Originally posted by kingdavid

Originally posted by Raskolnikov
I didn't say they would, I said that's what Bush hopes.
So you agree with me that nukes don't scare Saddam.

I don't know if they do or not. They do have the ability to vaporize most of the infrastructure he's hoping to hold on to making them something he should fear tacticly. Then again, he's pulled "if I can't have it, nobody will" routines before.

And rask and co.,in regard to nukes,you guys talk about pression and selective hits against military targets as though nukes are precise like femtosecond lasers or something.
We all know how nukes behave when they land,don't we?

I've mostly been talking about "smart bombs" in terms of precision. These are the laser and GPS guided bombs that can hit specific windows in buildings. But, in specific regards to nuclear weapons, it's very easy to predict the amount of damage they will do, and the US probably has the most accurate delivery vehicles in the world. But why do you keep bringing up Bush's mention of the possibility of using nuclear weapons as if it's the primary mode of attack while consistantly ommiting the conditionals he used in the very same statement. It distorts a blunt but clear statement into something it's not. That's called "spin."

[quote]So tell me again why you're defending him?

I'm not defending Saddam.
I'm defending the notion that,especially in this day and age,nation should have a very very very strong case to go to war.And notice it's not just a plain war;nuclear weapons are being mentioned in the same sentence that war is mentioned.
I'm also reassertting the fact that America has no moral grounds to remove Saddam.
And it's this moral ground you seem to seek to claim when you mention the suffering of the people of Iraq.
How many people are homeless and suffering in your country?
Thousands,I'm told.
What you doing about it?
Again,I'm told,pretty much nothing.So feeling the pain of Iraqis is not the issue here.Buy the way,during the Iraqi/Iran war,which Iraq won,on whose side was America?
You talk about sanctions preventing the smuggling of weapons and stuff to Iraq.In the above mentioned war,who supplied them with weapons?
Who buys the diamonds that fuelled the civil war in Sierra Leone?Or the oil that comes from Angola?Which oil company was involved in the polution in Nigeria which led to the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa?
If you look around,you'll see you guys have no moral ground on which to go to war.

By your critera, I think no nation or coalition of nations have the "moral ground" with which to remove Saddam from power. I say we (you, me, everybody) have a [u]responsibility[/u] to remove him from power. In part because we did support him in the past, in part because he hasn't fufilled the terms ending the Gulf War, and in part because it will probably save more lives in the long run. I think all nations do, but as you can see (though you may choose to omit), they're choosing their oposition based on their own self interest, be it because they're making a lot of money with the Iraqi oil they're exporting or because they're afraid they may one day have to own up to their own human rights abuses.
You bring up homelessness in America and claim that (almost) nothing is being done about it. That's simply untrue. There are all kinds of programs to help homeless people get on their feet as well as shelters and feeding programs to offer them food and shelter. These programs and shelters are both Federally and privately funded. Could more be done? Yeah, but more can always be done, unfortunately to do more means to sacrifice other programs that help other people (like, say, retirees or Turkish earthquake victims). You have also failed to mention that no other nation in the world gives out more foreign aid than the United States and that it receives virtually none in return. Again, "spin."
Who buys the diamonds that fuelled the civil war in Sierra Leone? Everybody. "Blood diamonds" are virtually indestinguishable from any other diamond once they're on the open market, and frankly, every diamond bought comes with a certain percent chance that it's a blood diamond. If more Americans are buying diamonds, than yes, quantitively there will be more of those diamonds in the US, but statisticly, it's the same percentage as anywhere else. You also failed to mention that there are programs to keep those diamonds off the open market and that no American company controls the diamond market. This is a world problem you're discussing. Much the same rebuttal can be made towards the oil you've brought up; that's the nature of open world markets.

Without Saddam and without sanctions Iraq would have plenty of oil wealth with which to buy food.

Besides the ruling Al Saud family in Saudi Arabia,how many oil billionares do you know of from that country.Or even millionares?
America has shown that as long as their basic intersts are served,what really happens to the rest of the people is really none of their business.
So don't tell me about the oil wealth of Iraq going to irdinary citizens as your interest.

