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Iraq War a Mistake

anglolawyer said:
Rėgime decapitation is not a lawful reason for making war. Pretending to obey international law while subverting it is the action of a rogue state, which the US has become.
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Once again your vendetta-driven reasoning has led to an absurdity.

Reduction to absurdity: If regime decapitation is of itself unlawful, then the invasion of Nazi Germany and the decapitation of the Nazi regime was a war crime.

"All necessary means" means "all necessary means".
 
RandFan said:
INAL

George H. W. Bush was able to build a coalition, in part, because many nations accepted the proposition that it was a just act to liberate Kuwait.

George W. Bush was unable to build such a coalition. IMO: It was because they sensed or knew that Bush was over playing his hand, lying and rushing to a war that would end up to be a quagmire without an exit strategy.
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This is just sad. You are forcing me to conclude that you are not being entirely honest.

How could you be unaware of the multinational force that participated in the decapitation of the Hussein regime?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_–_Iraq

Count the number of countries that put boots on the ground in Iraq.
 
Toontown said:
I prefer to think it simply has not occurred to you that the commander in chief has the authority to use whatever interpretation of the information he is provided to reachas a pretext to lead others to his own conclusions.
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FTFY
 
Toontown said:
I prefer to think it simply has not occurred to you that the commander in chief has the authority to use whatever information he is provided to reach his own conclusions.

Reaching his own conclusions from information provided to him would not be lying. It would be reaching his own conclusions. Which is what he was elected to do.
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A.) An honest commander in chief, a smart one, listens to the experts. B.) An honest commander in chief doesn't then lie to the American people.

  • The CIA told Bush one thing based on evidence.
  • Bush told the American people another based on no evidence.
  • That's what's known as lying.
 
RandFan said:
George W. Bush's CIA Briefer: Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public

It wasn't a mistake. It was a lie.
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Skeptic Ginger already posted this article and another one like it. I eviscerated the allegations here. She didn't do her homework and never examined the primary source (i.e. the interview with Chris Matthews), trusting instead in the honesty of partisan hacks at MotherJones and Salon. You have done the same, although in your case, the laziness and partisan bias is even more egregious. I mean it was only two pages ago that I gave my rebuttal.
 
Toontown said:
This is just sad. You are forcing me to conclude that you are not being entirely honest.

How could you be unaware of the multinational force that participated in the decapitation of the Hussein regime?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_%E2%80%93_Iraq

Count the number of countries that put boots on the ground in Iraq.
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Given that I argued in favor of the Iraq invasion on this forum and given that I played this bit of slight of hand then it's you being dishonest.

A few boots on the ground is hardly substantive. What's even more dishonest is your ignoring the nations and number of troops that conspicuously absent.

Now, compare your "token" coalition list to a real coalition. The one to oust Saddam from Kuwait.
 
Toontown said:
You made a counter claim to the effect that the war was illegal, but the illegality was criminally swept under the rug by the UNSC.

I reduced your counter claim to the vendetta-driven absurdity that it is.
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No, sorry. You are all over the place here. I have not said anything was 'criminally swept under the rug'. I'm not sure what that means. Sunmaster was implying that an illegal war can be ratified subsequently so that it becomes legal after all. I was simply asking for some authority for that proposition.
 
RandFan said:
INAL

George H. W. Bush was able to build a coalition, in part, because many nations accepted the proposition that it was a just act to liberate Kuwait.

George W. Bush was unable to build such a coalition. IMO: It was because they sensed or knew that Bush was over playing his hand, lying and rushing to a war that would end up to be a quagmire without an exit strategy.
Click to expand...

Think about it: even _Canada_ didn't rush to follow the US like the lapdog that we usually are.
 
RandFan said:
A.) An honest commander in chief, a smart one, listens to the experts.
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Th "experts" he listened to were the neocons whispering conspiracy theories into the Oval Office echo chamber. Any opinions expressing an alternative (honest) assessment of the situation were discounted. Confirmation bias? Or stupidity? Or pure pretext to achieve a long standing dream? Some combination of the three I suspect.
 
anglolawyer said:
You keep making this idiotic remark. It doesn't improve with repetition.
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It doesn't need to improve with repetition. The problem is that the bozos who think it was better to leave a group of psychopaths in control of a fourth of the planet's primary oil reserve clearly aren't getting any smarter with the repetition of the deplorable predicament.

anglolawyer said:
If you want to have the: was it a good thing to do, lawful or not argument, the floor is yours.
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You've established nothing which requires me to jump through any such hoop.

However, I can dispose of your hoop in one sentence: If this monkeyball finds it acceptable to have it's primary energy reserve in the hands of psychopaths, then screw this monkeyball. It deserves nothing from me.

anglolawyer said:
You can perhaps start by discussing how we are all better off with the prospect of ISIS taking over.
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Another hoop? No problem. If the monkeyball lets ISIS take over, then screw the monkeyball. I've done my best to talk sense to the monkeys.

