To war, or not to war......that is the question

[_JS]

Iraq has ben attacking Americans since the Shah left.

Iraq never had a shah, but I assume you mean Iran. They haven't made many "attacks." They've supported some terrorist groups, but the U.S. dealt with them as well. And U.S. support for Iraq during the Iran/Iraq War was well known. Plus US support for the Shah, his army, and SAVAK were well known. It wasn't as if we were innocent as the pure driven snow.

They have killed hundreds , have been for years , and they want expantion of the effort,why are we tolerateing it?

Because diplomacy and understanding foreign relations are a lot more complex than watching Under Siege or Rambo.

Seriously, you really believe we haven't helped kill as many or more of them?

[Plane]

Iraq has ben attacking Americans since the Shah left.

Iraq never had a shah, but I assume you mean Iran. They haven't made many "attacks." They've supported some terrorist groups, but the U.S. dealt with them as well. And U.S. support for Iraq during the Iran/Iraq War was well known. Plus US support for the Shah, his army, and SAVAK were well known. It wasn't as if we were innocent as the pure driven snow.

They have killed hundreds , have been for years , and they want expantion of the effort,why are we tolerateing it?

Because diplomacy and understanding foreign relations are a lot more complex than watching Under Siege or Rambo.

Seriously, you really believe we haven't helped kill as many or more of them?

Yes ,I do mean Iran . Thank you .


"They haven't made many "attacks." They've supported some terrorist groups,..."

Excuse me?  Define "attack" in terms that do not include hireing goons to kill.

"Seriously, you really believe we haven't helped kill as many or more of them? "
Not yet , not nearly , and I still have hope of avoiding it.


Because diplomacy and understanding foreign relations are a lot more complex than watching Under Siege or Rambo.

It is more like "The Godfather".

[Michael Tee]

plane:  [speaking of the purported Iraqi threat to the U.S.]

<<Perhaps not immeiadiate , but definately intolerable.>>

I think you need to re-think the difference between "irritating" and "intolerable."   

There was no immediate threat to the U.S.A. posed by Iraq.  There was a perfectly acceptable mechanism in place in the U.N. for resolving real threats, this was the Security Council, which was  not even asked by the U.S. to intervene.  If a peace-keeping apparatus, set up with great care over the past 60 years, was completely by-passed, what does this do to international law and the means of peaceably resolving future clashes?  Guarantees more violence, IMHO. not less.

I think at some point you need to come to grips with what your country has done, the lawlessness, the cynicism, the lives lost - - all unnecessary and all deplorable.  You have absolutely nothing to be proud of in the record of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

[Plane]

plane:  [speaking of the purported Iraqi threat to the U.S.]

<<Perhaps not immeiadiate , but definately intolerable.>>

I think you need to re-think the difference between "irritating" and "intolerable."   

There was no immediate threat to the U.S.A. posed by Iraq.  There was a perfectly acceptable mechanism in place in the U.N. for resolving real threats, this was the Security Council, which was  not even asked by the U.S. to intervene.  If a peace-keeping apparatus, set up with great care over the past 60 years, was completely by-passed, what does this do to international law and the means of peaceably resolving future clashes?  Guarantees more violence, IMHO. not less.

I think at some point you need to come to grips with what your country has done, the lawlessness, the cynicism, the lives lost - - all unnecessary and all deplorable.  You have absolutely nothing to be proud of in the record of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

The UN was not ineffective as we thought it was, it was actually corrupted and practicly in the hire of Saddam.

I wonder how the UN could ever become a trustworthy organisation , it appears to be a bribe magnet.

[sirs]

The UN was not ineffective as we thought it was, it was actually corrupted and practicly in the hire of Saddam.  I wonder how the UN could ever become a trtworthy organisation , it appears to be a bribe magnet.

Not in our lifetime

[Michael Tee]

<<The UN was not ineffective as we thought it was, it was actually corrupted and practicly in the hire of Saddam.>>

That is exactly the kind of unthinking negative bullshit that makes me sick.  The UN and its predecessor the League of Nations were the first co-ordinated, serious effort in the entire recorded history of the human race to regulate the relations of states and abolish the scourge of war, which in the past century alone claimed well over 50 million lives.  By no coincidence, two U.S. Presidents were instrumental in laying the foundation of these institutions.

