I know why Einstein got kicked out, and you can make all the excuses that you want, but he was still kicked out. Bush might have gotten in to college with his dads help, you know all the power the a very JR. senator from TX has in Connecticut (you know where Yale is) and while his dad might have been able to get him in to school, it would not help him get out of school. Since there is only one Superpower now, and that is the US, and if France and the UK, had been able to keep a lid on nuclear weapons development, there would only have been 4 or 5 countries with this sort of tech. Hell the USSR did not even start selling its tech until about 15 years ago! because is wanted all its satieties to be completely dependent on it. granted the other guy argument is weak, but it was used in the US during the election, and I don?t remember Hitler ever running for any position in Iraq, but then again I went to a public school (open to everyone, I think they are called private in the UK) and did not pay all the much attention to my over worked and over paid teachers. And just because he uses the wrong word, and or makes up his own words, it is easy to ignore him, but it does not weaken or mitigate the argument that he is making, and it is the weak that attack the man and not the points. more hostile, I did not know that was possible, when they air hour after hour of anti bush/Blair news every night, what did they do add a second commentator so they could both talk at the same time about how stupid Bush is? I have never said/thought that either CNN or FNN are impartial, hell at times CNN is left of Pravda and when they are trying to be impartial they are just way off to the left of the political scale (at least in the US.) and FNN has never claimed (that I can recall) to be impartial, but also I don?t think that they are as far right as every one else thinks they are, but I do know that they lean, and likely slant the news, to the right. But they are selling something that people want, and they are buying it. While there was not a lot of interest for the US to get in evolved with WWI, we were selling both arms and ammo to both the UK and France, with out demanding payment up front and before shipment (more on this latter) long before we sent over soldiers. What is wrong with that, why should we have gone over there early and let the French leadership kill off every 5th man in a unit just because an attack failed? and yes the French did this on many occasions, and there is a great movie with Gregory Peck (I think cant find it in my dvd collection, the problem with having 500+) that tells the story of one such event. While the 20 Million dead Russians, and I have heard as high as 40 million, but I wander, did do a lot to stop Germany in WWII, if they have either been issued weapons to each solider, and if they had put leaders in charge instead of party members, and if they had given any of them some sort of training, they could have gotten away with one third the losses, not one third less, but one third total! And for the most part it was the Russian Winter that broke Hitler?s armies back, just like it did to Napoleon. yes the US only Helped win the war, if you count the total elimination of the German Manufacturing base as helping to win the war. Or if you ignore the fact that the US did almost all of the fighting in the Pacific and the Mitchell Bombers are the soul reason that Australia did not fall to Japan. And just for the record the US was selling weapons, and sending soldiers to UK to fight Germany long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. I don?t care if they did give back the Statue of Liberty, and all of the US troops were under French control in WWI I wonder how few would have been killed if the French had allowed the Army and Marines to use proper arty prep for a ground attack. There is a movie about the Lost Battalion where US troops were abandoned by the French in the Armenian(sp?) forest and survived for a month while being surround by the Germans, while the French could not even take any ground, as a mater of fact when they attacked they lost ground in that battle! And the French did not send the US any weapons or ammo, or Troops until they had been paid in full first, and the troops from France, while they did fight and die valiantly, did not get to the US, hell they did not even leave France until the US had the British troops on the slow retreat for almost 4 months! Did the French help yes, but all they did was shorten the war, after a winner was already decided. The British would have lost anyways. If you fail to see that bankrupting the USSR was a good thing, then you don?t understand the amount of people that they would have killed, and they have killed, in there war for Global Domination. I guess that for you since they are only killing Russians and or Chinese it is not worth doing anything, but for some of us it is. If you can remove all of the places where the terrorist hide and where they train, then it is the way to world peace. You will never get world peace by passing resolution after resolution, eventually you have to send soldiers and take the ground, or all you do is waste lives and money. And I am not going to post in this thread again, I am tired of defending the right thing, to those, not just you Sam, but others, to the people that are convinced that if we had left Sadam alone nothing would have happened. It did not work with Germany when he invaded France (before the war saying he only needed some breathing room, and was trying to reunite Germany) and it will not work here. Ignoring a problem does not allow it to go away, it allows it to grow stronger! Brad
if he's santa, no presents for me this year, thanks. personally, I think we should interrogate the hell out of him, then hang him in Baghdad square where the big statue of him was, and then let the Iraqi people have their way with his body.
