No you aren't. You hit the nail square on the head and buried it.
You've got to be kidding.
That's what I did, lol.
Yep. EAO is the sites biggest trolls.
Did the Bush Administration deceive Americans into supporting the Iraq war?
- Thread starter earth_as_one
- Start date
Taking another thread down this track would have been off topic. I tried to post choices that represented various viewpoints neutrally.
Iraq has longed claimed Kuwait as it's 19th Province. Kuwait being a member of the UN has borders that are determined. So Iraq can go fly a kite as they say.
Iraq was heavily indebted to Kuwait from the failed Iraq- Iran War. this was a way f ensuring the debts were not paid.
Now if Saddam had headed into Saudi there was nothing to stop him. He then could have negotiated from a position of strength.
He also could have withdrawn from Kuwait and kept those few islands. No war.
I'm not kidding. I might not agree with him most of the time but I genuinely thinks he tries and is capable of a reasonable discussion. I know people troll him all the time, but I think every discussion we've had has been civil.
I used to think the same thing. Wait until you corner him with facts several times or discuss Jews for a few years.
That's because he's running out of people to talk to.
Your time will come. Not that I would expect to see you treat him like the rest of us do.
You seem insistent on arguing a point I'm not making. This is typical among people who hold strong opinions on this topic. You only want to argue one thing and deviations are ignored to reiterate your point.
I can summarize your post in two points.
1. Saddam Hussein was genocidal and brutalized his people, but was worse in the past than he was just before the invasion.
2. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein wasn't as urgent as the ongoing genocide in the Congo.
You fail to realize that neither of these points has any bearing on my point, nor do I buy that those points follow logically towards non-intervention. For starters, I'm not saying that Iraq was more urgent than the Congo. That's the second time I've made that clear. More importantly, Saddam Hussein isn't redeemed for refraining from mass murdering people for 10 years. You said yourself that you would have supported humanitarian intervention at the time of Hussein's worst crimes. In my opinion, the idea that a man should be punished for a heinous crime becomes more urgent and the injustice more egregious the longer he is allowed to move freely in luxury and adoration. I'm not following your logic that Hussein was alright because he wasn't mass murdering Kurds between some arbitrary date before the war.
I suspect your argument can be more explained with this analogy: a friend of mine always tells this story about her time at university. In 2000, a protest banner demanded foreign intervention in Afghanistan to stop the Taliban. A year later, after September 11, the banner was changed to demand the US get out of Afghanistan. You supported intervention in Iraq when certain Western powers were against it and went against intervention when those same powers supported it. I don't buy the flimsy logic that things weren't as bad in Iraq in 2003 and that's why you don't support invasion. I don't believe you are that irrational to believe such a thing, but I do believe that you have a knee jerk propensity to oppose American foreign policy even if it contradicts your previous opinions.
I could be mischaracterizing you though. I do think that your intellectual integrity is stronger than most around here, you're just sometimes wrong for the right reasons
Off-topic, but I supported the Afghanistan war, even though I believe OBL could have been captured without a war. I was against helping either side in Afghanistan's civil war.
Regarding my "flimsy logic", its called "Least Harm"
The Iraq war didn't stop a humanitarian crisis... it created a humanitarian crisis.
International laws, treaties and conventions supposedly govern inter-state relations. Currently, only the UNSC can authorize foreign intervention and even then, only under very specific conditions which include to stop or prevent a humanitarian crisis like Rwanda in 1994 and maybe Iraq in 1991. Iraq in March 2003 was not a grave humanitarian concern, unlike the DRC. But by 2004, Iraq may have been a grave humanitarian concern as a direct consequence of unbridled greed supported by a manipulated and deceived public.
No country's jurisdiction must be allowed to reach into another country without that country's permission. If you accept that premise that one country can be another country's judge, jury and executioner based on might makes right, then our future consists of escalating arms races and warfare. I'd like to move beyond that to something more constructive.
What the US did, was illegal from an international law perspective. US law only applies to within the US, not Iraq (or Panama, Cuba, Vietnam...)
