kellinator | Will wonders never cease.

Maybe they just flew back from San Diego Comic Con ... and wore their suits on the plane ... and ... oh, who knows. ;D

Maybe they read your journal and are there to "fix things"

It's like the people who go up and down Stone Mountain to try to train for a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail. They're warming up for walking around Dragon*Con all weekend in the Labor Day heat.

take pictures!
that's totally cool :)

*is a geek*

Camera phone, someone has to have one!

yes yes yes!
camera phones are good

There will be a lot more stormtroopers in the streets of New York in coming weeks. (wait for it ... wait for it ...) They're called Republican National Convention delegates. *ba-dum-BOOM!*

Aren't they a little dumb to be a stormtrooper?

Well, in the Star Wars sense, yeah. In the 1930s Germany sense, they'd fit right in.

Noticed some disturbing similarities, huh? I've wondered why more people haven't made that connection...

My first thought wasn't "Oh dear...what's wrong?" but rather, "Ooooo...I hope they're hot!"

Just goes to show you where my brain is...

I dig that too, and I'm not there! LOL

Hello?

Our President is George Dubya Bush? The man who gave us John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, WMDs as reason to invade Iraq, and Osama bin Laden regularly laughing at us on videotape?

And you think seeing Stormtroopers is a wonder?

The Emperor is just making ready to shut down institutions of higher learning, that's all.

(High time he did, too. Why, if we don't do something about those darn colleges and universities, we might end up with a democracy on our hands...!)

You must forgive me -- I just caught a sound bite of the Prez on TV, and as usual it left me foaming at the mouth. Stormtroopers on campus just seemed too ironic, under the circumstances. :-D

What was wrong with WMDs as a reason to invade Iraq?

Intel at the time (same intel that had been used during the previous decade) said he had them... and, they're finding caches of sarin and similar agents day after day....

I'll agree that Ashcroft and Patriot-I were both major mistakes. I'll always remember Ashcroft for wanting to put clothes on the Justice statues, because boobies are evil.

What was wrong with WMDs as a reason to invade Iraq?

Without a UN resolution, everything. It weakens the UN and increases the chance that other powerful states will act unilaterally against a perceived threat. China against Taiwan, Israel against the rest of the Middle East, both spring immediately to mind. Not only that, it's morally wrong: the US and the UK have WMDs, too. "I can have them, but you can't, because I'm bigger than you."

Intel said that he had them

Only a few isolated and rather suspect sources, which were seized upon, had the intelligence community caveats and cautions hacked from them, and were presented by politicians as solid fact.

Actually, I have several friends just back from Iraq and WMDs are there in number, as for "we can have them and you can't..." you make a valid argument there as I also have several friends who won't be coming back from Iraq, well not without body bags anyway.

As for UN resolution, I don't care for the UN and would prefer that we withdraw as we do all of their dirty work anyway...just my opinion. I figure if we are part of something we should have an equal share and not carry the whole burden - even if we are better equipped.

There was a UN Resolution. Resolutions including 1441 authorized member nations to act to require compliance with the removal of weapons in violation of earlier UN resolutions (which have been discovered and destroyed as a part of the occupation). Asking for specific confirmation (and having it rejected by nations in illegal business relationships with Iraq that didn't want such uncovered) was a foolish idea by our the current administration.

As to the intel -- you consider UNSCOM a rather suspect source? What about Iraq itself? Russian Intel? English reports from 1993-2001? Don't be so short-sighted as to only see the reports at the very end of things; there were reports from all over the place that were properly vetted by agencies outside our own underfunded intel community that showed a risk in Iraq, and considering recent discoveries of viable sarin, may have understated the risk. Politicians, though, are known for digestion of detail into sellable soundbytes, so I will agree that the facts were presented as fact, if a bit simplistic for their intended audience.

I'm not going to opine on the veracity of general or specific sources - that's been done elsewhere and in greater depth, eg the Butler report summarised neatly here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3892809.stm which also notes that the sarin gas, etc, has not been discovered in significant quantities. Yes, I'm confident Saddam wanted all kinds of icky weapons. No, I'm confident he didn't have them in any useful form.

The legality of going to war on the back of UN 1441 is, at best, dubious. It does not specifically authorise force to be used in compliance (but c.f. e.g. UN 678), and part of the UN charter specifically prohibits nations from relying on the implied use of force.