Oh I love it But you should never take a discussion too seriously, 'cause then it gets too heated and this thread might be closed then.
My kids hate it though. They haven't won an argument with me yet. Mostly I outlast them and they give up True, it's best not to take this too seriously, it'll only rattle nerves. That's why I usually try to only argue on points I can prove - it also tends to calm people down.
Read this: http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/20/timep.affirm.action.tm/ Oh, I'm sorry. I got the jargon wrong. What has your post got to do with the fact that Bush could not name the leaders of countries with nuclear weapons? And wtf is a "satieties"? If you want to discuss things with people you have to make your posts understandable... Well that makes it alright then, doesn't it? Again, what point are you trying to make here? OK. I'll lay off Bush and his incredible intellect, and instead get stuck into his policies. Why did he he use WMD's as a reason to take Saddam out? Why did the US use fabricated evidence to try and implicate saddam in uranium smuggling? Why is he so anti-contraception in Africa? Erm, again- in English this time please? I think you're trying to say that the BBC has always been hostile to Bush. Well, I would have to disagree... Surely the point about "news" is that it should be facts, and not biased? And to be honest, American politics is so far to the right that it doesnt take much for something to be left of it! Great argument. "I saw this movie once, right..." . Go on, you can do better than that surely! In fact, now you mention it, I've got a song that goes "I'm so bored with the USA"....damn, can't find it- thats the problem with having so many mp3's... If, if, and if. Whats your point? They still stopped Hitler. So my point still stands, the US didnt win the war. Arty Prep? Whats that? Was he in a movie? Erm, Armenia is next to Russia and Iran. Look, this site has a map and everything: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/europe/armenia/armenia.htm I suppose you could always check your point (whatever it is) with imdb? What are you on about? Is this ye olde patented "i can't think of anything relevant so I'm going to splurge everything I know about history into one post" method of debate? No, I don't. And i must have missed their (as in belonging to, not as in "there are") "war for Global Domination". Is there a movie about it? OR, *shock* *Horror* we could educate people about the horrors of war. We could teach people not to hate based on colour, class, or creed. We could do unto others as we'd be done by. We could think about *why* "terrorists" do what they do, and eradicate the root causes. War only breeds hate, suffering, and malcontents. It feeds radicals. It destroys. It is not a good thing. Saddam had those inspectors so far up his backside he wouldn't have been able to do anything without us knowing about it. There was only one reason to take out Saddam, and it wasn't because he was a threat to the US, or Britain. Are you talking about the Anschluss? That was Austria, not France- and he didnt invade anyone untill he invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. Sam
</deep breath> blimey that post was bigger than I expected. Please, no one else post anything that gets my goat up- I'm trying not to get sucked back into this thread! Sam
the entire poitn i see in this argument is this: Saddam needed to be taken out...and then only thing the UN was doing was making more mandates... the man had bugged rooms and telephones thus allowing him to know where inspectors were going to be heading before they got there...he had 8 palatial estates totalling in 12 square miles that were "off limits" to inspectors...last i had heard UN inspectors had found 300,000 gallons of anthrax, and suspected he had 4 times as much... the man had gassed his own people. killing some 20,000, and used it on other people...for god's sake he was using mustard gas, i don't recall which internation agreement that banned that, but the last time that stuff was used was WWI, for a reason... also, he was rebuilding facilities that the UN had dismantled because they were used for his nuclear research program...UN inspectors said he would be able to develop nuclear weapons in 8 to 10 years...i believe that was '91...later they believed he would be able to develop them sooner than that...3 to 4 years... the UN proclaimed mandates, Saddam flagrantly defied them...case in point, ballistic missiles that would be against a UN mandate were being fired at our troops stationed outside his own country... the man had the capability for nuclear weapons, and there was no one to stop him...North Korea has a few very important players surrounding it, China, Russia, and Japan, all of them who, if threatened can handle themselves...Pakistan and India have each other by the throat...now Iraq if it were to develop nuclear weapons would have no one to stop it...there is no one with whom they'd have to deal with...Saddam could use these weapons and not fear any reprisal... he has harbored terrorist cells before, albeit his ties with al-qaeda are flimsy at best, he has terroristic ties...he harbored them...if you slowly start taking out places for terrorists to hide out, then you essentially eliminate them... i'm sorry, but the fact remains, he had the ability and the motivation to develop nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons in such irresponsible hands is simply unacceptable in my opinion...
