On 14 Sep 2002 at 18:37, Hermit wrote:
>
> [quote from: Joe on 2002-09-14 at 12:52:05]
> On 14 Sep 2002 at 7:19, Hermit wrote:
>
> >
> > Introduction
> >
> > His favorite daytime television programs having failed to deliver
> > the hard evidence that Joe Dees needed to make a compelling \"case
> > to action\", he is now echoing the latest administration calls for a
> > \"new\" approach to global relations. One based on the perception
> > that some people are too \"evil\" to be permitted to rule. Joe Dees
> > should know that all evil is in the eye of the beholder - other than
> > where we have an established and accepted law in order to permit the
> > establishment of an objective perspective. As I shall show in this
> > essay, we do have such law, and it does not support the actions that
> > Joe Dees is advocating. In addition, I am going to show that nobody,
> > not least the United States, will benefit from the advocated action.
> >
> You obvously did not read the essay I posted, or else you are so
> entrenched in your unfortunate position that you would turn a blind
> eye to these manifest atrocities.
>
> [Hermit] I did and I don't. We have a postulated mechanism, the
> International Court for Crimes Against Humanity. We should be putting
> all those accused up for trial in this appropriate forum. Not
> attempting to subourne it or illegally going to war over unproven
> accusations.
>
And how do you suppose we should accomlish that? By sending in the
English bobbies? Wrong; it will require going in and getting him.
>
> > > Pragmatic Issues > > 1) The Kurds are largely
> brutish, tribal, religious fanatics who > strongly support Al Qu'aeda
> (who are reportedly present in Northern > Iraq) and who are reportedly
> instigating attacks from there against > the regime of Saddam Hussein
> - and who are presumably dealing with > like minded groups to develop
> attacks against the US. Thus \"Operation > Shield\" has and is
> undoubtedly harming the US. > Actually, the Kurds have been attempting
> to establish a democratic system in the northern no-fly-zone area, and
> have captured several Al Quaeda operatives (cf. the essay I posted).
>
> [Hermit] Substantiate please. Refer also \"Re:Current News: Kurdish
> extremist leader arrested at airport\", Hermit, Reply #162 on:
> 2002-09-13
> (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadi
> d=11541;start=150)
>
http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/020325fa_FACT1
Page 13-14:
Over dinner one night, Salih argued that the Kurds should not be
regarded with pity. "I don't think one has to tap into the Wilsonian
streak in American foreign policy in order to find a rationale for
helping the Kurds," he said. "Helping the Kurds would mean an
opportunity to study the problems caused by weapons of mass
destruction."
Salih, who is forty-one, often speaks bluntly, and is savvy about
Washington's enduring interest in ending the reign of Saddam
Hussein. Unwilling publicly to exhort the United States to take
military action, Salih is aware that the peshmerga would be obvious
allies of an American military strike against Iraq; other Kurds have
been making that argument for years. It is not often noted in
Washington policy circles, but the Kurds already hold a vast swath
of territory inside the country”including two important dams whose
destruction could flood Baghdad”and have at least seventy
thousand men under arms. In addition, the two main Kurdish parties
are members of the Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National
Congress, which is headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a London-based
Shiite businessman; at the moment, though, relations between
Chalabi and the Kurdish leaders are contentious.
Kurds I talked to throughout Kurdistan were enthusiastic about the
idea of joining an American-led alliance against Saddam Hussein,
and serving as the northern-Iraqi equivalent of Afghanistan's
Northern Alliance. President Bush's State of the Union Message, in
which he denounced Iraq as the linchpin of an "axis of evil," had had
an electric effect on every Kurd I met who heard the speech. In the
same speech, President Bush made reference to Iraq's murder of
"thousands of its own citizens”leaving the bodies of mothers
huddled over their dead children." General Simko Dizayee, the chief
of staff of the peshmerga, told me, "Bush's speech filled our hearts
with hope."
Prime Minister Salih expressed his views diplomatically. "We
support democratic transformation in Iraq," he said” half smiling,
because he knows that there is no chance of that occurring unless
Saddam is removed. But until America commits itself to removing
Saddam, he said, "we're living on the razor's edge. Before
Washington even wakes up in the morning, we could have ten
thousand dead." This is the Kurdish conundrum: the Iraqi military is
weaker than the American military, but the Iraqis are stronger than
the Kurds. Seven hundred Iraqi tanks face the Kurdish safe haven,
according to peshmerga commanders.
General Mustafa Said Qadir, the peshmerga leader, put it this way:
"We have a problem. If the Americans attack Saddam and don't get
him, we're going to get gassed. If the Americans decided to do it, we
would be thankful. This is the Kurdish dream. But it has to be done
carefully."
The Kurdish leadership worries, in short, that an American mistake
could cost the Kurds what they have created, however inadvertently:
a nearly independent state for themselves in northern Iraq. "We
would like to be our own nation," Salih told me. "But we are realists.
All we want is to be partners of the Arabs of Iraq in building a
secular, democratic, federal country." Later, he added, "We are
proud of ourselves. We have inherited a devastated country. It's not
easy what we are trying to achieve. We had no democratic
institutions, we didn't have a legal culture, we did not have a strong
military. From that situation, this is a remarkable success story."
{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT="}
The Kurdish regional government, to be sure, is not a Vermont town
meeting. The leaders of the two parties, Massoud Barzani and Jalal
Talabani, are safe in their jobs. But there is a free press here, and
separation of mosque and state, and schools are being built and
pensions are being paid. In Erbil and in Sulaimaniya, the Kurds have
built playgrounds on the ruins of Iraqi Army torture centers. "If
America is indeed looking for Muslims who are eager to become
democratic and are eager to counter the effects of Islamic
fundamentalism, then it should be looking here," Salih said.
