Viewing Thread:
"A Query for the Pro-War Lobby"

That is, those tubthumping pro-war ladies and gentlemen who never allow hard facts to get in the way of a good days crowing.

Here's a thing or two about your remarkably ill-thought through blusterings;
You're all saying "See! See! Told you, stupid hippies" and conveniently forgetting that at no point did "Anti-War" mean "Pro-Saddam"

The reasons for going to war are still invalid. NO womd found or used, NO UN approval, civilians injured in the thousands etc etc

And just what the hell has happened to Saddam then? I thought we weren't stopping until he was dead?
So where is he?

I hope that some intelligent pro-war people will take the time to respond to this. Doubtless the more moronic among them will take another opportunity to ignore the entire question and respond with their usual reality-free tirade...

Miserableman wrote:
> The UN had
> their own team in Iraq, seeking out WMD and it was working, but the US
> and UK went against the authority of the UN to satisfy the will of the
> UN. Disregarding any flaws in the way the UN works, does that not seem
> more than a little bit upside-down?

No, because you can agree with the general principle's of an organization without agreeing with their means of achieving them. For example, I agree, like the government, that all kids are entitled to a good education. I don't agree with their current methods of almost forcing every pupil into a university rather than highlighting the other further education routes. The UN violations were simply an example of how Iraq had been offered a peaceful alternative and failed to comply.

The UN team was of Weapons Inspectors, not weapon finders, there job wasn't to hunt for WOMD. South Africa did it right, team goes in, weapon's are displayed to them, team decides whatever based on what they see. The strategic trickle of information supplied by Iraq was far from the intended procedure.

The real flaw was in allowing the emphasis to be put on WOMD at the cost of almost totally ignoring the human right's issues.

Light wrote:
> Yup; not a single reason for this war rings true. Yet still people say
> "It can't be about the oil". This is despite the fact that
> it is the only reason with sufficient evidence in support of it.


Wait, the oil. Do you think a starving country should be able to sell their oil so they can eat/improve health facilities and general public services? No one is going to steal the oil, the only person who really was stealing it was Saddam. Yeah, the US went in and ring-fenced the oil fields, ohhh, evil sods. Protecting the country's main asset which history shows was at risk when we look to the regeim's actions from the last Gulf War.

There are many reason's for this war, not all are that impressive. Look at the big picture, a nation of people are free from a tyrant. There will be a little bit of fun as we sort out who runs the country and in the whole re-building process, but ultimately a good thing has been achieved.

Dr Gonzo wrote:


>
> From one of my earlier posts: "[i]s it right to overthrow a
> tyrant who kills and tortures his people? Is it right to ensure a more
> even distribution of the wealth so that people can eat?"


Yup; it's definitely right to do that. However, as I've already said; anti war does NOT mean pro-Saddam.

Also, are you seriously suggesting that that is the reason for the war? To overthrow an unelected tyrant? Because when it comes to being an unelected leader, Dubya has no real right to complain...

But that is by the by; what is not is the fact that the US and the UK had no interest in whether or not a dictator remained in power. To suggest that both nations had suddenly grown a conscience and wanted to make the world a better place is...well, it's a wonderful idea, but history suggests that it has no basis in reality. I mean, I'm not trying to belittle anyones opinion here, but come on; have you seen the atrocities our two nations are responsible for? And in recent history too. Yet now we're supposedly on the side of the angels? Please...

If it ended here, now, with Iraq free of tyranny, then of course that would be good. Yet today, Dubya is suddenly insistent on allowing US businesses to deal with Iraq. Do we think that the Iraqi people will be the main beneficiaries? Or will it be about 30 of Dubya's business mates?

Also, when one bears in mind the track record of the US for replacing one dictator with another, you'll forgive me for being skeptical that the Iraqi people are really as free as mainstream media would have you believe.

And finally, nice to see that you've accepted that oil did play a big part in this war ;)

To be honest I'm not fussed if Bush, Blair and friends are only going in there to free up the oil or whatever. They are getting rid of a tyrant and this hopefully will allow a better living for the Iraqi people. This may just be a by-product of some other goal, but it still happens. If the UN had have organised the Human Rights issues to be the main crime rather than the WOMD issues the whole thing could have panned out very differently.

And the buisness interests bit - what are you going to do? France don't want war for numerous reasons, one being it'll nullify the headstart a French companies had in getting the oil. It's the way of the World - you think those swinging UN votes went against the war or in-line with the minor countries financial links to the big boys? Capatalism baby, gotta love it. Well, you've got to live with it really.

Oh, and I never accepted r reject oil's part in this - we just can't say. I'm saying it is one of a number of factors, but then if things were that desperate Bush could just slap a tweak on his emissions regulations and, in effect, generate a pile of oil anothe way... though not using it. Up then that's opening up a whole new ball park if we start talking about why he doesn't want to do that...

And the replacement dictator/track records. Though one, Muslims are far happier than we would be with a dictatorship, tribal leaders are common for some. However, already an elected leader seems like the popular choice, ironically it may not be the democratic choice. Hopefully the US has learned how NOT to do this already.

