
I will lay this out in very simple terms.
- Iraq repeatedly violated sanctions put on it by the UN/allied coalition.
- Iraqs leader tried to assinate a U.S. President
- Iraq funded and sponsored terrorists.
All of which gives the U.S. the ability to act in its own defense and to enforce international resolutions. You may not like how it was done (i.e. without international consent), but the justification for war is as plain as day.
sorry typo with the preemptive, good thing you corrected me.
Yes, those seem like decent reasons, although maybe Bush should have presented those as the reason we went to war instead of creating other reasons. Are you going to deny that Bush wanted to finish his father’s job as soon as he was elected? To me, that was pretty clear.
Biltrightwave said
“All of which gives the U.S. the ability to act in its own defense and to enforce international resolutions. You may not like how it was done (i.e. without international consent), but the justification for war is as plain as day.”
If the Iraq invasion was truly about enforcing a UN resolution like you say, then the US would have followed through on their promise to go back to the UN for a vote on an invasion. Instead, at the last minute the US shelved the vote, because the administration knew it would lose. I know this all happened a while ago and it is easy to lose track of the details, but we nixed voting on an invasion at the UN because we knew we didn’t have the votes to support it. The resolutions already in place did not give us permission to invade. Some people believe this is open to interpretation but legal experts in international law say that we violated international law when we invaded Iraq.
Also, by invading Iraq George Bush has “cried wolf”. In the future, the US will now have a much harder time taking pre-emptive action like we did in Iraq, whether it’s warranted or not.
Iraq was not a threat to us, we gutted them during the last Gulf War, and the sanctions kept them in a weakened state. Even their direct neighbors didn’t consider Iraq a threat.
As far as campaign contributions, Bush had the biggest campaign warechest in US history during the 2000 election, and he is expected to have double that amount this time. Bush will outspend John Kerry by far. Unfortunately, all Bush has to run on during the campaign are negative ads and fear, he doesn’t have a successful track record as president, or a positive message for the future (unless you count a mission to Mars LOL)
Biltrite,
Believe it or not I had heard of the bill of rights and I had heard of the arguments for invading Iraq.
However, while I’ll admit the US had the ability to invade Iraq and apparently the administration believed it was in imminent danger at that time, I’m not sure about the right to do so.
While it won’t show up in your constitution or bill of rights, there are internationally accepted rules, regulations and laws.
I think terrorism is a new threat that really hasn’t been hashed out very well with respect to international laws. Obviously horrific damage can be inflicted against citizens in any country by only a handful of people.
Obviously all nations, even those other than the US, would like to protect their citizens from harm (by the way, some other countries have constitutionally protected rights and freedoms as well).
In any case, the justification for the war on Iraq was WMD. So far, nobody has shown Iraq to actually have had WMD sitting around. It appears that this justification was a mistake. I know the Bush administration has never actually made a mistake, but somehow both of these facts are present at the same time.
So, considering that the war was not sanctioned, that the war was launched due to a mistake (if it wasn’t a mistake it was fraud and I’m not suggesting that) and that it may or may not be justifiable under international principles, we might see some interesting things when this is all over.
What are the steps that a post US invasion Iraq can take to recompense the damage and destruction caused by a war that turned out to be a mistake? What should it do about the death and abuse of it’s own innocent civilians? Maybe nothing.
Finally, I’m not against the US or anything stupid like that. I’m just asking some questions and trying to get you to think instead of parrot some bonehead administration policy statements. The fact that they stated the US has the right (and the ability) to do something, doesn’t mean you actually do – whether or not you or I agree with it.
Oh yeah, when the US went into Iraq I had high hopes. I was thinking, wow, would it not be great if Iraqi’s did welcome them there. Wouldn’t it be great if friendship were to develop between the two countries. Unfortunately, if this is happening it isn’t making it into the media.
Unfortunately, idiocies such as the prison abuse situation (brought about by incompentence at a high level) will make it very difficult to come out of this with a happy peaceful Iraqi populace. It doesn’t matter if was only a handful of misguided people or not, the Arab world will never buy that story.
If you want to talk about law, there is an important principle. Not only must justice be done, but it must be seen to be done. The Iraqi people and the Arab world are not “seeing justice done”. They will never believe it was low level idiocy. If the US wanted to try to win their hearts they would have high-level resignations over the issue.
I would suggest, as presented by another poster, that the current administration is not really concerned about winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people or the Arab world. They are interested in being re-elected and not admitting mistakes – which might hamper that process. Pity.
I have specifically not mentioned anything about the reconstruction effort because I believe there have been some mistakes made. The point about the United States having justification for invading Iraq still stands.
Also, Its really poor reasoning to look back at say “we didnt find any WMD, there was no justification for war”. The fact remains that EVERYONE, even those opposed to the war, agreed that Iraq had WMD (many, such as myself, still do, although clearly not to the extent and capabilites that intelligence would have had us believe) You can not look back at past decisions with hindsight glasses and the knowledges of today in mind. Its the most fundamental error in historical analysis.
I will follow that by saying that there is not indication that either Bush or Blair “trumped up” intelligence to go to Iraq. They went wtih the intelligence they got and the dangers the thought that intelligence presented. In fact much of the WMD evidence was gathered by the British and british independent auditors/investigators who would have LOVED to string Blair up, conculded that he was acting on the intelligence given and had not inflated the threat risk to go to war.
Biltrite, I’m not doing a historic analysis with current information…
I’m comparing the concept of innocent until PROVEN guilty for individuals with that same concept for countries. Is it really okay for one country to invade another based on circumstantial evidence and different ideologies?
That is a very bad precendent that has now been set!
I mean, historically, you could invade another country for any reason you like, but as we all know the world is changing. Things are not the same as they used to be.
Based on your logic, who do you think China should justify invading? The reasons won’t be the same, but they could certainly make a case for reclaiming some errant territories if they wanted to.
What I think you are saying is that it is okay for the US to lead an invasion because it occupies the high ground. Perhaps you are right. However, that won’t stop other countries from using the same justifications and pointing at the US example.
I’m not sure that is a good direction for the world.