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Politics : GOPwinger Lie Debate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SI Dave who wrote (156)	3/3/2004 11:06:53 AM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 403

Here's something on GOPwinger backbench disenchantment: War doubters hit back at PM By Michael Gordon National Editor March 4, 2004 Former defence force chiefs have branded as offensive and wrong John Howard's assertion that opponents of the Iraq war supported a policy that would have kept Saddam Hussein in power. The Prime Minister this week stepped up the defence of his decision to join the Iraq war, telling Parliament on Tuesday that prominent Labor politicians had "the heavy burden of justifying to the Australian people why they supported a policy that would have kept Saddam Hussein in power". He insisted this was the "practical consequence" of Labor's policy - "and that will be to your everlasting political shame". Foreign Minister Alexander Downer led the attack, saying: "The fact that we got rid of that regime and you wanted that regime to remain in office is an argument that between now and polling day we would be happy to have." High-profile opponents of the war who shared Labor's view that tougher inspections and United Nations sanctions should have preceded a commitment of troops to war, have now taken exception to the Howard-Downer claims. They include those who held key positions in the Defence Force at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991. Air Marshal Ray Funnell, chief of air staff from 1987 until 1992, told The Age: "As someone who opposed the war... I find it deeply offensive that I'm categorised as someone who wished Saddam to remain in power. What it suggests is there was no alternative other than going to war. There were alternatives and they weren't tried and some of those alternatives may well have led to regime change. How would we ever know? "Some of those alternatives may well have discovered things without loss of life that have now been discovered with huge loss of life and a terrible remaining situation in Iraq." General Peter Gration, chief of the Australian Defence Force from 1987 to 1993, said it was absurd and silly to argue that those who opposed the war wanted Saddam to remain in power. "I opposed the war because the Government's case for going to war, which was based principally on the weapons of mass destruction, was unconvincing and weak. "Our Government didn't argue its case for war on the basis of regime change but, if they had, it would have been vigorously opposed ... it's simply not acceptable international behaviour to take the extreme step of going to war without UN backing because you don't like a particular regime, however bad it may be. I think the Government realised this and that's why they didn't use it as a principal argument." General Gration said it was still unclear whether the threat of terrorism had been reduced. He believes WMD were just a pretext for war - and that the real reason was to consolidate US control of, or access to, oil. Admiral Mike Hudson, chief of naval staff from 1985 to 1991, said it had been shown there was insufficient evidence to justify war. Mr Hudson also took issue with Mr Downer's assertion that Australia's alliance with the US would have been substantially weakened if the Government had refused to go to war. "I cannot believe that relationships between the two countries were so sensitive that we had to acquiesce in a pre-emptive attack on Iraq when there was so little obvious reason to do so." theage.com.au

To: SI Dave who wrote (156)	3/3/2004 12:05:44 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 403

May I raise a separate issue? Well, you obviously don't have time to say no before this gets posted, so I will anyway. Are the TOU worth the bytes it takes to display them? However, you subject yourself to possible suspension and/or termination if you do any of the following: * Provide untrue or incorrect information about yourself during the Silicon Investor Registration Process. * Use Silicon Investor for illegal purposes or for the transmission of material that is unlawful, harassing, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, tortuous, improper or otherwise objectionable. * Use Silicon Investor in any way that infringes or may infringe the intellectual property rights, copyrights or other rights of another. For example, you may not copy and paste a press release into a post on Silicon Investor. * Use Silicon Investor for the transmission of junk mail, spam, chain letters, advertising or unsolicited mass distribution of e-mail. The SI Administrators may remove post(s) or terminate your account for these or any other violations of the Terms of Use, so make sure you read the whole thing. Well, we had a recent demonstration of what the "spamming" clause was worth. Message 19836981 Message 19833374 The claim is made that it's punishable, but then magically a 3-day sentence turns into "time served"- -a bit over a day, I believe. And now you say I had nothing to do with the commutation. The words "vulgar, obscene" also occur in the TOU. If you check the TOU violation reports, you'll find some of those. Yet nothing actually happens. Are we allowed a certain number of violations within a set period of time? If so, how many and how long? Or is that clause simply worthless and we can write post after posts that consists of nothing but vulgarity and expect no consequences? Inquiring minds want to know. I've tried to stay clear of TOU violations. Am I making a mistake that simply cramps my style?