Re: USA & Iran

On 3 May 2006 18:17:18 -0700,
wf3h <wf3h@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

AC wrote:


wf3h <wf3h@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

And, unlike Nazi Germany, where every indication of militarism in violation
of treaty could be found by the most trivial glance, every expert out there
stated Iraq posed no threat.

where did THAT come from? NO ONE said that. NO ONE. what they said was,
at BEST, iraq needed MORE inspections. NO ONE, including the germans
and the french, said iraq was NOT a threat

And those inspections were underway when the US made it apparent that an
attack was imminent.

which is ALOT different than saying it posed no threat.

And, as it turned out, Iraq posed no threat, and hadn't in some time.



this is what i mean about your argument. because it begins with latent
anti-americanism, the very idea that a rationale existed for the war is
beyond the scope of your imagination.

There's no anti-Americanism in the argument. It's just that I think the
Iraq was a pathetic blunder. As well, there is no correlation between
Germany and Iraq. Germany was, even after its defeat in 1918, a highly
populated, industrially advanced society capable of producing a war machine
and the underlying economic system to sustain it.

Iraq, on the other hand, was surrounded, shattered and posed no meaningful
military threat to anybody. The situations are incomparable.

the fact that it was not a conventional military threat does not mean
it wasn't a threat.

It wasn't a threat.

indeed, atomic weapons are sought by most nations
PRECISELY because they have shattered and ineffective armies.

It had no such weapons.

nuclear
weapons allow them to achieve world class status on the relative cheap.

But Iraq had no such weapons.




Unlike Nazi Germany, where successive
governments in the 1930s in Great Britain basically minimized militarism, in
the case of Iraq, the US ended up grossly exagerrating the threat and
creating false links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

the links between AQ and hussein were minimal...but they were there.

Hussein was a secular dictator.

let me rephrase your sentence to bring out the salient aspects

'hussein was a secular DICTATOR'.

the fact he was secular NEVER was a guarantee he would not consort with
AQ if he thought it was in his best interests.

Why would consorting with religious fanatics of the kind that threatened his
power base in his best interests? And why are we even having a discussion
about hypotheticals. The claim was made that Hussein and al Qaeda were in
some sort of cahoots as a justification for the invasion. The claim was
false, and even a trivial analysis of how Hussein did business would explain
precisely why. Remember, bin Laden had no problem deposing Hussein, but he
didn't want the Great Satan involved.


and you guys seem to have more faith in hussein than a saint has in
christ.

Now, once again, you begin inventing positions for your opponents to have.
Where have I said Hussein was a saint? He was a monstrous butcher, but a
perfectly acceptable monstrous butcher when he was threatening Iran, but an
unacceptable monstrous butcher when he turned his attention to Kuwait.

and this is based on the word of hussein that he would NEVER ('i swear
on the souls of my grandchildren'...apologies to the don)...consort
with terrorists. even though he DID

But notably, not with the ones that flew planes into buildings on September
11th, 2001.


but the issue is, under what conditions is the US an evil imperialist
war machine. iraq does NOT demonstrate that it is. specious comments
that it 'armed' or 'supported' iraq do not, in view of the sotto voce
support of the french and germans who, while they were 'pursuing peace'
were arming hussein and buying his oil.

The issue is the justifications used prior to the invasion. The key here is
how those justifications suddenly changed when it had become clear that
Hussein had posed no threat to his neighbors. Then it became some sort of
saintly mission of liberation.



(You will note that I was fully in favor of Gulf War I).

what guarantee do you have...other than his word as a
gentleman, that, when it served his interests, he WOULDN'T cooperate
with murderers?

I'm sure he would co-operate with murderers, just not the kinds of murderers
that base their intent on religious doctrines that were as much a threat to
him as to the West.

again, proof? he DID have conversations with AQ. they didn't amount to
much, but he certainly kept the lines of communication open.

Proof? The proof is that he treated his own religious fanatics with his own
manner of tender mercies. AQ was no friend to him.


hell, the shi'ite terrorists in teheran offer asylum to AQ and AQ has
routinely murdered iranian diplomats.