Probably the biggest proof that the US government didn't altruistically intervene for the good of the Iraqi people is that the US government and most Americans have never given a crap about the Iraqi people. Most Americans don't even care enough to bother themselves to find out how many died as result of this war. The number of dead iraqi civilians rarely makes the news and on the rare occasion the news mentions Iraqi deaths, its always twisted around selective truths and boldfaced lies justifying what was essentially an unprovoked war of aggression to gain control of Iraq's oil wealth. If Americans truly cared about Iraqis, they'd make an effort to hold those responsible for their "error"( at a minimum... or IMO a war crime.)
I guess if you kill 1 person by mistake its manslaughter. But when someone kills 1.4 million by mistake (or by a war crime), they don't even have to apologize or say "oops". Instead they get to travel around giving speeches and collecting appearance fees. What would be just would be if Bush, Cheney and any one else who might be responsible for 1.4 millions deaths ever stepped foot out of the US, that they would be detained and and sent to The Hague to stand trial for initiating and waging of a war of aggression. If it's determined the war was just a mistake then they should get the equivalent of manslaughter for each man, woman and child who died as a result of their mistake... served concurrently, plus pay damages. That would be just.
My advice regarding CB's constant snide comments about me: Judge people by what they write, not what people write about them.
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No, it's flimsy inconsistent logic.
There's literally tons of evidence to support that observation.
I could go find all the evidence needed to prove my case, but history dictates that in the end, anyone that feels as Corduroy does, usually changes their tune after a few go-arounds with you.
Wait for it.
Corporate Profits Have Grown By 171 Percent Under Obama
Corporate Profits Have Grown By 171 Percent Under Obama | Disinformation
Trickle down theory is the real "mess".
Then why the high unemployment, exponential food stamp growth, receding GDP, 1.3Trillion deficit even with the highest corporate tax rate in the world?
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It might have something to do with American being nostaligic for the good ol' days of half the world being self-segregated behind the iron and bamboo curtains and the inability to keep funding the opression of Central/South America, Africa, india and the Middle East through currency domination.
Welcome to Globalism Wally, where even America is fair game for rape and pillage.
Now that everyone is gaining equal footing, America no longer has the advantage of being the main reserve currency.
Now that somebody in Botswana doesn't have to buy US dollars to buy import goods from Latvia means the US dollar no longer has any clout and has to compete with other reserve and national currencies.
It's not the fault of Obama or Bushes or Clintons.
It's the fault of the people who thought they could go on living the life they once did without repercussions.
It's going to take hard work, sacrifice and unity for America to regain it's glory.
How can that happen without leadership when politics became a made for TV sport?
The NSL (National Spastics League) is going to have to be dissolved.
There will never be hard work and sacrifice without unity and the NSL is what is preventing unity.
http://www.examiner.com/article/dol...rrency-as-china-begins-to-sell-oil-using-yuan
Loonie poised to join elite group of global reserve currencies - The Globe and Mail
We're going to have to watch our back now. America will do whatever it takes to knock us back down.
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Truth sucks Wally? Want to know the real reason for the Iraq invasion?
Iraq: Baghdad Moves To Euro
By Charles Recknagel
November 01, 2000
Baghdad's switch from the dollar to the euro for oil trading is intended to rebuke Washington's hard-line on sanctions and to encourage Europeans to challenge it. But the political message will cost Iraq millions in lost revenue. RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel looks at what Baghdad will gain and lose, and the impact of the decision to go with the European currency.
Prague, 1 November 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Iraq is going ahead with its plans to stop using the U.S. dollar in its oil business in spite of warnings the move makes no financial sense.
Baghdad this week insisted on and received UN approval to sell oil through the oil-for-food program for euros only after 6 November. Iraq had threatened to suspend all oil exports -- about 5 percent of the world's total -- if the body turned down the request.
The move comes despite repeated cautions that Baghdad's departure from the oil industry standard of the dollar will cost the country millions in currency conversion fees. UN officials have said Iraq will have to reduce the price of its crude oil by about 10 cents a barrel in order to compensate buyers for the additional costs.
And the UN has said moving to the euro will mean Iraq earns less interest on its oil revenues, which are held in a UN- monitored escrow account in New York.
The UN also has warned that Iraq's switch will create cumbersome new administrative processes because Baghdad says it wants to keep its existing deposits in dollars for now. That means the oil-for-food program will have to maintain two accounts -- one in dollars and one in euros -- for the time being.