Did the US government put the Saudi's into power? No. Has America ever controled Saudi soil? No. Did America establish the Al Saud family's ownership of the Saudi oil industry? No. So how would this related to Iraq? It doesn't. After the event of war, expect to see a "transitional government" made up of ALL of Iraq's ethinic groups to be established to democraticly choose their new government and political system. At this point sanctions will be lifted, and the Iraqi economy will be free to operate at it's level best. Iraq's farmers will be able to get seeds (Iraq has the most water of any nation in the entire Middle East), resumed oil production will mean MORE JOBS, and generally more wealth in the market, Iraq's industry will be free to produce what it will and feely export it. Iraqi entrepeneurs will be free to import anything they damn well please and sell it freely. Expect to see Iraq's economy to improve drasticly within a year of Saddam's removal.
As to the Saudi Government and economic model, talk to the British about that one.

The point is that while the international community does nothing to remove him people suffer and die. In this instance, inaction is murder.

Really.
Is this the first time you guys are seeing people suffer under poor regimes?
NO!!
You even helped prop upsuch regimes when doing that was in your best interests.Case in point:Zaire's Mobutu Seseseko during the cold war.
Stop kidding us people!!

I'm not going to make excuses for my nation's shortsighted foreign policy in the past. In case you haven't noticed, much of it has come back to bite us in the ass in recent years, and hence our motivation to do our best to set first Afghanistan and now Iraq right. In past years the American government's outlook on the world was "Communism is bad, so everybody who's against it must be good" and that's a very shortsighted outlook on the world. Anybody who doesn't see that now is quite frankly an idiot.

Has the US invaded Saudi Arabia, removed one government and put another in place? Nope. "Apples to oranges."

The point you're being drawn to here is that the involvement of America doesn't not guarantee any ordinary citizens.It has been shown.But that seems to be one of your "for" arguments!

America's involvement with Saudi Arabia is pretty much a business relationship, and since Saddam invaded Kuwait, partially a defensive one. America's involvement with Iraq after a war would be reconstruction and then the facillitation of a new democratic government and is much better compared to America's involvement with Germany and Japan after World War II. "Involvement" is an increadibly broad word and simply fails to describe what's going on with any degree of accuracy.

Gandhi and Mandela faced different power balances and ethical questions.

They did not.

Yes they did:
Gandhi faced the British Empire, that while (officially) quite willing to plunder lands and people of their wealth was composed (unoffically) of British people who tend to get awefully squeamish about strong opinions being expressed, much less open oppression of fellow human beings. Gandhi was able to show the British the inhumanity of the situation, rally internal support towards independance, and break the British will to hold onto the Indian colony because he didn't allow the British people to ignore the injustice of the situation.
Mandela helped bring down the Apartheid system by winning world support. Now the old South African government largely didn't care about black South Africans, but it definately cared about the economic sanctions the world community placed on it and buckled.
Saddam Hussein on the other hand is a completely different ball of wax. He is already ignoring sanctions at the expense of his people and will continue to do so because he never gives in. In the past twelve years he hasn't made a single consession that wasn't in resonse to force or the reputable threat of force. NOT ONE. If you've read the Amnesty International report on the man, you'd also see that he doesn't care about injustice, he cares about his personal ambitions and to hell with anything or anyone who gets in the way. He will not be swayed by nonviolent protest, partially because he doesn't care and partially because it takes less effort to snuff out. ESPECIALLY when the world community is willing to stand by and WATCH.

Still don't get my point? I'll do the rather ghastly calculus pertaining to this situation for you:
TOTAL civilian casualties during the Gulf War was a few hundred to two or three thousand. This number is difficult to establish concretely because of Saddam's propoganda efforts). Compare that to the AVERAGE number of Iraqi civilians to starve under UN sanctions; OVER FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED CIVILIANS PER YEAR (going be ed's figure of 500,000 deaths divided by eleven years - I consider ed's number to be low because it's atleast six months out of date). Using a relatively high-ball figure for civilian Gulf War casualties of 2,000 and the casualty rate is STILL TWENTY TIMES GREATER. TWENTY. If you extrapulate that high-ball Gulf War figure out to a full year, it's still seven times fewer deaths than those caused by economic sanctions.

Inaction now is MURDER.

[Edited by Raskolnikov on 02-04-2003 at 07:26 PM]