Whilst I agree that politicians (and others) often have to rely on soundbites to convey a story to the media, such a serious issue should not have been decided on these soundbites - and not only were they abbreviated facts, they were also highly selective facts.

There is a resolution that authorized the no-fly zone that was enforced by UK and US together... I'd guess that one would suffice for the use of force for compliance with UN actions.

And, that report is out of date; there are more recent discoveries, and will be from here on out as more and larger areas of Iraq are searched. I'd think that cyclosarin sufficient to kill half-a-million people qualifies as a sizeable quantity, although in volume it's rather tiny. I have friends over there that have seen lots more than the press has seen fit (or been allowed) to print, but I think it is primarily the old stuff that is less potent (though, to be sure, less dead is still dead).

The Articles of the UN make it very clear that the use of force has to be spelled out explicitly on a case by case basis, which 1441 did not, and not extrapolated from other resolutions.

As has been noted elsewhere, you can have sarin sufficient to kill half a million people, but it's useless unless you can aerosolerize it without destroying it, which is the really tricky part - and that, Saddam didn't have.

There are thousands of Kurds that would disagree with your assessment of Saddam's ability to deliver sarin, except they are dead now...

And, I stand by my statement that there exists sufficient UN resolution that allowed military action, as such resolutions were used to justify the no-fly zones for such a long time.

Now, if you want to argue THOSE were inappropriate, as well, I'm willing to entertain that....

Worthy of consideration is the statement lodged to both Houses in the UK, concerning the authority to take action in Iraq:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3287.asp

Indeed, Blair set out his case along the lines you suggested in the other reply, that the authority under 678 was revived. This is the advice that Goldsmith, the UK Attorney General gave, but refused (and still refuses) to give his rationale behind his decision. I find that curious - if his case is so bombproof, as it were, why not publish his rationale? Particularly since many lawyers disagree that the resurrection of 678 is valid; for the counter arguments to Goldsmith, see, eg,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3522807.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,913589,00.html

Without Goldsmith's full advice being published, I find it hard to agree that the war was lawful. (I may still think the same were he to publish the advice, of course). An unlawful action, even if it were made for the best intentions, still leaves me squirming uncomfortably.

I will NEVER argue that point -- this whole war is an uncomfortable thing for me, too. And, not because it is potentially illegal, but because of the previously argued idea that pre-emptive action, once justified in the world, leads to war on all sides. ::ugh::

Remember, though, that the advice of the magistrates/laywers in the UK could be couched in intelligence we are not at liberty to know, so the reasoning may be understood or revealed at the appropriate levels, but not to the masses. That's the only "out" I see, but I'll have to go with it for the time being (the whole point of the House of Commons is to debate the hell out of stuff, so if he didn't present his logic, his arguments would have been tossed on their ear just on general principle).

Thanks for those alternative points, btw... I'll be reviewing them for office discussion (I'm often the intermediary between radical right proponents and the one voice of the left when they have lunchtime vocal altercations)

*having finally recovered from shock, after you agreed about Ashcroft & the Patriot Act* ;-)

What was wrong with WMDs as a reason to invade Iraq?

My goodness. Where do I begin? I mean, what wasn't wrong with WMDs as a reason to invade Iraq?

First of all, as you pointed out, the same intelligence was used to justify the invasion as was used the previous decade. We relied on outdated information! Intelligence isn't like dry goods; it doesn't "keep." What was true ten years ago may or may not be true today. Analysis of threat levels must be made based on current info, not yesteryear's data.

Second, the intelligence itself was flawed. I have a cousin, retired now, who was career Marines; he spent the second half of his service in intelligence, and is still disappointed he never convinced me to go into military intelligence, too. (I have a tremendous gift for strategy.) Thanks to him, my knowledge of intelligence-gathering methods is both broad and deep. The intelligence consisted primarily of "soft" data, meaning unreliable, such as reports from Iraqi runaways who hadn't been in a position to really know whether the info they reported was true; they were reporting rumors, to be blunt. What little "hard" data we had didn't actually prove anything; it consisted of items such as satellite photos of trucks coming and going for purposes unknown. Ooh-aah, ooh-aah. If invasions were justified on as little as that, then every nation on Earth is justified in invading every other nation on Earth.