> > 2) Saddam Hussein is not in control of Northern Iraq because the US
> > is protecting the Kurds. Thus the ongoing campaign against Baghdad
> > is counterproductive in that it has and is providing a safe haven
> > for avowed enemies of the United States. Thus advocacy of continuing
> > or extending Operation Shield is arguably harming the US.
> >
> The position of the Kurds, as outlined in that essay you REALLY should
> read, is one of support for the US tempered with disillusion
> occasioned by our nonsupport of their post-Gulf-War revolt.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. You do not address the points raised, nor do
> you substantiate your position.
>
I addressed the contention that the Kurds were enemies of the US by
countering that they regarded us as fickle, but as friends. The
substantialtion in the aforementioned article, follows:
My peshmerga escort took me to the roof of a building overlooking
the Kalak Bridge and, beyond it, the Iraqi lines. Without binoculars,
we could see Iraqi tanks on the hills in front of us. A local official
named Muhammad Najar joined us; he told me that the Iraqi forces
arrayed there were elements of the Army's Jerusalem brigade, a
reserve unit established by Saddam with the stated purpose of
liberating Jerusalem from the Israelis. Other peshmerga joined us. It
was a brilliantly sunny day, and we were enjoying the weather. A
man named Aziz Khader, gazing at the plain before us, said, "When I
look across here, I imagine American tanks coming down across this
plain going to Baghdad." His friends smiled and said,
"Inshallah"”God willing. Another man said, "The U.S. is the lord of
the world."
Ismail wore slippers and a blanket around his shoulders. He was
ascetic in appearance and, at the same time, ostentatiously smug. He
appeared to be amused by the presence of an American. He told the
investigators that he would not talk to the C.I.A. The Kurdish
investigators laughed and said they wished that I were from the
C.I.A.
>
>> > 3) The US administration was
> apparently heavily involved in > facilitating access to biological
> weapons (for which there are no > \"dual uses\") and possibly
> sponsoring the use of chemical weapons by > Iraq. The US
> administration undoubtedly prevented attempts by the > International
> community and Congress to address or prevent this. When > this gets to
> court, assuming that the US does not simply engage in > murder - as is
> currently (and illegally her stated intention) - the US > involvement
> will become explicit. Will those political commanders > currently
> employed by dubya's administration to \"mastermind\" Gulf War > part
> III, and who were allegedly involved in this process during the >
> Reagan and Bush administrations also be arraigned for crimes against >
> humanity? Either way, it seems that our hypocrisy is going to become >
> embarrassingly apparent. I am not sure how this is going to be
> \"good\" > for the US. > Not only will Hermit stoop to blaming the
> victime (the Kurds), he stoops to eviscerating those who would rescue
> them from their victimized position via a regime change.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. You do not address the points raised, nor do
> you substantiate your position. Instead you levy ad hominem at me.
>
I fairly describe your own ad hominem.
> >
> > 4) The arguments which the US have used for investing the territory
> > and overthrowing the governments of other nations is already being
> > used by other nations to justify similar action. Thus as predicted,
> > US actions and arguments have already had a massively destabilizing
> > effect. I am not sure how a more dangerous world is good for the US.
> >
> What other nations? Unsupported contentions are just that -
> unsupported.
>
> [Hermit] False accusation of lack of support. The story has been
> posted in the CoV's forum for such material. Refer \"Using the US'
> arguments: Russia Rams Home Strikes Warning to Georgia\", Hermit,
> Reply #159 on: 2002-09-12
> (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadi
> d=11541;start=150)
>
They are warning Georgis that unless they clear out the terrorists that
have migrated into their territory, Russia will be forced to do so for them.
Hardly unreasonable.
> >
> > 5) As Afghanistan, which is rapidly reverting to the same \"rule by
> > warlords\" (and indeed, the same warlords) which enabled the
> > creation of the Taliban in the first place, clearly demonstrates,
> > the US does not have the technical capability to instantiate
> > \"democracy\" or even to control the situation in Islamic countries.
> > And her presence in such countries is sufficient to generate an
> > ongoing recruiting effect for organizations prepared to encourage
> > acts of terror within the US. Thus these actions are massively
> > unhelpful to the \"war on terror.\" I am not sure how this is good
> > for the US.
> >
> We do need to do more in Afghanistan (as Kofi Annan stated) to
> expand the new Karzai government's control of the countryside. I am
> hopeful that we will indeed do so.
>
> [Hermit] Hope is not a sufficient argument to overturn evidence or the
> objection. Thus it stands.
>
You furnished no evidence, just opinion; you have a nasty habit of
conlating and confusing the two. You have presented no evidence that
the Afghanistan action has resulted in increased terrorist recruitment, nor
have you established that the US lacks the technical capacity to intantiate
democracy in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I not that the US was very
successful in doing so in Germany and Japan, post-WW II.
>
> > > 6) As I predicted, and as the quarterly
> report > (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,791314,00.html)
> from the > US Federal Reserve reflects, the US is unable to afford the
> cost of > the actions she is already involved in, and this is causing
> global > economic catastrophe. Action which further destabilizes the
> Gulf > Region could see the cost of oil (which has already doubled to
> around > $30 per barrel) rising to around $40 per barrel even without
> a war. > This would have the effect of producing negative growth in
> the US. > Should Saudi Arabia collapse, even if the US steals the
> Iraqi oil, the > cost per barrel would rise to $80 to $90 per barrel.
> I am not sure how > this can be good for the US. > Ths cost of oil
> would skyrocket were Iraq to seize Saudi Arabia. The temporary
> increase in price that might result from our moving to change the
> regime in Iraq is a short-term burden we must be willing to bear for
> long-term security and stability.
