Comments Posted By Jonathan
Displaying 21 To 30 Of 99 Comments
Sgt Thomas:
You got personal first sir. (yes I know, tu quoque)
I already admitted you are more intelligent than I, what more do you want?
Your first link wouldn't open in my browser.
Your second link has no mention of WMDs.
Your third link seems to be valid but it never mentions the nature of the WMDs. A nuclear weapon program requires a truly massive infrastructure which would be hard to ship in twenty airplane loads. The US nuclear fuel program during WWII at Oak Ridge Tn. was the largest building in the world at the time.
OK, Saddam had chemical and/or biological weapons.
Your fourth link mentions Al Queda and chemical weapons but does not state where they came from.
Ditto your fifth link.
Ditto your sixth link.
Your seventh link timeline ends in 1999
Your eighth link, the plane was an unmanned spy drone but the article mentions that a U2 was narrowly missed. I had no idea we still used U2s, I thought they had been retired some time ago in favor of the SR71.
OK, I've looked at your links, now here is one of mine.
At a press conference on 24 February 2001 during Powell's visit to Cairo, Egypt. Answering a question about the US-led sanctions against Iraq, the Secretary of State said:
We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq...
If Saddam had WMDs in 2001, why would Colin Powell assure the Egyptian government that he did not?
Did you know that a terrorist cell was broken in the USA that had chemical WMDs
And the funny thing is that it never made it beyond the local news in Tyler, Texas.
"This was a huge arsenal," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston, "absolutely a huge arsenal of military style weapons."
Found in Noonday were hundreds of bombs and machine guns, and 500,000 rounds of ammunition. The inventory list of what was found is extensive. But the most startling discovery was the combination of sodium cyanide, acid and gunpowder. Mixed together it becomes a lethal chemical bomb capable of killing everyone inside a 30,000 square foot building. Authorities believed Krar a threat to national security, suspecting him of being a part of a "criminal scheme" to violently attack the U.S. Government.
"We have yet to figure out the actual destination of any of these bombs or any of the devices," said Featherston, "but I don't think you possess these weapons for defensive reasons."
Go ahead and do a search, you won't find it on any national news.
I wonder why that might be?
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 13.01.2007 @ 19:43
Saddam got what he deserved and you idiots posting your Liberal moral relativism makes me puke.
I've read all the posts in this thread and I've not seen anyone defending Saddam.
Perhaps you could provide a quote or two where someone in this thread has defended Saddam.
Obviously, your reading comprehension is far and away better than my modest skills since you can glean information that I totally miss.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 13.01.2007 @ 14:23
The US and our allies won WW2 with the full support of the American people, including the media. I don’t think we would have been able to win if our own prominent countrymen were on the airwaves repeating the same kinds of propaganda as Tokyo Rose. This is what we have come to, our own sense of freedom of speech is helping to destroy us.
By this point in the timeline, the US and the Allies had already won WWII, a war that was forced on us and for which we were unprepared militarily. Much of the Pacific Fleet was destroyed at Pearl Harbor on the first day of US involvement in WWII. On December 8, 1941, the day after Japanese forces attacked the American military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress and asked for a Declaration of War with Japan. The Senate and House of Representatives approved the war declaration unanimously with the exception of one vote - Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin became the first member of Congress to vote "no" on both the declaration of war on Germany during World War I and the declaration of war on Japan in 1941 - and FDR signed the resolution that day. The American people and American industry were mobilized and a truly shared sacrifice was demanded of all. Taxes were raised and war bonds were sold to adequately finance the war effort.
In contrast, the war in Iraq was a war of choice for which we had plenty of time to prepare. Rather than being called to a common sacrifice, the American public was told to "go shopping". Taxes were not raised and money was borrowed from Japan, China and other foreign powers to finance the war. The American people had and have no emotional investment in this war and the only ones doing any sacrificing are our brave servicemen and women and their families and friends.
A nation or a people are drawn together by common sacrifices. When everyone is seen to be sacrificing it makes the individual more likely to accept those sacrifices. GW Bush has never called on the American people to sacrifice in any way, that is why most of us are apathetic and disconnected from the sacrifices our military is suffering in our name.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 12.01.2007 @ 21:38I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940
The more I read this stuff, the less I like Americans. This rancor can be witnessed in all corners of the ‘sphere, but, as I’ve stated numerous times, something is seriously wrong when a growing number of Americans look across the table and begin seeing enemies rather than fellow citizens.
It's not as bad, yet, as it was in 1861.
I've been watching the gradual radicalization of the US electorate in general, and politicians in particular, for many years now. The problem, it seems to me, is that there are two roughly equal sized blocs of the voting public that have radically different views of what government is and what it should do. When either bloc seizes power, they set out to implement the governmental agenda of those who brought them to power. To both sides, the other side's agenda is anathema, to be fought tooth and nail at all costs.
I think it is telling that GW Bush, who ran as a "uniter, not a divider", has in the five plus years since 9/11/2001 managed to take a nation more united than I've seen in my lifetime and divide it more bitterly than I've seen it in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Vietnam and the Nixon resignation.
