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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: runes who wrote (68306)	3/6/2003 1:12:41 PM
From: chomolungma	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Runes, When I heard about the possibility of a new compromise U.N. resolution, I was encouraged, but then I got thinking how they could possibly word it and my hope disappeared. What will be the trigger for war? Saddam doesn't even admit to owning weapons of mass destruction so how can we make a trigger that he won't destroy them? You can't have "cooperation" as a trigger because it isn't concrete. France may say in 3 months that Iraq is cooperating and the U.S. may say they aren't. So, I have to conclude there is no way a resolution can be worded to satisfy all members of the council.

To: runes who wrote (68306)	3/6/2003 1:39:02 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Do I want Saddam in power, hell no. Do I think Bush is doing more damage to the US than anyone since McCarthy, you bet. I think the government should be at the minimum held to a code of conduct no less than each of us is held to in our everyday lives. This may sound odd, but I consider Bush a greater threat to America than Saddam. Not because Saddam is a better person. But because Bush is in the position to do much greater damage and he lacks the wisdom and perspective needed for a person of such power. Let's take a quick look at US involvement with Iraq over the past few decades. First of all, Ba'th party took control of Iraq with support of US (yup, we helped them get there). Next we decided Ba'thies were no good and we pushed Shah of Iran to wage a proxy war via Kurds. Then we hung the Kurds to dry and be killed by Ba'th party. Then we supported Saddam to develop WMD and turned a blind eye on his use of weapons that have been banned for almost 90 years (the first global disarmament treaty was against chemical weapons due to the damage they caused during WWI). When our money, intelligence, and WMD support was not enough we went so far as to nearly directly fight side by side with Saddam. Then we encouraged Saddam to attack Kuwait so we can have a good excuse to destroy his military. Then we asked the Iraqis to rise against him and take control of their country. But when it looked like they could pull it off fast, we actually tied their hands and let Saddam fire on the civilians with gunships! Now we are saying that this brutality which we helped him do using the weapons that we sold him is grounds for us to remove him. But even as we claim this right on behalf of Iraqi people, we are not willing to let them hold a referendum to choose what kind of State they like to have. Does this insane back and forth shifting look right to anyone? What makes you think we are on the right path now? What has changed? How is anything that we ever did in Iraq produced a benefit to America? What we need is a paradigm shift in the way we operate. There is a very narrow window of opportunity to get this right and bring about lasting stability to the world. And nobody in Washing seems to see it because decades of cold war, lack of historical perspective, and complete unaccountability towards foreign policy has brought people in power who would feel more comfortable in a cold war world than one which is fair and just. Quite literally they are bent on creating enemies because without a soviet threat to deal with, they feel out of their element. Sun Tzu PS Our blind support of Saddam and his use of chemical weapons during Iraq-Iran war is the cause of Iran's resolve in developing deterrent weapons.