White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs

An anonymous reader writes "This New York Times article reports that in 2002, the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts. Specifically, aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges." In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges.

Lied is a bit strong

[Anonymous Coward]

They went with the CIA judgement that they could be used for nuclear projects. Regardless of whether they were or weren't, the other option is for Saddam to build rockets. Why would he need rockets? Oh, that's right, he was a dictator that killed lots of people.

irrefutable evidence

[dirvish]

"Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States."

So where are those tubes now Dick?

Does it matter?

[TrentL]

I keep reading stories like this, hoping the American public will finally "get it". But it never happens. Richard Clarke, the 9/11 commision, Abu Ghraib, whatever. If it's not there kid in Iraq, they don't care. We just need to face it: about 45% of this country is going to support Bush no matter what. I'm not saying people should switch to Kerry, but if you still support Bush at this point, you must have constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in your head.

What makes you think this will change anything?

[savagedome]

The saddest part is that there is a very high chance you guys will have this team back in business (?) again for the next four years. I read the transcript of that debate last week and it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason. Damn shame.

No Surprise

[xombo]

Weren't some of the news channels telling us that before hand or am I the only person that remembers history? I feel like we're living in the world of 1984.

I intentionally gave party members syphilis, et all.

/. Bias

[zmcgrew]

I'm glad we don't have a bias one way or another here at /.. I mean, "In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges" screams "I'm a Democrat, I hate Republicans!" to me.

When did /. become a mouthpiece for the Democrats?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it... How is this news for nerds? In light of all the other political blather going around, it isn't news that matters, either. Can we stop the political BS and just get back to the nerdy stuff?

Slashdot, let's not try to be a site you're not. Let's leave the political discourse to the other sites and leave it out of here. Please!!

Disputed != Lied

[BurritoWarrior]

If y'all would tone down the rhetoric, you would have Bush out of office, but instead you use inflammatory terms like the headline here. You wind up turning off the undecideds/moderates out there with the over-the-top Bush bashing.

This can and will happen again

[cOdEgUru]

What concerns me most is the ability of this administration (or the potential of any future ones) to pull a veil over the collective US public to go to war against an enemy that was a perceived threat, not a real one. What worries me most is that this could very well happen again, if we let this one slide. That in the future, a Republican or democrat white house could choose to shift its focus on a nation that it deems to be evil and take its own young men and women in to a hail of bullets and ill will.

Bush was brilliant or clueless enough to have his administration divert the public's gaze from Afghanistan or Iraq, forcibly or otherwise and even the critics in the media remained largely silent over the unjust war the country was being dragged in to. The esteemed Bob woodward said it himself that he finds himself guilty of ignoring stories that were of relevance, that could have proven to the public time and again that this war was being fought in the name of lies, that this was an unjust war. But men, who shirked their duties when their country asked of them to fight, chose to send young men and women in to harms way.

It were a crime then to question the legality of this war, it was unpatriotic to do so, it was simply wrong to doubt on the ability of our Commander in Chief, who chose to surround himself with yes men instead of criticism, like a clueless King who was fed what he needed to know by his courtiers, and never the truth.

It happened once, and it will happen again. And its a shame that it does, in this age when media remains omnipotent, the public has access to information of any nature, that a group of men and women could pull a veil over our collective judgement and lead many a mother's kid in to a nation in peril and a war that never end.

Re:COULD

[eliza_effect]

You COULD be a terrorist. I think we should lock you up just in case. We'll let you out when the War on Terror is over.

Re:What makes you think this will change anything?

[GreyWolf3000]

I read the transcript of that debate last week and it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason.

There was rhyme or reason. Whether or not said reasons were substantial, or actually based on evidence, is another question.

Well thank goodness...

[Spectra72]

Thank goodness that Congress stepped in and asserted a few checks and balances, otherwise this could have gotten out of hand!

Or not...

The failure of Congress to voice even token dissent on every foreign policy decision since 9/11 is the biggest failure of the entire system in my view. Every Congresscritter should be voted out of office and barred from even running for town dogcatcher for the rest of their miserable lives.

Half the country knows George Bush and Co. are a bunch of half-wits with their own agendas, but we deserve better from Congress. That they chose to goosestep to the White House's tune with nary a word of protest is unforgiveable.

Re:2-bit extremist liberal hash

[Anonymous Coward]

Business as usual.

Repsonse

[sethadam1]

I was going to mod you troll, but then I realized, maybe better to explain to you that you can set preferences in your account settings to ignore the politics section.

Do that, and then you won't have to worry about us liberals getting in the way of your video game updates.

Re:Whaaaa?

[josh3736]

You're being sarcastic, but what I don't understand is how they straight-up lied about WMDs and whatnot (and knew about it), yet not a damned thing is happening about it. Clinton gets a BJ, and everyone starts screaming "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!?" So I have to ask, what's really more important?

And yet people still want to vote for W. I just don't get it.

Re:Whaaaa?

[YouHaveSnail]

The sarcasm is well taken, but it sure as hell isn't funny.

Stupid moderators.

Re:COULD

[Draconix]

Wouldn't caution entail _not_ attacking a country for extremely questionable motives and alienating most of the world?

What a lousy Slashdot article

[LinuxParanoid]

Ugh, the spin on this article, both the headline and the editorial comment by Michael, is annoying. (The actual NYTimes piece is worth reading.)

1) Old news. All this analysis that the tubes could have, or even
were fairly likely to have been used for rockets, not centrifuges
was known and public in Dec2002-Mar 2003. If you don't remember
it, you just weren't paying attention. It's even old news that
the Energy Department and State Department experts were the
ones disagreeing. (What *is* news is that the caliber of experts
that said the tubes were likely not for centrifuges was not
made public at that time to the best of my knowledge.)

2) Michael grossly mischaracterizes the Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld
position at the time as saying the "tubes were slam-dunk evidence".

That was *not* the way the White House or the administration
presented the case at the time. The tone of 95% of their statements
was basically... well, we're not sure but it doesn't look good.
There is evidence that Saddam is reconstituting his nuclear program, etc.
What are we going to do about it?

In fact, the "slam dunk" comment was made *in private* by CIA director
Tenet to George Bush when Bush told the director that the case seemed
weak and was that the best info he had? At least that's the
story documented by Bob Woodward's book that came out a year after
the war, "Plan of Attack" (WSJ opinion [opinionjournal.com],
a longer CBS News summary [cbsnews.com].)

Now why Tenet said it was a slam dunk is a bit of a mystery to me.
And it presumably is the basis for the 2-3 statemtents pre-war
made to various obscure audiences but reported in the mainstream
press where Bush or Cheney said things like "we *know* Iraq
has WMD"... statements that were remarkable and notable precisely
because the administration was generally not so definitive in
saying that Iraq had WMD... most of their statements centered
around Saddam's recalcitrance in the light of various UN resolutions
and inspectors.

Hey, I'll go so far as to say Bush misled the American people
and/or made a poor decision to go to war, knowing that the evidence
was thin. And I think that is a #1 reason not to vote for him.
But I don't think a Slashdot article heading "White House Lied
About Iraq Nuclear Programs" or a editorial comment that the
administration was announcing that the tubes were "slam-dunk evidence"
is right. It's really sad to see such misrepresentation of what happened.

--LP

Re:COULD

[chunkwhite86]

You COULD be a terrorist. I think we should lock you up just in case. We'll let you out when the War on Terror is over.

Well lets see here. If I had a history of using WMD's on my own people, and of having the desire and the means to begin a nuclear weapons program, and then some mystery tubes turned up that *could* be used to satisfy my nuclear desires, then yes my friend, I quite possibly COULD be a terrorist.

Re:/. Bias

[IvyMike]

The statement, if true, doesn't scream bias. It sounds like a fact, which like most fact seems either refutable, or true.

Feel free to refute it and show how it's false, but on the fact of it, just because a fact helps one side more than another doesn't mean that it's automatically bias.

Re:Is there no haven?

[visgoth]

Nobody's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read the politics subsection. If you wish to minimize your exposure to partisan political crap*, then the last place you should be reading is this section.

* It is becoming difficult to find articles that are not tainted by ppc on /. lately, I will concede that. Perhaps things will settle down slightly after the election...

Impeach Bush!

[norweigiantroll]

Oh wait, presidents can only be impeached for lying about their personal life, not for something that actually affects the American people.

Re:COULD

[timeOday]

The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002.

Doesn't leave much wiggle room for "could."

And when the plan entails thousands of US casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties, do you call that "caution?"

Re:Burden of proof

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard this said many, many times, and while it may be technically true, that doesn't mean we were justified to go to WAR because of it.

War is a failure, it's not a success. It's not something we should be looking for excuses to get into, it's something we should be looking for excuses NOT to get into.

War is what you do when all other options have been exhausted, and we clearly hadn't exhausted all of our options.

Re:Burden of proof

[ManoMarks]

Regardless of whether you think it is right or wrong to go to war, ie whether or not we had a casus bella against him that would stand up in a court of law, it is, in my oppinion, bad policy to risk so many of your own lives, and kill so many of their people, just because you are legally allowed to and pretty fed up. If your experts aren't giving you real data that says yes, in all likelihood this country is producing weapons of mass destruction, and is likely to use it, it's just not worth it. It is particularly not worth it if all the experts are saying the likely result is chaos which is not beneficial to U.S. interests. The problem with the Bush administration's approach is that they basically were looking, from day 1, for a way to justify attacking Iraq. What they then did was latch on to any flimsy excuse. The result isn't that pretty, but regardless of the result, it was wrong to risk U.S. lives, and Iraqi lives, on flimsy evidence that you knew to be flimsy and probably inaccurate. They payoff that was expected to off-balance those risks has yet to come, and it looks like it probably won't.

Re:I'm not listening!!!

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

If by "Flip-Flop" you mean "Being able to change his opinions based on new information", sure.

Re:COULD

[DeepHurtn!]

Easy to say when it's not your country that was invaded. Easy to say when it's thousands of non-American civilians that are paying the price.

Re:Burden of proof

[schiefaw]

Everyone conveniently forgets that when we let Saddam off the hook in '91, one of the conditions was that he would have to prove that he had no weapons.

Why don't you prove that YOU don't have weapons. Let us know how that goes. Good luck!

BTW, if you can prove a negative, please let the world know. It will be a great advance.

Re:Does it matter?

[theoneknuckles]

The war in Iraq *is* killing someone's baby everyday.

Re:Does it matter?

[Concerned Onlooker]

Indeed. Even if Bush loses I've been demoralized by the amount of support he still enjoys. It may be below 50% but in my mind that's far too high.

I do not feel better off than I did four years ago. I don't even feel the same as I did four years ago.

Re:Burden of proof

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you start with day one being 9/12, then you are ok. We would not be in iraq if 9/11 had not occurred.

Re:Burden of proof

[timeOday]

Even if that gives us the right to invade Iraq, the question is, was it in our best interest?

Re:Burden of proof

[ManoMarks]

It seems likely that the Bush administration would have had much less support for war in Iraq without 9/11. The did come in with the agenda of invading Iraq, that's been fairly well substantiated. You may be right that they couldn't have pulled it off.

Re:Does it matter?

[HumanTorch]

Did you ever think that a substantial portion of your country is just like him (Bush)? Maybe they really wanted to get rid of Saddam, remain the number one military power on the planet, continue to exploit other nations to maintain their level of consumerism, and they actually don't care about the details.

Re:Burden of proof

[Scrameustache]

when we let Saddam off the hook in '91, one of the conditions was that he would have to prove that he had no weapons.

How do you prove that something doesn't exist?

Explaining that 45%

[FunWithHeadlines]

"We just need to face it: about 45% of this country is going to support Bush no matter what."

First of all, since only about 50% of the population will vote, it's only about half of that 45% who will be voting for Bush. Basically, one-quarter of the country falls into this category, and one-quarter into the Kerry camp, and one-half in the Who Knows? category. OK, with that out of the way, let's play devil's advocate and speculate on why those people will vote for Bush despite what you say:

Liberal Attacks: "Yeah sure, figures it's in the New York Times, that bastion of liberal thought. Let me check Fox News to get the real story. Heh, just as I thought, they don't even mention it, must not be true. Just more liberal lies."

Patterns of Birth: "I was born Republican, my pappy was Republican, his pappy was too, and I'm gonna die Republican."

One-Issue Paramount: "I wish Bush would be more forthcoming about these things, but hey, he's going to (fight abortion / put conservatives on the Supreme Court / fight for school prayer / put tax money in my pocket / keep them liberals away from my wallet / keep America safe)."

Shared Beliefs: "We got ourselves a born-again Christian in the White House, and by God, we've got to keep him there!"

Shared Geography: "He's from Texas! Not like them panty-waists from Taxachusetts."

Rambo Syndrome: "He got tough with them terrorists, and he's gonna keep getting tough, and that's the way I like it!"

How do you reason with such persons? Basically, you don't. If they want to microfocus on one particular issue, ain't nothing you can say to negate it. Just remember, it's really only 25% of the country.

Re:Is there no haven?

[Headius]

I think the point is that this is another indication of this administration's willful disregard for advice and information from the scientific community if it conflicts with their agenda. If that isn't news for nerds (or news that should worry nerds) then I don't know what is.

Re:If Bush Administration Lied About WMD,

[Medieval_Gnome]

The big difference between these people and President Bush is that while these people thought that Saddam still had WMD programs, President Bush was the one who started what is for all intents and purposes a war that was without justification for entering it. Some even voted to allow the President the right to choose whether or not we invade. But the decision was still his to invade against the will of the vast majority of the civilized world, and that is where most of us disagree with him.

But your quotes do help illustrate that it is not as clear as some on either side would make it out to be.

Re:Does it matter?

[VoiceOfRaisin]

it worked in nazi germany.
before you mod me down, im not saying bush=hitler, but the same systems of propaganda are happening and are working just as they did then. the major media is also going along with it all as well. sure theres the odd stories of this and that but none of the hard questions are being asked, about "the war on terror" or 9/11. i guess thats why alternative internet news sites are getting so popular. the thinking half of the population is sick of this shit.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that there is not a single bit of flamebait in the above comment and every word of it is true, yet it still gets modded down by people who want to censor what people read on slashdot to only anti-bush anti-microsoft pro-kerry pro-linux FUD and bullcrap.

US Govt == Hypocrites

[grolschie]

Iraq, North Korea, China, India, Wales, etc, actually any country, has a right and a duty to defend itself. If the US and other countries have nukes, then every sovereign nation on the planet has the duty to defend itself with similar force.

Does it matter?

[upsidedown_duck]

GWB can rebut any statement by just saying the same simplistic catch phrases that cite only the successes in Iraq. For better or worse, Bush really knows his constituency. People can take "Saddam is in jail" to the polls, but not the three-paragraph (well reasoned or not) statements Kerry makes about why he thought Saddam was a threat but would have relied on inspectors using war as a last resort with a larger coalition of nations, etc.

Slashdot provides a discussion forum for a reason.

[Fantastic Lad]

Damn liberals, Think the world is only viewed through their eyes..

I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.

-FL

Re:Burden of proof

[HalfFlat]

And don't say inspections, we tried that for OVER A DECADE and it wasn't working.

Of course it was working ... if it had failed, they wouldn't have had to have lied about the WMDs!!

Re:Whaaaa?

[Epistax]

Is this all that you can come up with? Could you point to something to refute what was said?

Actually, does that even matter? They are responsible for knowing this if the CIA knew this. They said what they said while the knowledge existed in their little club. Whether or not the president was personally aware of the fact is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned.

It's called responsibility.

The NY Times is not a credible news source.

[Banner]

Considering how many stories the times has 'gotten wrong' and 'had to retract' about Bush in the last four years, and all the other crap they write about, you have to take everything they write now with a grain of salt. A very large grain.

The NY times is so partisan, that they are no longer credible. So I have a very hard time believing any of this, nor anything they write. Besides nuclear weapons were only ONE of the reasons we went in there, read the state of the union address! And Sadam did have illegal weapons, he even used some of them in the war.

So please, get down off your cross already, somebody needs the wood.

Re:michael's madness

[hawkeye]

Thanks A.C.! I'll be remembering you when I proudly cast my vote for Kerry!!!

Anything's got to be better than the ignoramous we now have for a president. He is a puppet for Cheney and his "neo-conservative" cronies, and little else.

Quite obviously, you have zero idea what impact this administration's decisions have had around the world. Bush has, literally, turned a positive world view into one that is, most definitely, negative... not many men could be that incompetent, but, then again, this is coming from a man that has failed at just about every task he's undertaken, in his entire life.

One more thing...If you, actually, want people to take your posts seriously, trying posting as something other than A.C....A.C.!!!

Cheers,

- Hawkeye

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is that most Americans don't give a shit about the rest of the world. The UN, and everybody else (save Britain) were screaming that there was no evidence, and that going to war is wrong. Did the Americans even try to listen? Of course not. Afterall, only American voices count.

Re:US Govt == Hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Germany after World War 1? Like Germany, Iraq LOST a war, and SIGNED agreements saying they wouldn't do these certain things. If you lose a war and give up certain rights, then you no longer have them.

Come on people, read your Aeschylus

[Anonymous Coward]

All presidents lie because the lazy Americans, worried more about their IRAs, how big their SUV is and how tiny their cell phone is, let them get away with it.

As for the matter at hand, Bush wanted Saddam because Saddam made Daddy Bush look stupid. His presidency will be seen by history as the quest of a young man to regain the love and respect of his father after years of debauchery. Any part of it that is not that way is merely the Republican Party's kapo (Cheney, Ashcroft, et al) animating their puppet in the White House.

Don't ask yourselves why we're in Iraq, ask yourselves why the other Arab countries are not. They're not because we prop up their aging criminal royal families in exchange for oil, while the royal grandsons race their cigarette boats around off Monaco. Remember, the 9/11 planes were not flown by Afganis, or Iraqis. They were flown by Saudis and Egyptians that hate our role in this.

Interviewed by the BBC, bin Laden once said that if he came to power oil would be sold at a price set by the world market. He's no dummy; he knows "his" country would need America to buy oil. Hell, that's practically all the part of the world has to sell. He knows our consumption of oil drives the world's economy. He's just saying 'no more sweet deals for Uncle Sam to look away while we murder our people' like we do for the House of Saud.

If Bush wants to "spread Freedom" he needs to look at who America has been sleeping with since the end of the 2nd World War. But he doesn't want to spread freedom; he wants to get re-elected (see earlier remarks, "Cheney" "Ashcroft.")

Re:Whaaaa?

[gcaseye6677]

It has been proven many times: The American people don't mind violence, even extreme violence, but the moment you do something sexual, the American public will call for your head on a pike. Same concept here, really.

Re:Whaaaa?

[josh3736]

Bah. I don't need Slashdot to tell me that Bush lied. I knew it all along. Back when the whole Iraq thing was starting, I was saying they are full of shit.

Face it, Bush was going to war because he wanted to go to war, period. When the UN voted against invasion, he basically gave them the finger and went in anyway. (What would happen if a country other than the US did the same thing? That country would probably be a giant hole in the ground right now.) Now look at the mess we have. We haven't accomplished a damned thing over there other than making the Arab popluation hate us even more.

It really hit home last week during the debate. Kerry said something along the lines of "what we decide to do has to pass the 'global test,'" which I thought is indeed very true. As soon as he said that, Bush got pissed. It just highlighted the fact that Bush & co. couldn't give a shit less about what the rest of the world thinks. They are gonna do what they want to do and no one is going to get in their way.

It's time to get real, guys. Every decsion you make has a global impact and you better damn well think about how the rest of the world is going to react to your decisions if you are truely concerned with making the world a better place in the long run.

Re:Burden of proof

[Hugonz]

Maybe not in your best interest.

Thinking coldy, even if one would support a war on Iraq because of, say, oil, you'd like to make it so that the US could get cheaper, more stable supplies of oil. But a barrel just hit 50 USD this week.

Probably not in your best interest, but in Halliburton's best interest, maybe. If you are in the oil business... 50 USD a barrel doesn't sound bad...

Re:High tolerance tubes

[Malor]

You should read the article. They actually went and asked the Iraqis in question.

At a rocket facility in Iraq, they found something like 16,000 rockets that had been built with the exact same tubes that had been ordered. They questioned why the newer orders were at the higher tolerances; the response was that they were trying to improve the accuracy of their rockets without doing a complete redesign. And, in fact, they weren't to extraordinary tolerances anyway... *aluminum cans* are better built than the tubes Iraq wanted.

Further, intelligence analysts specifically warned Powell that it was untrue to claim the requested tolerances were excessive for rockets. Our own rockets (the Model 66, from memory) that are most closely similar, use the exact same material at very similar tolerances. Claiming that Iraq's request was not suitable for weapons use was grossly untrue: we did/do the same thing!

Further, the tubes were of anodized aluminum, which is not suitable for use in a centrifuge. (uranium gas, apparently, doesn't react well with anodization... and you really want to keep uranium gas under control) They also asked the rocket guys about this, and they said that they wanted to protect them from the weather. The inspectors went outside and looked, and saw that many of the existing tubes were badly corroded, so it was very sensible to order the anodization, if their real use was for rockets and they would, like the others, be stored outside.

The evidence that the tubes were for rockets is extremely compelling, from the dimensions to the weight to the material. The evidence that the tubes were for nukes is, essentially, a paranoid fantasy that is not related in any way to the truth. The tubes were the wrong size and shape, they were anodized, and they were a huge step backwards from the technology Iraq had been using in 1991.

In the words of one analyst, per the article.... if the tubes were meant for centrifuges, they were so poorly suited that we should have just given them all they wanted.

Re:Contempt of Congress

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't count on Bush being tried in a court of law unless he personally killed someone, in cold blood, with 10 witnesses, and was caught grinning into the camera.

And for impersonally killing thousands of people, in cold blood, with millions of witnesses, and being caught grinning into the camera, he may well be re-elected. Superb.

Re: Whaaaa?

[Black Parrot]

> You're being sarcastic, but what I don't understand is how they straight-up lied about WMDs and whatnot (and knew about it), yet not a damned thing is happening about it. Clinton gets a BJ, and everyone starts screaming "won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!?"

That's our "liberal media" at work...

Re:Does it matter?

[Bricklets]

if you still support Bush at this point, you must have constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in your head.

One could argue you're the one living in a fantasy if you truely believe every Bush supporter has "constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in [their] head." I've met quite a few intelligent people who for one reason or another support Bush. I'm not going to argue one side or another, but I will say just because you may not understand someone else's political beliefs and reasoning does not automatically mean they're living in a "fantasy world." Politics is never black and white (or simple for that matter).

It's quite obvious you're not trying to win over any opinions with statements like that.

Re:Burden of proof

[geofferensis]

"What options did we not exhaust? "

Pretty much every option we are using with North Korea right now. If we had to go to war with Iraq, we have to go to war with North Korea.

Accountability

[gimpboy]

Well since I'm a citizen of the United States, I'm only able to hold my own government accountable directly. When our vice president says "There is no doubt that Iraq has reconsitituted it's nuclear weapons program", he has made a very strong statement.

It is our governments job to guide the country. When they are guiding the country into an unpopular direction, they need to justify this. I think it is irresponsable to make statements like the one above when there is in fact much doubt.

Lied is a bit strong, but I believe misled is an understatement. It's only right to hold our leadership accountable.

No Excuse for Lies

[freejung]

No, I'm sorry, but if you want to start a war, for whatever reason, the burden of proof is on you to show that it is justified. The first Gulf War had ended twelve years earlier, and Iraq was not considered a credible military threat to anybody. Before you go and attack a sovereign nation and depose its government and kill large numbers of people, you had better be prepared to meet a very high standard of proof.

Unless there was some reason to believe that he did have weapons, there was no reason not to simply continue with the inspections. Anyone with any sense knew this at the time -- why do you think Powell tried so hard to convince the UN that Saddam really did have WMD?

Even if you feel that at some point something had to be done, why that particular point, if there was no evidence of WMD? And why this particular action -- even if something had to be done, why did that "something" have to be invading and taking over the country?

More importantly, this is no excuse to lie to the American people. If the war was justified regardless of whether Saddam was building nukes, why not just say that? Why lie to us about it?

The answer, of course, is that the American people would never have accepted going to war unless they felt threatened. So basically, Bush tricked us into going to war, and now he wants us to be OK with that because he thinks the war was justified anyway. That just doesn't work for me, and I think a lot of the American people feel the same way.

Re:LIAR

[Short Circuit]

Whoa...calm down.

Politics suck...even people who think they know what they're talking about usually don't know about many aspects of the people they like.

That's why it helps to read political blogs that attack people you like.

So, chances are, the parent doesn't know what he's talking about. (No offense intended.)

(And to be totally honest, that's a lesson I only learned in the last few weeks.)

Re:Whaaaa?

[kmahan]

Because Republicans control the Legislative branch (Congress/House). Since these are the folks that would be the ones to start the investigation it's not going to happen. It's not about the law, it's about the politics.

Clinton's BJ got investigated (along with impeachment) because the Republicans controlling the legislature had a chance to embarrass the Democrats (Clinton).

[TANGENT]
A fascinating amendment would be that no person with a felony conviction would be allowed to hold public office. That would never happen. The thought of every candidate having to pass the equivalent of a DOD/DOE Secret background screening makes me laugh.

Re:Burden of proof

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

I hope you get to attend a university someday. You might learn to do some research and have informed opinions. (OK, I think you do not have the ability to think critically; I hope I am wrong.)