>
> [Hermit] No credible military analyst considers this even slightly
> possible, never mind probable. Saudi Arabia has the best equipped
> military in the peninsula and the best airforce. Iraq has a collection
> of broken down 15 year old equipment and no spares - and effectively
> no airforce. It is not possible. Even if they were sufficiently insane
> to attempt it (and there is no evidence that they are) they know that
> they would be beaten back by the combined forces of the World. If you
> *believe* differently, as your assertion here appears to reflect, you
> will need to substantiate your grounds for holding your *beliefs*. I
> saw it on CNN, or some third rate neocon told me are not a reason for
> a conclusion to transcend belief.
>
The successful pursuit of nukes would drastically change the situation you
incompletely describe, as would the Iraqi deployment of the chemical and
biological weapons they already possess.
>
> > 7) Meanwhile, considered analysis suggests that we are less secure
> > than we were prior to the attacks on the use in 2001. Public opinion
> > also reflects this. I am not sure how this reality suggests that
> > increasing our enemies would be sensible.
> >
> Not only do 67% of the US population belive that the Congress has
> handles the war on terror well, 75% believe that Bush has, and 84%
> believe that the American people have. In addition, 58% of the
> American people now support the use of US troops to force a regime
> change in Iraq (Gallup poll). To depose that ruthless tyrant from his
> throne of power would eliminate our most dangerous enemy in the
> region.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. Your reply does not address how secure or
> insecure the US is, or feels.
>
It addresses US approval for current and contemplated future actions,
which is the base measure (and a new poll rasis the approval rating for US
action in Iraq to 75%).
>
>Despite your assertions and some $37.7
> billion dollars spent so far in this financial year, FAS and the
> \"Department of Homeland Security\" both assess the risks as being
> higher, not lower. In addition, I recall the claimed popular support
> for such illegal attacks as being in the 80% range at one time.
>
Immediately post-9/11. It is almost that high again.
>
> A far
> cry from the figures you provided.
>
Pretty damned close, now.
>
> In addition, wanting to go to war
> does not indicate security, but rather the kind of deepseated fear and
> insecurity you appear to have been displaying since 9/11. This is also
> reflected by respected research organizations (as opposed to Gallup).
> For example, the Pew Research Center's Report, One Year Later: New
> Yorkers More Troubled, Washingtonians More On Edge
> (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=160) which
> completely inverts your assertions.
>
Of course US citizens quite reasonably fear a nuclear-capable Iraq led by
Saddam Hussein, which is precisely why they overwhelmingly support pre-
emptive regime change there.
> >
> > 8) Given the evidence already available (e.g.
> > [urlhttp://www.commondreams.org/views02/0601-01.htm]\"The Bush 9/11
> > Scandal for Dummies \"[/url], it appears that there are serious
> > questions that require answers. I am not sure that such questions
> > will even be asked in a country which remains continuously at war
> > and where far too many of its citizens have decided, along with
> > government, that they can dispense with historic constitutional
> > protections put there for very good reason. I am not sure how this
> > can be good for the US.
> >
> The US has been largely at peace between the end of the Gulf War and
> 9/11; it is our enemies who have waged constant warfare against us
> during that period, and it is beyond high time that we responded to
> them in kind.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive and deliberate side-tracking. What you must mean
> is that you cannot understand why you have so very many enemies and do
> not understand newspeak. I cannot remember the last time the US was
> attacked by some other country. I can count the number of times she
> has deployed troops. Do some research.
>
I did, and I successfully refuted your contention that the US has been at
constant war for the last ten tears; it is simply not true. Deploying
peacekeepers when requested to do so by the UN does not count.
> >
> > 9) Should the United States defeat Iraq and presumably dispose of
> > the Ba'thist party, the United States claims to have no answer to
> > how they would govern Iraq, or how they would prevent the multiple
> > religious and tribal groupings in the region, fully as fanatical as
> > Hermit, from causing rapid disintegration without deploying several
> > hundred thousand \"peace keepers\" in the region. As Iraq is already
> > devastated by US sponsored sanctions, which if her economy were
> > functioning at 1990 levels would take 100 years for them to pay off,
> > it is difficult to imagine how this \"peace force\" would be paid
> > for, and thus it is unlikely that it would be effective. I am not
> > sure how this can be good for the US.
> >
> We will find a way. There is a history of civilization and culture in
> Iraq (blighted by their present despot) which was not present in
> Afghanistan; I predict that the difficulties that Hermit envisions
> will be much less than he supposes, just as they have been in
> Afghanistan (Hermit's prophecy quotient is historically sadly
> lacking). I also predict that people will be dancing in the Baghdad
> streets in joy and gratitude for their US- sponsored liberation from
> Saddam, just as they did in the Kabul streets when the yoke of the
> taliban was removed from their necks.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. Unmarked editing of a a post is invalid,
> improper and dishonest. But then we knew that.
>
There was an error in your post concerning who the real fanatic was here;
I merely corrected it.
>
> Additional assertions
> about prior unsupported assertions do not make them valid or address
> argument.
>
But your arguments are rife with unsupported assertions and oracular
predictions from someone whose prognosticatory abilities, as I stated
above, have historically proven to be sadly lacking. Apparently, you wish
to establish a double standard by means of which you are permitted to do
so while I am not; I will not let you get away with it.
>
> You have already acknowledged that the US is going to have
> to substantially increase its presence in Afghanistan, at exactly the
> the time that her star is on the wane, her erstwhile allies reverting
> to banditry, her troops needed elsewhere and her economy collapsing.
> You cannot refute this and thus are attempting to fiddle as a
> distraction.
>
With 1.4 million troops under arms, we can easily manage to keep
sufficient troops (~30,000) in Iraq while devoting 250, 000 to an Iraqi
regime change. And most of the citizens throughout Iraq support their
loya jirga elected Karzai administration; after a lone gunman failed in an
assassination attempt on President Karzai in Kandahar, the spiritual home
of the taliban movement, a crowd of demonstrators marched through the
streets of the city shouting, "Long live Karzai!"
