And you wonder I’ve become a traitor on the West’s involvement in the mideast?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
And you wonder I’ve become a traitor on the West’s involvement in the mideast?
Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told | World news | The Guardian [/quote]
When was this option ever taken off the table? This isn’t new…
What is the point that you are trying to make Sloth? It is kind of hard to base a discussion on one incomplete sentence and a link to the propaganda organ of the British labour party.
By the way, who is that old fucker in your avatar?
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Sloth wrote:
And you wonder I’ve become a traitor on the West’s involvement in the mideast?
When was this option ever taken off the table? This isn’t new…[/quote]
Advertising pre-emptive nuclear strikes (publically stated) as a key action to stop proliferation?
[quote]pat36 wrote:
By the way, who is that old fucker in your avatar?[/quote]
Hah! Lou Dobbs. Show some respect! Anyways, I’ve yet to grow bored with him, so he’s in place for now.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
What is the point that you are trying to make Sloth? It is kind of hard to base a discussion on one incomplete sentence and a link to the propaganda organ of the British labour party. [/quote]
“To make the pre-emptive strike option viable, the report proposes a major shake-up of the way Nato operates, including “abandoning consensus decision making so fast action can be taken without the threat of vetoes and caveats imposed by some nations”.”
[quote]
Sloth wrote:
And you wonder I’ve become a traitor on the West’s involvement in the mideast?
BostonBarrister wrote:
When was this option ever taken off the table? This isn’t new…
Sloth wrote:
Advertising pre-emptive nuclear strikes (publically stated) as a key action to stop proliferation?[/quote]
It actually makes perfect sense, particularly if you are prepared to use a preemptive nuclear strike as a last resort - if you advertise that fact and others believe it, you’re less likely to need to use it.
I thought this topic was going to be about Russia’s recent threat of a pre-emptive strike.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
I thought this topic was going to be about Russia’s recent threat of a pre-emptive strike.[/quote]
I don’t know why I didn’t think to include that. Yes, it’s totally relevant to this discussion. Thank you.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
I thought this topic was going to be about Russia’s recent threat of a pre-emptive strike.[/quote]
Some good quotes from the Moscow News article:
http://mnweekly.ru/news/20080124/55305669.html
[i]“We are not planning to attack anyone. But our partners should clearly understand… that the armed forces will be used if necessary to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and its allies, including on a preventative basis, including with the use of nuclear weapons,” RIA Novosti quoted Baluyevsky as saying Saturday at a scientific conference in Moscow. He underlined, however, that “military force can and must be used to demonstrate the decisiveness of the top leadership of the country” only as “a last resort” and when all other methods have failed.
“This is the clarification of the nuclear doctrine,” Sergei Karaganov, a defense expert and the dean of the International Politics Department at the Higher School of Economics, told The Moscow News. “What [BaluyevÂsky] means is the enhanced deterrence doctrine, which was created in the United States” and used by NATO for decades. [/i]
I think the problem is, is that the report focuses on proliferation. Well, remember Iraq? We just knew exactly where those stockpiles were, until we found out we didn’t.
Nuclear strikes shouldn’t be an option to stop proliferation. Especially when the last adventure to do just that left us with little credibility.
“In other words, the generals argue that “the west” - meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain - should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.”
We will not attack this land! We never told anybody of any potential attack plans our generals conceived.
There will be no act of agression where soldiers, tanks and our mighty fleet will surprisingly yet valiantly crush the defenders in a swift one week operation.
Nobody here will order the soldiers to rape, to pillage, to murder children without remorse. And we didn’t say we will build underground concentration camps. You’ll not find these comments anywhere.
Of course, it’s never been totally off the table…
Sloth you obviously have forgetten that Saddam had a year before the invasion to hide weapons in an area the size of Texas. Or the Syrians might have them. So not finding them does not prove he didn’t have them. Saddam had used wmd in the past so it was not unreasonable to think he had them.
All options should be on the table to stop proliferation. To set artificial barriers to our government dealing with threats invites problems.
What the guardian writers don’t understand is that the fastest way for a nonnuclear state to aquire nukes is to hire help from a nuclear power. Letting the potential suppliers of such techonolgy know that they could be putting themselves at risk is a good way to discourage them.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I think the problem is, is that the report focuses on proliferation. Well, remember Iraq? We just knew exactly where those stockpiles were, until we found out we didn’t.
Nuclear strikes shouldn’t be an option to stop proliferation. Especially when the last adventure to do just that left us with little credibility.
“In other words, the generals argue that “the west” - meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain - should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.”