We forced the inspectors to leave. We (i.e. Bush) decided that the inspectors' mission had failed and offered as evidence a pack of lies.

"we tried that for OVER A DECADE and it wasn't working"
Did we find any WMDs? NO! This sounds like success to me. How to justify this comment ("it wasn't working") of yours?

Is there even one honest bone in your body? Are you just a political hack?

Re:Burden of proof

[n8_f]

[H]e would have to prove that he had no weapons.

How do I prove I don't have something? Especially if you are convinced that I do? It is easy to prove I have something, I can show it to you. But to prove I don't have it I... show you nothing? But then you say it is over there. So I show you there is nothing over here and you say that I moved it over there. Of course, by the time we are able to check, you say I've moved it somewhere else.

However, getting away from the philosophical and theoretical prove, I am pretty sure that was never a condition to begin with. He had to agree not to develop weapons of mass destruction and allow inspectors to look around to verify that he wasn't. While we can't prove somebody doesn't have WMD, we can be reasonably certain they don't because the development of all them leaves chemical traces behind that can be detected long after they've left. Which is why an inspection regime can work.

The ball was in Saddam's court.

No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere. We gave them the locations of where we thought they were producing WMDs and they all turned out completely wrong. We kicked the weapons inspectors out so that we could bomb Iraq.

Damned if they did, damned if they didn't.

[slcdb]

On the one hand, the Bush administration has been roasted by the Democrats for not taking pre-9/11 intelligence seriously enough.

On the other hand, the Bush administration is getting roasted by the Democrats for taking post-9/11 intelligence too seriously.

It sure is nice to have your cake and eat it too, eh Democrats?

Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.

Anyone else want to boycott Slashdot subscriptions?

Hindsight and the pathetic Slashdotter

[Daimaou]

Bush and Kerry had the same information presented to them before this all started and they both chose to go ahead with military action. If Bush lied, Kerry lied. Period.

Mistakes may have been made, but if so they were made by both candidates. Now, one opportunistic candidate is pretending that he had nothing to do with it and using his own mistake (if one was made at all) against his opponent. Shameful really.

To be honest, I am quite disappointed in the cognative skills of most Slashdot posters regarding this topic. I thought this particular community of people were smarter than many posts suggest.

Kerry hasn't told you one thing that he is going to do. He has proffered nebulous lists, buzzwords, and catchy quotes, but nothing substantial or concrete. Most of you that are planning to vote for him have no other reasons in mind than he isn't Bush and he isn't a republican, and that is really pathetic.

Anti-Republican != Democrat

[Monx]

The problem with this whole post is this: Just because I disagree with Bush out of doesn't mean that I like the Democrats. I dislike both parties. They're both up to their ears in risky foreign policy that earns us the hate of the rest of the world. How many dictators (including Saddam) have the Democrats and Republicans installed over the years? Remind me why they supported (or orchestrated) the destruction of several democratic governments in the Americas alone?

It's time to get rid of both of our main parties.

holy slanted title batman!

[Anonymous Coward]

i read the first three pages of this new york times opus, and not once does it indicate the white house lied about the use of the tubes.

it does say that energy experts suggested they were to be used for rockets, but what the heck would energy experts know about rockets?

hey, tin foil hat crowd, i hope you're wearing 'em. don't put 'em down until the liberals tell you its ok.

Re:Explaining that 45%

[grolschie]

Patterns of Birth: "I was born Republican, my pappy was Republican, his pappy was too, and I'm gonna die Republican."

This goes both ways. Many democrat supporters have the same mentality.

I liked the movie F9/11, but one thing that concerned me was the guy who had always voted republican, who said he is now going to be very vocal for the democrats. People need to think outside of the square, instead of flip-flopping between the two parties. There is ample evidense that both parties have screwed the country in some way when it was their turn to rule. Each will continue to do so in each's own turn in power. Perhaps a third or fourth option is needed, otherwise the same one party will get in power when the other in unpopular, and so on, rinse and repeat...

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

And some people will say anything in order to justify their fairytale view of the world and their leaders. In this case I believe that the people inside America are the one's living a fictional outlook on reality... that is to suggest, people like you.

It's much easier to call people communists and start throwing labels, leftist, etc around, and patently dismiss them than it is to actually give serious consideration to what is being said when it may poke a hole in your worldview.

I'm the first to admit that I'm stupid, make tons of mistakes, and am often wrong. I find a lot of interesting bits of knowledge out there that makes me uncomfortable. Those boys up there in the white house now are certainly not golden saint bastions of goodness that mere mortals ought to aspire too become. That's certain. Not every bit of critism is completely off base.

Re:Whaaaa?

[donatj]

If I were to give you 5 months notice that I was looking for something, quite possibly no larger then say a sofa, and sand dunes nearly the size of California to bury something (where any evidence of burying something would be blown over by in a matter of hours) would it not be easy enough to hide just about anything so it would be next near imposable to find? (Not to mention the huge labor force and money Sadam had behind him) I have a 15-archer yard; I am going to bury a nickel, no set distance from the top of the soil... I will give you 5 years to find it... I mean this isn't even to scale of soldier to ground space... Christ, think of the logistics. Slashdoters are supposed to be intelligent... think to scale

Re:/. Bias

[spin2cool]

I'd argue that we have a bias towards the truth. This is a community of skeptical, highly intelligent people who don't fall for bullshit or partisan rhetoric.

Re:Burden of proof

[1010011010]

If I were President, on September 12, 2001 I would have announced two new programs:

1. An "Apollo Program" to end our dependance on foreign energy; in particular oil from unfriendly groups, and more specifically oil from the Middle East, within 10 years. We obviously don't want our affairs too entangled with psychotic theocrats.
   
2. A "Neutralization Program" to locate and incapacitate those involved in the attack. Taking out the Taliban was, in fact, a good start. I'm unclear on how to draw a straight line to Iraq from there, other than with a ruler.
   

To my mind, the best way to lower the threat level of the Middle East is to stop giving it our money. Let Europe buy their oil and become entangled in their affairs. We don't need it.

Of course, I have a libertarian view of foreign policy: Peaceful co-existance without any of the turn-the-other-cheek stuff. Don't fight unless you have to, but be sure that when you do fight, you minimize the probability of your adversary attacking you again.

Re:The NY Times is not a credible news source.

[OWJones]

OK, so Jayson Blair pulled the wool over their eyes, and they took a credibility hit. But with regard to the Bush White House, the only thing the NYT admitted to doing wrong is saying that they didn't question the Administration enough before going to war.

That's right. They retracted agreeing with the President.

Oops.

Enough with this "The NYT and Washington Post are dirty liberal rags that print 'news' that is actually lies!" BS.

-jdm

Re:Whaaaa?

[josh3736]

I think people are taking the whole "global test" thing a little too literally. It's not like were gonna print up a questionnaire and pass it out to world leaders.

The way I interperted "global test" was more along the lines of carefully thinking out our actions and basically putting ourselves in the rest of the world's shoes. "How will the Arab world react if we do X? What if we do Y? And what about the Chinese?" The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules. Sure, for things that don't require immediate action, we should most definately get the input of foreign leaders.

And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.

Re:Whaaaa?

[ChairmanMeow]

The 50,000 troops sitting on the Korean DMZ are there to die and buy us time in the event the North decides to move in. Lets say we know N. Korea is about to launch a nuke at S. Korea with a full scale attack.

Do we wait on the "Global Test" or do we turn them in to glass?

Bad analogy. In that case, there would actually be a direct threat to Americans and to stability in the region, and the U.S. would be justified in taking action. However, in the case of Iraq, unless you can prove that Saddam Hussein had a short-term plan to attack Kuwait with biochemical weapons at the time the U.S. invaded, then the analogy simply doesn't hold up.

Here comes the cashcow

[slumpy]

The politics category is slashdot is kind of out of hand.....There's not really any discussion whatsoever, just a bunch of agreement going on. I feel there's being very little new that's been brought to the table, or any new thoughts on the subject from any of these posts here. Sure you can say the same about me and mod me flamebait, but I'm not posting this from my political beliefs, I just feel nothing is being accomplished from these one-sided "discussions" which feel more like a high school pep rally with everyone chanting in unison. C'mon lets's add something new aside from Clinton gets sucked off and impeached...so why the fuck don't we all go abu garib on Bush's ass!?!?

For instance....The NYtimes, which has a history of perjurers (Jason Blair) and playing up toe the 5th avenue aristocracy has an anti-bush article which mainly sites known liberal only authors. Not that partisan writers cannot be effective, but a little variety should spice it up.....

Re:LIAR

[Doc Ruby]

It has everything to do with LYING. That's what we're talking about in this thread. The metal tubes are now just Exhibit A in Bush's lies about Iraq. We have to live with this Medicare scam for the rest of our lives, if people don't punish these betrayals by Bush with replacing him next month. And if you don't care about Medicare, there's plenty more where that came from.

Re:Whaaaa?

[fleener]

Why isn't anything being done about it? Oh come on. Neocons control all three branches of the government and own the fourth estate. If ya'll aren't scared by now, you haven't been paying attention. The fact that President Twitchy's support didn't evaporate after his revealing performance during the debate is enough to show you how completely uninvolved and clueless the voting public has become. So, let's recap.

#1 Govt 0wn3d.
#2 Media 0wn3d.
#3 People herded like sheep.

The only people alarmed are, uh, the rest of the world's population.

No draft

[ArchieBunker]

Trust me, there won't be a draft. Nobody wants it. The bill was started by a democrat and is "dead" in the senate because no one will even think of sponsoring it. The military doesn't want people forced into a job they don't want. How well do you think those people would perform? The public doesn't want a draft, and neither do any politicians. And for the people who say Bush is sending your sons and daughters to die; The individuals who signed up for the military know they can be called into action at any time. If you don't want to be in Iraq then you shouldn't have signed up. Sounds easy enough.

I suspect this bill was started just to try and hurt Bush later in the election. The media picks up the story about a bill for a draft and the public goes apeshit.

Re: Whaaaa?

[Black Parrot]

> Do we wait on the "Global Test" or do we turn them in to glass?

Obviously we nuke them into glass. Then when we find out the President lied about the intelligence, we say we actually did it to liberate them.

WMD Spin Machine

[Mulletproof]

"...according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity."

Oh yeah, there's credibility just oozing from this story. We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine? On conditions of anominity??? Oh, and it just happens to be election year! What a coincidence!

And while we're on the subject of amazing coincidences, where was this scandal coverage in 2002? I mean, you supposively had top CIA officals who knew, you had the Department of Energy who knew, America's leading nuclear scientists who knew as well as any number of intelligence experts and Martha Stewart who knew. No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?

Are we stretching the bounds of credibility yet? No? Then it's a good thing for the NYT that investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. [cnn.com] I mean, you'd almost [pbs.org] think [defenselink.mil] this administration [cnn.com] acted without [caabu.org] cause [cnn.com]...

Re:Hindsight and the pathetic Slashdotter

[dfn_deux]

Bush and Kerry had the same information presented to them before this all started and they both chose to go ahead with military action. If Bush lied, Kerry lied. Period.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support either of these guys for President; but, I was under the impression that Kerry voted in favor of giving Bush the option to make war. Which is different than voting in favor of war. There is some seperation between the branches of government and perhaps Kerry was under the impression that maybe there was more information available to the Executive branch that would put them in a better position to make the decision.

And before you start typing your rebutal to my comment, let me add that I think it was stupid of the legislative branch to vote in favor of providing an option for the executive branch to make war....

Where's the buck?

[Webs 101]

Harry Truman used to have sign on his desk in the Oval Office: "The buck stops here."

I imagine George Bush has a sign on his desk: "The buck stops, um - somewhere else."

Whether or not the Bush administration foisted known lies or used mistaken judgement, whether or not the war in Iraq was planned from inauguration or if it was really meant to combat an immediate threat, the fact remains that the war was a big fat mistake and the administration refuses to take responsibility for it.

Re:The NY Times is not a credible news source.

[xigxag]

Who do you regard as a credible news source? Fox News? They don't just get stuff wrong, they make silly stuff up [cliche-host.net] about the Democrats. (See their retraction [foxnews.com].)

The fact is that all news sources make mistake and they all have biases. The Times, at least, will occasionally question the aims and motives of it's own party, unlike most of the right-wing organs in this country.

And Sadam did have illegal weapons, he even used some of them in the war.

And if you happen to have a joint in your house, it's okay for the cops to bomb it to bits? "Illegal" doesn't mean, "I get to destroy your country." Hussein didn't have the WMDs that the US claimed he had, the ones we supposedly invaded him over. If Bush had said, "We're gonna put Saddam out of power because he's a bad guy sitting on a heap of oil that we want, plain and simple," then we as Americans could have decided, before the fact, whether we'd jump on board with him. But he didn't say that. Up until the last moment, he engaged in the blatant pretense of waiting for Saddam to "disarm" his nonexistent WMDs. He lied.

Re:US Govt == Hypocrites

[cyfer2000]

Iraq, North Korea, China, India, Wales, etc, actually any country, has a right and a duty to defend itself.

And we all should together to protect the earth, so USA, Russia, China, UK, France, India, Pakistan and whatever should destroy all of their nuclear weapons and promise no future developing of such weapon. You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one.

known disputed sold as irrefutable = lying

[SuperBanana]

If y'all would tone down the rhetoric, you would have Bush out of office, but instead you use inflammatory terms like the headline here.

Bush and company called the evidence conclusive and worthy of going to war; it was used as justification to both US citizens and the international community. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, kill a thousand plus US troops, trash carefully crafted diplomatic relations...THEN sell all that as a "success" AND the reason you should be elected- you goddamn well better have your I's dotted and your t's crossed.

It was publicly reported that at best the evidence was inconclusive, and now we see that it was quite positively false, and further that they KNEW it wasn't conclusive. Fact is, to date, not a single fucking piece of evidence has been uncovered to support any of Bush's claims that Iraq had any "weapons of mass destruction", and certainly not the claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat to national security.

That fits my definition of "lying" pretty well, thanks.

Re:WMDs not Bush's issue rather Blairs.

[be-fan]

You're completely off-base. Two reasons:

1) Mutually assured destruction referred to actions between nation-states. No nation-states attacked us on 9/11.

2) Mutually assured destruction reffered to "full scale use of nuclear weapons", not conventional attacks.

MAD was never meant to be "we will blindly lash out at the world with nuclear weapons in response to any and all attacks on our soil." MAD was, instead, a deterrence based on the idea that in any full-scale nuclear attack, both the attacker and the target would be destroyed. In a twisted, eye-for-an-eye way, MAD is an inherently just doctrine.

Re:If Bush Administration Lied About WMD,

[jalefkowit]

This is insightful? Puh-leeze.

All these quotes are from people whose understanding of the Iraqi WMD situation would have come through the Administration's filter. Executive branch personnel -- the ones who work in and for the White House -- are the ones who see the whole mass of intelligence our systems gather. Members of Congress don't have that privilege -- they see what the Administration chooses to share with them. (Those who sit on national security & intelligence-related committees see more than others -- but even they only get predigested intel.)

In other words, your list of quotes proves nothing except that these people could all have been lied to as well. If the President calls a Senator into the Oval Office, shows him an incomplete picture, and leaves out relevant facts that might contradict his position, is the Senator the liar if he leaves the meeting convinced that the President has identified a real threat?

And never mind that you selectively quote people like Scott Ritter -- who by 2002 had doubled back on his earlier belief [salon.com] in Iraqi WMDs. If you're going to quote Ritter circa 1998, why not Ritter circa 2002? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that showing how Ritter's position evolved would undermine your premise that he was a "liar" like the President and his crew are.

When it comes to intelligence, there are a few people, all in the White House -- the President, the National Security Advisor, and so on -- who are expected to know more than any Senator or Congressman. They're expected to know the whole picture. That's what makes it a different matter entirely when Condoleeza Rice or Dick Cheney shrieked about Iraqi WMDs than when J. Random Congressman did so.

Re:Whaaaa?

[KoshClassic]

So, a president lying under oath about sex is worse, in your mind, than, say, a president lying to our soldiers, their parents, and the American people about why he's risking their lives, why he's risking the credibility and prestige of the United States, not to mention why he's risking all of the other potentially negative consequences of going to war?

Now, granted, Bush, Cheney, and Co. were not technically under oath to tell the truth when they made all of their assorted 'statements of fact' to all of us, but I submit that for men in their positions, telling the truth about such matters ought to be for them a matter of honor, a matter of doing what's right and far more important than whether or not they're under oath at the time.

If the president lying about such things is not an 'impeachable offense', it certainly ought to be, and I can't help but wonder what would be going on right now if Congress were controlled by the other party.

Re:If Bush Administration Lied About WMD,

[revscat]

As I recall, Clinton made the same "lies" about Iraq in front of Congress... or did you not know that??

When? Clinton never EVER testified before Congress, so right there you show you don't know what you're talking about. Sitting presidents don't.

And Senator Kerry has been on television several times, as far back as 1995 in fact, stating the same "lies".

When? When did John Kerry know that aluminum tubes were not capable of being used in nuclear weaponsmaking, but claimed they were so capable anyway, and did so in front of Congress? Do tell.

How can something be inflamatory anyways when these people actually made those statements? In this country, that's what we call telling the truth.

They were stating what they believed. When the Bush admin officials testified in front of Congress, they were intentionally LYING. Big difference. They had information beforehand that contradicted what they were saying, and can be proven to have known it.

But its obvious you've got the blind ideology stick shoved up your bum, so I don't think this post will make a bit of difference.

Shyah? Conservatives alwas find it so easy to find a hole to crawl into when the rhetoric fails to be convincing.

Re:Whaaaa?

[IgLou]

Ok, keep in mind I'm a jaded, paranoid conspiracy nut... and a Canadian to make it worst. But the reality of the war was to gain resources in particular oil.

Iraq was no threat to theat the US, what could they do? Honestly, maybe Saddam could have said a few nasty words about George W's daddy (but then again who hasn't).

If you want to know what this war really is about look at who profits http://www.halliburton.com/index.jsp [halliburton.com] and then start looking at the connections between those who profit and those who make the decisions.http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0331 -01.htm [commondreams.org]

Honestly isn't it a conflict of interest when your leaders are making more money from corporate interests than by their own job?
I suggest to anyone to really look at some of the news out there that is being suppressed and question now whether good people who are willing to defend their country are now being used as corporate bodyguards while Iraq's oil is being plundered.

Not to say Canada is so great we have similar problems but not on the same scale of course.

Re:Whaaaa?

[blackbear]

First, I'll believe the story when I see real proof. The press has shown itself to be a bigger lier than the politicians lately.

Second, of course I'll still vote for W, even it he lied. (yes, I mean lied and not just "repeated a lie."

Why would I do this? Not because I love the Republican party, I don't. Rather because the choice, as I see it, is between a Socialist, and a Liberal. So, while Socialism is one of the most vile and evil forms of economy ever devised; Liberalism is just annoying, so long as it's continually challenged at every turn. Since these are my only real choices, I'll take the closet liberal and lower taxes, over compelled charity and a blue helmeted military, any day.

Now we can watch the moderators duke it out as this valid counterpoint to the parent post is moded up and down for the next five days or so.

The Horror, The Horror...

[freejung]

"We train our children to drop fire on people, but we won't let them write 'fuck' on the sides of their airplanes, because it's obscene." -- Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now

Re:Whaaaa?

[lspd]

I know... it's not like Clinton lied under oath or... oh, wait. That would be (a) lying, and (b) perjury. Not the same at all. Clinton's forgiven.

Right, because when G.W. was put under oath he only told the truth about Iraq. Oh, wait a second....he refused to be put under oath...what a complete surprise.

So... The president can be questioned under oath about the whereabouts of his pecker on a particular day, but not questioned under oath about his reasons for invading another country. Go figure.

Re:i always thought it was right to invade iraq

[orin]

and i fear it's tehran, here we come, and a draft, in 2005. because i don't know about you, but i don't trust those mullahs with nukes, and i know for certain the neocons, or even the dems, don't either.

Do you really think that after all of this, the rest of the world trusts the US with nukes?

This is the main problem - the US, which was basically trusted by most of the world to "do the right thing" is now seen as consistently doing "the wrong thing".

Now there isn't much that the "rest of the world" can do about it ... but "Brand USA" is looking pretty busted right now. The US already imports far more than it exports. As the US gets more "on the nose" because of its unilateral foreign policy - people who buy US products around the world are going to shop elsewhere.

The US once was percieved as a "beacon of freedom" in the way that no other nation has been in history. Your current President has managed to flush that reputation down the toilet. It would take 20 years of great Presidents really making positive contributions to the world (as the US did for the most part last century) to undo the damage the current one has done. If the current one gets re-elected, I'm pretty sure that in four years time Americans abroad will be about as popular as white South Africans abroad during the 1980's.

M.A.D

[div_B]

While I generally agree with you, that statement assumes a situation like the Cold War, where both sides understand and want to avoid the result: complete annihilated by the other (mutually assured destruction). Does Kim Jong-Il care? Would Osama Bin Laden care if he had a nuclear arsenal? You don't start a nuclear bluffing match with a madman who has nothing to lose.

Obviously you're right, pure MAD only applies to situations such as that during the cold war, and any degree of asymmetry at all ruins it. However, having nuclear weapons is a great bargaining chip, or, more accurately, not having them renders you pretty much irrelevant.

I'd be willing to wager that a whole lot more Al-Q activity goes on in Pakistan than Iraq (Iraq as it stood before the invasion that is, obviously it's seething with hardline islamist nut-jobs now). However, Pakistan has the bomb, and therefore doesn't have to be pushed around, similarly to Nth Korea - no US administration is going to attack them if they can nuke even Japan in retaliation, let alone land one in California.

This has been the big give-away from the start. If Saddam had nukes (or even plenty of chem- or bio- weapons), the neo-cons would never have invaded. Why would you put thousands of troops in a position where they would likely be nuked? If you still don't get it: Iraq was invaded because it DIDN'T have WMD. It was a soft target*, with oil, and invading it no doubt served many other political purposes, but it clearly didn't have WMD, that much was fairly transparent before the invasion began.

* for invasion, evidently occupation is a different story.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Rayonic]

(When the UN voted against invasion, he basically gave them the finger and went in anyway. (What would happen if a country other than the US did the same thing?)

Well, it depends.

If you're stomping down on a former colony, that's just fine.

If you're an African nation comitting genocide, that's okay too.

If you're trying to wipe out Israel, that's alright.

The list goes on and on...

Re:Whaaaa?

[upsidedown_duck]

Face it, Bush was going to war because he wanted to go to war, period.

Future sessions of Congress will probably be more hesitant to give the President authority to declare a war. Even counting successes in Iraq, are there any indications that it _won't_ be another Vietnam? Technically, the US has been there for more than 13 years with a few more years coming, meaning it really could stretch out to be as long as the US presence in Vietnam. Considering the inspectors, the recently installed government, scheduled elections, the long history of conflict in the region, and what some call a guerilla warfare situation, the historical parallels are not few and far between.

Re:Hindsight and the pathetic Slashdotter

[rice_web]

I'm surprised that you don't realize that it's not what you will do, it's what you've done that matters in politics. If the population believes that Bush has done badly, he will not be elected. Similarly, if the population decides that Kerry was not sufficiently liberal/conservative/pro-business/anti-business/wh atever before he began to run for President, then Bush will not be elected. It's a simple game, and I think that you've misread the intelligence of the general public.

Re:Explaining that 45%

[K8Fan]

* This is, BTW, the most compelling argument I've seen against Bush thus far. As an Atheist, that much God-stuff in the White House is scary shit. But then...Kerry has done nothing to suggest he's any different.

Kerry is a practicing Catholic...who is pro-choice. That is a very strong indicator that he is a man of his own mind and doesn't support a particular position just because his church says so. I find that very reassuring.

Re:Whaaaa?

[starm_]

Social services have been shown to increase the flow of money because people in good health are more productive. There are all kinds of psychological and physical advantages to having these programs. Why do you think that even the most money driven corporations usually force their employees at taking a huge part of their salary in benefices? It is because they know those healthy employees are productive employees. If the government provided a greater part of these things to its citizens it would increase productivity and quality of life in general. You have to increase taxes so that it is viable but the tax increase to corporations isn't as high as it looks. It won't drive companies away because they also save a lot. They don't need to provide as much benefices to their employees since the government provides it instead. The companies benefit from workers that have profited from social services all their life and are therefore more qualified, more psychologically balanced and are able to compete better in the global economy. Therefore, the number of jobs increases, specially the good ones that need higher education and that have good pay.

True, there are cheaters in the system. And there are probably lots of them. But I believe you should not go out of your way to punish them, that's just punishing yourself. You should try to do everything you can that dissuade the cheating by tailoring the system so that it is not advantageous to cheat, but only if it doesn't impair your lifestyle to do so. Cutting social services impairs your lifestyle and raises the cost of living. I know humans have an instinct against freeloaders, there's a bell that rings in our head at the thought of the possibility of being exploited. Basic instincts can help us lots of times, but we have the advantage over animals that we are intellectual beings. Don't let that basic instinct get to you when your intellect can tell you that you are better off if you just ignore the freeloaders sometimes. Be proud of your legacy to society and to America. Don't be scared it will just benefit the freeloaders. Be glad that you made a better place to live for the other hard workers which are doing the same for you. Yes if you look at it directly I can see how it can seem to benefit mostly others, but it is as much for your benefit, the benefit of the economy and of corporations. You have to look at the big picture. It will be very beneficial for you that everyone around you is competent and sane. There are high costs associated with the opposite situation. You're right taking your hard earned money and forcing you to give it to others for no reason is bad. But this is for your benefit. It also acts as a kind of insurance to you. If ever you or a member of your family gets really sick or you loose your house and everything you own in a disaster, you will have government help to fall on.

