Tiesto14, if you have a point, it would be nice see you express it in a way that we could actually understand it the right way, not the ignorant way. You seem to spitting up in the air and your own spit seems to fall right into your face. You actually have no idea on who you are throwing your words to, and why. I didnt bother to read all 4 threads, but just your first posts.
First, I would only like to say that, the French were never defending Saddam Hussein or what ever sort you thought inbetween your brain cells. The French as well as the other nations against war, were against it for one reason, and that reason does not mean that they are Saddam's friends. The actual reason was because WAR is not the answer and from their view of point, and the view of point of actually majority around the world, as well americans, is that Why Attack Iraq?!?! ( Classic questions here ), what has Iraq done to the US? Is IRAQ an actual threat?!?! what proof do we have that they are linked to AL QUAEDA?!?... The point from what the US was on was that, its been 11 years and Iraq hasent disarmed, and the logical answer for that, was probably because there was no PRESSURE on them, also, the same pressure now on IRAQ, if held, we could have Iraq disarm, and the US government give out evidence if tehy claim that Iraq has the weapons.. also, not to denie that Iraq didnt have weapons, but to actually disarm him through diplomacy and through other ways, but not a WAR like the US and allies will start in less then 3 hours. So whatever side you are on, you are actually showing to everyone in here what a fool you are, jsut by the way you are speaking, saying what you said about the French, Im happy that not every country jumps out the building if the US tells them too.. US can be a superpower, but that doesnt mean that everyone should do what they say, and I think that many like you, and the US presidency got very surprised when many didnt support the action on which they are on now. I personally dont support it, as Im not convinced on why and what. Iraq does have the weapons I think, but a WAR like this all of the sudden its no justification, even if its after 9/11, Iraq was not behind 9/11. All I can do now though is pray that everything is done fast, and that what Bush is doing now, will HOPEFULLY not go farther then Iraq.. I pray that things dont get worst( nationally and economically)..I pray that the casualties are less then though, And I pray that better times come, and that the elections arise through the Horizon, I just PRAY!

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Upcoming:

Michael Andrews Feat. Gary Jules - Mad World (Grayed Out Mix)

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade I don't think there's any doubt that Iraq still possesses some reminants of its biological/chemical weapons programs from the late 80's (guess who funded them?) but my argument was always that firstly the US are overplaying the quantity and quality of these weapons and the threat that they pose. Iraq would never be stupid enough to use these weapons against another nation just for the sake of it (even though they don't have the means to now that they've destroyed half the Al Samoud's - which would struggle to make it past the Iraqi borders if launched from Baghdad anyway) and, as I have said time and time again, the threat is nowhere near significant enough to justify the high-level of civilian casualties that will doubtless ensue (especially if Saddam Hussein does use what biological weapons he has - ironically, this war could provoke the kind of scenarios - namely the deployment of cheical/biological weapons - that it was trying to prevent). This isn't some sort of movie about good vs evil, or us vs the terrorists. This is warfare, and people will die. It is not the kind of undertaking we should be entering into on the "hunch" that Saddam may have a 15 year old vial of Anthrax hidden somewhere. I severely doubt that you would sacrifice friends of members of your family on the off-chance that Iraq has WMD's and it's unfair of you to expect that innocent Iraqi's should make this sacrifice just to appease your vague concerns. Human life is more precious than that.

I agree.

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Und ich tanz einfach weiter...

quote:

Those reports indicate Saddam has given field-level commanders the authority to use chemical weapons on their own initiative, without any further directives from the Iraqi leadership, Pentagon officials said.

is there anyone else who believes this goes a fair way in supporting the claim that WMD could fall into terrorists hands from iraq? i mean, if field-level commanders have control over chemical weapons, and can use them without directives from iraqi leadership, then doesnt this pose a very serious risk? i wonder how loyal mr field-level commander would be if an al-qaeda operative offered him $1 million USD for a single warhead. do you really think mr. field-level commander who probably makes shit all money is gonna deny that offer? i mean, the al-qaeda operative aint gonna use the weapon against his own people, so it's a win-win situation, he gets money and the US gets a chemical warhead pointed at them. ever heard the saying 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'? anyone can be bought, and in the chaos of this conflict it would be very easily for a single warhead to slip off the paper.

