Justice

It was a SHITTY reference regardless, you unoriginal twatrock. -=Mike Oh FUCK YOU, Mike. Monkey Island references are fucking GOLD, especially this case. You should try the God damn game before dissing it. A Devoted MI Fan.

Ummm, I'm not trying to be confrontational, but is it considered "Dodging" if you are invited to be a Rhode Scholar at Oxford? I mean, personally, given the choice, I'd pick Oxford over Vietnam, and not consider it dodging the draft, I wouldn't believe anyone here if they said they would pick to go to Vietnam over Oxford. Not that anyone here would ever get invited there. but, yeah, that seemes a bit flawed, to say he "dodged" the draft, like he did something wrong or illegal by going to college. =Gabe Um, he wasn't at Rhodes the entire time. It's fairly well established he used connections to get waivers that he did not actually warrant.

Eh? The resolution didn't say we could go run in there against everyone's wishes. Basically, what Powerplay is trying to say is that we're following the spirit and intent of the resolution. Doesn't mean we didn't break it anyway. I'd just like to clarify the bolded statement, because it seems to be used more and more and it's quite incorrect. The UN isn't a single voice. It is, like our Congress, many voices with many different opinions, ideas, and goals. On the issue of Iraq, the UN was very divided; much of Eastern Europe sided with us, plus Britain and other nations around the World. The most notable block against us was the Rhineland Countries (Germany/Belgium/France) and Russia, again with other countries as well. It was a very split decision, and to say that we went against the entire UN is a very critical distortion of the truth that the Democrats have really been pushing around. We went against the wishes of a very determined coaltion, which just happened to have a country that wasn't afraid to throw down it's security veto (France). This can be likened somewhat to what happened with UN involvement in Kosovo when Russia refused to allow any sort of action. Just as if Bush vetoed something that the Democrats passed through Congress, it would not be looked on as "Bush defies Congress" but rather "Bush defies Congressional Democrats". Did the UN not approve of the action in Iraq? Yes. Did the entire body of the UN universally disapprove of the action in Iraq? Hardly. Just to note, this is a BIG problem that the UN really has to fix (The Veto Rule), otherwise I think we'll see it become more and more like the League of Nations: Something that is antiquated, inept, and that will soon be realized to be a failure. -=Kris ... I've been waiting a long while to say that.

No, he just hid away so he wouldn't have to do anything. How appropriate for a draft dodger, eh? j/k, but your comparison lacks any sort of insight into how this issue is important. I'm sorry, but Bush Sr. service in World War II didn't do shit for his CnC status for Desert Storm. And we still had other situations around the world like Somalia to deal with. To believe that being a tactical officer somehow will prepares you to be Commander in Chief is horribly mistaken. In no way does a single tour as a Lieutenant POSSIBLY prepare you in any way to be CnC, or hell, even for upper echleon military duty. Kerry's service is nice (Though after reading how he earned his Bronze Star, I almost want to call him a 'fucking cowboy' even more than I would call Bush one ), but it hardly qualifies him for ANYTHING. Hell, even McCain's service (Which is much more of a fucking trial than anything Kerry did), isn't worth much in terms of experience outside of character, and even then it might not be even noticable (In Kerry's case, it just seems like a footnote). Overall, I don't fucking care. I didn't care that Clinton was a draft-dodger, I didn't care that Kerry served, I didn't care that Bush was in the National Guard. It's all fucking moot.

The UN resolution said that in the event that Saddam was in violation, it was up to the UN, not the United States, to figure out what to do about it. Hey, it's still a reason. They were in violation of the UN resolutions set against them, and the US decided to enforce it because the UN refused to take action. I'm perfectly fine with that. so if cops don't enforce the speed limit, can I tape one of those neato flashing light thingys I got at Spencers Gifts onto my car and enforce the law for them?? j/k of course, but thats the first thing I thought of when I read that response Hey, someone has to be in control. I'm all good for that sort of stuff... ... he wrote as he listened to "King of My World". Bush should honestly walk out to this at the Republican Convention.

The UN resolution said that in the event that Saddam was in violation, it was up to the UN, not the United States, to figure out what to do about it. Hey, it's still a reason. They were in violation of the UN resolutions set against them, and the US decided to enforce it because the UN refused to take action. I'm perfectly fine with that.

This would be a legit gripe if we weren't looking for Bin Laden at all. But we are. There isn't much more we can do that wouldn't be a waste on him. You are over-generalizing. Which would you rather have them attack: Innocent people in NYC, or Marines who can fight back in Iraq? I don't subscribe to the theory that much, but there is a decent logic to it that it's harder for a terrorist to attack a dozen Marines who is trained to kill rather than a dozen men, women, and children off the street at home.

