Weapons Meet WMD Criteria

So at what point do you draw the line, Muaddib? What now? One by one we go and take out Iran, Syria, Lebanon, NK, or anywhere there could possibly be a terrorist?? Then maybe we can be safe? They killed 2,700 of us, and we killed how many people from another country who dared stand up to an invading force? 100,000? 150,000? When is full retribution granted here?

I draw the line at any dictator that indiscriminately kills millions of his own people. I draw the line at crimes against humanity. I draw the line because like the President, I'm not afraid to step up. I draw the line because I'm not going to cower here and postulate about how I would do this "If they came here," or do that "If they came here."

I draw the line and so does the President because the free Iraqi's are human too and deserving of life. Deserving of someone to come help them overthrow a tyrant that is systematically killing them. Men women and children. Children that now have a chance to grow and lead productive lives. My line is out there, I walk the walk, not just talk the talk and so does my President.
The war is about many things as most wars are. Not the least is the protection of endangered human lives. A noble pursuit and an admirable objective. The violation of the UN sanctions is the actual base reason, but I could care less about the toothless hound that is the UN. It is sitting here in our warm little livingrooms and allowing millions to die by one man's hand that is abhorrent to me and my kind.
It is all about protecting the innocent, the weak, the small little ones that have no say and can not speak when the gas comes rolling into their village and chokes their small lives away.
That is what it is all about.

Semper

You said semper in regards to us who oppose this war "you would not believe it if Jesus came back and brought you a 50 megaton warhead from Baghdad. " so I simply turned the question back around on you....if jesus himself said bush was wrong would you believe him?" There was nothing scarcastic about it....I am trying to point out as I have done before...you assert we have blinders on and so I am questioning yours.

I was being VERY VERY sarcastic Grover.

Figured you would get that.

My religious views are not pertinent to the conversation. But I would believe whatever Jesus said.

Again, it was meant in a sarcastic way. Sorry for the confusion.

Semper

those are noble ideals semper....too bad we apply them selectively. Sudan....Rawanda....Cambodia....Burma....Uganda... the list goes on of dictators and genocides whose actions we chose to ignore because they were not stragetically important to us....then there are our own crimes including 600,000 killed in the Phillipines after we took over from the spanish.

I have seen several comments related to the term "weapons of mass destruction" and the definition of that term. I believe you will find there to be no agreed definition of the term at all. The U.S. military has a definition (and uses it) that probably comes closer than any other: Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbers of people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives or nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but exclude the means of transporting or propelling the weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part of the weapon.

The problem with the phrase is that it originated in 1937 as a political phrase used to describe the aerial bombardment of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War. (The town was completely obliterated by conventional weapons delivered over several days.) Wikipedia carries an article on the phrase that probably explains its current useage as well as any:

en.wikipedia.org...

The term first came into general useage by the public to describe nuclear weapons and many people think that nuclear weapons are the only true weapons of mass destruction.

[edit on 9-7-2006 by Astronomer70]

Originally posted by grover
those are noble ideals semper....too bad we apply them selectively. Sudan....Rawanda....Cambodia....Burma....Uganda... the list goes on of dictators and genocides whose actions we chose to ignore because they were not stragetically important to us....then there are our own crimes including 600,000 killed in the Phillipines after we took over from the spanish.

Now you are going over the line... Tell us who was president during the Rwanda massacre?.... and i don't want to comment on your other exagerations and generalizations because then it would derail the thread..

Nice try to derail the thread grover... We are talking about wmd and was Saddam was doing.... let's not derail the topic....

[edit on 9-7-2006 by Muaddib]

There are many past instances of mistakes Grover. No one will deny that however;

We can never base our current nobility on any past actions, not even our own.

Whatever has happened in those places, has in fact happened and in no way can effect the outcome, the reason or the importance of Iraq. Every action taken must of a natural course, be judged by it's own merits. Seeing the faces of the little Iraqi children that may just live to grow up, that is reason enough for any man; if you ask me. Watching their eyes light up going into the schools we have built, seeing the faces of the women as they come in to vote for the first real time ever.

Honor is a singularly simplistic action, and must be for it to have any value at all.

