Jeez, listen to yourself: Are you saying that Israel is killling innocent civilians justly?!? Do I have to explain the difference between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys again? Maybe these civilians, like the victims of 9/11 or the London Underground bombings on 7/7 or the people in Northern Ireland are just ordinary people, who want to lead their peaceful lives, raise their families and then suddenly they are the victim of political circumstances that they never even had a hand in creating. Stop being so naive. Most Lebanese civilians are not on hand shaking, have-a-cup-of-tea terms with the Hezbollah. They don't even know where these people operate (otherwise they would be moving swiftly in the opposite direction right now, wouldn't they?). Just like most Northern Irish civilians are NOT in the habit of knowing where the IRA holds its meetings or stores its weapons. Carpet bombing Belfast was never considered an appropriate option; I don's see how Lebanon is different. You want Lebanon to not support the enemy of Israel? Israel not indiscriminately bombing the crap out of them would be a start. You cannot expect a government to take measures against extremists while its country's infrastructure is destroyed. You cannot expect civilians to reject your enemies while you are the one killing them. Seems pretty simple to me.
Ah, but there you get into the very root of organized terrorism. The terrorists are not government, they don't wear uniforms, and when they infiltrate a place most of the time even the local citizens aren't aware of who they are (see previous statements on the IRA). So, the great cycle. 1) infiltrate 2) provoke an actual government to attack you 3) blend in as 'just everyone else' getting attacked 4) provoke the people on your side to defend themselves against these 'invaders', talk about how we've all done nothing to deserve this 4.5) if you have the infrastructure and funding, offer humanitarian aid to those injured on your side 4.51) make your group look like heroes if you could do #4.5, as you're being helpful...and then help people draw the conclusion that that's why you're being attacked, because these infidels don't want your people to flourish. By making it 'us' vs. 'them,' you bring these people into the 'us' part. 5) stand back and watch full-on war break out against the 'oppressors' 6) feel smugly justified and that you've done God (or Allah)'s work By responding to Hezbollah's attack, Israel plays right into the strategy of terror. The terrorists are not clearly visible even to the Lebonese, all *they* know is that bombs are being dropped on them, just like all Heifa knows is that rockets are showering down. The problem is, the bomb droppers carry a flag, have a border, have a government...they're visible, and hezbollah is not. To kill hezbollah, you must kill a lot of people that are nowhere near being even related to them. To kill israel, well...if you're israeli, you're a target. You can't beat the terrorist by wielding the sword of a government. You beat the terrorist by wielding the olive branch of the people. Just because they are political does not make them representative, and that is the message missed by both the israeli government and my own.
And if Iran wanted to they could wipe Israel of the map. It's like everyone in the middle east is retarded or something. Firstly, there are reports of ambulence men being shot while saving civvies from cars that have been bombed while escaping southern lebanon, I've seen one of these ambulence drivers in a hospital, covered in bandages, still in his bloody uniform. While I agree that Israel is doing only a small ammount of the damage it could if it chose to, you cannot reasonably say that it hasn't unjustly harmed some civilians. Your logic regarding not supporting terrorism is wonky. The french supported terrorism in world war 2, they felt their country had been invaded and they fought that invasion. Whether you agree or disagree with it Hizbullah enjoys similar support that the french resistance did in parts of Lebanon, and many Lebanese people feel that they are, to use the old cliché, freedom fighters. As has been said before, you can't fight terrorism with bullets. Terrorism has a military-esque manifesation but its fed by the widespread support it enjoys. Israel needs to show that it's not trying to be the authoritarian in charge in the region, that includes not taking prisoners from across borders, Hizbullah or civilian.