Cite?





and was contained, and even if it wasn't, it simply does not
possess the industrial capacity and population that Germany does.

it doesn't need to possess the INDUSTRIAL capacity. it merely needed
the weapons capacity.

Which it did not have. It's nuclear program was no more.

unfortunately hussein successfully deceived everyone about that,
including his own generals.

So far as I can tell, outside of the mad imaginings of Bush and his cohorts,
no one thought Hussein was capable of building a bomb.


except the germans and the french...

I recal them saying that more data was needed.




when hans blix stated that the ONLY reason he was cooperating was the
presence of US troops in saudi arabia. how long would THAT have to go
on?

Apparently forever, judging by how much the House of Saud needs an American
presence to hold on to power.

apples and tennis rackets. prior to the build up of US power to invade
iraq, there were about 5,000 US troops in saudi arabia for the
protection of bush's friends. the build up to invade iraq was of a
different magnitude. and it would have been very expensive to maintain
such a position...and if we'd had to fight hussein later rather than
sooner?

The hypothetical scenario was false.




The US wasn't solely to blame from Germany's military rise.

gee that's sweet of you. somehow the US was responsible. the folks who
WEREN'T, it seems, were the germans. wonder how THEY escaped blame.

Oh *** off. Of course Germany was to blame. But this isn't a black and
white world. In fact, the whole intent of the first half of Churchill's
first book on the history of WWII was to lay out precisely how the Allies
turned, over a twenty year period, victory over Germany into a calamitous
and even more destructive war.

the US ignored the whole situation. again, you seem to think that's
wrong. why? why should we have NOT ignored hitler, but SHOULD have
ignored hussein? how do you know they 'dont represent a danger' until
they attack? do you WAIT until they DO attack? why?

The Allies were wrong. They needed to demilitarize Germany, and by the
1930s, all but abandoned it. If they had intervened at key moments, such as
forcing the disbandment of the General Staff, Germany's teeth would have
been pulled without a single shot.

As I said, the two situations were incomparable.





Now, the most Hussein was able to do was to harass his own population, steal
oil money and poke the No Fly Zone. He had no WMDs, posed no threat even to
his neighbors and most certainly, considering the kind of dictator he was,
would certainly not have aligned himself with a pack of religious fanatics
like Al Qaeda.

you guys keep saying that as if it were a surah in the q'uran.

prove it.

He spent a good deal of his time killing and threatening his more religious
citizens.

which is not an answer to the question of how you know he wouldn't
consort with terrorists.

These terrorists are religious fanatics.


yet you seem to think the US singlehandedly engineered hussein's rise
to power, and his continued presence in office, absent the massive arms
sales from germany and the oil purchases from france.

why?

And again you invent positions for me. When did I ever say the US
singlehandedly engineer Hussein's rise?

because you keep screaming about US influence but IGNORE the influence
of others. where WW2 is concerned it's not a 'black and white world',
but where the US is concerned, it seems, it is.

So, in other words, you were just creating strawmen.





that is true. and it's probably irrelevant. at SOME point he would have
resumed his weapons development. it was only the threat of US
intervention that even got the inspectors as far as they got.

With planes ready to bomb any suspicious activity, when precisely was he
going to resume activity.

bombers require bases. bases require protection. protection requires a
build up...a buildup is prelude to war...

The US spent a decade keeping Hussein in check with the force that was
there.


i asked you a simple question, one that you have not answered to date.
the question is:

when was the US RIGHT to go to war?

you write VOLUMES about why the US was wrong. you keep telling me you
think the US WAS wrong in ALL of its engagements. yet you say i'm
simplifying your position.

fine. then answer the question.

I did. I said the Revolutionary War, WWI and WWII come to mind. The Korean
War and Gulf War I are also cases where it was reasonable.

It seems like you're not reading many of my responses.

--

and this particular thread was written BEFORE you finally DID answer.
nice to see you recognize the complexities in not being 'black and
white' in many situations

You really are a piece of work.


including iraq...

Which posed no threat.

--
Aaron Clausen
mightymartianca@xxxxxxxxxxx

.