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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (1837)	1/17/2003 6:32:42 PM
From: SBHX	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Party, Hey, I like to party too and not have to think about all the mess that is going on. Unfortunately, my conscience would not allow me to leave your assertions unchallenged. The result of leaving saddam alone is not peace for the rest of the world. This is a widely recognized fact by the UN security council. It is all about the lesser evil here. Do you leave someone like that alone, when you know once he gets breathing room, he will come after the american people with any tool at his disposal? This is not a viable option. There is a wide misunderstanding of how muslims really feel about the americans. Sure there is widespread resentment, sure they hate the americans and israel, but you don't realize that the support for Al Qaeda is a lot weaker than you assert. In Asia, as an example, after the initial distrust and suspicion of Bali, the masses in the country with the highest muslim population now realize how insane the Al Qaeda doctrine is and they are doing a very good job of uprooting this organization. This is happening in many areas of asia ~ in most cases without any prodding from the americans. Of course there is demonstrations and protests against this war. In england, at the start of WW2, there were protests too. If you compare the texts of the pacifists then and now, they are almost the same word for word. Nothing changes. Sane people hate war, this is well understood by all. However, Bush cannot walk away from someone who has shown willingness to do severe damage to the american people. It would be easy for him to be a pacifist, and he might even gain a few points in popularity, but the fact is : it takes courage to stand up and follow the hard path knowing there are hard and painful decisions ahead. He might very well be sending american soldiers to die, and the cause had better be just. When the bombing starts, will Saddam bomb its own citizens and women children? Yes. He needs to survive and will easily sacrifice hundreds of thousands of his own people to get there. Will some muslims believe the americans are targetting iraqi civilians? Yes. For a period, all hell will break loose. There will be riots in the muslim world. Will the truth eventually come out? Yes. Eventually, and perhaps that will make it a better world. There are many peaceful muslims with a conscience who understand what Al Qaeda did was wrong. There are too few willing to speak out. But the muslim extemists who wish to fight americans have been fighting and plotting for a while and unfortunately, the americans, by being successful and largely secular will have to fight them. Even their children may have to fight them. Until the americans surrender their sinful non-muslim way of life, this is not going away. Understand this is a war for the right to exist and you get the right idea. Suppose I take your side. Will walking away from saddam mean less muslims will fight americans? I doubt it, after posturing by the US with some minimal support by the UN, walking away will reveal americans to be nothing but toothless paper tigers. If anything, it will hasten the demise of their way of life and embolden the muslim extremist who will now gain in strength of numbers. But what of Saddam? The start of the war has a chance where there will be bodies of iraqi women and children paraded in front of CNN and AL Jazeera. If the american bombs are accurate, saddam will just have to get his people to do the dirty work. There could very well be bombed out civilian apartments, maternity wards. Many innocent will die. This is why the best way to successfully remove Saddam is to ensure that his inner circle is cut off completely from the rest of his armed forces. I suspect that the right offer to the rank and file and a show of sufficient force can minimize the losses of innocent civilians. In fact, if Saddam were to bomb his own people, perhaps his soldiers will turn on him too. Back to the international diplomacy stuff : We are not dealing with a neutral presumed-innocent party here. By international law (ie: UN's resolution 1441 etc), the onus is on Iraq to provide full and complete accounting of their weapons. They have failed and given the weight of evidence due to their pattern of action here, in a normal court, this would be the remedy phase of the trial. Actually, given the ease of moving needles in a haystack without detection, I'm surprised that the un inspectors even found this. Guess the UN inspectors are working round the clock.

To: PartyTime who wrote (1837)	1/17/2003 6:35:19 PM
From: Mighty_Mezz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

re "As good as our military is we lose things also." And on a grand scale, too. For fiscal year 1999 the Pentagon Inspector General reported $2.3 trillion worth of untraceable accounting entries. ... The Army's central accounting system lost 56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile launchers, a General Accounting Office study found when it audited the Army's fiscal year 1999 books. ... The Army and Navy together lost during shipment almost $4 billion worth of equipment, the GAO reported in June 2000, including what the GAO said were "some classified and sensitive items." from newhouse.com

To: PartyTime who wrote (1837)	1/17/2003 6:39:29 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

You think the same person moves everything and keeps an impeccable record of what they moved where? Hmmm.... They more people that are involved in this, the more chance there SHOULD BE that someone would know that that the location of such armaments should be recorded. So postulate as many people as you wish. The more you postulate, the worse it gets. Unless, of course, there is a conspiracy to hide the existence of that equipment. But that speaks for itself, doesn't it? Do you want to spend the rest of your life fighting Muslims? Would you like your children to spend the rest of their lives fighting Muslims? Speculation as to future events here. Maybe something like that will happen; maybe not. would Bush be Saddam-like? Depends on whether we could put together a good offense or defense in two months. If not, no. Why? Are you trying to use Kim Il Jung's behavour to justify Saddam?