Re: Questions for John Kerry
For reasons of a logical debate, I will reply to your thread, but in return, you should reply to the questions I pose
McGentrix wrote:- How might you explain the apparent abrupt change in policy of Libya; the unexpected removal of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb; and the about-face in Saudi Arabia - and what precise plans do you have to induce similar such positive changes in attitude in Iran, Lebanon and Syria?
Hmmm, well if you are talking about Kadaffi, lets look at the situation. kadaffi admitted to bombing the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland and has been a KNOWN sponsor of terrorism in the past. We have a STRICT policy I thought of not negotiating with terrorists, yet we changed the rules for Kaddaffi. Has he turned over a new leaf? I think not, and you should as well. The official change in stance with Kaddaffi was monetary in nature and if you think anything different, you haven't looked at the entire situation. Last year, he was pulled off the UN watch list because he started paying the victims families of the plane bombing. He asked the US to do the same, because monetarily, it is in the best interest of Lybia to promote trade with the US and our partners. He also held back approximately half of the payment to the families because the US still had him on the watch list. It was approximately 1 Billion dollars held back by Kaddaffi from the victims families.
It was also the UN, the same group which you despise, which first agreed to a settlement with Lybia, not the US. We instead followed suit and tried to present off the idea as he was scared of the Bush administration, when in fact, the Bush administration took an entire year to let him off the watch list. The UN signed an agreement with Kaddaffi in which he would claim responsibility, denounce terrorism, disarm all biological weapon systems and pay the families $2.7 Billion. Kaddaffi held a Billion dollar caret over the victims families and forced the US to remove him from their terrorist sponsored states list. Bush did not scare him, come on now. You are feeding into the Republican spin machine like the rest of the non-thinkers voting for Bush. Read up on the issue, instead of believing what Hannity, Rush and Fox News tells you the answer is, because most of the time, it's a complete and utter distortion of the truth.
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- In January, you promised to be a president who "reduces the overall need for deployment of American forces in the globe - and I mean North Korea, Germany and the rest of the world." More recently, however, you have chastised President Bush for saying that he will do precisely that, suggesting that his "hastily announced plan raises more doubts about our intentions and our commitments than it provides real answers." As president, would you send those departing American troops back into Germany and on the Korean Peninsula to restore previous levels? And if not, why?
To Germany, no but to Korea yes. Germany is not a threat to democracy and the American way of thinking, North Korea is. One of the biggest faults of the Bush Administration is the complete neglect and allowance of a rouge nation to gain nuclear (pronounced noo-clee-are BTW) power without intervening. If you want to look at a nation which directly threatened America, look at the general in NK, not in Iraq.
We allowed NK to become nuclear active, ignored Irans attempt to do the same, all while fighting a war built on false pre-tenses for a false threat presented to the American public, while simultaneously ignoring the impending threat of nuclear proliferation through rouge states such as Iran and North Korea. One of the largest blunders of the Bush Admin. not even counting Iraq. Bush should be fired just for his ignorance in this matter alone.
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- President Bush was the first American president to isolate Yasir Arafat. Do you agree with the president's radical step of ostracizing Mr. Arafat? If so, would you also ensure that he is no longer a party to the Middle East peace negotiations?
And where did that get stability in the Middle East. Face it, Yasir Arafat is the leader of the palestinian uprising in the West Bank. We need a leader who will start the peace, not increase the violence. Bush's ultimate backing of Sharon, while ignoring the palestinians is another downfall of the Administration. It all starts with Israel, and if we ever want peace in the Middle East, we need to re-evaluate our position whenm dealing with this nation. I'm not saying to turn our backs on an ally, but we need to discern that peace is more important then friendship and the long term health of the global economy is more important then petty differences concerning the conflict. It's high time we put a stop to the violence occurring in Israel and the West Bank and led the world in the march toward peace, not infuriate an entire part of the globe by feeding into their stereotypes of the bully American.
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- The new International Criminal Court has gained the support of many European nations. In a recent statement to the American Bar Association, you asserted that the Bush administration has been "ham-handed" in its approach to the court and has "needlessly alienated" allies on the issue. But you don't say much else - merely that you would "carefully consider the full range of U.S. interests at stake with respect to the court as we review our policy and fashion a more constructive approach."
Do you intend to ask the Senate to ratify the treaty and join the court? How would you ensure that the court respects good-faith differences in war-fighting doctrine? How, in the meantime, would you prevent the court from asserting criminal jurisdiction, without American consent, over members of the United States military deployed abroad?
First, there is no way we can obide by the courts rules when we are fighting by the war doctrine we are currently under. We need to completely scrap the piece of legislation, which is the war doctrine and establish long ties to the Geneva convention. Colin Powel warned this administration about the consequences of using the war doctrine and ingoring the GWP, but this fell on deaf ears. This administration, made up of a bunch of career politicians, ignored and avoided the Vietnam war with all their might, have set up a war doctrine which goes against the way Americans have treated war for the past 50 years. I know times have changed, but this is still America and we should still be held accountable for our actions no matter what. We need to have a leader who is responsible enough to fix the problems before they occur, not ignore them when they do occur. So yes, I would back the ICC and I would want our troops to commit themselves in the most respectable manner possible.