Iran would have no possible way of wiping Israel off of the map.. They still don't have a real nuke just yet.. Israel on the other hand still has all of the 20-50 bombs that we gave them during the cold war.. Iran would be gone well before they had a chance to put even a dent into Israel.. Even if North Korea provided them with every nuke they have (estimated at 2-4 total), they're 1/10th the power that the Japan bombs were 60 years ago and they still don't have a missile that could carry the bomb due to weight issues.. The ones that Israel have are 10 times the power of the Japan bombs and fit onto the bottom of our F-16's.. you do the math.. This is what it comes down to.. This has been a land war for thousands and thousands of years.. forget religious here for a moment.. It's all been about land.. They want it.. They won't give it back.. But that's the key phrase.. "give it back".. This is all technicly "our" fault back in the late 40's for re-creating Israel as a nation.. I'm not saying that we made a mistake, but the world could have done things a bit differently.. Just like Iraq.. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have gone in and taken out So-damm-insane, but we anounced to the world a false reason.. why not just say, he's a bad person that's killing his own people just because he felt like it??? I'm done for the morning..
I'm reasonable sure that the US did not *give* Isreal nuclear weapons. IIRC they stole the fissionable material from us, and got some help on the design from sympathetic individuals within the governmnent, but did most of the actual work themselves. Building a functional nuclear weapon is difficult, but hardly impossible for any industrial nation. Getting the fissionable materials is the hard part, the rest is fairly straight-forward and known. The problem with you're arguement is that if we used that as the basis for invading countries we would have to invade about a third of the nations in the world. You'll notice no one lifted a finger when it was Rwanada and we could care less about Darfur and Somalia.
The French gave nuclear technology to Israel. They were on a guilt trip. It could be argued that we had a moral obligation to take out Saddam, but then again we could have not helped him into the saddle and kept him there in the first place. All that the Middle East has known from us is that we seriously meddled in, and screwed up their affairs for our own benefit. It tends not to like us for a reason.
It doesn't really matter tbh, estimates I've seen show them as having between 100 and 200 nukes, they have indigeonously developed the capacity to use them, they have nukes. Doesn't change a thing though, Israel is less then 30,000 square kilometres, if any nation ever invaded it one nuke would take the whole damn country out. Not to say that the invading country wouldn't suffer, but it'd be perfectly posssible given the tiny size and population of Israel.
Agreed.. There's no possible way for us to take out every bad person on the plannet.. Hell, So-Damm-Insane wasen't even close to the top of the list in terms of atrocities towards humans.. Hell, He's not even in the top 10.. He's still on the list of people in my book that don't deserve to share the planet with us.. (btw, G. W. Bush is on that list as well as downright evil people, just to put that into context..) My big concern is pretty simple.. Country A: We've got Nukes!! We've got Nukes!! We're building more as well as long range missiles with the capabilities to hit you with them.. Oh yeah, we're still technicly at war with you since the 60's.. I'm also a complete phycho that would more than likely be commited by any 2 bit phych med-student.. Country B: We haven't even been trying to develop Nukes for the past 10 years.. We haven't attacked anyone since you took away most of our capabilities.. (well, I tried to kill you daddy, but that was between him and me) Who do we go after? Country B.. The country with the least amount of global threat let alone to their own people at least at that moment.. "But they tried to kill our president's daddy" So now thousands and thousands of our own servicemen are dying because our president had a grudge against someone.. I hope him and Cheny impeached and then assasinated once he gets out of office.. (I say after they're out of office, because Cheny in office is scarrier to me than the idiot puppet Bush) "Most of our imports come from other countries" (2002 speach to the US auto companies)
