Bush is full of crap

[IrishHand]

My facts are perfectly in order, but thanks for coming out. All polls suffer from a number of biases, with many of those revolving around the sample polled. The reality is that the most efficient method of polling is the telephone - and that restricts the sample to those with phones and listed numbers. While the overall effect isn't that big here at home where nearly everyone has a home phone, the same can't be said about many foreign countries. When you read a poll about the opinions of Egyptians or Turks, you're probably looking more at the opinions of the educated than the average citizen simply by virtue of the nation's communication infrastructure.

No matter what nation, poor, uneducated people are far less likely to play a part in polls. Science says that the poll should have a representative sample, reality means you're going to have some bias. I was just suggesing one way to interpret that bias.

[IrishHand]

Sure, they have a right to their opinion, but mightn't their opinion be quite uninformed, not to say biased or wrong?
An excellent argument against democracy and in favor of dictatorships.

As long as [the UN] represents so many garbage governments run by iron-fisted thugs who were never elected in the first place, I don't see why we should give too much credence to their opinions
The current administration wasn't elected, and that hasn't stopped you from giving "too much credence to their opinions."

[A] great many fanatic Islamists--Islamofascists if you wish--oppose us on nearly everything.
It seemed to me that their main problems were our (military) presence in the Holy Land and our support of Israel. However, it is apparent that you're acqainted with more "Islamofascists" than I am, so I shall defer to your superior knowledge.

Furthermore, the Iraqi people themselves long for regime change.
Again, I will bow to your superior knowledge of the will of a foreign peoples. I will suggest though that typically when a nation's people "long for regime change", they have something called a revolution (we did one in this country a couple centuries ago). I haven't heard of too many peoples who thought that a war wherein many of them will be killed, and where the net result will likely be the replacement of one tyrant with another (only the 2nd one willing to help the US while he's helping himself), was the best way to change your head of state. I'm sure you're right though...I'm sure there are zillions of Iraquis praying for the day when the US cruise missiles rain down upon them.

elected governments are simply SUPERIOR in every measure of which progress and liberty and human rights are parts
That's ridiculous. There are many positive aspects of nearly every governmental model - women in Soviet Russia enjoyed a vastly superior level of equality at home and in the workplace than did those in this country for decades (we're still trying to close that gap, as evidenced by the continuing disparity in male/female pay scales. I could list a pile of examples, but let's be honest - you're as wedded to your ideas on this matter as an Islamic fundamentalist is to his. You believe that US democracy is the cure for all that ails the world, while anything related to Muslims is backwards, counterproductive and wrong. I prefer to think that people are all basically the same, regardless of who you pray to at night or who you pay your taxes to.

[Zeno]

A competent polling organization would take into account the lack of telephones or other ways of communication and do street or house polls or other means to get a statistically random sample. But your point is valid that polls may be skewed. Which I agree with. What or how the bias comes about is probably a question for a professional pollster. But I'll add that polls are probably more bias just in the way questions are asked or phrased, the timing of questions, etc. Opinion polls can have a varying degree of bias, and I think that is a reasonable statement that most would agree to.

-Zeno

[MMMMMM]

The opinions of the majority of the people of the world arent part of our democracy in the US--my saying they are uninformed isn't an argument against democracy because we're talking about opinions not votes.

The current administration was elected--I suggest you read up on what the electoral college is, and why poplular vote doesn't determine the President.

There ARE millions of Iraqis hoping for deliverance from Saddam.

If you can't discern that democracies are better than totalitarian systems, I can't argue with you because it would be pointless to try.

Maybe someday you will realize that some ways ARE better than others. In fact it's IDIOTIC to think otherwise--the chances of various ways being equally good is virtually nil--think about it mathematically.

People may be born with the similar hearts and minds, but what they develop into later can be quite different. Long-term indoctrination in fallacious ideas can be quite convincing to many. Just because twenty people believe 20 different things doesn't mean they are all right--probably only one is right, if any are right at all--the myth of equality is just that. Equality of rights as an ideal= a good thing. However equality of ideas=false.