Which brings me to, third, the claim of WMDs in Iraq was used to justify a doctrine of preemptive war, a very bad idea. Two reasons why it's a bad idea: 1) War should be a last resort, because human life is too precious to jeopardize if alternative solutions are possible, but a doctrine of preemptive war by definition regards war as an option that comes somewhere before "last resort." This leads to sloppy (or biased) intelligence-gathering to justify war, as we've seen; it also leads to poor preparation, if not for the war itself then for its aftermath, as we've also seen. 2) If one of the world's leading nations, i.e. the United States, throws out the old rule (adopted following WW II) that unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation is not allowed, and replaces it with a doctrine of preemptive strikes, what's to stop everybody else from doing the same? Then Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, North Korea and South Korea, and many other hostile relations can erupt into preemptive strikes followed by open war. Hell, what's to stop us from dispensing with diplomacy altogether and just whopping anybody who upsets us? A preemptive strike doctrine is a nightmare waiting to happen, and it'd be too late to stop it just by waking up.

Fourth, speaking of North Korea, there are rogue nations known to have, or be close to having, WMDs that we're not doing a damn thing about. You can't seriously believe Saddam Hussein's sarin (of which he had little, and no means of delivering it, and it's a wuss chemical weapon unless in a confined area, and it's as likely the sarin bomb that exploded near the convoy in May was brought in and placed by terrorists who've entered Iraq after our invasion as that it belonged to S.H.) is a deadlier threat than North Korea's nukes.

I'm probably about of room. But I think I've made my points...!

Thank you for making them with far more clarity than I. :-)

Happy to be of service, Meester Mexican Vampire sir. :-)

*shhhhh* no fair!

I find that the WMDs, and the intel that has shown that there are still WMDs in Iraq (and been borne out in discoveries), to be sufficient to take action. My issue, the whole time, is this was a UN issue first, and the action should have been theirs, not member nations. Alas, with France conducting improper business trades in violation of UN agreement, and having veto authority, such an action was not forthcoming.

Gotta agree with the first-strike line, though. It's been my primary defense when asked why I'm anti-war in this very obvious "good thing" of removing a dictator that was killing his own people. I'm glad Saddam is out of power, but I'm not happy about the means, or the position it has placed the US in from here on out.

Oh, and the argument that 'others deserve it more/better/first' is not sufficient, in my mind. Sure, North Korea is a mess, and we had a hand in that, too, but we have already shown that Korea is a "bad place" to hold a war, so action there was very unlikely to be considered. Contrarywise, the actions in Kuwait/Iraq a decade ago were so decisive, that the choice was obvious. Stupid, but obvious.

I'd disagree that Saddam had little sarin. We sold him a whole hell of a lot, and the stuff degrades slowly (even after two decades it is still a problem, as can be shown in the incineration issues involved in destroying our own older supplies), so to figure out what he has we'd have to know everywhere he'd used it, and subtract. And, as you no doubt know, he wasn't terribly forthcoming with those details. Strange, that.

Still, you did a good job in presenting your side. It's always good to see decent information come out, instead of the parroted party rhetoric!

*arches an eyebrow* Really, I had come to expect better of you. That last bit flirted dangerously with condescension. For the record, I never parrot party rhetoric, unlike many fans of FOX News and Limbaugh and other blustering Republican goons that I've argued politics with. Indeed, it would be rather difficult for me to do so, since I'm technically a democratic socialist, not a Democrat per se; there are plenty of my kind in Europe, but their party rhetoric is tailored to their countries, and it would do me very little good to parrot their rhetoric here.

I fear you are distinctly in the minority in regarding the intel relied upon sufficient to justify action against Saddam Hussein, in the form of invading Iraq. Most professional intelligence agents were firmly convinced of precisely what I asserted: i.e. that the intelligence was outdated, firstly, and of the unreliable "soft" variety instead of the far more compelling "hard" variety (which, though it can be vague or even erroneous, is still by its nature much more reliable as a rule).

I'm relieved we at least agree that it was very unwise of us to adopt a doctrine of preemptive strikes. To my way of thinking, that's such a dangerous concept that people of all political persuasions should find it frightening, and unite to dispense with it, pronto.

