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It got Dean elected DNC chair.

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Isn't it always in U.S. interest to have less genocidal dictators, that are also ruining the domestic econony, running foreign countries?

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If the alternative is equally or more ruinous to the domestic economy, mightn't we prefer the genocidal dictator?

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Yes true. You would admit that the administration was right because you would have to. You might feel better about foreign intelligence but who cares about that. The issue is would you 1) Support the war and our involvement 2) Support the Bush administration; if you found out there were WMDs - I think not.

How are we supposed to know what is in every square inch of a country that is thousands of sqaure miles, and whose government isn't exactly helpful in our pursuit of gathering intelligence on them. All of a sudden a liberals think our intelligence should know absolutely everything about every inch of every foreign country. It is just absurd. It would be like blaming the New York City police for not anticpating every murder in the city last year.


They felt it was in our interest to invade and were trying to convince the American people. What did you expect them to do - lay out the argument for the other side? So the administration got it wrong. Was it such a huge mistake. Why is that such a big deal. We still unseated a genocidal dictator.


It was predicated on the idea that Saddam Hussein had it in for the US. the embargo was slipping and he soon would have access to revenue from his massive oil supplies. It was becoming extremely more difficult for us to keep our no fly zones. Eventually he was going to get a hold of a US pilot has prisoner. It didn't look like the local insurgents were going to topple him anytime soon. We had invaded the country before so we new we could topple him pretty quickly. Al Queda, with only the help of a backward state took out the WTC, which showed us that if terrorists hooked up with a powerful state (Iraq) they could do more damage. Saddam was a brutal dicator that was willing to use WMDs on his own people and probalby would do so again, and might use them on his neighbors. And finally, he flagrantly broke the treaty that ended Gulf War One. When Hitler ignored the Versailles treaty and that was ignored it didn't turn out well.


I think gassing the Kurds, and draining the swamps were enough to justify an invasion.



NO. Three is no rational argument in support of a genocidal dictator.


When was the goal of our foreign policy perfection. So if we couldn't set up a perfect society we shouldn't go in. The question is not whether it is perfect, the question is the country significantly better off - and it is.


It wasn't my judgement to make, but it certainly was the Bush administrations. The Bush administration had the means to end Saddam's reign and they decided to do it. Not ending the reign would also have been a decision based on moral judgement, and a bad one.


No - an unfortunate fact that liberals are in denial off. If you were against the invasion you were for keeping Saddam in Power. It is that simple. You may have liked Saddam gone with out an invasion but that wasn't an option.

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We might prefer a dictator if it would mean a better economy, but not a genocidal dictator. A genocidal dictator is never the right option. However, in this case not only did you have a genocidal dictator but one that also was destroying the economy.

In every year of the occuptation the country's economy has grown by more than forty percent. Before the embargo, Iraq was a kleptocracy. The Batthists when the first got in power nationalized all the important industry and pretty much ruined the economy. Saddam took that ruined country and ruined it even more by setting up a Kleptocracy. Then the sanctions hit. There was no where to go but up.

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Don't you have to weigh that against costs in dollars, costs in lives, impact (positive or negative) on other international relations, etc.? In the abstract, sure, it's in our interest to have less genocidal dictatorts (my new favorite word) ruining their own countries. But there's a cost, and you gotta consider whether or not the goal is worth it, don't you?

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You had juxtaposed the domestic economy with foreign dictators, implying you were pointing to damage to the US economy. She was asking if deposing foreign dictators was in the US interest if it were ruinous to the US economy.

Yes, Saddam was bad for the Iraqi economy, but was deposing Saddam good for the US economy?

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FEWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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This war has been incredibly cheap in lives and in money. Of course it doesn't seem to cheap to the families of men and women that have died, but we lose ten times the number of people every year in car accidents on American roads than have died in Iraq. In dollar terms the war has been very cheap. Our budget is over two trillion every years. The war hasn't even cost one tenth of one years outlay.

Considering the amount of money and lives it has taken to unseat other genocidal dictators, this war was very cheap.

As far as the effect of the US economy, does anyone really know if the war was a negative or a positive? If you think you know the answer to that, you know more than any economist in the United States today.

Nobody else here, no one like me.
 

What James Garner film is your Avatar from?

BTW: my father just got the complete Rockford files on DVD for father's day.

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How many lives were lost in the pursuit of combatting the pernicious affects of the Clintons in the 90s? By comparison this Iraq thing is de minimis.

Nobody else here, no one like me.
 

Cool. If I am channel surfing, I will *always* stop on an episode of the Rockford Files -- irregardless (ha!) of whether it has 5 minutes or 55 minutes left.

The short answer to your question -- I don't know. From a PM conversation Not Bob had with an Very Hot Imaginary Internet Chick Friend last year:

Not Bob: I dunno what movie it came from -- the file name of the JPEG had "The Great Escape" in it, but I don't think that that is correct (though the time is probably pretty close). I just loved the look on his face.

