On 7 Sep 2002 at 2:36, Hermit wrote:
>
> [Joe Dees] The threat of terror attacks must be forfended against, or
> 9/11's happen, or worse. In our new post-WTC world, where a small
> group of transnational terrorists can cause great catastrophe without
> significant prior warnings such as troop movements, etc., and then
> disappear either in the cataclysm or immediately following it, the
> only effective defence is pre-emption. <snip> These are the points
> that Henry Kissinger so ably made, and which you, or anyone else here,
> have so far failed to address.
>
> [Hermit] And when you are wrong? What does that make you? Ah yes, the
> aggressor against whom preemption is required. But when you are a
> small country being threatened by the US you need to work carefully.
> And then attacks like "911s happen - or worse."
>
If you are a small country consumed by a desire to atomically tweak the
cat's moustache, you will do so clandestinely, anyway; it is to be expected
that the cat will either pre-emptively defend itself or nuclearly annihilate
you if you should succeed in evading its notice prior to the attack. Which
would YOU prefer? I would greatly prefer conventional pre-emption to
nuclear annihilation, for us and for them. I'm just funny that way. Of
course, nuclear pyros such as yourself wanna see the big boom.
>
> I long ago suggested that your arguments could equally be used to
> justify us bombing Washington ourselves. Now you are at it again -
> justifying why others should be able to bomb Washington with impunity.
>
Yes, you ridiculously and ludicrously did, making less sense than
Scatflinger in the process. And the only threat Washington is posing is
against thse who are already conspiring to attack them, and others are - or
have you forgotten 9/11 less than a year later? The US cannot pre-empt a
planned attack or an attainment of nukes which they have not detected,
which of course means, considering the seriousness of cross-border pre-
emption, that prior to such pre-emptive moves, the US will have gained
substantial evidence of same. You don't think those envoys are going to
Russia, China, France and Germany to play tiddlywinks, now do you?
The argument that the US may not be able to detect all the threats out
there is no argument whatsoever for doing nothing to pre-emptively deal
with threats that HAVE genuinely been detected. The US will no longer
assume the thumb-up-the-ass posture and wait for the visitation of the
next cataclysm.
>
> Apropos of something, Libya and Iran are both seeking nuclear weapons
> and it is the considered opinion of those knowledgeable on the subject
> that Libya will acquire a nuclear capability long before Iraq has a
> chance of doing so. (And their development is occurring in bunkers
> designed to withstand nuclear attack). And of course, the US did
> attempt to assassinate Gadhafi, and instead killed his daughter - so
> according to the reasoning you have espoused here on Bush Senior,
> Gadhafi would be perfectly justified in attacking the US.
>
The only country to use WMD's against their neighbors in the last half-
century has been Iraq. They are also the only country that has used them
against their own citizens (a provision prohibiting that was not even
included in the treaty on chemical weapons, because it seemed
unthinkable). Qadaffi has moderated much in the last few years, as
opposed to Saddam Hussein. And we are hoping that the more moderate
and popular Khatami presidency will wax in influence as the influence of
the hardline Khameini-led clerics wanes - but if it doesn't, and they do
indeed begin to pose a much greater nuclear threat to others, we will be in
a much better geographic position to conventionally pre-empt such a
threat if we have already dealt with Iraq, and have troops there.
>
> So, does this mean that the US should attack Libya next? Or Iran? Or
> Israel? After all, we know that Israel has "weapons of mass
> destruction". But then, we do too. And as Gadhafi said "we demanded
> the dismantling of Israel's weapons of mass destruction, otherwise the
> Arabs have the right to be equipped with the same weaponry." (Al
> Jazeera TV 2002-03-25) And what exactly is wrong with this argument?
>
I do not think that at this point that Libya would use them offensively
against Israel or the US, nor do I think Qadaffi would give them to
terrorists, but we are indeed monitoring the situation at his hardened
underground facilities (which aren't hardened enough to withstand a
determined US strike should same be deemed necessary). The fact is
that Israel has had such weapons at Dimona for some time now, and has
not resorted to them, even when attacked by her neighbors (it has ably
enough defended itself by conventional means), nor is it anticipated that
Israel would do so unless its very existence were direly threatened. It has
handled its stewardship of such weapons responsibly. Such can not be
even remotely assumed of the likes of Saddam Hussein, who has
repeatedly demonstrated his recklessness, irresponsibility, aggression
and bloodthirstiness to the world at large. In fact, Israel rightly views
Saddam Hussein's obtaining of nuclear weapons as just such a dire threat
to their existence, and that is why it pre-emptively took out Iraq's French-
assisted Baghdad nuclear facility prior to it's going on line, to wide
condemnation at the time, but great appreciation thereafter, which has
only grown with the passage of time. Had they not done so, the self-styled
Saladinic Saddam Hussein would've been able to defend his annexation
of Kuwait with nukes; should he get them now, what's to deter him from
once again occupying Kuwait, and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula as
well? There is nothing strategially critical for Libya to occupy, and Iran
would have to go through iraq to do so (which is why we made the horrific
mistakes of supporting Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war and not dealing
decisively with him during the Gulf War).
>
> And if this argument is correct, what does it do to your impassioned
> demands for attacking Iraq - without the mandate which Jiang Zemin and
> Putin have both indicated appears undesirable and unnecessary. In
> company with most of the population of Europe who, according to some
> recent polls, consider Bush and Sharon more of a threat to world peace
> than Hussein. What makes you think they are wrong and you are right?
>
We shall see what positions those nations hold once they are privy to the
evidence we shall show them. As far as Europe goes, it was US force that
permitted them to live in their Elysian bubble, and they have done little to
protect or preserve it, even in their own Serbian back yard, depending
upon the reviled barbarian US to once again respond to their pleadings to
pull their fat out of the fire. History - the history of European appeasement
and denial and its horrific results - convince me that they are wrong once
again, just as the history of saddam Hussein does, and the impeccable
logic of Henry Kissinger, among the vast predominance of specialists in
the field.
>
> ----
> This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of
> Virus BBS.
> <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;thread
> id=26430>
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