Hawk, I agree with you that it seems the USA legality isn't at issue. Anyway, if the USA conflicts with any treaties, they can just "unsign" them, as they do.
In the UK, it's different. For a start, they have the European deal, which I'm not sure isn't part of this matter. Also, the UK [I think] signed up to the International Criminal Court [unlike the USA] so UK soldiers have to keep that in mind when they follow orders which might or might not be legal. And, the UK has common law which the Privy Council might determine means the Blair military decisions were beyond the pale. Parliament also calls the shots in the UK and the PM is only there as long as he has a majority and is kept on as leader of his party. He can be ditched any time, with a quick vote. There's no need for an impeachment process as in the USA to break a fixed term.
Anyway, I have no idea of the legal niceties of Malcolm Kendall Smith's position. I just thought you'd find it interesting because of the overall situation. His case really does seem to be more complicated than just some AWOL grunt having a hissy fit and not following orders, which you seem to think it is.
Anyway, we'll see. I don't want to try to figure it out ahead of time because it's mostly just the usual Calvin Ball rules. I was just curious what you might think about it all.
So far, the conflict in Iraq has gone about how I guessed, even down to the numbers dead [I guessed there would be more than there have been, on both sides, or I should say on all four or six sides].
I still think it would have been better to do the NUN first and get more support and get better organized for after the surrender. It was pretty obvious that there wouldn't be any sort of war to speak of [in a conventional sense] and that it would be a guerilla operation once there was an occupation.
<So what is there to protest about our goals? >
The goals are reasonable, but I don't think the way of reaching the goals was very good and the goals are still far from achieved.
<And even without WMDs being found in Iraq, it's clear that Al Qai'da is operating in that country and we have an obligation, duty, and opportunity to confront and defeat them... >
The whole WMDs thing was quite funny from start to finish. AlQ didn't seem to be doing much in Iraq while Saddam was running the show. Since they wanted to defeat him and take over, that's not really surprising.
I'm not sure that a lot of AlQ are in Iraq. I guess it's mostly local insurrection with an Islamic Jihad flavour. Islamic Jihad isn't all AlQ by any means. The best conspiracy is not one where actual conspiring is necessary. Best if people just have commonality and their actions are oriented like iron filings in a magnetic field, responding to what impels them. It makes it tough to beat them - swarms of individuals acting on their own account with common goals is tricky to beat.
Mqurice |
