🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan C wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 17:18:54 +0000, EvilBill wrote:
>
>>> And you hate Tony Blair and George Jr.  So, I stand corrected,
>>> British Left Wing wacko then.
>
>> So I'm a whacko to believe that launching unprovoked invasions, while
>> simultaneously taking away civil liberties (you probably don't know
>> about
>
> Unprovoked?  I guess you don't know about Iraq's not complying with UN
> sanctions for what, 12 years?  That's OK?

The sanctions were useless, it was only the Iraqi people that suffered
anyway (the innocents that are mostly dead now... some estimates put the
death toll at 250,000 now, the 40,000-odd 'official' toll only covers known,
reported deaths and doesn't include suspected insurgents, other
non-civilians or Coalition troops...). Saddam was still living it up in his
palaces, the sanctions were pointless.
I do know Iraq was violating the no-fly zones on a daily basis. But then,
who are we to say what part of someone's country they can't operate aircraft
in? Who are we to take the moral high ground? One or two nations shouldn't
*have* the supposed moral authority to act as the world's police and I
strongly believe that there is never an excuse to invade someone else's
country.

>  The near genocide-category
> killings carried out by the Iraqi government?  The belief *at the
> time* that he had WMD and was about to use them?  That all adds up to
> "unprovoked".  I don't think so.
>

That belief was not shared by the UN weapons inspectors. Who by their very
nature *as* weapons inspectors (and thus experts in the field) would know a
lot more about it than governments who had their own agendas.

>> the new powers granted to the police over here, which allowed them
>> to, among other things, shoot an innocent man in the head, and
>> detain an 11-year-old girl for attending an anti-war demonstration)
>> is the mark of two governments that have nobody's interests at heart
>> but their own greed?
>
> It's easy to find isolated (and fairly meaningless, therefore)
> incidents of police misconduct in any society.  Your examples, while
> regrettable, don't really mean much.
>

Unfortunately, they're not isolated incidents. Another one was an
82-year-old man in the House of Commons - a lifetime member of the Labour
Party - roughly bundled out and arrested as a terrorist, for muttering
'nonsense' to something one of the Cabinet was saying. A *lot* of people
have similar stories. Another elderly guy was arrested for 'displaying
anti-Blair sentiment' (that's what was written on the police report) for
wearing an anti-war T-shirt.
This country is being turned into a police state - these powers were
explicitly granted to the police by the Blair government, to be able to stop
and search at will and detain without charge or trial.

>>> Care to explain Saddam's super cannon aimed at Israel and *NERVE*
>>> gassing the Kurds then?
>>> Wait, Saddam didn't have any weapons, did he?
>
>> If he had them, he'd have used them on our forces during the
>> invasion. Simple as that.
>
> Maybe.  Or maybe we disabled his ability to use them with the
> swiftness of the strike.  Again, you must remember that *at the time*
> it was believed he had them, based on faulty intelligence from
> multiple nations.
>

I tend to believe that even if he did have them, Saddam wasn't stupid. What
about the MAD deterrent, as the phrase was during the Cold War? He'd have
known that if he'd ever launched something at the US, within minutes his
country would've been turned into a smoking heap of ash with 20 million
corpses...

>> The gassing of the Kurds was a very long time ago, and so was
>
> I almost don't believe you said this one.  How long ago was it?  10
> years? 15 years?  Whichever, not so long ago.  Besides, would that
> make it OK??? Is what the Nazis did "OK" because it was a long time
> ago?  Sheesh.
>

Of course it's not OK.
But nor is it OK what *we're* doing. Torture of POWs? Tens of thousands of
dead civilians? Not to mention the constant *posturing* and sabre-rattling
our governments are doing which just makes the rest of the world hate us
even more.
(As an aside, our hands aren't clean when it comes to genocide, either. A
hundred years ago the US did all but wipe out the Native tribes, and the
British committed many atrocities during the days of the Empire, especially
in India. So really, we're sat in a glass house, and we're throwing
boulders.)

>> the whole 'supergun' thing. (I might note, the supergun was never
>> actually completed anyway...)
>
> It shows intent, whether it was ever used or not.  It indicates a
> willingness to attack and kill.  That's enough.

Well considering what the Israelis are doing to Palestine's civilian
population in the West Bank, it's not surprising that other Middle Eastern
countries want to kill them. Hell, we want to kill Muslims because of what
bin Laden did to the WTC, don't we?

-- 
-- 
"I hope you don't object to my badgering the witless!"

EvilBill - http://www.evilbill.org.uk
yahoo: evilbill_agqx