I firmly believe capitalism (or profit maximization) is the only way for countries to work well. It is a form of economic survival of the fittest where the better, easier, cheaper alternative is the one that thrives. It is the most natural way to efficient life. But I still think you have to be intelligent about it and not view only the direct obvious causality link (my money goes to the poor), but the big picture where the sum of all direct and indirect advantages are accounted for.

One argument towards taxing the rich is that, you can rarely "hard work" your way into making a salary of $1000000 a year. If you do make that salary it's probably that you inherited money, you manipulated the market (possibly illegally), or you were just plain lucky (you put your money at the right place at the right time). You may have worked hard. But the hard work usually doesn't account for that high a salary. I think people who have acquired their wealth through, manipulation, luck, or inheritance, should be the first ones to be taxed a lot because they haven't worked for their money.

Also assuming we keep the incentive to be productive constant, there is a fixed amou

Re:Whaaaa?

[mriker]

First of all -- and I'd think this to be plainly obvious to anyone with half of a fucking brain -- destroying a country is slightly more serious than someone getting a blow job. That more than one person in this forum is neglecting that fact is absolutely shocking, and genuinely frightens me about the direction of the United States of America.

Second of all, Clinton shouldn't have been on trial for impeachment for getting a blow job in the first place. That he was should be far more worthy of outcry and riot than his lying about it.

And thirdly, while Clinton may very well have believed there were WMDs in Iraq, Bush had no evidence to that effect whatsoever, lied to the American people about it (and continues to do so to this very day), and proceeded to murder thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians for no other reason than to get some more of that tasty oil. And oh yeah, he got rid of a "brutal dictator" in the process... one that posed no credible threat to the U.S., and one of very many "brutal dictators" on this planet -- but the only one with so much delicious oil in his back yard.

Crap

[Mark_MF-WN]

If that were true, the White House wouldn't have had to lie. Seriously -- why not just say "we're going to liberate the Iraqi people", or "we're going to take out the dictator that we armed in the first place"? Why concoct a pack of lies about nonexistent WMDs and fictitious ties to Al-Qaeda?

Americans shouldn't have to die just so Bush Junior can clean up Bush Senior's mess.

Re:Whaaaa?

[mr100percent]

The UN believed Iraq had WMDs? Did their weapons inspectors tell them that? Did they find a problem in the thousands of pages that Iraq submitted presenting their evidence that WMDs were destroyed?

Re:Explaining that 45%

[Solder Fumes]

Damn. How arrogant.

How about Reasoned Compromise: "May not agree with his every last item of policy, but in comparing the two likely candidates, he is at least closer to the preferred side of issues involving government spending, taxation, business incentives, and military functions."

I would wager that 90% of the voters in both camps fall into the above category. Despite what you might think, most Americans are actually normal people with decent intelligence levels. You should go out and actually meet people, instead of getting your opinion of America from the news, which by definition focuses on the negatives and deviants in our society. Major political candidates are never very far from the center these days, and the voting public reflects that.

Nobody forced you

[freejung]

to click on the article. Some nerds care about politics. You can't possibly argue that the president lying to the American people doesn't matter, can you?

Re:Burden of proof

[thparker]

And don't say inspections, we tried that for OVER A DECADE and it wasn't working.

Maybe it's just me, but isn't the fact that we've found pretty much nothing in the way of WMD in Iraq strong evidence that inspections did work?

This is definitely Bush

[Enrique1218]

This is definitely classic G.W. He hasn't quite caught up with the times. He has totally bungled the "war on terror' since pre-9/11. His admininstration didn't pick up where Clinton left off. They were looking at Iraq when the planes hit the towers. They half-ass the whole Afganistan campaign and let bin Laden slip away at Tora Bora. Then, they move onto Iraq and took valueable resources away from the hunt all the while creating the perfect recruitment poster for al Quaeda and alienating most of our allies. He didn't quite comprehend that Sadaam was a vanquished threat and that there is a new player on the block using a whole new bag of tricks. I believe he had to prove to himself that he could do better than his dad against Hussein. (Silly rabbit)

Re:Whaaaa?

[mr100percent]

Main Entry: global
Pronunciation: 'glO-b&l
Function: adjective
1 : SPHERICAL
2 : of, relating to, or involving the entire world : WORLDWIDE (global warfare) (a global system of communication); also : of or relating to a celestial body (as the moon)
3 : of, relating to, or applying to a whole (as a mathematical function or a computer program) (a global search of a file)
- globally /'glO-b&-lE/ adverb

Kerry said, "that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

What does "global" mean in this sentence? Well, let's work down. It clearly does not mean "spherical," so that is out.

But it clearly also cannot mean "worldwide," which is what the White House is implying. Kerry very clearly meant no such thing. He started by saying that he would not give up the prerogative of going to war preemptively.

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

KERRY: I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?

The "global test" Kerry speaks of relates in his mind to convincing "your countrymen" of the legitimacy of what you are doing, first and foremost. Convincing your own citizens cannot possibly be a "worldwide" matter. It is only in the last clause of the sentence where the rest of the world comes up. And there, Kerry is not suggesting that it be asked its opinion beforehand. He used the past tense. He is saying that only by first passing the global test with Americans could the US hope, after the fact, to prove to the world that what had been done was legitimate. W. from all accounts was never much good with things like tenses of verbs.

So, if "global" here does not mean "spherical" and does not mean "worldwide," then what does it mean? Kerry was obviously using the word in the third sense above, of "complete." Military action has to pass a complete test, in order to gain the entire confidence of the US public, in preparation for making a convincing case in the aftermath of the war to other countries.

Kerry is saying that Bush's reasons for going to war were flawed and incomplete, so that in some polls less than half of Americans now say it was justified. And if less than half of Americans can justify it, you can hardly expect that the Spanish should go on giving gold and lives for its sake. This unfortunate situation, Kerry is saying, is because the rationale for the war was deficient, incomplete, and less than global in the sense of thoroughgoing.

W. probably couldn't get out a word like "thoroughgoing" without tripping all over it, so Kerry did him a favor in using the shorter word "global." Unfortunately, W.'s dictionary doesn't seem to go

Re:No Surprise

[MarkusQ]

Weren't some of the news channels telling us that before hand or am I the only person that remembers history? I feel like we're living in the world of 1984.

Yes, I remember that too. But no one listened when I kept pointing that out at the time (along with the fact that it was Saudis on the planes, not Iraqis or Afghanis, and or that the sequence of events within the administration didn't square with their explanations (how do future events cause you to take actions in the past but leave you able to claim you had no foreknowledge of them?), the fact that the yellow cake forgeries had already been shown to be fakes, etc.)

As it turns out, Orwell over engineered his totalitarian state. You don't need to use all those heavy handed--what's that? Paris Hilton? Naked? Doing what?

Sorry, gotta run.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Whaaaa?

[tarunthegreat2]

You weren't the only one who knew. The whole frikkin' world knew. That's why Bush refused to take this to the UN. Calling the rest of the world cowardly whiny bastards who always beg the US for help then put it down was a lovely little smokescreen, designed to get right-leaning people salivating even more. These days, it's especially dangerous to have an independent mind. "Bush is bad? You must be a terrorist. America made a mistake in Iraq? Well why don't you go back to your own country, you 4th generation immigrant!" It was obvious to the world that Iraq was NO THREAT whatsoever to anybody (except the poor Iraqis who got tortured). If you notice, nobody was gainst the war in afghanistan - why is that? It's basically it was again obvious to the universe that Afghanistan was full of savage bastards who treated women like dogs, destroyed a 1500 year old monument, and exported terror, not just to America, but India, Russia and China too. That's why everybody supported the war against Afghnaistan. Because Afghanistan was directly related to worldwide terrorism. Saddam Hussein was a bastard no argument. But how do u make a case to attack him, and not China? Or North Korea? Or Zimbabwe? Or Sudan? Or Pakistan? Or Iran? Or Suadi Arabia? All these countries have regimes or a general populace which hates Americans. They abuse Human Rights like crazy. They have no clue what democracy is all about. Two of them already HAVE WMDS, you don't have to go hunting for them, for fuck's sake. Of course, you may like to point out that I'm being naive, and many of these countries are important to American interests. And that's fine with me, I'm simply attacking the justification for invading Iraq. Let's call a spade a spade. Iraq really was a diversion, and maybe just a family vendetta even. Bush knew he couldn't catch Bin Laden, so let's just give the public another evil asshole instead - one which it would be easy to get rid of. Everbody knew Iraq had no army, no money nothing to defend itself. Bush went after Iraq because he was a coward. If he had real balls he would have tackled other countries, If "democracy" and "the saftey of the world" and "human rights" are his cause.

Why do people like Bush

[Bruha]

Lost my Job in 2002 spent 6 months getting new one at lower pay.

My health care premiums have risen every year.

The first Tax break was really a loan to be repaid the next year. Funny I had to pay it while I was on my unemployment.

My friends are now fighting a war and have emailed me several times to never believe what their superiors have said. Believe the News.

No WMD's and I'm sure Saddam is still laughing inside about it.

Our freedom is threatened by the Patriot Act.

Bush wants to amend the constitution a document that has historically given rights to individuals. This time he wants to take away individual rights.

Cuts money to the police while at the same time allowing the assault weapon ban to expire.

Oh despite a 87billion dollar boost in money soldiers (I was one) are still getting raises that are lower than inflation and many make much less than poverty level with housing and food considered.

That second tax break amounted to 15 dollars a month for me and I make 60k a year. However I'm paying more than 40 dollars extra a month in Gas for my veichle and nearly 50 dollars extra in energy costs for my house.

Oil prices are high reguardless that there's no shortage and in fact Saudi Arabia has consistently said consumption is far below supply. Yet nobody is doing anything to stop the price runup's.

Also I've learned something. Americans need to pay attention to who they're voting for. That senator or govenor you're voting in may have more ambitions than just helping your state or their constituents. Cheny is a grand example of who we may not of had to put up with if they didnt vote him into congress years ago. In fact he may never of joined up with any of the Bushes and Gore could be president today.

Re:Whaaaa?

[kevlar]

OMFG, I can't believe this was marked flamebait. Someone can post complete nonesense about the Evil Republican President without any reprocussions, but the second someone shows any support for the guy, he's marked as flamebait. Way to go.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Few American voters are angry that we went to war in Iraq. They are angry that it is not as successful as they hoped it would be. WMDs were only justification for the war to other countries. We went to war in Iraq for one simple reason: we were losing face. Letting Iraq mock us (and the world) on UN resolution after resolution was showing to the world that we had no backbone. Going to Iraq was the administration's way of telling every third world country that we had the balls to pound them if they don't behave. Unfortunately with the war being less successful than hoped, that lesson is losing its luster. This is what pisses of Americans and they want someone accountable.

Have no doubt that if the UN didn't exist the US would have no problem conquering territory from minor nations (we have done so many times in the past). And the American people would love it. We'd love to pick a fight. But politics today prevent that. But that doesn't mean that we want the world to think that we are weaklings. It wouldn't suprise me that if this war is relatively unsucessful for a long time we will pick a fight with North Korea or Iran.

Re:Whaaaa?

[mabhatter654]

it was in the yahoo news several months ago... the CIA "knew" all the reported stuff, but in typical beurocratic fashion choose to ignore it. The trusted the word of some two-bit rat informant [questionable credibility] over what the evidence they had on hand actually said... That's what they reported to Bush.

I'm sure bush didn't "lie" about it. as far as he knew that's what the intell said. BUT... it speaks much of his character that he's been a "texas gunslinger" right from the start. That's what I've always been mad about. The French and German allies wanted to do more inspections...work thru the channels. Sure, they had their own tracks to cover [maybe?] but let's face it, any ONE of the countries arguing for a peacful solution could have knocked over Iraq on their own. Bush has been very much a "let them eat cake" type president...he's got no touch at all with real americans... it's apparent he's just a PHB [straight out of dilbert] who hides behind his radical cabinet's decisions instead of being responsible for them and putting cabinet members in their place. Look at his choice of VP...it's still Cheney! even though that guy is nearly impeachable for his part in the energy "crisis". He doesn't belong there...he's got no chance in hell of being president. If he looks like a puppet and acts like a puppet...

To sum it up... Bush has the words of great men like Reagan...but not a lick of the wisdom that made them great. [What truely made Regan great wasn't the military buildup, but his willingness to invite the soviet leaders over here to talk...and treat our biggest rivals with respect, eliminating their fears, even as we were "defeating" them economically. That is something Bush can never, ever do.] His choice of cabinet, VP, and words in public all smack of the typical egotistical american executives we all hate...who are rude, sloppy & ineffectual.

Re:Whaaaa?

[HiThere]

Kerry is playing to the crowd, and I don't trust him that much more than I trust Bush...which is not at all.

I do expect that Kerry would be more polite. It's practically impossible for him to fail at that. And I consider making the choice on those grounds a truly terrible state.

Neither one of them would say a word of truth that didn't benefit them. Either one would lie if it would benefit them. (Not proven for Kerry...but probably because I haven't been paying attention.)

WHY IS ANYONE SURPRISED BY THIS STORY!? THIS WAS ALL KNOWN AND IN THE PAPERS BEFORE THE INVASION.

Yeah, I believe that Bush lied. That's been plain for nearly a year. All you need is a bit of memory so you can compare what he's saying this week with what he said last month. The CIA told Bush before the invasion that Saddam wasn't "any danger to anyone who didn't come inside his country". (Possibly the said "he's not danger"...I don't really remember the exact quote.) And this wasn't secret. (Sorry, I don't keep my old papers filed and indexed by lie. There are too many of them.)

Also, technically I believe you are correct. Clinton probably lied under oath, and Bush lied after being allowed to refuse to go under oath. But Bush lied about something serious, and Clinton lied about something trivial (that time). Sorry, but I can't take having the political support to be able to refuse to go under oath as grounds for anything. I did think that Clinton should have just refused to answer...and that he was stupid to have played things the way he did. But...

If they'd pushed the financial deals that Clinton did, then they would probably have found something serious...but it would likely have involved a bunch of their backers, too. They broached the matter, but quickly backed off. That gave me strong suspicions that the legislators were no more innocent than Clinton.

If you want to play technical games, though, I believe that a case could be made for Bush having deserted the army in time of war. I'm not sure that's a capital offense, but it may well be. It used to be in the 1800's, and I never heard that the law got repealed.

all you offer is fud

[circletimessquare]

fear, uncertainty, denial.

9/11 proves that the middle east exports its problems. thousands died on that day who had nothing to do with the middle east. so it doesn't matter if the us is center of pure evil in the world or the us is a beacon of good, all that matters is that the us is a target. and its also pretty obvious that the us is the only one who's going to do something about it.

so all of your fud: us being south african whites in the days of apartheid, nobody buying us goods, the us not respected or liked, doesn't matter at all.

no really: stack up everything you've said, and throw in a few more anti-american sentiments. i am honestly responding: who cares. really, why should the us care what anyone else thinks? can you give me a solid, justifiable reason why anti-american sentiment should matter when confronted with a world environment that creates something like 9/11?

so you show me a list of problems in your post above. fine, my response: 9/11 is a problem many orders of magnitude larger than everything you have indicated above. therefore, the problems you have indicated to me can be dismissed, there is a larger problem at hand. simple analysis i think, don't you?

in other words, you show me indications that the us is unpopular in the world due to it invading iraq. well, 9/11 says to me that that the us has larger problems than a popularity contest. so invade iraq, and to hell with what you think, really. you're not helping us, so please, be my guest: go sit in a corner and talk abotu how evil americans are. so what? what can you offer me? you can't offer me any help, so i don't care what you think of me.

because thousands of my fellow citizens incinerated is a whole hell of a lot bigger issue than who is loved or not.

Re:Explaining that 45%

[Stalus]

Shared Geography: "He's from Texas! Not like them panty-waists from Taxachusetts."

Except that he was born in Connecticut. And those Texans that paid attention in their government classes know that the Texas governor has no power. Lastly, those of us that paid attention while he was governor know that he wasn't a very good governor either.

Remember your history, at least the past few years

[fleener]

Sorry dude, but Hussein provided volumes of proof on paper as demanded and inspectors had finally achieved free reign. The U.S. censored much of this material before providing it to the United Nations, then invaded Iraq as they had planned all along. We now know Hussein didn't have squat and had obeyed the WMD dismantling that Pappy required of him in the '90s. It didn't matter what proof Iraq provided to President Twitchy because Twitchy was dead set on invasion. We now know what the CIA knew all along, that Iraq was a neutered kitten -- a mighty cry, posing no threat except to its own tail. The only thing Twitchy has accomplished with his two invasions is giving terrorists a second wind and wildly successful inspiration for recruitment. America is 100 times less safe because of this administration.

Re:Damned if they did, damned if they didn't.

[fermion]

This is not necessarily a Democrat versus Republican thing. It is not like Fox News fabricated quotes from Kerry. It a broader failure to understand that searching for truth does not mean deciding what is true than creating a fact pattern that fits the truth. It has been a problem with this administration. They consistently abuse logic and science to justify the things they believe and the actions they wish to take.

If you had read the article, all 10K+ words of it, you would have seen that there was bipartisan support for the attacking of Iraq. In Bush's rhetoric, he has repeatedly pushed the issue that Kerry supported the war. Democrats and Republicans crossed the lines in both directions during the votes, mostly based on their understanding of the data. Intelligence is a fragile art. The Clinton administration could have done more to help prevent 9/11. The Bush administration is certainly not helping matters by creating an environment in which communication is purposefully confounded so as to make the facts look different from what they are generally agreed to be.

Examples from the article.

• There was no evidence linking Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. Cheney, needing a justification to attack Iraq, asked the CIA to find a link. The scariest link would be if Iraq was still developing WMD. There was no real evidence that such a program still existed, but when your boss tells you to do something, you do it. The WMD was a necessary truth, and facts were not going to get int the way.
• The only people really pushing the idea that the aluminum tubes were for a centrifuge was the CIA. Most other experts agreed that they were probably for conventional rockets. The US in fact used similar tubes with similar tolerances. In fact the tubes could only have been used in a prototype centrifuge that would likely be unsuitable for production. This information was given to the administration at all levels. He was specifically warned by the security committee that some of his statement were untrue. Yet when Powell made a speech before the security council concerning the tubes, he stated most intelligence officials thought the tubes were for a centrifuge, even though he had recently been informed this was not the case.
• The day before the State of the Union address the IEAE concluded that Iraq had not credible WMD program. They concluded the tubes were not for a centrifuge. They looked at the inspection data and concluded that the tubes were for a conventional rocket program, again much like rockets in the west. In the address, the president cited past reports of the IEAE that stated Iraq had a WMD program, but did not reference the latest report that stated such a program no longer existed. The people generating the speech admitted purposefully leaving such information out. The president has consistently said sanctions did not work, when in fact every shred of credible evidence indicates that they did work.
• The junior analyst who proposed the possibility that the tubes were for a centrifuge was told by many national and international experts that his theory was flawed and likely wrong. This information was generally available. When he was sent to conference, the attendees were quoted as saying they felt embarrassed for him.

Even when the pre invasion inspection found the tubes were used for conventional rockets. Even when we found not WMD. Even when every shred of credible evidence seems to point that there is not WMD program. The president still believes his story.

The problem is not the republicans or the democrats. The problem is that we have a set of people who have no sense of logic. No sense of shame. No sense that the truth is something that is not set in stone. Just because I believe that I am the greatest guy in the world does not make it so. I am just going to say this. Bush is a truly stupid person. He drove drunk into his thirties. That was truly stupid. He lied about his arrests. That is truly stupid. The republicans are in t

Let's apply a little criticle thinking here

[MarkPNeyer]

Can we please, just for a few minutes, remove our tinfoil bodysuits and think??

So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies. At first glance, this sounds plausible. That's how you can explain the president's willingness to wage a war in Iraq - it's close to afghanistan, right? And those terrorists were arabs. He thinks that should be enough to convice the average shmuck american. Then when you consider that we know we could crush the Iraqi army easly, he can spew a bunch of feel-good rhetoric: we're ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant and liberating the iraqi people. As an added bonus, he can give the contracts for getting all of that iraqi oil to his corporate buddies. It sounds like a decent plan.

Now, please, think critically about that for a second. The hypothesis is that bush's desire for going to war was based on purely political (and perhaps montary) reasons - so that he could get a boost in the poll numbers. A few big questions should present themselves:

• Bin Laden: What about catching Bin Laden? Wouldn't catching him bring bush a massive boost in the polls? If you're after poll boosts, going into iraq is a decent way to do it, but why not put all of your effort into catching that guy alive? You could drag his trial out for months, and then hang him for 3,000 counts of murder during the democratic national convention.
• Timing: If you're going to war in Iraq, when's the best time to do it? We know it'll be a relatively quick victory. The first gulf war only lasted a hundred days, so even if you guess it'll take you three times as long, you're still under a year. We went in march of 2003, so that means the war would be over in march of 2004, before the heat of the election season. Why would you want to go in then? If the war goes well and you get a quick victory, it's over before the election even matters and the boost in the polls could easily wear off. If it drags on longer, you're in an even worse situation, because you could be accused of mismanaging the war. That's the last thing you want - a rising body count as the election day creeps closer and closer, with no end to the war in sight. If you really want political advantage, you'd drag out the pre-war negotiation period untill july 2004, when you decide that we've had enough negotiations. That way, no one can acuse you of rushing to war - you can spend a year planning for all sorts of contingency scenarios, pleading for more help from allies, and sending in more 'inspections' just to claim that saddam wouldn't cooperate. When election time rolls around, you'll be in the thick of fighting, and hopefully there'll be footage on TV of the american forces kicking butt, interspersed with big ads featuing you standing in front of a flag.
• WMD: Why would you make up a reason for going to war? It's not as if your republican supporters wouldn't back you all the way, regardless of your reasoning for going to war. All you've got to do is say that we've given saddam enough time to abide by his resolutions, and he's not cooperating. Your loyalists will support you no matter what, those damned liberals will oppose you no matter what, and anyone dumb enough to support the president just because we're currently at war isn't going to need much convincing. Inventing a reason to go to war only invites intense criticism when it's found out that the reason is completely false. When you consider this in tandem with the timing issue, it makes even less sense. If you know there is no threat posed by WMD, why do you invade 20+ months before the election, when there will have been plenty of time for you to find those WMD

Re:Slashdot provides a discussion forum for a reas

[Derling Whirvish]

I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.

You could make the same claim against the NYTimes couldn't you? That:

... anybody who claims that the NY Times doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.

You will find that the real truth actually lies somewhere in between thinking that the Bush administration lies on a regular basis and the NYTimes always tells the truth and thinking that the Bush administration always tells the truth and the NYTimes lies on a regular basis. Both are extremist views.

Re: Whaaaa?

[TGK]

And as we all know, the reporters are the ones who have the most influences over what goes into the final finished product that you see on the screen.

The roll of all those production managers, producers, directors, and lets not forget overwhelmingly rich and powerful media moguls is to sit around and whittle their dicks.

You can't seriously think that just because the majority of journalists are liberals that the media has a liberal bias. That's like saying that because the majority of workers in the automotive industry are democrats that the industry as a whole supports the democrats. The evidence [opensecrets.org] would be against you in that one.

You can't tell me that with ultra conservative individuals like Rupert Murdoch behind the scenes issuing direct memoranda to the lowest levels of his media empire directing stations on what to run and not to run that conservatives are powerless and unrepresented in the media.

He who has the money makes the rules. The having of money is one of the strongest predictors of political affiliation and the people at the top have a lot of money.

Re:Whaaaa?

[hobo2k]

In case you missed the debate. I'm not specifically picking on Poland. I'm picking on Bush for repeatedly using Poland as an example of how broad his coalition was.

Re:michael's madness

[hawkeye]

Dunno what to reply to first...

First off, I'm married, live in Silicon Valley, and have 3 kids, a solid job and a good life. All of which is being threatened by the current administration, in more ways than one.

Hmmm... see you still like to live behind the A.C. shield. Grow some testicles...you moron! Mine have already been proven to function just fine :-)

Cheers,

Hawkeye...

P.S.: What ethics? The same "ethics" that Cheney displays when he states that there was no collusion during the Cali. power "crisis"... (later to be proven *wrong*, by a federal judge *and* his own administration!) Be careful who you support and/or believe is ethical.

Burden of disproof

[FredFnord]

Remember, it was for Saddam to prove he did not have weapons. It was not the job of the UN, the inspectors, or the USA to prove he did or didnt.

Which is a beautifully convenient piece of sophistry. Anyone with even a little bit of education knows that you can't prove a negative. You can't even come close.

"Where are your hidden weapons labs?" "We have none!" "Well, show us." "Show you what?" "Your weapons labs." "But we have none." "Well, prove it." "All right. Where would you like to look?" "You tell us." "But if we have no weapons labs, we have nowhere to tell you about." "Ah, so, then, you refuse to be cooperative."

