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Since it seems to be sole determinant for you as to the quality of the job he did for our country, you must be an extremely petty person.
At least the country didnt fall to economic ruin under Clinton and we didnt inspire increasing hatred and derision around the world under his administration, unlike both Bush administrations.
A man takes an oath to the Constitution of the United States....
while under that oath, he ends up in a court of law where he takes an oath to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". He then lies...
And you don't see how one affects the other?
I take it you don't understand the word "honor", do you?
Like most intelligent people I consider the balance of his and his administration's to be a shining example of effective leadership in a line of otherwise failed Presidencies.
At least we see now that is indeed you who are not responding to direct questions with anything more than flaming BS.
Nukes?
I'm wondering if you even read either of these articles? lol.
Quote: (from top link):
"Last month, U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said he had no real evidence Iraq actually has weapons of mass destruction although inspectors still have “many open questions” about Iraq's capability."
"Many open questions" are not sufficient grounds to spark a further major de-stabilising conflict in the middle east, or does your all-knowing risk analysis disregard that fact?
Have a look at this article from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists it makes a credible case against your CBS news reports and goes into detail to show how much of what CBS claimed prior to the first US invasion was simply hype to support Bush Sr.'s itch to get Saddam...
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1991/m91/m91albright.html
Of course, I fully expect another flamed response.
Sorry, but since when were 'islamics' the enemy?
I believe (I have no evidence to hand) that the US has weapons of mass destruction.
I believe they are looking more likely than anyone else in the world at the moment to use any weapons they may have.
I think the US has ignored international law on many occasions, and is ostracizing itself from the international community by refusing to sign up to various treaties etc as mentioned before.
And I believe the US is/has threatened to ignore any UN decisions and invade Iraq whatever.
Who else thinks the US is a greater danger to world peace than Iraq? Hands up....
I'll second that. As a matter of fact even Sky News viewers, who are by no means left wing, voted in a recent poll that GW Bush posed a bigger threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.
More shocking is the list given by the New Internationalist magazine about the behaviour of the US during the last few decades:
Since the Second World War
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Has bombed 21 countries
China 1945-46, 1950-53
Korea 1950-53
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-61
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Lebanon 1983-84
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Bosnia 1985
Sudan 1998
Former Yugoslavia 1999
Iraq 1991-20??
Afghanistan 1998, 2001-02
As rogue states go, this one is difficult to match...
The journalists were shown around a so called atomic bomb factory which turned out to be Iraqi ex nuclear reactor which was bombed many years ago and is used for nothing more than storing radioactive water from when the plant was operational! Journalists comfirmed that the plant was harmless and no longer operational!
Western journalists will probably be shown around other sites to prove once and for all that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.
Ex UN inspector Scott Ritter also pleaded with Saddam to let weapons inspectors back in to prove his point that he believes Iraq no longer posses weapons of mass destruction either!
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
The media tour that was given was not of the intense nature of those conducted previously by UN weapons inspectors and could easily have been a whitewash stunt.
Bio/Chemical weaponry is easily hidde3n away in makeshift labs which have no relation to the sites which media pundits were allowed to see.
Notwithstanding that, I still adamantly disagree with our more hawkish brethren on the wisdom of any unilateral crusade by the Bush administration to take matters into their own hands. There is far too much in the way of negative regional consequences to justify any action that does not have the common support of the international community.
Gee...I'm sure a journalist would have a clear idea of what to look for.... :rolleyes:
Steelgate, do you know how to identify VX? How about Sarin?
Clandestine, I notice your article did nothing to address the issues of Chemical and Biological weapons.
Let's make this real simple. Let's assume there are no nukes, just bio/chem weapons. Is the risk still worthwhile to eliminate those weapons being used? I'd say yes. So would anyone else who has seen what those weapons do.
So, the US invades to eliminate the bio/chem weapons...and in the process they find a nearly completed nuke. Will Clandestine apologize? Will Steelgate?
No, they'll continue to moan about the horrid USA.
So, the US doesn't invade....and Saddam uses those bio/chem weapons when he has more long-range scuds...or he develops a nuke and uses it on Tel Aviv...
What will Clandestine and Steelgate say then? The USA should have done something?
BTW, Steelgate...you've heard that Ritter is under investigation for supposedly taking $400,000 from an Iraqi official, haven't you?
Something a bit more current [June 19, 2002] that is interesting is a lengthy and in-depth analysis of Iraqi force capabilities reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies...
http://www.csis.org/burke/mb/Iraq_DynNet_Assess_61902.pdf
[page 22]: "IAEA and US intelligence experts privately put little or no faith in claims of various Iraqi defectors that Iraq that Iraq retains the the ability to make fissile material, has extensive covert facilities, and has workable bomb designs small enough to be used in missile warheads. IAEA experts note that the Iraqi diffusion effort effort was never effective, that the Calutron designs fell far short of meeting specification, and that Iraq's centrifuge designs proved to be far less effective during laboratory review than they initially estimated..."
