quote:Originally posted by First of Two: I'm sure that the 3500 civilians who got blown up by our bombs in Kosovo would differ with your assessment that it was about 'nothing,' Balaam.
Erm. You may want to check your notes, FoT. Because at no point did I even bring up Kosovo, or for that matter say that it (presumably Kosovo) was about ' 'nothing' ' or whatever and stuff.
But since you did bring it up, if I remember correctly the primary reason we were in Kosovo was for humanitarian concerns. Namely ethnic cleansing and the raping and stuff. This was the stated purpose of the mission, the need for our intervention. As that article you cite pointed out, those reports may have been exaggerated. Probably a lot of the rapes that happened over there weren't systematically ordered and organized. Probably a bunch of them just kind of happened spontaneously. I mean a bunch of big gruff soldiers (lots of 'em with a troubled past) out there in the terrifying and harsh battlefield and all men, and no sex and you place them in a position of power with a group of beautiful young women, it just happens, you know. They just need a release and there weren't any orders or organization or anything. It just happened. And that really is the point: that it just happened. Because it did happen. Many, many ethnically Albanian women were raped by Serbian soldiers. Also thousands of bodies of their less (more?) fortunate victims have been recovered from mass graves in Yugoslavia. It may not have been the numbers that Cohen or Clinton were throwing around, but still THOUSANDS. That's a lot of dead people to you and me. That's real dead people. Found. Buried in the ground. That are dead. That were the reason we were there in the first place.
The primary reason we entered into Gulf War Ep.2 was because we said that Sadaam Hussein was not complying with U.N. Weapons inspectors and was, in fact (we claimed), producing weapons of mass destruction. This was the premise. We (the US) tried to go the straight route, through the U.N. But they were taking too long or stalling or ineffective or whatever, so we had to go in (w/ the coalition of the willing in tow) to stop those weapons programs which were so imminently dangerous. And since that was the primary reason we were there no back-pedaling on their non-existence should be tolerated. Maybe we don't find them in the numbers we anticipated, perhaps not in the immediacy of deployment, but something concrete that we can say, "Yes, we were vindicated in coming over here and our boys and girls getting shot at and kiled because the stuff that's in these bombs (or missiles or whatever) would have killed many thousands more American (or possibly Israeli or other Allied) lives..." Where are they? We need to see them. We need to know that the reason we were told it was so bloody important to risk our troops was valid. I hope we do find them. I hope we pry up the flagstone to some out-of-the-way palace and find an underground lab with a centrifuge full of enriched uranium and a cluster of warheads and maybe even some blackmarket Russian ICMBs or something. Because then it would mean something. I could feel like my country did something good and righteous and we were right to do what we did and flaunt our military might and bypass valuable global treaties to destroy this threat. But until we find those weapons which were the reason we went, we went to war for a lie. Obviously Sadaam was not a nice or a good man. It is true that there were huge humanitarian concerns (hell as someone already pointed out we even supplied/encouraged some of his atrocities), but really that's not why we went over there. That's not why we went around the UN and NATO. We went there to get them WMD and make sure they didn't make any more dead Americans.
Look, man I know I'm not going to ever convince you that the liberals might have a point or even that both sides need to be closely scrutinized because they're full of finks. I realize it's beyond that. And I also realize that you'll think we're attacking you because it's a cause you so fervently believe in. But honestly it's not like that. Not for me anyway. I can't speak for anyone else, but it's not like that for me, at least. I want you to have a different opinion than me. I want you to be able to believe in something I don't. I just want you to see, to accept that if our country has gone to war and risked our fighting men and women, upset global politics and been manipulated into invading a sovereign nation under false pretenses, then that is wrong. Very very very wrong. This country is possessed of the most powerful military and arsenal that has ever existed ever. And with great power comes great responsibility. (This is all sounding very familiar for some reason). But if our leaders have indeed unnecessarily risked (and lost) the precious lives of our service men and women and possibly worse done so to further some alternate agenda to which we are not party, then our leaders have failed in their most important duties to protect and to honestly represent their citizens.
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Even if Bush DID lie to start this war (of which you still have no evidence), I'm pretty sure that's not an actual crime, because he wasn't under oath at the time. I'd probably call for his head ANYWAY, mind you, but you couldn't impeach him for it.
Wrong.
quote:To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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Conservative Republicans like to compare George W. Bush to Ronald Reagan, characterizing him as a masculine Everyman, traditionally conservative and regularly underestimated because of his low-key manner. Liberals like to compare him with his father, who seemed Reagan's tightly wound, Ivy League, career-climbing opposite -- and a one-term president to boot.
Now a different former president is the dominant comparison: Bill Clinton. And that bodes very poorly for our commander in chief.
In the past week, as the White House first reeled from plummeting polls and the Iraq intelligence flap, and then beamed at footage of Uday and Qusay's demise at the Mosul corral, references to Clinton have come both from those taking aim at the president and those buffering his image.
For opponents, Bush's notorious 16 words in his State of the Union address erroneously talking up the Iraqi nuclear threat make up a far more important prevarication than Clinton's 11 ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.") Moreover, the White House's fine parsing of the phrase matches Clinton's floundering over the definitions of "is" and "sexual relations." Consequently, critics argue, the political price that Bush pays for his lie should more or less match what Clinton paid. The stakes, after all, have been wildly disproportionate.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I was worried, because I do all my spelling via Google these days, and it responded "Hypocrisy is the right spelling, according to Sweden's number one death metal band!" and I believed it, and then later I started to wonder if maybe Sweden's number one death metal band was really all that concerned about proper spelling.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Salon's writer makes the erroneous equivocation of "erroneous" with "prevarication." Possibly he is prevaricating.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I'd expect a Swedish death metal group to have good spelling ability. That, and not biting the heads of bats - "It is not very hygienic, and is cruel to the bat besides!" And they probably persuade their female groupies to enter a nunnery. 8)
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