Nash....at Charon's request

[Nash]

It's a case that has its merits, and is certainly interesting to ponder, but I really don't give too much of a damn about trying to prove that one justification for war was any more invalid than another.

I mean... Lets talk about the terrorist justification. Or the human rights justification.

Same difference. Equally as suspect.

Come on Toad, lets move on.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
Now you want to go back to relying on the UN's findings in order to justify an invasion that the UN didn't authorize. Highly contradictory.

[/b]

Not at all, but you're putting words in my mouth and twisting the argument to suit you.

The point of the UN "material breach" is that there's NO POSSIBLE way you can claim the WMD threat is solely a PNAC fabrication. There are too many other indepent and in some cases "anti-PNAC" sources that mention the threat. You simply can't lay all "WMD threats" at the feet of PNAC although it would benefit your argument to do so and I see why you keep trying.

 And a path already well worn. Please don't go back there.

You're absolutely right. I admit that I "can't find anything ilegal that PNAC has done," because my knowledge of international law amounts to one gigantic gaping hole.

And there's not even the scintilla of an attempt to charge PNAC or the administration by people with far more intelligence and expertise in these areas, far more motive to "get Bush", far more money to do so and far more resources.

What's that tell you?

But.... why are you ignoring what is right now hitting you in the face like a ton of bricks?

I'm still trying to figure our your objection to PNAC. I wish you'd spell it out.

[Toad]

Originally posted by oboe
Very true!   Any opinions as to the legality of that doctrine?  Common sense tells me massive invasions with the stated goal of regime change would HAVE to be illegal.

I'd be much obliged if you can tell me that it's illegal to state the goal of "regime change" if you have just cause for war.

The example that springs to mind is Hitler. I think we were pretty clear that he was going to be removed.

The key isn't "stated goal of regime change". The key is "just war".

Now, THAT has been discussed before here too. If you search you'll find my opinion on that and on it as it relates to Iraq.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
Please tell me that you read it all.

No, I haven't read it all. Probably won't.

I'm sure that since you have, you can point me to where it says Iraq must be invaded and SH removed under any pretext that can be "sold" to the US public and Congress.

Also noting any other grave threats to my Republic and the world would be appreciated.

[Nash]

Again, I don't have any objection to PNAC.

(and again, by PNAC we're talking about the administration, and by administration we're talking about PNAC).

I have just as much of an objection to PNAC as I have to there being a United States government. Which would be absurd.

I do have an objection to their clearly states goals and their clearly stated solutions, and the flawed means by which they are carrying out these clearly stated goals.

Period.

[Nash]

Originally posted by Toad
No, I haven't read it all. Probably won't.

I'm sure that since you have, you can point me to where it says...

This is not a Nuke debate. I'm not going to do your heavy lifting for you.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
Come on Toad, lets move on.

To what?

I still have no clue what you're trying to say in this thread other than that PNAC formed, laid out it's goals and policies, attempted to get elected or appointed to positions that allow influencing policy and attempted to achieve its stated goals.

As I said before, I suspect that if ANY other organization did that and you personally subscribed to their theories and goals, you'd be praising them.

All I really see here is that you don't subscribe to the goals and policies of PNAC.

Great. From what I've read so far, I really don't either. I'm an isolationist at heart.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
This is not a Nuke debate. I'm not going to do your heavy lifting for you.

Not asking you to really.

But I'm hardly going to take 1-2 hours out of my day to sift through all that and try to decipher your point in this thread from that document.

If it supports some point you're trying to make, link it. Because, as I said, I fail to see much of a point to your statements in this thread.

And, I have to now go and do the final touch-ups on the room I just painted. After it dries down some, you always see those "painter's holidays" and I have to finish the cut-in around the inside of the closet.

Ta for now.

Do try to tell me your point in this thread in a paragraph or two. Maybe I'm just slow today but I can't see it.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
I do have an objection to their clearly states goals and their clearly stated solutions, and the flawed means by which they are carrying out these clearly stated goals.

Period.

Ah, finally.

You don't agree with their politics.

That's IT?

OK. Certainly your right to an opinion.

Don't see that was worth a 2 page thread.

[Nash]

Well you're defending them, aint ya?

