An Example for You Chickenhawks

[ACPlayer]

Now, if the USA were actually being invaded by a foreign army,

So the war on terror is not a defensive reaction to outside hostility but is an offensive action!?!?

[twowords]

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Also, I never argued that the Iraq war was necessary. I said I thought it was probably a good idea and would likely and hopefully do more good than harm.




This qualifies as good enough to go to war!?!?!?!?!? You would advise to go to war because it might be a good idea and it might be good for a foreign people in the long run despite massive death and choas now?

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The death and chaos now are relatively small potatoes compared to the murders of many hundreds of thousands by Saddam, and to the atrocities, and to the lack of freedoms and decades-long terrorizations of an entire populace.

The Iraq War is certainly NOT the ONLY thing that is vital (if indeed it is even vital at all).

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Saddam killed hundreds of thousands? Try tens and most of that was over ten years ago. Again, by this rationale and the "lack of freedoms" rationale, we would have to invade all evil/murdering dictators of the world, some worse than Saddam.

You imply above that the war in Iraq is not vital. This is the problem I have with you, since you are ok with our country going to war (which IS very undesirable in itself) when it is not vital/necessary. If people like you are ok with this, then you DO deserve criticism if you will not fight it yourself. I think your general argument that "well, you see, I can't actively help in everything I support" is extremely weak, so rehashing that will certainly not convince.

I'm almost sure if you Iraq War supporters did enlist, then you might see why war should only be considered when it is vital and the last resort. I would like to hear from the rest of you hawks on this thread.

[trippin bily]

You must be lots of fun at parties.

[MMMMMM]

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Saddam killed hundreds of thousands? Try tens and most of that was over ten years ago.

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Have you not been keeping up with the news on this? A few years ago Human Rights Watch put the number of people "disappeared" by Saddam's regime as high as 290,000--and that was before the more recent discoveries of additional mass graves in Iraq. More current estimates in the news have been closer to 500,000.

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Again, by this rationale and the "lack of freedoms" rationale, we would have to invade all evil/murdering dictators of the world, some worse than Saddam.

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Hmmm, that's not why I brought it up. I mentioned it because you can't only look at the side of the balance sheet which tallies current casualties due to the war--you also have to take into account what was in place before the war, and the deaths (and tortures) it produced--and would likely have produced had it remained in place. In this case Saddam's regime was truly horrific on a wide scale, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

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You imply above that the war in Iraq is not vital. This is the problem I have with you, since you are ok with our country going to war (which IS very undesirable in itself) when it is not vital/necessary. If people like you are ok with this, then you DO deserve criticism if you will not fight it yourself. I think your general argument that "well, you see, I can't actively help in everything I support" is extremely weak, so rehashing that will certainly not convince.

I'm almost sure if you Iraq War supporters did enlist, then you might see why war should only be considered when it is vital and the last resort. I would like to hear from the rest of you hawks on this thread.

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So do you think we should not have gone to war to stop the genocide in the Balkans, Kosovo, Bosnia under Clinton? How about now, would war be justified in stopping the slaughter in Sudan?

[MMMMMM]

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Now, if the USA were actually being invaded by a foreign army,
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So the war on terror is not a defensive reaction to outside hostility but is an offensive action!?!?

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Non-sequitur. Do you see why?

[nicky g]

"A few years ago Human Rights Watch put the number of people "disappeared" by Saddam's regime as high as 290,000--and that was before the more recent discoveries of additional mass graves in Iraq. More current estimates in the news have been closer to 500,000."

My undertanding is that what you refer to the "additional" mass graves were in fact some of the original mass graves that had always been known to exist that had simply been excavated recently. Do you have any links to reports suggesting these are somehow additional to the mass graves that have long been talked about? If they are, where did they extra dead people come from?

[MMMMMM]

Nicky, I recall reports surfacing in the news within the last year--at least one report was of the discovery of a new mass grave, if I'm not mistaken. And I recall estimates being offered at the time.

I just spent a fair bit of time searching while responding to twowords' post--and there is so much stuff out there it is really hard to find what you are looking for. Maybe a better searcher than myself could find it, but I couldn't, at least not in 15 minutes or so.

[nicky g]

"I recall reports surfacing in the news within the last year--at least one report was of the discovery of a new mass grave, if I'm not mistaken"

But this is what confuses me - in what sense could it be "new"? The vast majority of the mass graves under Saddam haven't been officially located and excavated, it's just known that they exist because of reports of atrocities and the fact that the dead bodies have to be somewhere (although in the months after the war Blari claimed graves with 300,000 bodies had been found, he later admitted that in fact no graves at all had been excavated at that point). The figures are based on reports from survivors, opposition groups etc; if there were to be "new" graves it would mean that somehow a whole lot of people were killed without anyone knowing/noticing it. I can understand that figures could be revised upwards (not that I'm saying they have, I don't know) now that some bodes can be actually counted, but I don;t think it makes sense to talk about extra or newly discovered mass graves. Maybe it's just a matter of semantics.

Don;t worry aboutlooking it up if you're busy, I'll dig around my self at some point.

[twowords]

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So do you think we should not have gone to war to stop the genocide in the Balkans, Kosovo, Bosnia under Clinton?

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I don't know but I do know that those did not require anything near 200,000 US troops, also it was internationally supported.

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How about now, would war be justified in stopping the slaughter in Sudan?

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Again, I don't know.

Situations like these would be so much easier to deal with if the US had better relations with the world community, and less problems with terrorism. Iraq War made both a lot lot lot worse.

[twowords]

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Now, if the USA were actually being invaded by a foreign army,
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So the war on terror is not a defensive reaction to outside hostility but is an offensive action!?!?

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Non-sequitur. Do you see why?

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Sure it is, but he's right; Iraq posed no threat and was nothing alike defending our homeland as you admit. Remember, in our book, no real threat = no sending 200,000 Americans abroad to war. You obviously feel differently.