You would think that every decent human being on this planet would support such an effort wholeheartedly.  That no sane, realistic person would expect anything approaching perfection from the UN, that it is a start, and only a start, towards its founding goals.  Instead we hear today - - from the right, from the Zionist Lobby and its supporters, from the forces of fascism, militarism and imperialism (naturally!) that the UN is "corrupt."  From the citizens of America the Incorruptible, no less.  From the land of Enron, and Jack Abramoff, from the Teapot Dome to the Savings & Loan debacle, from the Jesusland of Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart and Abscam and Watergate, we are getting the real lowdown on the United Nations - - "it's corrupt."   Eeeew, the stench of corruption.  How can any decent American deal with such people?  Corrupt, is it?  Fuck it, fuck the whole thing, fuck the corrupt United Nations and fuck its corrupt laws and its corrupt institutions and its corrupt treaties.  One sovereign member state ought not war on another except in the clearest possible case of self-defence?  Fuck that, that's corrupt.  We'll do as we please.  Why should the corrupt Charter of a corrupt organization bind the decent, law-abiding, snow-white and incorruptible American people?  We make our own fuckin' rules here, pardner, because the laws are corrupt.

"practically in the hire of Saddam" - - plane, what are you thinking?  Did Saddam then hire the UN to impose a boycott on himself that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children?

<<I wonder how the UN could ever become a trustworthy organisation >>

You start by trusting it.

<< it appears to be a bribe magnet.>>

Then insist that the bribe-takers be tried, and if convicted, punished.   Do you really think that five thousand years of recorded history provide no clue at all to what happens internationally if there is no supra-national institution to regulate teh relations of states?  You and your vicious comments are chipping away steadily at the foundations of this wonderful institution, trying to take the planet back to a time when there was no UN and no League of Nations.  And why do you do this?  Because the UN is "corrupt."  Probably in all its history, has LESS bribery and LESS scandal than your own pathetic nation over the same time frame, but that's obviously irrelevant.  Why work towards strengthening the institution and building on it, when it's so much easier to tear it down.

You people who are so eager to tear down structures which try to impose a civilizing law on the relations of states and revert to the law of the jungle in international affairs probably do so because you feel you are the strongest beast in the jungle.  Even if you were right, it would be a miserable and pathetic course to choose, but I think in the end there are stronger.

I've believed in the UN since I was a kid in elementary school.  We were taught it would bring an end to war, which so far it has not done.  But that's OK.  I know now that people like plane (and he's far from the worst of them) will snipe and carp and do whatever they can to bring the UN into disrepute, and ultimately to make it, as John Bolton said, "irrelevant."  You do your worst, and I and others will continue to do what we can, where we can, to see the UN strengthened, to see its errors corrected and to counteract everthing that the planes and sirs of the world can throw at it.

[sirs]

<<The UN was not ineffective as we thought it was, it was actually corrupted and practicly in the hire of Saddam.>>

That is exactly the kind of unthinking negative bullshit that makes me sick. 

Well of course you would.  You embody precisely what the UN has become, so of course it's gonna steam you when someone calls you on it.

The UN and its predecessor the League of Nations were the first co-ordinated, serious effort in the entire recorded history of the human race to regulate the relations of states and abolish the scourge of war, which in the past century alone claimed well over 50 million lives.  By no coincidence, two U.S. Presidents were instrumental in laying the foundation of these institutions.

Unfortunately, just like some other organizations, like the NAACP & NEA, once well intentioned, and moral institutions, have gone the route of polar ideology, where diversity of thought is embraced, unless it's not of the same mindset as those running it, then it's deemed "hate speech", "intolerance".  Then add years of overt Anti-americanism, blatant anti-semitism, corruption & bribery, and you have the new and improved version of the UN.  Sad, quite sad, when you consider their original goals & purpose

[Plane]

<<The UN was not ineffective as we thought it was, it was actually corrupted and practicly in the hire of Saddam.>>

That is exactly the kind of unthinking negative bullshit that makes me sick.  The UN and its predecessor the League of Nations were the first co-ordinated, serious effort in the entire recorded history of the human race to regulate the relations of states and abolish the scourge of war, which in the past century alone claimed well over 50 million lives.  By no coincidence, two U.S. Presidents were instrumental in laying the foundation of these institutions.