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- After the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in East Africa, President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes against Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. Should we have responded more vigorously then, and to the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in 2000? Was there any additional military option before 9/11 that would have made sense?
In hindsight, yes, but that's playing Monday morning QB. We should have as a nation stood behind our president when he warned the American public of the threat of Bin Laden. At the time of the bombing all we heard was how this was a "wag the dog" approach to thwart the Monica hearings. Well, sorry to say that mainstream America got it wrong. We should have been more heavy handed militarily in August of 98', but we as a country should have backed the president with his just bombing of the terrorist camps instead of calling him a treasonist liar for doing so. Maybe if the president had the support of the American population in 98' September 11th never would have happened.
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- The former head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program, Mahdi Obeidi, says that Iraq's nuclear program "could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers." Now in the United States, Mr. Obeidi says that Mr. Hussein continued to back a long-range missile project and harbored "the illusion in his mind that he had a nuclear program," constrained only by economic sanctions.
But economic sanctions against Iraq would almost certainly have been lifted by the United Nations once arms inspections were completed. How then could we have guarded against Mr. Hussein's reckless intentions? If you were president, would you have judged regime change a bad policy, assuming that legal requirements were met?
First, you have to look at the source of the information. If I was president, I would have done the entire review process and learned that Saddam was not actively pursuing nuclear equipment. Mr. Obeidi's statements and documentation was all acquired pre 1991, not after we had the sanctions on Saddam. It is no secret that Saddam had the technology and the capability to build nuclear weapons, Israel bombed ons such facility in 1983. Where the massive amount of disinformation comes from is the neglecting of letting the American public know this information is from pre Gulf War one when were Saddams ally. Here is the transcript from the assessment of Iraq's nuclear capabilities prior to invading Iraq.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.irq.un.transcript.elbaradei/index.html
Right before we invaded Iraq, information was available which was contrary to the president's belief. 30 days after the president warned the American people of the impending threat of a mushroom cloud, information was available which not only contradicted it, but claimed it was an outright falsehood. This is a report by weapons inspectors in Iraq at the time and a report by the top nuclear specialists in the country. There is documentation which shows exactly what each weapons claim was for, and how each piece of evidence used by the Bush administration was an outright falsehood.
Since you will probably not take the time to read the lengthy article, I will cut and paste the important results of the investigation.
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Transcript of ElBaradei's U.N. presentation [...]
At the outset, let me state on general observation, namely that during the past four years at the majority of Iraqi sites industrial capacity has deteriorated substantially due to the departure of the foreign support that was often present in the late '80s, the departure of large numbers of skilled Iraqi personnel in the past decade and the lack of consistent maintenance by Iraq of sophisticated equipment[...]
At this stage, the following can be stated:
One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question.
Fourth, although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet-production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge enrichment program.
As I stated above, the IAEA will naturally continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.
After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.
Read the last line again
After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.
This was a report given to the US one month prior to the invasion. So not ONLY did he use false documentation for his evidence, he completely ignored any and every contrary opinion by the best experts in the world. No wonder why the world hates us so much, yet you think it was the oil for food scandal, get real and open your eyes and your mind to thinking, it may just suit you well one day.
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- If President Bush next week were to announce an offensive against Falluja and other terrorist strongholds in the Sunni triangle, would you support it?
Absolutely, but with what? Our strung out and over used young soldiers? Think about the troops first, how their moral is, how they react to certain situations and what the plan is before making a rash decision. You need to approach a problem from all sides, not a polarized and acute point of view, for when you do this the wrong decision is always bound to follow you.
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- You have said that we cannot cut and run from Iraq and that we could "realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years." But if you now consider the war to have been a mistake, how could you, as president, "ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake'?
The mistake was going to Iraq in the first place, we created a hellstorm and it would also be a mistake to leave now. I (Kerry) have stated before that the solution is more troops to bring stability to the situation. The longer this problem is ignored, the worst it is going to become. Soon, we may not have enough troops to accomplish what needs to be accomplished because we ignored the problem for so long. As soon as we can stabilize the area, we can start by transitioning forces from the UN and bring our kids back home safe. It wasn't me who decided to go into Iraq, but I will find a way our of the quagmire and I will find a way to bring our young soldiers who are fighting so valiantly for our country home safe.
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- You've said that it is unacceptable to allow a second African genocide in a decade, this time in Sudan. You've also said you don't propose sending American troops to Sudan. If it becomes clear that the only way to stop the killing is through armed intervention by a coalition of the willing, led by United States troops but lacking the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, would you as president take such an action?
Not in our current situation. Our most important situation is in the stability of Iraq, and until this is done, any and all situations are not going to be attacked with the same fervent vigor they need be. We can not overextend our troops when we are already overextended to begin with. We need to solidify our forces and stabilizer the area. Only after a transition of government from a US held occupation to a free and government held Iraq will I even consider sending over American troops to another country. The genocide is awful, atrocious and downright deplorable, but right now, we need to focus on our problem, our mess we created and right the ship. Only after that is accomplished, can and will we intervene into another genocidal situation.
Good enough answers for you, or will you not bother to reply?
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