JanW wrote:
It could be that you're right when it comes to Kosovo (except for the extermination claim--I just can't go along with that!) Or it could be that we (US, NATO) let them down when it came time to stick around and try to maintain the peace. We have a bad history where that's concerned!
In the case of Kosovo, there's at least one gigantic problem which nobody has addressed yet: If ethnicity is henceforth to be eveything and history and rightful ownership not count for anything anymore, what do we say when the UN steps in demanding that we hand the entire American southwest including Texas and California over to Mexico on the same basis. Me, I'd rather simply give Kosovo back to Serbia and forget the whole deal.
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As for Macedonia & democracy, etc.--I am appalled at the claim that the US needs to spread democracy. This is ethnocentric in the extreme, and is particularly disgusting when the US benefits from the puppet governments we've supported through the years. The fact is that we support whatever government will best feed our insatiable greed for their natural resources.
I'd argue both points again. One, the total lack of democratic and responsible government in the middle east other than for Israel is arguably the major problem and the problem creates enough danger for us to justify trying to spread democracy in the region.
Two, the claim that we invaded Iraq for oil is basically idiotic, it would have been vastly cheaper just to buy the oil.
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Gungasnake, you said that there's evidence of a tie between Saddam Hussein and the anthrax scare here in the US. I haven't seen that evidence. Please send it along and I'll have a look at it.
That one strikes me as unarguable, and I'd not refer to it as a scare. People died. What that was was an outright act of war which we were simply unprepared to deal with at the time due to the neglect of the previous administration.
The question of the technical sophistication of the anthrax involved is dealt with here:
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html
Basically, nobody other than Saddam Hussein has ever created any sort of an anthrax weapon that sophisticated.
Other than that, the connections between the anthrax and the 9-11 hijackers are well documented and the Czechs are sticking with their story of Mohammed Atta having met with Iraqi state security officials in Prague prior to 9-11. It's the kind of an accumulation of circumstantial evidence which would be sufficient to convict in any courtroom.