> >
> > 10) US actions are believed by most of the world to have been
> > demonstrated to be comprised of equal parts of hypocrisy,
> > self-interest and naked greed. We are already complicit in the
> > murder of millions of Iraqi citizens, and hundreds of thousands of
> > other people who identify the US as \"them.\" We are accused of
> > serious war crimes in Afghanistan. We stand accused of massively
> > supporting many of the most repressive regimes on Earth, not least
> > Israel. Tapes of bin Laden accusing the US of massive prejudice
> > against Islam due to their actions in Israel are now public,
> > removing the grounds for the claim that this had nothing to do with
> > 911. Another war with Iraq will undoubtedly result in further
> > deaths. Possibly large numbers of them. This cannot reduce the urge
> > by others to \"punish\" or \"take revenge\" on the US. I am not sure
> > how this can be good for the US.
> >
> The mistaken and self-salving beliefs of meme-infested fanatics (read
> the fine essays The Future of Political Islam by Graham E. Fuller or
> Al Quaeda's Fantasy Ideology by Lee Harris) and jealous US beneficiary
> weaklings (read the excellent essays Europe: Grow Up On Iraq by Andrew
> Sullivan or Power and Weakness by Robert Kagan or The Lonely
> Superpower by Samuel P. Huntington) are not to be given credence or
> force. The proverbial and dreaded 'rage of the Arab streets' is quick
> to manifest, but as fickle as the flight of a butterfly, and generally
> abandons losers rather quickly; US resolve, OTOH, is slow to jell but
> steadfast and sustaining once it has formed, as it has in this case.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. Bigotry is never a responsive argument.
>
It is not bigotry to note historical fact, except in the minds of those who are
prejudiced against such reportage when it inconveniently contradicts their
position. I referenced my remarks thoroughly and comprehensively. >
>
> > 11) It is quite clear, that if their political masters do not
> > interfere too much (and that is very far from certain), and if
> > appropriate support is provided (and the administration is looking
> > for a \"cheap war\" given that our tactical stores are depleted and
> > many of our aircraft are in desperate need of replacement or
> > refurbishment due to unplanned use - and congressional reluctance to
> > make the necessary replacements while it was possible, along with a
> > huge shortage of money to do so now), that the US military is
> > capable of overcoming any short-term resistance which Iraq is
> > capable of generating. It is not clear how this tactical reality can
> > be turned to a strategic purpose. Strategy has to involve more than
> > \"eliminate Hussein.\" Yet, so far as we are aware, that is all the
> > guidance received to date from the US administration. As far as we
> > can tell the thinking appears to be to leave men on the ground
> > indefinitely, attempting to hold an hostile country under control.
> > As any experienced commander - or military historian - can tell you,
> > this is a recipe for being bled to death by rat and mice bites.
> > Unless US military equipment and lives are regarded as disposable, I
> > am sure that this would not be good for the US.
> >
> The US is currently resupplying its arsenals, and your claim that a
> post- Hussein Iraq would be hostile territory holds no more credence
> than your same mistaken claim concerning Afghanistan. I envisage the
> Iraqi people as being extremely grateful to their US liberators for
> being relieved of their crushing burden of brutality and fear.
>
> [Hermit] Your unsupported opinion seems almost irrelevant in the
> chorus of concern emanating from the US military and research
> institutes locally and globally, some posted in CoV forums. Your
> assertions about the situation on the ground appears to be based on
> heavily censored US news sources. \"But not only has the government
> tried to control people's minds, they've copped to controlling the
> media, too. Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's plan to infiltrate
> America's newsrooms, was such a success that former CIA director
> William Colby boasted, \"the Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone
> of any major significance in the major media.\" Carl Bernstein
> substantiated this, revealing that hundreds of journalists and news
> organizations were involved in this subversion. And though officials
> have admitted to planting fabrications in the past, it seems they're
> still at it. Remember the story about the terrorist's passport
> surviving the fiery crash into the World Trade Center? What could
> that be but government-issued pabulum? And what else but full-scale
> public brainwashing accounts for the rash of Stepford Citizen Syndrome
> spreading throughout the country?\"
> http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/05_stepford.html
> and \"Anyone who claims the US media didn’t censor itself is kidding
> you. It wasn’t a matter of government pressure but a reluctance to
> criticize anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast
> majority of the people. And this isn’t just a CNN issue--every
> journalist who was in any way involved in 9/11 is partly
> responsible.\" Rena Golden
> (http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/cnn-war.htm), the executive
> vice-president and general manager of CNN International.
>
Your claim that the sources the positions of which you approve are
unbiased and valid while those that present embarrasssingly inconvenient
contrafactual information are either ignorant or malevolent is a
Scatflingeresque conspiracy-theory extremist position. I already
addressed this propensity in my phenomenology of extremism.
>
> > Legal
> >
> > 1) When somebody asserts \"pre-emption\" the evidence has to be
> > overwhelming lest the pre-emptor become the aggressor. This is why
> > the grand Charter of the UN does not permit preemption. The UN, and
> > many other nations, including Iraq's neighbors, along with most of
> > the reputedly competent security analysis organizations (e.g.
