<The past three years have been hard years, a time of hard decisions and tough choices. I have looked into his eyes and I have seen his character.>
I wish these guys would stop gazing lovingly into each others eyes and seeing the Earth move. Bush always likes to look deeply into eyes and see the truth of the soul. It's almost homo-erotic!
In fact, eyes are notoriously NOT windows to the truth. Any half-decent con-man has loving eyes, full of truth.
<I have seen courage and consistency ... the courage to stand up to terrorists and the consistency necessary to beat them.>
Huh? King George II isn't interested in Osama any more. He's irrelevant or something. Saddam was where it was at. Doesn't really care where Osama is. This is the "dead or alive" sheriff who "always gets his man"? Oh, hang on, that's not the Alamo, that's Canada's Mounties.
He hasn't beaten Osama. Osama is still on the loose and has threatened an attack to make 911 pale. Hoping these are idle words doesn't seem more reliable than trusting Chalabi's intelligence about WMDs. I am holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. With luck, it'll be a fizzer, but I'm not optimistic when I see the silly "security" now given to airliners AFTER the horse has bolted through the cockpit door. It's a bit late to shut the door now. While they are goofing around with airports, and air marshalls are pointlessly flying around the sky when the terrorists have finished with flying, is beyond me.
<In the battle for Afghanistan we removed a regime that provided the base of support for the al Qaeda terrorists that had been killing Americans for years.>
Yes, but they haven't beaten Dostum [Saddam Hussein Junior] and they haven't stopped Al Q or Taleban from operating in Afghanistan. It was a good effort, but lacked follow through. The consistency he mentioned a few sentences ago.
<In the battle for Iraq, we removed a brutal regime with an avowed hatred of America, a history of torturing its own people, and a history of using WMD against its neighbors and its own citizens. We removed a regime with well documented ties to terrorists -- like al Qaeda murderer Abu Zarqawi.>
What's wrong with WMDs and using them? The USA invented WMDs and still has the world's greatest armoury of them, all primed and ready to go at any time.
When in conflict with neighbours, of course countries pull out the weapons at their disposal. The USA pulled out nuclear bombs and obliterated a couple of Japanese cities full of civilians, frying them alive.
Kholt was wondering what makes a war crime. The winning side decides what is a war crime and what isn't. If Saddam had a nuke and blew up New York, that would be a war crime. If the USA has one and fries Hiroshima, that's not a war crime. If Milosevic backed people who killed civilians, that's a war crime, but free fire zones in My Lai are not war crimes, or if they are, get a sentence smaller than Martha Stewart's crime against humanity.
Of course Saddam had a hatred of the USA. Look what they were doing to him and planning for him. The USA would have a hatred of Saddam if he was inspecting their WMDs and had spies in the UN inspectorate lining up targets and arranging mayhem right there in Peoria.
Instead of coming over all precious, just boast that the USA was tougher and leave it at that. Saddam's WMDs are inherently no more evil than the USA's. A WMD is just another weapon, like a club, knife, gun, grenade, bomb, cruise missile, torpedo, daisy-cutter, tactical or 30 megaton noocular doomsday device. Those on the receiving end of the knife, club or 30 megatons are just as dead and as General Schwarzkopf said, "There's no nice way to kill somebody in a war". <And six months after the war ended, when, as part of a campaign to "terrorize the Iraqis into surrendering," the Pentagon admitted using tank-bulldozers to bury Iraqi troops alive in mass graves, The Globe and Mail found a Washington spokesperson to comment that, "There's no nice way to kill somebody in a war." web2.uwindsor.ca;
Mqurice
PS: I bet if the Texans had tactical noocular bombs during the civil war, they'd have used them against their own people too [George Washington's troops or maybe it was that other bloke Abraham]. That's what people do when the chips are down. They might even use them against doves - that would get a lot of doves in one go! New Zealand is a nuclear-free zone, and there's legislation to that effect, so they can't use them here, even if I do make fun of them. |
