US goes to war

[Brian R.]

I hope everyone will allow their blood pressure to decrease a little...

[High_Jumbllama]

We're having a disagreement. Amazingly it is one of the very few without name calling of which I am very proud of that for once.

[drslump]

KvHagedorn,

Good point. Franco was more of a political/cultural oppression than an ethnic killer.
He didn't have nuclear mass-destruction weapons but neither had Hitler.

-----

Iraq looks now more like a high-security jail than a country.
I mean, imagine if you put the most dangerous assassins in the world and their wifes and children in a high tech 24h CCTV monitored jail, with night vision cameras and all the extras. With guards checking the perimeter continuously, all of them armed to the teeth.
Now you can say "hey! those people are dangerous, I'll feel safer if we just make explode the jail and kill them all!" or you can think "there are innocents in there! how can you even think in killing them".

Certainly I'll not sleep better if innocents are killed that way, even if there is no more assassins on this planet after that.

Iraq cannot launch any long distance attack right now. Even if they had the missiles to do it I'm sure Turkey and the other frontier countries have got Anti-missile weapons courtesy of the US.

Personally I'm quite sure that Iraq does not have any powerful nuclear weapon. If they had one no country will think to go in war against them.

Politicians will better say that they want to make war on Iraq because that way they'll control the oil.
That will represent that the world will get a "stabilized" price for the oil barrel and everybody will be much more happy! buy bigger flats, better cars and subscribe to more pay-per-view TV channels.

PS: I'm not anti-US, anti-Capitalism or anti-whatever, I'm just not anti- and not pro-. I follow my own ideas.

[edit] re-reading this post I'm not sure if my english skills are up to discussing this kind of things, so if I've offended someone it wasn't my intention and I'll be glad to rectify (just give a little explanation of why so I can learn from it ). Thanks, Ivan

[Admiral]

So Saddam has nukes and chemical weapons, I won't deny that and he must be "taken care" of ,Clinton should've given the clearance to snipe him. Then again, so do you and you surely seem more trigger happy to use them and have used nukes in the past. Openly, he won't use them first, maybe retaliate with.
There is also the posibility of supplying terrorists with such weapons and that seems to be your main point.

Though you can't expect me to believe you go there simply to liberate the iraqi people and install democracy, there are economical (oil) and whatever other interests (get rid of weapons) at stake.
Also, Saddam is a byproduct of your own policies, same as Bin Laden.
Oh ! btw, where is Bin Laden ? you still don't have him. I thought he was the main target in this anti-terrorist crusade. Seems you've successfully managed to shift attention.

Musharaf and Chavez have the potential to be such byproducts. One has nukes the other oil.
One wonders if you "create" such people out of stupidity or out of far more sinister reasons.

[Pace]

What right have we to dictate what he can and can't do? Simply, we're more powerful.

He dictates to his people, we're going to dictate to him.

P.

PS: Killing Saddam doesn't solve the problem, and might even destabilise the region even more. What happens if Iraq is weakened? Will Iran invade? Saudi? Will others retaliate - Mr Hussein Jr? Osama bin Laden? Bombing Iraq will not prevent another 911. Killing every single human is the only way to stop someone wanting to kill someone else.

[High_Jumbllama]

We have no right but we can and we want to. Economic reasons are a facet of this. There is no doubt at all of that. Whenever there's been trouble in the past countries have wanted us to join in. Now that we want to take out a threat before it becomes serious again and as diplomatic efforts have failed consistantly we are looked at as greedy bullies.

Don't forget they are violating the terms given to them at the end of the first war. Otherwise we would have kept going into Baghdad before as much as we did not want to.

C'est la vie et la guerre.

[Gurm]

Yep. Imagine if Japan at the end of WW2 had, after surrendering, not disarmed and stood down, but had sneakily built up their forces and continued to attack us...

Are we "bullies" for intervening in such a case?

- Gurm

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Gurm
Yep. Imagine if Japan at the end of WW2 had, after surrendering, not disarmed and stood down, but had sneakily built up their forces and continued to attack us...

Are we "bullies" for intervening in such a case?

- Gurm

I think the Nukes had put them off a little bit Gurm.

[Greebe]

Good point. Franco was more of a political/cultural oppression than an ethnic killer.
He didn't have nuclear mass-destruction weapons but neither had Hitler.

There were no nukes back then... those were hydrogen bombs

Hitler was roughly a year away from having the H bomb if we hadn't stopped him when we did. The discovery of deutritium right after the war sent shivers down the spine from all that thought he was still years away from such a device. Perfecting the V2 as a means of deploying this weapon was in his sights which is virtually the same point we're trying to make with Saddam... not neccessarily nukes, but anything else on the order of biological/chemical is also in his sights.

[Pace]

Originally posted by Gurm
Yep. Imagine if Japan at the end of WW2 had, after surrendering, not disarmed and stood down, but had sneakily built up their forces and continued to attack us...

Are we "bullies" for intervening in such a case?

- Gurm

The difference is in the offensive stance taken by Iraq and Japan. Japan launched a direct attack on the US, and her allies launched attacks on most of the west.

I'd sleep easier if the US went in and levelled the Iraqi infrastructure, I just don't know of Americans could. Should the UK join I would be more uneasy. Why? The backlash from his friends, and our enemies (or, 'enemy' as it appears to be heading).

P.

[The PIT]

One of the things that always sits at the back of my mind we helped Soddam when he was fighting Iraq as we saw him as a way of getting rid of the then Mr no1 nasty guy The Aytollah.
It failed but we weren't bothered until he ate Kuwait which was part of Iraq until us Brits stucks us penny worth in and then he threatened another of our friends.
So we gave him the means.
Now we suddenly decide we want to take his toys of him for the second time.
If we do what next puppet Government are we going to set up or is it going to be somebody else who's too weak and ends up being ousted by religous nutters.
Theres other countries that are more dodgy for example Pakinstan. If General wotsit name got killed or lost out to radicals you've got a worst enemy there. The us likes him now as he's finding out who's going to stand up against him but if gets killed Oh dear. Syria that quietly sends out terrorists, Iran that does the same but less quietly.
Perhaps it's better the enemy you know.

Oh one thing I'd forgot the Kurds. We encourged them to revolt and then abandonded them with token no fly zones. Since then they've been masquered by the turks without any protest from the west. Makes us look like a right bunch of two faced "£$%s

[cjolley]

Originally posted by Greebe
There were no nukes back then... those were hydrogen bombs

Hitler was roughly a year away from having the H bomb if we hadn't stopped him when we did. The discovery of deutritium right after the war sent shivers down the spine from all that thought he was still years away from such a device. Perfecting the V2 as a means of deploying this weapon was in his sights which is virtually the same point we're trying to make with Saddam... not neccessarily nukes, but anything else on the order of biological/chemical is also in his sights.

Don't you mean A bombs (fision) not H bombs (fusion)?
Without a fision bomb it's pretty hard to get a fusion bomb going.
chuck

[The PIT]

Cjolley aren't we nit picking we got the idea. No smilies, a lot of poeple died then as they did in both ww wars but it seems humanity hasn't learn't.

[cjolley]

Unfortunately there is a big difference.
Smiles?
chuck

[The PIT]

Not if your vaporized there ain't.