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c o n : f u s e d

LOL! Endlesswave tht pic ownz all.

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Todays youth have desacrated music with the popification of all generes. FOR SHAME.

MUSIC GURU - 2002.

Occrider:

I'm not going to answer you point by point, but I will say this.

Assume for a second that Iraq does have all the weapons it hasn't accounted for and had already been proven to be in material breach of the weapons restrictions imposed on it by Resolution 687 (and thus of 1441 as well). That is, assume Iraq still has the left over biological / chemical agents and scuds that they haven't yet been able to credibly prove that they have destroyed yet. I don't believe this to be the case, but to give you a better idea of where I'm coming from I'll humour you for a second. In this scenario, can a war then be justified?

Firstly we'll deal with the weapons of mass destruction. How, by going to war, can the US be certain that - after a thorough search of the country - all the weapons have been accounted for? Who's to stop Saddam from hiding his weapons somewhere, to be reclaimed by his supporters long after the US invasion? What's to stop him from using his weapons on Isreal or Kuwait in a final death throw - something he'd be highly unlikely to do before the invasion given his knowledge of the likely consequences (think back to the 12 years of restraint)? Then, how do we know that we can trust the subsequent regime (i.e. the puppet government put in after 2 years of US occupation) not to reclaim the weapons he has hidden and to be an even greater risk to international security? Where are the scientists with the knowledge to produce these weapons going to go after the war? Are they going to stick around and produce biological and chemical weapons for the next regime? Are they going to defect to another nation (say, for example, Iran) and start producing such weapons there? Are the going to defect to a terrorist organisation and start producing weapons for them? Remember, you can destroy the labs and you can destroy the weapons, but you can't destroy the know-how or the desire to utilise it in the production of deadly weapons. Or, as sfintj0r put it:

quote:

if field-level commanders have control over chemical weapons, and can use them without directives from iraqi leadership, then doesnt this pose a very serious risk? i wonder how loyal mr field-level commander would be if an al-qaeda operative offered him $1 million USD for a single warhead.

If these weapons are being controlled by field-level commanders, what happens to them and the weapons once the control and power exerted by Saddam Hussein is cut off? Can we really trust Saddam's commanders to hand over all there weapons to American invaders when there's probably a very high demand for them on the blackmarket? Or, if they're faithful to Saddam, what's to stop them from using these weapons against the occupying American troops later on?

And I could continue like that with the risks involved, but will suffice to say this: Invasion does not guarantee disarmourment, and it does not guarantee the abolition of whatever risk Iraq poses to global security. If Saddam Hussein is just one evil man in Iraq with control over vast amounts of hidden weapons, what good will removing just Saddam do? Can they really just the rest of the 300,000 strong military (anyone of these people, theoretically, may later on be able to gain access to these weapons) to lay down when this happens, to hand over all weapons and to passively support the American occupation?

That aside, we also seriously need to consider the politcal consequences of the war - both in Iraq and in the entire Arab world.

Firstly consider Iraq. If you consider the liberation of the Iraqi people one of the main reasons to support this war, go back to the post Vesa made a while back about the plans the US has for Iraq after the current regime is ousted. All they plan to do - or so it seems - is to replace the current, anti-US (but not necessarily anti-western) Sunni regime with a pro-US Sunni regime. Have a look at this:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2...5330596325.html

