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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (161258)	2/16/2003 11:42:39 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573950

>I may have misunderstood what you said but you talk about Iraq and rogue states on the one hand and al Qaeda with its one-focus on the other hand as if they are separate. But then you suggest that its somewhat reasonable for Bush to tie the two together as two elements of the war on terrorism. That is actually what Bush has tried to do with not much success. No, I think they're separate "wars", so to speak, but they've got common elements. I don't think the administration is going about this correctly... by making them one, they lose credibility. Iraq is NOT funding al-Qaida... though they are funding Hamas and Hizbollah, and Islamic Jihad, but so are Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, among others. Allowing these double standards hurts the administration, IMO, though not much, because Europe doesn't want to attack anyone at all, so adding countries to the sh*t list wouldn't really help. >That's right. That's why I think its a waste of good money to go after Saddam. I don't think it is. I think it should be a part of a global campaign to shut down terrible regimes, such as North Korea's, Syria's, Iran's, and perhaps Saudi Arabia's, or at least getting them to "fall in line". They're not going to become democracies by themselves. >That's right........and we are doing the same thing like we do over and over, and did with Saddam....the enemy of my enemy is my friend.....until we step out of denial and remember how evil and dangerous they are. The GOP is famous for doing that. Sure, but if we flash our power by taking out one regime, we may be able to "straighten out" its replacement, and if that regime is bad, then we take it out, and keep going. If we can't follow through, we shouldn't bother at all. >That's why I find OBL to be so disturbing......he is a cunning, well educated, duplicitous foe that so far, we have hurt only slightly. And as you said, the entire world is OBL's field of battle. Well said. >Whereas Saddam is your run-of-the-mill, evil dictator whose bias is regional and who can be contained so long as he is watched closely. To spend billions chasing down Saddam when OBL/al Qaeda is lose and growing seems the height of idiocy to me. I see no reason we can't do both, other than the questionability of the follow-through. One may be more scary than the other, but Saddam does oppress 20 million people, even if they're "his own". No leader should be able to do what he does, not Kim Jong Il, not Robert Mugabe, not Yasir Arafat, no one. -Z

To: tejek who wrote (161258)	2/16/2003 11:46:15 PM
From: brian1501	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573950

Whereas Saddam is your run-of-the-mill, evil dictator whose bias is regional and who can be contained so long as he is watched closely. To spend billions chasing down Saddam when OBL/al Qaeda is lose and growing seems the height of idiocy to me. It would be idiocy to sit back while Saddam pursues nukes, longer range missiles and other WMD. Once he gets them, he's a real problem. Better to nip it in the butt sooner rather than later...and you get the bonus of freeing a bunch of people at the same time! You always cast Al Qaeda and Iraq as one or the other. I see no reason to assume that is the case. We already did most of the damage we could via direct military in Afghanistan. The military is free to do other things now (ie Iraq). The fight against Al Qaeda is mostly an undercover affair now. There was a bust of an Al Qaeda cell in some backwater country on the news just this week. I think it's a good bet that the CIA (or some other allied intelligence service) had something to do with it. The fight continues, it's just not as blatant or using the same people. Brian