> > Jane’s, Rand, FAS, BAAS, IAS) have repeatedly stated that there is
> > no evidence that Iraq poses a threat to her neighbors, never mind to
> > the US. There is also no believable evidence of intent. Saddam
> > Hussein is fully aware that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or possibly even
> > Iran, with no help from the US, could overrun Iraq today, and there
> > is little he could do to prevent it. To the best of my knowledge,
> > nobody has presented history or speech, that indicates that Saddam
> > Hussein has ever held anything other than regional aspirations. And
> > those are utterly irrelevant in the Middle East of today. Even the
> > UK is not seeking to present evidence that Iraq poses any credible
> > threat to her or the US, but is instead arguing, as does Joe Dees,
> > that Saddam Hussein should not be allowed to govern, because he is a
> > very nasty man and he might acquire some nasty weaponry somewhere,
> > somehow, which might make him dangerous. This may be true. And
> > certainly, he might be tempted to wield a blow against those
> > threatening him if this ever were to happen. But a concatenation of
> > \"ifs\" is not evidence of danger and the world is full of nasty
> > people. Besides, the reality is that he is fully aware that such an
> > attempt would not have much effect (even if some WMD equipped nation
> > opened the doors to their arsenals to him, no weapon systems he is
> > likely to be able to deploy would have more than a symbolic effect
> > in the greater scale of things) and it would almost certainly result
> > in the destruction of Iraq, himself and his aspirations.
> >
> We have clear and telling evidence that he has long been attempting to
> gain nuclear capability (cf Bush's UN speech), and the achievement of
> such a capacity would disastrously tip the power balance in the
> Mideast region. In a post-9/11 world, where a small group of agents
> or terrorists can quickly cause massive devastation by deploying
> WMD's, pre- emption is the only reasonable alternative to appeasement
> and capitualtion in the face of terror or the threat of it that it
> seems possible to evolve (cf: Henry Kissinger's excellent essay on the
> topic). And if Saddam Hussein wishes to make an indelible Saladinic
> mark in the annals of history, he may indeed be willing to sacrifice
> his life to do so (he has historically shown no compunctions
> concerning the sacrifice of Iraqis); plus, he is prone to cataclysmic
> miscalculation. To allow him to achieve a nuclear capacity is a risk
> that cost-benefit analysis entails we dare not take.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive.
>
Completely and absolutely responsive and refutational, your oft-repeated
mindless mantra notwithstanding.
>
> All support lacking.
>
The UN speech and the Kissinger article are evidence that this is patently
untrue.
>
> What dubya said is
> evidence of a demented monkey determined on war throwing a dilemma at
> the UN (refer e.g. \"America has put the UN in a no-win situation\"
> (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,791357,00.html)) . Not
> proof of Iraq's capabilities or intentions.
>
The opinion of your 'unbiased' (snort! cackle!) usual source, the misnamed
Guardian, a ready supplier of ad hominem fallacies for you to employ.
>
> > > 2) It should be noted
> that the Grand Charter has the same weight in > the US law as US law
> itself (as do all other treaties signed by the > US)- and thus action,
> which contravenes the charter of the UN, is > unconstitutional. When
> such action is performed or advocated by those > who have sworn to
> defend the constitution, this constitutes treason. > Seeing as Joe
> Dees continuously raises his stint as a junior > technician in the US
> military, is it fair to presume that he took an > oath to defend the
> constitution? If this is the case, it might also be > worth asking why
> he is continuously engaging in advocating treason > while
> simultaneously accusing others of insisting that the US behave >
> lawfully of un-American or even anti-American behavior? Of course, the
> > same question should be asked of dubya. > The US has historically
> assumed those peacekeeping and aggression- deterring tasks that the
> rest of the world was unable or unwilling to take on, and usually at
> their request. The UN has been asked to save itself from irrelevancy;
> we shall see whether it possesses the backbone and resolve to do so.
> Hermit wasn't too enthusiastic about our saving the Bosnians from the
> Serbs, either, when Europe lacked the will to clean up its own back
> yard.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. Does not address legal implications. Introduces
> deliberate side tracks and distortions.
>
That membotic mantra again, when the filters close to valid and sound
points that the memebot cannot, must not, allow himself to see. My
response presents the present situation succinctly and cogently.
> >
> > 3) Like any other accused, Saddam Hussein should be considered as
> > innocent until proven guilty and while in office is protected from
> > prosecution, by international agreement. The only exception to this
> > is for \"crimes against humanity\" which might be brought against
> > him in the new court established for this purpose, which the US, for
> > understandable if not good reasons is attempting to emasculate -
> > just as they have emasculated dozens of other international
> > treaties. The action being taken by the US in an attempt to protect
> > US and Israeli nationals from prosecution could be used by Saddam
> > Hussein to avoid prosecution.
> >
> There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal of the
> first order; he is, for one thing, the only leader alive to have
> commanded the use of chemical weapons against civilian women and
> children.
>
> [Hermit] And this is \"proven\" where? Official US reports and action
> in the security council indicated that Iran was guilty of deployment,
> not Iraq. Were we lying then? Or mistaken? How do you know that we are
> not lying or mistaken now? Have you noticed that the US has been
> accused of using biochemical warfare in her Asian wars, nuclear
> warfare in every combat zone where depleted Uraniam shells have been
> used and deploying prohibited weapons on her own population during
> various tests and in riot situations? Until a court exists to try such
> assertions, they will remain, \"unknown.\" So far as I am aware,
> Saddam Hussein has not been accused of personal involvement. Then too,
> neither has dubya. But as CIC, dubya stands accused of warcrimes too.
> As is Sharon, personally and through proxy. Why not put them all in
> the dock together? Then your assertions might be seen to be more
> persuasive.
>
Here comes some gassing quotes from that essay to reopen your almost
immediately reclosed eyes:
The attack had ebbed by about two o'clock, and Nasreen made her
way carefully upstairs to the kitchen, to get the food for the family.
"At the end of the bombing, the sound changed," she said. "It wasn't
so loud. It was like pieces of metal just dropping without exploding.
We didn't know why it was so quiet."