With Iraq now set to begin oil transactions in euros as early as next week, President Saddam Hussein has clearly made up his mind that banning the dollar is worth flying in the face of financial logic. The euro reached record lows last week as it traded at 82 cents to the dollar, down 30 percent since its launch in January last year. Currency traders say they don't expect a rebound soon.
The calculation has set analysts scrambling to find where Baghdad sees the payoff.
Pierre Shammas, a Middle East expert at the Cyprus-based Arab Press Service, calls the move an emotional one impossible to understand on economic grounds.
"As long as the euro goes down, you don't switch to a currency that goes down in value while the dollar goes up in value. Saddam has not spelled out his plan in detail. These are politicians talking. They are not experts, they are not central bankers, they are not even oil men."
But he says Saddam may feel the strategy is worth the price because it allows him to draw a clear line between what Iraq sees as two camps in world opinion regarding the UN sanctions.
One camp, led by the U.S. and Britain -- a country also outside the euro zone -- wants to maintain strict trade sanctions on Iraq until Baghdad proves it has no more weapons of mass destruction.
The other camp, led by euro-user France -- along with Russia and China -- favors easing the sanctions on humanitarian grounds while still pursuing disarmament.
Baghdad appears to be trying now to deepen that divide by rebuffing Washington as it takes a small part of the world's oil trade off the dollar. And it appears to want to encourage ties with states like France and Italy, which it sees as sympathetic, by embracing the euro.
But analysts say the political message Baghdad is sending is largely symbolic because the currency switch offers no gains or losses for any of the states involved except Iraq.
That is because the currency switch merely formalizes what is already a standard Iraqi practice of purchasing goods under the oil-for-food program exclusively from nations it views as potential allies. Baghdad currently buys a significant share of its humanitarian supplies from the euro zone, as well as from several Arab countries and China.
Shammas says Saddam may also feel that rejecting the dollar is worth paying a financial price because he calculates the price as far lower than the UN does.
Iraq has long complained that the oil-for-food program allows it to use only about a half of the money it earns from oil sales to purchase humanitarian goods. The rest of the money is used to pay for the UN's administrative expenses connected with the program and for war reparations in the wake of Baghdad's 1990 invasion of the emirate and the ensuing Gulf War.
At the same time, Baghdad has said the UN sanctions committee routinely holds up contract approvals for purchasing goods, further limiting its access to the oil earnings. Iraq says the delays are a deliberate policy by Washington and London to keep sanctions tight. The U.S. and Britain say a long contract-review process is necessary to assure Iraq only acquires humanitarian products.
But if Saddam sees a low price tag to playing with the oil-for-food program, Baghdad is still limiting its losses by saying it does not want any of the dollars currently in its escrow account to be converted. The account, kept at the New York branch of the French bank BNP Paribas, now totals some $10 billion.
Analysts say Baghdad's decision not to convert that large sum means Iraq's switching currencies will have no effect on the embattled euro's fortunes. The untouched $10 billion are equivalent to several European bank interventions to prop up the weak currency and such a large conversion might have helped bolster investor confidence in it.
Shammas says that in deciding to move to the euro, Iraq is dusting off a strategy which another state hit by U.S. sanctions -- Iran -- discussed as recently as last year. But talk of a conversion quickly ended in Tehran as the euro has plunged over recent months. Shammas:
"In Iran, a presidential adviser -- now he is a presidential adviser -- proposed a switch to the euro last year in a newspaper editorial. But that was before the euro weakened. He said 'since our European trading allies have the balance tilted in their favor in our balance of trade, since the bulk of our investment is coming from the euro zone, and since it's likely to be a very stable currency, stronger than the dollar, why don't we switch to the euro?' But, of course, the reality proved different."
Shammas says the idea of switching to the euro has appeal to Iran and Iraq because they feel if several major oil producers did it they could create a stampede from the dollar which would weaken Washington. He says another possible candidate for a changeover if the euro were strong might be Venezuela, whose relations with Washington have turned rocky as President Hugo Chavez has stressed ties with Cuba's Fidel Castro.
But so far, no big stampede to the euro is on the horizon -- except in Baghdad. And that leaves Saddam once again charting a highly individual course that guarantees he keeps other capitals guessing what his next move will be.