Semper

it doesn't matter who the president was or is muaddib during any of those incidents, they were wrong. Again I am trying to point out something, not derail the thread. Semper pronounced noble ideals, ideals we tend to call american....but that they are also ideals we apply selectively. We have supported many a bloody regime because it was in our interest to do so and have ignored just as many because they weren't...if it weren't for oil we wouldn't give a rats ass about Iraq. It is this disconnect between our rhetoric and much prounced ideals and the actuality that fuels much of the resentment towards us in the world. If we would just shut up and behave like any other amoral regime (and all governments are amoral, make no mistake about it) it wouldn't matter so much, but we consider our ideals a major export....so we are scrutinized based on them. I repeat...if it weren't for oil we wouldn't give a rats ass about Iraq, Saddam Hussien or his long suffering people.

How much oil have we gotten from Iraq Grover?

531K gallons per day.
That is below Canada, number 1, Mexico, number 2 on and on.

Iraq is number 5 and slightly more than half of the number 4.

So your saying we are going to invade Canada next?


When does a lofty ideal, an honorable act, stop being such because some less honorable action was taken somewhere before?

So I was not able to close that last Homicide, means I should not investigate the next one?

Semper

Well said Grover. As blatant and unfeeling as it gets, but true.

Semperfortis it doesn't really matter whether or not we currently import oil from Iraq or not, the country represents a potential source of the stuff should we need it and it is therefore in our direct interest to have access to it, or control it. We can sugarcoat it in many other ways (and routinely do), but when it comes right down to it that is what really matters to us as a nation.

[edit on 9-7-2006 by Astronomer70]

You can also add, grover, Mr. Bush's revenge for Saddam Hussein trying to assassinate the elder Bush too.

If America was so concerned about "saving the little children" and building schools, they would have helped Sudan stop the genocidal war.

But as far as I'm concerned, I've feel that the U.S. government believes oil is more important than lives. That is why the U.S. mostly protected the areas of the oil repositories and not the civilians at all.

I'm concerned that the only WMD we have to be worry about is the spread of disinformation concerning "staying the course in Iraq".

And equating the weapons to WMD's is just another form of disinformation in my book.


About leaders killing people though: Mr. Bush, as governor, took more lives by virtue of the death penality than any other governor; Mr. Bush as President has tortured civilians, forced military tribunals on them (until Hamdan was ruled upon) and sent his own people as well as foreign nationals indefinitely to jail. He has a Congress which passed a resolution in effect censoring the press. He disregards the Geneva Convention. And until recently (2004), he used immunity so that any U.S. Soldiers would not be prosecuted for war crimes in the ICC. People who express dissent are arrested or carted away to "Free Speech Zones".

Not to mention the arrest of a filmmaker in Iraq by the U.S. military. This director was sent to a detainee camp indefinitely until he fought the government to get out. Now he's suing Rumsfeld for violating the Geneva Convention.

When do we draw the line with our own leader--if we are so concerned with the likes of other leaders from other countries who brutally do the same thing to their people?




[edit on 9-7-2006 by ceci2006]

I repeat...if it weren't for oil we wouldn't give a rats ass about Iraq, Saddam Hussien or his long suffering people.

How can you KNOW that?
How can you back up time and replay the scenario and observe the results? You can't. So this is an opinion, your opinion and one you are entitled to, but in no way fact.

It is however one huge talking point for the anti-war pacifist crowd and I would expect it to be as it is easy and convenient. Statements that are not provable are always the ones most spouted.

It is easy to not accept that we are over there for true lofty and honorable intentions; and just look for anything that is a HUGE power word, like oil, and continue to bash it into the heads of the public until they start stating it's a fact. Especially for the anti-war crowd.

I guess we went to Vietnam for the HUGE rubber tree export business? The anti-war crowd lost that one for us, must have been something. Wasn't oil, hmmmm, maybe the seafood market?
Sarcasm again, but the point is valid. You can always make up whatever silly excuse you want to to be against something.

Semper

Why do I keep reading statements that Hussein killed "millions" of his own people and it never seems to be questioned?

He's on trial for his crimes right now and the US has spent obscene amounts of money investigating his crimes, and training the team of prosecutors and judges. He's charged with ordering the deaths of 148 people. Why is he not being charged for the "millions" of people he killed?

