From heros to zeros!

[Ineluke]

originally posted by TheTaintedSoul
Ineluke, generally this is what i gather of your opinion from your posts so far:
Iraq probably had wmds, these would have been a threat to Israel, Saudi Arabie and other countries in the vicinity.
That the wmds haven\'t been found is likely cause they have been sold/transported to another country.
 I this correct? I want to know if i understand someones view correctly, thats why i ask.

This is a correct summary. I would like to add that the wmd\'s were also a threat to american embassies and military bases in those countries.

And i very much doubt the existence of WMDs in Iraq, Saddam knew that if they were found he would get in a very bad situation.

Which is the very reason that he would have gotten rid of them in the first place

Erm, i dont really understand, thats what im suggesting, that he got rid of most of the wmds or at least stopped producing them.

Yes he got rid of the wmds but that doesn\'t mean that they were never there in the first place. I believe he sold/moved them.

True im making assumptions.
1) That Saddam is a coward is however not entirely my own. He is a paranoid person afraid of losing his power, fearing to be betrayed by his own. Much like Stalin in fact. Even his own sons didn\'t always know where he went to or was. There were multiple convoys going in different directions. Not that he had it all wrong, assination attempts have been made on his life.

I guess I have to concede that point.

2) Saddam cared only for having power (think thats an assumption i can easily make). When he attacked Kuwait to gain power he expected the US to do nothing. Now if he attacked a country he knows the US responds. Why does he care? Well that is easy, does/did he stand a chance against the US army? No Saddam knew his regime is doomed when he attacks another country. And being in power is more important to him than anything except his life perhaps.

This is not a point that I will concede. Saddam may have thought that with the US occupied with the war on Terrorism that they would not have time to deal with him. Or he may have not ever intended to actually use the wmd\'s but to have them and be able to threaten to use them. When dealing with wmd\'s you don\'t have to actually use them for them to have an effect on polotics and war.

Okay you\'re right i shouldnt put it in \"\'s but i wanted to clearly seperate that sentence. Unfortunately i don\'t have a link or source. Most of my information comes from the media here. However the meaning of the sentence was like the one i wrote, as well as the change. It was an example of the numerous documents where alterations have been made. Making them reflecting in a more negative and sometimes unrealistic way of the wmds in Iraq.

I don\'t think that those documents were changed as much as your media would like you to believe. I will admit that they may have been altered to cast Iraq in a more negative light but I highly doubt that we would go so far as to change words like defensive into offensive. Or to stretch the truch so far that it becomes false or unrepresentative of the actual situation.

How did the USA get the \'proof\' Powell showed at the UN? Some of that were new weren\'t they? Apparently the US watched Iraq closely. Also the US stated to know of locations of wmds. Therefore id think they would have seen transportation of those wmds and have proof thereof.

It could have been that Saddam slipped up in the transportaion or storage of a set of wmd\'s and we caught him when he slipped. Once he realized we knew he had wmd\'s he began to be much more carful.

I don\'t accuse the US of covering up stuff (at least that was not my intention with my point). Im saying the argument of wmds are in other countries is lame. How i see it is: Your country didn\'t want to admit they were wrong (would have been to embarresing and damaging to their reputation) so it was said Syria had the wmds. Later they acknowledged that the information of wmds on which the war was based was overrated and wrong.

Why would the US outright lie knowing that as soon as it was looked into the lie would fall apart? Lying about the weapons being moved to Syria when we knew that they weren\'t there either would have dammaged our reputationeven more than being wrong about the weapons in the first place.

It would have been easy, thats for certain alright. However other countries (like france) in such a case would want the UN to take a close look at the wmds. And such a complex technology i think has specific technology that \'tells\' what country produced the wmd.

You need to keep in mind we have seen Iraq\'s wmd\'s in the past. It would have been simple for us to construct a token number of \"Iraqi wmd\'s\" minicking their technology to make it seem like they were their\'s or we could put wmd\'s from another country and say saddam didn\'t construct them he bought them.

After at least a decade of indoctrination Saddam was likely to have at least some very loyal followers. And to be certain, kidnap their children and wives. threaten to kill them if nothing happens and loyaltie is assured.

Ok I concede this point but he still would have to deal with the revolt of his country as he killed a large portion of the populace.