But yeah, that's basically it. I got a problem with them.

And I got a problem when guys like you who have no idea what they're about, defend them all the same, using obfuscation and sidetracking, employing salamanderly little arguments consisting of UN article 317 section 3 blah blah blah and defending them by blowing smoke up people's arses because we cannot really know what "fixed" means.... all the while not knowing much of anything about who these people are and what their goals are.

So if you want to examine who it is that's runnin' the show, and what they want to do, and evaluate the repurcussions and effectiveness of those aims, and debate the relative merits of all of that, then great.

There can easily exist disagreements on it.

But if you want to run around and pretend that it's about something other than what it is, using every possible dance move in the Solid Gold inventory.... I don't care for it.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Nash
Well you're defending them, aint ya?

Nope. Where did  you get that idea?

THIS is what I'm defending, white knuckles and all, for Bush, for PNAC, for you, for me, for Kerry, for anyone:

COFFIN v. U.S., 156 U.S. 432 (1895)

"The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. [156 U.S. 432, 454]

And I got a problem when guys like you who have no idea what they're about, defend them all the same, using obfuscation and sidetracking, employing salamanderly little arguments

...and as I've said, I've got a problem with folks that condemn them without anything but opinion to back up the condemenation. The formed, had a plan, got in office, implemented some]/i] aspects of their plan.

None of you have shown the least bit of evidence that they deliberately lied about WMD, haven't shown that, from their perspective (amongst others that thought it was real as well), the threat wasn't real.

all the while not knowing much of anything about who these people are and what their goals are.

Just because I didn't read the entire 90 page manifesto doesn't mean I was a) unaware of them b) unaware of some of their tenets, unaware of their general goals. I had visited their website before and read some of it.

But if you want to run around and pretend that it's about something other than what it is, using every possible dance move in the Solid Gold inventory.... I don't care for it.

Isn't it funny how life is full of mirrors? You apparently see my paraticipation in this thread exactly as I see yours.

Lot of dancing, implying and pretending that ends up with "I don't like their politics."

Whoop-de-do. Now there's something rarely heard in this world.

[Nash]

Ah, so your participation in this thread, as well as other related threads, is just to stand up for the presumption of innocence? That's it?

I guess that would explain your obsession with the WMD issue. A shame that you cannot simply admit defeat, and let it go. Not because it's fun to see you admit defeat, but because despite WMD seeming like some huge issue - it really isn't. It's not pretty to see one so smart grasping at a thing so peripheral.

It's just one thing, and its context needs to be understood. If you'd care to read and absorb the expressed views upon which this government is currently acting, then I'd expect that you'd be at some discomfort, to put it mildy, upon realizing that those views amount to blatant imperialism which runs counter to your personal isolationist leaning, evidenced by: "...the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces" running counter to "I'm an isolationist at heart."

So on one hand, you hold a core belief about the direction America should take, and on the other are more than happy to enter into a UBB dust-up in order to defend the administration on the details that merely surround a greater policy that you fundamentally disagree with.

Then you label your defense as the defense of the presumption of innocence.

That's the problem I see with many of your arguments here. Due to the fact that they are not consistent with your core values, they end up falling flat. Luckily for you, you are quite intelligent and are able to express whatever it is you want to say with enough panache to make it seem as if your arguments are valid. Indeed many of them are.

But due to them being in support of a fallacy to which even you do not subscribe, those arguments tumble down over the shaky ground upon which they were built.

I suggest that if you are serious about defending this administration's actions, you educate yourself on this administration's intentions.

[Toad]

Look Nash, you have this need to twist everything into your particular frame of reference, your particular strawman. It's your style. Unfortunately, your frame of reference is just that. It's valid for you, that's all. It's sure not an open view.

Review the whole thread.

There's a few people jumping up and down shouting "PNAC! PNAC!"

My response is "PNAC what?"

And the answer is "I don't like them".

The entire case for just war rests on WMD. You're smart enough to know that. Yeah, I gave them the benefit of the doubt on it. The time passed and now I feel the war cannot be justified. (We're stuck with it now; we have to stay with it.)

I'm the one bringing up WMD all the time? EVERYONE brings it up. It's key to the entire issue. It basically IS the issue.