I'm just explaining why I see Iraq as a legitmate step in the War on Terror. Frankly, I'm sure many people would That's the Taliban, numb-nuts. Sorry, but Iraq had an actual formidable military, especially in the Middle East. The only place that could really stand up to them around there is Israel, so them causing havoc wouldn't be out of possibility.

Because of 1) Military: Any military action we take or took in the Middle East could easily be muddle up by Saddam, as he still has a incredibly formidable ground military. If we were to, say, take action into Iran for possibly holding Nuclear Weapons and the incredible danger of those falling into the wrong hands, Saddam could make a grab at Saudi Arabia while all our forces on are somewhere else. He's proven himself as a loose cannon, and just because he wasn't doing anything at the moment doesn't mean he wasn't going to do anything ever again. He was just waiting for the right chance, and we simply took that away from him. And to respond to your 'sedate' comment: he wasn't sedate. Sedate is not doing anything hostile. Building missile systems that allow you to strike all over the Middle East and having the capacity to quickly being production on C/B weapons is NOT a sedate country. What about no-fly zones as well? Iraq was not sedate, and it was still a very dangerous thing. 2) Geography: Iraq is almost dead center in the Middle East. This was great for Saddam because he could strike just about anywhere he wanted with his great military. By eliminating him, we eliminate the huge destablizing possiblity of Saddam launching an attack on Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others. Plus it gives us a great base of operations for fixing the Middle East. Most anything else I can think of is pretty well covered with the above two. Am I the only one who hates the "It's only gonna get taken over by some other crazy bastard" idea that it's impossible to set about democracy in Iraq? Did we say the same for Germany after it started two World Wars? They seem pretty good right now. That's a piss-poor "The West is Superior" argument to think that the Iraqis can't form democracy. Political Vendetta? Possibly. I'm sure there was a little bitterness that his father didn't actually finish the job. Of course, there are many other reasons that can also be used to justify it. And isn't that a renig on your earlier quote? I mean, if he thought it was a threat as well, obviously it wasn't completely a political vendetta.

Then again, you didn't care about the 26,298,000 people suffering in Iraq. Who is worse here? All in all, that's STILL a pretty dumb-ass quote. Hitler tried to direct the war from his bedroom rather than let his generals do the talking. I haven't seen any such thing from the Bush Administration. So you'd better clarify this a bit better... Bin Laden wasn't the single perpetrator here. An entire organization was. Hell, as pointed out already, Bin Laden isn't even the organizational leader of Al-Qaedia right now, so why waste tons of resources on him? That would be like the Russians stopping all offensive action against German to hunt down Hitler because he's somewhere in Eastern Europe. You are missing the forest for one tree. Not only this, but it isn't like we haven't captured any Al-Qaedia members who were in on 9/11. I'm almost dead sure we caught the #3 man a year or so ago, and we've captured numerous Al-Qaedia operatives as well. It's not as though we haven't been doing damage to them, you just don't see it on T.V. because, well, if we give away our hand, they can adjust and not make those mistakes anymore. You mean like Kerry advocating give Nuclear Fuel to Iran? I'd consider that a whole hell of a lot more dangerous at the moment. The ridiculous concept is that you consider what we are doing as terrorism. I guess that was too hard for you too figure out, though... Whoa, apparently UN Resolutions don't count as "reasons" anymore. Do you REALLY think that if we hadn't attacked Iraq, they would have forgotten about us? Whether we invaded Iraq or not, they would STILL be at odds with us. Because lord knows we can negotiate with Saddam. I mean, Jesus, he's only been violating UN Resolutions and Sactions for the past 11 years. "Peace in our time" is not a strategy. That was proven by Neville Chamberlain. We can't use diplomacy against these people because they don't work on a diplomatic level, they work at a military level. They don't sign treaties, they attack people. Wake up. Never said we are perfect, but no one is. And for the record, finishing off Saddam WAS correcting a mistake. We are. That's why we took out Iraq early on so Saddam couldn't cause trouble and attack someone while we were trying to fix the Middle East. No one else would be more likely to cause trouble than him if we were trying to do anything major, so it was SMART to get him out of the way. Maybe if you could get past your single-minded obession with Bin Laden we could actually plan out an intelligent way to cure the disease rather than deal with it's symptoms. Did you read ANY part of my last post? Also, Saddam killed over 1 Million people outside his own country. He's slaughtered his own people. Are you saying we should ignore this mass murder? And by the by, I know about Sudan. And just so you know, WE were the ones who wanted Sactions on Sudan for all the crap they've done, and we couldn't get it passed with them on it. WE aren't the ones ignoring shit here, the rest of the world is. Wake up. I'm not an advocate of that, but it's a much better strategy than crying "Can't we all get along?" on the world stage. You are truly a little, deluded 'duder'. -=Kris ... Hey, I've always wanted to do this! I feel, like, so cool now...

