Axis Kast wrote: Once more: the interventions in Grenada and Panama are not comparable to the present situation in Iraq, given that American citizens were on the ground and under direct threat from violence in both countries. Intervention to safeguard nationals under such threat is permissible under international law. Again, no such situational definition obtains in regards to Iraq.
The Americans at St. George Medical College on Grenada could have been evacuated with or without an invasion. We struck primarily in order to prevent the construction of an airstrip by the Cuban government.
How eagerly you display your ignorance. Grenada had been consumed in revolutionary violence, with a military coup which had overthrown the Maurice Bishop government followed by counter-revolutionary action by Bishop loyalists. Briefly liberated from detention, Bishop was recaptured by the army which was then backing the Hudson Austin junta and subsequetly shot along with those captured by him. That was certainly enough to constitute an immediate threat to American lives on the ground in Grenada. Such a situation does not obtain in terms of the present crisis with Iraq, no matter how much you try to liken the situations.
Americans haven’t been killed by the self-same organizations – HAMAS, Hizbollah, Al-Aqsa, or Islamic Jihad – which Hussein professes to support?
And I denied this when...? The question is whether random terrorist attacks constitute a
casus belli for war in and of itself.
BTW, the 241 U.S. Marines who were killed in the Beruit bunker bombing carried out by Hezbollah were deliberately put in harm's way and furthermore had not been issued ammunition for their weapons. In short, we ourselves bunched our people together as perfect targets in a known hazard zone.
International law is laughable. We’re talking about a beast quite similar to the “collective pacifism” of Europe post-Versailles.
Even more of your historical ignorance for display, I see. Nevermind that the League of Nations had been constituted with virtually zero power to enforce any of its decisions and also lacked the participation of the United States, which had declined to join that international body in the first place. Conditions which are not at all comparable to the present United Nations setup. By contrast, the UN was instrumental in the effort to turn back North Korea from its invasion of the South in the 1950s, acted as a buffer in the superpower conflict of the Cold War, has brokered peace and effected peacekeeping missions successfully in locales worldwide, including Somalia, Lebanon, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
If we’re going to haggle over legality, I should point out that no mention of “serious consequences” was ever made by the dissenters despite their agreement that Iraq is now in direct violation of Resolution 1441. The document itself included numerous legal loopholes – intentionally.
Because no resolution can include a tripwire clause for war. The UN would be abdicating its responsibilities if it had.
And as always, law is only a matter about which to worry when you can be compelled to respect it. The United Nations cannot hold us back.
Saddam Hussein thought the same thing going into Kuwait in 1990.
American citizens have been killed by organizations who receive support from Hussein whether or not you wish to explain it away.
I explain away nothing. An appeal to emotion does not a justification for preemptive war make, no matter how much you wish it did.
It hasn't "grown in power" in twelve years. It has been successfully deterred and contained. Your very arguments for launching a war against Iraq apply better against North Korea given that they are restarting a nuclear weapons research and development programme and are committing acts of aggression. No matter how you try to obscure your arguments, it still comes down to hitting Iraq because it's too weak to oppose us. At least so you hope.
We’re not talking about a conventional war. Iraq has been proliferating missiles as well as biological and chemical agents.
The evidence uncovered by UNMOVIC says otherwise, and Iraq's production of Al-Samouds has been anemic at best. Iraq still has only half the war machine it possessed in the 1991 war, no matter how much you wish to deny this central fact.
You are convinced Hussein will not deploy his weapons, correct?
He has not deployed them in twelve years. What part of this is so difficult to comprehend, exactly?
Possession by prohibited materials when the régime in question has obvious desires to incorporate them into a working infrastructure is indeed a solid basis on which to go to war from my point of view. And that’s what this part of the argument is over. Opinion.
No, it is over material fact and international law. Your opinion is immaterial in that regard.
Washington puts forth the strong argument that total disarmament is impossible without régime-change. If the Bush administration isn’t putting forth the argument that Iraq must be disarmed of weapons and materials it clearly possesses, what then, is it insisting?
Nevermind that regime-change did not become an official goal of Washington until just a scant three weeks ago.
Every military assessment shows Iraq's armed forces to be substantially weaker than they was in 1991, without the capability to mount another invasion of Kuwait or any surrounding nation in the region and with no indications that the losses sustained in the Gulf War have ever been restored to the combat strength which existed in 1991. Iraq has been demonstrably deterred and contained, given that they have conducted zero invasions since being pushed out of Kuwait.
It’s containment only in the conventional sense. They build the al-Samouds, correct? They imported prohibited components, correct? Containment still permits the perpetuity of the Ba’ath régime.
They are destroying the Al-Samouds. And the survival of the Ba'ath regime is not the issue. It is rather whether that regime is capable of presenting a threat to its immediate neighbour states or to the United States itself. Militarily, it has no such capability. That is fact —deny it all you wish.
You deny that the rest of the world wants to see us fall?
The rest of the world wants us to not undertake unilateral action. They were not opposed to disarming and containing Iraq.