Okay, we agree that the war on Iraq had little to do with terrorists connection of Saddam. But it was used by the US as one of the reasons to attack Iraq.

That was just a token reason. Somthing to add to the list. Because a list of reasons to go to war is much more impressive than one big reason.

About the crime rate: Although we terrorism is besides the point with iraq, im trying to put things into perspective. I dont want America or Europe to do nothing about terrorism. Instead of using violence the source of terrorism should be removed by improving the state people are in.

Ok now that I understand what you meant I completly agree.

I intended to post a clear view of how i see the war on Iraq (and afghanistan). This will have to come later im afraid but this is enough to argue on i think .

Good I\'m looking forward to it.
This should be a good amount for you to chew on.
I do have a request of you though. Only quote what is absolutly nessisary for your comments to make sence that last on was a bit long...

[kbilik]

Originally posted by tygerwilde
Americans are arrogant and ignorant

I agree with this statement, and I\'m american....

what does that make me???

perhaps king of the retards???

It definitely reveals that you are arrogant and ignorant. Can\'t say the same about most Americans or Europeans.

[Monketh]

I can think of several problems with the solution.
First, the rich makes a very unstable tax base.  A recession can kill 30% of your income *snaps* just like that.  Think California.
2.) Dictatorial regimes hog aid mean for civilians.
3.) Politicians will have to be threatened to convince them to send aid to people who are perceived as a threat.

Farmers are diliberately kept poor here in the \'States (and proll\'y Europe too) to ensure cheap food prices.

[SaintNuclear]

You\'re contredicting yourself here:

Originally posted by TheTaintedSoul
Put the money spent on war in Iraq and afghanistan in the wellbeing of people in undeveloped countries. Encouraging education, economy, etc. In a countrie with a well educated middle class democracy will form easier and is more stable.

Here you\'re saying that the US should invest money in undeveloped countries, influencing them as they see fit.

However, here...

In general the west should live worldwide by the standards they claim to have.
And the international community should become more of a democracy instead of the USA influencing the world the way they see fit.

You\'re saying that the US shouldn\'t influence the world as they see fit.

Here i think the UN is important. Slightly naive perhaps i look out to a world where an invasion of one country by another will cause the others to helpt that country.

You do know that that\'s how WWI started, right?

Ineluke, generally this is what i gather of your opinion from your posts so far:
Iraq probably had wmds, these would have been a threat to Israel, Saudi Arabie and other countries in the vicinity.

This just reminded me of a certain article I\'ve read not long after the war on Iraq started.
Apperantly, Iraq and Israel had secret peace negotiations (that if I remmember correctly had an American representative or two to watch over).
They were going really well not long before Bush started giving Saddam deadlines for disarming.

Of course, once the war started, the negotiations stopped.

Peace between Israel and Iraq? It does sound a bit farfetched, but peace between Israel and Egypt seemed farfetched back in the time too.

And Saddam wouldn\'t attack Saudi either. And if he would, every single Muslim country would probebly pay to be the one to slay him.

Originally posted by kbilik
This is true but these cults are not state sponsored nor do they have a global network with financers who own nearly a billion dollars (Bin Laden\'s fortune). Cults have caused damage - like in Japan where they released poison gas in the subway. But the threat is no where near the level of Al-Quida

Let me remind you that these terrorist organisations started small too. And these terrorist organisations have existed for the last few tens of years, they\'re alot more known.
An apocaliptic cult probebly won\'t be state sponsored, but it can definitly have a network of rich people supporting them.

The damage part is mostly financial related. It takes only one rich bored guy to be able to do something even bigger than 9/11.

[kbilik]

Originally posted by SaintNuclear

Originally posted by kbilik
This is true but these cults are not state sponsored nor do they have a global network with financers who own nearly a billion dollars (Bin Laden\'s fortune). Cults have caused damage - like in Japan where they released poison gas in the subway. But the threat is no where near the level of Al-Quida

Let me remind you that these terrorist organisations started small too. And these terrorist organisations have existed for the last few tens of years, they\'re alot more known.
An apocaliptic cult probebly won\'t be state sponsored, but it can definitly have a network of rich people supporting them.

