A liberal's comment on Iraq

[noni]

Originally posted by: M00T

Originally posted by: piasabird
Do you think that when a country sponsors terrorism, that this action is the same as doing the killing yourself?

Iraq was a sponsor for terrorism. It gave money to terrorist organizations.

Consider the following example.

I hate my wife, so I hire a hitman to kill her.

I am not really doing anything aggressive so the law should not attack me.

I view it as exactly the same.

False analogy.

Do some research on fallacies of logic.

So what if he has a couple of quirks in his deductive reasoning. The general idea is valid.


Now I'm not really sure and probably nobody in the world truly knows if Iraq sponsored anti- US terrorism or in particular the terrorists that attacked on 9-11.
But for the sake of the argument lets assume they did.

Let me rephrase.
Now the logic makes sense.
Iraq sponsored the attack on U.S > Iraq declared war on U.S. The only problem with this is that they denied they did such thing plus it would be very hard to prove they did.

I'm also really confused now lol looking at my post why Bush didn't go with this argument instead of WMD nonsense.
This makes a whole lot of sense compared to WMD. If I were Bush I would have definetely used the Iraq terrorists link argument as my main reason for going to war.
WMD doesn't make any sense and the spreading of democracy is so-so.

 

[imported_Seer]

Originally posted by: noni

Originally posted by: M00T

Originally posted by: piasabird
Do you think that when a country sponsors terrorism, that this action is the same as doing the killing yourself?

Iraq was a sponsor for terrorism. It gave money to terrorist organizations.

Consider the following example.

I hate my wife, so I hire a hitman to kill her.

I am not really doing anything aggressive so the law should not attack me.

I view it as exactly the same.

False analogy.

Do some research on fallacies of logic.

So what if he has a couple of quirks in his deductive reasoning. The general idea is valid.


Now I'm not really sure and probably nobody in the world truly knows if Iraq sponsored anti- US terrorism or in particular the terrorists that attacked on 9-11.
But for the sake of the argument lets assume they did.

Let me rephrase.
Now the logic makes sense.
Iraq sponsored the attack on U.S > Iraq declared war on U.S. The only problem with this is that they denied they did such thing plus it would be very hard to prove they did.

I'm also really confused now lol looking at my post why Bush didn't go with this argument instead of WMD nonsense.
This makes a whole lot of sense compared to WMD. If I were Bush I would have definetely used the Iraq terrorists link argument as my main reason for going to war.
WMD doesn't make any sense and the spreading of democracy is so-so.

Maybe because the link to terrorism was even LESS valid than the link to WMDs??

 

[noni]

It doesn't matter how valid the argument is when you're not really sure you'll prove your point afterwards. I wasn't saying what argument is closer to the truth, I was only saying that the link to terrorism is a better reason for going to war.

Furthermore, if Bush wanted to protect himself from embarassment before going to war he would have chosen the link to terrorism as that is harder to prove then the physical presence of WMD's. This means the CIA or whoever supplied the intel was wrong and Bush relied on that information.

But whoever came up with the concept of using WMD's to scare people and to gather support for the war needs to go back to school. The idea of some nation with a couple of nukes duking it out with the U.S. is just ridicilous. Nobody would be stupid enough to do that- not even North Korea but thats a whole different story.

That's why the argument for WMD's is useless UNLESS that nation has strong ties with terrorists as was the case with Afghanistan.



Also, weren't WMDs the primary reason for going to war? Please correct me if I'm wrong cause I honestly don't know/ remember. I know there was some talk about the possibility of Saddam supplying wmd's to terrorists and his ties to Al-queida, but it wasn't nearly as big.

 

[Craig234]

Also, weren't WMDs the primary reason for going to war? Please correct me if I'm wrong cause I honestly don't know/ remember. I know there was some talk about the possibility of Saddam supplying wmd's to terrorists and his ties to Al-queida, but it wasn't nearly as big.