That is not to say, however, that I or YOU or anyone else has any idea what they (President, Congress, Joint Chiefs) REALLY thought about the threat. Maybe they were convinced it was real, maybe they weren't. Maybe some were, some weren't. As you pointed out, everyone not involved at that level, in the end, was guessing what the intel actually said.

Now as to PNAC principles. I'm familar with the "Reader's Digest Version." Why? Because while you apparently feel PNAC is some unstoppable force, I am comfortable enough that our form of government provided checks and balances. When something gets too far out of balance, the pendulum swings back. PNAC has passed its apogee. I don't feel the need to read 90 pages of it; the short story will do. I'm not the one that can influence it in any degree anyway. For that I pretty much have to rely on the built in checks and balances.

Further, I do subscribe to some of their principles but not necessarily for their reasons or in full. Take the one you qoute:

"the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces".

I ABSOLUTELY believe America should maintain the preeminence of U.S. military forces. Not a doubt in my mind. However, I could really give a fig about "global leadership". That's not what matters to me. Can you understand that?

Take another one:

we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad

I basically agree with that. However, I reserve the right to disagree with PNAC's methods of achieving that goal.

So, while you try to force people into Nash-defined pigeon holes so you can slam the strawman, you have to realize that people see that tactic for what it is too.

Now, let's talk about your charge of "defending" PNAC. I have a conceptual problem here, help me out.

You say you can find nothing that PNAC has done wrong or illegal.

OK, so how is it I am "defending" them against you if you say they haven't done anything wrong?

I'm certainly not defending them against your "I don't like their political views" attack. I told you that's certainly your right to an opinion and I don't agree with them for the most part either.

What I did is point out that despite all the brouhaha about PNAC and Bush......... there's just no evidence they did anything wrong.

In fact, there's really no evidence they did anything other than what they are saying they did, which is make a decision for war on the intel they had about the threat they saw. Which, yes, turned out to be wrong.

Defend the administration's actions? Yet another strawman.

All I did is point out that there CAN be other explanations than those that you provide. There's other possibilities. As yet there's just no definitive proof either way.

I've said in this and previous threads that if there ever IS proof, I'll be calling for and working for impeachment/punishment proceedings. So I'm totally siding with them, right? Not.

It turned out to be an unjust war. Why? No WMD = no immediate threat. (That's why WMD is important, BTW; it's the only thing that fits just war theory. And why supporting statements from other intel agencies and Blix are important.)

However, being wrong alone is not enough to impeach Bush because there's no evidence that shows Bush deliberately lied us into the war.

Bush may have just thought he was doing his job. Assign any probabillity you like to that other than "0". Because there is that prossibility to some unknown degree.

Now, until there's actual evidence... not opinion or simple frothing hate of Bush....  I'll have to go with presumption of innnocence.

I guess you won't though; your perogative.

I wish it was all simple. But it isn't. The Congress gave the President the clearance to act and he did.

Is the other method to wait for another Pearl Harbor? IE: wait until we have been attacked and someone or some country has openly declared responsibility for it and declared war on us?

Distrust and ignore all intel until an attack validates one of the intelligence estimates?

Only this isn't 1941 anymore and the weapons are a lot different.

[Nash]

Well, gee...

That was certainly passionate.

It's not like I think that you're expecting a response by me to what you've written. But in case you are, can you break it down into 1 or 2 things? You don't feel like reading a book any more than I feel like writing one.

[Charon]

Show me something of that order, notes from meetings by actual participants that proves "it (WMD) was picked and used to sell the policy." And that deliberate lies were used to "sell" it.

Something a little better than personal opinion. Get some kind of proof, I'll be happy to join the fight to impeach.

After the participants are dead, or cleanly out of public service, you may get something like that. Happened with McNamara. And the "deliberate lies" argument was never my position. I'll say it again, since you seem to have missed it the other times I've said it already. I DON"T BELIEVE THEY DELIBERATELY LIED ABOUT THINKING WMD WOULD BE FOUND. How's that? But, you never lie in PR anyway, you just concentrate on the appropriate truths, or portions of the appropriate truths.  I doubt there are any legally impeachable quality smoking guns.