The damage part is mostly financial related. It takes only one rich bored guy to be able to do something even bigger than 9/11.

Remember, economics and financial losses lead to poverty which in turn leads to fights over resources and a rise in extremism.

As for terrorism starting small first, yes it did. The problem is that people regarded it as a simple police matter (crime) at first. Then it became a means of other countries striking at their enemies. In Israel for example, the Arab armies were defeated in 3-4 full scale wars. So what did certain governments do? They fund suicide bombings and use the Palestinians and hijack their cause as human bombs. It didn\'t occur to anyone that this sort of thing could happen to anyone else. But the idea spread.

As for cults, there are no indications that they will become such a threat. Its a possibility, but not likely. Besides, many cults engage in mass suicide and their predictions are constantly proven wrong - thus discouraging others (not everyone I admit).

These extremists hijack an entire religion to claim what they do is holy. This makes it far more deadly because they can lure radicals and constantly indoctrinate which can give them a very large following.

As for \"rich bored guys\" causing disasters worse than 9/11... give me an example.

[SaintNuclear]

Originally posted by kbilik
As for \"rich bored guys\" causing disasters worse than 9/11... give me an example.

I didn\'t say it happened, I said that to make a disaster worse than 9/11 all you need is a rich bored guy.

1. With enough money, anyone can get themselves a few nukes, hire henchmen to plant them in big cities, and just press the button. If any of these henchmen gets arrested, money can take him out one way or another.

2. Boredom can make you do idiotic stuff, just so you won\'t be bored. I can\'t give you an example of someone that made a large-scale terrorist attack due to boredom, but two bored people could start a bloody fight against each other just so they can do something. If boredom can cause that, excessive boredom can cause worse stuff.

[kbilik]

Originally posted by SaintNuclear
2. Boredom can make you do idiotic stuff, just so you won\'t be bored. I can\'t give you an example of someone that made a large-scale terrorist attack due to boredom, but two bored people could start a bloody fight against each other just so they can do something. If boredom can cause that, excessive boredom can cause worse stuff.

It takes more than boredom and money to commit something like that. It takes determined fanaticism and hatred to actively find anyone willing to find the weapons (there is constant monitoring against this), thoughtlessly murder millions and plunge the world into a major depression.

If you intended to say that anyone with money and the will or connections can do such a thing, then I would agree. However, they would have to be suicidal as the reaction to such an act will be swift and merciless. No matter how much money they have, it won\'t be of much use when international banks and laws collapse and you have entire nations sending guys to mow you or those related to you down.

Which is why fanatics are so dangerous - they couldn\'t care less.

[DepthBlade]

Originally posted by Monketh


Farmers are diliberately kept poor here in the \'States (and proll\'y Europe too) to ensure cheap food prices.

God these posts are getting longer and longer to read heh

You are right on that idea, they seem to be trying it here in Canada but the farmers have set so many fall backs for themselves in the years that if they are going under there is farmer insurance given to them by the government and if not by the government other farms from around Canada send funds and last year they were sending massive loads of wheat and such to feed the animals here in western Canada.

[TheTaintedSoul]

For now ill only respond to this post, but later ill reply to the others as well.

Originally posted by SaintNuclear
You\'re contredicting yourself here:

Here you\'re saying that the US should invest money in undeveloped countries, influencing them as they see fit.

However, here...

In general the west should live worldwide by the standards they claim to have.
And the international community should become more of a democracy instead of the USA influencing the world the way they see fit.

You\'re saying that the US shouldn\'t influence the world as they see fit

indeed the way i wrote down is somewhat contradicting, what i meant was not exactly what i wrote, its difficult to write it precicely down .
I meant more something like:

And the international community should become more of a democracy instead of the USA acting in the world the way they see fit.
So the USA/west shouldn\'t ignore interntational criticism and just go ahead do what they think is best for the world. They should however influence countries in a positive gentle nonviolent way.

You do know that that\'s how WWI started, right?

Here too i think my intention wasn\'t put down well enough. Im talking about a system (in the far future) where countries know that an attack on another country means they will lose because all the other nations (or at least those in the neighbourhood) will help that countrie. Like a Nato worldwide. But this is really far far into the future.
The WWI started for other reasons, yes alliances were the problem but in this case they were hidden and opposed. Im talking about a huge alliance between all nations.
Blame me for being naive but as an optimistic person i do believe one day this will be realised.