At the last, when the inspectors were still in there, just before they were pulled out, the Iraqis were cooperating to the fullest extent of their abilities. There were some major paperwork problems, apparently generated because when they destroyed some of their weapons they didn't document them sufficiently. But they were even being allowed to inspect within all the places that had previously been off-limits, and in fact were even allowed unannounced visits with no warning time.

Strangely, the rest of the world thought they were doing fine. Given that, one must either assume that every single other country with the exception of England* is bone stupid, or that we are warmongers who above all else didn't WANT the inspections to work.

Makes you feel good to be an American, don't it?

-fred

* - (Yes, we had other allies eventually. But at that point we still hadn't scraped them together, so it was just GWB and GB)

Wow. Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

This and most of the other lies used to justify the war were pretty much known to be false before the war began. It's nice to see the news media starting to do their job now that thousands have died and we're in an unsolvable mess. Thank you NYT, thank you so FREAKIN much.

Re:When did /. become a mouthpiece for the Democra

[upsidedown_duck]

How is this news for nerds?

Nerds have strong opinions about many things, even things that are political. Software Patents are a political issue, for example, as is Linux vs. Windows, to a large extent. GPL vs. BSD licensing has had its share of politically-motivated discussion. So has pretty much anything regarding Sun Microsystems or HPaq or IBM, lately.

Adding in election politics, at least until November, doesn't seem entirely out of line, given that the Presidential election is weighing more on many minds than whether Java 5 supports syntactic sugar for type casting.

Unfortunately

[freejung]

Sad to say it, but the strategists behind this move actually are thinking globally. If your global objective is domination and you are willing to use whatever means necessary, the obvious strategy is to control the energy resources. If you have to offend a few people in order to do that, so be it. At some point the oil is going to start getting scarce, and at that point whoever has military bases on top of the remaining oil reserves wins.

Not that I think this justifies what they did, of course, I don't think global domination is a legitimate goal. But if you think it is, this move makes perfect sense.

Re:Burden of proof

[FredFnord]

The strange thing is, Mr. Hussein could have had the sanctions on Iraq removed at any time over the past decade by allowing weapons inspectors back into the country to confirm that the weapons had been destroyed.

He made it pretty clear that he didn't believe this. In fact, he thought that any inspection regime designed to do this would basically be a cover for a spy team sent from the USA to gather intelligence, with the express aim of overthrowing him.

He was, yes, a wee bit paranoid. (Actually, he was a big-time nutcase.) In his defense, though, it's not at all unlikely that that would have been the case.

-fred

Re:Whaaaa?

[killjoe]

"many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's."

That's because most people are complete idiots. All the evidence points to the contrary. The amount of soldiers killed in Iraq went UP after saddam was captured. Actually the amount of total violence in Iraq went up.

Bad use of a source

[Phelan]

Apparently they didn't teach you in school that Opinion Pieces (i.e. the Op-Ed piece you linked to above) are the opinion of the author of the piece and usually have a loose license to the truth. While on the other hand the article in the actual story is reporting which comes with a much higher burden of proof for facts.

Don't use Op-Ed pieces as source for 'facts', also don't use an extremist site to get 'facts'. Examples of sites that do not qualify as reliable on facts are:
http://www.freerepublic.org/
http://www.dem ocraticunderground.org/
http://www.drudgereport.c om/ (remember the Kerry Intern story he broke, and turned out to be a pile of...
http://www.commondreams.org/

Re:LIAR

[AoT]

I'd have to agree with you here. For a long time I was a Democrat, then I started looking at their record, and their goals and I just couldn't support them anymore. The problem I have now is that there really isn't a single party that comes close to representing my views. I'm nominally an Anarchist, but if you ever bring that up in conversation people instantly dismiss your views.

Not that most people have the slightest idea of what Anarchism is. And no I've never thrown a bomb or broken a window.

The American people really need to start looking at alternative politicaal structures, because our is pretty screwed up at this point.

One-party dominance

[freejung]

This is precisely why we need to break this whole one-party dominance trip the Republicans are on now.

It's bad enough that the Dems and Reps are pretty much the same party at this point. But it's even worse that the Reps are trying to take over every branch of government. This completely breaks the system of checks and balances, as if it weren't broken enough already.

We need to go in the opposite direction as fast as possible. That starts with getting a Democratic president now, so that we'll have some sort of check on the Republican Congress.

In the long term, this means we need to move beyond the one-party-two-names system and develop some real alternatives. But we have to take that one step at a time, and the first step is to break the Republican stranglehold on power.

That said, I agree completely that congress failed miserably in this regard. Sen. Byrd stood up at the time and waved a copy of the Constitution, saying "our job is not to rubber-stamp the president's resolution, our job is to protect the text of the Constitution!" Nobody listened. Kerry is as accountable for that as anyone. But at least he no acknowledges that going into Iraq was a mistake. That's a start, and right now, it's good enough for me.

Re:Really a surprise?

[bonch]

Well, at least we know Michael's opinion on it. Sheesh. Is there a time he doesn't interject his viewpoint in an article submission?

I don't see how Slashdot expects to have balanced political coverage considering the left-leaning of this community. Look at all the "lie" accusations flying around, despite all the foreign intelligence that supported what the administration was claiming. Huge mistake? Fuck yeah. Lying? Uh, no. By that standard, CBSNews is a big liar as well.

There's more to it.

[khasim]

You're building up a case to go to war.

You're assembling the evidence for that case.

You find that some of the evidence wasn't substantiated.

You find that some of the evidence was false.

You find that some of the evidence is in dispute.

You find that some of the evidence is hearsay.

At what point do you STOP and have ALL the evidence re-examined?

Rather, what we saw was a continuing onslaught of new "evidence" and fear.

All since proven false.

Now, how is it possible to get ALL of the "evidence" wrong? Not part of it. Not some of it. But all of the "evidence".

Bush and Co. lied to get us into this mess.

Re:Does it matter?

[Hard_Code]

Yeah, sort of sad how 4 years ago we were fighting for progress and now we are just begging to get the fucking status quo back. It's like my country has been carjacked.

Re:This can and will happen again

[demachina]

Its happened more than once. The Gulf of Tonkin incident used to sucker the U.S. in to Vietnam was very similar. The South Vietnamese were attacking the North Vietnamese coast with patrol boats, the North Vietnamese amazingly enough fought back. An American destroyer was supporting the South Vietnamese boats and provoking retaliation, but it now appears it was never even fired on. By the time LBJ finished spinning it the North Vietnamese had engaged in a sneak attack on an American ship, practically a Pearl Harbor, and thus the U.S. was suckered in to a quagmire that cost the U.S. dearly. It is so very similar to Iraq today. The North Vietnamese were no angels and deserved to be fought but the puppet regimes the U.S. stood up in the South were far worse which is why the insurgency in Vietnam continued to grow throughout the war. If you are going to meddle in a civil war you need to make sure you are backing people who don't suck. Allawi has all the earmarks of another ruthless corrupt puppet that will foment a continuing insurgency.

If you don't want these things to happen you need people challenging the administration when they are lieing and not after all the damage has been done like now. It was painfully obvious at the time the Iraq WMD case was a lie but journalists and politicians alike were deathly afraid to challenge it in the wake of 9/11 lest they be branded as unpatriotic and soft on "Terrorism", many who did challenge it were branded just that by the Bush administration and Fox News. So its easy to Monday morning quarterback and say people should know better, but the fact is most people who tried to speak out, paid dearly for it.

Cheney and the Neocons had the whole Iraq thing outlined before 9/11. They no doubt danced a jig when 9/11 happened because they knew they could get away with almost anything in the post 9/11 frenzy. You can't really even blame George for it. He was just doing what Cheney was whispering in his ear. Cheney is the one really running the country. Bush is just an empty headed figurehead with a powerful name.

Re:Whaaaa?

[N3WBI3]

Yes, you are just a nut..

Ok, keep in mind I'm a jaded, paranoid conspiracy nut... and a Canadian to make it worst. But the reality of the war was to gain resources in particular oil.

Oil is fungable, the us has nothing to gain by invading Iraq. Simply lifting sancations (like France and Germany wanted) would reduce the cost of Oil as much (in fact more than) direct "control" over Iraq will..

If you want to know what this war really is about look at who profits http://www.halliburton.com/index.jsp

So I guess when Clinton gave Halliburton all kinds of contracts in Kosovo, and Yugoslavia that was all about padding corporate america's pockets right?

Look getting someone to do reconstruction in a war zone is not like hiring someone to seal your driveway, there are very few who do it and Halliburton just happens to be one of the bigger better companies..

And this is surprising why?

[carlmenezes]

Mod me down if you want, but this has to be said.

The rest of the world knew that Iraq had no WMDs. Everyone knew it was a "war to boost the economy". Nobody did anything. Why didn't America know? Ask your media that question and ask yourselves how much international news you actually listen to? Ask yourselves why.

Then you'll see why it isn't surprising. It is always easier for a government to go in for the wrong reasons and explain later, just like it's easier for us to do something we've set our minds on and explain later.

Look at the U.S's foreign policy from the outside (try some independent and known-to-be-unbiased news agencies for a change) and you'll see the difference.

Re:Whaaaa?

[HermanAB]

I think you are being sarcastic too, but I am not - I am perfectly serious. I am an ex military officer and happened to have lived in the middle east for a few years, where I watched lots of Iraqi TV programs. It was quite hillarious sometimes, since Saddam Hussein featured in *every* TV program.

The Hussein regime was a total abomination. There has been a constant civil war in the country for decades now - that same civil war is still continuing today. The different factions in Iraq hate each other so badly, that even the common foe - the USA - can't get them to stop fighting each other for more than a week or so at a time.

Saddam and Hitler are the only rulers ever, that gassed their own citizens. Saddam had to be removed - kudos to President Bush and the US Military for doing that.

Really, thank you guys.

Re:Whaaaa?

[dubl-u]

I think people are taking the whole "global test" thing a little too literally. It's not like were gonna print up a questionnaire and pass it out to world leaders.

Yeah, it amazes me how many people have apparently forgotten all but two words of that debate answer. To help them, I'll include it here:

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

It's not clear to me why this is controversial. America's true authority in the world isn't military, it's moral. If neither our citizens nor our allies trust our government to act wisely, our ability to influence the world is much diminished. We can hardly persuade people to act against truly dangerous rogue nations like North Korea if they think we might be a dangerous rogue nation ourselves.

Whether or not one truly cares what the other 95% of the planet thinks, there's a lot of pragmatic value in working with allies to achieve our goals.

how uptight is America?

[SethJohnson]

With all due respect, in your culture, a bare breast may seem especially sexual. In other cultures there is no stigma attached to a woman's breast being revealed in public. In Austin, Texas, where I live, women are free to walk around topless if they so choose. ANYWHERE. In fundamentalist religious cultures,such as the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, women were forced to cover their skin from head to toe. In Austin, Texas, our children seem to be growing up just fine. Sometimes they see breasts naked in public. Not unlike when they are walking around the house and their mothers are changing clothes. Kids across America see breasts on the internet anytime they wish. As a result of our nation's children seeing a naked breast on the Superbowl Halftime Show, were they harmed? What damage was done? If you choose to respond to this question, please cite as many scientific studies as possible that indicate children who view naked breasts are likely to have been psychologically harmed.

Re:Burden of proof

[n8_f]

I am talking about 2002-2003. Regarding the earlier inspections, read Scott Ritter's book. The reason the Iraqi's had problems with allowing inspection teams into presidential palaces and the like was because we had placed CIA agents on the inspection teams and Saddam was paranoid the inspectors were gathering intelligence to have him assassinated. He was at least half-right: we were gathering intelligence, but I don't know that we would have assassinated him. There was no point. He was contained, as Powell himself said [thememoryhole.org].

The buck stops here.

[Mybrid]

Well that's what Harry Truman said anyway.

Bush uses CIA (bad) intelligence when it suits him and ignores it (assessment of Iraq in the next five years) when it doesn't. Remember, the uraninum and aluminum tube intelligence came after 9/11 and the entire intelligence community was sharply rebuked for not doing its job. How can they NOT double check all the intelligence after 9/11? especially when making the case to go to war? Bush says 9/11 changed the way we look at the world and nowhere is this more obvious than with intelligence. The intelligence community needs a new outlook with lots of scrutiny after 9/11. The question is did he give the intelligence for going to war in Iraq the 9/11 scrutiny or the 9/10 scrutiny?

They only answer can be that the buck doesn't stop with George Bush. He's not looking to take responsiblity but rather he's looking to get his way. He wanted to invade Iraq and he found intelligence that agreed with him and he wasn't concerned with due dilligence of having it doubled checked.

Of course now he doubts the intelligence about the bleak outlook for Iraq.

He's only using intelligence as propoganda to get his way. It is transparently obvious.

The problem with Congress's checks on war...

[LinuxParanoid]

Like you, I wish (at least in hindsight) that Congress should have checked Bush. And I agree that Congress has that role and responsibility.

But let's be realistic about what happened. A) There *was* token dissent. The problem was that it didn't go beyond being token. B) Congress can't be trusted with highly secret info because they leak it to satisfy their own political agendas or due to their own incompetence. It's happened over and over. C) Because of B, both citizens and Congress presume that the Executive branch has info they do not release to Congress. D) Because of C, when there is a really critical, intelligence-driven decision to be made, the US citizens and the Congress will tend to trust the president due to the additional information available to him but not to us. Plus for a congressperson there is the following pragmatic logic. For a congressperson to buck the tide, they risk a career-ending looking-foolish moment if the intel turns out to prove the Executive correct. And if the congressperson goes along with the ride, the worst they suffer is having to claim the Executive duped them and they run on the issue in the next election.

This is a structural problem with Congress. While you might claim its a moral or ethical failure of many many congresspeople, it's tough to argue they are not acting in a perfectly rational way.

The solution for this problem it to vote out your local duped congresspeople, Republican or Democrat. If they face getting voted out in either case, maybe they'll start taking responsibility for knowing what's going on and they'll start taking keeping confidential info secret more seriously.

--LP

fine, who cares

[Bauguss]

I say who cares. Clinton lied, Bush lied, they learn how to do it from very early on in politics.

Here's what should really be focused on.

The US and the World should have a ZERO tollerance policy towards genocide of any kind. WMD's should never have been the reason that got america to go to war. But for some reason, the US and it's allies (and some partial allies like France) seemed to be fine with this prick ruling a country the way he was. Kerry says he think we should have gone down more of a diplomatic road. Well, I ask what they hell we are supposed to call the entire decade of the 90's. Was that not diplomatic? Time and time again we let him get away with shit and never said enough is enough. EVERY single time we said, "do that again and that will be it"

We can't let countries be ruled by terror. All they do is create environments where terrorists are born and thrive. And terrorist's just love to place blame for their problems on anything but the real cause. Pretty much every country in the Middle east is ruled badly. 9-11 should have made the world say enough is enough.

That brings up other questions though. Was Iraq our biggest threat? Probably not. It is probably North Korea and our friendly allies in Saudia Arabia. The problem facing the US government though was that our more immediate threats were not and are not as easy of a situation as Iraq. We've had a good amount of troops posted in Kuwait for some time to deal with Iraq. Every time in the 90's that Iraq did something that caused us to respond, it cost the US billions of dollars. (every time we redeploy troops to show a show of force costs a hell of a lot) So something had to be done. Oh, must I not forget to mention, that Saddam was a mass murderer.

Iraq was the easiest conflict for the US to choose as a next step in the war on terror that actually could have a result in the entire war. It accomplished several things. It gives the terrorists a battlefield. (and we needed more than just afghanistan) It also got rid of a dictator who caused the middle east and the world a great deal of trouble for many many years. And, even the odds are tough, creating a democratic Arab country, if successfuly, would be a HUGE thing. If Iraq can rise from the ashes, then it will give hope to millions of oppressed Arabs all over the world. Remember, hope is something most Arabs only get when coming to the US. (this being from my conversations with them)

So, put your anti-Bush aside. Focusing on the WMD issue is not only a waste of time but it turns the worlds attention from something greater.

I write this in recognition that the world taking a stance against genocide is going to be a issue where the world turns its back on issues that are to complex for it to deal with. I also write this in recognition of how anti-Bush slashdot is. Please take a minute to put politics aside and truly think about whats going on in the world outside of our own borders.

Anyway, there is much more I can say but I'll leave it at that. This probably won't be modded up anyway to make any difference.

Re:M.A.D

[Anonymous Coward]

"
I'd be willing to wager that a whole lot more Al-Q activity goes on in Pakistan than Iraq (Iraq as it stood before the invasion that is, obviously it's seething with hardline islamist nut-jobs now). However, Pakistan has the bomb, and therefore doesn't have to be pushed around,"

what are you smoking ? pakistan is not being pushed around because you guys started supporting it from the very begining. gen pervaz mushraf conducted the coup with the us support. You guys started raising a bloodhound...wait till it comea and bites you in the ass.

Re:Whaaaa?

[pyrrhonist]

The way I interperted "global test" was more along the lines of carefully thinking out our actions and basically putting ourselves in the rest of the world's shoes. "How will the Arab world react if we do X? What if we do Y? And what about the Chinese?"

That's not enough actually. You can't just picture yourself in another country's shoes, as this is the same as doing something without asking, and may actually be considered more insulting. You can't as an American president, presume to know how a certain country would feel about U.S. military action anywhere. You have to go before the rest of the world, put forth a resolution, and tell them that this is what you want to do. At least that's the procedure that is currently in place.

And that's just the problem. I don't think Bush & co. have been taking seriously any of the input from the rest of the world.

The current administration tried [bbc.co.uk] to take the rest of the world seriously. They tried to play by the rules and Colin Powell went before [state.gov] the U.N. to try to convince them to support our resolution for action in Iraq. Multiple times, we tried to get the U.N. security council to back us unconditionally. Furthermore, many U.S. citizens desired [latimes.com] U.N. support before taking military action in Iraq, so it was important for the administration to try to achieve this. They did not take the rest of the world lightly in this case.

However, as we all know, these attempts to gain support failed, and at this point maybe that's when the "global test" should have failed. This is when Colin Powell started his tour to find supportive nations, and when he had 49 [fact-index.com], the "global test" passed for the administration. That is where the controversy lies. There were supportive nations, but the fact that none of them were France, Germany, and Russia was a major issue. Probably the largest sticking point, was the fact that the U.N. Security Council did not back our actions, and we did not have support of all the permanent members.

That being said, the administration felt that it had enough global support to pass its definition of "global test", and made its decision to attack.

The Global Test is more of an abstract concept than a strictly defined set of rules.

And therein lies the problem, and why Bush appeared upset. Bush and Kerry have very different interpretations of what constitutes a "global test". The administration feels that they had enough support globally, but Kerry feels that this was not enough.

So what constitutes a global test? Is it enought to have N number of nations supporting your actions? Is it enought to have only the U.N. Security Council supporting your actions? Do you need more than this? It's a very slippery slope.

It appears, though, that no matter what we do, at least some of the rest of the world will not support us. If, for instance, Canada suddenly just bombed Detroit, I would find it had to believe, even in this case, that we would get overwhemling support in the U.N. to retaliate. Canada would most certainly be condemned by the U.N. for attacking the U.S., but it is doubtful whether the U.N. would support a U.S. attack on Canada. Furthermore, we wouldn't have the support of all the U.N. Security Council in this case. Most of Europe would probably not support action. So now what do we do? Retaliate, or just ignore the attacks?

You cannot take the opinion of the world upon any of your actions lightly, and this is why we went before the U.N., and why it was necessary to consult congress [whitehouse.gov] first before any action was taken.

Re:Nobody forced you

[MtViewGuy]

Look, many want /. to be discussing issues in regards to technology, not turn into another forum for the all-too-fashionable Bush-bashing.

It's small wonder why the phrase "One way to start a fight is to start discussing religion and politics" is so true nowadays. (sigh)

lets all point the finger at each other

[peterzum]

There are intelligent people on both sides, so why are so many people acting like anyone that votes for someone besides your candidate is an idiot? That's just rude, and it's not going to help anything except for civil war.

Look I'd like to vote for someone better than Bush, but I don't think Kerry is the man, if you think Bush lies, guess what, so does Kerry. People are attracted to voting for Bush because we always know where he stands, and yes I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks (and yes I do know somewhat of the sacrifice military people make, my dad was in the military, and was half paralyzed and half brain dead from the time I was 7 due to his injuries in the service).

Does anyone remember September 11th? Does anyone remember Osama declaring war on the U.S.? Does anyone remember the feelings they had that day, or the day after 9/11,... the feelings that justice must be done for these several thousand people that died, and we must prevent it from happening again. Look, Kerry voted for this war too, he supported it. Bush just stuck to his guns, I know where he stands and that's why I'm voting for him.

Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves. He also financially supported the people that want to kill U.S. citizens, which I think most of us are. His sons would torture their own Olympians after they returned to Iraq if they didn't perform well. There's more, but I'm not going to continue on the tyranny for now. I don't care if he had WMD's or not, there were several other reasons to go to war with him (supporting terrorists, being a tyrant and killing his own people). There are too many parallels between Saddam and Hitler. Remember what happened when we tolerated Hitler, it cost over 50 Million lives to stop him. If we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. We have learned from history that 'dictators that kill their own people because they don't like their point of view' are dangerous, and need to be stopped. So we learned from history, we took him out before he got out of hand. And yes, this means we should be at war with other countries now too (i.e. North Korea, Iran), but I'm pretty sure we can't support that many war fronts without reinstating a draft.

Now you may say we're stuck in Iraq. Does anyone remember how long we were in Japan after WWII? about 7 years. How about the U.S.'s own revolution how long was it before the 13 colonies could agree... 11 years if my memory serves me correctly. Remember history, the rapid progress in Iraq is unprecedented. Yes it costs human lives and that is horrible, but it is a choice between less people dying now or more people dying later. It's a tough choice to make, but we made the right one.

And if you don't think that the media is slanted left, why is it that they call President Bush "Mr. Bush" and they call President Clinton, "President Clinton." or any other former president, is called "President." It's just one more way they undermine him. Just something interesting to think about. Also why is it that the media only reports the bad news and the deaths from the war, they never tell about power being restored, or schools being built, I've never heard a letter from a soldier who's actually in Iraq on the media on the T.V. I have heard several of their letters on the radio, and they paint quite a different picture from the one we see every night on the evening news. I'd talk more about their slant to the left, but I've been too long winded already.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[admdrew]

I found the whole halftime "tit show" disappointing.

The 'disappointing' part of it was the lack of sexual shock. I watched the Superbowl in a dorm room with 8 other college-aged guys, a fairly sexually charged group of people. Half of the people in the room didn't even *notice* that it was happening, and those that actually saw anything didn't really think anything of it. Christ, it's like whining about seeing a woman breastfeeding her baby in a public park. It might be giggle-inducing for those under 16, but it's hardly harmful or "disappointing."

Your portrayal of sexuality (and how it is/should be viewed) as one of two extremes is a little unfortunate. The 'sex-fest' that is MTV (an informed observation on your part, I'm sure) is certainly not realistic nor necessarily beneficial when teaching children about sex, but it is no more skewed and inaccurate than the wildly conservative views touted as family friendly.

If you feel the need to actually adjust your television viewing habits due to the sexual content on a public network, you could probably stand to do a little better in educating those whom you seem to be a role model or some sort of parental figure for. If the MTVesque view is something you don't want perpetuated, censoring it exactly what not to do. Religious affiliation and the fact they're involved in a church group aside, they're still regular kids. Most of them will have more meaningful sexual information provided to them by their peers. Being honest and open in your dealings with these teens when it comes to sex will be more effective.

As long, of course, as you're willing to accept the fact that they may develop opinions slightly more liberal than your own.

FactCheck

[n54]

There isn't any news in this "news" for anyone, it seems like just another excuse to be able to trashtalk Bush, rewrapping an old story using people "all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity" (NYT quoted). In addition the NYT article states "American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes", it should seem obvious for all that choosing which point of view or arguments to believe is not lying even if you are later proved wrong.

For all those who are tired of loudmouths endlessly repeating their favourite rants ("Bush/Kerry is a liar" etc.) here's a link to FactCheck.org: http://factcheck.org/ [factcheck.org].

Go - Read - Think - Think some more - Read some more - Doubt your assumptions - Think again - Vote (if you're an US citizen) for whoever you agree the most with but please respect that others do not see the world through your eyes, heart and brain (observations/feelings/thoughts).

Please differentiate yourself from the Moore/Limbaugh crowd and be proud of it. Please don't base any vote on who shouts the loudest or for that matter on whoever shouts less.

Re:WMD Spin Machine

[demachina]

"We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine?"

It isn't a new story. It shows you how asleep at the wheel people have been that anyone thinks its a new story. Its been known for a year or more that there was a total of one expert claiming they were suitable for centrifuges and a host of experts who KNEW they were not. It a story getting some new legs because some people are growing a spine. In case you haven't noticed there have been a string of leaks, apparently coming out of the CIA, in the last couple weeks, designed to embarrass the Bush administration before the election. Last week it was the intelligence estimates that had predicted the insurgency in the Iraq which the Bush administration choose to ignore.

The Bush administration has been trying to make the CIA and George Tenant the fall guy for all of these failures and I think people in the CIA have had enough of it and are fighting back. It was Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearl and the rest of the Neocons in the DOD who fabricated the case for war in Iraq, the CIA unfortunately went along when they shouldn't have but the Neocons in the DOD are literally getting away with murder while the CIA is literally being destroyed over it and that will be really bad for the U.S. in the long run. How is it being destroyed. Porter Goss is being made its head and if you thought there was a danger of the CIA being politicized before just wait until he is its head. He is as partisan as they come and a Bush administration lap dog. The CIA is also going to be sucked in to the intelligence reform act. If you thought we had intelligence problems before wait until they are all in one agency, and under a political hack like Goss. There wont even be the pretense of objectivity and second opinions. At least a few agencies, like state were debunking the Iraq WMD case. When all intelligence is in one agency it will be EASIER to fabricate a case for war as was done in Iraq.

