Re: Bush Rx Psychoactive Use?? (was: Re: Kerry 1 NASA 0 was Re: Hmmm - a robust arguement?)

From: Steve Harris sbharris_at_ROMAN9.netcom.com (sbharris_at_ix.netcom.com)
Date: 11/08/04 

Date: 7 Nov 2004 18:15:07 -0800

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message news:<8dGdnRI6TOsfv-TcRVn-3A@rcn.net>...
> In article <79cf0a8.0410201328.41b166f3@posting.google.com>,
> sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) wrote:
> >jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote in message
> news:<WaqdnffOPqth2OvcRVn-iQ@rcn.net>...
> >> In article <79cf0a8.0410191106.49a2b671@posting.google.com>,

> >> > ..The secular govenment of Saddam was way down on
> >> >the list of active threats to the US in March 2003.
> >>
> >> Saddam had a high potential of mess making. Mess prevention
> >> is the reason Iraq became the next project.
> >
> >If it was, it was a stupid reason. You judge people's potential to
> >make messes by the messes they've made in the past.
>
> In this case, I am judging a mess potential based on ability
> to make them and intentions to make them.

Who says? Saddam had no ability-- all agree on that by now. The US
downgraded their assement of his ability during the GW Bush
administration before 9/11, and only upgraded it later. For no good
reason they has surfaced. As for Saddam's intentions, they can be
judged by what he did to the US when he really did have some WMD
ability. Which was nothing.

> > ..Iraq had shown the
> >potential to attack its neighbors, and even gas them when losing, as
> >with Iran--- but never any neighbors or any other country with
> >advanced weapons systems. Saddam had a chance to do that when he
> >launched SCUDs at Israel (back when had the capability to use
> >missiles), and he used neither chemical nor bio agents there (no doubt
> >Israil promised to nuke him or something, but it really doesn't
> >matter-- whatever they could and would do in response to an Iraq WMD
> >attack, he knows the US would do worse). That was his time of maximal
> >provokation, and the time he had the chance to use WMD if *ever* he
> >was going to. He didn't do it. Showing he had the restraint and the
> >good sense not to commit suicide. After that, both his ability and his
> >provokation to use WMD declined drastically. So far as I'm concerned,
> >that's the end of it.
>
> Fine. You may put on those blinkers; I won't. I am not talking about
> using the weapons. I am talking about selling those weapons to
> somebody who intended to use them. Saddam was in serious money
> gathering mode. He was accumulating tons (literally) of cash
> under the table. I don't understand why nobody talks about this.
> I also don't understand why the report _out of the UN_ two weeks
> ago isn't getting talked about; the one about his capability to
> resume manufacture and intent to do so.

I know of no such report. Please cite. The idea that Al Qaida or any
other group of terrorist might have enough simple cash to bribe the
absolute ruler of a country with a gross domestic product of $60
billion, into doing something that might end his regime, is nutso.

> > ..If he didn't do it in 1990 in the first gulf
> >war, there's no reason to imagine he ever would. If not against
> >Israel, certainly not against the US.
>
> Here you have an incorrect assumption. You think a country
> has to be a direct threat before we should take some action.
> How do you classify somebody who sells the means to a person
> and/or group who will use them. Or are you jumping into
> Kerry's appease the French camp?

There was no reason to think Saddam would sell WMD to anybody. That is
a paranoid fantasy, and it's not worth the half trillion dollars it
has already cost us to make sure it won't come true.

We live in a world of risks and opportunity costs. The worst case of
terrorism in our history cost us 10% of the number of people who
simply die of the flu each year. And that happens EVERY year, not just
once back in 2001. But the NIH continue to get its measly 15 billion,
while the new Dept of Fatherland security gets 40 billion. That's
misplaced priorities. You are not going to die of terrist attack and
neither am I. You are going to die of something medical and probably
something quite treatable. The same for your family and everybody you
know and love. Except the treatment will not be there because the half
trilliion bucks was spent on bombing Iraq. Stupidity!

> >>This has already
> >> produced good side effects elsewhere in the world.
> >
> >If you call getting an extra billion people mad at us for no
> >particularly good reason, a "good side effect."
>
> What billion are you talking about? The Muslim moderates
> who cannot voice their opinion and expect live until tomorrow?
> These people are starting to peep a little, testing the tolerance
> waters. Even Iraqis are starting to say no.

These people are costing us blood and treasure we cannot afford.
Already the number of soldiers lost is a third of the casualties on
9/11. And no end in sight.

>
> >Mind you, I'm not arguing that we should not have gone into
> >Afghanistan. That was a completely different situation.
>
> Should we have gone into Afghanistan before 9/11 happened?

No! You cannot predict 9/11's. The money you spend preventing them is
better spent someplace else. Twenty TIMES the number of people lost in
9/11 will die of colon cancer this year, and a decent screening
program would save at least half, and possibly as much as 80% of them.
We don't have the money for it. Guess where we spent it?

 
> > ..I just wish
> >we'd finished the job we started there.
>
> We are finishing the job. Sheesh! It takes time to change.
> A guy I yak with is amazed at the rapidity of this change.
> He's also noted a change in another country where the economy
> went from dictator/strict controls to capitalism within a decade.
> It took us many decades to figure out what worked.

>
>
> > ..And may not have the will or
> >money to finish now that we're mired down in Iraq.
>
> WE AIN'T MIRED!!!! I never thought you would be one to
> demand instant gratification for processes that takes centuries
> to develop because you know, or used to know, your history.

I'm not demanding instant gratification. I'm demanding we not have
gotten into the process at all. And yes, we're mired. Turn on your TV
and have a look at Falujah.

The rest of your argument is simply repetative. Saddam was going sell
WMD because he needed the money, blah. I say baloney. I say the worst
anybody who actually did manage to buy the worst WMD Saddam ever had,
would not have been able to inflict even the damage on the US which
happens *every* year with the normal flu season, the vaccination
against which we *&^%ED up this year because we weren't paying
attension. Due to our focus on foreign wars. And because (somehow) we
don't have the $100 million (that's million, not billion) the CDC
asked for to do something about insuring the vaccine supply. Having
spent it all on our half trillion dollar war on terrorism. This is
totally frigging nuts.

SBH

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