I have to agree. I gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt, but calling the bluff with Nuclear Weapons involved in this day and age is beyond stupid. o.0

Uh, technically no, considering Bush has spent 4 years in the office already, experience is pretty much on his side more than anything. At any rate, being Governor of a state is much better experience for a President to have than Kerry's Senate career. And on Kerry having more military qualifications: The only person in the elections, including the primaries, who could possibly have any USEFUL or MEANINGFUL military experience is Wesley Clark. I don't care if you were a lieutenant in a war, that's not high up enough to be considered anything that could be useful in being commander-in-chief because at that level it's only tactical decisions, not strategic. And as Welsey Clark (And, looking to the past, Grant) show us, military generals aren't necessarily great candidates for higher office (Did Clark even know what half the issues were?).

Did you actually read the article? I don't remember any big financial institutions being attacked in the last 3 or 4 years. Just because the plans for these are a few years old doesn't mean that they aren't still active plans, and apparently the chatter on the terrorist network is at a very high level. But you don't really care for reading the articles, do you? You just tend to spout of your mindless crap without thinking, I'd imagine.

Again, the largest focus was on WMDs, which was supported by most of the time-honored intelligence and knowledge we already had. Try telling the UN in 1998 that Saddam had no WMDs and they would laugh at you. Same two years after that and such. There was no reason whatsoever not to believe that Saddam had WMDs, from all the intelligence gathered and given. Secondly, if you haven't been reading, the Senate has said that Joe Wilson gave us a crock and that the Uranium claims actually DID have truth and were a credible threat. Oh well despite the fact that inspectors had never found any, and were pulled out in order to start dropping bombs!?! Because, hey, UN Inspectors before Blix DID find stuff and always thought that there was more out there. And on not finding anything: I keep mentioning this, because everyone loves to ignore it, but Saddam was developing a long-range missile program that could hit as far as Israel and Egypt. Doesn't sound too peaceful, does it? Now, I have to wonder what the hell a mentally-unstable dictator would need a long range missile program with no payload for, but... Who in the hell ever claimed Saddam was a peaceful guy? I don't remember Bush saying we were going to Iraq to dismantle the deadly long range missle system. I specifically remember hearing "WMD's, WE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE...." Apparently Long Range Missile systems can no longer cause huge amounts of destruction. Someone wasn't watching on March 21st, 2003. And hey, who cares that they are in the hands of some unstable dictator? I mean, jeez, those things couldn't possibly destablize a region already on the brinking of blowing up. (Hint: Imagine if we had to go into Iraq because they had started firing these things off at Israel and how hard it would be to hold back the Pitbull they call the Israeli Military from rampaging through Syria on its way to Iraq) At any rate, did you ever concieve that they built the missiles to carry a certain payload? Creating a missile system without something to deliver is moronic. The Kay report tells us they were actively rebuilding their C/B Programs, and the fact that we've found warehouses full of destroyed computers tells you that they were working on something big that they didn't want us to know about. Perhaps making logical conclusions is beyond your comprehension, but not beyond mine. Terrorism can not be stopped by simply hunting down the terrorists we know of and bringing them to justice. We have to start fixing the Middle East if we want any hope of completely tearing these people out. People like the Taliban, like Saddam Hussein, were governments who supported terrorism, who actively preached against the US while oppressing their own peoples, who were destablizing threats to the Middle East. Iraq, with it's military power and obviously dangerous (He's already tried invading three countries, people). If we want to fix terrorism, we have to fix the Middle East. To fix the Middle East, we have to take Saddam out of the equation, otherwise any other major action you take could allow Saddam to use his military for a big power grab. This is a simple concept, but I guess you don't get that. And before we invaded Iraq there WERE terrorist attacks every other day. It's been like that since 2000 in the West Bank, "duder", so your analogy is pretty lost. It's sad to say, but at least the Iraqi people have a chance now, rather than just being stuck under the thumb of some evil bastard who starved them to fucking death and terrorized them for pleasure and to keep them in line.