The US assisted the rise of Saddam Hussein's Baath (socilaist) party to power in the 50's and 60's, because the secular pro-western (at the time) regime was congenial to US interests in the area. It kept the Iraqi Shiites down (thus preventing an alliance with Iran) and the pro-western stance meant that the US had both an ally and a trading partner in the area (a later attempt to do a similar thing in Iran backfired badly). Even while he was gassing the Kurds, Saddam Hussein was still in the US's good books, and it was only after Kuwait that the relationship soured. Now, with Saddam Hussein no longer congenial to US interests, they want him out, but - ultimately - his regime was, for a long time, perfectly suited to US needs which remain largely the same 30-40 years on. Thus the perfect scenario for the US would be to replace Saddam Hussein with a pro-western, more moderate Sunni Islam replica. This, however, will not go down well with the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq (the latter outnumber Sunni's 2 to 1) and could just cause further instability in the country:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,69314,00.html

Democracy in Iraq is highly unlikely, if only for the reason that a democratic vote would likely put a Shiite party in power (highly theocratic as opposed to secular) and that's a scenario the US want to avoid because of their ties to Iran (another member of the "axis of evil" if you remember). The US aren't going to spend $100 billion on the invasion and occupation of Iraq just to see a unified, fundamentalist Islamic alliance between Iran and Iraq which poses a much greater threat than the current Iraqi regime does on its own.

So the scenario as it is likely to eventuate: the US invades Iraq, occupies it under martial law for 2 years and then hands it over to another Sunni Muslim socialist dictatorship. What happens then? How do we know that this regime won't persecute the Shiites and Kurds in the same way that Saddam Hussein has? How do we know that the Shiites and Kurds won't revolt against this new, weakened government? Remember, Saddam Hussein, through his brutal tyranny, has been able to keep the Kurds and Shiites down - what happens when he and his regime are gone? Will there be a bloody civil war in Iraq once he is ousted? Will the US regime/new Iraqi regime be forced to use the same heavy handed tactics that Hussein did to keep them down (which voids any humanitarian justification for the war)?

Quite apart from the political angle, what happens to the Iraqi society once the bombs have stopped dropping? Will there be enough infrastructure in place to provide the Iraqi citizens with their basic needs? If not, who will pay for the rebuilding of the infrastructure destroyed by 12 years of American bombings, and how long will it take? How do we deal with all the refugees forced to flee Iraqi cities? How will they be fed and sheltered? How do we reassimilate them (and the tens of thousands of existing Iraqi refugees in Jordan) with the Iraqi society? Will the Iraqi society accept the temporary US dictatorship? Will they accept the new Iraqi government? After this war, can the US trust the Iraqi people not to grow restless with the US and the west in general for their intervention?

Then, beyond the uncertainty about how stable a post war Iraq will develop, how will this war effect the stability of the Arab region in general? How will Palestine react to the departure of one of its greatest supporters? How will Turkey react if the Kurds are given greater autonomy? Will Saudi-Arabia maintain their strong alliance with the US given that they have already condemned the war? How will the Arabic people as a whole react to seeing yet another Islamic state invaded by the US? Will the pro-western regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan be able to survive a swell of public uprising? Even assuming they do, how can we be certain that the people of these, and other Arab nations don't turn to terrorism to combat what they see (and not without justification) as US imperialism? How will Iran react to the new westernised government given that they implicitly feel that they could well be next on the "democratisation of the Middle East" agenda? Even beyond the Arab region, what will the US do if North Korea takes the opportunity to bomb/invade South Korea or any other nation? If their forces are already stretched, is the US military strong enough to wage two wars at the same time?

And the questions go on and on.

Basically, my point from all this, is that there is a great amount of uncertainty about this war. Firstly, the justification for this war is ambiguous to begin with. Afterall, we don't know if Iraq has WMD and even if they do, there is a lot of doubt about whether they would ever use them offensively. It may breach Resolution 1441, it may provide the US with the legal opportunity to invade, but - ************ - does that necessarily make this war the best available option? Secondly, we cannot be certain that winning the war will secure peace and stability in Iraq or the Arab world. This could well be an action that sets alight the burning emebers of antipathy in the Arab world, and could lead to a long period of instability both within the region and within Iraq itself. Finally - and probably most importantly - there is a massive cost both in terms of money (for the invasion of Iraq firstly, and then the occupation and rebuilding of it subsequently) and, obviously, in terms of human life.