A short distance away, in a neighborhood still called the Julakan, or
Jewish quarter, even though Halabja's Jews left for Israel in the
nineteen-fifties, a middle-aged man named Muhammad came up
from his own cellar and saw an unusual sight: "A helicopter had
come back to the town, and the soldiers were throwing white pieces
of paper out the side." In retrospect, he understood that they were
measuring wind speed and direction. Nearby, a man named Awat
Omer, who was twenty at the time, was overwhelmed by a smell of
garlic and apples.
Nasreen gathered the food quickly, but she, too, noticed a series of
odd smells carried into the house by the wind. "At first, it smelled
bad, like garbage," she said. "And then it was a good smell, like
sweet apples. Then like eggs." Before she went downstairs, she
happened to check on a caged partridge that her father kept in the
house. "The bird was dying," she said. "It was on its side." She
looked out the window. "It was very quiet, but the animals were
dying. The sheep and goats were dying." Nasreen ran to the cellar. "I
told everybody there was something wrong. There was something
wrong with the air."
The people in the cellar were panicked. They had fled downstairs to
escape the bombardment, and it was difficult to abandon their
shelter. Only splinters of light penetrated the basement, but the dark
provided a strange comfort. "We wanted to stay in hiding, even
though we were getting sick," Nasreen said. She felt a sharp pain in
her eyes, like stabbing needles. "My sister came close to my face and
said, 'Your eyes are very red.' Then the children started throwing up.
They kept throwing up. They were in so much pain, and crying so
much. They were crying all the time. My mother was crying. Then
the old people started throwing up."
Chemical weapons had been dropped on Halabja by the Iraqi Air
Force, which understood that any underground shelter would
become a gas chamber. "My uncle said we should go outside,"
Nasreen said. "We knew there were chemicals in the air. We were
getting red eyes, and some of us had liquid coming out of them. We
decided to run." Nasreen and her relatives stepped outside gingerly.
"Our cow was lying on its side," she recalled. "It was breathing very
fast, as if it had been running. The leaves were falling off the trees,
even though it was spring. The partridge was dead. There were
smoke clouds around, clinging to the ground. The gas was heavier
than the air, and it was finding the wells and going down the wells."
The family judged the direction of the wind, and decided to run the
opposite way. Running proved difficult. "The children couldn't walk,
they were so sick," Nasreen said. "They were exhausted from
throwing up. We carried them in our arms."
{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT="}
Across the city, other families were making similar decisions. Nouri
Hama Ali, who lived in the northern part of town, decided to lead his
family in the direction of Anab, a collective settlement on the
outskirts of Halabja that housed Kurds displaced when the Iraqi
Army destroyed their villages. "On the road to Anab, many of the
women and children began to die," Nouri told me. "The chemical
clouds were on the ground. They were heavy. We could see them."
People were dying all around, he said. When a child could not go on,
the parents, becoming hysterical with fear, abandoned him. "Many
children were left on the ground, by the side of the road. Old people
as well. They were running, then they would stop breathing and die."
Nasreen's family did not move quickly. "We wanted to wash
ourselves off and find water to drink," she said. "We wanted to wash
the faces of the children who were vomiting. The children were
crying for water. There was powder on the ground, white. We
couldn't decide whether to drink the water or not, but some people
drank the water from the well they were so thirsty."
They ran in a panic through the city, Nasreen recalled, in the
direction of Anab. The bombardment continued intermittently, Air
Force planes circling overhead. "People were showing different
symptoms. One person touched some of the powder, and her skin
started bubbling."
A truck came by, driven by a neighbor. People threw themselves
aboard. "We saw people lying frozen on the ground," Nasreen told
me. "There was a small baby on the ground, away from her mother. I
thought they were both sleeping. But she had dropped the baby and
then died. And I think the baby tried to crawl away, but it died, too.
It looked like everyone was sleeping."
At that moment, Nasreen believed that she and her family would
make it to high ground and live. Then the truck stopped. "The driver
said he couldn't go on, and he wandered away. He left his wife in the
back of the truck. He told us to flee if we could. The chemicals
affected his brain, because why else would someone abandon his
family?"
As heavy clouds of gas smothered the city, people became sick and
confused. Awat Omer was trapped in his cellar with his family; he
said that his brother began laughing uncontrollably and then stripped
off his clothes, and soon afterward he died. As night fell, the family's
children grew sicker”too sick to move.
Nasreen's husband could not be found, and she began to think that
all was lost. She led the children who were able to walk up the road.
In another neighborhood, Muhammad Ahmed Fattah, who was
twenty, was overwhelmed by an oddly sweet odor of sulfur, and he,
too, realized that he must evacuate his family; there were about a
hundred and sixty people wedged into the cellar. "I saw the bomb
drop," Muhammad told me. "It was about thirty metres from the
house. I shut the door to the cellar. There was shouting and crying in
the cellar, and then people became short of breath." One of the first
to be stricken by the gas was Muhammad's brother Salah. "His eyes
were pink," Muhammad recalled. "There was something coming out
of his eyes. He was so thirsty he was demanding water." Others in
the basement began suffering tremors.
March 16th was supposed to be Muhammad's wedding day. "Every
preparation was done," he said. His fiancée, a woman named Bahar
Jamal, was among the first in the cellar to die. "She was crying very
hard," Muhammad recalled. "I tried to calm her down. I told her it
was just the usual artillery shells, but it didn't smell the usual way
weapons smelled. She was smart, she knew what was happening.
She died on the stairs. Her father tried to help her, but it was too
late."
Death came quickly to others as well. A woman named Hamida
Mahmoud tried to save her two-year-old daughter by allowing her to
nurse from her breast. Hamida thought that the baby wouldn't
breathe in the gas if she was nursing, Muhammad said, adding, "The
baby's name was Dashneh. She nursed for a long time. Her mother
died while she was nursing. But she kept nursing." By the time
Muhammad decided to go outside, most of the people in the
basement were unconscious; many were dead, including his parents
and three of his siblings.
