Brandon9000 wrote:No, not very often. More often, my liberal board opponents either point out how often I have said the same things (as though they don't) and then move on without further comment, or engage in some random ad hominem and then move on without further comment. You yourself once limited your response to a post of mine on this topic by simply saying, "The sky is falling" or some such. Hardly an example of addressing what I say.
When you indulge your "saw my head off while i'm screaming" paranoid fantasies, yes, i'm very likely to indulge in ridicule. My point remains that your nonsense has been repeatedly answered, and answered cogently, by a great many people, and you still trot out the same worn-out shibboleths as though you had some fresh argument.
Quote:On the contrary. All of the items on your list below, I have addressed here many times, and, no, I won't find links for you. I will address them again now, though, since your arguments are so incredibly false.
In that your subsequent responses here do not address the bankrupt litany of partisan support for the Shrub's dirty little war which you invariably trot out, yours are the arguments which are incredibly false.
Quote:Incorrect. You can't contain someone with WMD, since he only needs to get one person with one WMD into your country to strike a crippling blow against you. Containment is a largely obsolete concept. As for bringing hellfire down on his head, he wouldn't necessarily. If someone like Hussein were to have a WMD smuggled into an American city and used, he could simply deny responsibility, express sympathy, and offer us aid. We still don't know who sent the anthrax through the mail. Imagine trying to pull evidence from the site of a nuclear fireball. He might someday be exposed or he might easily not.
The delivery system to which you refer, a single terrorist with a single weapon, would require an operational sophistication which would have its origin written all over it. Your anthrax analogy doesn't hold up, because the source was quickly identified by chemical markers on the available samples as having been from the United States. Such markers are available for all biological, chemical and nuclear materials. In the conditions under which Iraqi security organs were obliged to operate prior to the invasion, tracking down Iraq as the source would have been child's play, and the Iraqis knew it. Several of the September 11th operatives moved to the west via Iran, which fact was quickly established. You are indulging your favorite paranoid fantasy that terrorists can strike at any time, anywhere, and we won't see it coming (not unlikely given the piss-poor track record of this administration)
and that we'll never know the source; which latter proposition is an absurdity, even for the stumblebums at Central Intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Your statement that containment is now impossible is a statement from authority which you do not substantiate. A nuclear fireball is only possible with a significant amount of fissionable material (don't even mention fusion, you're not getting a device like that through assembled, and you're not going to assemble it here without expertise that can't be taught at a terrorist camp in the Hindu Kush) and a very large explosive triggering device. The only scenario involving nuclear material in a "suitcase" bomb is a dirty bomb, a conventional explosive wrapped in radioactive material. You may let your paranoia run away with your imagination, but that doesn't oblige reasonable people to swallow your contentions whole. The September 11th gangs used airliners as bombs precisely because the 1993 attempt proved they couldn't assemble the necessary materials for an effective detonation on site, nor smuggle them in. After the 1993 attempt, we rounded up the perps lickity-split, and we knew right where bin Laden and company were holed up--Afghanistan. Your entire thesis is predicated upon an assumption of nearly total incompetence on the part of United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies--which if true, means were not safe from anyone. I can see how your paranoia leads you to such assumptions, but once again, don't expect the rest of us to subscribe to your fantasies of horror.
Quote:Yeah, we know because we invaded. Had we not invaded, and had he still had them, many people could have died later.
All lot of people do die every day in Iraq. A lot of people in the United States could still die due to terrorist action based in Iraq
now that we've invaded, because those borders are far more porous now than they ever were before the Shrub and his Forty Theives of Baghdad totally screwed the security situation in the middle east. Once again, your paranoid thesis is predicated upon an assumption that we are hapless and helpless targets, with no security resources of our own to protect us, or track down the perpetrators of an attack against us. Besides being a ludicrous assumption from which to proceed, it sure as hell doesn't speak highly of your boy in the White House.
Quote:What lies? The things you call lies in my experience don't rise to that standard.
So you've missed the entire Wilson/Plame embroglio, eh? You still believe the yellow cake story? When Cheney stated that Iraq was "the geographical base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but especially on 9/11" (thereby giving the Shrub plausible deniability for the statment, while reaping the benefits of freaking out the paranoids), you still buy that? You've read nothing about the Ministry of Defense memoranda from England which have been released? What a stunning case of burying one's head in the sand.
Quote:Anyway, even if Bush is the antichrist, there was enough information just in the superficial history of the events to give a reasonable probability that Hussein still had the WMD and/or programs. He had been caught lying about it before.
So what? We know that Iran has a nuclear capability. We know that North Korea has a nuclear capabitlity. We know that Pakistan and India have the capability, the weapons and the delivery systems. In the specific case of Pakistan, we set up al Qaeda there with the knowldege and consent of Pakistani security services. We know today that al Qaeda members are harbored in and operate from Pakistan. I guess you want us to invade them, too, huh? I haven't characterized the Shrub as the antichrist, and find that laughably absurd, as i have no reason to assume that any "Christ" exists or ever did, and don't give a rat's ass for religion. That is just an example of the extent to which you always attempt to ramp of the hysteria in such discussions.
Quote:Yes, I have addressed this one a few times on A2K. My answer is: So they wanted to do the right thing and invade Iraq earlier, but allowed smaller measures to run their course first. Big deal.