Again, the largest focus was on WMDs, which was supported by most of the time-honored intelligence and knowledge we already had. Try telling the UN in 1998 that Saddam had no WMDs and they would laugh at you. Same two years after that and such. There was no reason whatsoever not to believe that Saddam had WMDs, from all the intelligence gathered and given. Secondly, if you haven't been reading, the Senate has said that Joe Wilson gave us a crock and that the Uranium claims actually DID have truth and were a credible threat. Oh well despite the fact that inspectors had never found any, and were pulled out in order to start dropping bombs!?! Because, hey, UN Inspectors before Blix DID find stuff and always thought that there was more out there. And on not finding anything: I keep mentioning this, because everyone loves to ignore it, but Saddam was developing a long-range missile program that could hit as far as Israel and Egypt. Doesn't sound too peaceful, does it? Now, I have to wonder what the hell a mentally-unstable dictator would need a long range missile program with no payload for, but...

We've actually found a lot of them already. Do we need to each and every one of them before we can actually concentrate on anything else? Out of all the stupidity I've EVER seen in CE, that has to take the cake. That's just... utter ignorance.

Utter lunacy. 0.o Talk about a fucking curveball in this debate...

Again, the largest focus was on WMDs, which was supported by most of the time-honored intelligence and knowledge we already had. Try telling the UN in 1998 that Saddam had no WMDs and they would laugh at you. Same two years after that and such. There was no reason whatsoever not to believe that Saddam had WMDs, from all the intelligence gathered and given. Secondly, if you haven't been reading, the Senate has said that Joe Wilson gave us a crock and that the Uranium claims actually DID have truth and were a credible threat.

I'm fairly sure he did discuss a much harder policy against Iraq, plus he rattled the saber a few times before 9/11 at Iraq. I'd say you're very foolish for thinking the American Public couldn't, on their own, determine that Saddam was an evil person that had to go. Again, much of the Bush Administrations wranglings were more geared towards World opinion because the UN wouldn't go if Iraq wasn't presented as a clear threat. A good majority of Americans were okay with going in; there wasn't much needed to shore up the US Public on the idea. ... Uh, proof? I thought WMDs were the big focus if anything, not Al-Qaeda, and most of the public bought that because it was the line touted by the UN for 12 years, plus every intelligence agency out there said he had it. Not to mention that many of the Iraqi Scientists that said Saddam had no weapons said that he still tried to come off as though he did and projected that info and image. And hey, downplay the liberation of the Iraqi people, NoCal. Good for you. Of course, the Democratic Party's "IT'S VIETNAM! IT'S VIETNAM!" tactic tends to disgust me far more than anything Bush has done with this war. Perhaps because, well, the opposition party has downplayed every success in our soldiers operations to instead denounce their actions as futile and that their deaths are completely in vain. The fact that you don't acknowledge the Democratic Party playing politics with this as well pretty much kills that post for me.

I'd need a source to believe that. There are a few others, but those two pretty much directly asked the question. Wow, and weren't you bitching at Tom for over-generalizing your opinion as well? Perhaps they just thought, ya know, it was a bad idea to let a fairly evil man to rule his country and be in control of one of the world's largest land armies in an area that is volatile as hell? Naw...

And the sad thing is if he had told Americans we were going to remove Saddam because it was "the right thing to do" then the American public would have turned their back and said, "that's all? Please!" Doing the right thing does not sit high on our agenda. No the American people would've responded with... "what about that Osama guy? You know... the guy that actually attacked us?" and the Republicans would've responded with "Shut up commie!" Wasn't there a fairly large amount of people supporting an invasion of Iraq just on the principle that Saddam was evil? I remember for a long time leading up to the war that the American Public supported it pretty heartily (Like 60%-40% on it for a while).

And the sad thing is if he had told Americans we were going to remove Saddam because it was "the right thing to do" then the American public would have turned their back and said, "that's all? Please!" Doing the right thing does not sit high on our agenda. Well, let's face it: the Dems would still be pissed because the UN doesn't accept "The Right Thing to Do" as a reason and we'd still be going in alone. Going into Iraq would have been a flamewar no matter what because Bush was doing it, and if Bush is doing it, it's gotta be wrong (Lest they fall into 2000-2002 mode again).

Two early points: On the Uranium Claims, the Senate VALIDATED White House claims about Niger and the intell on them, so this guy is dead wrong there. Secondly, the Chem/Bio weapons claim that Iraq still had the capability to quickly turn around systems and quickly create said weapons was also confirmed in the Kay Report, which stated that Iraq obviously was pursuing and had the capacity to start up these programs again if needed. Most of this stuff is the crap we've been hearing for months, only put into column form and doesn't really swing anything to me. Oh well...

Yeah. It's really surprising what sort of health conditions the President's have had while in office that the public had no idea about...