I believe in giving everyone a chance on the personal level. That doesn't mean, however, that some belief systems aren't vastly inferior to others. A simplified and obvious example would be Copernican theory versus Galilean theory. Both sides might have believed they were right with equal fervor. But that doesn't mean the correct belief cannot be determined, or that Galileo didn't know the Church was stupid.

[nicky g]

"But Bush has said that Saddam does have an option so his statement can be construed as if you choose an option that leads to war then if you commit war crimes."

I don't quite follow what you're saying here; if it's that, by being invaded, Saddam has committed a war crime, that's absurd.

My understanding is that the war crimes he would be charged with would relate to the Iran war and the genocidal attacks on the Kurds. Which would be a good thing. A shame that no US or allied trops will join him in the dock for the war crimes they've committed by massacring a retreating army at Basra (something they gave assurances they would never do), deliberately starving the population of Iraq (illegal under the Geneva convention), helping Saddam put down the Shia rebellions after the Gulf war, deliberately prolonging the Iran/Iraq war and so forth. Ho hum.

[adios]

Actually I'm fairly certain that Bush wasn't referring to previous war crimes in that statement.

nicky, invasion == Bush, forcefully comply with UN resolution.

So Bush speak is:

if you choose to defy the UN resolution to disarm, are forcefully made to comply with the UN resolution to disarm and you wage war against those legitimate efforts to make you comply; if you, Saddam, commit war crimes as result of your waging war against those legitimate efforts ...

How did I do with interpreting Bush speak?

[nicky g]

Heh, pretty good, it's a tough job.

Well clearly if Saddam does commit war crimes in the forthcoming war, then he'll have committed war crimes. But if "forcing invasion" is all they can come up with, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, that isn't a war crime under any international treaty. Resisting an invasion, whether legitimate or not, may be illegal in this case under UN law but it isn't a "war crime." Starting a war, going to war etc isn't a war crime; disobeying certain rules of engagement and poor treatment of the enemy are war crimes.

[adios]

"disobeying certain rules of engagement and poor treatment of the enemy are war crimes."

Like civilian shields of military targets.

[nicky g]

Indeed.

[IrishHand]

I love how you completely tone down your positions when challenged to make them more defensible.

M argument #1 (verbatim, since you don't like my paraphrasing): elected governments are simply SUPERIOR in every measure of which progress and liberty and human rights are parts

My reply was that they weren't better in every measure - I believe there are valuable things to be learned from every governmental model in both theory and practice.

Your apparent restatement of your argument: If you can't discern that democracies are better than totalitarian systems, I can't argue with you because it would be pointless to try.

I'll take that as a tacit acknowledgement that democracies aren't better in every way. I agree 100%, as I'm sure most people on earth would, that a form of democracy is certainly better than a form of totalitarianism in the general sense. I just believe it's valuable to draw from the best aspects of every form of government in working towards some mythical "ideal" government. I don't want some utopia tomorrow, I'd just like to see improvement today (and tomorrow, and the next day, etc).

I also agree with you that there are surely large portions of the Iraqi population that would enjoy a regime change. I tend to suspect, though, that they're far less enthusiastic about the US invading them as a means to achieve this than you are. US soldiers certainly weren't hailed as "liberators" in the first Gulf War, I'm not sure what leads you to believe that's changed.

I'm going to ignore your little diatribe about the virtues of being "right" as opposed to everyone else who's wrong. My life has never been set up in terms of right and wrong - I'm more concerned with happy vs. unhappy. If millions of people want to believe in some God, and millions of others want to believe in another, and still millions believe in none at all, that's all fine with me. Is one group right? I'm sure they are. Does it make the slightest difference in my lifetime? Not that I'm aware of. We'll all learn the answer to that particular question eventually.