Food for thought...
As for Bio/Chem, I still oppose any lone ranger tactics by my country in handling the matter. Bush is doing more than enough to inspire future insecurity of US citizens at home and abroad for him to be acting like a self appointed Avenger of righteousness in the world. Any resolution to the issue of current Iraqi WMD retention should and must be a matter for the entire international community to decide.
Like most hawks today, you are grasping at anything that will justify this invasion.
"The slump led in 1931 to a major breakdown in the system of international payments. Production fell in country after country and trade plummeted. Gold became concentrated in the hands of the dominant capitalists in the USA, Britain, France and the countries associated with them. These states also had a monopoly of access to most of the sources and raw materials in the world. The world thus became divided into two groups; those countries which had the gold and raw materials and those which lacked them. Germany, Japan and Italy were in the second group and in a bid to solve the problems this presented, the governing parties organised on an aggressive totalitarian basis and resorted to policies which challenged the other, dominant group.
To get gold and currencies to buy essential raw materials the totalitarian states tried 'dumping', i.e. selling their products below cost. In their trade with other countries they used devices which avoided gold, such as barter and bilateral trade agreements and credits which had to be used to buy their goods. All these devices tended to tie their trading partners to them and thus take them out of the world market.
This decline in the use of gold threatened the financial centres of London and New York. London was also threatened as the centre of dealings in raw materials. Pursuing these aggressive economic policies Germany had considerable success in Southern Europe and Latin America, while Japan made headway in the markets of Southern Asia. In 1931 Japan used armed force in Manchuria to set up a trading monopoly there. In the past the imperialist powers had decided on an open door policy for trade with China as none of them was strong enough to exclude all the others. Now Japan was trying to do just this, a policy which inevitably led to conflict with America and Britain. Italy similarly used force to get an overseas market in Abyssinia in 1935.
By way of response, the dominant powers decided on a determined campaign to regain the markets lost to the totalitarian countries. German, Japanese and Italian goods were boycotted. Credits were offered to the countries of Southern Europe to win them away from dependence on Germany. The more successful these policies were the more desperate became the economic position of German capitalism. Without the funds to give credits, force appeared to be the only way. Hence the annexation of Austria in 1938, the breaking up of Czechoslovakia in 1939.
At this point the conflict of economic interests was coming to a head. Germany was trying to keep its gains in Southern Europe by all means, including force, and Britain and France were using credits to undermine German influence. There was no backing down on either side. War would break out as soon as Britain and France decided to resist force with force."
From "What Caused The Two World Wars" by the Socialist Party of Great Britain published in 1950.
It wasn't a direct comparison between two charcters though was it?
The criticism was that the international community has a history of sitting back, watching things unfold only for a tradegy to strike. The list is endless, including recent additions of Rwanda, the Balkans, Indonesia...
At some point, after these events a left wing leaning individual will say, why didn't they (the US usually) do anything?
Look at many of the complaints about the propsed US action in Iraq. How often does the expression "but they don't do anything about...".
Fair enough, I can accept that. I agree that the US could also do a great deal in other areas, if they were so minded. But I'm certainly not going to condemn them for acting against one of the most oppressive regimes, if and when they do.
You're right, but rather than listen to Winston Churchill people listened to Neville Chambelain.
I think you kind of make a good point there Steelgate.
Just not the one you intended.
:thumb:
True there are many cases where the international community failed to act or to act in any timely manner. However, it is one thing to refrain from action in the face of an actual event or ongoing conflict, it is quite another to decide without conclusive evidence of any present danger that "perhaps" at some future date there might be trouble and on that basis launch a full scale invasion and overthrow, which could well be the very spark that ignites an entire geographical region of the globe into utter chaos and tribal infighting that could last far longer than anyone anticipates.
Like it or not, America is only one nation amongst many and does not have the moral authority to act as judge jury and executioner for the world. However much Bush and Co. might think they do.
NATO. Led by...?
Rwanda was something which the international community could have done something about. If anything it acts as proof of the toothlessness of the UN, without the US.
How many UN actions don't include the US, or their forces?
The role of the UN is to prevent conflict from happening. It has a diplomatic mission. The whole premise is that they act to stop such events, rather than reacting to them afterwards.
Like it or not, the US is the only country with the capability, and political will to take such action.
And its the US who usually get the first call from the UN to act as executioner...
What would constitute "proof"? How could we be sure that any "evidence" wasn't biased?
1. Iraq will not allow inspectors the unrestricted access required.
2. What will a satellite tell us. Yes it can show a building, but can is show what is happening inside?
3. What is PR9?
OO-RAH!!!