As an aside as part of the National Intelligence reform it appears the Republican's are going to try to force through the ultimate symbol of Big Brotherism, a National ID card for every citizen.

Re:Whaaaa?

[blanks]

Global test Question 1: County has done nothing wrong, but has billions in oil. Do you. a) Destroy it, and have your friends make billions re building their infrastructure, along with putting other friends in charge of the oil. b) Work with the UN to take care of any problems we personally have with this country. c) Let them continue to run as a country and wait for them to do something that would give any type of real reason to attack. I think the USA scored a big fat F on this test.

Re:Disputed != Lied

[ottffssent]

Sorry. That doesn't fly.

Bashing would be Bill Maher's constant harping on Bush sitting around reading to kids while planes continue to collide with buildings. Yeah, in hindsight he kinda screwed up, but I'm sure it made sense at the time. It's not like he was going to do anything anyway. The president doesn't gather information, and I'm sure the information gathering went on just fine without him, and was prepared by the time he got somewhere and listened to it.

Bashing would be constantly badmouthing the man every time he takes a break because early on in his presidency, vacationing seemed to be all he got done.

Pointing out a pattern of deliberate, baldfaced lies told by the President in an effort to push his country into a war with an uninvolved sovereign state is not bashing. It's impeachable, and the only reason Bush is still in office is because the Republicans are in charge right now.

I'm not entirely sure what "inflammatory terms" you refer to. "Lied" perhaps? I wouldn't call that "inflammatory" - I'd call it "the uncolored truth". Disputed would be if we found a chemical factory that may have been producing chemical weapons, or a nuclear program that may have been generating power or may have been generating weapons-grade plutonium. Lied is when the country goes to war on the pretense that we're fighting terror and putting down an imminent threat, only to discover that neither is remotely true.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[norton_I]

The thing I don't get is why a 2 second shot of a breast is considered "worse" than all the other sexual content of the superbowl and its commercials, and really most other TV. Or, why it is considered worse that some pretty extreme violence in movies (and in the superbowl).

Personally, I don't have a problem with any of the above, but it worries me that only a few people complain yearly about how lewd the beer commercials or the dancing are, but when we see Janet's boob, everyone goes ape shit.

In particular, many of the commercials can be interpreted as being seriously degrading to women (again, I don't particularly care: I can respect women and laugh at the commercials and not mix up real women with models on TV), while the halftime show was definately sexual in nature, but not at all degrading (in my book).

Re:Whaaaa?

[dubl-u]

many people, if pressed to do so, would agree that the world is at least a little bit safer without Saddam Hussein in charge in Iraq, regardless of whether he had any WMD's.

And that would be relevant how?

I think the making the world safer is a fantastic goal. But for the massive cost of invading and occupying Iraq (so far: 1000+ US dead, 10-20x that in Iraqi dead, $100 billion, strained relationships, lost credibility, and hugely increased dislike of America in the Muslim world) we got a lousy deal if all we got is "a little bit safer".

And although not everybody agrees, reasonable analysts suggest that the world is, in fact, less safe. We recently discovered that Pakistan was behind the biggest nuclear proliferation problems in decades. And we did nothing, even when they gave the guy responsible a pardon and a medal. Why? Because they're an "ally" in the war on terror.

Futher, Iran and North Korea, knowing that we are distracted by Iraq and politically stretched, are getting away with further bomb-building preparation. Meanwhile, Iraq is a big ol' recruiting poster for nut-job militants around the world. And the fact that we are unable to stabilize the situation there only encourages them, both now and in the future.

WMD fiasco vs Constitutional power to declare war

[Jollyeugene]

The WMD fiasco is nothing but a sideshow to keep you from seeing the real underlying issues here.

Ever since Vietnam the Presidents have totally pissed on the Constitution they swore to uphold. The President has NEVER had power to declare war, that was granted to the Congress. I don't recall Congress declaring war against Iraq, for whatever reason.

The Congress does not want the political heat of declaring war. So they attempt to push that over to Bush by signing a letter of "support for our troops". They can then blame the President for whatever goes wrong, or take credit for whatever goes right. This way, they keep their offices relatively unspotted in the view of the people. Offices which in reality consist largely of shoveling money towards corporate interests.

All this reeks of the same corruption that occurred when the Senators of the Roman Republic shoveled all their power over to Octavian... making him Caesar. Those Senators did not want to risk alienating the people by taking stands on issues, they would rather let Augustus do it, and then blame him when things went sour. Thus, those Senators could hide their incompetency and accountability from the people, while continuing their corrupt business dealings.

We read in Article I Section 8 that Congress has power...:

Article I Section 8 (Powers granted to Congress):
"...To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;...."

In Section 1 or Article II we read: Article II Section 1 (Executive branch, office of President):
"...Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Now that Congress has no gumption and represents corporations instead of the people-- the President does whatever he wants. So we go to war at his say so, over whatever he wants us to fight and die for. The leaders of our country swore to uphold the Constitution, yet they piss on the balance of power that was built into it for their own political and personal gain.

And these people are going to bring "freedom" to Iraq. Physicians... heal thy selves.

"I'll liberate you peoples' fate
Spoke the Burnin' Bush
But the song of beasts
Growl with oil soaked teeth
Their dollar is mighty and true
Now the eagle soars the sky
Over refugee and child
And to all there is no end
Another day in perfect Hell"-- Flogging Molly

do we agree...

[circletimessquare]

that al qaeda is more than osama bin laden?

that al qaeda is a systemic problem created from various socioeconomic, geopolitical, theohistorical problems?

that al qaeda is a symptom, not a cause?

then you agree that the patient, the middle east, is the real issue, and that you have to confront the problem of a world that created something like 9/11 as a long range problem, with many long range steps, including invading iraq to serve as a base for fixing the sick patient that is the middle east

got it?

iraq is but step 1, there are many steps to go before we have a middle east that does not launch it's madmen around the world

Didn't you Americans know they were lying?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Korean.

I am always curious whether the Americans really didn't know that GWBush was lying when he started invasion over Iraq. Didn't you really know? There is no WMD there. American bombers drop huge amounts of bombs over Iraq almost weekly-base since operation desert storm.

Were you really not aware of that? or you just don't care about diying people just because they were not visible to you?

Please open your eyes and see what's happening there. Everybody in the world knows about GWBush's cruel invasion and massacre hurts world peace. American people are only people unaware of the truth blinded by there media companies.

Mercy please. Stop killing innocent people of the world. Don't just drop your bombs anywhere you want.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you're Israel and trying to stomp out somebody else, that's just swell and peachy, coz you can always guilt people out of that line with

Remember the Holocaust! Never again! Never again!

All the while you are perpetrating your own li'l holocaust! Ain't it great!?

Re:Whaaaa?

[arkanes]

Organizations have ways of letting things be known. I'm sure that the government and the CIA are no different, especially in light of the fact that W's dad was the head of it. I would be very, very suprised if there wasn't an undercurrent of what kind of information was desired, and if that undercurrent didn't directly affect what was delivered to the Presidents desk. It'd be the same under any administration, of course.

That said, I still have to slam Bush pretty hard for the way he handled and is handling it - obviously he can't back down now, but he's spinning like a top to keep any blame off of himself - the mark of a poor leader. It's his reponsibility to ensure that he gets all his information, and if there are beuracratic problems preventing that it's his job to bring those to light and to solve them. It shouldn't need to wait for partisan commissions and depostions and hearings - a real president would have been livid over being fed incomplete or false information and would have done something about it.

NO WMDs

[Doc Ruby]

The fact is that Hussein destroyed the weapons because we forced him to. Another fact is that we pulled our inspectors out and invaded because their demonstration that no WMDs existed got in the way of our invasion. Then there's the question of an insane, paranoid tyrant defending himself from not just American flyovers and domestic attempts at freedom, but serious threats from neighboring Iran and Israel, both of which successfully attacked him from the air in the 1980s, and both of which likely have The Bomb. So he said he had one, too, in a way that wouldn't violate his house arrest, but which put those enemies on notice.

Here's another fact: NO WMDs. The inspections worked, because there were NO WMDs after they got underway shortly after Iraq War Sr. And, there were NO WMDs.

Benjamin Franklin quote resumes actual situation

[Anonymous Coward]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin
1706--1790
Letter to Josiah Quincy
Sept. 11, 1773

Re:Whaaaa?

[ioslipstream]

Ummm, didn't you forget something? The reports that Iraq submitted did not show that they destroyed all the weapons they were known to have. Quite the contrary.

The UN did agree that there were unaccounted for weapons and chemicals. Why do you think there were 17 resolutions? The UN however, wanted to wait for the inspectors to find the weapons that were unaccounted for, while the US did not want to wait for 17 more resolutions.

Whether or not you support the war, please get the facts straight. Saddam failed to comply with any of the resolutions. The thousands of pages of reports further proved the UN's, not just the US's , assertions that Iraq had not proven through documentation that they had in fact destroyed all the weapons the UN knew they had from prior inspections.

Re:you are self-centered

[Viking Coder]

What? You're the one who basically said, if it doesn't involve the US then I don't care.

"so it doesn't matter if the us is center of pure evil in the world or the us is a beacon of good, all that matters is that the us is a target. and its also pretty obvious that the us is the only one who's going to do something about it." (As if there was no response to Chechnya. Holy crap.)

"no really: stack up everything you've said, and throw in a few more anti-american sentiments. i am honestly responding: who cares. really, why should the us care what anyone else thinks? can you give me a solid, justifiable reason why anti-american sentiment should matter when confronted with a world environment that creates something like 9/11?"

"in other words, you show me indications that the us is unpopular in the world due to it invading iraq. well, 9/11 says to me that that the us has larger problems than a popularity contest. so invade iraq, and to hell with what you think, really. you're not helping us, so please, be my guest: go sit in a corner and talk abotu how evil americans are. so what? what can you offer me? you can't offer me any help, so i don't care what you think of me."

Now, you are the one who is freakishly centered on the U.S. You are interested in the world in only two divisions 1) those who attack us, 2) those who can help us kill them.

By ignoring everybody else, you are making more of Category 1, and ruining any chances of finding anyone in Category 2.

You're the one who said that if they don't directly relate to us, they don't matter. I was indicating that everything relates to us, in an attempt to prove to you that we need to pay more attention to what the world thinks, not less. I've focused on that one and only one point, because your first post was so blatantly "Island-Fortress U.S." that I felt I needed to show you the error of your ways.

If you want to criticize me, that's fine - but this laser-like focus that I've shown on How Things Affect Us was in direct response to your irrational argument that "the us not respected or liked, doesn't matter at all".

YOU TYPED THOSE WORDS. I've spent all of my effort on that one issue.

So your psychobable (It's "maladaptive", by the way), is understandibly predicated on the false belief that I only care about how things affect me; you seemed in your first post on the subject to be freakishly unaware of how the rest of the world affects you.

If you want to try to turn the tables here, then please go back and read this [slashdot.org] post of yours again. You sounded absolutely fricking nuts in it.

Re:Damned if they did, damned if they didn't.

[dubl-u]

Oh, and Michael, the little personal spin you decided to tack on the end of that submission -- I'll never buy a Slashdot subscription thanks to that. I come here to get the facts, not your personal anti-Bush agenda.

Oh, please. Your user number makes it pretty clear that you've been around long enough to buy a subscription. Your threat to not buy one is only credible if you might actually have bought one.

Personally, I'm happy to get a small amount of honest opinion from the editors. I may not agree, but I'd much rather have people be straight about their views than have them pretend to be "fair and balanced".

coalition

[M. Baranczak]

Getting a piece of the oil field action was a big part of it, but there's also another aspect: Poland feels threatened by Russia, and it needs alliances, both economic and military, to help defend itself. Going into Iraq proved to be a bad strategic move, since it managed to get most of Europe pissed at Poland, without getting anything tangible from the US.

And Bush's chummy comments about his buddy "Vladimir" were definitely not reassuring to his Polish allies.

On a related note, here's a report from Warsaw by an old professor of mine:
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20041004 &s=ost [thenation.com]

Old news

[Trickster Coyote]

I remember reading this story when it was happening more that 2 years ago. At that time it was reported that experts were highly doubtful that the tubes were for nuclear refinement.

Why does it seem that nobody listens to what anybody else says if the president claims something contrary. Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's -- even if they are experts on the issue?

Grow up, Americans! It's time you got over your infantile fixation on hero figures and giving them divine, infallable status.

I don't know what it is like in other countries, but here in Canada, even people who generally like the Prime Minister will treat things he says with a measure of healthy scepticism. And if a bunch of experts line up saying the PM is full of shit, people will listen to the experts, not the PM.

When this was in the news 2 years ago, it was easy enough to conclude that the White House was off base in its assertions. Why is it just now that people are thinking "Hey! Maybe the experts were right and the president was wrong"?

Re:Does it matter?

[scotch]

George is a personally moral man

Moral men admit mistakes. Immoral men will go to any length to justify their actions and will never admit wrong doing. Moral men think long and hard about starting actions that result in the deaths of 15000 people. Moral men start wars as a last resort. Moral men start wars as a last resort when they say that is what they intend to do - i.e moral men keep their word. Moral men do not prey upon the fears of americans to facilitate acts of foreign agression. Moral men are not certain in the face of all doubt but always doubt their information and actions when either of those result in harm to others. Moral men do not accuse others of "flip-flopping" if they themselves have "flip-flopped" repeatedly - i.e. moral men are not hypocrites. Moral men do not misconstrue the words and ideas of their opponents in order to attack an easier target - i.e. moral me do not construct straw men. Moral men step down from positions of authority when it is clear they don't have the intellect, judgement, or leadership to justly execute that authority.

it's about more than the children

[SethJohnson]

In Afghanistan, women were beaten and sometimes executed for showing even their naked ankles in public. Here is a website [rawa.org] created by Afghan women where they describe the restrictions placed on them by the Taliban. So, probably those women were psychologically harmed by their fundamentalist abusers.

It is up to you to prove that naked breasts are detrimental to our society if you are going to advocate that women be restricted from baring their breasts in public. I submit that you oppose women baring their chests in public because you are uptight about a woman's body. If you disagree, then tell me how it's bad for a woman's breasts to be displayed.

Welcome to 2 years ago!

[ElGanzoLoco]

Welcome to 2 years ago!

No, seriously, that's rather old news (out of the U.S. anyways) and the rest of the world always had strong doubts about the administration's claims. Powell's Powerpoint demo to the UN was fun too...

Come on, get over it: assholes rule the world.

Re:Whaaaa?

[packeteer]

...most Americans don't give a shit...

Please dont confuse the decision makers of the US with "most Americans". Remember the decision makers of the US dont do what most americans want them to do. Also remember that most americans didn't vote for George Bush in the last election.

Breasts as Sex Objects - The Real Story

[SlideGuitar]

You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").

Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.

Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest ... for sexual purposes.

But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.

Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.

The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.

American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!

Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex. http://milkofhumankindness.org/ [milkofhumankindness.org]

That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.

(Yes, I'm an American man too.)

Re:Whaaaa?

[10Ghz]

So, where are those WMD's? Why was USA in such a rush to invade Iraq? If Iraq has WMD's, why weren't they used to save the country from USA's invasion (you know, that's the whole point of having them)? why haven't they been discovered? Hell, US forces were able to find Saddam from a hole in the ground in some remote location, yet they can't find those vast arsenals of WMD's and/or extensive WMD-program with scientists, documents and facilities?

It seems to me that there are no WMD's nor is there a WMD-program. So what about the un-accounted WMD's then? The whole disarmanent-process was a complicated affair that involved lots of people and thousands upon thousands of pages of documents. There are bound to be errors. Were there errors in Iraq's documentation? Propably. But that does not change the fact that no WMD's have been found.

Were errors in documents sufficient reason to invade a sovereign nation and kill 10.000 - 37.000 civilians (depending on whose numbers you accept) instead of waiting and letting the inspectors to do their job? It seems to me that US just wanted to have their little war.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[mdielmann]

Being honest and open in your dealings with these teens when it comes to sex will be more effective.

Ah, so it's okay to show 3-year-old children pictures of some of the more gruesome scenes from D-Day, napalmed villages in Vietnam, or any number of massacres in Africa in the last 30 years, because it's real, we're being open, and they need to know the consequences of violence? Shall I teach my kids about sex by having intercourse with my wife in their presence?

There are such things as age-appropriateness, and healthy presentation. No one learned a valuable lesson about healthy appreciation of the female form or sexual education from Janet's public display. I personally didn't see it (don't generally mind T&A, but don't like football), but would have been irritated if my child had seen it, not because I think it's inappropriate, but because I would not have been given a choice. This occurred on live TV, in a time-slot where sexually explicit material is disallowed. Janet doesn't have the right to make that choice for me, nor for my children.

That's the crux of the issue. There is an agreement between the broadcasters and the FCC, which the public is aware of, that certain things aren't going to occur on certain stations in certain time slots. Some people out there make decisions on what they will watch based on these criteria. Their choice was removed by a celebrity who felt her "artistic expression" overruled the right of everyone else on whether they were buying into her desires. And her lack of respect for everyone else's rights is what I despise about her.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:lets all point the finger at each other

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves.

And lets not forget who gave him the precursors to make those WMD's, back when he was fighting Iran... *us*. So maybe we should attack ourselves for supporting/training Osama to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, or ourselves for suppling Saddam with the technology to gas thousands of his own people.

We have learned from history that 'dictators that kill their own people because they don't like their point of view' are dangerous, and need to be stopped.

.. and how many of those governments have we supported in the past? So you are saying that it was ok for Saddam to gas thousands of Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war, with the technology we gave him? Why didn't we attack China after the Tienemen Square (sp?) incident, after all.. its was most definitely "genocide" of policial dissidents.

We've taken a country with virtually zero terrorism (ok, Saddam was a pretty brutal guy, but he kept iron-fisted control on his country, including keeping terrorits out), and turned it into a 'cause' for the terrorists, a place where they can rally/recriut for the 'cause'.. alienated all the allies we had after 9/11 (notice nobdy had a problem with us going to Afghanistan.. we knew Saddam was there, we could prove it, he attacked us, we went).

The one thing that stuck out to me during the Kerry/Bush debate was when Kerry mentioned Kennedy going to France over the nukes in Cuba... and offering proof. And the response was "no need, if you say you have proof, we believe you"... Bush has sqandered any semblence of respect our allies have for us, over Iraq. He has taken us from being a respected country, looked up to by our allies, to being distrusted and disliked around the world. From a world that was behind us and supported us in going after Osama, to a world that hates & distrusts us, in 2 years.

Yes, Kerry voted to authorize force.. as did many others who realize that sometime the threat of force is what brings people to the table to talk. Unfortunatly Bush, with his lack of any knowledge or tact of foreign diplomacy, didn't want to talk, he just wanted to start a war with a country who's military his father decimated 10 years earlier. The "serious threat" that we defeated in 2 weeks.. yeah, sounds serious to me. Yellowcake (oh, wait, that was forged), aluminum tubes (oh, wait, those weren't really for nukes), and in the meantime people who *are* a threat, have actual ties to terrorists, are working on or *have* nukes, and even (N.K.) are working on missiles with range enough to reach us.. not gonna bother with them.

Its like being the bully on the playground, who could kick anyone's butt, and going for the guy who is still on the ground from the last time you beat him up... while a couple other guys are carving baseball bats out of wood to hit you with.

Re:i never understood this mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

Responds militarily against a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11? Why didn't they go and bomb Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia:
- Sold us lots of oil.
- Didn't use the money from those sales to build one of the largest standing armies in the world for a non-superpower.
- Didn't have a history of using chemical WMD's on their own people or those of neighboring countries.
- They even let us build our military bases on their territory.
And the leaders of Saudi Arabia didn't try to assasinate G.W.'s daddy.

Re:fine, who cares

[Get Behind the Mule]

I say who cares. Clinton lied, Bush lied, they learn how to do it from very early on in politics.

I care, you better care, and so should anybody else who cares about the USA.

Clinton lied about getting blow jobs from Monica Lewinsky in the White House, evidently because he hadn't told his wife and daughter about it. In fact, Hilary and Chelsea Clinton were the only people truly injured by what he did; but conservatives in America freaked out about it, and a partisan majority in the House impeached him. Ann Coulter wondered whether he should be impeached or assassinated.

Bush, however, lied about the reasons to start a war, in which presumably tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over a thousand American soldiers have died, bereaving their families and making orphans of their children. Bush's dishonesty is a moral abomination that has caused an enormous amount of death and suffering, with no end in the foreseeable future.

If you see some kind of moral equivalency between Clinton's lies and Bush's, then I have no choice but to wonder if you comprehend the value of human life.

The US and the World should have a ZERO tollerance policy towards genocide of any kind.

Interesting, Iraq under Saddam has often been called a brutal dictatorship, and Bush supporters like to cite that as an ex post facto justification for war, but the expression "genocide" has rarely been used.

Be that as it may, dictatorship or "genocide" were not given by Bush and Cheney as justifications for the war, and the American people were never given the opportunity to decide whether they would support a war on those grounds. They said it was because of WMD's and alleged connections to Al Qaeda, both of which have proven to be false. And what's worse, the Bush Adminisration may have been aware of the shakiness of their claims. Chances are, they realized that the American people would not have have supported a war to overthrow a dictator who was no threat to the US, so they decided to come up with something else, anything else, no matter how poorly supported by the facts.

If a "zero tolerance policy towards genocide" is the justification for war, then do you advocate US intervention in Sudan, which is widely regarded as a potential genocide in the making? Neither Bush nor Kerry support such a policy, as they both stated in the debate. I doubt that the American people would support such an action under present circumstances. Wouldn't you agree with Bush and Kerry that at applying other means of pressure in Sudan, such as enlisting the help of the Organization of African States, is a better way to start?

If overthrowing dictatorship is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of North Korea? In fact, North Korea is worse than Iraq by far on all of the reasons given for invading Iraq: It is widely agreed that they really do have WMD's (four to seven nuclear weapons); and North Korea is one of the cruelest dictatorships the world has ever seen, where the people are in constant danger of starvation.

If overthrowing tyranny is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of the People's Republic China? A communist dictatorship ruling a billion people?

If overthrowing dictators is the justification for war, the do you advocate war against almost all of South America, almost all of the Middle East, almost all of Africa, and almost all of Southeast Asia?

Are you aware that this world is filled almost to the brim with ruthless tyrannies? Indeed, we certainly should do whatever we can against it, but if the answer is that the US should go to war against any and every dictator in the world, then we would be at war with almost all of the world, almost all of the time.

And every time we go to war, assuming we succeed with the overthrow, in the aftermath we would be faced with just the sa

Re:Whaaaa?

[amorsen]

If, for instance, Canada suddenly just bombed Detroit, I would find it had to believe, even in this case, that we would get overwhemling support in the U.N. to retaliate.

Why do you find that hard to believe? I think you should note how rare it is for a country to invade another country these days. One of the reasons is that UN would be quick to condemn it. Instead, nations tend to "support freedom fighters" in neighbouring countries.

Re:undecided

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush truly believes what he is doing is good for the world.
No one really plans to screw up America on purpose.

Saddam truely believed that what he was doing was good for Iraq. He didn't really plan to screw up Iraq on purpose. He had to maintain the impression that he still had some military power, or Iran might have gotten the idea to attack again.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[stephanruby]

"As someone who invited a bunch of teenagers..."

Babies don't have a problem with breast. Teenagers don't have a problem with breast. Only some adults have problems with breast. Next time something like this happens again, and it will happen again. Don't make a big deal out of it. If you don't make a big deal out of it, the babies won't cry, and the teenagers won't feel threatened. It will be as if nothing as happened, which is the way nature intended it to be.

Re:Whaaaa?

[ScouseMouse]

Because America is going to get us all killed, and as i dont live in the US, i dont even get to vote against it.

Actually, thats a bit unfair.

George Bush, Dick Chaney and John Ashcroft are going to get us all killed.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Flyboy Connor]

I know what a lot of you are thinking. Where do I get all this stuff? I got it by READING THE NEWS for the last three years. It's surprising what you get when you read, especially if you stop getting your "facts" from the thoroughly whipped American mainstream news and reading, well, news from anywhere else but here.

I live in Europe. What surprises me is that news like this comes as a shock to US citizens. In Europe, we have known this for years, from the moment Iraq was invaded.

I had the same experience with Fahrenheit 911. I thought, "Nothing new here. Don't tell me the average American didn't know this?!"

Seriously, the world would be a much better place if the citizens of the US, arguably the most powerful country in the world, would be better informed about what's going on in their own country and in the rest of the world.

Since the US has so much influence on the world, I sometimes think it would be fair if every human being in the world was allowed to vote in the US elections (at least as far as foreign affairs are concerned). The republicans would be wiped out.

Re:Whaaaa?

[maxpublic]

Anything Israel does (like defending themselves from terrorist groups) does not have the United Nations seal of approval.