What I oultlined above....
The demise of the dollar - Business News - Business - The Independent
And there is the Evil iranians..
Iran stops selling oil in U.S. dollars -report | Reuters
Still think it's a pile of crap Wally?
Iraq: Baghdad Moves To Euro
By Charles Recknagel
November 01, 2000
Baghdad's switch from the dollar to the euro for oil trading is intended to rebuke Washington's hard-line on sanctions and to encourage Europeans to challenge it. But the political message will cost Iraq millions in lost revenue. RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel looks at what Baghdad will gain and lose, and the impact of the decision to go with the European currency.
Prague, 1 November 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Iraq is going ahead with its plans to stop using the U.S. dollar in its oil business in spite of warnings the move makes no financial sense.
Baghdad this week insisted on and received UN approval to sell oil through the oil-for-food program for euros only after 6 November. Iraq had threatened to suspend all oil exports -- about 5 percent of the world's total -- if the body turned down the request.
The move comes despite repeated cautions that Baghdad's departure from the oil industry standard of the dollar will cost the country millions in currency conversion fees. UN officials have said Iraq will have to reduce the price of its crude oil by about 10 cents a barrel in order to compensate buyers for the additional costs.
And the UN has said moving to the euro will mean Iraq earns less interest on its oil revenues, which are held in a UN- monitored escrow account in New York.
The UN also has warned that Iraq's switch will create cumbersome new administrative processes because Baghdad says it wants to keep its existing deposits in dollars for now. That means the oil-for-food program will have to maintain two accounts -- one in dollars and one in euros -- for the time being.
With Iraq now set to begin oil transactions in euros as early as next week, President Saddam Hussein has clearly made up his mind that banning the dollar is worth flying in the face of financial logic. The euro reached record lows last week as it traded at 82 cents to the dollar, down 30 percent since its launch in January last year. Currency traders say they don't expect a rebound soon.
The calculation has set analysts scrambling to find where Baghdad sees the payoff.
Pierre Shammas, a Middle East expert at the Cyprus-based Arab Press Service, calls the move an emotional one impossible to understand on economic grounds.
"As long as the euro goes down, you don't switch to a currency that goes down in value while the dollar goes up in value. Saddam has not spelled out his plan in detail. These are politicians talking. They are not experts, they are not central bankers, they are not even oil men."
But he says Saddam may feel the strategy is worth the price because it allows him to draw a clear line between what Iraq sees as two camps in world opinion regarding the UN sanctions.
One camp, led by the U.S. and Britain -- a country also outside the euro zone -- wants to maintain strict trade sanctions on Iraq until Baghdad proves it has no more weapons of mass destruction.
The other camp, led by euro-user France -- along with Russia and China -- favors easing the sanctions on humanitarian grounds while still pursuing disarmament.
Baghdad appears to be trying now to deepen that divide by rebuffing Washington as it takes a small part of the world's oil trade off the dollar. And it appears to want to encourage ties with states like France and Italy, which it sees as sympathetic, by embracing the euro.
But analysts say the political message Baghdad is sending is largely symbolic because the currency switch offers no gains or losses for any of the states involved except Iraq.
That is because the currency switch merely formalizes what is already a standard Iraqi practice of purchasing goods under the oil-for-food program exclusively from nations it views as potential allies. Baghdad currently buys a significant share of its humanitarian supplies from the euro zone, as well as from several Arab countries and China.
Shammas says Saddam may also feel that rejecting the dollar is worth paying a financial price because he calculates the price as far lower than the UN does.
Iraq has long complained that the oil-for-food program allows it to use only about a half of the money it earns from oil sales to purchase humanitarian goods. The rest of the money is used to pay for the UN's administrative expenses connected with the program and for war reparations in the wake of Baghdad's 1990 invasion of the emirate and the ensuing Gulf War.
At the same time, Baghdad has said the UN sanctions committee routinely holds up contract approvals for purchasing goods, further limiting its access to the oil earnings. Iraq says the delays are a deliberate policy by Washington and London to keep sanctions tight. The U.S. and Britain say a long contract-review process is necessary to assure Iraq only acquires humanitarian products.
