On 8 Sep 2002 at 22:26, Hermit wrote:
>
> [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.
>
You call them the 'real criminals' as if Saddam Hussein pales by
comparison; 'nuff said!
>
> [Hermit] Your initial claim having been demonstrated as farcical, you
> appear to have segued away from your initial assertions to which I
> responded in this letter, introducing new and unsupported assertions.
>
No, my initial assertion was that Henry Kissinger makes a strong case for
pre-emptive action in a post-9/11 world; rather than respond to his
arguments, you deviated into your favorite anti-US, anti-Israeli rant.
>
> [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.
>
Actually, Saddam Hussein is the one who has provided the justifications for
US pre-emptive actions against him, by attacking the countries of Israel
and Kuwait, attempting to assassinate a former US president, Using
chemical weapons on both his own people and those of another country,
and pursuing nuclear weapons. Until he began pursuing such execrable
paths, the US had no beef with him.
>
> [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.
>
Percursors were provided that had many non-chemical-weapons uses;
Saddam Hussein is responsible for both applying them to the purpose of
manufacturing chemical weapons and for subsequently employing them to
kill masses of people.
>
> [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.
>
They do indeed possess nukes, at Dimona, but have never used them,
while Saddam Hussein is likely to do so should he obtain them. we thought
he was four years away prior to the Gulf War, and subsequently discovered
that he was less than a year away. That chance cannot be taken. It has
been reported that Saddam has been attempting to obtain high-quality
aluminum tubing needed to produce a fissile-material-purifying centrifuge,
and there is no other purpose for that tubing. In addition, there is evidence
of post-1998 construction at known nuclear weapons research sites in Iraq,
and he has been regularly meeting with his nuclear physicists.
>
> [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.
>
The 'tu quoque' is for you to answer the charge that Saddam Hussein is
flauting UN resolutions having to do with UN mandated inspections and the
pursuit of UN-prohibited WMD's by launching into a diatribe of 'Well, Israel
has ignored Un resolutions, too!" This 'tu quoque' does not affect one whit
the fact that Iraq has indulged in these UN-prohibited activities and ejected
its WMD inspectors.
>
> [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.
>
And the UN resolutions ignored by Israel have nothing to do with the case
against 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.
>
But they are true.
>
> [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?
>
Elsewhere in the world. There is a lot of it around. Many emigrated to the
US and Europe.
>
> [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.
>
They ARE indeed stateless, since they are an oppressed ethnic group that
has been denied the right of self-government. There has been a Kurdish
terror organization led by Ocalan that attacked Turkish interests, and they
responded with a campaign against them which ultimately led to Ocalan's
capture and death. I happen to think that sections of southeastern Turkey
and northwestern Iran, as well as northern Iraq, which are the Kurds'
traditional homeland, should be ceded for the creation of a state for the 30
million Kurds in the area.
>
> [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.
>
It might also tell us about the cold war alignments, which have recently
changed with the demise of the USSR and the democratization of Russia,
and the relatively greater willingness of the USSR and China to propose
trojan resolutions for propaganda purposes.
>
> [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?
>
Actually, Israel has returned most of the land it captured in the '67 and '73
wars, is at peace with two of the principles (Jordan and Egypt), and has
been negotiating the return of the Golan heights to Syria. When the West
bank was under Jordanian control, the Palestinians were not allowed by
Jordan to form their own state, but jordan never gets called on the fact.
The US is currently on record as supporting a Palestinian state.
>
> [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.
>
The self-interest of not just the US, but the entire global community is at
stake when the middle eastern supply is threatened by the possibility of an
Iraqi Arabian Peninsula invasion and annexation, followed by an Iraqi oil
chokeoff defended by Iraqi nukes, and world petroblackmail, as well as a
Saladinic nuclear strike against Israel or the US, which would prompt a
devastating response and embroil the entire planet in chaos..
>
> [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?
>
The UN resolutions regarding Iraq were passed subsequent to Iraq's
execrable behavior during the Gulf War and Saddam's subsequent
slaughter, employing, among other things, chemical WMD's, of his
country's own disenfranchized citizens in the north (Kurds) and south
(Shiites) in 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."
>
If that happened then, the position of the US subsequently underwent a
180 degree turn. The actions of Saddam Hussein are of much more
recent, and current, vintage.
>
> [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.
>
It was a classic exercise of the Monroe doctrine, and considering the
actions of Noriega, a necessity defence of the US actions is extremely
feasible, as it would be a forteriori with Iraq. even though Iraq, both directly
and indirectly, poses a much more serious danger to the world at large, the
Bush administration is nevertheless consulting with both the US Congress
(which is highly likely to approve of pre-emptive action against Iraq if the
UN fails to discharge its global responsibilities) and the UN on the matter,
and it remains to be seen whether or not the UN can retain its credibility by
insisting upon a firm deadline for the resumption of UNSCOM inspections.
If they cannot, then the US and britain will nevertheless be forced to act,
but no one can claim that they did not try the international approach
beforehand.
>
> [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.
>
I have defended it quite ably, you simply wish to have an argument about
the argument by first castigating the US and Israel rather than dealing with
the necessity of pre-emptive conventional regime change vis-a-vis iraq,
and then complain that it is I, not you, who strayed when I factually counter
such diversions. I believe that you indulge in such rampant segue-ing
because you know that you cannot refute the cost-benefit necessity of pre-
emptively changing the Iraqi regime in a post-9/11 world where the
previous international doctrines are woefully inadequate for the protection
of nation-states agaist a WMD terror aggression that can kill perhaps
millions, without discernible warning, and with the agents maintaining
relative anonymity. Such terror cannot be successfully dealt with by after-
the-fact reaction; it must be forfended.
>
> [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.
>
Your hatred for and bias against the US and Israel has been visible on this
list in your posts for a long, long time.
>
> [Hermit] No wonder you chickened out of a formal debate.
>
I am engaging in one now, since I finally lured the Memerically Infected
Mushroom out of his miasmic pit of BBS willful ignorance and malicious
animus.
> ----
> 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=26442>
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