[diamondgeezer]

A tea-drinking biscuit-munching Brit I may be, but I'd rather fight in a war with Iraq than see a dirty bomb or a tactical nuke go off in any western city, be it american, one of ours, or anywhere.

Don't misunderstand me, war is bad wherever and whenever it happens. In particular, a war in the middle-east right now would knacker any shred of political stabilty that might still be lingering, as I'm sure Sandwich will tell us. But, while a US-led war against Iraq would kill thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, millions would die if Saddam went all pre-emptive on the US.

[Top Gun]

Can someone explain to me why most westerners have forgotten that it's customary in a War that when you bomb someone, they bomb you back Maybe if people remembered that fact then they wouldn't lend their support for imperialist conflict so lightly.


DG: There's about as much chance of the Wommen's institute attacking western cities as Saddam Hussain, unless his regieme is backed into a corner and has nothing to lose.

[Su-tehp]

Originally posted by mikhael
Where his DC connections got him duty as a war reporter/photographer. Anyone who doesn't know that doesn't know Gore's MILITARY record nearly well enough as they should. Lest we forget, neither Bush nor Gore served as a soldier. Bush was in, as I recall, the Air National Guard as, of all things, a pilot.

Correct, mikhael, Gore did serve as a photographer, but my point was that Gore was MUCH closer to the hot combat than Bush was. You have to be able to be close enough to see the combat in order to take a picture of it. But your point about neither of them serving as a soldier is valid.

Before 9/11, people kept saying Bush wasn't up to the job of being a wartime president (precisely because he had no wartime experience) and that he was a bumbling fool who kept misspeaking and had no leadership skills. That ALL changed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks when he displayed extraordinary leadership in the months following 9/11.

Gore was derided as a too-smart, lying, boring egomaniac who was incapable of delegating authority to anyone. Who's to say that opinion of him would not have changed if he had been president at the time of 9/11 instead? Carl seems really confident of his answer to this, but unless he has the ability to see alternate timelines, his assertion that "had Gore won the election, he would have apologized to Osama after he blew up the WTC and offer to blow some more up for him" doesn't seem to count for much. Go figure.

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Don't misunderstand me, war is bad wherever and whenever it happens. In particular, a war in the middle-east right now would knacker any shred of political stabilty that might still be lingering, as I'm sure Sandwich will tell us. But, while a US-led war against Iraq would kill thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, millions would die if Saddam went all pre-emptive on the US.

'Geezer is right about this. In case there is any confusion about my position, I just want to say that I DO NOT say that shouldn't go to war on Iraq EVER, just we should not go to war with Iraq AT THIS TIME. Make no mistake, Saddam Hussein WILL have to be dealt with, sooner or later. I just prefer it being later, once Al Queda has been taken care of, or at least weakened far more than they are now. You know that they are already recovering from losing Afganistan last year. A lot of them are already in Pakistan, and if they ge ahold of Pakistani nukes while we're spanking it in Iraq, we'll have lost the war on terror.

Once the Muslim fundamentalists get nukes (either from Iraq or Pakistan), we're done. If we invade Iraq NOW, without UN support, we open the door to the militants getting nukes in Pakistan. Does anyone seriously believe that (Pakistani President) Musharraf will be able to keep his nukes out of Muslim militant hands if a war on Iraq will so inflame his people to overthrow him? Jesus Christ, half the people in his own intelligence service are Taliban and Al Queda sympathizers!

No one should be convinced that the Second Gulf War will be as easy as the first because the Republican Guard will just hide in the cities, rather than get slaughtered out in the desert, like last time. I've said it before and I'll say it again: urban warfare is every attacking general's nightmare.

Trading Pakistan to the militants just to get into a quagmire in Iraq would be a horrendously stupid trade.