What the UN thinks about the matter isn't relevent. As an American, however, I'm for ending all U.S. aid to Israel - primarily because I think the money, MY TAX MONEY, could be better spent at home. And if the Israelis can't make it on their own after more than 50 years of statehood, then they don't deserve a nation in the first place.

Max

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK didn't initiate the war in Iraq, although our elected representative (Tony B Liar) did blindly follow Bush and his oil-buddies into it which, in turn, has led to increased sympathy for the extreme factions of the Islamic faith from those were previously more moderate.
This, perhaps, is what the OP meant.
British politics is something of a wasteland too...
On one side we have The Liar and his bunch of hand-wringing, spineless toadies (and Blunkett, token hardliner), on the other we have the Tories who are so right-wing they fell off the bird. The Lib Dems are a nice idea in theory but are pretty useless in practice, yet I usually vote for them because I agree with more of their policies than those of the other two parties. The rest are a waste of time, most being single-issue parties.
Perhaps we should shovel your lot and our lot together and shoot them to Mars?

Re:Burden of proof

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare say 90-95% of professors do not need to be well-informed of current events outside of their specialties.

This is such a bogus argument.

You could make the exact same claim that "businessmen have to be well-informed of current events to tap into market and cultural trends"... and businessmen are notoriously conservative.

Try another line of reasoning, please.

Re:Let's apply a little criticle thinking here

[0x0d0a]

So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies.

I'm going to go more with "line the pockets" than "keep approval ratings up". It'd be eaiser to keep manufacturing bogus terrorist threats to keep approval ratings high.

What about catching Bin Laden? Wouldn't catching him bring bush a massive boost in the polls? If you're after poll boosts, going into iraq is a decent way to do it, but why not put all of your effort into catching that guy alive? You could drag his trial out for months, and then hang him for 3,000 counts of murder during the democratic national convention.

Because (a) the man could be dead and thus a lost cause, and (b) bin Laden isn't financially interesting to energy companies.

Timing: If you're going to war in Iraq, when's the best time to do it? We know it'll be a relatively quick victory. The first gulf war only lasted a hundred days, so even if you guess it'll take you three times as long, you're still under a year.

Take the line-the-pockets approach. You have to win the war, stabilize the government, and put in place administrators that will do what *you* want them to do. Bush needs that time.

WMD: Why would you make up a reason for going to war? It's not as if your republican supporters wouldn't back you all the way, regardless of your reasoning for going to war.

Not *all* Republicans are hawks.

All you've got to do is say that we've given saddam enough time to abide by his resolutions, and he's not cooperating. Your loyalists will support you no matter what, those damned liberals will oppose you no matter what, and anyone dumb enough to support the president just because we're currently at war isn't going to need much convincing. Inventing a reason to go to war only invites intense criticism when it's found out that the reason is completely false.

If it's a matter of proving intent, you can provide strong evidence, but it's a darn hard thing to prove that someone deliberately lied. And clearly the support *wasn't* there -- Iraq was pretty controversial from the start. WMD -- scare the people -- is a great tool.

Oil: Going to war will create situations where you can award lucrative government contracts to fellow oil cronies, and maybe you'll see a bit of money yourself, right? If that were the case, why aren't we taking a lot more of Iraq's oil?

Because the war and subsequent anti-occupation sabotage has damaged Iraqs oil infrastructure. Bush might want Iraq oil (I'd imagine he does what with oil prices and having to call in favors to get Saudi Arabia to increase production to try to offset things), but he simply can't have it.

You're telling me there isn't one document anywhere, one shred of evidence that shows bush intentionally mislead the public?

Don't forget the uranium bits. But, seriously, why would there be one? Do you expect Bush to keep a diary and write "Today I deliberately lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to try to garner support for invading Iraq?" Of course not.

He stopped going after Bin Laden because Bin Laden was no longer a threat once most of his operatives were destroyed. Capturing him is like cutting off the head of a corpse - it's a nice symbolic gesture, but you've got other things to worry about. Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are still reasonably strong and pose a threat; going after bin laden is a waste of time when there are others who pose a real danger. The only benefit to bush would have been political.

Except that this doesn't jibe with Bush's statements about al Qaeda still being a threat.

He went to war when he did because he feared that

Bush IS a pupet

[gnuman99]

Bush is a puppet. Period. It is Cheney that does the actual policy decisions. Remember that it is always better to rule from behind the throne, than on it.

Re:Whaaaa?

[mrscorpio]

As far as I'm concerned, the president is under oath 24/7, from the minute raises his right hand on inauguration day.

Wake up

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, anybody there?

It has taken 2 years and a war for Americans to know that what their government told them about Irak was "just a lie"?

International cooperation. Why did you think Bush's team failed to get a UN approval?

Re:Old news

[jafuser]

Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's

A significant number of people in the US think GWB was placed into his current position by "God" himself. So that's at least one large chunk of the group who blindly follows whatever he says.

I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.

Re:I'm still voting for Bush, and here are my reas

[0x0d0a]

#1 - Iraq is a strategic location flanking Iran on the west. We are also in Afghanistan flaking Iran on the east. WMD's were just a floater to get us into Iraq and prepare for the next targets. The Pentagon and CIA know much more than we do and know that all of our media is watched by the enemies. So due to national security, they cannot disclose all information.

So if Kerry wins the election, gets into the White House, appoints non-Republican Supreme Court justices, and makes a bunch of decisions that you don't agree with and appear corrupt and ill-thought-out to you given your available information, will you still stick to your "the government knows better what's good for me than I do" line?

#2 - Peak Oil (and natural gas). Just Google for Peak Oil. China is now the #2 importer of oil behind the US. Our entire economy and way of living depends on oil. There is no way at all we can just switch to solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power in a decade. Further, we use natural gas for fertilizers for food. We use oil to power the machines which harvest and transport food. Without oil, the US economy and population will die. So you liberals can cry me a farking river about Iraq. We are better off now and in the future by securing oil in the Middle East. That is, unless you want to starve and die.

That is a slippery slope fallacy, and one of the most extreme I've ever seen. Vote for Bush -- or *starve and die*!

#3 - US Dollar. If oil is allowed to trade in a currency other than the US Dollar such as the Euro or Gold, the US Dollar will collapse, our economy will grind to a halt, and we will be in a Greater Depression. We must ensure that oil transactions will continue to take place in the US Dollar currency.

See above. Seriously, where do you *get* this stuff? This is absurd! The strength of a currency depends on the stability of the government backing it and the inflation rate. How is the US keeping fingers in the Middle East particularly important to either?

#1 - I really like this guy. He's a no-nonsense guy who won't take BS from anyone. Just watch the VP debate on Tuesday. Cheney is a great business leader and enhances the Bush ticket.

He's also corrupt, a hawk, pushes for secrecy and lack of oversight, has lied about his corporate ties and has had his fingers in Middle East wars for too long.

#1 - Clinton's "Assault" Weapon Control Act expired! You liberals can take my guns from my cold, dead hands. If you really want it, I'll give it to you, one bullet at a time.

Ah, yes. The act that Bush said he supported? That one?

It's either us or them, kill or be killed.

The hell it is. When Saddam Hussein represents a greater risk to you of anything other than paying a quarter cent more a gallon at the gas pump, *then* you can talk.

We were attacked on 9/11 and now it's time to kill everyone involved.

And, apparently, Iraq, just for the hell of it?

Re:Whaaaa?

[saforrest]

so, its either believe saddam hussein, a known liar, who was actively attempting to deceive the un and the weapons inspectors or use force to find out what the truth really was.

Well, as a third option they also could have continued with the weapons inspections. Saddam was actually being fairly compliant with his entire country surrounded by hostile armies.

Israel

[caitsith01]

Not that I want to get embroiled in a flame war but...

If Israel wants to pull back to it's original borders, as mandated by the UN and defined at the time of its creation, close those borders, and build the biggest frickin wall in history, NO ONE WILL COMPLAIN. If they want to shoot any Palestians who try to cross that wall, that would probably be tolerable too. If they really want to, they can build a giant dome over the whole of Israel and not let anyone in or out. Fine, fine fine.

The problems are:

(a) Israel is building a big fuckoff wall *way outside* those borders, conveniently annexing large swathes of territory that do not belong to Israel with NO JUSTIFICATION

(b) Israel is pursuing a systematic policy of colonising a foreign territory with 'native' Israelis

(c) Israelis forces are performing violent operations against civilian, terrorist and militia forces alike with no real concern as to which is which, outside its own territory, with no international sanction and indeed against international law and consensus

(d) the Israeli government actually talks about maintaining the genetic purity of Israel (ah the irony) in the sense of making sure that at least 50% of Israelis are Jewish so that there can never be a 'democratic coup' inside Israel at election time

(e) Israel, unlike other nations, is completely ignored in all the hubbub from the west about nuclear proliferation despite possessing 100-200 nuclear warheads.

Most of these things are contrary to international law (which Bush and Blair now spit on but which still matters to most countries); some are contrary to domestic Israeli law; all are contrary to basic standards for ethical behaviour.

Incidentally, I genuinely like the Israeli people and I fully support their right to live free from the fear of suicide bombers or invasion by their neighbours. But the way Israel is going about its business at the moment is just atrociously bad.

Afghanistan? A good start?

[MacDork]

A "Neutralization Program" to locate and incapacitate those involved in the attack. Taking out the Taliban was, in fact, a good start. I'm unclear on how to draw a straight line to Iraq from there, other than with a ruler.

And yet, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Osama is a Saudi prince by birth. Saudi charities [usatoday.com] were funding terrorism. Saudi Arabia makes their women wear hoods, teach and endorse radical fundamentalist Islamic religion, and have no problem with slavery. [bbc.co.uk] Afghanistan was just a terrorist camp ground. By the time we got there, the terrorists were gone and the Taliban was left holding the bag.

So where did we go after Afghanistan? That's right, Iraq. Who's next? Iran maybe? We aren't going to win the war on terrorism, because we keep invading the wrong countries.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a defector, I believe it was one of Saddam's son in laws, who testified to US intelligence debriefers that Saddam had poison gas (this was "intel" that the Bush administration played up in the media) but that same Iraqi defector also testified that Saddam had destroyed these poison gas weapons (and the Bush admin. deliberately suppressed this part of the report).

So, maybe the UN did or didn't know, but the Bush admin. certainly knew. And they lied.

As for your "UN Resolution" bullshit: Israel has violated many, many more UN resolutions than Iraq ever did and nothing is done about it because the USA protects Israel (or Israel controls the USA, which amounts to the same thing).

I don't see you calling for war against Israel to enforce UN sanctions.

This hypocritical resort to claiming to be enforcing UN resolutions (against the explicit wishes of the UN!) is just silly. The Bush admin. doesn't give a damn what the UN thinks.

The UN is nothing more than a jumped-up debating shop anyway. Bush has effectively demonstrated it is meaningless in the face of US actions. It only serves to act either as a fig leaf for US ambitions, or as a meaningless charade easily tossed aside when it doesn't cooperate with the US.

Re:Nobody forced you

[Dusabre]

Some nerds care about politics. And some nerds are furries. So that means /dot has to present news of interest to them? Just because some members of a group have an interest in another subject, doesn't mean that a news website for that group has to cater to them. Slashdot is tech... The tech aspect of the tubes and lying scandal is very tenuous.

Re:Whaaaa?

[ScouseMouse]

Yeah, but the UK doesnt seem to be able to make policy decisions without the US's say so.

The Majority of the UK wanted nothing to do with the Iraq war. That didnt stop Buttkiss Blair doing what his lord and masters in the white house and the oil business told him.

Admittedly this is more to do with our Elected representatives than the US's.
In some ways, i wish we had Thatcher back. Whatever her faults, she didnt take crap from anyone.

Unfortuntely in the UK we have the choice between an untrustworthy tosser, an idiot who is out to grab headlines, and someone who basicaly means well, but feels we should be run from Brussels.

Hmm, perhaps i should consider starting the ScouseMouse dictatorship party. Any takers?

Re:Whaaaa?

[FireFury03]

The UN, and everybody else (save Britain) were screaming that there was no evidence, and that going to war is wrong.

Actually, here in the UK a huge chunk of the British public protested about the war and the government plain ignored public opinion (not for the first time in this government's history either (can you say "fuel protests"?)... unfortunately, come election time the voters seem to forget about this stuff).

Re:LIAR

[maxpublic]

a) you can't just go around appropriating words and redefining them as you please. Or actually you can, but rational people will think you're an idiot. Or illiterate. Or both.

b) if there's no way to enforce the rules, does that mean I can wander over to your house, put a bullet in your head with my .38, and take all of your stuff? Well, yes it does! That's anarchism for you, which is why it has a 100% rejection rate throughout world history!

Max

Re:Anti-Republican != Democrat

[caitsith01]

"with what he knew and said THEN it's clear he would have done the same thing as Bush."

Complete and utter b.s. With all due respect, if you really think things would have gone the same if Kerry was President then your understanding of political dynamics is pretty damn poor.

The reason Kerry has said so many stupid things about Iraq along the lines that 'he would have done the same thing as Bush', and the reason he voted for it back when the war started, is that it is essential (in his opinion, or his strategists') that he be seen to be patriotic, and the media/social frenzy of patriotism requires that all good Americans support U.S. foreign policy in the wake of 9-11. Does this mean that he would have actually done the same thing? NO, it does not.

Plus, you ignore the massive and concerted effort to orchestrate the conditions for war that was undertaken by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Rice and Powell amongst many others. Without the big plan they had to whip up support for the invasion it would never have happened, and I do not believe that a President Kerry (or Gore for that matter) would have implemented such a plan.

Re:Whaaaa?

[tarunthegreat2]

What information were they privvy to that we weren't? Why were they 'right' when nobody really knew, or were they just on the correct side?

I'll tell you what information they were privy to. How about the fact that Iraq is a small piece of shit country that couldn't fight of USA the first time. How about the fact that India, Russia and China, have been facing terrorist threats from Afghanistan/Pakistan for YEARS, and gave their intel to America, showing that the real targets should be Pakistan/Afghanistan. If America really was serious about the war on terrorism, they would and SHOULD try and impose democracy on Pakistan, a KNOWN holder of WMDs, not Iraq.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[fucksl4shd0t]

As a man, I've used every single part of my body for sex at one point or another. I'm trying really hard to think of a part of my wife's body she hasn't used and failing.

So what's your point about sexual pleasure from boobs? I get sexual pleasure from a very light backrub (not massage, the kind that gives you goose bumps). Does that now make my bare back offensive and unsuitable for showing during the superbowl half-time show?

Re:Burden of proof

[xyr0]

If something is binary, weapons or no weapons, it can be proved one way or the other.

Is Gödel binary?

If a system is sufficiently complex (weapons industry), then there are certain assumptions that cannot be proven or disproven (not possession of WMDs) within the system. Therefore another system (UN, USA, whatever) outside of the first system has to proof that there are indeed WMDs. Its not the job of the Iraqis to proof they have no WMDs, it was the job of the UN (didnt find anything) or USA (proof: pretty powerpoint presentation feb03, lies) to proof it.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[mdielmann]

The point was, in order, that 3-year-olds aren't going to get much value for the level of trauma they'll suffer from seeing bloated and dismembered corpses from some war, and that it is unhealthy for some things to occur at any age. The exact phrases were "age-appropriateness" and "healthy presentation".

Okay, now let's deal with real issues. Were Janet's rights somehow infringed by not being allowed to expose her breast without permission in a timeslot where such was disallowed? Would my rights to not have someones's privates presented to me in a time and place where I wouldn't expect, or desire it infringed?

I personally don't care if she wants to bare her breast. I haven't seen it, have no desire to see it, and am relieved that my lack of interest in football finally has a tangible benefit. Had it not been live TV, unannounced, in a timeslot and/or venue where such activities are disallowed, I'd be even less concerned. Bear in mind, strip bars have been ignoring, and making fun of, sexual taboos (and yes, it's sexual, just look at the cover of any porn mag if you're unconvinced) for a long time. And I readily uphold their right to do so, so long as they don't remove my right not to.

And yes, I'm aware that there are cultures where women's breasts aren't considered sexual, and cultures where they are, yet there is no inhibition in displaying them (without fabric). And I'm aware of the difference between art and gratuitous displays, and the subjectivity thereof. And when I think my children will do something other than giggle when they see Michelangelo's David or Venus de Milo (and others), I'll be sure to show them.

In my opinion, Alanis Morissette did a far better job of making fun of the taboo while still haveing an element of taste. Those who would be offended were, while having to deal with the fact that they probably have far more revealing clothing in their own closet. That points out the holes in the taboo, whereas all (most of?) the critics could say that they hadn't worn tearaway tops in public...

A defense of "no superbowl tits..or warn me first"

[LinuxParanoid]

Thank you for respecting my culture enough to accept that a bare breast may seem sexual. I hope you will also accept that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that a breast is an organ that is part of human sexual response and arousal. Now that we've dispensed with that petty argument, let's get on to your questions about harm, etc.

I do not claim any harm to the one or two kids who noticed a five-pixel breast on their TV screens for a period of under 1 second. My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point.

While I do not expect a rational skeptic such as you seem to be to adhere to that particular moral choice that we wish to make, I hope you will grant us the freedom to pursue our choices, and some respect for our desire to have a shared understanding of what is going to appear on the TV.

I call it "truth in advertising" or "good product labeling." I recognize a concerned more liberal friend would caution me that labeling content leads to censorship, and being a good reader of 1984 I am not ignorant of those perils, although I think they are overblown if applied in this case. More information about the content, more metadata is good. It's really a matter of courtesy and good expectation-setting within any medium.

Let me explain this in a slashdot metaphor. Just as I do not want to see the goatse guy without adequate warning, despite the fact that I do not find it particularly titilating, sexual or "deeply offensive", I'd just rather not see it while in the middle of reading slashdot without a little warning first.

So it is with tits at the superbowl at church parties.

I am asking for courtesy, not for the world to adopt my sexual ethics.

--LP, who has also lived in Austin btw

News from old-europe

[Anonymous Coward]

This is kind of old news, I mean, we heard that one year ago.. in the so called "old-europe" news papers and on TV...
American people beware, the last year was a very dark year for true information in the US, at last with the presidential election coming, you are coming back from propaganda to real stories.

And FYI:
- Sadam was not involved in sept 11 even if the guy deserve to die a thousand time.
- Bush said that he prefer fighting terrorism outside the US... so, concidere that US Soldiers in Iraq are just there to create a terrorism playground and be killed.

Re:Whaaaa?

[ScouseMouse]

In this you have a point. They could hardly make more a mess of our foregn policy than TB has done. :-)

Never the less there is a body of opinion that the UK's disconnection from europe is why the economy has managed to avoid most of europes downturn.

I personally believe that the Euro is a good idea, but as most of the country seem to disagree with me and i feel that any Brussels government would try to force it on us, i can see that would be a bone of contention in the future :-)

Besides Brussels is a lot longer to go than London when you need to picket some politicians :-)

Re:Israel

[Minna Kirai]

Why is it racist to have a Jewish state when there are 22 Arab states that are by definition Muslim

It's still racist either way- but Israel continually advertises itself as different and better: "The only democracy in the Middle East", they say. Well, newsflash- if the right to vote is contingent on religion, you're not a democracy.

PS. You're wrong about that 22 Arab states. Not all of them are systemically racist.

Bush 04

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberals are closet communists.

You scream about the right wing ideology of Bush et al, but fail to look at the real enemy and see the enemy for what it is.

The enemy is militant Islam, and the way to defeat it is to have free muslims. Iraq is part of that.

Also reading the NYT article, its funny that libs don't realize that of course you can come up with different scenarios by asking different gov't agencies. It seems to me though that if I am asking about another country's nuclear ambitions, I am not going to ask the energy dept, I would ask the CIA.

But hey thats just me.

Besides, we need Iraq so we can invade Iran next year. Look at a map. We have them on 3 sides now. Afghanistan, Iraq and the ocean. They are fucked, and they know it.

Wooooaah!

[stridebird]

Ahem, I think the reason that Bush and the neo-goons don't steam into Pakistan is BECAUSE they are known to hold WMD. Invading Iraq started to look a lot more attractive when it became obvious they had no credible weaponry to deflect an invasion (by the largest holder of WMD, of course). Naturally, the disappearance of any good reason to invade Iraq was awkward but nothing serious strong arm neo-goon spin couldn't handle. FUD reigns, saddam doesn't.

Re:Whaaaa?

[BobSutan]

It seems to me that US just wanted to have their little war.

No, it just means the current administration wanted to have their war. Not one person I know who actually has a coherent thought in their head thinks the war was justified on the basis of the adminstration's viewpoint of "just trust us". First is was "WMD", then it was "Freeing the Iraqi people". It just smacks of the defense used in the OJ trial--just keep playing different cards until one of them works. Anywho, the simple truth is now becoming evident to the extent of this administrations lies and the only people who would vote for Bush are the sheeple that buy into the propaganda. However, were there good things that came from the war? Absolutely, the world is less one evil dictator and a people freed of his tyranny. But let me make one point absolutely clear: Any good that came from this war was a mere side effect of capitalistic greed and a warped sense of personal revenge on Bush's part.

MOD PARENT UP

[zonix]

Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's

A significant number of people in the US think GWB was placed into his current position by "God" himself. So that's at least one large chunk of the group who blindly follows whatever he says.

I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.

You hit the nail right on the head!

I remember images of GWB standing at a press conference with the bible in his hand offering it as a guidebook for everyday life and politics. And there's the executive order to launch the faith-based charity initiatives, slashing through your first constitutional amendment - the same constitution he swore to protect as the President of the United States. Following 9/11 and the war on terror, there's the "good vs. evil" and the "crusade" references.

How about the previous (?) presedential debate where he said he viewed Jesus as his inspiration? When he was asked to elaborate he said that people wouldn't understand unless they'd experienced - I guess - his touch? I can't remember his exact words, but in any case he said he had had a religious experience that changed his life.

This is a guy who must believe he was chosen by his own god to be the President of the US. He openly discussed his religious motives during the presedential campaign, and it must surely have played a huge part in him getting elected - that makes him practically a religious leader.

All this is very disturbing to me! When you view the bigger picture, it turns out that the war on terror, etc. is basically a holy war wagered on both sides. It's truly saddening that the human race hasn't evolved beyond religion. We're still very much primitive in this regard.

z

Re:Whaaaa?

[mpe]

Or it was a proactive action to remove a known regional threat. Saddam was a threat to his people and the region.

If this was the case you'd think that Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Iran, etc would be those nations beating "wardrums" hardest. Rather than a country several thousand miles away, especially given that Iraq never had ICBMs or long range bombers.

Re:Whaaaa?

[mpe]

Well, as a third option they also could have continued with the weapons inspections. Saddam was actually being fairly compliant with his entire country surrounded by hostile armies.

The last thing a country under threat of invasion needs is weapons inspectors letting the enemy know that the country dosn't have anything to defend itself with.
It looks like the US allowed the weapons inspectors to do enough to be sure that Iraq could not repel an invasion or retaliate against its invaders.

Re:it's about more than the children

[10101001 10101001]

A cultural taboo without worth is not a taboo worth having. To remove it from one's culture as taboo merely makes it archaic. Such leaves one less offendable, more open minded, and generally better adjustable to other cultures which *do* have equally bizzare taboos. For a melting pot such as the US, such a change improves the culture of all those willing to accept it. All freaking out about such taboos does is breed a baseless hatred and intolerance.

This is all based on the assumption that seeing the human breast, male or female, is merely a cultural taboo without any basis on anything else. There can be other, reasonable, reasons for a person to want for themselves to not do such acts (modesty, pride, or to maintain a speciality of one's physiology to a life-partner). It doesn't seem clear why the acts of others which have no direct affect on you can reasonable be said to be blocked. Nor does it seem reasonable to maintain a thought police on all things that exist instead of trying to rationalize to one's children why people do the things they do.

All in all, taboo only has the power to offend you when you let it. Culture is defined by your actions, not the actions of others. And tolerance of even the most debasing acts that others freely choose to live in shows your understanding that Jesus--assuming you're Christian, and if so, you do do what he suggests, right?--doesn't expect you to play God in the lives of others.

Read the story of Lot again. Read the story of Job again. God harms the wicked. You don't need to do his job for him. God harming someone is not always a sign of that person's wickedness. God is an ass. Beyond that, Jesus never did wrong to do right. He was perfect, and he is someone you should strive for. To murder or harm another in this life to avenge a murder or theft is to doom your soul on a (possibly) doomed soul over a person or thing which is already resolved regardless of your actions. Taking out vengeance in this life is pragmatic only if you believe this is the only existence.

Re:Whaaaa?

[(trb001)]

If Iraq has WMD's, why weren't they used to save the country from USA's invasion (you know, that's the whole point of having them)?

Actually, no country in its right mind would use WMDs on forces that are within its borders. Destroying your own country and making it unlivable defeats the point of the weapons themselves. They're offensive, used when you're trying to destroy someone ELSE's country.

Hell, US forces were able to find Saddam from a hole in the ground in some remote location

Once again, you're using faulty logic. The US found Saddam through tips that they were given by people in the country who wanted Saddam found. Within finding Saddam, many people in the country still feared him coming back to power and punishing them for their (not to sound like Dr. Evil) insolence. The weapons creators/hiders, however, had no such reason to reveal where weapons were. They've been questioning "Dr. Anthrax" and "Dr. Nuclear" or whatever her name is, and they're coming up with very little (that we know of). They have no reason to tell what they were doing, since telling will only convict them under international law.

instead of waiting and letting the inspectors to do their job?

