Eat this Saddam lovers

[Drake Tungsten]

There is ONE single pro-war poster here that has made a consistently reasoned arguement, and that is Lazarus, becuase he always simply justified the war on humanitarian reasons.

[Asmodean]

TCO you keep lashing out at us Euro's.

Some of us are on your side in this, OK?

Most of the people I know, myself included, supported the war wholeheartedly.

Saddam neede to be removed, and that is what happened.

Why don't you take the stance of Brad Wardell (Galcactic Civilizations developer, and Stardock CO.)?

He actually said in a usenet thread that if the Euro's didn't go with the U.S. in this (which some of us did) then the U.S. don't need the Euro's and that he didn't really care about Europe one way or the other.

Asmodean

[mrmitchell]

then just give a link to a Posting where you did it, Sloww

Screw you.
Any 'Noob" just coming into the Iraq fray is just little late.

SlowwHand, I'm sure you talk like that in Texas, but we're on Apolyton, which is a reasonably civilised place. (And screw you too bastard )

[TCO]

I don't justify it on huminitarian grounds. We would not make these efforts if the guy was in the middle of the Pacific ocean or something. My feeling was always more that he was a strategic danger. That he had invaded his neighbors (SA and Kuwait) in 1990 and that he had a long history of threatening others and of developing WOMD. I expected to find more cannisters and the like. But I did not advocate going to war because of "rockets on the launcher" but because of the pattern of behavior and the refusal to honor the 1991 agreements after GW1.

[el freako]

Originally posted by TCO
a. You don't know me well enough to judge me.

True I can only form a judgment on the basis of your posts, here's hoping that they have been in jest.

Originally posted by TCO
b. spare me. The US has a proud history.

What like genocide (the american indians), Land-grabbing Wars (Mexico) and helping out dictators (Pinochet, Shah, even Saddam)

Originally posted by TCO
c. Who cares if we drive pickup trucks, tote guns and like capital punishment. We are a lot closer to you than to the Saddams and the like.

Very true, but if the Iraq's of this world go wrong then it's a managable problem, if the US goes wrong then its a catastrophy

[Q Classic]

But only a raving lunatic would say that he never ever had them. After all, what did UNSCOM find?

It is absolutely honest to say he never had nuclear weapons, because he didn't.

He may have had a few chemical shells and assorted odds and ends before the start of the war, but nothing substantial.

Anyway, we on the left don't have to prove the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction, the American occupying forces seem to have done a dandy job.

Face it fascists, we were right and you were wrong, period.

so i'm a fascist now because i'm taking a moderate stance, as i've always done? so i'm a fascist, even though the quote in my signature would have me arrested in the night, beaten, tortured, and then perhaps quietly shot in a fascist regime?

some of the claims i've seen made by left-wingers is that saddamn ever had weapons of mass destruction, which is not borne out by simple facts such as the gassing of the northerners in the aftermath of the first gulf war.

you obviously haven't also read the first part of my post, where i ask how exactly the find of a bunch of small missiles incapable of holding any sort of nbc agent constitutes a weapon of mass destruction.

i still haven't found any evidence credible enough to actually believe that saddam was an imminent threat to our security. there have been no proven links to show that saddam was actually deeply involved with al qaida. this leads us, naturally, to the question of why this war was so critically needed--it wasn't about womd, because there are plenty of other nations we could clock; it wasn't about liberation, otherwise we'd be in zimbabwe and georgia right now; it wasn't about humanitarianism, else we'd've been in rwanda or east timor...
i can't buy any of the reasons that bush and co. sold to make us go to war. i can't buy any of the explanations given now explaining why we had to. and i can't buy any of this "proof" that we're being given to prove our rationale.

finally, if we did this to keep the un's honor, we certainly have a strange way of doing it. it's like calling a girl a whore, *****, and slut for being taken advantage of, slapping the ho around a few times and then dumping her, only to go out and beat the crap out of the guy who's been taking advantage of her. and now we want to go back to her and ask her to bail us out of jail?

the war was a ****ing mistake. but we're there now, and we have to stick it out. we can do some real good there, more than what we've done already, but it doesn't look like this administration has a ****ing clue on how to do it.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Asmodean
TCO you keep lashing out at us Euro's.

Some of us are on your side in this, OK?

Most of the people I know, myself included, supported the war wholeheartedly.

