[Joe Dees] Of course the ferocity and depth of your hatred for both the US and Israel was bound to come to the fore, but the fact that you hate them so much is no reason for them to allow a murderous and irresponsible despot, who hates the US and Israel no less than you do,
if not more, and has used WMD's before, on both his own citizens and those of another country, to develop nukes just to please you.
[Hermit] A rant. Based on a fallacy (that I "hate" Israel/USA). Which you self-evidently cannot support. Thus this putative argument fails.
[Hermit] Your initial claim having been demonstrated as farcical, you appear to have segued away from your initial assertiuons to which I responded in this letter, introducing new and unsupported asssertions.
[Hermit] If Saddam Hussein "hates" Israel and the USA, I'd suggest that the USA has provided him with more than adequate justification. Thus this putative argument fails.
[Hermit] The USA and NATO members provided the chemical weapons and the precursors for biological weapons to Iraq. At the time that Iraq deployed these weapons, the USA regarded Iraq as a valuable ally and partner. Despite evidence for such attacks being raised in the Congress and Senate when they were perpetrated, the US saw fit to ignore them at the time. Which smacked of expediency. To raise them now smacks even more of the same. Thus this putative argument fails.
[Hermit] There is no credible evidence that Iraq has nuclear weapons or the ability to acquire or produce them. There is credible evidence that Israel (which has previously attacked Iraq (and other Arab countries) when no state of war existed) has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Thus this putative argument fails.
[Joe Dees] A vile and vicious tu quoque is just a version of an ad hominem fallacy - didn't you know that?
[Hermit] Kindly demonstrate the "tu quoque". To simply assert its presence is not persuasive.
[Joe Dees] If I was to indulge in same, I could point out that more Jews have been expelled from Muslim countries than vice-versa, and that many more Palestinians have been murdered by Muslim governments than ever died at Israeli hands. And the largest group of stateless people are not the Palestinians, but the Kurds, whom Saddam has gassed and slaughtered in Iraq.
[Hermit] This has nothing to do with the "number" of UN resolutions which have been ignored, yet which you raised as demonstrating the justification for attacking Iraq.
[Hermit] Further I would appreciate it if you would provide facts to support your assertions. After all, on the face of it, both of your assertions appear ludicrous.
[Hermit] According to the Israeli census, there are not 5 million Jews in Israel of Middle Eastern parentage, so where did this greater number of Jews go?
[Hermit] According to the UNHCR, the kurds are not refugees (with or without right of return), neither are they stateless, and in any case, there are more Kurds in Turkey (which according to the Kurdish associations, has also killed more) than in Iraq.
[Joe Dees] But one could not pry you from your visceral anti-US and anti-Israel animus with a titanium crowbar, nor can many in the UN be separated from their emotional investment in US- and Israel-bashing, which explains many of the resolutions. The US was the real target of many of them; its support for Israel was simply used as a club with which to diplomatically bash it.
[Hermit] Support your assertions. This is an attempt to attack me rather than my argument. Which was simply that your assertion that because Iraq was in violation of 16 resolutions that they deserved to be attacked was assinine. Of the 248 vetoes recorded by the five Security Council members since the inception of the United Nations, the United States has cast 73 - the vast majority of them related to the Middle East. The United Kingdom comes second. France third. The USSR fourth and China fifth. Which might tell us something about the relative interest in global peace by each of these countries.
[Hermit] Is it not true that Israel is in contravention of International law, treaties and security council resolutions including resolutions affirmed by the US, and that no action has been taken to rectify these grave faults?
[Hermit] Yet the US appears to have interests both in oil supplies and in the continuation of the above situation by its client state, Israel. Which might suggest that all the "moral trumpeting" we are witnessing, and having to witness you repeating ad nauseam, is in fact to disguise the self-interest of the US.
[Hermit] Further, as you have argued that the UN operates not in search of peace and justice as is required by its charter, that it could well be argued that the resolutions against Iraq simply reflect the animus of the US against Iraq?
[Joe Dees] Of course, that same US government that Hermit condemns for greenlighting Indonesian oppression in East Timor when in fact a rogue member of the US military gave an unauthorized assent to an Indonesian policy there to which the US government was diametrically opposed,
[Hermit] But that is not what I said, was it? Have some facts before making invalid noises based on hearsay and assumption. In December 1975 the Security Council unanimously ordered Indonesia to withdraw its invading forces from East Timor "without delay" and called upon "all States to respect the territorial integrity of East Timor as well as the inalienable right of its people to self-determination." The US was, of course, party to that resolution. However, the US subsequently increased its shipments of arms to the aggressors, and accelerated the arms flow even further as the attack reached near-genocidal levels in 1978. Far from being "unauthorised", the biography of the US ambassador to the UN at the time says that they were following the instructions of the State Department, which sought to render the UN "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" and which "wished things to turn out as they did and worked to bring this about."
[Joe Dees] and deposing a drug-dealing, sword-waving despot in Panama after fulfilling a promise to cede them a strategically important canal that the US largly built,
[Hermit] I think you will find that according to the Grand Charter of the UN that this action was illegal. No matter how good the US believed her reasons to be.
[Joe Dees] is not given any credit whatsoever by the Hermster for protecting Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and northern and southern Iraq, for liberating them in Kuwait, and for having its troops murdered trying to feed them in Somalia.
[Hermit] The sentence construction appears confused here. But then, this appears all of a piece with your general confusion. I didn't mention the invention of the Steam Jenny, Caesar's invasion of Gaul or the discovery of the tomb of Isus here either. For the same reason. They were largely irrelevant to refuting your putative argument. Which I notice that you have resoundingly failed to defend.
[Joe Dees] Your hatred for the US has poisoned your mind to the point that you are no longer capable of logical cogitation where she is concerned.
[Hermit] More unsupported name calling.
[Hermit] No wonder you chickened out of a formal debate.
---- 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;threadid=26442>
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