Nasreen said that on the road to Anab all was confusion. She and the
children were running toward the hills, but they were going blind.
"The children were crying, 'We can't see! My eyes are bleeding!' " In
the chaos, the family got separated. Nasreen's mother and father
were both lost. Nasreen and several of her cousins and siblings
inadvertently led the younger children in a circle, back into the city.
Someone”she doesn't know who”led them away from the city
again and up a hill, to a small mosque, where they sought shelter.
"But we didn't stay in the mosque, because we thought it would be a
target," Nasreen said. They went to a small house nearby, and
Nasreen scrambled to find food and water for the children. By then,
it was night, and she was exhausted.
{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT="}
Bakhtiar, Nasreen's husband, was frantic. Outside the city when the
attacks started, he had spent much of the day searching for his wife
and the rest of his family. He had acquired from a clinic two
syringes of atropine, a drug that helps to counter the effects of nerve
agents. He injected himself with one of the syringes, and set out to
find Nasreen. He had no hope. "My plan was to bury her," he said.
"At least I should bury my new wife."
After hours of searching, Bakhtiar met some neighbors, who
remembered seeing Nasreen and the children moving toward the
mosque on the hill. "I called out the name Nasreen," he said. "I heard
crying, and I went inside the house. When I got there, I found that
Nasreen was alive but blind. Everybody was blind."
Nasreen had lost her sight about an hour or two before Bakhtiar
found her. She had been searching the house for food, so that she
could feed the children, when her eyesight failed. "I found some
milk and I felt my way to them and then I found their mouths and
gave them milk," she said.
Bakhtiar organized the children. "I wanted to bring them to the well.
I washed their heads. I took them two by two and washed their
heads. Some of them couldn't come. They couldn't control their
muscles."
Bakhtiar still had one syringe of atropine, but he did not inject his
wife; she was not the worst off in the group. "There was a woman
named Asme, who was my neighbor," Bakhtiar recalled. "She was
not able to breathe. She was yelling and she was running into a wall,
crashing her head into a wall. I gave the atropine to this woman."
Asme died soon afterward. "I could have used it for Nasreen,"
Bakhtiar said. "I could have."
After the Iraqi bombardment subsided, the Iranians managed to
retake Halabja, and they evacuated many of the sick, including
Nasreen and the others in her family, to hospitals in Tehran.
Nasreen was blind for twenty days. "I was thinking the whole time,
Where is my family? But I was blind. I couldn't do anything. I asked
my husband about my mother, but he said he didn't know anything.
He was looking in hospitals, he said. He was avoiding the question."
The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the Red Cross,
began compiling books of photographs, pictures of the dead in
Halabja. "The Red Crescent has an album of the people who were
buried in Iran," Nasreen said. "And we found my mother in one of
the albums." Her father, she discovered, was alive but permanently
blinded. Five of her siblings, including Rangeen, had died.
Nasreen would live, the doctors said, but she kept a secret from
Bakhtiar: "When I was in the hospital, I started menstruating. It
wouldn't stop. I kept bleeding. We don't talk about this in our
society, but eventually a lot of women in the hospital confessed they
were also menstruating and couldn't stop." Doctors gave her drugs
that stopped the bleeding, but they told her that she would be unable
to bear children.
Nasreen stayed in Iran for several months, but eventually she and
Bakhtiar returned to Kurdistan. She didn't believe the doctors who
told her that she would be infertile, and in 1991 she gave birth to a
boy. "We named him Arazoo," she said. Arazoo means hope in
Kurdish. "He was healthy at first, but he had a hole in his heart. He
died at the age of three months."
And to re-emphasize why we must pre-emptively prevent Saddam Hussein
from getting his talons on nukes, another quote:
A few weeks ago, after my return from Iraq, I stopped by the Israeli
Embassy in Washington to see the Ambassador, David Ivry. In 1981,
Ivry, who then led Israel's Air Force, commanded Operation Opera,
the strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. The
action was ordered by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who
believed that by hitting the reactor shortly before it went online he
could stop Iraq from building an atomic bomb. After the attack,
Israel was condemned for what the Times called "inexcusable and
short-sighted aggression." Today, though, Israel's action is widely
regarded as an act of muscular arms control. "In retrospect, the
Israeli strike bought us a decade," Gary Milhollin, of the Wisconsin
Project, said. "I think if the Israelis had not hit the reactor the Iraqis
would have had bombs by 1990"”the year Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Today, a satellite photograph of the Osirak site hangs on a wall in
Ivry's office. The inscription reads, "For General David Ivry”With
thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi
nuclear program in 1981, which made our job much easier in Desert
Storm." It is signed "Dick Cheney."
"Preëmption is always a positive," Ivry said.
Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a
nuclear power. After the Osirak attack, he rebuilt, redoubled his
efforts, and dispersed his facilities. Those who have followed
Saddam's progress believe that no single strike today would
eradicate his nuclear program. I talked about this prospect last fall
with August Hanning, the chief of the B.N.D., the German
intelligence agency, in Berlin. We met in the new glass-and-steel
Chancellery, overlooking the renovated Reichstag.
The Germans have a special interest in Saddam's intentions. German
industry is well represented in the ranks of foreign companies that
have aided Saddam's nonconventional-weapons programs, and the
German government has been publicly regretful. Hanning told me
that his agency had taken the lead in exposing the companies that
helped Iraq build a poison-gas factory at Samarra. The Germans also
feel, for the most obvious reasons, a special responsibility to Israel's
security, and this, too, motivates their desire to expose Iraq's
weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Hanning is tall, thin, and
almost translucently white. He is sparing with words, but he does not
equivocate. "It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb in
three years," he said.