But that is exactly why we went for Country B. We knew that the lion had no teeth. Saddam, like any tyrant, ruled by fear and intimidation. He was surrounded by enemy states as well as contenders to the throne within his own borders, so he had to make it appear as if he had a powerful, committed, well-equiped army and WMD. On the other hand, the UN (and particularly, the US) was leaning on him for exactly those reasons so he had to show that in fact, he had no WMD. Saddam's political manoeuvering and lack of co-operation with weapons inspectors was a result of his tight rope act in which he was trying to convince his enemies that he was armed and dangerous, while convincing the UN that he was in fact unarmed and harmless. Had he co-operated fully, he would have been revealed for the toothless, clawless lion he was. Of course, the US knew that. If Saddam had WMD, he would have given the inspectors the grand guided tour: nothing like showing off your might to make people back off. In fact, he would have paraded them down the street, Red Square style. The very fact that he was trying to hide something could have told anyone with half a brain that what he in fact was trying to hide, was that there was nothing to hide. When the US invaded they handed out some gas masks to their troops, but no particular measures were taken to suggest that they were worried about WMD. The US knew all along. But Country B. was the perfect patsy: someone that looked dangerous to all the world, but in fact was known to be harmless. To force him to submit to weapons inspections was a clever political manoeuver, because it put him in a double-bind scenario: if he played ball, he was emasculated for all the world to see and that would be the end of him; if he did not play ball, he would be a legitimate target for invasion and that would be the end of him also. It was a no-win situation. There were about ten reasons to invade Country B. (and I can list all of them), with oil at the top of the list, but none of them to do with any actual threat that he might have represented. However many people are still gullible enough to think that it was because he was a threat, or because he was an evil dictator, and that he did have WMD but managed to hide them --with his arch enemy Iran, of all places. And that oil or conflict investment had nothing to do with it, even though Paul Bremer's orders are the most blatant asset stripping of an entire friggin' country that has ever been witnessed. I mean, it is too dumb for words. We poke fun at Bush' intelligence, but the people who support him think he is smart. I am starting to wonder whether that possibly is because they are even dumber than him. For who else would the rationale "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad" (not true, btw) be a perfectly acceptable political rationale for going to war?
Bush being dumb is your opinion, he was elected 2 times, so I dont think he is all that dumb, Also, calling his supporters dumb isn't a good way to get your point across, I dont enjoy being called dumb because of my political views. And not that this thread should be about Iraq, but we didn't go to war because of Bush Sr., or desert storm as you put it, just liberal media crap.....we went to war because we thought he had WMD, something that George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, the UK, The Russians, French and Germans, and Hans Blix of the U.N. said existed. It seems everyones intellegence was wrong. Their is a difference between being wrong and doing wrong, were we wrong about wmd it would seem so, were we wrong for takeing saddam out of power, I dont think so at all. If thats dumb, lets put saddam back in power.......
bush did attempt to use the excuse of attempted patricide, iirc. no one said it was the ONLY reason he had for aggression. liberal media crap? that sounds like neo-con right-wing dogma to me no one will say taking out a despot is wrong, so stop being so jingoistic. having a suitable rationale after the fact does not absolve us from acting on faulty intel in the first place. would it be okay if you ran a stop sign but hit a guy walking across the street, but then finding out he was a wanted felon? sure, you commited vehicular manslaughter, but hey, it's okay because he's wanted in three states (for vehicular manslaughter)!
