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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (179666)	1/11/2006 4:10:45 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

Yeah... I've tried to be decent and discuss the issues at hand, whether it be Iraq or Venezuela. However, those two just seem intent on substituing rancor and vitriolic rants for documentation and legal basis. If, as they claim, the overthrow of Saddam was illegal, Bush would have been charged appropriately either by the UN, or the World Court. Neither of which have occurred. Furthermore, citing ONLY the threatened veto by France and Russia against using military force to enforce UNSC 678, 687, and 1441, they completely ignore the fact that both of these nation's government agreed with Bush that Iraq had failed to abide by the terms of the cease-fire and that is was time to set a time limit for those outstanding issues to be resolved. After 90 days of inspections by UNMOVIC, not only were new violations, transpiring AFTER UNSCOM inspectors left in 1998, discovered, but most of the outstanding previous issues of non-compliance remained unresolved as well. These were detailed in a 170+ page report issued by UNMOVIC in early March, 2003. As for Venezuela, it's apparent to me that while Chavez may have been democratically elected, he has NOT upheld the democratic principles upon which he was originally elected. While he might be commended for many of his social programs, we have to ask what political cost has been incurred with regard to rights of free association and dissent by the average Venezuelan. Furthermore, we don't find many true adherents of democracy rubbing elbows with Fidel Castro, where journalists have been jailed merely for being accused of holding anti-castro viewpoints. Chavez, instead, should have been using his leverage to admonish Castro and to uphold the democratic principles of a free press and political opposition. What I really believe is the problem with both Sylvester and Geode is that they have permitted their absolute hatred for all things "Bush" to impair their ability to view the world objectively. If Bush opposes something/someone, the immediately leap to defend the target of Bush's criticism. However, I'm sure their partisanship would be markedly different were John Kerry in office right now. They would be supporting all of his policies with blind obedience, even though I can't imagine he'd be handling the Iraq situation any differently than is the Bush administration. I certainly believe Kerry would be calling for unilateral withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, nor would we be seeing Murtha daring to criticize Kerry for such a stance. Hawk