On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:08:07 -0400, DSK wrote:

Dave Hall wrote:
Another glowing example why countries should not be ruled by
oppressive dictatorships; communist, socialist, or fascist.

And yet, here you are, cheerfully proclaiming that Bush & Cheney are our
ordained leaders regardless of whether they were elected last time or
"forced" to cancel the election this time...

Get over it. Bush WON the election fair and square, albeit by a very
slim margin. Every single recount, both official and unofficial, came
up with the same conclusion.


Lose the sarcasm. It doesn't help your credibility.

Ask me if I care. You are never going to learn anyway. Not about boats,
not about history, and damn sure not about politics.

You speak as if you have something to teach. I'll clue you in - You
don't.


... Besides, modern
liberalism didn't really start taking off until the 1960's. Although
they have been caught trying to "revise" history.

Like when?

In any event liberalism as a political concept dates back to the
earliest Renaissance.

I said "modern liberalism". The sort of warped left wing socialist
type that's emerged as today's liberal.


... Should the fact that innocents
often die in war, deter us from the greater common good?

What "greater good" are you talking about?


That should be plainly obvious. Ridding the world of a threat.

Like what?

Terrorism and those who aid and abet it.


In WW2 we were fighting a
declared war against nation-states. Civilian casualties were a
regrettable strategic necessity, once the imperative of destroying enemy
industries was established. Many people still do not accept it as axiomatic.


So why then should your well crafted thought here, not equally apply
today? Does the fact that the players play by a different set of rules
change the urgency or legitimacy of the mission?

The only players that go by a "different set of rules" are Bush &
Cheney. Terror tactics and suicide attacks have been around since Old
Testament times. Only the ignorant think they are something new.

They were pretty much low key and confined to local regions (The IRA
comes to mind). Al Qaeda has raised the ante by declaring war (Jihad)
against the western world (And that's not just the U.S.).



In this case, we invaded & occupied a sovereign nation for no logical
reason and with no serious justification.


The logic and justification are there. The problem is that you refuse
to accept it, for reasons which I'm sure you think are valid, but are
based on little more than your own personal beliefs.

OK... what was the threat? Where are the WMDs? Where are the links to Al
Queda?

Ask a citizen of Kuwait about the threat. WMD's? Probably buried in
the desert or in Syria. While Saddam had no part in 9/11 directly, he
has had past connections to other terrorist groups. That's a matter of
record.


So far, Bush & Cheney have claimed it's all true, but they have provided
no evidence. The 9/11 committee asked them repeatedly.

Well, some of the evidence may have been faulty, due to intelligence
blunders not just here but in some other countries as well. The Brits,
the Aussies, and us were pretty much in agreement with the "facts" as
we knew them at the time.

.. and in the course of that
war our military inadvertently killed over 10,000 civilians. It did
little or nothing to hasten the defeat of enemy armed forces.


Saddam's army is history. His WMD program is gone, the citizens of
Iraq have a chance at self governing. We've accomplished many of our
goals. I'm also not so sure that that 10,000 civilian casualty figure
is accurate.

No, it's probably closer to 15,000

"Probably" doesn't cut it.

Saddam's army was no threat to the U.S. His WMD's were gone since the
early 1990s.

You don't know that. You only helplessly cling to that as some sort of
security blanket.

Invading another country to install a democracy is not
acceptable... if that were the case, then the U.N. would be justified in
building a coalition to invade the U.S. based on the 2000 election.

A fairly won election?

Do you have ANY evidence to suggest that the election was anything
other than fair? Every count and recount that I've read shows Bush the
winner.

And you still want to call yourself a conservative? You sound like an
Al Gore lackey.


There was
little or no enemy industry to destroy, indeed we wanted to preserve the
most important (oil) so as to grab it quickly.


It's not important to destroy industries. The only reason to cripple
industry is to deprive the enemy the means to continue to wage war. In
the case of Iraq, the war was over so quickly, that there was no need
to knock our manufacturing and other support industries.

So why did we? That is where the "collateral damage" happened, in the
"shock & awe" bombing campaign to knock out Iraq's infrastructure (read:
roads, water & electric utilities).

To soften the army and limit their ability to maneuver and fight back.

By some amazing coincidence, the
contracts to rebuild that infrastructure have been mostly handed to
Halliburton and it's subsidiaries.

Then why are the insurgents kidnapping contractors from a multitude of
nations in order to intimidate them to leave the country? Halliburton
is not the only act in this play. They are concentrating on the oil
infrastructure, as this is their area of expertise. Of course you
won't know that because your biased news sources conveniently leave
out those little details, and continue to promote this theme of "War
for Halliburton profit" idea. More anti-capitalist propaganda.

Iraqi civilian deaths are a fact that the Bush/Cheney Cheerleaders will
not ever accept, but true nonetheless. Unfortunately this will influence
history for a long time to come.


I don't understand your duplicity here. In one paragraph you defend
the civilian casualties of WWII as "strategically necessary", yet you
bemoan the same statistic in Iraq. War is war.

You yourself just said, it was not necessary to knock out Iraq's
infrastructure. But we did. And caused 10,000+ civilian casualties doing it.

That 10,000 number has not been confirmed, nor has it been determined
who was killed by whom. Saddam was not above killing his own people
(or hiding behind them) for a political or tactical advantage. Knowing
just how accurate our arms are, I doubt that we had that much
collateral damage.


.... But ask yourself,
is the world better off with or without Saddam Hussein in power, with
his network of thugs aiding and abetting anti-western terrorists and
covertly developing WMD?

Considering the fact that Saddam was not aiding abetting anti-US
terrorists and had no credible WMD program?

Yes he was! Do you read anything that doesn't have a leftist spin to
it? Did you not see the terrorist camps that were discovered in
northern Iraq? Do you not remember the money that Saddam pledged to
terrorists who blew up Israeli targets? He has been VERY friendly to
terrorists in the past.

Yes, he's not the only one, but you have to start somewhere. The
bigger question is: are you ready to take the war against terror to
the next level?

I would like to see the U.S. take the war against terrorists to the 1st
level. So far, we did a pretty good job in Afghanistan but left it
unfinished, and then took a horribly wrong turn.

Afghanistan is still on-going. Because it's not front page news on
your liberal rags, doesn't mean that we're not still actively deployed
or that it is "unfinished". Iraq was not a wrong turn. Only those who
lack vision and understanding are unable to make the connection or
understand the dynamics of the plan.


IMHO if you're going to kill 10,000 people you'd better have proof. So
far Bush & Cheney have none.

If you are going to claim 10,000 people, you'd better have proof.


If you're going to divert hundreds of
millions of dollars, billions of man-hours, devote a major part of the
U.S.'s considerable military might, then the goal should be worth it.

It was.

So far, Bush & Cheney have no proof. They don't even have very good
evidence. And by some great coincidence, the war in Iraq has
tremendously enriched a lot of Cheney's former business partners as well
as completing GWB's personal vendetta against Saddam. If it looks like a
duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.... is it really a duck?

If we replaced Halliburton with some other company (assuming there was
another company who could do the work in the time frame required),
would that change your opinion?

Dave