[vyper]

I won't get dragged into a whole debate, I will say only this:
Millions of men have toiled/suffered/died for the United Kingdom, and for the power we now have over others in the world. They made those sacrifices so that future generations would not have to. Now we see freedom threatened and our very existence threatened, not today, not tomorrow, but in the coming years when countries like Iraq develop more lethal and long range weapons. We have the military power to stop this process with minimal loss of life to our people. Cruise missile strikes, strategic bombing and limited special operations would destroy the Iraqi military machine in weeks, while causing us limited casualties to our forces. This would mean that one day, our people would not have to suffer in the bloody mud of a battlefield in a war against a far more powerful Iraq. We owe it to ourselves, and our children, to stop that war before it ever happens. We stop it by stopping murderous, dictatorial regimes like Iraq. No one denies that there are many other countries just as bad in the world. For example, China is not holiday resort, but could we realisticially beat China at the moment? No. So we do what we can. We fight the good fight where we can and save who we can. One day, we will realise all the little fights like one against Iraq will add up to one colossal victory for right, for good, for freedom - and on that day we will know we have served history and humanity well. I believe that given this argument without media dramatisation the vast majority of Brits would support it. They will eventually agree anyway though, and on that day they will be saying: We will not surrender our freedoms, we will not cower before evil we shall face it and defeat it. We shall fight. We shall win. We shall remember.

[CP5670]

man, why do people keep using EXACTLY THE SAME arguments over and over again? I see the same ideas, frequently even in the same words, in almost every topic on this subject; in previous topics, after some argument posts, I thought I had gotten some people to admit that their same old ridiculous anti-war arguments were invalid, but I guess I was wrong. I'm not going to participate in this yet again since the same things are being said again, but it should be fun to watch anyway. Good thing the governments don't listen much to the rabbles, though.

[Su-tehp]

Originally posted by CP5670
Good thing the governments don't listen much to the rabbles, though.

It's not like the rabble listens to the governments, either.

[Stryke 9]

Hell, CP's right. You're all blathering on your own little filibusters, and haven't really acknowledged a bleeding word another person has said. No wonder you all have such high opinions of your own views and intelligence.

Go ahead, lock this. It IS pretty disgusting to watch.

[Su-tehp]

Yeah, screw it. I've said my piece, and like CP said, I've stated it mucho times already. There's no point to this thread except to piss people off, and that's something Petrarch did NOT mean to do when he started this thread.

Let's lock it up; all it will do is generate hurt feelings.

[Stryke 9]

I doubt anyone's feelings can be truly hurt in a thread where people make only the slightest pretence to be paying attention to what's being said in the first place.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Top Gun
DG: There's about as much chance of the Wommen's institute attacking western cities as Saddam Hussain, unless his regieme is backed into a corner and has nothing to lose.

Yup, which is why an attack against Iraq would have to be something of a blitzkrieg - we'd have to have won before they know what hit them, otherwise we risk the button being pressed.

And if I were you I wouldn't underestimate the WI. As far as I can tell, western civilization has been under attack by the female of the species for some time

[EDIT] HLP should so make Stryke an Admin

[Stryke 9]

Yes... he wouldn't attack unless attacked, and we don't wanna be attacked, so we'd better try to attack him so fast he can't respond. Flawless logic. Once again, lock this.

EDIT: I know. I've told them that many a time.

[diamondgeezer]

Stryke mate, just because the Iraqi government is 99% likely to not launch nukes unless threatened directly, it doesn't mean that they're not gonna be encouraging terrorism and nuclear armament among other anti-western regimes. Iraq is a problem which needs to be dealt with, one way or another.

[Stryke 9]

"encouraging nuclear armanent"? It's not like nukes are a dime a dozen, and you can just get them if you really want to. Good uranium is REALLY hard to get (I should know), and no government that gets it is gonna have enough to go around. Never mind that Saddam isn't entirely trusted by his neighbors (even if they DO like him, more or less), and he most certainly doesn't trust anyone enough to help them get nukes that might someday be used against him.

There's no real evidence that he has anything to do with terrorism. He's no friend to Al Qaeda or any of the other ultra-religious groups (considering all of the mosques he's depopulated, and his rather decadent lifestyle, this is hardly surprising), and at any rate he's no moron- he knows that any fresh act of terrorism against the US is gonna be tied to him whether he had anything to do with it or not, and that a big event would be the end of his regime- if anything, he's gonna discourage large-scale terrorism as much as he can.