My apologies for the rant (and yes, it is my opinion). However being re-elected twice has not so much to do with being smart, as with being just smarter than the majority of the voters out there. And no matter which side of the political divide you are on, that's not so hard... As for other people's opinion on WMD: - U.N. reports submitted to the Security Council before the war by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency (which have been largely validated by U.S. weapons teams) found that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant and that there was no evidence to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N. inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War. Newt Gingrich' response was that approving Hans Blix as chief U.N. weapons inspector was a mistake made "even though he was clearly opposed to war and determined to buy time and find excuses for Saddam Hussein." It is nice to see politicians remain objective and rational... - The UK? Let's not start on the UK. The UK published the September Dossier on 24 September 2002. The paper, titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government", was part of a campaign by the government to bolster support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Its release date was brought forward due to increasing pressure from the media, and in the face of fierce criticism of the claim that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. Suffice it to say that this dossiers on Iraq's WMD has been derisively called the "Sexed Up Dossier". A 2003 briefing document for the Blair Labour government "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation" became known as the "Dodgy Dossier". It was issued to journalists on 3 February 2003 by Alastair Campbell, Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, and concerned Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Together with the earlier September Dossier, these documents were ultimately used by the government to justify its involvement in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Channel 4 News coined the term "Dodgy Dossier" when its reporters were made aware that much of the work had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources. The most notable source was an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi titled "Iraq's Security & Intelligence Network: A Guide & Analysis" which was published in the September 2002 issue of the Middle East Review of International Affairs and looked at the state of Iraq around the first Gulf war, 12 years ago. Whole sections of Marashi's writings on "Saddam's Special Security Organisation" were repeated verbatim --including typographical errors-- while certain amendments were made to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings (eg. "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq" became "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq", and "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" became "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes"). In its opening paragraph the briefing document claimed that it drew "upon a number of sources, including intelligence reports". Before the document's release it had been praised by Tony Blair and Colin Powell as further intelligence and quality research. The day after Channel 4's exposé, Tony Blair's office issued a statement admitting that a mistake was made in not crediting its sources, but did not concede that the quality of the documents's content was affected. I want you to pause and reflect on this. An official government document that formed the basis of something as serious as going to war, was basically a botched-together MS Word copy-and-paste plagiarising job unworthy of even a mediocre first year University student (who would be expelled for such an act, by the way). - The Clintons did indeed draw a similar line on WMD in Iraq as Bush. But at least they get the credit not to use it as an excuse for war motivated purely by economical self interest. - The other countries, by and large, supported the sensible solution: let the weapons inspectors do their work. It is only when their findings did not say what the Bush administration wanted to hear, that things got personal and the US decided to proceed with an invasion anyway. Either way, you have to admit that the reasoning behind "Saddam has WMD" seems incredibly stupid. It does not matter how many people made this reasoning error; if they sat down and thought about it for a second, they would have known that the only thing Saddam had to hide was that he had nothing to hide. But it is quite clear from the above that the US and UK government were working very hard to make a case to invade Iraq, by hook or by crook, making up the "intelligence" as they went along. However, if you wish to attribute intelligence to the Bush administration, that works for me as well. We can then interpret the above not as "misinterpreted intelligence" or (if you will) stupidity, but pure, deliberate, manipulative intent. So either it is stupid, or it is evil. Probably a bit of both. As for Saddam's "decomissioning" being a smart move: the violent death toll of Iraqi citizens is 76% (US estimate) to 250% (Lancet estimate) of that when Saddam was in power. The economy is 60% of what it was before (and declining), unemployment is unchanged at best, or doubled at worst estimate, inflation is spiralling up (although the currency is more stable on the global market, you can buy much less for it at home) and agriculture is struggling to support the population. Communicable diseases are on the rise as most hospitals are barely functioning, and literacy amongst children is actually declining as schools have mostly been destroyed in the war and they are mostly staying at home to work and support the family. Utilities are at 78% of what they were before (three years later!) and infrastructure is still not restored. Oh, and Iraq is a terrorist holiday destination now. Meanwhile, Bremer's order no. 39 allows for (1) privatisation of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) 'national treatment' -- which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds and the right to export these profits rather than re-invest them in the country; and (5) 40-year ownership licences. That's not dumb by the way; that's plain evil. The very dubious actions taken in this war have lost the US (and the UK) serious credibility as democratic nations. Every crime committed by some burnt-out, stressed-out psycho-soldier is now held up as a shining example to all jihadists out there to show what a depraved and hostile people we really are. Paradoxically every country in the Middle East now aspires to stocking up with --you guessed it-- WMD to prevent befalling the same fate as Iraq, as we obviously are loose cannons who can't be trusted to respect borders. And we now own this situation, and have to repair it while under fire. So you tell me: was overthrowing Saddam such a smart move? Is Iraq so much better off now? Is the Middle East more stable now? Are we in the West safer from terrorist attack?
