Originally posted by 10Bears
1. You mentioned a couple of months ago your stance was they should let the inspectors back in..
2. That the evidence should be presented to a world body. That the U.N. security council should make a new resolution.
3. Congress should take a vote. I agree with that.
4. Not CIA spooks painting possible targets but actual inspectors. That was one of the reasons Iraq had for ejecting them.
5. This new doctrine of Japanese style pre emptive strikes is just plain wrong.
6. The looting of a sovereign country. Our boys might die so another rich man can get richer. it’s dishonest, it’s immoral, and it’s un American.
7. They want us to move our base out of Saudi Arabia,
8.They want us to spend a little less on Israel.
9. stop trying to impose our culture on the world all the time. You don’t need to pipe in the TEN channel on satellite to these conservative Muslim countries. You don’t need to build McDonalds everywhere. Mind your own business and take care of business..
Numbered your points for easier quoting.
1. Yes, absolutely; in accordance with the UN (ie: pretty much the whole dang world) belief that this will make the world a safer place.
2. Yes, to the UN and to Congress. If they have nothing but speculation, there's no cause for war. If they have hard evidence and Iraq continues to defy the UN resolutions, that's different. That is cause, IMO, to take action.
3. Congress, IMO, is taking the easy way out. They are defaulting on their Constitutional duty. In this particular case, there's plenty of time for debate and time to declare war IF NECESSARY.
However, I think the entire bunch are a bunch of chicken droppings without the balls to do what the Constitution requires... which is say Yes or NO to war with Iraq. They, like so many others, "don't want to be involved". If it goes well, they'll take the credit, if it goes poorly it's all the President's fault.
BS. It's the job of Congress to declare war. There shouldn't be any undeclared wars. And this won't be a "police action" or any other euphemism that allows them to dodge their duty.
So if this is about either weapons or oil it's the job of Congress to send troops. Not the President. Will they abdicate their responsibility?
4. I'll wager several mult-national intelligence agencies had operatives on the various inspection teams. It wouldn't suprise me if somewhere in the "Secret Ops" part of the UN resolutions it wasn't determined to be necessary or desired. You'd want to know everything you could learn.
If Iraq didn't like that... too bloody bad. You become a threat to the rest of the world, unpleasant things like that will happen to you. They could have just stayed out of Kuwait you know. Or taken any one of the several opportunities to withdraw from Kuwait offered to Iraq on a silver platter prior to Desert Storm starting.
5. Disagree. If you have the evidence, I think preemptive is the way to go. If you've got a person in power that's willing to gas his OWN citizens AND he has developed (or is developing) larger and more effective WMD there's no need to wait until he uses them.... OR hands them over to non-Iraqi operatives that will use them.... before you act.
I think there's several examples in 20th Century history where the use of pre-emption would have saved the world a lot of death and destruction.
It's exactly why the UN was founded. Head off trouble pre-emptively. By negotiation if possible, by action if not.
6. This is a conclusion you to which you are jumping a bit early, IMO. There is no doubt that should Hussein be replaced that Iraq will be much more open to world trade. For one thing, I'd expect the sanctions to be removed immediately and for "foreign aid" to be applied. The whole world helped Afghanistan for example and still his. (BTW, have you noted how many Afghan refugees who left under the Taliban have returned?)
Further, oil is without doubt Iraq's main source of foreign trade income. OF COURSE oil companies are going to vy for it. Oil companies from all over the world, not just the US. Your "exploitation" scenario sort of ignores the fact that there are other oil interests in the world market besides the US.
Nor will the oil be stolen or given away. It'll be sold at "market" price and more of the money will be spent on things that Iraq actually needs, not another Presidential Palace.
Further, we need Milo, the commodities trader to come in and give us all a quick lesson on how oil is sold and distributed around the world. I think DNIL also made this point. Iraqi oil is being used right now, and not just by the US.
7. Yep. I'd move out of Saudi. I'd also deal with the Saudi government as if it were an unreliable ally. They are. They are out of touch with their citizenry and obviously unable to control, investigate or even provide data on elements in their society that are a clear and present danger to the US.
8. I'll go you one further. If I were Emperor for a Day, I'd cut off aid to Israel totally. One, they're already the strongest power in the region.. by far.. and they don't need any more hardware. Two, Israel itself is in violation of SEVERAL UN resolutions and they're far outside their UN delineated borders. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
9. Umm.. business IS business. No one MAKES anyone take all 762 satellite channels. Deals for satellite broadcast into a foreign country have to be approved by the government of that particular country I would imagine. If they don't want the Playboy channel, I'm sure that could be written into the agreement. Same with MacDonald's; no US troops land to set up a Mickey D.
In short, acceptance of US culture is a voluntary thing. It's offered, heck it's aggressively marketed.
However all a country has to do is "just say no". Turn off that TV. Cook a little homemade hummus.
But we didn't force the Soviet Union to drink Pepsi, the choice of the cold war generation. They CHOSE to allow Pepsi in for their own reasons.
Countries allow our culture (or disallow it) for their own reasons.