lol. "Without any reprisal". Do you know what the range of a trident missile is? Its not like you need to be next door to fire one! Sam
now in all seriousness, would the destruction of his people be a true deterent for this man?...it might be for some sane leaders, but this man is not...he killed 20,000 of his own people.... if he sent a nuclear missile hurtling towards a US city quite a few people would view him as god's divine leader...that's all i need to know...
Saddam did *not* have the capabilities for Nuclear Weapons. Certainly none that could threaten the US. And anyway, I wouldn't trust Ariel Sharon with a nuke any more than I'd trust Saddam with one. Or Bush. Or Blair for that matter. Or anyone. No-one should have that kind of firepower. Sam PS Penski, I agree!
for god's sake man, he was rebuilding facilities, had capabilities for nuclear weapons, and was searching out means to build them...a defected scientist even said that he had resumed his nuclear program, while saddam paid lip service to the UN... i'm sorry to say that the UN has fallen into a body of inaction...the man flagrantly defied UN mandates, and what did the UN do?...imposed economic sanctions...well guess what they did...nothing...absolutely nothing... yes, they sent in inspectors, and that's a great idea...but for 11 years he had defied mandate after mandate, when is enough enough?...when do you stop with the niceties and actually act?...i understand perfectly that his ties to terrorism are rather flimsy, but the last thing the world needs is a rogue nation with a nuclear weapon maybe we were hasty in our actions, at that time, but when you're gambling with lives, namely thousands upon thousands of potential victims, it's not a gamble i'd be willing to take...i'd much rather deal with him now, than face the inevitability of a nuclear warhead finding a US city... you can disagree all you want, but when you're the sole superpower left in the world, it's basically you who set the rules..i don't like it, i'd like to believe that there really is no need for anymore war, but really, this modern era is the same as the past, only with bigger guns and more civilian losses... and don't even try and tell me that France and Germany had the right idea...it just so happens that the moral high ground and an economic impasse happened to coincide... i'm glad i scare you, if it weren't for people like me to counter your arguments, even if mine are piss-poor, then this wouldn't be much of a world, now would it?
i don't like nuclear weapons...i don't like any weapons...but the fact that remains is that we do have them... basically this all boils down to one thing, survival of the fittest....the world is just as savage as it was 5000 years ago, if not more so...we've just come to see it as a world that's more civilized...so, in order to prevent a loss of life, i'm very willing to take action... don't think i'm a close minded person, quite the contrary...but...when you come to threaten my way of life, then i am going to act...maybe i'm selfish, but put into the same position i believe that every single one of you would do the same thing...and if you don't think you would, you're only decieving yourself...survival is the most fundamental human attribute...