Thus to sum it up briefly, we're going to war for dubious reasons without any idea about whether the war will provide a definite solution to the problems it hopes to solve (that is, if the problems exist in the first place), completely uncertain of the outcome and at a great cost that has the potential to send to entire globe into recession and that could potentially result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Perhaps I'm just a bleeding-heart liberal pacifist, but it is my opinion that war is the most harrowing of all human experiences, and should be avoided where possible. War is only - and I do mean only - justifiable as an absolute last resort (where it is patently obvious that no other options exist), where the benefits are clear, precise, obtainable with a high degree of certainty and completely outweigh the costs (which must be kept to a minimum) and where the problems and issues that sparked the need for war in the first place can be demonstrated to a high degree of certainty to be solved by the war. The degree of human suffering and economic outlay must be justified against these criteria.

As I see it, this war fails on each and every of them.

Nonetheless, taking into account everything I've said here, I'd be interested to hear why you think that the reasons provided by Bush et al provide the justification necessary to unleash such an evil as warfare upon the world. This isn't about whether Saddam Hussein is or isn't in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction or whether he is in violation of 1441, it's about whether the flimsy reasons given by the Bush administration justify war in this case, taking into account the massive uncertainties, the unresolved "peaceful" options, the ambiguity of what benefits may arise from such a move and - obviously - the massive costs involved.

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http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

Renegade, we two had a smiliar discussion weeks before the war in Afghanistan. Again you were against it, while I supported it. Your arguments were basically the same ones as this time: No clear objective, no definite justification, huge uncertainies concerning the aftermath. You feared that the Taliban regime might survive and keep terrorizing the population and/or the US military in a Vietnam like guerilla war. You feared that the Northern Alliance might prove as evil as the Taliban. You feared a civil war between the Pashtuns, Arabs, Pakistani etc. etc.
Let's say that you turned out to have been partly wrong. I won't go so far to say that Afghanistan ended perfectly (the main goal, OBL's death, was not accomplished f.e.) but thinshave improved. You won't see any more public executions and rapes, no more Christian missionars as hostages or destroyed Buddah monuments, and certainly no more safe heaven for Al-Quaida. Still there's a long way to go and unfortunately many assasinations and single terrorist attacks to survive until a real Democracy ( to the extent to which it can be reconciled with the region's culture and religion) is established.
From today's perspective, would you still say that the war in Afghanistan was a mistake?

Regarding the Iraqi war uv'e broguht up many good points (I'm pretty amazed at the comprehensive knowledge you seem to demonstrate with regardss to each and every topic ). I never cared too much about the discussion about the WOMD. Whether or not Saddam posseses them right nowhas never been relevant for the justification of this war IMO. The regime's evil threatening nature and its POTENTIAL to indeed once again produce and use WOMD. The WOMD bullhit was just the cornerstone of the pathetic process of seeking a diplomatic legimation.

The possiblity of a US-controlled equally brutal Sunni regime is unfortunately pretty likely. But let's think a bit about the Shiite "problem". If u'd paid attention to the latest developments in Iran you'd have noticed that more and more, especially young citizens, revolt against the theocratic regime. Iran seems to head towards a more liberal and secular future. Now what if the USA do indeed install a full democracy in Iraq, resulting in a democratic Shiite government, which respects both Sunnites and Kurds? That would definitely encourage the Iranian neighbours to continue their protest and eventually follow the Iraqi example.
Maybe I'm naive and underestimate both the US's determination to controll Iraq with brutal help AND the Shiite/Sunnite hatred, but this would be the best case scenario. In any case, I think post-Saddam Iraq will be a better Iraq.

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"Those are my principles, if you don't like them... well, I have others.”

WOW

renegade, whats your major
*sorry for going off topic*

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quote:

SAS is an exception, of course because they are the experts in finding and destroying chemical weapons. But if Bush really needed the SAS guys from Britain and Australia, couldn't he get them without explicit political support for war?