Not going to disagree with the rest of your analysis, but this bit got my attention . I'm not sure quite how you think Saddam would have paraded his WMD, if he had them, Red Square style, and the fact that he didn't do that made it obvious that he didn't have them Surely had the US been given absolute concrete proof of the existence of WMD, such as that which would be provided by his parading of them, then Saddam would know the game was up as he would clearly be in defiance of UN resolutions and the US would act against him. A parade of his WMD would surely have just given the US its justification for war, as it would confirm its most stated fear about Iraq as being true. I can't help but feel a May Day parade of his weapons would have been a provocation to the US in particular and thumbing his nose at the international community in general, hardly something he's likely to do if he's like most dictators, as you often say, interested primarily in his own survival?
Back towards the Israel/Lebanon crisis here, I came across an interesting article about the bombing of the UN post which killed 4 of the unarmed UNIFIL observers, which suggests that the Israeli fire in very close proximity to the post may have been 'out of tactical necessity' - rather than deliberate targetting of the UN, fire may have been directed at Hezbollah fighters operating in close proximity to the UN position, who were doing so to draw Israeli fire onto the UN. http://www.nysun.com/article/36860?page_no=1
True, but North Korea does it, and gets away with it. Iran merrily removes seals from their nuclear processing facilities on a regular basis, and everybody is at pains neither to dismiss, nor discuss military options to deal with them. Because all the tough talk notwithstanding, nobody is going to invade anybody if it looks like they can put up a good fight (just look at Israel's charmed existence). So I think that if Saddam had put up May Day parades demonstrating sufficient power, that there would have been lots of verbal outrage, but very little military action.
I doubt also that Israel would deliberately target UN forces. Interesting though, that this was the nature of Kofi Annan's accusation. Obviously people are starting to think of Israel as a loose cannon... This is not helped by its statement that "the world authorises our bombing of Lebanon, because they haven't demanded a cease-fire", which has outraged the US and UN alike. Then again, everybody is doing what they want. The US is merrily shipping laser-guided bombs for Israel through UK airports without informing the UK government, and dismissed the dismay that the UK government expressed over this as no big deal.
I wouldn't be surprised if certain soldiers manning guns targetted UN troops. The outside world except for America seem to viewed with a huge ammount of hostiity and malevelence. Israel have gotten pretty good at firing those guns, yet they still hit foreigners every once in a while, a part of me does wonder if it's intention and certain troops being loose cannons, just like when that israeli cruiser blew up that family on the beach that everyone seems to have forgotten about.
Some more points of interest related to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon... http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/who-is-this-man.html To me the above is a very interesting (and unusual) piece of analysis, which seems to point at some degree of media manipulation on the part of Hezbollah, in as much as they seem to be providing 'rescue workers' and other individuals who are repeatedly photographed in dramatic and emotive poses in different locations, potentially posing for the benefit of the cameras. Clever propaganda uncovered, or just strong coincidence? Then some video, apparently from an IDF jet over Qana, that shows a Katyusha launcher firstly firing its rockets, then apparently driving inside a civilian building. The footage may be inconclusive, as it is broken up into sections (from the perspective, I'd say because the filming aircraft has flown over/past the vehicle and then had to turn round to to follow it, and as such may have been edited to cut out the turn), and of course its a youtube video which may lend doubts to its truthfulness...but its interesting all the same. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aur_DmTIw70 Lastly, UNIFIL reports on the fighting - suggestions of Hezbollah deliberately operating in the vicinity of UN positions, in order to draw Israeli fire onto the UN? 29th July 30th July 31st July
I think to focus on some possibly Hizbullah propaganda man is being a bit damn stupid to be frank. Hizbullah may be putting people in the right places at the right times, but unless they're burying corpses under 20tonnes of rubble too then I think Israel is still doing something very ****ing wrong. Maybe it is propoganda, but at least there's some truth behind it, unlike the crap we get from modern countries in the form of "spin" on half truthes and non-denials.