BTW, the Hussein regime was just ISIS in suits. At worst you'd only be getting more of what you've already established that you find preferable to psychopath decapitation - that being a fourth of the planet's energy reserve, and all the power and wealth it provides, in the hands of a group of psychopaths.

Are we done yet?
 
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RandFan said:
INAL

George H. W. Bush was able to build a coalition, in part, because many nations accepted the proposition that it was a just act to liberate Kuwait.

George W. Bush was unable to build such a coalition. IMO: It was because they sensed or knew that Bush was over playing his hand, lying and rushing to a war that would end up to be a quagmire without an exit strategy.
Click to expand...

Your opinion about why certain countries opposed the Iraq War doesn't make sense. First, almost all intelligence agencies (including the Germans and the French) believed that Saddam had an active WMD program. So there was no reason to believe Bush was lying or that Saddam wasn't in violation of the 1991 ceasefire agreement. Second, why would other countries care about the US ending up in a quagmire? I rather think Russia, China, and France would be thrilled about that. On the contrary, I think they were actually worried that we would demonstrate the overwhelming superiority of US military power and strengthen our hegemony in the world. Third, the opposition to the Iraq War from these countries was most likely due to the fear that their lucrative economic ties to the Baathist regime would be severed and remolded in the US's favor. The countries I mentioned, plus Germany, all had big sanctions-busting business with Iraq, and some of the government leaders in charge benefited personally from the corruption of the UN Oil for Food program. The interest in preserving the status quo was self-interested and amoral, to say the least.
 
Toontown said:
Once again your vendetta-driven reasoning has led to an absurdity.

Reduction to absurdity: If regime decapitation is of itself unlawful, then the invasion of Nazi Germany and the decapitation of the Nazi regime was a war crime.

"All necessary means" means "all necessary means".
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Ah, I see the level at which I need to adjust my arguments in your particular case. Self defence is a lawful basis for war. Germany was the aggressor in all cases in WW2 so the war against Germany was entirely lawful under the doctrines we use today. I am not sure how far these doctrines had developed in 1939 (or 1941 as far as the U.S. is concerned). The stated objective of the allies was unconditional surrender, not rėgime change.

Moreover, the west did not decapitate the Nazi rėgime. As I understand it. the regime collapsed entirely in the course of Germany's total defeat. But anyway, as I said, international law has developed a fair bit since then so you may be comparing apples and oranges.
 
RandFan said:
Given that I argued in favor of the Iraq invasion on this forum and given that I played this bit of slight of hand then it's you being dishonest.

A few boots on the ground is hardly substantive. What's even more dishonest is your ignoring the nations and number of troops that conspicuously absent.

Now, compare your "token" coalition list to a real coalition. The one to oust Saddam from Kuwait.
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And now, quite predictably, you have committed the Nirvana Fallacy.

Your Nirvana Fallacy consists of comparing the "token" (well poisoning) coalition to another larger, ideal coalition, and based on the bogus comparison, declare the less numerous coalition nonexistent.

BTW: when you say something didn't exist, and you admittedly know it did exist, you have lied.
 
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RandFan said:
Given that I argued in favor of the Iraq invasion on this forum and given that I played this bit of slight of hand then it's you being dishonest.
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This is really the most amazing bit of logic that I've seen posted on this forum. What are you trying to say here? That because you once believed Proposition A, and you changed your mind so now you don't, that all people who believe Proposition A are wrong? And not just wrong, but dishonest?
 
Toontown said:
And now, quite predictably, you have committed the Nirvana Fallacy.

Your Nirvana Fallacy consists of comparing the "token" (well poisoning) coalition to another larger, ideal coalition, and based on the bogus comparison, declare the coalition nonexistent.

BTW: when you say something didn't exist, and you admittedly know it did exist, you have lied.
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It was a token coalition. It didn't exist. When you pretend a token thing is a real thing then you lie.
 
sunmaster14 said:
This is really the most amazing bit of logic that I've seen posted on this forum. What are you trying to say here? That because you once believed Proposition A, and you changed your mind so now you don't, that all people who believe Proposition A are wrong? And not just wrong, but dishonest?
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Having played the game myself I recognize it.
 
sunmaster14 said:
First, almost all intelligence agencies (including the Germans and the French) believed that Saddam had an active WMD program.
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That's nonsense. German Intelligence even warned the US about the baseless nature of the claims from "their own" source Curveball. Nobody in Germany - except Angela Merkel perhaps - believed Powell's theatre at the UN. Joschka Fischer even famously threw it right in the faces of Rumsfeld et al at the Munich Security Conference:

 
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