You deny that Grenade was primarily about depriving the island of an airstrip built by Communists?
The facts of the matter deny this.
My point is that failing to attack Iraq at this point in time puts an American ally at serve risk.
Israel has not been at "severe risk" from this man for twelve years, and certainly has more than enough military force of its own to deal with Iraq if it ever became such a threat. Or are you seriously proposing that Iraq constitutes a mortal threat to a country with 200 atomic bombs?
We will likely have to face down Saddam at one point or another over the next five years if we let him off the hook now and rely only on a United Nations inspectorate.
And your proof for this surmise is...?
Which can only exceed the proscribed range by not carrying any sort of payload.
Small steps to future transgressions. How about their infrastructure, which can permit the testing of missiles with four times as much thrust?
No such tests or capabilities have been observed by UNMOVIC inspectors on the ground at the Ababil test facility in Central Iraq. The most advanced that they've gotten is the Al-Samoud 2, which can only exceed the 150km. limit by not carrying a payload, and those are in the process of being destroyed.
Which have yet to be demonstrated as having any capability to carry spray tanks for chemical agents.
You yourself posted testimony by Hans Blix acknowledging that these machines could take part in targeted attacks.
And you simply decided to cherry-pick your way through Blix's testimony to derive the conclusions you wish to entertain. Your original charge was that "he has drones capable of carrying chemical agents"; whereas the Blix report makes no such positive assertion.
No matter how many times you wish to parrot the aluminum tubes lie, it still does not make them of sufficent grade to be useful in uranium centrifuges.
It’s not that they aren’t of the proper grade, it’s that machining them to specification will be difficult and expensive. They
can be turned to use as centrifuges.
By means which does not make it worth the effort or the expense, to support a non-existent nuclear development capability. Try chewing your way out of that bear-trap as much as you like and it still comes out the same: the aluminum tubes are not suitable.
Then your case for war is necessarily weakened.[/quote]
Not at all. I’m not arguing that Iraq is a conventional threat.[/quote]
No, you're trying to paint Saddam Hussein as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
A threat which is already being dealt with by intelligence and counter-terrorism operations and does not require the resort to all-out war.
In Palestine? In Iraq itself? I disagree. Far better to topple Hussein.
Right, it's far better to stop the killing of (maybe) dozens by killing thousands in a war which is likely to spark terrorism instead of suppressing it. Al-Qaeda is already getting a lot of recruitment mileage out of our pending invasion and occupation.
That rocket-artillery program seems awfully odd. Why didn’t they ever import anything prior to the aluminum tubes? Why no foreign aid? Why no clear prototype or test bed? Why were the rods never machined properly?
Prior to 1991, they could produce their own rockets; that was before we bombed the crap out of them. They haven't been getting very much in the way of foreign aid since then, and the tubes are not machined for use in uranium centrifuges. They are within the specifications for the 81mm artillery rockets that Iraq has been building and deploying for two decades. See:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0124-08.htm
So are you going to continue to flog the aluminum tubes lie, which has been discredited up, down, and sideways, or shall we move on?
But not how they could be used. Conducting reconnaisance is also a way unmanned drones can be "used against troops". The question is "can such drones mount chemical spray tanks?"
According to your admissions, they’ve got the “deliver a weapon to a remote target.”
Only if you choose to totally alter the context of the material you're reading. We're not arguing your fantasies, however.
Then why hasn't this information been shared with UNMOVIC (assuming that said materials sold to Iraq by the United States haven't already been accounted for)? And why cannot further inspection based upon the release of said information uncover these stockpiles and lead to their destruction? Why can't the time to find and destroy all suspected stockpiles be incorporated into a general programme of deterrence and containment?
He’s had eight years in which to hide them. I’ve no faith in the inspectorate.
Translation: you "guess" they exist.
The "faulty logic" of actually inspecting the tubes in question, plus failure by IAEA scientists to detect telltale traces of waste radioactive materials in the sites alleged by the United States to have been reconditioned for restarting an Iraqi nuclear weapons programme.
Who says the infrastructure has got to be functioning?
The stupidity of that statement, I think, is self-evident.
Only if we acceed to the logic of "might makes right" that is and decide that we can simply attack whomever we wish when we wish and for whatever reason we wish to put forth. Again, that's Hitler's logic.
You might not like it, but it’s possible. More often the outlook is that we will attack on a logical basis from our point of view – with or without your agreement. This is an isolated case.
And we're right back to Hitlerian reasoning.
Whether or not you agree with the logic is another matter entirely.
You should take your own advice.
The threat he poses today is directly involved with the threat he will pose tomorrow. You’re trying to claim he won’t pose as great a threat tomorrow.
And you have zero basis for the supposed greater threat he will pose tomorrow beyond your "guess" that he will.
We’re not getting all that far in Palestine. We’re scoring victories against al-Qaeda, yes. But toppling Iraq would bring many benefits from the point of view of combating terror.
And this is based on...? Oh, right —you "guess" that it will.
