Re: Bush goes Nuclear!

From: Dave Typinski (nospam_at_nospam.net)
Date: 07/14/04 

Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 11:55:32 -0400

Joe Bergeron wrote:

>In article <hn99f01143li29c7eu0cfufrp0p78iecph@4ax.com>, Dave Typinski
><nospam@nospam.net> wrote:
>
>> >And, evidently, lie about it!
>>
>> They never lied, they obfuscated - and they did so because they had
>> to. The real reasons we invaded Iraq would have been found
>> politically unacceptable to the squeamish laity. Most people do not
>> understand that you have to kill people to prevent deaths in your own
>> country. That's unfortunate, but that's the deal.
>
>So the best thing an American citizen can do is not to bother
>questioning its government, since it will lie, er, "obfuscate", to
>promote any agenda which we are too lily-livered or too dumb to
>understand?

Absolutely not. Questioning GovCo is the best thing we've got going.

In this particular instance, however, it seems that the government had
good reason to invade Iraq. Their publicly stated reason was garbage,
as is par for the course. Despite that, in this case, the
administration (and Congress was on board, too, including Kerry and
Edwards) did the right thing for the right reasons, despite the fact
that they messed up their marketing of the process at the outset.

>> >In other words we will do as we damn well please, regardless of what that
>> >nation is doing.
>>
>> Within reason, yes.
>
>If a preemptive, unprovoked invasion of a militarily weak, thoroughly
>beaten nation is "within reason", what is outside of reason?

Invasion of, say, Belgium would fill that bill.

I disagree that the invasion of Iraq was unprovoked. Nor was Saddam
Hussein thoroughly beaten (it was he and his government apparatus that
we were after, not Iraq). He may have been weak militarily, in
comparison to the most advanced military on the planet. He was by no
means weak financially.

>> This does not, however, mean the U. S. will go about stomping little
>> nations out of existence. That's not our game. Ruining a country
>> doesn't make them more likely to engage in commerce. *That's* what
>> the U. S. is after, ever more commerce and the expansion of free
>> market capitalism.
>>
>> So, to that end, if a nation interferes with global commerce, it will
>> be dealt with appropriately. If it drastically interferes with
>> American commerce, it's government may be removed.
>
>So which is it? Did we invade Iraq because it was a threat to American
>citizens, or because we wanted to buy Iraqi oil only we couldn't get as
>much as we wanted because we had imposed sanctions on Iraq?

Yes.

That's what I meant before about multiple reasons. There is no "which
is it," for it is "all of the above."

>> So, may I ask, what do you suggest we ought to have done instead and
>> why?
>
>I suggest we should have kept on doing what we were already doing. We
>had Saddam cooped up, reduced to a helpless pipsqueak with no power
>beyond his own borders.

No military power. He did have, though, the financial means with
which to mess with American interests through the proxy of terrorist
networks external to Iraq. He also evinced an unwillingness to
cooperate with weapons inspectors, making the supposition that he was
truly militarily weak quite tenuous. He mightn't have had tanks and
aircraft, but he didn't need that sort of hardware to attack Israel or
anyone else in his neighborhood. Missiles and warheads were all that
was needed.

>UN weapons inspectors found nothing, and it is
>now apparent that this was not due to their incompetence, but to the
>fact that Saddam had no major weapons.

Then why didn't Iraq cooperate with the UN team? Why were stores of
NBC protective gear found within their conventional weapons caches?

I hold that the jury is still out on this one.

>It was a relatively inexpensive
>program of containment that was all but totally safe for our troops,
>and it kept intact America's international reputation. It was all
>working rather well.

Actually, it wasn't working so well. Not for the stability of the
Middle East, not for U. S. interests, and certainly not for the Iraqi
people. 

--
Dave Typinski
http://home.alltel.net/trapezium

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