Poll: over 40% of Canadian teens think America is "evil"

Dick Cheney

I overslept this morning and didn't have time for breakfast. I wheeled through McDonalds for an egg Mcmuffin and OJ on my way to my first appointment. I'm gonna Die!

I think I must be toast too. The blood pressure thing at the grocery store said 121 over 77 with a pulse of 66... HYPERTENSION. Didn't they used to say that was ideal?

Um Bill....those numbers are really quite good.

And thats still not true, no matter how oft you repeat it.

Even on the question of whether Saddam "had WMD" at the time of the invasion, I already quoted you one foreign minister from a sizable country in "the free world", here in this very thread (1), 2), 3)), saying he was "not convinced" by America's suggested proof that Saddam still had WMD.

It was unprecedented for a German foreign minister to openly turn against a US minister like that. It was unprecedented for a minister to switch to English and address the US secretary of defence directly with such a harsh message, in front of all those allies. It reflected the deeply-rooted unease with the bluster with which the American government claimed to know Saddam still had WMD, when we werent all that sure at all. Joschka spoke for Belgium, France and a bunch of smaller countries as well as his own - and for many opposition politicians and voters in the countries whose governments did side with the US as well.

Yet you still persist with your "everybody in the free world believed he had WMD" line.

Moreover, this time you even add "and would use them". Almost everyone in the free world believed Saddam still had WMD and was going to use them?

Now this is so patently untrue I dont know where to start ...


Here, however, you've got a good point. Most who say the war was a crime argue that we should have continued to practice containment. But how do you practice effective containment without sanctions? Can you be against both sanctions and war? I guess you can, but that would have given Saddam a way longer leash than I'd be comfortable with, in any case ...

Chances of anybody defeating Nimh in a debate about Iraq WMDs < Pamela Anderson climbing out of my TV and fellating me into a coma.

Intresting new avatar you got there, Lion ... ;-)

Well nimh seems to have difficulting in seeing what I actually wrote even when he quotes it

Yeah, it is almsost - and I stress almost - as awesome as me. Almost.

I see that we continue to play the game of the Right, of justifying the war after the fact, which of course ignores that none of the reasons advanced before the fact have panned out.

I also notice that none of the defenders of this war are willing to answer the question of why Iraq, and why not the Sudan . . . or any of several other nations in which such things have been a commonplace. In fact, with Sudan, you have a government with indisputable links to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. I'm sure i'll get no more takers on this one than i have had in the past.

I always liked your old avatar though ILZ....it was so....so.....beautifully bored looking.

I did address Iraq and Sudan in an earlier post, I think on this thread.

Your assertion that there was a general global consensus that Iraq possessed WMD is just wrong. In fact, if you recall, Colin Powell's failed presentation to the UN was an effort to create said consensus. Needless to say, it didn't work out.

"(almost) everybody in the free world in the current and previous administrations believed he had WMD and would use them."

That seems a pretty straightforward claim, now doesnt it?

Whether he had them or not, "the belief was that he did".

Except it wasn't. Many in the free world, prominent politicians among them, believed they didn't know for sure whether he did.

Let alone whether he'd use them if he did have them ...

But I believe that you believed it. And Bush, and Blair and Howard and even Hillary Clinton.

But not by far "(almost) everyone in the free world".

Or would you like to further amend that?

My new avatar is an answer to the age old question: can you improve upon perfection. The answer, of course, is yes, and my avatar is proof.

It is rather strange. It makes the Right look like institutionalized myopia. The Conservative posters in this forum spend thier days fighting an unwinnable, uphill battle to prove that Saddam may have had some minute amount of WMDs or WMD related programs, and that Iraq may have had tenuous links to terrorism. What gets lost in the ensuing confusion is that even if these assertions are true, there are literally dozens of countries that fit the bill much better than Iraq, thus reducing the argument to inanity. It is absurdity heaped on absurdity.

Nimh, I believe I qualified my comments to Cyclop to be (almost) all those with authority. Except for one German minister, which we have already discussed this week, I don't know of any who stated they 'doubted' or 'didn't know' if Saddam had WMD. And as we have already discussed, given the materials and technology furnished Saddam by Germany, I don't believe for a minute that particular German minister had any doubts that Saddam very well could have WMD. It could just be really embarrassing if such was traced back to Germany. What happened to all that stuff I wonder? It didn't turn up after the invasion.

If investigation into the Food for Oil scandal continues along the vein it is traveling, any potential embarassment to Germany will pale at the embarrassment in store for France, Russia, and numerous U.N. officials and staffers. The U.N. however seems to be staunchly making that investigation as difficult as possible. In other words, it may be proved that any who 'doubted' had strong motive to doubt.

So I'll stick by my original belief that almost every person with authority to decide in this matter were of the opinion Saddam had WMD. The U.S. administration and Congress almost certainly held a unanimous opinion about that even among those who did not vote for the invasion.

You of course are entitled to hold a different opinion.

One does owe the Right grudging acknowledgement, however, of having moved the topic of debate to the issue of whether or not the Iraqis are better off now than with Hussein. I will respond as i have here again and again, because it is disheartening to see people with their hearts in the right place being lead astray by this red herring.

All this phoney-baloney righteous indignation, at a time when it seems the Arab paramilitaries in Darfur have gotten frenzied to do all the slaughter possible before someone intervenes. They needn't worry . . . the Right in America doesn't give a rat's ass about the plight of the less fortunate or the victimized in their own country, let a lone half a world away. These crocodile tears for the Iraqis are solely the product of an attempt to hold some farcical moral high ground, and to attempt to accuse those who disagree with them of being willing to lie down with those who murder on a vast scale. That is all the more sickening in view of this:



Unfortunately, to my knowledge, this image captured from video is all that is available. A clearer image, such as a still photo, would make it more easily identifiable as what it is--Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein, during the Reagan administration.

There is just so much for the Right to try to sweep under the carpet. Debating these issues on their terms is the equivalent of holding the carpet up for them.

There is actually a word for this: delusion.

And this: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=2&u=/nm/20040709/pl_nm/iraq_intelligence_qaeda_dc
The bi-partisan senate committee found NO LINKS between Iraq and al Qaeda.