There is some debate among arms-control experts about exactly
when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no
disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon, and a
nuclear-armed Iraq would alter forever the balance of power in the
Middle East. "The first thing that occurs to any military planner is
force protection," Charles Duelfer told me. "If your assessment of
the threat is chemical or biological, you can get individual protective
equipment and warning systems. If you think he's going to use a
nuclear weapon, where are you going to concentrate your forces?"
There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or
with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons. When I talked
about Saddam's past with the medical geneticist Christine Gosden,
she said, "Please understand, the Kurds were for practice." {PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT="}
> >
> > 4) If we were to accept the arguments which the US (and Joe Dees
> > acting as dubya's second poodle) have attempted to use against Iraq
> > as having any validity, they could easily be used to justify any
> > action against any other nation (in contravention of the Grand
> > Charter). As such, unless it can be shown that politicians with no
> > oversight have miraculously become trustworthy, the world will
> > become a more dangerous place. I am quite sure this will not be good
> > for the US - which currently appears to have the best politicians
> > that money can buy.
> >
> The Saddam regime possesses or is close to possessing two key
> prerequisites that other nations do not simultaneously possess: motive
> and opportunity. He is driven by hatred and a personal sense of
> fateful grandeur, and he is actively developing the means to indelibly
> etch his name in the annals of history forevermore. We simply cannot
> allow him to achieve such a cataclysmic ambition.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. The supposed \"evilness\" of the criminal does
> not justify an illegal response.
>
The danger of such weapons being in the hands of one so evil, however,
does justify a conventional pre-emptive response to forfend mass WMD
slaughter at the hands of one who has proven his willingness to use them.
> >
> > Summation
> >
> > Yes the US has suffered grievous harms. Not least those self-imposed
> > and most certainly many triggered by the perception held of her by
> > much of the remainder of the world. While it is true that not all of
> > that perspective is accurate, much of it is. For example, the US has
> > repeatedly proven herself an untrustworthy aid source, a very
> > unreliable partner and a very ill-behaved debtor. And this invites
> > retribution from the innumerable people and groups who perceive
> > themselves as having been harmed or prejudiced by her actions. I
> > would argue that this is a far more visible, insidious and much
> > greater danger than those which the action which Joe Dees advocates
> > is intended to forefend.
> >
> And you would argue in biased error. The US, or any other country, is
> not perfect, or even in principle perfectible, but it has been the
> greatest force for freedom, security and prosperity in the world for a
> long, long time.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. Unsupported assertions by Joe Dees, apparently
> based only in bigotry and belief. Others believe differently, and have
> argued that the US is the country most responsible for evils range
> from the cold war and global poverty, to being the primary cause of
> supposed \"global warming\". Your assertion does not address the
> contentions made.
>
It does not, perhaps, address the anti-US bigotries you parade on proud
display, except to refute them.
The 'cold war' was engaged in by two sides, and the right side won.
The US should indeed sign on to the Kyoto treaty, but that has nothing
whatsoever to do with the necessity for pre-emptive conventional regime
change in Iraq.
>
> The fact that its actions have not always been perfect (an
> unrealizable ideal, anyway) is no reason for it to allow an
> implacable, hate-filled and miscalculation-prone despot to develop the
> nuclear means to do it massive harm. In fact, the two are not even
> related - in other words, it does not follow.
>
> [Hermit] Unresponsive. Does not address relative dangers or risk
> assessment.
>
The cost-benefit analysis is as follows; if a regime change in Iraq would
cost 50,000 lives (and most estimates are far lower than this), but a
nuclear exchange would cost ten million, and there were only a ten
percent chance that Saddam would use such weapons once he developed
or obtained them, the cost-benefit analysis is still twenty-to-one in favor of
pre-emptive action.
> >
> > For these reasons and all those itemized above, ranging from the
> > purely pragmatic to the preeminent legal, it is clear that serious
> > issues remain to be addressed within the United States, and in her
> > relationships with other nations, before attempting to deal with one
> > of many tin-pot dictators - including if he is in that category, or
> > even in some more \"special class\", with Saddam Hussein.
> >
> There is scant time to waste before dealing with Saddam becomes
> incalculably more costly than it presently is. We wasted such time
> with Bin Laden, with disastrous results; having painfully learned that
> lesson at the cost of 3000 lives, we will not again repeat such a
> horrific mistake.
>
> [Hermit] Assuming that you have argued your way past the objections
> and then blythely asserting \"urgency\" doers not make a case which it
> is now evident that you cannot. > > It should also be clear that
> precipitate action is not in the best > interests of the United States
> and that those advocating such actions, > while they may imagine that
> they have her best interests at heart are > doing her no favors. >
> Those who are doing the US no favors are those who counsel doing
> nothing while Saddam Hussein gains nuclear capability.
>
My case has ably been made, and your attempt at one has been
thoroughly shattered.
>
> [Hermit] I have proved that it can be argued that were the US to take
> the actions you advocate, that it would be illegal, precipitate and
> self-harmful. You evidentially didn't, and cannot, prove that this is
> not the case. Instead you again demonstrated that you are incapable of
> rational debate or indeed of using the appropriate forum, but instead
> persist in spewing your crap all over this list. What a hero you are
> (not).
>
Your self-description should not be projected onto me, mother-slanderer.
It is I who have conclusively proven my case that NOT to act in the face of
the gathering danger that Saddam represents is the foolhardy course, in
spades, and you who quite obviously cannot prove otherwise (because a
fallacious case such as yours is impossible to prove).
> >
> > Hermit
> >
> > [hr]Full Copyright Statement
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> > ----
> > 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;thre
> > ad id=26568>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> 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=26568>
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