An area's strategic difficulties is no reason not to confront its madmen leaders, if those leaders genuinely constitute a threat to other peoples. That's what professional strategists, as my cousin tried to recruit me to be, are for. I readily admit that jungle (and mountains, and islands, and cities which after all are just urban jungles) is one of the worst terrain types to try to seize control of. But there are strategies to deal with each. And the difficulties did not stop us from opposing Japan (islands) or Germany (a fair amount of which is hilly and mountainous) in WW II. If the cause is just, the territory simply must be dealt with. So I, in turn, find your argument that it's insufficient to point to others who poser a much greater threat, to be itself insufficient.

Saddam Hussein purchased a heck of a lot of sarin from us in the 1970s and 1980s, for crying out loud. He'd been very busy attacking Kurds and other Iraqis with the stuff, since then, and he's been kept bottled up too tightly to get his hands on a fresh supply throughout the 1990s and 2000s thus far. Frankly, I'm surprised you think he'd have any left to amount to much; he's used almost all of it, you can be sure. He's not the type of man to save some for a rainy day. *wry smile*

Not condescending towards you, but towards far too many people I've had to have this conversation with. I can count on you to be logical and reasonable, and I hope that our exchanges (some of which I make as an exercise, holding your position before we start) bring enough information to others that they learn something beyond what the left or right have put out on their captive media.

There is very new intel, 1999-2002, that was also used in the decision to effect regime change. In fact, the British intel about the uranium sale from Niger (which is considered acceptable by senior EU intel, to this day) is of that recent (and hard) variety. Still, from those I've had the pleasure of talking with (not as many as you, I'd warrant), they agree that we didn't have much in the solid intel arena, mainly because the UN wouldn't force the issue and get some significant operations in force to PROVE where the WMDs went. My hope with a war effort of any kind was that it would be a UN sanctioned ENFORCMENT action, with the inspectors part of the insurgency. Alas, that is not what happened, and considering what France had to hide, was not ever going to be the way of things.

I hate to say it, but I'm glad that Saddam was not as careful with his weapons, as that means they can't be uncovered by our enemies unseen to be used against us later, but it still hurts to think of all the deaths that had to happen to use up such a significant resource. *wry back at ya*

You must acknowledge that we never opposed Japan on her soil, but on a few islands and with a massive bombing campaign. Likewise Germany was bombed into submission, with most of the groundwork done by Europe and not ourselves. With the sudden arrival of fresh troups and supplies, it was inevitable that Italy and Germany would fall. But, was the cause so just? We know the evils of Germany, but what was horrible about Italy that wasn't just as problematic in Africa, or Russia, or China? Japan attacking us directly forced our hand where we might have left them alone to conduct their exercises in Australia and China unchallenged, so what was so evil there that wasn't just as bad elsewhere?

War is almost never justifiable, I find.

And, I dare say that the lessons learned in Korea AFTER WWII were what motivate us to not re-enter that theatre, so earlier wars are not going to make your point. But, I fail to see what is insufficient about my point. You tried to show that there were worse threats, and I showed that there were better victories. It is insufficient in this case (the decision to have a war) to raise the greater risk and greater enemy, if the obvious outcome is the greater loss in fighting the battle. Diplomacy may yet win in Korea, as the leadership is still willing to talk.

My argument is that, when assessing who a war should be against, that you should NEVER just pick the greatest threat; in fact that may be the fastest way to ruin. You instead pick the worst threat you can beat handily, as this will improve your own morale, reveal to your enemies that you are willing to wage war, and potentially escallate the Diplomacy that saves lots of money and lives on both sides. Is that still insufficient? Yes, I admit I have the presumption that somehow, a decision to go to war has been made already, in that sufficient enemies exist as to cause a need for action. As I can't justify war personally, I really can't make a case for why picking one is particularly a good idea, except in the case of forcing others back to the bargaining table, which is such a tenuous game as to be outside my reasoning.

Perhaps Grand Moff Tarkin was playing nearby?

You've stumbled upon the secret. The law school is the Death Star.

That's no moon.

They've been all over in that area, evidently. There were some sightings elsewhere.

Have there been Elvis sightings too? ;-)

Will wonders never cease.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Stormtroopers...

Re: Stormtroopers...

Re: Stormtroopers...

Re: Stormtroopers...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject