The US, UN & Iraq III

Craven de Kere wrote:

You think right. That's the one.

I was away from A2K a while, so I did a search on my own screenname to find out where I still owed anyone a reply. That's how I came here and to this post.

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In the comparisons of Wilson and Roosevelt, and condemnation of them for having campaigned on the basis of having kept us out of war, i would note that that simply made good political sense. Did they deceive the people in this? Certainly if you are willing to condemn them based upon an estimate of their motives and true intentions. Do any other politicians willfully deceive the public when in a race for the white house? yes--all of them. Would(will) George II do this in 2004? without doubt. Can anyone provide a shred of evidence that either Wilson or Roosevelt had plans in the works to willfully deceive the public in order to obtain a declaration of war, in order to attack Germany? No, no one can.

What is being overlooked, is Wilson was able to make a creditable case for war, based on evidence which cannot be questioned. Roosevelt simply had to deliver his "day of infamy" speech, and the arch-idiot of the historical rogues gallery--Adolph--was more than happy to declare war on the United States, and assure his own destruction. Are the situations between Wilson and Roosevelt on the one hand, and Bush on the other analogous? Absurd--they certainly are not.

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It's good to see you around, means I can ignore the politics board. :-)

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Craven, That'll be the day! LOL c.i.

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Did anyone else note this odd random correlation in three posts in this thread? It concerns different posters, so it isn't that there's any of a case about anyone to be made, but I think there's a challenge hidden in it somewhere about exploring our readiness to be consistent, perhaps - what do we consider justified when?

First McGentrix listed the various reasons the US administration had formulated in law to justify its war on Iraq. One was the Iraqi regime's refusal "to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman".

Then the Pinochet trial came up. Steve noted that "the Spanish wanted him for murder of their citizens, just a few amongst the thousands of Chileans he killed" - similarity of situation, there - about which georgeob1 (had) noted that he considered "the house arrest imposed on [Pinochet] by the British government, acting as the stooge of an errant and hypocritical Spanish judge [..] a shameful episode".

What do we consider justified, when?

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nimh

I'll refer you to the Membership Agreement wherein it is specifically stated that posters are not permitted to turn my analogies back on me.

I am personally sympathetic to the notion that humantitarian disasters such as mass slaughter by the state or by factions within the state provide just cause for intervention by others in that states affairs. I hold that such a situation is a FAR more justifiable cause for international military action than protection of commercial interests.

Given those opinions, I would be more sympathetic also to a President who found it necessary to use deceit to prevent such atrocities. Of course, that dilemma clearly isn't applicable here.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

It's good to see you around, means I can ignore the politics board. :-)

no, please, you cant leave me with that responsibility - that would be too wicked a revenge! ;-)

Craven de Kere wrote:

My Mood: [busy]

"Dot-communism"? <smiles>.
How's that service work, actually?

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nimh,

The service is good, right now their server is having pretty serious technical difficulties and my real mood is actually "ecstatic" (set at 5 PM when I am "off" work) but it's not updating here.

It's usefull if you want to use it in email signatures and several other places.

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Setanta wrote:

In the comparisons of Wilson and Roosevelt, and condemnation of them for having campaigned on the basis of having kept us out of war, i would note that that simply made good political sense. Did they deceive the people in this? Certainly if you are willing to condemn them based upon an estimate of their motives and true intentions. Do any other politicians willfully deceive the public when in a race for the white house? yes--all of them. Would(will) George II do this in 2004? without doubt. Can anyone provide a shred of evidence that either Wilson or Roosevelt had plans in the works to willfully deceive the public in order to obtain a declaration of war, in order to attack Germany? No, no one can.

What is being overlooked, is Wilson was able to make a creditable case for war, based on evidence which cannot be questioned. Roosevelt simply had to deliver his "day of infamy" speech, and the arch-idiot of the historical rogues gallery--Adolph--was more than happy to declare war on the United States, and assure his own destruction. Are the situations between Wilson and Roosevelt on the one hand, and Bush on the other analogous? Absurd--they certainly are not.

justice robert jackson, the american prosecutor at the nuremburg trials asked nazi foreign minister von ribbontrop why the nazis declared war on the US. von ribbonbtrop replied that they had a treaty with japan to declare war on any nation who attacked japan.

jackson, incredulous, was reported to follow this response with the question, "why was this the only treaty your government decided not to break?"

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And, of course, the Japanese didn't care if the Germans lived or died. Japan negotiated a cease fire in 1939 with the Soviets. When Hitlers armies drove within site of the Sparrow Hills outside of Moscow, they were finally stopped, and then held through a nightmare winter (for which they had not prepared), it was by the troops whom Stalin had been able to transfer from the far east. The dominance of a Naval attitude, and a totally cynical attitude toward their undertakings, led the Japanese to ignore any notion of a concerted plan. Attacked from two sides, the Soviets would have been obliged to give ground on both sides, and likely would have sacrificed the very valuable petroleum and mineral resources of the East, rather than that Moscow or Leningrad should fall.

Juntas like that die because they're too bloody stupid and selfish to survive.

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Don't know if anyone else uses this resource (it has a subscription service): http://www.fpif.org/index.html

Good stuff in general, some interesting new papers this week...

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Good for a laugh: http://www.un-freezone.org/

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Kuv

Lovely anecdote.

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blatham wrote:

nimh

I'll refer you to the Membership Agreement wherein it is specifically stated that posters are not permitted to turn my analogies back on me.

..... or to point out an egregious error which I loudly proclaim.

I unjustly chided a poster concerning the year and Presidency during which Saddam's gas attacks on the Kurds occurred. Nimh, Kuvaz, and others have noted it. I was dead wrong and I was loud about it.

I'm sorry and embarrassed.

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george

sorry and embarrassed is exactly the way we like our republicans. And thank you for the correction on Membership Agreement rules.

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blatham wrote:

george

sorry and embarrassed is exactly the way we like our republicans. And thank you for the correction on Membership Agreement rules.

Don't rejoice - I'll get over it quickly.

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Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, June 14, 2003

Hmmmmmm

NUS Index | Update at Hrs: 18:00 | 16:00 |

International
CIA reassigns two top Iraq analysts

Washington, June 14. (PTI): The CIA has reassigned two senior officials overseeing its analysis on Iraq and its suspected weapons of mass destruction.

The officials, whose names have not been revealed, had served in senior positions in which they were deeply involved in assembling and assessing the intelligence on Iraq's alleged stocks of chemical and biological arms, The Los Angeles Times reported today.

More than two months after the fall of Baghdad, the US search teams have yet to find conclusive evidence that Iraq had such weapons in the months before the war, an assertion that President George W Bush used as his primary rationale for invading Iraq, the report said.

One of the officials was reassigned last week to the CIA's personnel department after spending the last several months heading the Iraq Task Force, a special unit set up to provide 24- hour support to military commanders during the war, the report said.

The other, a long-time analyst who had led the agency's Iraq Issue Group, that is responsible for analysis of all US intelligence on the country, was dispatched on an extended mission to Iraq, the paper said.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I was dead wrong and I was loud about it.

I missed the being "loud about it" part.

Actually, I still can't find it - I went looking for it, of course, because I was already blushing for urging you to apologise when you already had. But no, can't find any of the sort.

I can only find back the post where, after others had pointed out your mistake, you explained how you'd merely responded to Joe Nation's post, since that had "represented a rather compact concentration of error and misstatements of fact, and I merely pointed that out."

Can't read an admission of being wrong in that, but perhaps I'm missing something important.

Blatham, you were being ironic, right? I'd almost started worrying about actually violating the Membership Agreement ! ;-)

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God what a jerk. You persist in reading what people write incorrectly, and dumping your scorn on them for it.

georgeob1 wrote:

I was dead wrong and I was loud about it.

George is saying that he was dead wrong, and that when he was wrong, he was loudly wrong. What's the matter Habibi, wasn't he contrite enough for you. You can't read an admission on his part of having been wrong in that? I begin to wonder just how poor your reading skills are . . .

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and
Nimh I told to him fuggeddaboudit, even I, I! have moments of mental numbness, so enough about all that. (Where the hell are my car keys?? Oh wait, I don't own a car.)

I think I just figured out who was telling those two, now re-assigned, analysts all the good stuff about the WMDs. Has anyone heard from Ahmed Chalabi in the last month or so? I'll bet those guys were getting an earful from him every time they called him up.

' Oh yes, there's tons of the stuff--- and maybe the makings of nuke or two--- ready to go at a moments notice--' **

So those two and others did the Owow and wrote it all down.

This was the guy TIME and others were interviewing in February and the buzz was he and his folks were going to run things for the Americans as soon as the lead stopped flying.
So we keep looking and when we ask him for more and better info, now he shrugs, 'What do I care? Are you guys still here?'**

** not actual quotes :wink:

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The US, UN & Iraq III

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