The SAS are only British Vesa mate. But I know what your saying, by far they are the most superior special forces unit in the world, their traning takes the piss how hard it is. They've been in Iraq for months I bet searching out targets, right now their probably out in the field as we type this taking out Iraqi soldiers & destroying certain sites. In one the newspapers today they supposidly got into a massive firefight with some Iraqi troops in Southern Iraq. But either way them guys are top fucking quality.

Your theory about the CIA dealing with tribal leaders to cause an uprising is an excellent theory, however it can always have risks as the Vietnam war started in a simular way.

And everyone seriously there is not point argueing about it, because its started and there is nothing anyone here can do to stop it. Like today walked past this massive protest where I live, I thought to myself yeah before the war that would be an appropriate time to protest however now, with the cops being distracted dealing with protest its a prime time for some Iraqi or some fuckhead like Osama Bin Laden to carry about a terrorist attack.

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hey tiesto, you should take care of WHO SAYS WHAT:

note:

"Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday." what does this person want? WAR of course.

"President Bush and other U.S. officials say Iraq has stocks of chemical weapons, including the deadly nerve agents sarin, cyclosarin and VX and a mustard agent like that used in World War I"

whohoo super-old stuff.

let's take a look:
Name_______First Made
Sarin (GB)__1938
VX_________1952


from http://www.chem.sc.edu/faculty/morgan/cw/cw.pdf

"Iraq CS Program 1981-1991 - In possession: 1-4 K tons of Mustard Gas, Sarin and Cyclosarin"

this professor continues
"Many of the chemical agents discussed here are considered obsolete for military purposes" (my emphasis)

so there is some points towards the idea that this is

1. old stuff
   
2. not threatening
   

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get font

I see your 4 Crushs and raise you 3 As The Rush Comes. - Yan from PvD's first summerstage event in '03

quote:

Originally posted by drizzt81 hey tiesto, you should take care of WHO SAYS WHAT: note: "Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday." what does this person want? WAR of course. "President Bush and other U.S. officials say Iraq has stocks of chemical weapons, including the deadly nerve agents sarin, cyclosarin and VX and a mustard agent like that used in World War I" whohoo super-old stuff. let's take a look: Name_______First Made Sarin (GB)__1938 VX_________1952 from http://www.chem.sc.edu/faculty/morgan/cw/cw.pdf "Iraq CS Program 1981-1991 - In possession: 1-4 K tons of Mustard Gas, Sarin and Cyclosarin" this professor continues "Many of the chemical agents discussed here are considered obsolete for military purposes" (my emphasis) so there is some points towards the idea that this is old stuff not threatening

hahahahhaha lol lol lol ool ol ol ahhahahahhahahhaahh FUNNNYYYYY


ok YOU go walk through some VX or Sarin gas and see how u do...lol hahahhahhahahhahhahahhahaha not threatening??...no more drugs for you dritz

I've always said that chemical weapons are obsolete as a tactical military weapon. However they are still deadly when used strategically to attack cities or civilians.

But I don't think the fact that those weapons are outdated decreases their potency. Vx gas will kill you just as effectively as a bullet.

quote:

Originally posted by TranceGiant Regarding the Iraqi war uv'e broguht up many good points (I'm pretty amazed at the comprehensive knowledge you seem to demonstrate with regardss to each and every topic ). I never cared too much about the discussion about the WOMD. Whether or not Saddam posseses them right nowhas never been relevant for the justification of this war IMO. The regime's evil threatening nature and its POTENTIAL to indeed once again produce and use WOMD. The WOMD bullhit was just the cornerstone of the pathetic process of seeking a diplomatic legimation.

but do you go around arresting people to POTENTIALLY being agressive? Not in Germany (or Austria) for all I know.

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get font

I see your 4 Crushs and raise you 3 As The Rush Comes. - Yan from PvD's first summerstage event in '03