You are either unaware of the PNAC agenda in all of its ramifications or are willfully being obtuse. Their stated purpose has been all along to invade Iraq and establish military bases to be maintained for the purpose of asserting American hegemony over the region. Tell me the Congress would have given the President war powers on the basis of a full disclosure of such a plan, and then try to sell me a bridge in New York. Allowed smaller measure to run their course ? ! ? ! ? That's very nearly a lie, and i only refrain from accusing you of one because of your demonstrable dissociation from reality. They did feck-all about Iraq until they worked out the necessary details to create in the mind of a gullible public an association with September 11th, and cobbled together a fabric of lies about weapons of mass destruction,
and admitted as much to their contacts in Blair's government. Yeah, when nearly two thousand Americans and Englishmen, and tens of thousands of Iraqis die because of the lies of the crowd in power in DC, that's a big deal.
Quote:Yes, but most of them don't have WMD development programs. If any do, we ought to treat them the same way. I have answered this one probably dozens of times on A2K.
Since you always trot out the
post hoc evil dictator drivel, you get no free ride on this. Absent any links, i frankly don't believe you. I've never read a post of yours in which you address the mealy-mouthed moralizing on the subject of evil dictators of which the right is now so fond, having stepped on their collective dicks on weapons of mass destruction and harboring al Qaeda terrorists. The Sudan both harbored al Qaeda and bin Laden, and they've been slaughtering their own citizens for more than twenty years on a scale that makes Hussein look like a piker. Where's the moral indignation? When is the invasion planned to commence? Oh yeah, that's right, they're not on the PNAC agenda, and they're not sitting atop the world's second largest proven petroleum reserves.
Quote:I would say that this is the one I have probably answered here the most often. We waited too long and now NK has the bomb. It's too late to invade. During the first hour of the invasion, NK could kill a million people. It was to prevent Hussein from achieving this level of near invulnerability that we invaded Iraq.
Once again, i've never seen this response before from you. As for "waiting too long," i frankly think you are lying on this one. North Korea has had a nuclear capacity and the missile delivery systems since the late 1970's. They've never even been a blip on the right wing radar screens. Your final statement to the effect that we invaded Iraq to prevent them reaching a level of near invulnerability is both a gross mischaracterization of the situation with North Korea, and a thoroughly dishonest attempt to re-write the justifications for the invasion. This doesn't even remotely resemble the
causus belli trotted out by the phoney cowboy in the White House. I will never believe you if you assert to me that you've worried about that one for the last thirty years.
Quote:Fear of the effect of WMD in the hands of someone like Hussein, is hardly paranoia. Just one such weapon could kill hundreds of thousands of people. If they started a plague, maybe more.
As murderous dictators run, Hussein was far more reasonable than Kim Jong Il is. He was a minority tribal leader, sitting on his own powder keg. Until it finally dawned on him that the idiots in DC were really going to invade, his biggest worries were always at home. You have, as always, inflated him into a bogey man which he never was. He was making a mint from
American profiteers in the oil-for-food program, it was in his best interest not to rock the boat. You're either incredibly ill-informed and naïve about the international situation prior to 2003, or you're willfully playing fast and loose with the truth about the international situation. The embargo was a political godsend for Hussein--he could starve the Shi'ites, reward his Ba'atist cronies and rant for the cameras to the Sunni faithful about the western crusaders. It was never in his interest to rock the boat; it was never in his interest to attack us, or even to have the least suspicion fall on Iraq in a terrorist attack. He stood to lose too much, even if he didn't think it would lead to invasion. The nicest way for me to view this is that you are stunningly unsophisticated in knowledge and judgment regarding the situation in Iraq over the last fifteen years.
Quote:Why abandon politicians who hold mostly the same opinions I do?
It is refreshingly honest of you, at least, to admit that you agree with a program which seeks to beggar the American people in favor of a corporate elite. Disgusting, but honest.
Quote:NK, I've answered above.
And demonstrated that you know next to nothing about North Korea and its regime and military programs over the last thirty years.
Quote:Iran is sort of a different type of animal at the moment, but ultimately, we would have to act to prevent them from arming themselves with WMD.
News flash, Bubba, they've already got 'em. They used chemical weapons and missiles against the Iraqis twenty years ago. The current tension arises from their determination to free themselves from dependence on Pakistani scientists and sources of weapons grade material. You really do know next to nothing about the situation in southwest Asia.
Quote:Certainly not. My discussions have been about dictators who do not follow risk averse policies, particularly if they have connections to terrorism.
Hussein could have been the poster boy for dictators pursuing "risk averse policies." He was happy as a clam at low tide with the embargo and the political gifts it gave him, as well as the opportunity for grafting on a vast scale. You need to get away from the neo-con talking points for a while and actually study the history of the region for the last century. You especially need to stop trying to hawk that tired old shibboleth about "connections to terrorism." No such connections have ever been proven. You must be a graduate of the Lash School of Hysterical Contentions About Terrorist Networks.
Quote:My personal good or bad points have nothing to do with the validity of my posts.
Remarking that in debates on this issue you fail to apply the same standard across the board, for however unpleasant that may be to you, does not constitute a comment on your "personal good or bad points." It is a concerted assault on the paucity of your arguments, it is not a personal attack. Are you now going to join the ranks of Fox and Ican in asserting that any vehement refutation of your nonsense arguments constitutes a personal attack?
Quote:You know, I thought you were supposed to be smart, but what you've given me tonight seem the arguments of a child.
As the most charitable construction to put on the remarks you have made about the middle east in general, Iraq in particular, Iran in particular and North Korea in particular is that you are incredibly ill-informed, there is an exquisite irony is seeing such an accusation from you.