Not singling anybody out because I see this argument used by many, but really, if you are trying to justify the invasion based on this shouldn't there be some evidence to support it?

make no mistake...as I have said many times I am an old hippy liberal and proud of it and my dreams and ideals are just as rooted in the American ideals and dreams as any conservative despite their rhetoric to the contrary, we liberals love our country just as much as they claim to do, but we don't question their love like they question ours, we accept it as a given. That being said, while I love my country I love my planet more and I have no illusions about our much prounced ideals and the disconnect between their pronouncement and their actuality, and I know what problems that causes. It is not blame America first like many knee jerk conservatives would have it....simply pointing out the reality.

thanks astronomer and you are also correct ceci

Semperfortis it doesn't really matter whether or not we currently import oil from Iraq or not, the country represents a potential source of the stuff should we need it and it is therefore in our direct interest to have access to it, or control it. We can sugarcoat it in many other ways (and routinely do), but when it comes right down to it that is what really matters to us as a nation.

So as we are, in theory at least, the largest potential oil deposit in the world, and the only thing keeping us from it are the tree-huggers,(I'm one by the way) we should attack Greenpeace?

Again, it is a convenient talking point and beaten to death.

We found WMD's, a military General, actually over there, told you they were WMD's, you don't believe it, you wont believe anything, so what's the point?

Semper

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe
Why do I keep reading statements that Hussein killed "millions" of his own people and it never seems to be questioned?

He's on trial for his crimes right now and the US has spent obscene amounts of money investigating his crimes, and training the team of prosecutors and judges. He's charged with ordering the deaths of 148 people. Why is he not being charged for the "millions" of people he killed?

Not singling anybody out because I see this argument used by many, but really, if you are trying to justify the invasion based on this shouldn't there be some evidence to support it?

Here ya go.
From the NY times that you all seem to love so much.

In the past two months, United Nations weapons inspections, mandated by American insistence that Mr. Hussein's pursuit of banned weapons be halted, have ranged widely across the country. But before this became the international community's only goal, Mr. Bush was also attacking Mr. Hussein as a murdering tyrant. It was this accusation that led the Iraqi leader to virtually empty his prisons on Oct. 20, giving Western reporters, admitted that day to Abu Ghraib, a first-hand glimpse of the slaughterhouse the country has become.

and

In the end, if an American-led invasion ousts Mr. Hussein, and especially if an attack is launched without convincing proof that Iraq is still harboring forbidden arms, history may judge that the stronger case was the one that needed no inspectors to confirm: that Saddam Hussein, in his 23 years in power, plunged this country into a bloodbath of medieval proportions, and exported some of that terror to his neighbors.

and

Approaching two million, including between 150,000 and 340,000 Iraqis and between 450,000 and 730,000 Iranians killed during the Iran-Iraq War. An estimated 1,000 Kuwaiti nationals killed following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. No conclusive figures for the number of Iraqis killed during the Gulf War, with estimates varying from as few as 1,500 to as many as 200,000. Over 100,000 Kurds killed or "disappeared". No reliable figures for the number of Iraqi dissidents and Shia Muslims killed during Hussein's reign, though estimates put the figure between 60,000 and 150,000. (Mass graves discovered following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 suggest that the total combined figure for Kurds, Shias and dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000). Approximately 500,000 Iraqi children dead because of international trade sanctions introduced following the Gulf War.

There ya go.

Semper

Semperfortis I fully agree with those of you that have posted comments saying in one way or another that we have indeed found WMD's in Iraq--I also have no doubt there are still other WMD's remaining to be found and/or that many were shipped out of the country prior to our invasion.

But which country started giving Iraq weapons in the first place? The United States, in order to fight against Iran during the Iran/Iraq War.

Originally posted by semperfortis
Here ya go.
From the NY times that you all seem to love so much.

Oh please... quotes without source articles?

Bad things happening at Abu Ghraib? Death tolls from the Iran/Iraq war?? Death tolls from the GULF WAR??? Child mortality numbers caused by SANCTIONS IMPOSED???

WHERE are the "millions" of Iraqi's killed by Saddam Hussein?

So you admit that Iraq had them?
If "we" gave them to them, they must have had them by your reckoning.

Or did they not have them?

Which is it?

I was given a gun, if I use it wrongly, is the giver at fault? No, I am.

But the point still stands Ceci, that you obviously believe that Iraq had WMD's. Welcome to the club.

Semper