Noni, the link to terrorism was not a good reason to go to war. The small link there was pales in comparison to other states, including ours. Paul Wolfowitz wrote an article saying how WMD's were chosen as the reason - it's a useful article.

In fact, to answer the question above, WMD's were the *only* justification for war. How can we say that, when Bush can rattle off 10 things he hated about Saddam? Because Bush said, repeatedly, that the choice of war was up to Saddam - if he did one thing, not ten things, disarm his WMD, there would not be a war.

The fact he said that if WMD were addressed he promised not to attack Iraq shows that none of the other 'nice to have' benefits of overthrowing Saddam were considered, were put forth, as justification for war. The opposite is true - Bush promised not to attack, even with none of them addressed, only WMD.

Yes, Bush also tried a lot of other arguments, such as the Saddam-Al Queda ties, and those were lies. Heck, the Bush administration had given tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban in 2001, making it a bigger sponsor than Saddam, who as a secular leader viewed the radical Islamisists as a threat.

 

[daniel49]

Craig:
you depend on the UN for much more then the time of day,you 'll have a whole world of Darfur's. As the UN watches Arab Muslums destroy the black Muslums of the darfur region. And we get talk, talk, and more talk. Meantime the Males are butchered, the females raped, thier villages burned, and the survivors flee across the desert in 100 degree+ heat hoping to make it to refugee camps.
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=africa&c=darfur

thier ineffectual blundering will also inevitably lead to another lebanon crisis.

The UN has become all together corrupt,useless, and ineffective.

 

[Craig234]

Daniel, the solution is to strengthen the UN, not weaken it. It's only as good as the members let it be, and help it.

As I wrote recently, it's like making one blind man the sherriff, not giving him a gun, and telling him to enforce the lawy by talking criminals out of committing crimes, and when he's shot the first time, saying "well, we tried law and order, and it doesn't work. Back to the wild west."

I think the world isn't ready for the UN yet. Just as our founding fathers' first attempt at a new nation failed because the states could not trust each other and would not surrender any power much to a central government (the Articles of Confederation), and it took some darned good arguments by a few men like James Madison arguining anonymously in The Federalist Papers, and some concessions to slavery and the electoral college to get the imperfect constitution on the second try, the first attempt - the League of Nations - didn't go well at all, and the second attempt - the United Nations has big shortcomings, but does a lot of good. I don't think nations are yet ready to move from the 'might makes right' with some diplomacy tossed in yet to any system which actually prevents wrongs in many cases.

We should, but it's like those who said so before the Articles of Confederation were tried, they were wasting their breath.

I happen to think that world peace may well rely on keeping many seperate powers with some organization to punish wrongdoing, and preventing any one power from reaching global dominance. But, guess what, the direction I think things are headed is towards more and more consolidated power.

 

[ProfJohn]

Craig, I don't think anything we do will "strengthen" the UN as long as half it membership is dicators and other thugs.

Can anyone name one world crisis that the UN was able to solve by itself without the US or NATO stepping in and slaping some people around?

About the only thing the UN is good for is its work with children and perhaps humanitarian aid. Both of which could be done just as effectivly outside of the UN.

Personally I am of the belief that we should from an organization of democraticly elected countries where membership is only open to democratic countries. Perhaps eventually such an organization could replace the UN or through its policies push more countries in the world towards democratic reform though economic policies.
I?d much rather buy a tickle me elmo made in democratic India than totalitarian China.

 

[Craig234]

About the only thing the UN is good for is its work with children and perhaps humanitarian aid. Both of which could be done just as effectivly outside of the UN.

One good sentence, one bad sentence.

I do give you credit for not being like so many right-wingers and refusing to acknowledge the huge good the UN does in its humanitarian programs, even if you barely mention it.

Your second senetence commits a common right-wing error, the ideological and false claim that anything the government does could/would be done as good or better without that government entity.

No, it wouldn't, you're speaking out of ideology and not rationality. See my thread on the trans fat issue from an hour ago for a great example of the same fallacy.