Apperantly, Iraq and Israel had secret peace negotiations (that if I remmember correctly had an American representative or two to watch over).
They were going really well not long before Bush started giving Saddam deadlines for disarming.

Of course, once the war started, the negotiations stopped.

Interesting, i never heard of that. Id like to add hear there is no real reason i can think of for Iraq to attack Israel. To help the palestinians? Like Saddam really cared, financing them was easy and only to raise his poor reputation to the arabics. And the army of Israel is more modern then that of iraq.

Leaves Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, at least they provide a reason, oil. However the US having troops in both of them makes winning such a war very unlikely for Iraq.
And i agree with SaintNuclear, the other arabic nations wouldn\'t allow such an act of Iraq.

Oh and one more thing, today in the newspaper there was an article about a report of IISS a british institute. They stated that terrorists can get wmds, they will keep causing small strikes until they have a wmd. This means (assuming the report as correct) i underestimate the threat of terrorism.
However they also claim that the number of terrorists have grown. The war on afghanistan and Iraq helped them grow. And though the taliban and Al Quaida in Afghanistan are removed this has little positive effect on the organization. Being decentralised its just as dangerous.  

[TheTaintedSoul]

Originally posted by Monketh
I can think of several problems with the solution.
First, the rich makes a very unstable tax base.  A recession can kill 30% of your income *snaps* just like that.  Think California.
2.) Dictatorial regimes hog aid mean for civilians.
3.) Politicians will have to be threatened to convince them to send aid to people who are perceived as a threat.

1) Im not sure what you mean. Youre saying that having too many rich makes en economy unstable?
2) Unfortunately true, and to add most of the aid only helps out a very small part of the civilians. We should keep trying though, aid done in a smart way has helped some countries improve nonetheless. And there are other ways we can help like the example i posted.
3) If politicians have to be forced they\'re in the wrong place. If the general opinion of the population is that aid should be sent i doubt politicians just ignore that. Also i hope politicians will start to see that helping backward countries is effective against terrorism.

The idea needs working out i admit that. And i dont have all the answers, im not that arrogant to think i know exactly how to send aid.

Farmers are diliberately kept poor here in the \'States (and proll\'y Europe too) to ensure cheap food prices.

In holland maybe thats true too. Doesn\'t really matter, the system i talked about does exist for no real sensible reason yet makes life for african farmers harder.

[SaintNuclear]

Originally posted by TheTaintedSoul
Oh and one more thing, today in the newspaper there was an article about a report of IISS a british institute. They stated that terrorists can get wmds, they will keep causing small strikes until they have a wmd. This means (assuming the report as correct) i underestimate the threat of terrorism.

Of course terrorists can get wmds.
They can get them from the black market, and they can steal them too.
Here\'s a scenario:
3 Al Qaeda militants join the US army as drivers.
After a while, they go up in the classification ranks, so they can deliver dangerous materials.
The army needs to deliver a nuke, and they\'re assigned to be in the convoy. One of them drives the truck, the two others drive escort vehicles.
A carefully planned ambush is made, so only the truck and the two escort vehicles with the terrorist drivers survive.
They drive to Mexico, and from there there\'s a boat \\ plane to take them out of there.


It may have to be a bit more complicated than the way I described it, but generally, it is possible. And Al Qaeda is known to have enough patience to plant a few terrorists in the US and use them only after a few years.



Terrorists can use missiles too.
When the Israeli army was in south Lebanon, there were many times that Lebanese kids (yes, kids) launched RPG missiles (no, not Role Playing Game, Rocket Propellant Grenade) on army vehicles and outposts.
In the last few years, Palastinians have launched Kasam missiles from Gaza strip on Israeli settlements and towns.

RPGs and Kasams aren\'t as harmful as military-grade missiles, but they\'re so light and mobile, that you can have a man on the roof of a building not far from the White House, shoot it, run away, and probebly not get caught while running away. Maybe he\'ll even come back home with the launcher.

[Ineluke]

RPGs and Kasams aren\'t as harmful as military-grade missiles, but they\'re so light and mobile, that you can have a man on the roof of a building not far from the White House, shoot it, run away, and probebly not get caught while running away. Maybe he\'ll even come back home with the launcher.