"Might", "potentially". No mention of "is", I notice. But don't let inconvenient realities get in the way of your fantasies now.
Like Bush, I am convinced they
are trickling down. Then again…
...George Tenet says you don't know what you're talking about.
Despite having been decried as false accusations by the American intelligence community, journalist David Rose today yesterday (Sunday, March 16) in ‘The Observer’ that, “An alleged terrorist accused of helping the 11 September conspirators was invited to a party by the Iraqi ambassador to Spain under his al-Qaeda nom de guerre, according to documents seized by Spanish investigators.” This individual – Yusuf Galan – “was photographed being trained at a camp run by Osama Bin Laden.” The Spanish judge presiding over Galan’s case accused him of being “part of a cell which organized bank robberies on behalf of al-Qaeda,” and “supporting the group financially and logistically.” In Congressional testimony last month, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet apparently suggested, according to Rose, “that Iraq had cooperated with al-Qaeda for ten years, and that it had trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and the use of chemical and biological weapons.”
The Czech government made similar accusations that terrorist Mohammed Atta was in “contact with Mr. Ibrahim Al-Ani [“an Iraqi intelligence officer”] in Prague in April 2001. He was later “expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities not compatible with his diplomatic status (the usual euphemism for spying).”
Oh —PUHLEEZE! This was discredited
TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO! Ever since then, Tenet has been clear that no positive evidence of an Iraq/Al-Qaeda link exists in repeated testinomy before Congress.
From the October 25 edition of the Washington Post:
The Pentagon's civilian leadership has ordered a small team of defense officials outside regular intelligence channels to focus on unearthing details about Iraqi ties with al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
And...
At a news conference yesterday, Rumsfeld denied suggestions that the initiative was meant to compete with the CIA or other intelligence agencies. He said it was intended simply to assist policymakers in assessing the intelligence they receive.
"Any suggestion that it's an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think would be a misunderstanding of it," Rumsfeld said.
But the effort comes against a backdrop of persistent differences between the Pentagon and CIA over assessments of Iraq. Rumsfeld and senior aides have argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has strong links to international terrorism, poses an imminent threat and cannot be constrained from eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. The CIA's publicly released reports have painted a murkier view of Iraq's links to al Qaeda, its weapons capabilities and the likelihood that Hussein would use chemical or biological weapons unless attacked.
"The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency," said Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who has met with the people in the new Pentagon office. "They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be."
"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."
Did you pay attention to that last bit? "They can't get him (Tenet) to say what they want on Iraq".
And invading Iraq helps stop Saudi-funded terrorism how...?
Saudi Arabia and Iraq are linked, but the invasion of the one is inherently different from the invasion of the other. We’re focusing on Iraq’s threat now – not Saudi Arabia per se.
Translation: you have no answer.
And that makes it right how? Oh yeah: "might makes right" and all that.
It’s fact.
Bullshit.
And it’s right because if we don’t attack, we are convinced he will.
With what? A fifth-rate war machine with antique weapons that managed to survive our first bombing campaign?
Careful, Hitler thought that same thing just before going into Poland.
You believe another power will follow the example of preemption in an important region of the world in this half-century? Which one?
Preemption is not what I am arguing at all. Deterrence and containment are. You have failed to demonstrate how this has not succeeded in keeping Saddam Hussein penned in and neutralised.
It is already being enforced through UNMOVIC and continuing sanction and deterrence. War has not been required to date to enforce international law upon Iraq.
Yet the threat of war has. And now we suspect that our troops will soon fall under attack whether or not we go into Iraq.
Yes, sadly we're into "suspecting" a lot of things lately.
UNMOVIC can only locate and destroy so much. Not all. Not nearly enough from the American government’s point of view.
The American government's point of view is biased by its determination to launch this war whether sufficent grounds exist for hostilities or not.
The potential for Hussein to attack a neighbor and thus compel American action is enough reason for us.
What potential? With a fifth-rate military which cannot mount an invasion of Kuwait and is hard-pressed to hold back the Kurdish resistance in the north? You're insane.
And régime-change for a purpose we deign important is always justification for us whether or not it is morally correct from a personal point of view.
It is immoral from every standpoint. Read the Nuremburg Charter sometime before you mindlessly ape Hitler's reasoning again.
There is no international law, merely international majority agreement or compellation of a given party to respect that agreement.
Another statement which is self-evident in its stupidity.
Ah, I see; disarmament's not happening fast enough to suit you, so let's go to war.
Exactly. I don’t think you will ever reach a point at which Hussein is adequately – or fully- disarmed no matter how much time we spend.
And this is based on...?
The logic of a moral imbecile. Or Hitler.
“A moral imbecile?” No.
Yes.
Merely somebody who understands that legality and morals only apply to those who can be forced into respecting them. You think somebody else is playing the game less hard?
We managed to get Hussein to respect international law when we pushed him out of Kuwait behind the force of UN aanction and backing. And the trick is not playing the game "hard" but "intelligently".
But then, you wouldn't understand that, would you?