But if Saddam sees a low price tag to playing with the oil-for-food program, Baghdad is still limiting its losses by saying it does not want any of the dollars currently in its escrow account to be converted. The account, kept at the New York branch of the French bank BNP Paribas, now totals some $10 billion.
Analysts say Baghdad's decision not to convert that large sum means Iraq's switching currencies will have no effect on the embattled euro's fortunes. The untouched $10 billion are equivalent to several European bank interventions to prop up the weak currency and such a large conversion might have helped bolster investor confidence in it.
Shammas says that in deciding to move to the euro, Iraq is dusting off a strategy which another state hit by U.S. sanctions -- Iran -- discussed as recently as last year. But talk of a conversion quickly ended in Tehran as the euro has plunged over recent months. Shammas:
"In Iran, a presidential adviser -- now he is a presidential adviser -- proposed a switch to the euro last year in a newspaper editorial. But that was before the euro weakened. He said 'since our European trading allies have the balance tilted in their favor in our balance of trade, since the bulk of our investment is coming from the euro zone, and since it's likely to be a very stable currency, stronger than the dollar, why don't we switch to the euro?' But, of course, the reality proved different."
Shammas says the idea of switching to the euro has appeal to Iran and Iraq because they feel if several major oil producers did it they could create a stampede from the dollar which would weaken Washington. He says another possible candidate for a changeover if the euro were strong might be Venezuela, whose relations with Washington have turned rocky as President Hugo Chavez has stressed ties with Cuba's Fidel Castro.
But so far, no big stampede to the euro is on the horizon -- except in Baghdad. And that leaves Saddam once again charting a highly individual course that guarantees he keeps other capitals guessing what his next move will be.
What I oultlined above....
The demise of the dollar - Business News - Business - The Independent
And there is the Evil iranians..
Iran stops selling oil in U.S. dollars -report | Reuters
Still think it's a pile of crap Wally?
NSL fans.....great comedy or a tragedy? :lol:
TEHRAN | Sat Dec 8, 2007 10:10am GMT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has completely stopped selling any of its oil for U.S. dollars, an Iranian news agency reported on Saturday, citing the oil minister of the world's fourth-largest crude producer.
The ISNA news agency did not give a direct quote from Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari. A senior oil official last month said "nearly all" of Iran's crude oil sales were now being paid for in non-U.S. currencies.
For nearly two years, OPEC's second biggest producer has been reducing its exposure to the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.
TEHRAN | Sat Dec 8, 2007 10:10am GMT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has completely stopped selling any of its oil for U.S. dollars, an Iranian news agency reported on Saturday, citing the oil minister of the world's fourth-largest crude producer.
The ISNA news agency did not give a direct quote from Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari. A senior oil official last month said "nearly all" of Iran's crude oil sales were now being paid for in non-U.S. currencies.
For nearly two years, OPEC's second biggest producer has been reducing its exposure to the dollar, saying the weak U.S. currency is eroding its purchasing power.
Globalization does not explain the poor economy in the States. The poor economy in the States is a direct result of the idealogue in the WH. Not many companies will invest in an atmosphere of uncertainty and a continual demeaning of the private sector by the Bamster and his acolytes.
America is a consumer economy. When it's dollar drops, it buys less, if buys less, less is sold, if less is bought and soldin a consumer economy then the entire economy suffers.
It's pretty simple.
No NSL team did this. The NSL fans did.
Corpirate profit is reinvested and/or hoarded. Sometimes they'll put money into a community project - and most times that project will bear the company name. Tax write-offs, eh? Vale/Inco does it locally. How often do you hear of a major corporation sharing the wealth with the people who won't accept their brand?
As I wrote in my post:
End Reaganomics corporate welfare and the problem will end overnight.
Corduroy doesn't seem like the type to stalk people on this forum, following them from thread to thread, in order to label them a Jew hating Nazi just because they believe everyone should be entitled to fundamental human rights and dignity. You on the other hand have done this which is why I don't like you very much. Your idea of a debate is to harass, name call, make false accusations, invent straw men and tell bold faced lies, in order to discredit people who don't share your viewpoint.
As long as people are polite and respectful towards me, I will be polite and respectful back... even if I disagree with them. As you well know, I will only tolerate so much forum rule violating nonsense and then I start dishing it back out.. out of self defense.