[/quote]
Speaking of Iraq…
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjIwNzY3OGVlNzM3NGVlNDU3MjU3OWE0Nzg3MjcxZDE=
[i]Saddam, WMD, and Preemption-Revisionism of the Revisionism? [Victor Davis Hanson]
We are supposed to hear on 60 Minutes from an FBI interrogator that Saddam hid knowledge that he had lost his WMD program, in hopes of retaining deterrence against Iran, and on assurance he had the personnel and infrastructure to reformulate it rather quickly once our vigilance grew lax �?? and in a general context that he thought he would never be removed by U.S. ground forces.
The entire question is going to be revisited �?? especially when we remember that Qaddafi gave up his program in December 2003 a week after Saddam was photographed in his spider hole; the Iranians (if one were to believe the NIE) supposedly began cessation of their nuclear weapons program at about the same time, and A. Q. Khan quite mysteriously a little later in January 2004 was detained in Pakistan and his proliferation program stopped. All of this is more than a coincidence, and suggests that the world might be a much more dangerous place had we not acted in 2003.
And by the same token, we are getting a third look at preemption, a doctrine that went from a legitimate consideration, to a supposed Strangelovian abomination �?? back again to a legitimate consideration? Nicolas Sarkozy raised the issue in relationship to Iran. Both Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama have talked of preemptive raids into Pakistan. But now we hear that the Nato team of war-planners �?? Europeans no less! �?? have announced that they retain the right to preempt with nuclear weapons against terrorist-sponsoring regimes with WMD-a warning that matched or trumped both our own much maligned 2002 National Security Strategy document and George Bush’s famous March 6, 2003 preemption address.
As Iraq continues to quiet down, expect stranger things yet to follow.[/i]
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Sloth wrote:
I think the problem is, is that the report focuses on proliferation. Well, remember Iraq? We just knew exactly where those stockpiles were, until we found out we didn’t.
Nuclear strikes shouldn’t be an option to stop proliferation. Especially when the last adventure to do just that left us with little credibility.
“In other words, the generals argue that “the west” - meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain - should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.”
Speaking of Iraq…
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjIwNzY3OGVlNzM3NGVlNDU3MjU3OWE0Nzg3MjcxZDE=
[i]Saddam, WMD, and Preemption-Revisionism of the Revisionism? [Victor Davis Hanson]
We are supposed to hear on 60 Minutes from an FBI interrogator that Saddam hid knowledge that he had lost his WMD program, in hopes of retaining deterrence against Iran, and on assurance he had the personnel and infrastructure to reformulate it rather quickly once our vigilance grew lax �?? and in a general context that he thought he would never be removed by U.S. ground forces.
The entire question is going to be revisited �?? especially when we remember that Qaddafi gave up his program in December 2003 a week after Saddam was photographed in his spider hole; the Iranians (if one were to believe the NIE) supposedly began cessation of their nuclear weapons program at about the same time, and A. Q. Khan quite mysteriously a little later in January 2004 was detained in Pakistan and his proliferation program stopped. All of this is more than a coincidence, and suggests that the world might be a much more dangerous place had we not acted in 2003.
And by the same token, we are getting a third look at preemption, a doctrine that went from a legitimate consideration, to a supposed Strangelovian abomination �?? back again to a legitimate consideration? Nicolas Sarkozy raised the issue in relationship to Iran. Both Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama have talked of preemptive raids into Pakistan. But now we hear that the Nato team of war-planners �?? Europeans no less! �?? have announced that they retain the right to preempt with nuclear weapons against terrorist-sponsoring regimes with WMD-a warning that matched or trumped both our own much maligned 2002 National Security Strategy document and George Bush’s famous March 6, 2003 preemption address.
As Iraq continues to quiet down, expect stranger things yet to follow.[/i][/quote]
God, I hope they’re wrong.
…
[quote]Sifu wrote:
It is kind of hard to base a discussion on one incomplete sentence and a link to the propaganda organ of the British labour party. [/quote]
That’s quite a claim you’re making there.
Is that the same newspaper that was extremely hostile to the Unionists in the American civil war? The one that unequivocally supported Israel’s cause in 1948? The same that blamed Bloody Sunday on the protesters? The same that supported military intervention against the Serbs in 1999?
Pray tell how you can claim that the Labour Party is behind The Guardian, an evidently unaligned paper.
You do realize Bush’s poodle was the leader of the Labour Party, don’t you? I don’t think you realize this thread has nothing to do with British domestic policies.
Your hard-on against whatever you think The Guardian represents is clogging your judgment - badly.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Is that the same newspaper that was extremely hostile to the Unionists in the American civil war? [/quote]
Yes, even the same writers.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Sloth you obviously have forgetten that Saddam had a year before the invasion to hide weapons in an area the size of Texas. Or the Syrians might have them. … [/quote]
There is a theory that the recent Israeli raid on Syria blew up a nuke factory made from Saddam’s old stuff.
No one has really talked about it for months so I think the Syrians really had something to hide.