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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (4459)	11/12/2003 8:34:44 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20773

It pisses me off how people can be immune to facts and just repeat the same old lines. I hear ya Zonder... Like those who say we needed UN approval to overthrow Saddam's regime when such approval would have been unprecedented in UN history. Heck, the UN didn't even approve of using military action during Desert Storm. They just lifted any prohibitions by saying "all necessary means". And like those who choose to ignore the fact that UNSC 1441, declaring Iraq in material breach of its cease fire obligations, provided Saddam 90 days (not 90 weeks, not 90 months) to comply on pain of "serious consequences" (a far harsher implication than UNSC 678 (Desert Storm's) "all necessary means". Especially when the UNSC votes AFTER the US Congress authorizes use of force against Iraq, and approves UNSC 1441 by a unanimous vote. One other fact that people ignore, and which pisses me off as well, is how people can believe that a cease fire agreement equates to a peace treaty. Iraq signed a cease fire accord, not a peace treaty. Violating the terms of the cease fire could, at the discretion of the other beliggerents could be grounds for reinitiating hostilities. After all, isn't that the case with North and South Korea as the Bush administration floats the concept of converting the long-standing armistice into an actual peace treaty: theage.com.au So since when does one or two members of the UNSC have the right to unilaterally change the terms under which the "Desert Storm" related cease fire agreement was consumated and now require an unprecendented vote by the UNSC to directly authorize military means to overthrow Saddam? The bottom line is that UNSC 1441 was a supplement to UNSC 678, not a nullifier. The language of "all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area". And when 1441 "recalled" 678, it was directly noting that its own authority was being drawn, in part, from 678, as well as every other UNSCR which drew THERE authority from 678 and 660. Thus, the war in Iraq is completely legitimate under UN guidelines.. It hardly destroyed international law.. If anything, it upheld it, and the credibility of the organization which had initiated that law... Hawk

To: zonder who wrote (4459)	11/12/2003 9:21:11 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

I think you'll like this: The French Were Right By Paul Starobin, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 Let's just say this at the start, since this is the beginning, not the end, of the discussion about how to grapple with the post-9/11 world (and because it's the grown-up, big-man thing to do): The French were right. Let's say it again: The French -- yes, those "cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys," as their detractors in the United States so pungently called them -- were right. "Be careful!" That was the exclamation-point warning French President Jacques Rene Chirac sent to "my American friends" in a March 16 interview on CNN, just before the Pentagon began its invasion of Iraq. "Think twice before you do something which is not necessary and may be very dangerous," Chirac advised. And this was not some last-minute heads-up, but the culmination of a full-brief argument that the French advanced against the perils of a U.S.-led intervention, pressed over months at the United Nations in New York and at meetings in Paris, Prague, and Washington. There were, of course, other war critics in Europe and elsewhere, but nobody presented the arguments more insistently or comprehensively than did the French, God bless 'em. Still seething over the French prewar position on Iraq, administration officials are hardly of a mind to bestow awards on the French for prescience. The Democrats, many of whom supported the war, would have no political gain in citing the unpopular French as role models for their thinking, even if the statements now made by the party's leaders in Congress and its presidential candidates so closely resemble prewar French comments. ("The war was an unnecessary war," retired Gen. Wesley Clark pronounced, a la Chirac, on October 9.) nationaljournal.com