Her: Hmm, a google search provided this link http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/writer/jamesgarner.html It looks like he made 2 movies with Doris Day the same year (1963) as "The Great Escape." Checking on imdb, it seems the movie I meant was "Move Over Darling" although I think I've also seen the other one too.

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Not according to, oh, pretty much every administration this country has ever had.

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I take it you are now in favor of invading Russia, North Korea, Syria, Burma, Egypt and half of the countries in Africa, right?

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No; I was just thinking that Less would make a great genocidal dictatort.

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I think that would have to be DICKatort.

In fact, I would be willing to bet the Less has already committed some torts with that particular appendage.

Successful Star Wars Test
 

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Um, it was land-based? Well, sea-based. ETA surface-based. Surface-to-air. That's the phrase I was looking for.

But I don't really know from weaponry.

ETA For N. Korean Missile, U.S. Defense Is Hit or Miss

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Point isn't whether we'd get it for sure, that would be the point V. a country with hundreds of missiles. point w/ Korea is to create the impression that we might get it. Deterent to them striking.

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When Colin Powell took out those little toy birds and made those little dying-bird calls ("peep! peep!") in front of the UN General Assembly to demonstrate how Saddam was destroying the Iraqi wetlands, I thought to myself, "we have never embarked, as a nation, upon a nobler or more justified enterprise." I am not ashamed to say there was a tear in my eye.

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Thanks.

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Agreed, although Club's re line is a bit inaccurate.

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mmmmm little dead birds!

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Russia - I wouldn't call him a genocidal dictator, although what he is doing in Chechnya is rather bad. But we don't have the option of taking him out (the cost would be way to high).

Egypt: Definitely not a Genocidal dictator. And the economy is improving in Egypt.

Syria: Taking junior out would be great idea. Our military is right there.

Burma: We need to take these guys out also.

North Korea: Can't take him out without losing Seoul. Otherwise he would need to go.

Africa: We should have done something about Darfur.

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Why is it a deterrent? So there's a 50% chance of success instead of a 100% chance of success? If they want to blow us up, wouldn't they still be willing to roll the dice? The deterrent is 1000 warheads ready to turn north korea into a radioactive desert.

What it does, if anything, is possibly take a bargaining chip off the table.

NK "We have a missile; give us food and oil"
US "We have Star Wars; your puny missile doesn't bother us. No soup for you."

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here's how i define deterrent:

• NK "We have a missile; give us food and oil"
  US "We have Star Wars; your puny missile doesn't bother us. No soup for you."

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Russia: The Chechens would disagree with you. And I thought it was always good to take out the bad guys?

Egypt: I think you need to study your history. But then again, he mostly kills people we don' t like, so that doesn't count, right? And certainly there have been many points in the current dictator's reign when the economy wasn't growing (seriously, you arguments is only to invade those with bad economies?)

The rest: You are nuts if you think military intervention is desirable or viable option.

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Deterrent implies that he is rational. We can't be sure he is rational. If you live with in the missiles range a 50% chance it a hell of a lot better than 100%.

Anyone that has ever been against missile defense has been caught up in partisan stupidity.

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Not if you lose your country while you are doing in. We could attack Iraq without any threat to the Continental United States. We attack Russia and we could lose every major city in American.

Do you understand the meaning of Genocide? If you do then how could ask those questions? The leader of Egypt is not a genocidal dictator.

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What genocide is going on in North Korea and Syria? And Burma?

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preemptive bombing of NK proposed by DEMOCRATS: http://www.kare11.com/news/news_arti...storyid=127766

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Non-responsive. What genocide is going on in NK or Syria? I'm not as sure on Burma.

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Kim is currently starving the entire population of his country to prop up his weapons systems. It isn't really for cultural reasons, but I'd imagine letting your entire country die is kind of like genocide.

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okay, so Syria is a stretch. But certainly its regime is in many ways as bad the former Baathist regime in Iraq. And certainly it's history of involvement in Lebanon is not without controversy.

As for North Korea, well, I'm not sure that we have reliable information about exactly what has happened there for the last fifty years, but letting your population starve is a step in the genocide direction. Do you think that everyone has equal access to food?

As for Burma, that one is easy. And here

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It would be a great scandal if only the New Republic could (a) prove that someone paid someone for favorable coverage, and (b) wasn't publishing fabricated documents, a la Dan Rather (though I guess that stuff bothers you guys only in certain circumstances).

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All it takes to discover the lies is moderate curiosity and a willingness to read. As for the WMD, the scandal is that the Administration didn't care. They wanted to invade Iraq for other reasons, and seized on any evidence of WMD as a pretext.

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Even then it would not rise to the level of a great scandal. Regrettable - perhaps. Lamentable - probably not.

An example of a great scandal would be the discovery of chemical WMDs in Iraq, as trumpeted by Sen. "I got the I'm-gonna-get-creamed-in-November blues" Santorum last week.*


*Again, assuming it were true. Which it isn't. So, --- no great scandal.

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You forgot China.

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Which one?