Iraq did not have a nuclear capability as we all think of it, but Saddam was trying to obtain the necessary equipment and had a very active nuclear program. * Bill Tierney is a formar UN inspector and served as an Iraq intelligence analyst with the US military. http://www.usainreview.com/4_2_Nuclear_Iraq.htm
that fact is enough to justify our action, atleast to me...maybe to others it would require a smoking gun, but i'd rather head it off now, than later
Offer me the proof and I shall believe it. No, I will not accept proof by assertion. Having said that, our countries respective leaders seem to think I will. I've been embroiled in posts like this far too many times, but here goes... 1) The person who continues to state the BBC news is an ultra-left anti-war propaganda machine has evidently not seen what the more left-wing mainstream press in this country has been saying (say Channel 4 news and the grauniad). The poster would also be appauled by the 'dastardly commie tendancies' among a large proportion of our country, especially in places such as my university, where student politics is fairly dominated by the left, and has a histroy of producing MPs. That is one thing that gives me slight relief from the aging complacency of 'New Labour' AKA the conservative party. 2) The USA the only super-power? How do you define super-power? The USA is within nuclear strike range from mainland China, China has a large enough population to produce a terrifying army. Their communists, and thus inherently evil, of course . However, China doesn't scare me anywhere near as much as the USA or Israel. 3) The implicit racism that is apparent in our societies is sickening. Only today there was a program about how Nancy Del'Olilio (or however you spell her name) was trying to bring a scheme to palestine and israel to encourage peace through football. She was invited to attend a scheme set up by the previous (liberal) prime minister of israel (who's name escapes me) which was similar to what she was intending on doing. This is of course very laudable, and the kind of idea that might actually help. I was shocked when they announced that they'd segregated the palestinians and israelis and they were all playing on opposing teams. It struck me as ridiculous implicit racism, and the kind of reason they're going to find it very hard to escape the bloodshed in that area. 4) No one has really done it in this thread yet, but in general it really pisses me off. The use of the word terrorists to describe the people carrying out attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. They aren't terrorists, they're freedom fighters opposing an illegal occupying force under international law. That doesn't quite fit with the propoganda though. 5) The person who thinks that the USA will achieve world peace through its 'war on terrorism'. You scare me. A lot. There is so much myopia in that statement, I want to scream. 6) It is probably best that they've now captured Saddam and even better alive. However, it's what they do next that is of crucial importance. They already seem to be getting it wrong, imo, Saddam will not have a fair trial by Iraqi law. I don't care if he killed 50million people or 5 people, if we're going to use our superior force to push our brand of 'democracy' and 'justice' on people then the least we should do is enforce a fair trial. We must lead by example. Victors' or revenge justice is going to be a disaster. It seems unlikely though, since the USA will not recognise the internation courts of justice. Blair's weak stance on this is lamentable considering how damned sure he was he was going to take us into an illegal war. The court should be an international one, as was recommended by a former international war crimes judge today. It could and probably should be conviened in Iraq, but without impartiality we are as bad as we make out them to be. 7) I'm not going to argue that Saddam shouldn't be deposed, it was done in a way that has caused my utter disapproval though. To try and justify it with ridiculous and 'spun' claims about WMDs and going without an international concordium is almost the worst example we could have set the world. 8) Bush is a muppet. Blair is a puppet. It saddens me to see people mix up being patriotic with unequivocally supporting governments. I love my country in lots of ways, I hate it in others. But I never let that be muddled with my loathing of government and our 'noble rulers'. Perhaps I'm being inflammatory with this point. But I don't care, free speech and all that: I hate dubya. I hate Blair. I hate our governements. There are so many reasons why. More than I care to delve into. 9) There are too many reactionary measures going on in our towns, cities, countries and internationally to this new threat of terrorism. There has to be a decent trade off so that your personal freedom isn't too adversely affected by 'terrorist threats'. 10) Until people get an approach to international politics even bordering on rational there'll never be peace. Anyone who thinks you can bulldozer yourself to peace is in my mind naive and a fool. I've written quite a lot now, and I won't go on further tonight other than to say. In the words of system of a down "**** the system". Alaric.
Enough about Bush's intelligence. Its an Urban Legend. Saddam was and is a tyrant. His people were terrified of him. Unfortunately, even the most horrible of people gain followers. It is the followers of Saddam that continue to fight. The public as a whole is glad to see him gone. The press, in general, is a liberal giant and will spin the truth anyway it see's fit.