Or they could put a grenade in a potato gun...

[kbilik]

Originally posted by SaintNuclear
RPGs and Kasams aren\'t as harmful as military-grade missiles, but they\'re so light and mobile, that you can have a man on the roof of a building not far from the White House, shoot it, run away, and probebly not get caught while running away. Maybe he\'ll even come back home with the launcher.

RPGs are mainly armor penetrators and will only blow holes into buildings. The Kassam is also a light missile that won\'t do much damage to these kinds of buildings. The real threat is from high explosives like in a car bomb or suicide bomber. Unless used in large numbers or against vehicles/small armored targets, these RPGs won\'t do much.

[SaintNuclear]

They won\'t, but it\'s still a threat.
With good aim and luck you could launch an RPG through a window and trash a room while killing \\ maiming the people inside it.

[TheTaintedSoul]

Originally posted by Ineluke
Yes he got rid of the wmds but that doesn\'t mean that they were never there in the first place. I believe he sold/moved them.

This is a point on which we disagree. You could be right. Iraq might have moved/sold the wmds. But consider the facts we know off, the proof of wmds was inaccurate, no wmds have been found so far. Considering that is it unlikely that there were no wmds?

Saddam may have thought that with the US occupied with the war on Terrorism that they would not have time to deal with him. Or he may have not ever intended to actually use the wmd\'s but to have them and be able to threaten to use them. When dealing with wmd\'s you don\'t have to actually use them for them to have an effect on polotics and war.

After 9/11 an attack on Iraq was more likely then before, it surprised me that the USA attacked Afghanistan and took so long before fighting war with Iraq. Also afghanistan was the only place where troops were busy with the war on terrorism.

If wmds are not intended to be used to threaten, why would they be a serious enough threat to start a war over?

I don\'t think that those documents were changed as much as your media would like you to believe. I will admit that they may have been altered to cast Iraq in a more negative light but I highly doubt that we would go so far as to change words like defensive into offensive. Or to stretch the truch so far that it becomes false or unrepresentative of the actual situation.

I don\'t think the media will make something like that up. Also they do as media should provide in a relative objective way news . Of course you should be carefull just to accept what they tell as the truth, i admit the media is slightly opposed to the war. If you doubt our media then i hope you do the same with information from your media.

It could have been that Saddam slipped up in the transportaion or storage of a set of wmd\'s and we caught him when he slipped. Once he realized we knew he had wmd\'s he began to be much more carful.

Then he was late with being carefull, usa claimed to know the locations for quite some time. And they did have much fairly recent proog. Covering up multiple transportations is not that easy without one being detected.

Why would the US outright lie knowing that as soon as it was looked into the lie would fall apart? Lying about the weapons being moved to Syria when we knew that they weren\'t there either would have dammaged our reputationeven more than being wrong about the weapons in the first place.

Im not saying its a lie. Transportation of wmds is a possibility but unlikely. Its however easier to claim then acknowledge that youre wrong. Admitting to be wrong is not something Bush is likely to do i think.

You need to keep in mind we have seen Iraq\'s wmd\'s in the past. It would have been simple for us to construct a token number of \"Iraqi wmd\'s\" minicking their technology to make it seem like they were their\'s or we could put wmd\'s from another country and say saddam didn\'t construct them he bought them.

Im not an engineer but i doubt such specific technology could be replicated well enough to fool exsperts in such a short time.

That was just a token reason. Somthing to add to the list. Because a list of reasons to go to war is much more impressive than one big reason.

Don\'t you think that when making such an important decision as whether to go to war the list of reasons the people should not be influenced by adding a false reason.
If you don\'t think of this, people are not stupid, they do realize terrorism has little to do with iraq. Having such a bad reason makes the other reasons lok less serious as well.
This as well as altering intelligence is one of the reasons the reputation of the US worsens. And makes people distrust the information of the US.
In fact im one of those people. Its strengthened my negative ideas about the war and the impression that the USA was determined to go to war even if no wmds were found.

I do have a request of you though. Only quote what is absolutly nessisary for your comments to make sence that last on was a bit long...

I tried too, is this better?