I think one party rule is bad for America, the American government works best when it is divided and the various branches can check and balance each other as the founding fathers intended.
The internet has been at least somewhat responsible for the growing divisions in American society. It allows zealots on both sides to segregate themselves into echo chambers where their rhetoric enters into a positive feedback loop and spirals ever more out of control. I've been banned from Democratic Underground for being too conservative and from Free Republic for being too liberal. Neither side is willing to admit that maybe, just maybe the other side has some valid points. Both sides play "gotcha" with the tiniest details of what the other side says or does. Both sides are hypocritical and incapable of recognizing their own hypocrisy.
I'm argumentative by nature, whatever the prevailing wisdom might be of those around me I see the flaws in their positions and just can't help pointing out those flaws. Needless to say, this makes me a lot of enemies.
I really try to take the objective approach and keep my own emotions out of my arguments, but like all humans I'm imperfect and very often fail in my objectivity.
What the solution might be to the continually escalating divisions in American society I have no clue. It will be up to calmer and wiser heads than mine to find and pursue any solutions.
Good Night and Good Luck
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 12.01.2007 @ 21:04
I'm sorry but I have no sympathy for George W Bush. Bush wanted this unnecessary war and pulled out all the stops to get it. Bush thought the war would be easy and quick but allowed his handpicked SecDef, Donald Rumsfeld, to overrule the expert opinion of military professionals and invade Iraq with woefully inadequate forces to do the job at hand and no plans for the occupation. I hold Bush and his administration fully responsible for thoroughly botching what could have been a difficult but not impossible war and turning it into the mother of all FUBARs. Note that I in no way whatsoever blame the military, they did their duty as they were ordered by their ignorant and willful civilian superiors and they did it to the absolute best of their abilities.
My heart aches for the dead and injured, their loved ones and their friends. A boy I know that my daughter went to middle school with still lives in my neighborhood, he came back with only one leg. My sympathies also lie with the troops currently in Iraq and their families at home missing them and waiting fearfully for that sickening notification of their loved one's death, I can only imagine their terror and despair when they get that final knock on the door. It is only by sheerest chance that my own son in law didn't go to Iraq, he got out of the Marine Corps with a partial disability only a few weeks before the stop loss orders started coming down.
George W Bush made his bed of thorns through his own ignorance, arrogance and hubris, let him lie in it I say.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 12.01.2007 @ 13:27No leader should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no leader should fight a battle simply out of pique. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life. Hence the enlightened leader is heedful, and the good leader full of caution.
-- Sun Tzu
WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
The Iranians elected one leader, they could’ve thrown the Shah out and done it again. They chose to become the only theocracy on the planet.
Whether or not the Iranians could have "thrown the Shah out", the fact is that the US deliberately interfered with the internal politics of a sovereign nation with a democratically elected leader.
You seem to have forgotten that good friend of GW Bush and good ally of the USA, Saudi Arabia. SA is no less a theocracy than is Iran. Religious police refuse to allow girls to exit from a burning building because they are inadequately dressed, you don't get much more theocratic than that.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 12.01.2007 @ 22:26
They elected a communist.
Socialist!=communist.
Does it really matter who they elected? They elected someone to represent them, the US decided, for whatever reason, that they didn't like that person and then set in motion events that led to the illegal and violent overthrow of Mossadegh. It's really no surprise that the whole sordid mess boiled down to a squabble over oil. Oil seems to have been the focal point of most of the Western meddling in the Middle East for close to a century now.
If you are so good at spotting the tu quoque fallacy, why then did you point out my tu quoque fallacy and not that of Mr Moran in the OP?
If something is good and righteous when one group does it, then why is it not good and righteous when another group does the very same thing?
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 12.01.2007 @ 19:56
Jon, it seems you haven’t educated yourself on logical fallacies yet.
Perhaps you can educate me then, Shawn.
If, however, you intend on claiming the tu quoque fallacy then I might preempt your attempt to edumacate me by saying that the tu quoque fallacy is exactly the one that Mr Moran used in his OP.
But then that might be a tu qouque fallacy also, eh?
I haven't see you pointing out that Mr Moran used the tu quoque fallacy, since you are so good at spotting that particular fallacy I wonder why that might be?
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. No es verdad?
What had Iran done to us in 1953 that required that we overthrow their democratically elected government and install a dictator?
Would you like to answer this question now?
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 12.01.2007 @ 01:46The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.
- Sun Tzu
Overthrowing a sovereign government is not a violation of international law?
What had Iran done to us in 1953 that required that we overthrow their democratically elected government and install a dictator?
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 11.01.2007 @ 14:24SAVAK was founded in 1957 with the assistance of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Its mission was to place opponents of the Shah's regime under surveillance and to repress dissident movements through intimidation, exile, imprisonment, assassination, and torture.
The CIA engineered a coup that overthrew Iran's socialist leader Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953
The 1979 Embassy hostage crisis was yet another example of "blowback" from Western interference in the Middle East.
Comment Posted By Jonathan On 11.01.2007 @ 12:35