This was, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons to go to war...the inspectors weren't being allowed to DO their jobs. They weren't allowed to talk to Iraqi scientists and weren't given the information they needed. They had been kicked out of the country before without completing their job, ergo the question became what was Saddam hiding?

--trb

Re:Whaaaa?

[Pharmboy]

Modded Funny but I see more insight than humor. Americans have been forced to quit listening to most of the world due to their decisions to protest against the actions of other countries, but do nothing about it. Passing an empty resolution is hardly the same as taking action.

Perhaps that is considered normal in the rest of the world, but in America, if you're going to bitch about something, you are expected to do something about it. I understand that this can intimidate some, but they must understand that to US, bitching without taking action looks very cowardly, or in the least, dishonest.

Complaining about a dictator is easy. Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.

Re:Whaaaa?

[mr100percent]

What WMDs are you speaking of? Gas? If that counts, then every country in the middle east has WMDs. Iraq's Sarin nerve gas from the 1990's was pretty much gone, after a few years it breaks down and turns into just water. If Iraq even had those WMDs, don't you think they would have used them on the invading US troops? They all wore gas masks during the invasion, but it turned out they didn't need it.

Yet? It's been a year, give it up. The US has been living there for a year, if they didn't find it they won't by now.

The Iraqi government doesn't make IEDs. Not only that, but there was no proof that it was WMDs anyway. You are referring to the case when an IED went off, and there were traces of Sarin at the scene. The experts say that it's likely someone took an empty shell left over from the Iran-Iraq war and turned it into an IED, not knowing that there was some leftover Sarin inside it. There are thousands of those shells lying near the border, an unexpected break on their part. Ever notice how the White House gave up trying to say there were WMDs?

Iraq Body count [iraqbodycount.net] lists between 12976-15033 innocent civilian deaths.

If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority. I mean, the US has allied with Uzbekistan, a country with a horrendus human rights record (which boiled one of its dissidents alive). If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now. If the war in Iraq was about "ties to al-qaeda", then we should've hit the Saudis first, 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9-11 were Saudis. Shouldn't we have mopped up Afghanistan first? It looks really bad if the US withdrew its Special forces from the mountains of Afghanistan in order to put them to work hunting Saddam Hussein. We gave Bin Laden Months to get a lead. If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now... hey.. (this paragraph copied from an earlier /. post some time ago)

Re:Whaaaa?

[TheDredd]

Because America is going to get us all killed, and as i dont live in the US, i dont even get to vote against it.

Actually, thats a bit unfair.

George Bush, Dick Chaney and John Ashcroft are going to get us all killed.

Correct, you can only say that after Bush has been reellected

Re:/. Bias

[argent]

Nobody is denying that they had a program in 1989, before the gulf war. But a defunct program that was derailed by sanctions and inspections doesn't justify an attack: an active program that's got a chance of success may, but not centrifuge parts buried under a rose bush or decade-old notebooks.

Oh, and an article claiming that Saddam expelled the weapons inspectors is hardly proof of anything. Let's look at what Scott Ritter (chief UN weapons inspector) said, shall we?

Saddam Hussein didn't kick out the U.N. inspectors. They were ordered out by the U.S. government, which then used information they provided to bomb 100 locations that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. So the weapons inspectors were used by the United States. This is the reality: When Madeleine Albright called up Richard Butler and said, "Jump!" Richard Butler always said, "How high?" It was obvious from day one.

Why Clinton wanted them out, I don't know, but it wasn't because they weren't doing their job.

Re:Whaaaa?

[jsebrech]

Yes. That is normally my first thought too when I run into a Harvard MBA/fighter pilot/Governor/POTUS. LUSER.

He got into Harvard because he's a bush. He got into pilot training because he's a bush. He got the governorship and the presidency because he's a bush. Everything he has gotten in life he owes to his daddy and his name. He has earned nothing on his own abilities.

Look at his real achievements, his grades in school, his test results when he joined the national guard, the financial results from the businesses he ran, the results in the education, health care and economic statistics from his policies. Really, go do that. And then ask yourself: has this man ever earned his position in life? Is he really competent at anything?

Re:Israel

[Anonymous Coward]

Incidentally, it's well worth remembering that since the Intifada while 1000 Israelis have been killed, they have in turn killed 3300 Palestinians, many of whom were civilians (e.g. rocket strikes).

Further they are demolishing the Palestinian infrastructure. Here's an example:

Earlier this Summer Palestinians in Rafah killed 17 Israeli soldiers. In retaliation, the Israelis killed 43 Palestinians (many of them civilian), and demolished 277 buildings, leaving almost 3500 Palestinians homeless. Since the start of the Intifada 15000 Palestinians in Rafah have been made homeless. These people live in tents and shanty-towns and they raise children who hate the Israelis for what has been done to them.

[It is curious that none of those who criticise the Palestinian terrorists ever stop to wonder what it is that shatters someone's spirit so much that they feel they could help their friends and families by killing themselves]

The Israeli administration, like the Stormont administration in Northern Ireland in the seventies, is engendering the terrorist threat it fears by pursuing a callous and violent strategy against the Palestinian population with disregard for civilian casulaties.

If you consider Palestine to be a sovereign state, then the Israeli government has illegally invaded it and is pursuing a war without sufficient regard for lives and livihoods of civilians, which is a war crime.

If you consider the Palestinians to be living in Israeli territory, they must then be considered to be Israeli citizens. By refusing to use the judicial system and by demolishing property, killing innocent civilians, and killing alledgedly guilty civilians without trial, Israel is failing to meet it's own standards of justice.

If you consider the area in which Palestinians are living to be part of Israel, but Palestinians to not be Israeli citizens, then the current brutality of the conflict could be viewed as an attempt to drive the Palestinians out - a technique which has the rather ugly name of "ethnic cleansing". It should be remembered that Britain, which created the state of Israel as a result of the Balfour agreement after World War One, always intended for Jews and Arabs to live side by side in the territory - both have equal claim to it.

No matter what way you look at it, it cannot be justified. Israel would do well to follow the accords to which it signed, scale back the military offensive as requested by a growing number of Israeli soldiers, and limit the violence. This in turn will, eventually, limit the causes for action which drive terrorist groups, who themselves perform acts which cannot be justified. However the best solution that Israel could pursue to the end the violence would be to eschew violent methods itself, and hold the high moral ground.

---
Figures are taken from the current issue of the Economist.

The Falklands War and Using Your Own Brain..

[theolein]

There are a number of things I'd like to say about this article in the NYT, the American Public(TM) and GWB's policies.

Firstly, what amazes me, truly, on a website meant for above average technically interested people is that almost no comments have been made on the actual technical contents of the NYT article itself as regards the Aluminium tubes and their suitability for use as Uranium centrifuges. The NYT went out of its way to explain to the layman (along with a very good graphic) how the tubes fit the use of small tactical rockets and were totally unsuitable, without extra manufacturing, for the use as centrifuges. I mean, come one, 60 000 tubes for centrifuges! Even the USA, the world's largest nuclear power, doesn't have or need that many centrifuges! It would be nice if people noticed this fact and then took note of how almost the whole American establishment basically went along with the analysis of ONE man (The guy called Joe), ignoring the majority's dissenting voices!

Secondly, this NYT article may well have been timed to be a political time bomb, since it appeared now, after the TV debate, but the NYT, to give it some credit (which the right does not do), explains very well in the same article that it itself was as guilty as almost everyone else in ignoring the evidence available during the highly emotional bullshit campaign that Bush and Co. conducted in the run up to the war. The NYT, for all its failings and left leaning political bias, has explained in a number of editorials that it made a mistake. How often does the favourite of the right, Fox news, do that?

Thirdly, I've seen a number of comments here about what the real motivations were for going to war, be they oil, control of the middle east, liberating Iraq, bring democracy to the middle east, furthering an agenda in wake of the 9/11 attacks. etc. My answer would be the Falklands War in 1982, when the right wing military Junta in Argentina used the issue of the Falklands, by invading them, to bring the nation behind them in the rush of patriotism in wartime, when they were politically starting to lose support. I think that the main reason for this war was a domestic political agenda in the USA, used by the very intelligent people behind Bush, such as Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld etc, in order to bring the American people in line with their way of thinking by starting a war. I feel most sorry for Collin Powell, who despite his actual opinion, suffered the consequences for being true to his President. I hope he gets a decent job in the future where he is repsected and not treated as the house nigger.

Fourthly, despite all the nuances of the aluminium tubes, such as the fact that this was not unknown in 2002 and the faked yellow cake uranium from Niger, none of which stopped anyone from believing the most astounding things about Iraq at the time, such as Iraqs supposed ICBMs capable of threatening the USA, I think that this article will be treaed by the American Public as being new and novel. I seriously doubt the ability of the public to distinguish the facts, and I am buoyed in this opinion by the comments here on /. where the same old emotional debate between faithful right and cynical left rages. In short, I think it will have a serious impact on GW's reelection chances, but that's possibly a good thing.

Re:Whaaaa?

[I8TheWorm]

That anyone would take either candidate at their word is incomprehensible. They both have proven track records of lying, but you're quick to point out that Kerry said something, so he must mean it.

Laughable at best.

Re:Murder

[freedom_india]

Iam sorry. That will not simply happen for two reasons:

1. They are highly placed politicians. When our parents were getting killed in Vietnam, these guys got themselves tanned in Air National Guard.
2. This is the not the first time a US prez. has lied to goto War. Check our chequered history and you will find many such men.
3.As long as we act like stupid GI Joe guys, put our heads into sand and refuse to think the World is a bigger place than USA, and as long as we refuse to listen to true world news instead of the Fox news crap about Peterson trial/Jacko Whacko trial, we will continue to have presidents and heads of state who will send our young men/women to their deaths without reason.

Amen.

WTF? slashdot or a campaign wagon?

[sl4shd0rk]

If i had modpoints, I would mod Slashdot -1 offtopic.

Re:Whaaaa?

[FireFury03]

Please explain what the point is in having the UN if a single rogue nation (the US) can ignore the consensus of all the other members of the UN and blow the crap out of another country? Especially since in the end it turned out that there were no grounds for war.

I'd also love to know why it's ok for the US to hold WMDs (especially given the US's record regarding wars) but it's not ok for another nation to hold them?

Nonsense

[joshsnow]

Blairs no liar - no more so than any other Bristish politician, anyway. I wonder when people are going to wake up to this fact.

Probably when that opportunist Kennedy is in No.10 busy implementing his tax-and-waste policies. As for Blunkett, I agree.

I thought no Home secretary could be worse than Michael Howard. Then Jack Straw came along. I thought no home secretary could be worse than Straw. Then "ID-Card, national database" Blunkett came along. Can anyone be worse than him? Menzies Campbell sounds like a good contender.

My experience of Lib Dems in local government has been that they're illiberal and undemoratic.

They're wasteful and authoritarian. A bunch of tax and spend social engineers. I fell out of love with the "Liberal" "Democrats" a long time ago.

That's why I'll be back to voting for Blair next time.

Re:Let's apply a little criticle thinking here

[aug24]

• He stopped going after Bin Laden because Bin Laden was no longer a threat once most of his operatives were destroyed. Capturing him is like cutting off the head of a corpse - it's a nice symbolic gesture, but you've got other things to worry about. Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are still reasonably strong and pose a threat; going after bin laden is a waste of time when there are others who pose a real danger. The only benefit to bush would have been political.

He stopped going after Bin Laden because they have no idea where he is and the body count was rising. Who says most of his operatives were destroyed? What about the vast sums of money and vast numbers of AQ fighters arriving in Iraq - am I imagining them?

• He went to war when he did because he feared that we put ourselves in danger by waiting too long. He would have liked to have a broader coalition, but felt it was urgent and wanted to take care of it immediately.

He went to war because...

1. Winning a war has historically made leaders popular.
2. It is in the US strategic interests to have influence in the Middle East and you are going to have soldiers there for a long time by the looks of things.
3. He could - and has - awarded lots of contracts to companies run or owned by his friends.

• The WMD question answers itself; he talked up the threat posed by the weapons becuase he beleived it. When faced with inconclusive evidence, he figured it was better to err on the side of caution then to assume we were safe from any attack.

Only an utter fool would believe the evidence that we are now seeing, and only a moron would remove all the qualifications without a damn good reason. Even if he believed it you offer no explanation for the presentation of it to the people as absolute truth. Our man's press man did the same: remove all the 'ifs' 'buts' and 'perhaps' words. But then our man's press man is an ex tabloid editor, so maybe we should have expected him to lie by default...

• He hasn't gone after the Iraqi's oil because he's not an evil man out for pure political gain.

Err... seems to have stopped the euro-pricing that was about to happen, doesn't it? Pretty good for America that crude is only ever bought and sold in dollars. Especially good for his oil-pumping friends and family.

In short, all your logic can be argued against. You may be right, I may be right, but it's certainly not that outlandish a proposal to say that he and the other neo-cons chose to kill a lot of people for monetary gain.

Speaking as a Brit, I am only sorry that our dickhead follows your dickhead so closely. Neither of our countries has gained from this debacle.

One more time: What was the problem with containment via weapons inspections? What, for the world, the US, UK and Iraq, has been improved by this war that would not have been achieved by inspections? And now weigh that against how things have got worse, with another failing state which now definitely is a haven for terrorists.

Justin.

Re:Whaaaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

"why Bush appeared upset"

No, bush is upset because someone is challenging him.

Look, I'm a republican, I voted for him, but the truth is, he's done a bad job in office because (a) he's not smart (b) he doesn't hire people who are smart (c) he's lazy.

He can't string together a coherent sentence and he can't explain his own policies in any kind of meaningful way.

I may not agree with Kerry, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to get us involved in a stupid war for stupid reasons. Some of us are old enough to remember Vietnam, and we're not going to get our sons and daughters killed overseas because of some moron in the white house.

This is like history repeating itself with Johnson. Its spooky that people like you can't see it.

Re:Whaaaa?

[gfxguy]

Assuming the initial claims for the numbers of weapons were accurate. Iraqi scientists have said that they lied about weapons existing when the alternative was their own necks being on the line.

That may be true, but how else are we supposed to interpret a declaration given by Iraq? Do we take it at face value or just always assume they are lying? And if we just assume they are lying, which way to we move our assesment? Did they have more or less?

Let me put it this way... a murder happens. Someone steps up and says "I did it." They go to jail. 5 years later the real killer is caught. Do you really blame the justice system for failing this person who admitted he did it?

So what plenty of states (including the US) are in contravention of UN resolutions. Some have been thumbing their nose at the UN for rather longer than a decade.

But how many were under a cease-fire agreement after losing to a worldwide coalition after attempting to annex a neighboring country? People keep forgetting that the regime did not obey the rules of the cease-fire agreement they agreed to in order to save their own necks.

I won't philosophize about it, but basic psychology tells us the a bad behavior rewarded is only repeated. In essence, the regime was being rewarded for disobeying the cease-fire agreement. The sanctions were only killing innocent people. There WERE WMDs. We do not know where they are now... maybe destroyed, maybe distributed, maybe hidden in some field... who knows? But we do know he had them at some point, and that he failed to disclose the evidence of their destruction - contrary to all the resolutions AND the cease-fire agreement.

Re:Whaaaa?

[jsebrech]

You wonder why some Israeli Jews are agressive now? They did unto Arabs as Arabs did unto them.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Re:Whaaaa?

[jweage]

There were other reasons to go to war besides WMD's and President Bush made that clear. See this [renewamerica.us] article. Iraq refused to cooperate with the UN inspections and various items were unaccounted for.

Let the inspectors do their jobs? Who are you kidding? Go take a look at some of the Iraq - UN timelines on the web and ask yourself why did the UN wait so long to do anything about Iraq's refusal to comply with UN demands? Eleven years after Gulf War 1, Iraq still wasn't complying with the UN, yet the UN did nothing. Wasn't it obvious that Saddam was using every tactic he could think of to delay action by the UN? That in itself leads to suspiscion that Iraq was hiding something.

How many political prisioners were killed in Iraq while they continued to defy and hold back UN inspections? I've seen estimates in the hundred thousands. The Iraq administration was evil. The only question in regard to this issue is should the US/UN step in when countries are systematically murdering those who oppose the government. If yes, then the WMD issue is immaterial.

An unmentioned strategic reason is demographics. In 15-20 years world demographics are going to shift severely. Middle Eastern countries will become a much bigger players on the world stage (Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc). These countries aren't exactly known for promoting world peace. What happens to world/US security when these countries are much stronger militarily?

*choke*, coffee sprays ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

Kerry is a practicing Catholic...

... practicing what, cognitive dissonance?

who is pro-choice. That is a very strong indicator that he is a man of his own mind and doesn't support a particular position just because his church says so. I find that very reassuring.

I always find this line of thought bizarre. It's actually much harder to hold yourself to an external standard, and requires much more thought and discipline. It's easy to just say you do ("why, I'm a practicing Catholic ...") and then just adjust your actual actions and beliefs to whatever is comfortable or expedient.

Re:My opinion on that Superbowl halftime show..

[ConceptJunkie]

I mean, hey, excuse me if I don't want to see some bloody disgusting mess of human flesh being sloshed out of a fat, flabby, stretch-marked, screaming angry woman.

Even if that woman is someone to whom you've pledged to love and honor your whole life and she begs you not to leave. Her own body is all but attacking itself to get that child out. The biggest reason I stayed with my wife, besides the fact that I wanted to be there with her, was because she was terrified. After the fact she told me the best help she got during delivery was the fact that I was there and the support I offered... and as a bonus, I got to be the first one to hold our second child until she was ready to take him.

You might want to realize that as an expectant father, it's not all about you. If you ever do marry and have children, I suspect you will understand better.

Election = Not (about2YearsAgo)

[salesgeek]

At this point I think Kerry deserves to win the election. He probably is the better candidate - but I honestly believe he can't win. Here is why Kerry hasn't slammed the door on Bush: This election isn't about 2 years ago or 30 years ago. It's about the next four years.

Kerry is making the same mistakes that Bob Dole and George HW Bush. Kerry is reliving the past. I wish Kerry would stop reliving the past and give us a reason to look at the future. His vision for the future will not sell to most of Americe: Higher taxes and a half-hearted attempt at winning "a grand diversion". Bush has always been very adept at dealing with domestic policy, an I fear that while Kerry will be pointing out past mistakes, Bush will be pushing future solutions... just like he did in 2000 with the drug benefits, no child left behind, etc... like the laws or not, the ideas sold well enough to get him a hair less than half the popular vote...

At the end of the day, I'm not delighted by four years of either of the candidates. They both stink.

After ....

[A_carton_short_of_a_]

Reading over the first 500 hundred comments it seems that emotions and patriotism has gotten in the way of simple logic. It's not about WMD's. If the USA, Britan, Australia and other coalition partners were concerned about WMD's the soldiers would be eating Kim Chi on the Korean peninsula or better still they might be in Packistan, India OR ANY other country with a Nuclear weapons program. The 2nd War in Iraq was NOT about WMD's it has nothing to with freedom for the Iraqi people - if that was such an issue the USA and its "know-how" would have taken care of that last time. The governments of the three mentioned nations have at one time or another dealt directly with despotic rulers at some time or another.

Its all about oil and controlling the supply. Control the worlds oil supply and you control developing nations such as China - the demand for oil in China is increasing rapidly. The USA went into Iraq for nothing more period. It is good? It is bad? Persinally I don't know - probably not for good the people of Iraq. Good for Ameraican's ? Well some of them are getting rich out this affair and will do for sometime to come yet.

So stop being blinded by the "spin" from the left and the right and lets do what nerds do best solve problems i.e. lets get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels!!!

Re:Can we keep the Political Stuff out of Slashdot

[nullportal]

"Can we keep the political stuff out of slashdot" Not really. Supress it here and it will emerge elsewhere. Besides, when does political begin and other choices in life, including about technology and technological society, end?

Re:Whaaaa?

[10Ghz]

Iraq refused to cooperate with the UN inspections and various items were unaccounted for.

Does that mean they had WMD's? Is shoddy bookkeeping good enough reason to go to war?

Let the inspectors do their jobs? Who are you kidding? Go take a look at some of the Iraq - UN timelines on the web and ask yourself why did the UN wait so long to do anything about Iraq's refusal to comply with UN demands? Eleven years after Gulf War 1, Iraq still wasn't complying with the UN, yet the UN did nothing.

Before the war the inspections were being carried out like they should. the inspectors were happy on how they were progressing.

And, acoording to the inspectors: Iraq war wasn't justified [cnn.com].

And, according to the inspectors, it was USA that was "not cooperating": [informatio...house.info]

"U.N. inspectors withdrew from Iraq a year ago, shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of the country. After the war, the United States deployed its own team under Kay and refused to allow U.N. inspectors to return. Kay's team concluded that Iraq did not have stockpiles banned weapons as alleged by President Bush in making his case for war.

"During the period under review, no official information was available to UNMOVIC on either the work of, or the results of, the investigations of the United States-led Iraq Survey Group in Iraq. Nor has the (U.S.) survey group requested any information from UNMOVIC," the U.N. report said.

It sets out Kay's findings that it was unlikely large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons were deployed in Iraq after 1994, but makes no comment on them."

How many political prisioners were killed in Iraq while they continued to defy and hold back UN inspections?

How many thousands died because of the embargo?

The Iraq administration was evil. The only question in regard to this issue is should the US/UN step in when countries are systematically murdering those who oppose the government. If yes, then the WMD issue is immaterial.

Well, US openly supports terrorism [soaw.org], should they be invaded as well? Or how about removing democratic leaders and replacing them with military dictators? Or doing business with dictators that replaced democratic government in a coup?

Why was Iraqi administration "evil", whereas US administration is not?

An unmentioned strategic reason is demographics. In 15-20 years world demographics are going to shift severely. Middle Eastern countries will become a much bigger players on the world stage (Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc). These countries aren't exactly known for promoting world peace.

Since USA has been involved in armed conflicts more often than any other country during this century, I think they are not the ones who should be preacing about "world peace"

What happens to world/US security when these countries are much stronger militarily?

Ah, I see. Since they MIGHT at some point in the future potentially threaten USA, they must be invaded now? I guess Finland could at some point in the future potentially threaten the USA somehow, should Finland be invaded as well?

Re:And this is surprising why?

[KjetilK]

Actually, it isn't quite right...

I'm in Norway, and I'm a physicist. I was pretty sure that there were no nuclear weapons. In fact I was very near 100% sure, and I saw absolutely no evidence for it, and when Rumsfeld used the good old, ufo/conspiracy-buff phrase "absense of evidence is not evidence of absense", well, it kind of gave it away....

It is true that the mainstream press did have quite a lot on the topic, and that the vast majority of people around here were against the war, and that they can say afterwards "what didn't we say".

Still the fact is, that neither the popular press, nor this vast majority had any clue whatsoever.

They were totally incapable of arguing about it, and there wasn't really any public debate about it here. Thus, leading politicians, such as Norway's Foreign Minister Jan Petersen could not do his job based on a solid opinion by his own people. The man is a total idiot. For one thing, after the Powellpoint-presentation, that contained nothing substantial at all, he said that it was "impressive". This guy really wanted to believe. Also, he never realized that the US was going to war no matter what. Norway has a tradition for sticking to the UN, but also looks to the US for guarantees for its security. It hasn't been a conflict there until recently. Until the last day before the attack he insisted that sticking to the UN was the right thing to do, and that the US would follow the will of the Security Council. Yeah sure...

I myself was pretty much paralyzed: I thought "it is just plain obvious that there is no nukes in Iraq, why aren't anybody saying anything". There wasn't ever anything substantial in the critique of the US WMD scaremongering. There are many physicists out there who could have said some very solid, informative and educational things, that would enable people to form a solid opinion. I guess I could have myself. But we didn't... I tried to write journalists, point them to good resources (iaea.org, for example), but failed. I was really just thinking, "somebody else with greater authority than myself have to do it." I guess everybody thought that way.

So, you USians shouldn't be too hard on yourself. We didn't "know" here either, for any sensible definition of "know". People here believed things that were contrary to the belief of many USians, but it wasn't a well-formed belief based on scientifically sound facts. They were superficial belief systems, and the reasons for them were probably similar for both sides of the pond, allthough they came out with different conclusions.

The whole thing is a total failure of the open, public debate in the entire West. There wasn't a problem of content not created. Following the iaea.org website, lending the ear to Scott Ritter now and then, writings by nuclear physists on production of arms, and the occasional opinion piece by physicists should do the trick. The blame must be shared by the media, by people in general and by the scientists who could have spoken, but did not.

But, since this is slashdot, let me blame copyright as well. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lines up two rights, the rights of people to take advantage of scientific and artistic advancements of society and the rights of creators to be awarded. As we know, there is a balance here, and it has been distorted. This distortion has resulted in that distribution of content to advance people's understanding of issues is not a legitimate exercise in it's own right, and so, the public, open debate has suffered dramatically.

The dramatic failure of the public and open debate is largely the reason why nobody got through to the general public with substantial arguments against the WMD scare.

Re:Nonsense

[KarmaMB84]

The difference between repeating false information and lying is intent. If the UN really thought there were no WMD or other violations in Iraq, they wouldn't have continued sending inspectors to look for them. Oh wait, they DID find banned weapons which Iraq was destroying (or not since they apparently had SOME that were ready to fire at us when the invasion began).

They were more than likely hiding something; be it plans for a renewed weapons programs in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or leftover samples for use in those revived programs. I don't think anyone truely believed that Iraq was clean. We found out later that they weren't.