Only "evidence" would be the detritus, after the fact...
You raised this objection:
to which I pointed out that the international community DID respond to the Balkans under the auspices of NATO. Now regardless of who it was lead by, the point we have been arguing here is not whether the US can do anything in the world but how that is accomplished and under what conditions it SHOULD be accomplished. In the case of the Balkans, the action had the support and involvement of the international community.
Its also safe to say that unlike the tinder box of the middle East, the strike against Serb forces did not carry the risk of destabilising the entire South Eastern European Region.
Next I pointed out that Rwanda was a civil war, not the overthrow of an entire regime with full state supported military arsenals at their command. As for the claim that the US was somehow the only country to do anything there, let me remind you that Belgium had forces acting there long before the US became involved. I Don't know if you recall, but certain Belgian commanders and troops were subsequently caught in a scandal of reported human rights abuses whilst policing the situation in Rwanda.
I then raised this point:
Thinking that you might understand and recognise the contrast I was trying to make, I perhaps did not specify my thinking clearly enough, because you responded with:
My point was that whilst the UN (or international community in any form) has failed to act in the face of actual ongoing conflicts or events, does in no way give the US or any nation unilateral right to decide to adopt a pre-emptive military role on the basis of mere claims and assertions that something might happen at some future point. Once we say that it is acceptable as a means of foreign policy for any one nation to declare war on the basis that it does not like a particular leader, government, or country's stance and that it might be a threat, we have opened the floodgate for all countries to resolve their disputes by violence.
Where would any UN diplomatic mandate be at that point? Right out the window. It would be the law of the wild west then, "shoot first and ask questions later".
And lastly you assert that the US is the only nation with the capability to take military action when such is demonstrably proven necessary. This is not true my friend. Despite a measurable gap in capability between the Western European powers (including the UK) and the US, nonetheless, there are plenty of nations who are capable of acting when and if they feel the situation warrants such action.
What is far more the case is the difference in the will to use force as a means of resolving conflict. The US has more of a propensity to flex its muscles under right-wing administrations than do present-day European powers, which prefer to exhaust diplomatic efforts before being forced to engage an issue militarily.
But you have to ask yourself, why did it have to be NATO?
The answer is that the EU and the UN were incapable of acting themselves. The UN because of Russian supprt for Serbia, and the EU because of the French (who it should be added were the nation accuse of leaking sensitive information to Serbia), oh and the fact that the Eu is a toothless talking shop of course.
But that is an issue which you cannot ignore or gloss over. face it the US lead because they could. Without them nothing would have happened.
I don't think it did. I have a feeling that there was a serious amount of criticism at the time.
Really? So no influence on Albania or Greece then?
Actually I made no such claim. I suggested that there was no action from African states, that once again the west had to get involved and once again the US was called...
I'm sorry but I disagree.
If the UN fails to act, then only a unilateral action is available. As for "pre-emptive" strikes, why should anyone wait to be attacked?
Again you seem to imply that there is zero evidence. On what basis do you make such a claim. Apart from Iraq there isn't anyone who says they catergorically don't have any WMD. The US/UK claim that they do, and that they have the evidence to prove it.
If Iraq does have these weapons, will you accept that they are a threat?
If they are a threat, doesn't that justify a "pre-emptive" strike?
You claim there to be "plenty" of nations. Name them.
Which is why Europe has been the focal point of two world wars.
Jaw jaw instead of war war, eh?
Sometimes diplomacy is no longer an option. In some cases it never really was...
Your gloss over the keep italicised terms i have specifically put there to emphasize certain points which you have not fully taken stock of. and come on with the feined ignorance of Europe or is continental matters really so alien to British thinking?
I really dont have the enrgy or time right now to right another dissertation to respond what you should as an intelligent individual be able to see for yourself.
I will say this though, as far as the Balkans conflict having an influence on the region, of it had an INFLUENCE, but the invasion to end it was not going to DESTABILISE the region as it will more than likely do in the surrounding region of the middle east. Greece is not an unstable nation however much it might have stand off issues with Turkey from time to time.
And I choose to disgree with you that any nation has a unilateral right to pre-emptive attack on a another nation with out seriously backing its claims with the evidence it claims to have. So far all this talk of proof hasnt proved too convincing to alot of leaders far more savvy than Bush. You may believe there is sound evidence but since neither of us has seen it I choose to side with those that say there is more at work here for the real purpose of this rush to war than Saddam.
Nor would ignoring the issue in the Balkans have likely destabilized the world....unlike ignoring Saddam with WMD.
The same approach you are so happy to advocate is the same approach that ignored Adolf Hitler as he rebuilt his military, acquired additional territory and marched troops into Austria.
Do you really need to wait for a "Poland" in order to be willing to take action?