You would think that every decent human being on this planet would support such an effort wholeheartedly. 

No , it is still a mostly American product. We support it financhially out of all proportion to our population and very very out of purportion to any benefit we get from it. Itmight b a good thing for us to cut loose and let it leave the nest so that it can prove it can fly without its Mama pumping worms into it all day .

Fly free UN,fly free!

Then insist that the bribe-takers be tried, and if convicted, punished.

Not gonna happen , the end of Diplomatc immunity would be the end of the UN , he number of those diplomats who are so comitted to the UN that they would put up wth parking tickets is five , two of whom are British.

"practically in the hire of Saddam" - - plane, what are you thinking?  Did Saddam then hire the UN to impose a boycott on himself that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children?

Do you belive that?
And also beleive that there was plenty of time for inspection to search out the WMD situaion?

I don't beleive ether of these.

And I think we will continue to find that Saddm was useing the embargo as political props while he was smuggleing and bribeing hie way around it.

[sirs]

Oh, you got facts that say the intelligence was nearly unanimous?  Mind sharing them with us?  

Overt Bush Critic and former Chief of Staff to then Secretary of State Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson acknowledged that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:  I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP--Ammunition Supply Point--with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.

Going on to shoot down another mis-impression, Mr. Wilkerson informs that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, was convinced:  "People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios....the consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Another war critic, Kenneth Pollack, National Security Council under Clinton, in latespring of 2002:  I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).

But of course, those aren't facts, right Tee?....that's just sirs made up fantasy of who said what.     

[Michael Tee]

Wilkerson (quoted by sirs) <<I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't.>>

The Brits were your partners in crime.  They cooked their books, you cooked yours.  All that Wilkerson seems to be saying is "he can't tell you why they thought X, Y & Z."

Who says they did?  How does Wilkerson know they did?  By their silence?  By one of them saying so?  And if one of them said so, was that the truth, or were they just being diplomatic?  We'll never know.  What we DO know for a fact is that the French and German governments (and many others) despite what their intelligence services may or may not have believed did not see the need to go to war against Iraq.  Possibly because they didn't believe their own intelligence services (and no reason why they should, their job was to critique the intelligence, not rubber-stamp it) and possibly because even it you accepted it all, it did not add up to a justification to invade another country.

[sirs]

The Brits were your partners in crime.  They cooked their books, you cooked yours.  All that Wilkerson seems to be saying is "he can't tell you why they thought X, Y & Z."

Who says they did?  How does Wilkerson know they did?  By their silence?  By one of them saying so?  And if one of them said so, was that the truth, or were they just being diplomatic?  We'll never know. 

Tee's SOP, let's ignore the facts that fly in the face of his made up mind.  What we DO KNOW, was WHAT WAS SAID.  So for Tee, Wilkerson & Pollack never said what they said, never worked in the field that they worked, never could make assessments and conclusions based on their initimate connections with the Intelligence community.  Let's pretend Wilkerson & Pollack don't exist.  There, now Tee is right, now Tee can claim he's validated. 

Give Tee precisely what he asks for (evidence of near unanimity in the intelligence community, NOT that it was used to try and justify war from all countries) and by god, that's not going to budge that template a milliimeter

[Michael Tee]

<<Well of course you would [be sickened by the negative bullshit aimed at the UN.]   You embody precisely what the UN has become, so of course it's gonna steam you when someone calls you on it.>>

What pisses me off is (a) the criminal and totally illegal actions of the U.S.A. and even more than that (b) their God-damn fucking hypocrisy in not only committing every fucking war crime possible but denouncing the very agency that they themselves had set up to stop that kind of shit from happening in the first place.