However, here are a couple of additional interesting primary sources and a study. Not worthy of a legal conviction perhaps, but worthy of some "grand jury" style consideration (which has a much lower burden of proof):

Scott Ritter:

The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material.

“The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was,” Ritter said last week.

He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. “Stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes (to produce weapons of mass destruction),” said Ritter. “They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage.”

Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague of Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to the media. “Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the media,” said Ritter. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2-523-944831,00.html

BTW, manipulate isn't "lie" but it does suggest a means to an end.

Interview with Richard Perle -- WMD an important rational but part of the big picture.

But a rationale emerges for why we need to go to war, and weapons of mass destruction becomes the leading reason. There were other reasons, as well. Give me a sense of why it was that weapons of mass destructions was preeminent and what the other reasons were?

Weapons of mass destruction were, of course, an important part of the rationale. We knew that Saddam had them. The U.N. had determined that he had chemical and biological weapons, that he had a nuclear program that was discovered in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. He refused to account for those weapons.

The inspectors had been constructively dismissed from Iraq in 1998. We knew there was activity hiding things. We knew the organization responsible for hiding them. So the picture was reasonably clear, although incomplete. He had weapons, he was moving them around, he had an organization to hide them and he wouldn't account for them. So it was an obvious concern. Sept. 11 had focused everyone's attention on what terrorists could do if they were to employ weapons of mass destruction.

But there was a larger, more ambitious plan, too, to remake the Middle East; that establishing a democracy in Iraq would be an important change in the world order.

There's no question that liberating Iraq from this vicious tyrannical regime was thought by many of us to be a good thing in itself. The added benefits -- if one could bring democratic political process to Iraq -- of shaping opinion in the Arab world, which is woefully devoid of democratic political institutions, would also be a good thing.

If you say would we have taken this action in Iraq, if the only purpose had been to try to bring democracy to Iraq, I think the answer is no. We didn't even consider using force to bring democracy to any other Arab country. But the combination of Saddam Hussein -- who had made war in the past, who had weapons of mass destruction, who was an avowed enemy of the United States-- When you put all of that together, that was a very powerful case for the action we took. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/perle.html

You have to decide for yourself if WMD was more important, equal or less important than the other factors. I have made my decision - for now.

The study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace states that "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile program" by treating possibilities as fact and "misrepresenting inspectors' findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire." http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/09/carnegie_study_calls_arms_threat_overstated/

Again, misrepresented isn't really a "lie" in a Clinton sense of the word, but it does suggest a means to an end.

Again, simply tell me what the big problem is with PNAC forming, stating its goals and moving to accomplish them. Isn't that what all political organizations do? What are you trying to say that I am missing?

I've covered this previously. As I stated -- nothing but a personal problem. I just think that when you put 1,300 kids in body bags with another 12,000 wounded, it should be for the primary reason stated. Not to mention the primary reason is now a total bust. I mean hell, doesn't that call for some critical analysis of our leadership, it goals and motivations? Maybe they actually did lie, though I don't currently buy it myself. It certainly opens up the topic for some consideration, I would think. Shouldn't you now start questioning that "presumption of innocence?" Similarly, if we do have bigger plans for the region I would like to know about them and know what it's going to cost moving forward in lives and dollars.

My life’s mission isn’t to convert you Toad. I’ve probably spent 30+ hours finding my own perspective, and lack the extra time to spend another 30 hours at the cut and paste shop. So I guess we just have to agree to disagree, or whatever, and move on. At leat that's my plan. I'm going to have a busy time dealing with the fine ethanol lobby next week.

If you develop the time or interest, Richard Clark has a pretty good book on a variety of related subjects, includeing the shift to Iraq post 9/11.  Not factually inaccurate according to Philip Zelikow, who I had a unique opportunity to meet last year when he was the honored guest at a small UVA dinner function i was lucky enough to attend. I was reading the book at the time and specifically asked him about it's accuracy. This frontline piece is also pretty good at showing some of my perspective: The War Behind Closed Doors And I missed this one, but it looks interesting: Truth War and Consequences I personally want to check out Woodward’s book, and "Weapons of Mass Distraction” which purports to cover these very issues in detail.

Charon