[diamondgeezer]

Doesn't encourage terrorism? The guy who gives thousands of dollars to Palestinian suicide bomber's families? Oh... right...

OK fair enough, that's not large-scale like some of the  Al-Qaeda stuff, but still... and evidently you're not shopping in the right places - nuclear weapons are a dime a dozen if you know where to go. Getting hold of uranium and the technology to process it may be tough, but there are plenty of people with ex-Soviet weapons for sale. And that's just for starters.

It also seems that Saddam's getting on better with his neighbours these days - a couple of days ago, he re-opend the border with the Saudis. Officially, they're still not talking to each other, but it seems that Uncle Saddam has realised how important the support of other countries is - especially when they're supposed US allies. Suddenly, it's looking less likely that US aircraft will stationed in Saudi Arabia this time around, and Saddam'll be loving that...

[Stryke 9]

'S called the lesser of two evils. Between the US and Iraq, it's a no-brainer for practically any Middle Eastern nation. Both have the bad habit of wanting to invade them, but Iraq is much less likely to successfully do so, and much less likely to turn on its allies.

And no. Absolutely not. You cannot just go out to the corner market and buy a tactical nuclear warhead, I don't care where you are or how much money you have. Russia defends its nukes to ridiculous extremes (it hasn't lost one yet), and the sattelite countries, while they do have bits of uranium-making supply here and there, never had nukes in the first place. And you can't just make them, either.
But that argument's counterproductive. Think of it this way- practically all of the countries in that region desperately want nuclear power. Getting an effective arsenal is better than the euivalent of winning the lottery. Still, next to none of these countries actually HAS one, few are even close to getting one, and maybe one country every five years GETS one. Even if it's their central expendure for years on end, as it is with Iraq.

Yeah, he supports the war on Israel. Nothign new there. It's a far cry from being able to, or interested in, mounting even the puniest assault on the US- never mind a large-scale disaster scenario such as everyone keeps envisioning. If he took every penny in Iraq and diverted it into a single attack on the US, he'd still hardly be able to do more than make a dozen or so people sick or blow up one corner of, say, the Cleveland city hall. It's like saying that the US will launch a full-scale assault on Mars, with the intent of knocking it into the Sun.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Still, next to none of these countries actually HAS one, few are even close to getting one, and maybe one country every five years GETS one. Even if it's their central expendure for years on end, as it is with Iraq.

Those odds sound reasonable enough. Unfortunately, it only takes one country with nuclear weapons to do the damage, and perhaps, as you suggest, Iraq got lucky this time.

As for buying ex-Soviet nukes - are you choosing to ignore the reports of 'hundreds' of missing weapons? Did you not read them? Or do you believe them to be American/Russian/miscellanious propaganda?

Lastly, you forgot to ask for the thread to be closed in your last couple of posts. Fair enough there's no Admins online right now, but that shouldn't stop you trying

[Mr. Vega]

Originally posted by Su-tehp
Carl, you know, or should know, that this is bull****. Gore was one of the 10 Democratic senators to vote for the (First) Gulf War. He served in Vietnam, so you know he's not a mealy-mouthed pacifist. When the Serbian-Bosnia war was happening under the U.N.'s upturned nose, it was Gore who convinced Clinton to use American airpower and military force to force the Serbs to the bargaining table to sue for peace. He did the same thing again when Kosovo happened. I have absolutely no doubt that Gore would have responded to the 9/11 attacks just as Bush did. Anyone who doubts that doesn't know Gore's political record nearly well enough as they should.

Show some respect for Gore. He invented the internet, after all.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
[EDIT] HLP should so make Stryke an Admin

Why?  Being able to spout off about the evils of western society doesn't automatically make you qualified as an admin.

[diamondgeezer]

That... was... sarcasm...

The smiley should have conveyed that I was getting fed up with Stryke's constant 'I know better than any world leader you can name' attitude...

Again,

[Stryke 9]

Uh huh. As opposed to, say, anyone else on the thread.

And whether I know better or not is irrelevant. Most world leaders, Bush in particular, have interests that are completely different than those of the people. That, and they're routinely disastrously wrong, anyway, so in a sense, yes, I'm just about as likely to be correct as any world leader.