<<Unfortunately, just like some other organizations, like the NAACP & NEA, once well intentioned, and moral institutions, have gone the route of polar ideology, where diversity of thought is embraced, unless it's not of the same mindset as those running it, then it's deemed "hate speech", "intolerance".  Then add years of overt Anti-americanism, blatant anti-semitism, corruption & bribery, and you have the new and improved version of the UN.  Sad, quite sad, when you consider their original goals & purpose>>

Oh, this is really hilarious.  This one takes the cake:  sirs, the peace-loving man of reason, the benevolent internationalist, is saddened - - he's saddened by the UN's fall from grace.  Once a noble institution formed for the betterment of all mankind, a goal that sirs and his ilk are deeply and fervently committed to, and now, alas! fallen from those lofty ideals in a way that wounds sirs more deeply than mere words can express.  Can we all appreciate the tragedy of the moment?  It's ruined sirs' whole fucking day.

[Michael Tee]

<<No , it [the UN] is still a mostly American product. We support it financhially out of all proportion to our population . . . >>

I could be out of date here, but the last time I looked the U.S. was way behind in paying its UN dues and didn't look like it was going to pony up any time soon.

<< . . . and very very out of purportion to any benefit we get from it. >>

That's hilarious.  Had you wished to stay within the UN procedures for dispute resolution, you'd be ahead now by about half a trillion dollars, the lives of about 3200 dead rednecks and the limbs of about 20,000 more.

<<Itmight b a good thing for us to cut loose and let it leave the nest so that it can prove it can fly without its Mama pumping worms into it all day .>>

Yeah . . .   That whirring noise you hear is just FDR spinning in his grave.

[Plane]

plane:  [speaking of the purported Iraqi threat to the U.S.]

<<Perhaps not immeiadiate , but definately intolerable.>>

I think you need to re-think the difference between "irritating" and "intolerable."   

There was no immediate threat to the U.S.A. posed by Iraq.  There was a perfectly acceptable mechanism in place in the U.N. for resolving real threats, this was the Security Council, which was  not even asked by the U.S. to intervene.  If a peace-keeping apparatus, set up with great care over the past 60 years, was completely by-passed, what does this do to international law and the means of peaceably resolving future clashes?  Guarantees more violence, IMHO. not less.

I think at some point you need to come to grips with what your country has done, the lawlessness, the cynicism, the lives lost - - all unnecessary and all deplorable.  You have absolutely nothing to be proud of in the record of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

In my country we cannot tolerate a level of arsenic in tap water that is suffecient to cause two deaths per century.

[Michael Tee]

<<Unfortunately, just like some other organizations, like the NAACP & NEA, once well intentioned, and moral institutions, have gone the route of polar ideology, where diversity of thought is embraced, unless it's not of the same mindset as those running it, then it's deemed "hate speech", "intolerance".  Then add years of overt Anti-americanism, blatant anti-semitism, corruption & bribery, and you have the new and improved version of the UN. >>

On the theory that sirs' diatribe deserved a little more serious treatment than the sarcasm I had previously heaped on it (sorry, sirs!) I would like to take another shot at it.

I suppose it would be too much to demand of you some relevant examples of the UN branding diversity of speech and thought "not of the same mindset of those running it"  [as an aside, I humbly ask, just who are "those running it" anyway?] as "hate speech" and/or "intolerance."  WHEN did this horrible atrocity occur?

<<Then add years of overt Anti-americanism, blatant anti-semitism . . .  >>

This is probably the commonest misconception of the function of the UN that  I have ever encountered.  The idea of the UN is to prevent war.  To get individuals who hate each others' fucking guts to resolve their differences non-violently.  This does not mean to get them to speak softly and peacefully to one another, or nicely or even politely.  The UN is a forum (among other things) - - a place where grievances can be aired, discussed, debated, and (hopefully) resolved.  If the grievances are of the sort that would in due course lead to war, you can expect that there are a lot of bitter, angry feelings behind them.  You would expect to hear violently unpleasant opinions of people, of groups, of nations, that would curdle your blood.  But in the finall analysis, as Winston Churchill once said, "Jaw-jaw [i.e., talking] is better than war, war."  (The way Churchill spoke, "jaw-jaw" rhymed with "war, war.")


<< . . . corruption & bribery, and you have the new and improved version of the UN. >>

You're an American citizen, right?  So if I were you, I wouldn't make such a huge fuss about bribery and corruption at the UN.  There are a lot of institutions that are just as corrupt as the U.N. and I'm sure that you're personally familiar with quite a few of them.  Trust me, you really don't want to go there.