Even John Kerry won't stand up and say Bush is a liar. He simply states that Bush "misled" America. Misled is a neutral term applicable to either a liar or someone that mistakenly leads another astray. Blair might very well be in the same situation. He said Iraq had weapons that could be fired within 45 minutes. Considering Iraq's attempts to actually make people think their units had the weapons and would use them against invaders (they were apparently issuing orders on the use of imaginary WMD), I don't see why we should think Blair lied. He probably just didn't know he was feeding the UK incorrect information.

We know now that Saddam likely didn't give a rat's ass whether sanctions were lifted in his lifetime since the Oil for Food program was a corrupt assortment of bribe takers that would let him do whatever he wanted with the money anyway.

Re:Whaaaa?

[supersnail]

Exactly what is better organized in the UK?

The trains?

The mail?

The tax system?

The schools?

The banks (Well the UK banks are better at extracting money from customers - but you guys still use checks!)

There are pictures of the WMDs!!!!!

[gosand]

It seems to me that there are no WMD's nor is there a WMD-program. So what about the un-accounted WMD's then? The whole disarmanent-process was a complicated affair that involved lots of people and thousands upon thousands of pages of documents. There are bound to be errors. Were there errors in Iraq's documentation? Propably. But that does not change the fact that no WMD's have been found.

I saw in some pro-Bush advertisement a picture of U.S. soldiers standing in front of crates full of what looked like shoulder fired missiles. The large caption said something like "And some say Iraq had no weapons"

My jaw hit the floor. They were a soverign nation, with an army. Of fucking COURSE they are going to have weapons! Hell, we probably sold them those rockets. The Bush supporters have gone from twisting the truth to twisting lies!

I remember when we invaded Iraq, because my wife and I had already had a weeklong trip planned for Paris. We had to decide whether we wanted to go or not, because the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Thursday, and we left for Paris on Sunday. We had to question whether it would be safe. It was of course, and we received zero ill treatment there. I got 10x worse treatment here at home, in O'hare airport. One NASCAR following, Bush-loving idiot at work asked me when I got back if I asked for any "Freedom Fries" while I was there, and I just stared blankly at him. He also asked if I got enough to eat, because the French eat just tiny little portions. (another blank stare)

But I digress... I remember, and some people seem to forget, that Saddam DID let weapons inspectors into Iraq. Yes, for years he dodged them, but when the threat was made by the U.S., he let them in. They didn't find anything, and before the inspectors could finalize their work and come out and officially say "Iraq has no WMD", Bush decided to invade. I remember specifically, he said the inspectors should leave because we were going in. And now the Bush supporters somehow forgot all of that and like to say that Saddam wasn't cooperating with UN weapons inspectors.

I just don't get it. Even after something like 9/11 (which again, has NOTHING to do with Iraq - even GW said so after 9/11) doesn't wake up the American people to the fact that we are not invulnerable. We can't go pushing around other countries without reprocussions. Bush had nothing to do with what caused 9/11, but he is setting us up for the next one. He is making sure that we are hated throughout the world, and that makes me nervous.

You are right in theory, but wrong in this case.

[khasim]

Complaining about a dictator is easy.

Yep, that's right.

Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.

Yep, that's right.

But it isn't applicable in this case because that wasn't how the war was sold to the US citizens.

We didn't go in to remove a dictator.

We went in because a dictator with terrorist connections was hiding "WMD's" and preparing to use them against the US.

Telling so many lies (and continuing to tell them) to sell your war does NOT show "moral character, will, and resolve".

Rather it shows the opposite. Too bad for your side.

Re:Whaaaa?

[madfgurtbn]

It's not clear to me why this is controversial.

That's because you use logic and care about America's standing among the nations and peoples of the world.

The whole 'global test' controversy grows from the right's fear of a global government. They are making, in my view, a tactical error when they try to use this right wing nut job argument at this stage of the race, where the only votes up for grabs are the hardcore undecideds.

Clinton was a master of this game, shoring up the base with some good liberal talk during the early going, then concentrating on middle of the road and even conservative issues once the race was down to the wire.

Anyone who thinks that the UN is an anti-American force for evil is already in Bush's corner. The debates everything else from Oct 1 on should be aimed at getting the undecideds, independents, and moderates of the opposing party. You cannot win without the middle.

Re:Explaining that 45%

[hendridm]

But what I wanted to say was this: Religion dictates a moral standard. If our President feels obligated to live within a moral standard of "not lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, etc", because of his religion, then so much the better. Religion gives a person focus, and if it helps keep a politician on a more honorable path, so much the better.

Yes, and this side effect of religion is admirable. However, I think most of us non-believers have a problem when they start pushing their faith-based values onto us like anti-abortion, prayer in school, banning gay marriage, etc. If it was just about having a high moral standard for yourself, most of us wouldn't care. But please don't tell us how to live a moral life - we can make up our own minds.

Re:Whaaaa?

[brsmith4]

The Bush administration has been gunning for Iraq since before they were elected. Proof of this exists here [newamericancentury.org] in their mission statement dated 1997.

You speak of resolutions, but what about the ~60 resolutions that Israel has violated during the past 50 years? Quite the double standard, don't you think?

The truth is, we have found no weapons. The one or two that we have found were 14 year old batches of Sarin, which has a shelf-life of maybe 2 or 3 years (pre-gulf war 1). We have pissed a lot of people off. We have created more terrorists instead of less and our allies would rather brandish their middle finger than lend us a helping hand.

Asside from the number of dead bodies we've either had to bury or fly back home in pine boxes, I'd still say we did a pretty shitty job. You tell us to "get the facts straight" and that "Saddam failed to comply with any of the resolutions". The fact that not a single WMD nor tangible program to develop them has been discovered tells me that you need to get your facts straight.

No accountability

[HangingChad]

Why does Wolfowitz still have a job? Why hasn't anyone been held accountable for this charade?

If Clinton would've done this the dittoheads would've taken to the streets to riot. But when it's their guy doing the lying...not a negative comment out of them. In fact, they're defending it. If that isn't hypocrisy in action then we might as well take the word out of the dictionary.

Just amazes me that there are still people supporting Bush and these right wing liars. Not all Republicans are dishonest, but it seems like the party is infected and controlled by a militant vein of people with no moral character. This isn't the Republican party I grew up supporting. That party had people that were tough and committed but still maintained ethical standards.

Re:Explaining that 45%

[_xeno_]

Of course he's Pro-Choice. He's a Democrat. Part of being a Democrat is that he's Pro-Choice.

He's also against gay marriage. Why? Because the polls are against gay marriage. (You should have seen his position on this after the court ruling in Massachusetts. He wavered for a bit, trying to find a position acceptable to his consitutants and the nation as a whole. I think he settled on some "against, but civil unions are acceptable if required" position.)

Kerry's positions flow with the polls. If a new poll came out saying that most democrats favored not murdering children before they could be born, he'd instantly become Pro-Life and would have always been Pro-Life.

If the next week another poll came out saying that people favored allowing women to have the right to choose what they do with their body, he'd become Pro-Choice again.

Being from Massachusetts, I've watched his positions flow based on what the media says he should think. And, actually, so has the nation. Remember the Patriot Act? He supported and helped write it. Now he's against it, because most Democrats are against it. Same with the war in Iraq.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, considering he's supposed to represent "the will of the people," but I don't really see it as a sign that he is a man of his own mind.

Re:Nonsense

[BohKnower]

It is surprising how politicians can look stupid or naive when it comes to its interests. The fact presented here, Bush lied about WMD, Blair could be fooled by Bush (which is a shame) or he knew about it (which makes him equals Bush IMHO). The UN inspections alone could have destroyed all WMD in Iraq (if it indeed existed), but this is not the real objective for war.

Re:Whaaaa?

[asoap]

Complaining about a dictator is easy. Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.

You know what sir... I don't agree with your tone of voice. Shit.. I just bitched about you.

Please reply with your address and phone number so I can come and blow up your house.

Just because you complain about someone doesn't mean you have to attack them. Before the war, the UN found missles in Iraq which had a range of something like 200 miles. Iraq was only allowed to have missles that had a range of 160 miles (or something to that affect). The UN forced iraq to dismantle those missles, proving that UN sactions were working.

-Derek

Re:Whaaaa?

[smooth wombat]

Actually, no country in its right mind would use WMDs on forces that are within its borders. Destroying your own country and making it unlivable defeats the point of the weapons themselves. They're offensive, used when you're trying to destroy someone ELSE's country.

You should read "The Sampson Option" by Seymour Hersh. In the book he describes how people within the Israeli national defense system have confirmed that Israel is willing to use its nuclear arsenal on its own territory should their backs be against the wall.

This was, in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons to go to war...the inspectors weren't being allowed to DO their jobs. They weren't allowed to talk to Iraqi scientists and weren't given the information they needed. They had been kicked out of the country before without completing their job, ergo the question became what was Saddam hiding?

Partially false. In the past Iraq had kicked the inspectors out and had given the run-around. However, in the last attempt to fend off an invasion Iraq threw open its doors. The inspectors could go anywhere they wanted. In fact, when the inspectors kept coming up empty the US gave inspectors its own information on where "it knew" the weapons were. Guess what, the inspectors found nothing. It was at this point that the US pulled the rug out from beneath the inspectors and invaded to try and prove that Iraq had wmds. As we now know Iraq never had any weapons since the early 1990s despite all our "evidence" that they had tons (to use Rumsfelds own words) of the stuff hidden away.

As far as why Saddam would do his best to hide something which didn't exist, various people have surmised it came down to appearances. If you can keep your enemies guessing as to what you do or do not have then you can appear strong. If Saddam had come out and said that he had nothing (which he eventually did) then he would appear weak in the eyes of the arab world.

Re:Whaaaa?

[MSBob]

The chief reason why Poland went to Iraq with the US is that they are scared of Russia and hope that one day when (not if) Russia invades again the Americans will be there to stop it. Of course it's very unlikely to happen as Poland hasn't a single drop of oil but Poles keep deluding themselves nonetheless.

Re:Israel (or it's borders)

[Snaller]

2. Except the 'wall', do you have any other bright ideas of how to protect civilians from suicide bombers?

Easy: The civilans should stop voting for warmongering nazilike bastards.

Re:Whaaaa?

[badnews]

Yeah, it amazes me how many people have apparently forgotten all but two words of that debate answer. To help them, I'll include it here:

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

[...]

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.


Kerry is not, of course, the first American to concern themselves with world opinion. The very preamble to the American Declaration of Independence states:


"... a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them ..."


(not that I would expect this Prentender-In-Chief to know, understand, or respect American history or the principles upon which it was founded.)

Re:Whaaaa?

[XMyth]

By going to war against Iraq, the US stopped Saddam's ongoing war on the people of Iraq.

People sure do like to bring that up. The funny thing is, it is NOT the point. The point is, that's not why we were told we're going to war. It was that Iraq had massive amounts of WMDs (Big fucking deal) and it was stated by Bush that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20 030319-1.html [whitehouse.gov]) to garner public support.

These were both LIES. That is the point. This current administration lied to all of us, and now its supporters want to go around and say "but that's ok, because there's other good reasons for the war". Yea, if these reasons are that good then why lie to us in the beginning? Maybe it's because this administrationg prefers to us fear to sway public opinion?

Re:A defense of "no superbowl tits..or warn me fir

[Anonymous Coward]

Any church that wouldn't TURN OFF a half-time show containing Janet Jackson, Kid Rock, and Outkast is not worth its weight in self-sacrifice, IMHO.

Re:Wilson lied during that testimony

[Izaak]

Do you have any more shrilled loony left propaganda to spread on /.? Times like these with so many geeks falling for conspiracies and out right lies, makes it so hard to be identified as a geek in public.

Interesting that the evidence you point to is a short oppinion post that simply references an op ed piece. That oppionion editorial is long on accusations and short on proof. I did a quick Google Search [google.com] and turned up numereous REAL article (with there sources properly referenced) that back up Wilson's story. Furthermore, I even found an article here [salon.com] that describes the attempts by the conservative political machine (using letters to the editor and op ed pieces) to discredit him.

Also, all the attempts to cast doubt on Wilson do not change the fact that the uranium proof documents WERE forged, and the administration DID know that. Those fact are not in dispute. The attempts to discredit Wilson is just an effort to distract from that.

Re:Nonsense

[websaber]

I always wondered why there is so little political news articles posted on Slashdot as it does have a lot to do with the future of tech. It's beginning to become clear that politics is only important to technology if it hurts a candidate the editors don't like. You be shocked at how few steps there are between a small editorial bias and CBS's memogate. I know that I will be flamed with out mercy for daring to suggest a bias but here is a sample of

Slashdot :: Politics :: Republicans

White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs

RNC Outsourced Voter Database to India

New Bush Guard Records Released

and

Slashdot :: Politics :: Democrats

Football Fans For Truth

The Rest of the World Wants Kerry

10 Things To Know About The Upcoming Debates

It's almost hilarious how obvious it is.

you folks can't see the forest

[jbeiter]

because you're micro-analyzing the tree... or nobody wants to actually come out and say it. This is a war against islamic middle-eastern nations. It's not about WMDs or even [entirely] about oil. Iraq ended up a target because they were already under judgment that the UN would not execute because they were making money off the situation. The goal is obvious and Bush stated it over and over. The US wants to erode militant islamic culture by way of democratic examples in the region. Make no mistake about it, this is a Jihad against Islam. It's just not politically correct to come out and say so. Communism is no longer viewed a threat. Islam is. [BTW, please don't confuse my stating of what I see as being the obvious, with my personal views on the situation.]

Re:Whaaaa?

[Moraelin]

"it's a permanent reminder of democracy in it self not being inherently "good" and as such it can't be a moral justification for political change or a goal of militairy intervention; there is no guarantee whatsoever that a (newly installed) democracy will not turn into a dictatorship."

No, I think you got it wrong. It's not that democracy isn't inherently good. (Or rather better than the alternatives.)

It's just inherently very _unstable_.

It's like balancing a ball on a fingertip. One moment of not paying attention, and it falls. And in the case of democracy there's always someone actually having an interest in it falling.

Rights and civil liberties are like a gold bulion bar on the sidewalk. You guard them, or someone _will_ take them away from you.

Unfortunately, people eventually start taking it for granted. "Oh, surely noone would take away _our_ liberties. Surely... umm... someone else would fight against that. Just not me. And not now. We'll, uh, see what we can do at the next elections." Just eventually it's too late.

Or they see someone walking away with their rights and go thinking "oh, I'm sure he's a nice guy and will give them back." Yeah right. Some 12 years after the Reichstag, Hitler still had no intention of giving back the liberties to his people.

(Neither does Bush JR and the gang. You don't see them talking about giving back the liberties they took "just temporarily". No siree, bob. They keep inventing bogus threats to justify keeping them.)

And then democracy falls. All it takes is that: a belief that surely it can't possibly fail now.

Happens all the time, since the dawn of time. The Romans were so happy that they thwarted Caesar's plan to be King, and kept their precious republic... that they let Octavian become Emperor _and_ supreme general _and_ high priest _and_ tribune of the plebs _and_ a few other titles just in case. (FFS, a patrician as tribune of the plebs must be one of the biggest jokes in history.)

The French revolution eventually just degenerated into a tyranny darker than ever before.

And so on.

As I've said, that's the only problem with democracy: it's unstable. You take good care of it, or you lose it.

Re:Whaaaa?

[kz45]

He will still be elected, cause US citizens are nothing but sheeps

The U.S citizens are sheep but not when it comes to George Bush.

Michael Moore's movie Faranheit 9/11 is nothing but propaganda. There are countless examples where he has taken clips from one interview and led the viewers to believe it was from another..just to make his point.

People still believe it, howevever. There are still Michael Moore rallies where he spouts the same old rhetoric..and people believe it. This is what scares me about this country.

Difference between a bl*wjob and a war ?

[freaker_TuC]

Clinton was being tore apart, even internationally, because he had sex with an intern. He lied about it and "deeply regrets that" (we all know the speech I guess)

Although, Bush killed dozens of people by a lie, not even getting a slap on the wrist. People believe in him as their leader who can justify anything.

So what's the difference between a blowjob and a war? The blowjob didn't kill people, the war killed dozens of people and will probably kill more dozens of people...

Do I call this naivity ?

Re:A defense of "no superbowl tits..or warn me fir

[robochan]

"My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point."

I can't understand your point.
You complain about a "strip show" yet, your church will condone the mass viewing of 22 men who hit each other so hard that they have to wear body armor, literally, beating each other bloody over a leather ball. Yet, your church condones said beating, interspersed with advertisements for drugs that give four hour erections? And you have the audacity to complain about a tit-flash?

Eat me.
Seriously.
And the sanctimonious horse you rode in on.

Re:Hindsight and the pathetic Slashdotter

[dfn_deux]

I hate getting baited by AC posters, however.....

I find that excuse ridiculous. You do not vote for the "option" to go to war. It's always an option. Either you vote for war, or you vote against. What fool would authorize the use of force and think that it will never be used?

When you are talking about the richest, most powerful, and most well armed Nation in the world do not underestimate the power of diplomatic leverage. Having an Ace up your sleeve like the congressionally approved option to bomb another country off the face of the planet could have had the effect of making diplomatic negotiations more fruitful.... Look at Libya as an example, once Bush decided it was his mandate to make pre-emptive war they dropped their Nuke program like a hot rock; it is purely academic to suppose that had congress voted to give the president the option to make war against Libya (had the war in iraq not happened) that Libya would have dropped their nuke program without a shot ever being fired.

If you think the option of pre-emptive attack isn't a powerful form of diplomatic leverage you musta missed that whole coldwar thingy that happened for about 40 years....

Re:Whaaaa?

[tabrnaker]

Big deal. The US has WMD's that are operational and can actually hit targets most of the time. They haven't made any steps towards disarmament either and they agreed to it, just like the iraqis. Perhaps we should have a pre-emptive strike against the states? After all, the states is currently the biggest threat around.

Re:Let's apply a little criticle thinking here

[h4x0r-3l337]

Even if, based on all the information he had access to, Bush sincerely believed the US was in danger, that only serves to illustrate a serious lack of judgement. The president of the most powerful nation in the world should have better judgement than that, and that is why Bush has to go.

Re:Ludicrous!

[Hassman]

Clinton lied under oath about SEX! This is something the general public has NO business knowing about. I hate it, HATE IT when politicians are called out on this. It happens all the time to many people...in many countries...in many walks of life... But OMG, a president did it! *Gasp* Let's impeach him!!! Come on. It was immoral, and wrong, but it in no way impacts how well he leads.

Bushed lied to the UN. He lied to Congress. He lied to the American People. Worst of all, he had no reason to lie! The American public rallied behind him, the international community supported us. All we needed to do was carry out a just war on terror and none of this would be an issue today. Bush would be re-elected in a heartbeat and the world would be supporting him and the US all along the way.

But instead he lied. Destroyed our credibility and split the country in two. I don't think the US has ever been this bi-partisan. BAH!! How can anyone support such a man. On top of it all, he's about as intelligent as a 5th grader.

Now then, you blame Clinton for the 1000's of deaths? Too bad it was Bush who cut the anti-terrorism budget when he took office. It was one of his first acts before going on a 4 month vacation.

Get your facts straight and open your eyes. This was is no longer about protecting Americans...it is all about the pocketbook.

Iraq or Israel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, lets get the facts/complaints straight and maybe the perspective too. Israel has nukes, imprisoned the whistleblower that revealed it, ignored more UN resolutions than Iraq ever did, and launches rocket attacks from Apache helicopters on 'terrorists' in wheelchairs. o_O And now has bunker busting bombs free (technically from the US).

Again, we're supporting a nation that does not follow international law, at all, and never has, and then pointing a finger at a country with far less military resources and saying 'oooo, you guys weren't open enough'.
Puhhlease.

And people wonder why the arab world thinks that the US is an occupier and has double standards.

Argumentum ad Stultum

[radtea]

You've committed a logical fallacy that I call "argumentum ad stultum": argument from stupidity.

Any argument of the form:

X would be stupid.
Therefore no one would do X.

is fallacious because it depends on a hidden premise that is known to be false:

No one would ever do anything stupid.

But we know, for a fact, that people do incredibly stupid things every day. I mean, what president would be stupid enough to have sex with an intern in the Oval Office?

So given that the reasons for believing there was any significant threat from Iraq are all trivially false, and given that the other reasons to invade Iraq are all pretty lame, it is very easy to conclude that Bush et al are either extremely stupid or clinically insane, or some combination of both.

Evil doesn't come into it. Stupidity and megalomania are the only things required, and anyone who knows anything about human history knows that there is no shortage of either, especially in the halls of power.

--Tom

Re:You're the one who needs to do the research ...

[Hassman]

I said Iraq had no connection to 9/11. None.

Well, by your logic the US gives money to terrorism. US buys oil from countries in the middle east such as Iran and Iraq. Iran sponcers terrorists, so we sponser terrorits. Good logic there...

Fox news spreds FUD when it comes to this issue. I prefer a new organization that isn't openly partisan.

I'm not misrepresenting anything. You're regeritating the same same stuff the bush campaign is spining out. They can't win based on the facts, so they need to win via fear.

Re:Israel

[aricusmaximus]

Yet another Slashdotter accuses someone of something he goes on to commit himself.

Have no clue who Twirlip is (since that's who you linked to), nor is associating him with me helpful to your argument.

So the Zionists convince the British Empire to evict the Arabs from Israel, and you think those victims should've argued in defense of their attackers?

Where do you dredge up this crap? The British *never* expelled *any* Palestinian from the areas now controlled by Israel. In fact, Britain restricted [yale.edu] the immigration of Jews to Palestine and limited their ability to buy land. You might have had some credibility given to your argument if you had actually brought up actual historical events causing grief to Palestinians. 600-800,000 Palestinians fled Israel in 1947, during the war of Independance (in response, Arab states expelled over 800,000 Arab Jews, most of which now live in Israel). The refugee camps were not in Israel's territory until after the 1967 war (instigated by Egypt and Jordan). In both cases, the Palestianian's losses were a direct result of Arab agression. Arabs (including Arafat and the PLO) have more than their share of the blame for the Palestinian's current plight.

As I already explained, this focus on Israel is not because they're uniquely bad, but because they claim to be better than that. Yes, I do hold them to higher standards. Saudi Arabia doesn't claim to be a land of freedom or enlightenment, so it isn't worth the time to point out that they're not.

I see. It doesn't matter how nicely you play, or how much restraint you show -- it's whether or not you claim the moral high ground -- apparently, words, not actions are important to you. And in fact, if I understand your position correctly, what Israel should have done was just killed/expelled all the Palestinian refugees and then told the rest of the world that it was none of their business. Kinda like Turkey with the Kurds (again, another situation that somehow never causes much outrage?). Perhaps they should have done exactly what the Arabs would have done to them had they lost in 1948, 1967, or 1973? Would that have been satisfactory?

Why don't you allow people to talk about one country without listing off their opinion on every other nation in the world?

To hold up the double-standard by which you judge Israel. Rediculous comments like "You're wrong about that 22 Arab states. Not all of them are systemically racist" just prove my point. There's over 22 Islamic countries, but just one Jewish state, and guess who you set fit to pick on?

Israel as a Jewish state has the right exist. The Palestinians (including the PLO) do not recognize that right. Until they do, why even pretend there's a reason to compromise?

Palestinian bombs still blow up Israeli buses. Rockets still bombard Israeli homes. The major Palestinian organizations (PLO and Hamas) do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Yet you blithely suggest they should be allowed to live well inside Israel's borders. You might as well ask Israelis to slit their throats right now.

Re:Israel (or it's borders)

[Begemot]

The majority of the planet...

Everybody on this planet has her/his own interests.

Do you really think that countries like Russia or France vote against Israel because they honestly care for the welfare of Palestinians? Or, perhaps, what really matters is their business relationship with Arab countries?

...because they think they are better... .

This accusation is false a priori just like any other generalization in the world. Nobody in Israel thinks so except some religious extremists and garbage like that you may find in any country. I'm Jew, I live in Israel but I don't think that I or anyone from my nation is better than anyone else. So thinks anyone I ever got a chance to talk with. I afraid you're a bit biased and fed up with propaganda. How come nobody blaims Russia for erasing entire cities in Chechnya? Spain has territories belonging to Morocco, Russia has territories belonging to Japan and everybody shut up. But Israel - nooooo, they're the true devil!

Re:Israel (or it's borders)

[Begemot]

I think democracy is the only way to go, of course when one thinks one is better - the majority is always wrong.

I guess you're right. Just note that Israel is the only democracy in ME.

Because Isreal is always innocent, and anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi.

I never said so, you know that. My point is that Israel "play" by the rules of this cruel world. We're just as "innocent" as many other countries. We most definitely don't want war but we don't have a solution.

Please note that all I'm saying is that calling our government (hence us who voted or not voted but democratically accepted it) "nazilike warmongering bastards" requires a very solid knowledge of what's going on in ME. Knowledge that no newspaper can provide. In order to be able to judge one should learn the situation from both sides. Have you heard all that both sides have to say? I afraid not.

Re:Israel (or it's borders)

[Begemot]

Conflicts like any other extreme conditions can't go ever and ever. It just takes time to develop a civilized society.

You should see what happened here during the last 50 years. The whole country was desert and marshes and now we have hitech and skyscrapers. It's only a matter of time till we'll make peace in ME.