It's important to look at the bigger picture here. The Middle East has always been a bit of a crazy, backwards place and in recent years they've been getting a bit big for their boots and the fighting has spilled out into the West or they've been commiting atrocious acts of Terrorism. Rightly, America have realised that it's time to put their foot down (because they ARE like kids these Arabs - going into a museum and trashing all their country's heritage? Slapping a statue with their shoes?) and so off we go, on a little journey, sorting out the bad guys so they can leave us alone and get back to being backwards. The leaders aren't important (Bin Laden, Hussein, I'm looking at you) because as long as their regimes and groups have been disapparated then the threat goes down by a lot. And hey, the Arabs get a better Quality of Life for it.

The other issue is this whole thing with the Palestinians and the Israelis going at each other since 1948 when Great Britain gave up their mandate to the UN. The League of Nations couldn't handle the problem so gave us control in 1922 after we overthrew the Turkish empire, promptly turned into the UN (which is as inept as it's forefather) and took back control of the Palestinian territories only to screw things up again. The only way to get Israel to withdraw from palestinian territories and hoepfully get the Quartet roadmap back on track is to assure Israel that there are no threats from nearby Arab states - and that means the yankees going round to each country one-by-one and rebuilding it. Good luck to them.

Garin wrote:
> Does each "excuse" need to stand up on its own? Does there need
> to be 1 definitive reason to do it? You can possibly argue this is a
> case where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
> (hope you get what I mean).


Of course they do. You can't send someone to jail for 5 reasons, none of which are actually valid. I am probably closer to your opinion on this matter than you think - I agree that now Saddam has gone the world is a better place, for the West, the middle East and the Iraqis. There can be no doubt in anyones mind that Saddam was a pretty nasty piece of work. I am, however, strongly opposed to the manner in which the war was built up to - any faith I had in the US government has long since evaporated because of the way they've just steamrollered their will onto this delicate situation. And now the bizarre situation with Syria is making me doubly sick.

The US cannot go on behaving like this, and the UK cannot go on supporting them. That's my real beef.

Mess wrote:
> It's important to look at the bigger picture here. The Middle East
> has always been a bit of a crazy, backwards place and in recent years
> they've been getting a bit big for their boots and the fighting has
> spilled out into the West or they've been commiting atrocious acts of
> Terrorism. Rightly, America have realised that it's time to put their
> foot down (because they ARE like kids these Arabs - going into a
> museum and trashing all their country's heritage? Slapping a statue
> with their shoes?) and so off we go, on a little journey, sorting out
> the bad guys so they can leave us alone and get back to being
> backwards. The leaders aren't important (Bin Laden, Hussein, I'm
> looking at you) because as long as their regimes and groups have been
> disapparated then the threat goes down by a lot. And hey, the Arabs
> get a better Quality of Life for it.


Are you being sarcastic, or do you really believe this? Are you from Texas?

Dr Gonzo wrote:
> No, because you can agree with the general principle's of an
> organization without agreeing with their means of achieving them. For
> example, I agree, like the government, that all kids are entitled to a
> good education. I don't agree with their current methods of almost
> forcing every pupil into a university rather than highlighting the
> other further education routes. The UN violations were simply an
> example of how Iraq had been offered a peaceful alternative and failed
> to comply.


The example is not valid, because by going to do a GNVQ you're not actively defying the frantic pleas of the Government to stop. Imagine you said to your son that he needed to earn a living, and he came back a week later and said he was going to move to Amsterdam and become a male gigolo, hmmm?


> The UN team was of Weapons Inspectors, not weapon finders, there job
> wasn't to hunt for WOMD. South Africa did it right, team goes in,
> weapon's are displayed to them, team decides whatever based on what
> they see. The strategic trickle of information supplied by Iraq was
> far from the intended procedure.


There is no distinction. Iraq were beginning to provide the necessary level of co-operation before the invasion, Blix was winning them over (albeit Western pressure will have had something to do with it). The job of the UN team was to find the missing WMD - that's why they did suprise inspections, that's why they tried to do interviews with Iraqi scientists in private, that's why they took papers away.


> The real flaw was in allowing the emphasis to be put on WOMD at the
> cost of almost totally ignoring the human right's issues.


Oho, so you advocate invasion of another country just because you don't agree with how they govern themselves? Isn't this tabloid diplomacy? It sets an extremely dangerous precedent - how do you decide who is Western-value-friendly and who isn't? Should we invade Zimbabwe because people are starving? How about North Korea, can't back down now, never mind that they've got nuclear weapons that can hit 2 billion people, *people are starving in there*. Russia? They're doing plenty bad things in Chechnya.

Whilst getting rid of bad people is, viewed from a certain angle, a good thing, from another angle it is the invasion of another country for no reason other than you don't like them. That's too big a decision for any one or two countries to make, as we all have skeletons in our closets, and certainly too big for that monkey in Washington.