Saddam neede to be removed, and that is what happened.

Why don't you take the stance of Brad Wardell (Galcactic Civilizations developer, and Stardock CO.)?

He actually said in a usenet thread that if the Euro's didn't go with the U.S. in this (which some of us did) then the U.S. don't need the Euro's and that he didn't really care about Europe one way or the other.

Asmodean

Sorry. I actually think Europe can do as they will. I have no problem with the Swiss. And of course Europe and US are not monolithic. Heck, Europe isn't a country!

There is some visceral Europe/America reaction and I respond to that.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

There is ONE single pro-war poster here that has made a consistently reasoned arguement, and that is Lazarus, becuase he always simply justified the war on humanitarian reasons.

Sorry, but you had too many weapon's based claims. Don't worry though, I do not for a millisecond put you in the same category as Sloww.

[Drake Tungsten]

Sorry, but you had too many weapon's based claims.

How does making weapons-based claims make your argument irrational? None of us knew for sure before the war whether Saddam had WMD or not. I preferred not to trust that he had destroyed them, given his past history and his shady behavior. Seems to make logical sense to me.

[Pekka]

TCO, thanks for the clarification . There are lots of wimps here, but the group of people who support US and its actions are not so small either.

[TCO]

Originally posted by el freako


True I can only form a judgment on the basis of your posts, here's hoping that they have been in jest.




What like genocide (the american indians), Land-grabbing Wars (Mexico) and helping out dictators (Pinochet, Shah, even Saddam)




Very true, but if the Iraq's of this world go wrong then it's a managable problem, if the US goes wrong then its a catastrophy

You will have to decide if the important part of the US is the land-grabs (should include slavery if you are listing sins) or if it is the Constitution, etc. I personally think the world is a different, better place because of the US.

Small point: support for dictators was as part of a policy of resisting a different dictator. Same as with how we supported "Uncle Joe" in WW2. And the support for Pinochet is more of a popular myth in the Che-fringe than a reality. Support for Saddam was very limited and was mostly in the dimension of making sure that he didn't lose that war with Iran too bad. (We wanted them both to lose...there were even editorials to that effect.)

I understand the worry about the US going bad. Well, you can always have that worry. Even if we are completely good, just our sheer power ought to give you that worry. But you should be ok. Our democracy is a lot more stable than any country in Europe with the possible exception of the Swiss or UK.

[SlowwHand]

Oh hell. Again with the stinking red savages?
They have it made.
They're spending the equivalent of the national deficit, adding on to their bingo halls.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Sorry, but you had too many weapon's based claims.

How does making weapons-based claims make your argument irrational? None of us knew for sure before the war whether Saddam had WMD or not. I preferred not to trust that he had destroyed them, given his past history and his shady behavior. Seems to make logical sense to me.

Past history is no proof of future action, never has an never will be. Basing something on trust is essentially emotional, not trully logical.

I did believe Iraq had something banned when we were arguing about the war, becuase all the sources I believed (again, an emotional, not fully logical issue) said he must have had something, but the arguements for why he would use them in the future, given his situation I found lacking through and through.

Laz's arguement was based solely on what he had done and was doing (which was oppresing his people) at the time, never on what he might in some immaginary future do: in essence, his arguement was fully documented 100% of the time.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
[q]

i still haven't found any evidence credible enough to actually believe that saddam was an imminent threat to our security.

i can't buy any of the reasons that bush and co. sold to make us go to war. i can't buy any of the explanations given now explaining why we had to. and i can't buy any of this "proof" that we're being given to prove our rationale.

It depends on what you mean by imminent. Certainly he had a history of

1. Invading his neighbors,
2. developling WOMD.
3. Usind WOMD.
4. Hiding weapons development from inspectors (we know that he did this to Blix in the late 80s).
5. Of not following agreements (most importantly those from the 1991 war) unless held to it with a gun.

But there were no "rockets on the launcher" threats. We didn't want to wait for them. The rationale for the war (at least for me) was much more strategic than tactical. I suspect the same is true for the Bush administration. Yet both those on the right and the left want to talk about imminent threats. Was Hitler an imminent threat in 1936? No. But you gotta take care of a bully eventually.

[Proteus_MST]

Didn´t Hitler attack american Ships with his Submarines and drew the USA into war this way?